Chapter 21
The grief hit in waves, each one colder than the last.
Ike pressed his back against the stone wall of the terrace, knees drawn up, and let the mountain wind cut through his thin shirt. He shivered despite the blustery, humid air.
Tucker rested his head on Ike’s feet, watching Ike with worried eyes.
The white Labrador seemed determined to make sure Ike didn’t do anything foolish.
For once, the stupid dog’s presence was a comfort to him.
After finding out Bobby was dead, the last thing Ike wanted was to be alone.
His thoughts drifted to Ava, but there was no way to reach out to her and let her know that he needed her now more than ever.
The rest of the guys carried their loss while digging for answers about Bobby’s death and making arrangements for Greta.
No one had time to fucking babysit him in his misery.
Except Tucker.
He sat there quietly as memories of Bobby flooded Ike’s mind.
Ones he hadn’t thought about in decades.
Bobby’s laugh replayed, loud, stupidly confident, echoing off these same mountains from countless summers.
Like when they were fifteen and convinced immortality came free with every sunset.
They’d smoked stolen cigars, drunk warm Felipe beer, carved their initials into a ceiba tree lower down the slope.
Ike wondered if the tree had grown around the letters or split them apart. He was afraid to find out.
Instead, he reached for the faded photograph resting under his palm.
Flipping it over, he stared at the fresh young faces from the summer after they’d graduated from high school.
They were crowded on the Hullabaloo yacht, with wide grins and the whole world ahead of them.
Ike stood in the middle, flanked to the right by Everett and Remi and to the left by Bobby and Kane.
Greta Zaniewski had beamed as she directed them into position, snapping several photos. He’d received it in the mail during his first week at the Palmchat Islands Military Academy. The picture had always been one of his favorites.
That’s why he knew he had to do whatever he could to help Greta as she dealt with the loss of her only son.
Bobby’s mother had wept over the phone. He’d heard the tremor in her voice as Kane spoke soothing words to her on his behalf, making the call on speakerphone from his outdoor balcony.
He sat next to his friend, listening to the intimate conversation and knowing that those words were ones he should’ve spoken himself.
She’d thanked him through Kane, without knowing he was listening.
She accepted Stingray’s assistance only because Kane had murmured his name like a password, unlocking her hesitation and replacing it with an instinctive reflex, grabbing onto a lifeline.
When Kane mentioned the King Family’s help, a fresh wave of sobs had overtaken her.
She welcomed the escape Kane offered. A sanctuary within the Stingray Compound while the investigation into Bobby’s death continued.
She couldn’t bear the islanders’ scrutiny anymore, not with everyone hungry for details about the murder of her only son in the heart of one of the islands’ most affluent communities.
The death of her only son was too hard for her to fathom, as she still reeled over losing Ike, a man who’d been like a son to her.
Him.
But he wasn’t lost. Or dead.
Not like Bobby.
The truth of it cut him deeper than the wounds that had killed one of his oldest and closest friends.
It had been only two days ago that he’d last seen Bobby.
Had known the man was in some kind of trouble.
His gut told him that Bobby had been neck-deep in PC-5 business when he’d made a mistake. A big one that could cost him his life. With Bobby’s arrogance, it could’ve been betraying the gang itself or running afoul of one of the cartel’s many powerful enemies.
Either way, he knew Bobby had a target on his back.
He should’ve done more to help, but he had no idea how little time Bobby had left.
There was one problem.
A violent stabbing wasn’t the M.O. of any cartel across the Caribbean.
The PC-5 and their kind eliminated the most dangerous threats without a trace.
No bodies were ever found. Nothing to link them to any person who had mysteriously vanished.
They couldn’t be investigated for a crime that couldn’t be proven.
That’s what made Bobby’s death harder to make sense of.
It wasn’t how Bobby had died, but who the cops had at the top of their list as a person of interest in his murder?—
A shadow stretched over the stone floor, long and dark, swallowing the edge of the photograph beneath Ike’s hand. It moved with purpose, cutting across Tucker’s pale fur, across Ike’s bare feet, across the grief he had carved out for himself in this corner.
Tucker lifted his head. A low sound trembled in the dog’s chest, a growl laced with a warning.
Ike didn’t need to look up to know who was standing there.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Ike said, his voice flat against the wind moving across the mountain.
Everett stepped fully onto the terrace, hands loose at his sides. "Probably not," he said, "but I didn't want you to hear about this from anyone but me."
Ike kept his eyes on the photograph. On Bobby’s young grin. On Remi’s bright face. On Everett standing beside her like he’d already glimpsed into the future and knew she was his forever.
“You’re running away with her, aren’t you?”
"Yes."
Ike's jaw tightened. He dragged his gaze up to meet Everett’s. The gray eyes reflected no remorse, no apology, not a single crack in the wall of his conviction. It scraped against the last thin edge of Ike’s control. “Bobby doesn’t deserve justice?”
Everett didn't look away. His voice was quiet and irrevocable. "I won't let her lose her freedom over one mistake."
"Mistake?" The word came out wrong, too sharp at its edges. Ike pressed to his feet, the photograph fluttering against the stone behind him. "Is that what you're calling killing someone in cold blood? She fucking stabbed him fourteen times in the chest."
Everett flinched. It was small, a tightening around his eyes and a slight shift of his weight, but Ike saw it. He wanted that pain to go deeper. Wanted Everett to feel a fraction of the thing clawing through him.
"Fourteen, Everett." Ike's voice dropped. "With a machete. For fuck's sake, he would've been better off being killed by the PC-5."
