Trevor Reese: His Secret Love Read online

  Carly thought she took care of herself, but she understood what her father meant. If it became crucial, she had a place to go. She smiled. “Yes, sir,” she said.

  And they moved on, small-talking about what type of home she wanted to purchase, until their food arrived.

  “How’s Mommy and those misfit children of yours doing up there in Jericho?” Carly asked as they ate.

  Big Daddy laughed. “Misfit children. I like that. It has a certain bite of reality to it.” Then he took a big bite of his food. “They’re all doing just fine, thank God. Even Donald and Ashley.”

  Carly laughed. Ashley was her older, biological sister that Big Daddy and his wife also adopted. Donald was Big Daddy’s youngest son. They both worked for him. They both were still stumbling along.

  “And please don’t let me forget to give you a pair of knit gloves I’ve got in my car,” Big Daddy said. “Your mother gave them to me and told me explicitly that I better not forget to give them to you. She’ll have my hide if I forget.”

  “Knit gloves?” Carly asked. “Oh, how sweet! Mom knitted some gloves for me?”

  “That’s what she wants you to believe,” Big Daddy said. “But you know good and well that woman, who also happens to run my hotel, did not sit around knitting any gloves.”

  Carly laughed.

  “But don’t tell her I told you.”

  “I won’t,” Carly said. Then she exhaled. And her whimsical look gave way to something far graver. “Daddy?” she asked.

  Big Daddy looked at her. He knew when the heart of the matter was about to be exposed. “Yes?”

  Carly looked at him. “How do you know when it’s real?”

  Big Daddy stared at her. He knew about the abusiveness she suffered at the hands of her biological father. She never gave him many details, and the background papers during the adoption gave only scant info, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that the abuse ran deep. He leaned forward. “I’m driving back tonight,” he said. “I was here on business all day. Bat-shit tired. It would be easier for me to just stay the night at your place and then make that drive in the morning. But I can’t.”

  “Why not?” Carly asked.

  “Because I would rather drive those two-and-a-half hours back to Maine and get to see my wife’s sweet face again tonight, and to smell her and touch her and hold her again, than to wait until tomorrow. That’s when you know it’s real, Carly. That’s when you know you’ve got you somebody worth fighting for.”

  Carly smiled. And reached out and clasped his hand.

  CHAPTER THREE

  His plane was ready and on the tarmac. By the time Trevor arrived at the airstrip, after a night of staying out of sight, it was nearly noon. He drove around the tarmac. The coast looked clear. Nothing out of the ordinary could be seen. He drove as close to the plane as he could, waited for his crew. There could be no phone communications at all during these missions, for fear of intercepts or set-ups, so the only sign of his return was the crew looking out for his automobile. They apparently saw him, because the steps to the plane came down. He stopped his car and got out. But he kept his gun locked and loaded, and by his side.

  But it wasn’t until he walked up a few steps that led up into his plane did he sense a problem. His pilot sometimes met him at the door, and sometimes he didn’t. That wasn’t the issue. But he saw what almost every flight passenger would have never even thought to look at. He saw what appeared to be a very slight indentation in the side of his plane, near the fuselage. Most people would say a small rock hit it at some point and caused the damage. Trevor wasn’t most people. He was a government-trained assassin. That damage was caused by a ricocheted bullet.

  As soon as Trevor realized what he was viewing, he jumped over the steps and back onto the tarmac. Gunmen raced out from inside his plane, leaned over the steps, and started shooting at him as if he was the moving object in their target practice.

  But he moved. Swifter than a panther, he moved. He went beneath the plane, firing back at them, and weaved and bobbed and shot his way back around to his car.

  By the time he jumped into his car, he had killed half of the gunmen. But the other half were coming for him. They were running and shooting and coming as if their lives depended on this kill.

  Trevor flung the stick-shift of the Dodge Charger he was driving into Reverse, floored his gas, and drove backwards with swerving, on-the-brink-of-losing-total-control speed.

