The Letter Keeper Read online

  I tilted my hat back and tapped my teeth, “Go on. I’m not in the—”

  I don’t remember the blast that launched me from the boat. I don’t remember my flight through the air. And I don’t remember landing facedown. Nor do I remember the sensation of my skin being set on fire. The only thing I do remember is the sound of Clay’s garbled voice, but I was too far inside myself to hear what he was saying.

  In hindsight, landing in the water was a good thing. It put the fire out.

  Clay later told me that the helicopter ride to Savannah General was both a lot of fun and one of the more fearful things he’d ever done. When the pilot told him he was not legally able to ride in the helicopter, Clay had answered, “Scooter, either you fly this thing or I will. But one way or the other, I am taking this man to the hospital.”

  To my knowledge, Clay has no idea how to fly a helicopter.

  I woke three days later with a furry warm body breathing next to me, his muzzle resting on my chest. Tail wagging across my legs. Clay told me the nurses objected at first, but then Gunner did that thing with his ears and made that little noise he makes, and they relented.

  When my eyes cracked open, all the world had gathered at my feet. Dressed in white, each face a story of concern. Bones, Clay, Angel, Ellie.

  And Summer.

  Somewhere inside me, I heard the echo of a James Taylor song. Frozen man.

  At my stirring, Summer sucked in a breath and knelt next to the bed, sliding her hand beneath mine. Her tearstained face wore torment. I tried to speak, but given the tube down my throat, I motioned for a pen and paper. The words were smeared and slow in coming. I could barely read my own writing. “Did somebody die?”

  The laughter did them some good.

  Apparently someone had set a bomb beneath the gas tank of my Whaler. It was set to a pressurized timer triggered by my weight in the captain’s seat. I don’t know how Gunner knew about the bomb—I don’t know whether he smelled it or heard it—but I do know he tried really hard to get me off that boat. When the bomb ignited, it did so beneath ninety-two gallons of fuel. Clay said he heard the explosion and saw rocket man arcing through the sky like Halley’s Comet. When he got to me I’d been facedown in the water nearly a minute.

  My injuries included a concussion, burns across my backside and arms, one collapsed lung, and various cuts and contusions. The technical diagnosis suggested that I’d live but recovery might be slow. It took a week to get me walking on my own, my biggest hurdle being the concussion. During that time, Summer never left my side. Which I found strange, given Mr. Bentley. Ordinarily I would’ve said nothing, but hospitals have good drugs, which lessened my defenses.

  “Don’t you need to check in with your boyfriend?” That was probably a bit blunt, but again my filter was not working.

  She looked surprised.

  I tried to let her off easy. “The one with the Bentley and the nice suits?”

  She looked more surprised. “You mean George?”

  My head was spinning and I sounded drunk. “Don’t know his name. But he drives a Bentley and he wears really nice suits.”

  She moved closer and nodded. “George.” She held my hand with both of hers. “He’s the producer of the show. And he thinks we’re better friends than we are.”

  Again, the drugs. “But I saw you at dinner. You held his hand. He stroked your leg.”

  “You were in New York?”

  “Came early to surprise you.”

  “When you didn’t show, I just figured Bones had you someplace else. I tried to call . . .”

  I leaned my head back on the pillow and moved my feet clumsily beneath the sheets. “Ginger’s got nothing on you.”

  “You really thought so?”

  “You were amazing. And then all those people stood . . .” My eyes focused on her. I shook my head. “I was standing outside the stage door when his car appeared.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “A future with me looks different than a future with him.”

  Tears dripped onto my cheek as she kissed me. Once. Then twice. She tasted salty. “George is a friend. That’s all. He’d like to be more. He’s not.” She placed her hand on my chest. “Won’t ever be.”

  The drugs kicked in and I faded off. When I woke, she was in bed next to me. Her head on my shoulder. I lay there several minutes, just breathing. The mixture of her smell and the strong rhythmic pulse of her heart was intoxicating.

  George could wait his turn.

