Chapter 11
ALEX
The words continued to scroll across the screen at the bottom, barely registering as Alex tried to process the shock.
The woman on the screen, her features pinched with concern, reported about the in-air explosion of a private plane hired by the Department of Homeland Security.
Details were few, but the passenger manifest indicated that Ava Collins, wife of billionaire tech genius Alex Stone had been among the passengers.
A picture of Ava flashed onto the screen, and Alex’s features twisted with disbelief and upset. “Ava?”
His voice broke, barely above a whisper as he spoke her name.
“Alex,” Julia said, her voice soft. “I’m so sorry. Why don’t you sit down?”
Alex ignored her, barely able to hear her words as he reached a shaky hand to trace the contours of Ava’s face on the screen.
“Ava,” he whispered again. “No.”
A warm hand slid onto his shoulder, and he twisted to find Julia standing next to him, her features pinched. “Alex, I think you should sit.”
“Sit down?” he asked, his voice shaky.
“Yeah,” she said with a slight bob of her head. “Come sit down.”
“Sit down?” His voice turned incredulous. “Are you kidding me?”
“Alex, this is a shock, and you need to process everything,” Julia tried.
“A shock…” He huffed out a harsh laugh. “Yeah, you could say that. It’s a shock, all right.”
Alex ran a shaky hand through his hair as he paced the floor. “Ava was on a plane that exploded. That’s…a shock. But…she’s…”
His voice trailed off as his mind tried to make her okay. Ava was always okay. Ava was so vibrant and full of life.
He recalled her smile, her coy winks, the way her lips felt when she kissed him, the way it had felt when she held him close. All of those things couldn’t be gone. Not yet.
Julia cleared her throat. “Of course, it is. That’s why you should sit down.”
Kyle rose from his seat and crossed to the doorway, disappearing through it as Alex continued to pace. “She’s…fine. She has to be fine.”
Julia stopped him from pacing as she stepped in front of him, her hands held in front of her. “Alex, please. Please, sit down.”
“I can’t sit down. We should go.”
“Go where, Alex?” Julia asked.
“To find Ava. We need to find Ava. Because she’s fine. She’s okay. Ava couldn’t be dead because…”
Julia leaned forward, her eyebrows raising as she waited for his answer. “Because?”
“Because…” His voice trailed off as his mind searched for a reason that Ava would still be alive. His features twisted as tears filled his eyes. “Because I can’t live without her.”
The tears spilled onto his cheeks as he sank to his knees and doubled over.
With her own eyes misting with tears, Julia joined him on the floor, gently rubbing his back as he wept over the news. His mind connected the dots, finally giving in to the two words that shook him to his core. No survivors.
He glanced up at Julia, his cheeks tear-stained. “She could be alive, right? She could be…”
Julia offered him a fleeting smile without a verbal answer as she rubbed his back, glancing at Grant for help.
“Hey, Alex, why don’t we sit down on the couch and discuss this a little more,” Grant said, hooking a hand under his arm and tugging him up gently.
“Yeah, right,” Alex said, recovering a little. “Right, we need to…we need to discuss this and figure out a way to find her. She’s probably okay. I’m sure she’s okay. I just…I would know if she was dead, right?”
Julia licked her lips as Grant eased him onto the couch before she took a seat next to him taking his hand in hers. “I know this is going to be hard to hear, but…”
“No,” Alex said with a vehement shake of his head, “no, don’t say she’s dead. She’s not dead. She can’t be dead. She can’t be dead. Because I can’t live without her. We just…we just started out lives together.”
“How about this…Grant has some contacts at DHS…maybe he could give them a call and see if somehow Ava didn’t get on the plane. And in the meantime, we’ll give her phone a call. How about that?”
“Juls, are you sure this is a good idea?” Grant whispered.
“Yeah,” Sierra said, “I mean she’s obviously–”
“Not here,” Julia finished for her. “Right. Yes, everyone just…do the tasks we talked about okay?”
“But Julia–” Sierra hissed.
“Just do it,” Julia said through clenched teeth before she crossed back to Alex.
He tapped his fingers nervously against his thigh as he stared at the coffee table.
“Did you try Ava?” Julia asked, trying to keep her voice bright.
“Not yet. Uh…my brain just isn’t firing after that bogus report.” He huffed out a laugh. “Crazy.”
He pulled his phone from his pocket, his hands still shaking. As he found Ava’s number, he hesitated. What would happen if she didn’t answer?
Julia rubbed his back, offering him a slight smile. “Do you want me to try her?”
“No, that’s…uh, maybe,” Alex said.
Julia nodded, slipping the phone from his hands and pressing the call button. She toggled on the speakerphone as the voicemail picked up.
Ava’s voice filled the room. “Hi, you’ve reached Ava, I can’t take your call right now, but–”
Julia hit the end call button, sliding her gaze sideways to glance at Alex’s reaction.
He shook his head, his brow furrowing. “Could be that she’s driving.”
Julia swallowed hard. “Alex…”
“I’ll check her location. Did Doc tell you that I hacked into Raven’s block on her phone and got it to send her location to me?” Alex grabbed his laptop and opened it, retrieving his newly modified program. “Now, we’ll see where she is.”
He tapped in her number and set the program running. It returned her last known location a few seconds later. “There we go,” Alex said as he bobbed his head, grabbing the coordinates and popping them into a map.