  But the stakes changed. He thought he was getting away. He thought he had outfoxed his foes. But an SUV suddenly drove up behind him as he was backing up, and didn’t stop racing toward him. He tried to swerve out of the way. He tried to maneuver his car in whatever way he could to avoid the collision.

  But the collision was unavoidable. The SUV crashed his car with a deadly crash. They aimed to kill him and his car responded to that aim. His car soared airborne, and was spinning around and around like metal on a lathe. Until it landed, upside down, on the tarmac.

  But the SUV wasn’t without harm, either. It flipped too from the impact, and landed broadside up. And the men inside that SUV were trapped inside.

  But the gunmen from the plane didn’t even run to their crew members’ rescue. They ran to Trevor’s car, with their guns pointed and ready. Two men approached on the driver’s side. Two approached on the passenger side. They saw Trevor sitting in the middle of the front seat, and he was dead. All the windows were down, and they were about to fire away, to add an exclamation point to his death. And it was a good strategy on their part, because contrary to what their impression was when they saw him in that car, Trevor Reese was not dead.

  He wasn’t even asleep. He was waiting. One gun in his right hand. One gun in his left. And as soon as they were fully visible to Trevor, he started shooting, and took out all four before they realized he had risen.

  But Trevor didn’t delay. He could smell a gas leak a mile away, and this one smelled as if it was right on top of him. Although in pain, he hoisted himself out of the car. He wasn’t about to survive multiple assassination attempts, only to go up in flames because he couldn’t get his slow ass out of a damn car.

  Once on the tarmac again, he quickly realized that it wasn’t his car that was leaking. It was the SUV. And the men trapped inside knew it too. They were banging on the locked windows furiously, kicking and screaming for him to rescue them. They wanted the man they had just attempted to assassinate, to be their rescuer.

  Trevor had a heart, but it was no fool’s heart. He didn’t look back. He ran to his plane and ran up the steps. He removed his dead pilot’s body out of the cockpit, piling his body where the rest of his crew’s dead bodies were already piled up, and flew that puppy out himself. He was on the west coast. Had to fly all the way to the east coast back to Boston. A six-hour flight. But he was ready, willing, and able.

  The plane lifted up and away just as the SUV, with the doomed hit men inside, went up too, in an explosive ball of fire.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “What’s going on in here?” Carly Sinatra wasn’t ten minutes in her office when her assistant, Bridgette Collier, hurried to tell her that her subordinates had disobeyed her direct order. She left her office, walked into the conference room, and saw what Bridgette meant.

  Two of her top consultants, Shirley Nance and Dallas Shephard, the newest consultant, were in the conference room with one of their biggest clients. They were seated at the table plotting what appeared to be a full-blown strategy to combat his situation. The only problem with that scenario? It was not what Carly told them to do. “You heard me,” she said. “What in the world is going on in here?”

  Dallas, as usual, took the lead. She smiled her best beauty pageant smile and rose from her chair. “Carly, hey,” she said delightfully. “You remember Perry Gavin.”

  Perry Gavin was a big-time A-list actor who was always fooling around with young starlets and getting into small-time image problems. Carly knew him well. “How are you, Mr. Gavin?”
she asked with a smile on her face. A smile, she knew, that did not reach her eyes.

  “I’ll be better if I wasn’t in this jam,” Gavin replied. “This is getting to be too much for a man my age. But you have to give the fans the image they want, don’t you? Not the real image. The image they want.”

  “Don’t you worry, sir,” Dallas said. “That’s exactly what we’re going to give them. You will come out on the other end looking better than ever.”

  Gavin chuckled. “That’s a big promise to make,” he said. He looked at the woman he once dubbed Cautious Carly. “What about you, Carly? Do you also ascribe to Dallas’s belief that you guys can bring me out of this smelling like a rose?”

  “No, sir,” Carly said bluntly.

  Gavin laughed. “Thought so,” he said. Then his smile left and he looked at Dallas. “Now cut the bullshit, and give me practical solutions!”

  Dallas swallowed hard. “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “However,” Carly said to Gavin, “I have two consultants already scheduled to meet with you and discuss your matter. Dallas and Shirley are already assigned to a different case.”