  Chapter 6

  Freetown

  Bones secured my release a few days later and transferred my care to our Colorado team housed on-site at Freetown. The paramedics helped transfer me from hospital to runway, where the seven of us, including Gunner, boarded the plane. Three hours later, we touched down and reversed the process. That much activity tired me out, so I slept throughout the trip.

  When Bones and I opened Freetown, we knew we needed a secluded fortress. Some place high, protected, and tough to get to. Drug-addicted women who have been emotionally, physically, and repeatedly raped for profit need a safe space to unwind all the knots the evil has tied. Getting free is tough enough without looking over your shoulder.

  What had once flourished in the late 1800s with schools and churches and shops and kids playing in the streets became a ghost town when the silver ran out. Situated in a high alpine valley, it’s one of the more beautiful places I’ve ever been. And given newer technology and better roads, it’s now accessible while also hidden. The altitude takes some getting used to when you’re two miles above sea level, but acclimation doesn’t take long. Especially for the young. Most folks who live around there have no idea we exist. We like it that way.

  For security, Bones brought in some ex-Delta guys and SEALs and retired Los Angeles SWAT officers. We give them each a cabin. Educate their kids. Free healthcare. And then pay them to put all their training to good use. Which they do. Rather zealously. Not only that, but most are still on some sort of active duty, which requires them to stay current in their training. And because the mountains around us are some of the toughest anywhere, they bring in their military friends and conduct mountain and cold-weather urban training all around us. Sometimes they even let me play along. We share stories at twelve thousand feet.

  While Bones plays the happy-go-lucky grandpa everyone loves to love, he walks these mountains morning and night, and there isn’t a footprint or broken twig that gets past him.

  These are his sheep. Freetown his pasture.

  For lack of anything more creative, we used to just call it the Town. But somewhere in our first year of operation, one of the girls said something to change all that. She’d had a rough go. Through no fault of her own, she was taken from her home and sold as a slave. For two years, she was traded around. Suffered horrors untold. To medicate her reality, she took anything she could get her hands on, numbing the pain of the present and past and future. Took us a while to find her. When we did, we airlifted her to the Town. She stayed in ICU for two months.

  Bones took her under his wing, which I thought was amazing when we learned what she’d endured. The fact that she would ever get within arm’s length of another man surprised me. But Bones is like that. Everybody’s grandfather. Or the grandfather they never had. Four years into her stay here, she’d graduated college—with a nursing degree, no less—and taken a job in our hospital. Working with the girls. Nursing them back to life. She met a guy. One of ours. Bones liked him. They set a date. She asked Bones to walk her down the aisle.

  During the early years of the Town, many of the girls wanted to climb to the top of the mountain, which leveled out just above fourteen thousand feet. Problem was, most of them were in such bad shape or they’d been beaten so badly that they were months from being physically able to make the trek. So Bones and I bought a chairlift from a defunct ski slope and had it installed. All the way to the top. It sits four across. We also built a cabin. Roaring fireplace. Espresso machine.<
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  We called it the Eagle’s Nest.

  A few weeks before her wedding, this girl and her fiancé and Bones and I had ridden to the top and were sitting on the porch, sipping coffee, looking out across a view that spanned seventy to a hundred miles in most every direction. And as we sat up there, she started shaking her head. She said, “There was a moment in my life when I was lying in the darkness, a different man every hour, on the hour, day after day after week after month, and I felt my soul leave. Just checked out of me. Because to live inside me was too painful. I let it go because I couldn’t understand how anyone, much less me, would ever want to live inside me. Too filthy. Too . . .” She trailed off, just shaking her head.

  Finally, she turned and looked at us. “Then you kicked down the door. Lifted me up and carried me. Here. And slowly, I learned to breathe again. To wake up and see daylight. And what I found with every day was that something in me stirred. Something I’d not known in a long time. Something I thought was long since dead. And that was my hope. Hope that somebody, someday, would see me. Just a girl. Wanting love and willing to give it—to give all of me. I had this hope that somebody would accept me without holding my past against me. Without seeing me as stained. As the horror. As something you just throw away. But somehow . . .”

