Cruise: A Thriller Page 22

  I’m a genius, Romina thought. Satisfied with herself and her plan, she put on the backpack. She would carry the other one in her hand. She grabbed the gun and kneeled down in the hole. The most unpleasant part of the evening had arrived. Her plan would only work if she could make the alleged suicide of Heleen seem real. Her dead body would be the only clue that would help the police come to their conclusion.

  She took Heleen’s hand. She put the handle of the gun in her palm. Just when she was about to place the Dutch woman’s index finger on the trigger, a light beam moved across the hole.

  “Police! Do not move!” a deep male voice ordered.

  Romina acted in a reflex. She grabbed the gun, turned it toward the light, and shot. At the same time, she stepped back farther down into the hole. She heard a loud bang and felt a sharp sting in her left arm. She ignored the sudden pain and started running.

  Juan Benitez sat on the ground. Surprise, anger, pain, and disbelief: all these emotions went through his mind at once. With his eyes wide open, he saw Romina disappearing from his sight rapidly.

  History had repeated itself, he thought. The impossible had occurred again. While she was held at gunpoint by him, a detective, Romina still managed to get away after one very lucky shot. How many guardian angels did this woman have? Or rather, how many did she have left?

  Behind him he heard the sound of breaking branches. Alderon had heard the shots and had rushed to the spot.

  “Over here,” Benitez whispered with a grimace of pain and shame on his face. The bullet from Romina’s weapon had caused more damage to his ego than to his shoulder. This should never have happened to him. Not with such a perfect record.

  “Are you okay?” Oscar Alderon asked as he dropped to one knee beside him.

  “It’s just a lousy flesh wound,” Benitez lied. He was glad it was so dark, so Alderon could not see his face, contorted in pain. “Romina doesn’t stand a chance,” he said confidently. “The boys are waiting for her at the SEAT.”

  Alderon stood up. He picked up his radio to call an ambulance. But Benitez did not let it get that far.

  “Please wait. I do not want any messages exchanged on the channel right now. It could give away our colleagues’ position.”

  Alderon put the radio back in his pocket, leaned forward, and stretched out his arm.

  “Let me help you up.”

  Benitez shook his head.

  “I’m just fine right here. You go look after Heleen. I have no idea what state she is in.”

  Romina’s arm burned. Because the blood continued to flow, her jacket sleeve was sticking to her sweater. It felt sticky, dirty. As if she had not washed herself for days. She kept running. The car was close.

  This unexpected setback also had another side. The adrenaline that went through her body now made her more eager than ever to achieve her goal. She realized that to achieve the ending that she had envisioned, where everything fell into place, was impossible now. But she could still flee. There was a million euro in her backpack, and David was waiting in the car. Start the car, drive away, and hide. Once the storm died down, she would leave the country with a different identity. In South America, you could live like a king on a million euro and they spoke Spanish there.

  Once there was more space between the trees and she was near the place where the car was parked, she slowed her pace. She stood very still, and was hyper alert to any unusual noises and looked around for shadows that did not belong in the forest. Her first impression was reassuring—there was no one in the immediate vicinity of the car.

  A real sense of urgency drove her to the car quickly. She pressed the button on the remote control that opened the doors automatically. In the same motion, she flung the bag forward so it was hanging from her arm. In a flash, she saw how David had pressed his face against the side window.

  “Police, do not move!”

  Two bright beams of light pointed at her body. The sudden shock did not stop her, however. Without thinking, she fired in the direction of the light and ran around the car. She felt completely out of control with the bag on her arm and blinded by the light. In the forest, the gunfire sounded like cannon shots. For a moment it felt like her world had exploded with loud noises that wiped out everything else. During this moment of total disorientation, she was hit in the leg by something, causing her to fall. She stood up as soon as possible, kept firing, opened the door, and threw the backpack on the passenger seat.

  Once in the car, the sounds that seemed to come straight from hell were muffled. David. The thought flashed through her mind. They wouldn’t dare shoot at the car for fear of hitting him. The intense pain that was now shooting through her ​​leg was quickly becoming so bad she couldn’t focus on anything else. She let out an animalistic cry, started the engine, slammed the gear into reverse, and hit the gas pedal.

  As she took a half-turn backward, the side of the car scraped along a tree stump twice. The scraping sound went by completely unnoticed by Romina. On the ridge she turned to the right with great difficulty. But the dark world around her faded into a blurred landscape without any real structure. She blinked quickly to get a clearer view. When this failed, she pressed down her right foot on the accelerator in a moment of total despair.

  Oscar Alderon knelt down beside Heleen, who was gradually regaining consciousness. He supported her, helping her get up.

  “Are you all right?”