  “But these ladies told me they were your top two consultants,” Gavin said. “Why would you not give me the best?”

  “The two assigned are excellent as well,” Carly said.

  “But they’re already on a case, Carly,” Dallas had the gall to say.

  Carly looked at her. She couldn’t believe this woman. “May I see you outside?” she asked. “You too, Shirley,” she added. Then she looked at Gavin. “Will you excuse us for just a moment?”

  “I don’t have all day, Carly,” Gavin said as he pulled out his cell phone.

  Carly never placated the firm’s clients, so she didn’t say anything. She headed out into the corridor. Shirley smiled at Gavin, however, and Dallas told them that they understood he was a very busy man and would only be a moment, as if she was running the show. They excused themselves and stepped out into the corridor with Carly. Shirley closed the door behind them.

  They were on the tenth floor of Reese Marketing, in the PR department that Carly ran, and although it was mid-afternoon and her day had been far more hectic than expected already, she did not expect this. “Where’s LaQuan?” she asked.

  Shirley looked at Dallas. She was the newest hotshot hire by Trevor. She was the new shiny object. Let her take the heat.

  Dallas was all too happy to take it. “He’s in Ben’s office. We switched with Ben and Steve.”

  “Switch back,” Carly said. “Ben nor Steve has the background to handle LaQuan’s case.”

  LaQuan Thompson, a rapper, had been arrested in the double homicide of his ex-girlfriend and her new lover. He insisted that he was innocent, and confessed his innocence vociferously, but it did not look good for him at all. It was Carly’s job, not to persuade his fans that he was innocent, which was usually her job, but to persuade the entirety of the Boston public, some of whom would be in the pool of jurors the prosecution empaneled, that he was not only innocent, but the very idea of his guilt was ludicrous. And that grand jury, once empaneled, would have so many seeds of doubt already, based on LaQuan’s numerous public appearances she was going to set up, and statements she was going to be certain he constantly delivered, that they would refuse to indict. It was a tall order. A prosecutor, it had been said, could indict a ham sandwich if he wanted to. Carly and her people had to make a ham sandwich a tough hog to chew. So tough that the jurors would spit it out. That was why she wanted all of her lead, seasoned crisis managers on his case.

  But when she entered the conference room and saw, not LaQuan Thompson sitting at the head of the table, but Perry Gavin, she was highly upset. And still upset, as they stood in the hall.

  “I understand your concerns,” Dallas said.

  “I don’t care what you understand,” Carly said. “I told you to assemble the lead team for LaQuan Thompson. Not for Perry Gavin.”

  “But there’s no problem,” Dallas said. “I’ve been at this a long time, Carly. Before you even graduated high school, I was a crisis manager. I’m telling you the right team is working with LaQuan right now.”

  “First of all,” Carly said, “you don’t tell me anything. I told you to put Ben and Steve on Perry’s case, and you and Shirley handle LaQuan, with my input on both. I want the top players. This is that serious. That young man could go to prison for the rest of his life if an indictment comes down. His best chance of freedom is with that grand jury, not at trial. He cannot get indicted! He cannot go to trial. As his consultants, that has to be our singular focus right now. We’ve got to get him out there, on every news program in this Commonwealth, radio and TV and social media, confessing his innocence well before even the thought of a grand jury is empaneled. We’ve got to control everything about that young man from the clothes he wears to the words he speaks. And we’ve only got days to do it!”

  The elevator doors opened, and Bridgette Collier, Carly’s administrative assistant, stepped off. When she saw the three ladies standing outside of the conference room, she hurried up.

  “Did you find him?” Carly asked her.

  “He’s still with Ben and Steve,” Bridgette said. “I told Dallas this wasn’t your assignment. I told her you wanted her to work with LaQuan. But she told me I worked for her, essentially, and I was to do what she told me to do until she had a chance to talk to you.”

  Carly was accustomed to insubordination. As the youngest member of the PR department, it was hard for many of her employees to accept that she was their boss. But she was not accustomed to this blatant disregard for her very precise order. “My assistant does not work for you,” she said to Dallas, “and there is nothing to talk to me about. I gave you a direct order.”