  She sank her hand into the snow resting on the railing. “Like this.” For several minutes she just cried in the arms of her fiancé. But it was what she said last that changed the name. Looking from Bones to me, she said, “I never thought I’d walk down an aisle in white. How could I ever deserve that? Not when . . . And yet, I am.” She shook her head. “I don’t really understand it, but somehow, in some impossible way, love reached down inside me, took out all the old and dirty—the scars and the stains that no soap anywhere would ever wash out. And love didn’t just clean me but made me new. And maybe the craziest part of that is how I see me.”

  She held her fiancé’s hand. “It’s one thing for him to see me as I want to be seen. It’s another thing entirely for me to see me, and I want to see me.” She laughed. “When I look in the mirror, I don’t see the freak. The maggot. The refuse. I see the new. Sparkling. Radiant. And I like her. I have hope for her. I think she’s going to make it. She is now what she once was . . . beautiful. A daughter. Soon, a wife. Maybe one day, a mom. If you only knew how impossible that seemed not so long ago.”

  She waved her hand across the Town nestled in the valley below. “I cannot begin—”

  We sat in silence several more minutes. The temperature was dropping. I stoked the fire. She reached into the air in front of her, made a fist and returned it to her chest. Pounding. “I was there. Now I am here. Love did that.” She spoke through gritted teeth. “I am free.”

  And in that moment, the Town became Freetown. It worked in West Africa; why can’t it work in western Colorado?

  Years ago, I signed over the royalties of my books to fund Freetown. Then Bones and I chose a board out of a select lineup of executives from New York to California—all of whom either have or had children here. While the success of my books was the seed and continues to fund a large portion, these corporate partners write large checks. And because they understand the need to operate under the radar, they don’t seek the marketing glory that would ordinarily come with sponsorship. As a result, people here pay for nothing. If it sounds like utopia, it’s not. The barrier to entry is slavery. And having been enslaved, everyone, to the person, chooses freedom.

  Returning here is a bit of a homecoming for me. It’s here and really only here that I possess some sort of celebrity status. Interestingly, these girls know nothing of my artistic career. Know nothing of my books. In fact, not even the corporate partners know. They simply know we have an invested benefactor. Of course they read my books. They’re scattered across the shelves here and there, but they have no idea I wrote them. They simply know me as the guy who kicked down the door. Some don’t even know that. Most think I’m just one of the guards.

  Which is fine with me.

  Every time I come back, I like to remind myself what we do here. It reconnects the disconnected parts of me. I pull on a hoodie and a hat, shove my hands deep in my pockets, and try to hide as I meander Main Street. I find a bench near the pet store where we give away free puppies, rabbits, and all kinds of birds. There, I close my eyes and just listen for one sound.

  The universal sound of freedom.

  Laughter.

  Chapter 7

  I woke after midnight in a darkened room. Gunner at my feet. Staring at me. Wagging his tail. Ever faithful. Across from me, Angel slept in a chair beneath a reading light. One of my books lay open in her lap. Lately, she’d taken to acting like a crazed fan since she knew a secret millions would love to know. She had also seen what it cost me to protect that secret, so I knew it was safe with her.

  During the months of her stay, Bones had kept me updated as to her progress. Given all the stuff that had been pumped into her system, Angel’s detox was difficult and not without challenge. Which meant she’d sweated most of it out. A gut thing. And difficult to watch. But here on the other side, she’d gained some needed weight and was talking about college. She’d make it. She looked good. No, scratch that. She looked awesome. More than that, she was free.

  As I studied her, I found myself asking a familiar question: What is freedom worth?

  She stirred, her eyes popped open, and she stretched. “Hey, Padre.” A sneaky smile. “I’m a goooood kisser.”

  I tried not to laugh.

  “How you feeling?”