  She nodded automatically. Immediately, she felt stabbing in the back of her head. She put her hand on the tender spot.

  “Where is Romina?” she asked, feeling dizzy.

  “She is being met at the car by my colleagues.” His gaze was friendly and reassuring. “Her game is over. As far as I’m concerned, she’s going to spend the rest of her life in a maximum security prison.”

  He picked up the bag and threw it over his shoulder.

  “Let’s go …” His words were cut off by the sound of gunshots. Heleen froze and felt like she was nailed to the ground. She heard another huge blow in the woods. Scraping metal. An engine began to wail. Slipping tires grinding in the forest sand. Heleen felt a tremendous amount of fear about what was coming.

  Nature held its breath for three long heartbeats. The intensity of the blow that followed raged through the trees. The terrible echo of shattered glass, twisted metal, and total destruction she heard hit her hard. She staggered, all the blood drained from her face.

  The scream came from the depths of her soul.

  “David!”

  Epilogue

  Ten years later

  The two large umbrellas gave them some protection from the sun, and the area around their beach chairs became an oasis of shade. Beside and behind them, shiny sunscreen-covered tourists voluntarily exposed themselves to the warm ultraviolet rays. They were all on towels, blow-up rafts, or beach chairs. A light breeze that came in over the water made the temperature feel more comfortable, which made the threat of getting sunburned even greater.

  From behind her sunglasses, Heleen looked at the game taking place in the surf. David had gotten into a conversation with two Dutch girls. Slowly but surely, the conversation resulted in a series of clumsy flirtations from both sides. David had no idea what to do. Casual and tough behavior was mixed in with splashing the pretty blonds—who responded almost hysterically, screaming and making exaggerated feminine movements, making it all seem a little humorous, but staying close to the very attractive Spanish boy who spoke Dutch fluently.

  The growing attraction to the opposite sex, hormones, rapid mood swings, major changes to his appearance. Heleen was facing a new stage in David’s life again. Despite the downside that puberty sometimes brought with it, she tried to enjoy every moment. “I think you may have raised a real womanizer,” Etienne giggled.

  Christian muttered something under his breath, after which his longtime companion nudged him playfully.

  “Fortunately, he is into girls. So he is spared all that stuff about ‘coming out’ and ‘being accep
ted by the family.’ ”

  Christian sighed deeply. Then he rolled his eyes. “How have I managed to survive for this long with you?”

  Heleen smiled. In all these years, these two hadn’t changed a bit. Always bickering with each other, but meanwhile … they were really in love.

  Christian and Etienne were her friends now. Real friends, people who you could build trust with, who were always there for you. She would have made it without them, she had to be honest about that, but it would have been a lot more difficult.

  After that terrible night in the woods in Blanes, they had flown in from Nice immediately. Effortlessly, they took over the tasks of housekeepers, cooks, drivers, and consultants.

  After all that drama, she needed to lick her wounds for a while first, and because her two friends took over all of her duties, she had plenty of time to do that in her own way. After she got past some of her initial hesitation, she broke down and told them all about the fear and agony she had experienced that night, tears streaming down her face. She spoke about the blow to her head and the horrifying images that had stayed with her. The self-blame that ate away at her insides day after day, and the constant worry about the possibility of losing the one thing she loved the most.

  She had realized that because of her own stupid actions she had almost lost the one thing that was most dear to her.

  During her sprint to the road, she had envisioned the worst-possible scenarios. She ran toward the spot where she had heard the crash as fast as she could. She was not thinking about her own safety anymore. She just had to see David. Once at the ridge, her nightmare became a reality. The black SEAT had left a path of devastation behind. After being airborne, the car had landed on the road, the front half of it crushed. Investigators were bent over Romina’s lifeless body. In her rush, she had not put on a seat belt and had gone through the windshield.

  In a panic, Heleen quickly scanned the scene with her eyes. She saw two uniformed officers. Between them was David. Overcome with happiness, she ran down the hill. Miracles do happen. Besides a few bumps and bruises, there had been nothing wrong with the little boy.

  “Hello, little daydreamer,” Christian’s voice brought her back to the present. “How about answering my question?”

  Slightly dazed, she blinked. “Sorry, what?”

  “We’re going to get something to drink—do you want us to get you something?”

  Heleen grinned apologetically.

  “I’ll have a mineral water … and a Coke, for David.”

  Etienne gave her a thumbs up. “Okay, now you can go back to day dreaming about hot, muscular men in thongs.”

  Christian gave him a friendly shove. “Let’s go, silly.”

  She looked after her friends, then turned her gaze back to David. The game with the girls was still in full swing. One of the blonds made ​​a comment, and David put his head back and laughed loudly.