Everett’s gaze sharpened. “Why would the PC-5 want to kill Bobby?”
Ike inhaled sharply. He'd said too fucking much, his brain muddled by grief. Everett was as sharp as they came. If Everett had been trained outside the limits of the DEA, he would have come dangerously close to Ike’s own level.
Ike looked past Everett to the steep green drop beyond the terrace. The island rolled away below them in layers of shadow and fading gold, too beautiful for the ugliness sitting between them.
“The real question is, why did Remi kill Bobby? What the fuck happened?”
Everett said nothing.
His silence told Ike too much.
"You don't know, do you? You didn't ask her what happened that night? Why she thought her only option was to stab the man who'd been by her side, loving her and supporting her after you fucking abandoned her —"
"Don't rewrite the past because you're grieving over your friend.
" Everett's voice was measured, but there was weight behind it, the kind that came from restraint rather than indifference.
"I get how hard this is for you. I know how close you were to Bobby, and I'm sorry for your loss. For all the guys."
"Go to hell, Everett." Ike turned away, gripping the terrace railing, the stone rough and warm under his palms. "You don't give a fuck that Bobby is dead."
"No, I don't." A pause, honest and cruel. "But I do give a lot of fucks that men who are like brothers to me are hurting right now from losing him."
Ike turned back. "But you don't care enough to give us a reason why he died."
"Knowing the truth doesn't change anything for me.
" Everett held his ground, steady in the way that had always been both his greatest strength and the most infuriating thing about him.
"If Remington ever needs or wants to tell me what happened that night, I will listen. But I won't push her to talk about it."
"And you're prepared to leave your whole life behind.” Ike swept a hand toward the valley, the compound below. "For her."
"You act like she wasn't your friend, too. We all grew up together.”
"She obviously changed a lot from the woman I knew. The friend I once felt so close to." The words came out quieter now, stripped of heat. "Never in a million years did I think she could be a murderer. But that's what she is now."
Everett looked away, jaw clenching.
He couldn’t dispute anything Ike said, no matter how much he knew Everett wanted to.
"We live in glass houses, Ike." He moved closer, his voice lowering. "Watch where you throw stones. None of our hands is clean. Not even Bobby's."
Especially not Bobby’s. Ike knew that more than Everett. Any number of his old friend’s transgressions could have set Remi off—the lies about being in the PC-5, the endless affairs behind her back, whatever the hell he did that had him so freaked out the day she killed him.
Now Everett was here, announcing that he was leaving, too.
One night was causing Ike to lose two of his oldest and dearest friends, and it made him fucking sick inside.
“Fine.” Ike knew there was no point in trying to change Everett’s mind. “But you can't use Stingray. The compound is off-limits.”
“Sebastian told me that Bobby’s mother is there. It’s good that you’re taking care of her.”
"The last thing she needs is to share space with the woman who killed her only son."
"I'm working on other arrangements."
Ike looked at him for a long moment. This man, he’d known for more than half his life, was about to disappear for the second time in his life. "I hope you don't regret throwing your life away."
"I could never regret doing anything that brings me closer to Remington, in whatever form that takes. She is my life. She always has been, and she always will be. I'm done hiding." He met Ike's eyes with an intention that felt more like a reckoning. "You should try it."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I understand more than anyone what you're going through, Ike.
The hollow brokenness that you can't imagine clawing out of.
After a while, the wreckage starts to feel permanent, and trying to rebuild your life feels harder than staying broken.
Any hope for redemption for your past sins has damn near vanished. "
Ike said nothing. The rebuke burned hotter than the afternoon island sun.
“It becomes easier to give up than to do the hard work.”
“You don’t think I’ve been doing the hard work to get better?”
“It’s not about you getting better. It’s about you realizing that a large part of the life you’re blessed with is to be there for the people who need you. The family and friends who love you and want you back.”
"I need …” Ike pressed a hand flat against the back of his neck. "More time."
"Bobby's death should be a wake-up call that time is not guaranteed to any of us."
Ike dragged a hand down his face.
Neither man spoke. The island filled the silence, the rustle of palms below the terrace, the far-off call of a night bird, the faint creak of the pocket doors shifting in the wind behind him.
Everett walked to the edge of the terrace, where the stone dropped away into the steep mountain slope below, the vegetation thick and green and indifferent to everything that had been said. He paused at the top of the descent and turned back, the wind catching the collar of his shirt.
"I won't leave without saying goodbye."
Then Everett was gone, his figure swallowed by the dense foliage of the tropical forest.
Ike stood there until the sound of Everett moving between the trees disappeared in the wind.
He nudged Tucker.
“Come on, buddy, let’s go inside.”
Tucker hesitated as if there was a trick in the invitation. Ike rubbed the back of his ears, then patted him on the back toward the open pocket doors. The dog wagged his tail frantically and pranced inside, jumping up on the couch and sinking down on one of the cushions.
What was he waiting for? Ike wasn't concerned about any external threats to his life. The Brazhenskys were no longer an issue. Was it time for him to rejoin the land of the living? Reclaim his life.
He sat down on the couch next to Tucker and stared at the safe deposit box. Was he afraid of never learning what happened to his parents, or of finding the truth and wishing he hadn’t?
Ike picked up the safe deposit box and hurled it at the door.
The impact forced the drawer open as it crashed to the floor.
Hundreds of loose diamonds scattered across his living room floor, skittering over the marble in every direction, cold and brilliant and catching the afternoon light still bleeding through the pocket doors.
Each one a small, indifferent star his parents had left behind in place of answers.