  I studied me. “Not too crazy about this gown.”

  She lifted her eyebrows once. Ever playful. “The view from the back is fun.”

  I chuckled, which intensified the soreness in my ribs.

  She slid a stainless stool next to the bed and rested her head on her forearms. “Mom and I were giving you a bath last night and I noticed something.”

  I stared at the ceiling. “I know you well enough now to know that the next words out of your mouth will make me uncomfortable.”

  “It’s no big deal. I closed my eyes for . . . some of it.”

  “I have no memory of that.”

  Another playful smile. “Shame. It was epic.”

  I decided to play along. “What’d you find?”

  “Despite our history, which I’d like to think links us together in some cosmic way, my name is not etched into your back. I thought I, of all people”—she tapped her chest—“had earned a place on the wall of fame.”

  “I have a feeling you’re going to make a point.”

  Her head tilted sideways. “Was I just having a bad dream, or didn’t you rescue me?” She raised a finger. “And if I remember correctly, although things do get a little fuzzy when it comes to the details, I think I had my own page on the black web. An auction even. With bidders. Lots of them.”

  “Let’s just say I snatched you back. But truth be told, it’s tough to rescue someone who doesn’t want to be, but you did.”

  “When did you first know?”

  “Know what?”

  “That I needed and wanted rescue?”

  “The chapel. First time we met.”

  “You’re all right, Padre.” She paused. “But you still haven’t answered my question.”

  “Your name is not the only one missing.”

  She nodded but said nothing.

  “Your mom’s, Ellie’s, Marie’s.”

  “Why?”

  “Tattoos can be burned off and shot through, so I wrote your name where no one could erase it.”

  “Where’s that?”

  I laid her hand flat across my heart.

  “You’ve gone sappy on me. I don’t even know who I’m talking to anymore. Are you taking estrogen pills?” She wiped her eyes on my sheet and raised a finger. “You should be a writer. You’d have people wrapped around your finger.”

  “Working on it.”

  She laid a hand on my leg. “Your secret’s safe with me.�
� She stood, smearing mascara. “Mama said to wake her when you woke up.”

  She turned to go but I stopped her. “What about the show? New York?”

  She shook her head. “Seriously?”

  I nodded.

  She shrugged as if I’d lost my mind. “Mom quit.”

  I tried to sit up but thought better of it. “What?”

  Angel disappeared. Two minutes later, Summer arrived. Sleep in her eyes. Looked like she’d worked a double, which meant she’d been by my side twenty-four-seven. During the last decade or so of my life, I’d buried my love. With no hope of a life with Marie, I figured I had no use for it so I didn’t give it much bandwidth. Buried it deep and closed the cellar door, focusing on the job in front of me and letting what remained of my heart wither.

  But summer always follows winter. A fitting name.

  And while part of me felt guilty because Marie still held my heart, I felt twinges of something I’d not felt in a long time. Part of me inside was coming to life, and that part had not lived for many years. Yet every time Summer walked into the room, I took a deeper breath than the one I’d taken seconds before.

  She kissed me on the cheek, checked my forehead for temperature, and then began doing that thing girls do with their hair where they twist it and twirl it into a bun while wrapping a rubber band around it at close to warp speed. “Hungry?”

  Her movements were graceful. Purposeful. Nothing wasted. A dancer by profession. A dancer in life. “Yes . . .” I swallowed. “But not for food.”

  Angel smiled. “Aaaaand I’ll be leaving now.”

  Summer tugged on her sweatshirt. “Help me turn him.”

  The two of them rolled me on my side and began changing my bandages. From what I could gather, the Whaler saved my life. The bomb had been placed below the deck, directly beneath the captain’s bench. When it ignited, the blast shot me out of the helm much like an eject seat on a fighter jet. Under ordinary circumstances, the bottom section of the bench also served as a cooler, and given the advancements in construction and proprietary materials and patents held by the Boston Whaler company, the bench held together, allowing the blast to propel me forward and protect my backside and chest cavity.