  “I understand everything you’re saying,” Dallas said. “But Perry Gavin is a major star, Carly. Think about what you’re doing. LaQuan Thompson? He’s nothing but some rapper!”

  Carly couldn’t believe her lack of reasoning. “He’s some rapper accused of a double homicide! Do you realize how difficult it is to get a grand jury to refuse to indict if the prosecution wants an indictment? That’s the kind of herculean task we have on our hands.”

  But Dallas was not convinced. “Perry Gavin is a megastar! He expects Reese Marketing to have all hands on deck for him right now. Not for some rapper who’s not even all that famous yet.”

  “Perry Gavin had yet another affair with yet another starlet who declares she had no idea he was married,” Carly said. “Perry Gavin’s reputation and image as this wonderful family man on his family show will be ruined if we don’t come through for him. LaQuan Thompson could get Life in prison. He doesn’t give a shit about image. LaQuan is our priority. We’ll have a team working Perry’s situation, but I want the A team for LaQuan.”

  “That’s how you want to call it, okay,” Dallas said as if she had a choice. “I’m just saying I wouldn’t call it that way. Mr. Gavin pays Reese Marketing five times what LaQuan could ever pay us to represent him. I think he feel he should get five times better service than some rapper, I don’t care what that rapper is accused of. At least, that’s how the agency I came from used to handle it.”

  “Let me enlighten you,” Carly said. “You aren’t working for that agency anymore. You’re working for Reese Marketing. More specifically, for me. If you don’t like those terms, get the hell out. LaQuan is our priority. Get him out of Ben’s office and into this conference room, and I mean now. Get Perry Gavin out of the conference room and put him with Ben and Steve. Now.”

  “But we can’t treat Perry Gavin that way,” Dallas insisted. “He’ll object.”

  “That’s your problem. This would not have been an issue if you would have done what I told you to do in the first place. I’ll be back in ten minutes. Get it done!”

  And Carly, with Bridgette on her heels, headed back toward the elevator, got on, and left.

  Shirley looked at Dallas. “Good luck with that,” she said. “Pe
rry Gavin is a spoiled movie star. He is going to be so pissed.”

  To Shirley’s surprise, Dallas smiled. “Yes,” she said. “Royally pissed. And I will gladly tell him whose decision it was and why. It might get so bad that Mr. Reese may have no choice but to get rid of that ninety-day wonder of a PR Director, and put a real woman in charge.”

  “Let me guess,” Shirley said. “You?”

  Dallas smiled again. “Why, Shirley, are you trying to encourage me?”

  “Hell no. You’re doing a fine job yourself.” Then she smiled. “I’ll get LaQuan from downstairs. I’ll leave Perry Gavin to you.”

  Dallas smiled even greater after Shirley was gone. Because she was going to make it her business that this kerfuffle was viewed, not only by Gavin, but by the entire staff, as a major fuck-up. A major fuck-up, Dallas thought even more excitedly, by Carly, not Dallas. And a groundswell of complaints was going to end up at the feet of Trevor Reese. And Trevor Reese, a man who prided himself in running a tight ship, was going to kick that black bitch to the curb, and install the most plausible alternative: Dallas.

  And Dallas had it all figured out. First, she was going to run PR. Then she was going to find her way into Trevor’s bed and let his fine body take hers. And then soon, after he get a taste of her, she was going to run him and his entire company too. Dallas had plans. She knew what she was doing.

  And when she reentered the conference room, and informed Perry Gavin of the screw up, the why of the screw up, and who was responsible, and Perry launched into a major, profanity-laced meltdown of epic proportions, Dallas inwardly smiled. Mission, she felt, accomplished.

  Carly had no clue about Dallas’s plans or Gavin’s meltdown as she made her way back to her office. But later that evening, when she made it home, it wasn’t going to matter to her anyway. Because Trevor would be back. And he would be ready, willing, and able to relieve her of every ounce of stress that job, those crisis situations, and Dallas Shephard herself was trying to cause.