  Just how resilient can a person be? A question she had asked often asked, mostly pertaining to David, but sometimes also to herself. It was hard to imagine all the things he had gone through during his young life. Because it was not only the death of his parents and all that had happened that terrible night, there was more. A few years later, there was another big setback in his life. He was hit right in his heart again.

  She remembered that Thursday morning when the phone rang as if it were yesterday. From Ana’s tone, she could hear that something was wrong. After a short conversation, she jumped right in her car and drove straight to her best friend’s house.

  The scans from the hospital unfortunately left no room for doubt. What started out as a lump in her groin was only a small fraction of the terrible disease that had already metastasized throughout her body, and the doctors gave her six months to live. It turned out to be eight.

  Because she always wanted to be there for Ana and David, she decided to move in with them. She took over some of the household tasks and had seemingly endless conversations with Ana that often lasted until deep into the night. Mostly about David’s future.

  Although she fought hard against her illness with chemotherapy, Ana knew it was an uphill battle that she would not win. During the periods when she felt reasonably well, she made the important decisions about how life would go on after her death. The most important was the transfer of David’s custody to her best friend. Her house would be sold and the proceeds would be put into an account that David could access after his twenty-first birthday.

  Even though they had decided so quickly that Heleen would look after David, the implementation of this plan, however, didn’t go as fast. It was a long process, and all of the bureaucratic regulations made things very complicated and difficult. In order to be appointed as David’s guardian, she went through an administrative hell, where each part of her past and present life was taken under a microscope. Eventually, in late March, she was appointed as David’s temporary guardian, a status that could later on be converted to full custody. The officer who informed her of this decision solemnly assured her that the Ministry had made an exception in this case because of the special circumstances involved. In virtually all cases, it took years before guardianship was awarded to a person who was not part of the family.

  Ana died in April. Heleen carried out her friend’s wish for her to continue living at the cozy cottage for the remainder of the school year and then move back to her own house the following summer, after which Ana’s house would be sold. In September, David went to his new school in Blanes. Just before Christmas she received a message from Madrid. She was now officially appointed as guardian of David.

  During the years that followed, it became clear to her that the mental well-being of a child depended a great deal on their environment. So she made sure he was raised in a very protected environment, without any major incidents. Despite all the dramas in his life, Heleen made sure he could grow up like a normal and happy child.

  The first few months after Ana’s death he had asked about her regularly. She explained as clearly as possible that Ana was no longer part of this world. She added that she was sure Ana would want him to do well in school and have fun with his friends. He accepted her explanation. He never spoke a word about that horrible night in the woods. She could only hope that he had erased this event from his memory forever or that he had found a way to process it somehow.

  Finally, their lives became peaceful. David did well in school; he went to secondary school, got a real girlfriend, and faced the typical physical and mental problems that came along with becoming a teenager. In short, he was a normal child. Exactly what Ana, she, and even Romina would have liked him to become.

  In addition to bringing up David, she was finally able to make time for her own project. She could now finally pursue her lifelong dream: a shelter for disadvantaged children. After the experience with the custody case, she decided to be well prepared from the start. She hired a gestoria, a service to advise her in setting up this shelter.

  She soon realized that the red tape that she encountered with the child-custody case was nothing compared to the regulations that applied to this project. When the gestoria explained to her what permits and adjustments were needed in the house in order to qualify for a license, it overwhelmed her. The conclusion was that it would be at least three years before she had the paperwork in order and could even apply.

  Because she still wanted to do something with kids, she decided to try the private sector. The rules for starting this type of day care were looser. In fact, mostly what they expected was that the area was childproofed and safe and that the little ones were taken care of by professionals.

  Eventually, she decided to keep the budget low on every level. A choice that still allowed her to realize her dream. It became a type of nursery. A shelter for children of single, working mothers. She took on no more than three children a day in the house, so she could give each one of them her full attention. The price she charged was only to cover the cost—more than that was not necessary, given her fi
nancial situation. The work was satisfying, and she genuinely enjoyed taking care of the little ones.

  The past ten years have been the most beautiful years of my life, Heleen thought. Raising David and setting up the nursery had taken up a lot of her time and attention, but her door was always open to her friends and family. Sometimes it was very busy, and sometimes they simply watched television every evening together or read books on the patio.

  The relationship they had built did not fall short of one with traditional blood ties. They were mother and son and it showed in everything that they did. Apart from the fact that they did not look the same on the outside, no one would draw this into question. Inseparable was a big word, but it came close.

  She was well aware that this was also a stage. Once David was eighteen, sooner or later, he would choose to go his own way. It was inevitable that she had to let him go eventually. Hopefully their bond was strong enough to last in the future.