Wayne had felt a modicum of relief when he’d been selected as Owen’s bone marrow donor. He viewed it as being akin to a paternity test. Of course, he knew that being a partial donor match for the stem cell transplant wasn’t that at all. Indeed, if he hadn’t been selected, an anonymous donor would have been found. Still, the fact that he had been selected was enough for him to once again push away his deepest fear about his connection to his son. There are things you know about your child, and one of those things was that Owen was Wayne’s flesh and blood.
The process, it turned out, was not all that dramatic. All Wayne would have to do was go under general anesthesia while the doctors harvested his bone marrow through a syringe. The doctor said the only side effect he’d anticipate was general soreness. Wayne wouldn’t even have to stay overnight in the hospital. The procedure was scheduled to occur next week, the day before Owen’s transplant.
Wayne doubted Owen cared that he’d be the one contributing the stem cells as opposed to some anonymous donor. But he still hoped that somewhere, deep down, it would provide some tangible evidence to Owen that there was nothing he wasn’t willing to do for him, even to the point of putting his own life at risk.
Haley listened to the minister tick off the virtues of a man she had once loved, then hated. The biography being recounted was one she knew well. How James had been raised in a hardscrabble town, put himself through college, and developed a love for art. How his apprenticeship in some of the city’s finest galleries had led him to branch out on his own.
None of that sounded like James to Haley. He was not his work, at least not to her. When Haley shut her eyes to conjure James, he lay on the sand beside her on their honeymoon, looking out at an anchored yacht.
“You think you can swim that far out?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said with a laugh. “The coming back might give me some trouble, though.”
“You won’t have to do it all at once. After we swim all the way out there, they’ll have no choice but to let us come aboard so we can gather our strength before swimming back.”
At first, she thought James was joking. But if he was, he wanted to maintain the illusion he was serious, because he stared at her without even the hint of a smile. The last thing Haley was going to do was show James that he had married someone who lacked adventure.
“Okay, then,” she said, and raced to the ocean.
The yacht was actually much farther away than she had imagined, perhaps because it was twice as large as she’d estimated from the beach. It took nearly a half hour for them to reach it. When they did, she wondered if her joke about being able to swim there but not back might have been too on the nose.
“Ahoy, ahoy,” James called out from beside the hull.
A man stuck his head over the rail and squinted down at them.
“We were wondering if you might like some company,” James shouted up.
Just like James had predicted, the man lowered the ladder, and they climbed aboard. It was a scene from a James Bond movie: James and Haley, dripping wet, walking on the finely polished wood floor of a hundred-foot-plus yacht. Also on deck were three women sunning on lounge chairs, each in her twenties and wearing a string bikini, sans top.
“Apologies for not bringing a gift,” James said with a grin, the way 007 might have if this were actually a James Bond movie.
“You know, we’ve docked in many places over the years, and this is the first time anyone has ever swum up to us and asked to come aboard,” their host said.
He was James’s age and dressed as if he was expecting guests, in white linen from head to toe. His accent was American.
“Is this your boat?” Haley asked.
“I wish, but I’m a guest aboard her.” He extended his hand. “Reid Warwick, at your service.”
As soon as the image of Reid on that Caribbean day left her head, she spotted the real thing sitting a few rows behind her at the funeral. Except for the fact that he was wearing black, he hadn’t changed a bit since their first meeting.
He smiled at her, that wolfish grin that was quintessential Reid. Like he saw you as prey, almost.
When Reid caught Haley’s eye, it seemed to him that she might truly be in mourning. The thought struck Reid as odd, especially after she’d shared with him some of her revenge fantasies, twisted tales of torturing James usually involving some harm to his manhood. He considered the things he could tell the cops about Haley, if he was so inclined, and what Haley might offer him to not be so inclined.
His mind turned from sex to money—his two most common thoughts, after all. In this case, from one beautiful woman (Haley) to another (Allison).
He had told Allison not to come today. “It’ll just raise a bunch of questions about who you are and what connection you have to James,” he’d said. “Send flowers or make a donation in his name with some charity. Better still, if you really want to pay your respects, let’s close this deal with the three remaining Pollocks so I can get some money to his family.”
Reid desperately needed Allison to make this deal happen. Without it, his cash flow difficulties would become far more serious in a hurry. In fact, even in the church, he couldn’t