The software drilled down to show the last known location of her phone. His heart stopped, his stomach plummeting. She’d been at the air strip.
He stared at the screen before he slammed it shut, his eyes filling with tears again as he shook his head.
“Alex…” Julia said as she touched his shoulder.
He jumped, shrugging away from her. “Don’t.”
She winced a little, hesitating before she spoke again. “Look, uh…”
“I said don’t,” he said, his voice rising slightly. “Because if you say it…”
“Alex, it won’t make it any less true–”
“It makes it real. And this can’t be real. This is…some sort of nightmare. Just a crazy nightmare. It can’t be real. Ava can’t be gone.”
Across the room, Grant nodded, ending his call before he glanced at Julia, giving his head a slight shake.
“Let me see if Grant found anything out.” She patted his back before she hurried across the room to speak with her husband.
Alex pressed his hands together, balancing his chin against his thumbs. “Come on, Ava. Where are you? You can’t be gone.”
He glanced at Julia who slid her eyes closed before she glanced up again at Grant, squeezing his arm. The two of them marched across the room toward Alex as Kyle rejoined them, his bag in his hand.
“Anything?” Alex asked.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Grant said with a sigh as he took a seat on the coffee table across from Alex. “I had a contact at the DHS look into any correspondence from the agents on the case before that flight.”
“And?” Alex prompted as Kyle perched on the edge of the couch next to him.
Grant pressed his lips together before he raised his eyes to meet Alex’s. “Agent Sanderson sent a message a few minutes before the plane took off that Ava was aboard.”
Alex’s heart stopped as the man said the words. “No…no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” he murmured as though it would stop what was happening.
His life was spiraling out of control, and his feeble attempts did little to halt its progress.
Kyle clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, Mav.”
“No,” he huffed out again, his voice breaking. “No, Ava…she can’t be gone… She can’t be.”
His last statement was consumed by a sob that he tried to choke back before his features pinched. He clapped a hand over his eyes as Julia rubbed his back.
“We’re so sorry, Alex.”
“No,” he groaned again. “No, why is this happening?”
“There’s nothing I can say right now to help,” Julia said. “Nothing is going to take this away. I’m so sorry, Alex.”
His lower lip trembled as he tried to make sense of the news. It wouldn’t click in for him. Ava couldn’t be gone. They had just started their marriage.
He’d wasted so much time, and now he had no more.
He’d never see her smile again, never hear the sound of her voice, never see her sweet face, never hold her again.
“How can she be gone?” he sobbed.
Julia rubbed his arm, glancing at Kyle who nodded.
“Hey, buddy, mind if I grab a few vitals?”
“What?” Alex asked with a sniffle.
Kyle grabbed his wrist without asking again as he glanced at his watch. “Elevated pulse.”
Alex stared incredulously at him, tugging his wrist away from Kyle’s grasp, frustration simmering beneath his shock. Checking his pulse felt absurd when his world was collapsing.
Kyle pressed a thermometer to his head. “Normal temp.”
“I’m not sick,” Alex protested.
“No, you’re in shock. Shock can do strange things to your body,” Kyle said.
Alex sat in silence, numb to what was happening. How could they be worried about his pulse rate when Ava was…
His mind couldn’t finish the sentence. The room spun around him as he tried to follow the conversation.
“It may be a good idea to head upstairs…maybe try to lie down,” Kyle said.
“Lie down?” he asked incredulously.
He leapt from his seat. “Lie down? Are you serious? Ava is dead!”
The words poured out of his mouth before he could stop them, stunning him. His features scrunched as he plopped down onto the couch between Kyle and Julia. “Ava is dead…”
This time the words came out slowly and breathlessly. “Ava…no…”
Julia pulled him closer to her as she rubbed his shoulder gently. “Alex, we’re all so sorry.”
“Sorry…” He huffed out a harsh laugh. “Sorry? Sorry that my wife is dead? That everyone else gets their happy ending, but mine just exploded midair?”
“Okay, I really think maybe you should try to get some rest after a blow like this,” Kyle answered.
“Kyle’s right. This is for your own good, Alex,” Julia said.
Alex twisted to protest when a sharp pinch in his arm stopped him. He glanced down as Kyle depressed the plunger on a syringe.
“You can hate me,” Kyle said as he withdrew the needle, “but you’re going to thank me later.”
“What the hell?” Whatever he’d injected hit Alex hard. His mind swam and his limbs started to feel heavy.
“Let’s get him upstairs,” Kyle said to Grant.
With one man on either side of him, they half-carried, half-dragged Alex up to his bed, dumping him on top of the covers.
Alex stared at the other side of the bed, the empty pillow starkly reminding him of the mornings he’d awoken to her gentle smile.
The cold space beside him now felt like an unbearable chasm.
Ava’s head would never touch that pillow again.
He would never wake up to see her face ever again. Ava was gone forever.
The sedative Kyle had injected made his eyelids heavy.
He started to let his eyes slide closed when his phone buzzed in his pocket. With a yawn, he tugged it from his pocket, staring with bleary eyes at the display.
No number appeared, only the word RESTRICTED. He swiped to answer, his voice slurred. “Hello?”
Barely conscious, a single word echoed in his ear, making him question everything. As the sedative dragged him under, a familiar, almost ethereal voice whispered, “Ace?”