Colleen approached, pulling Olivia into her arms and ushering her away. Alexander gave her an appreciative smile before turning to the vast collection of microphones set up on the podium, scanning the crowd for anything that appeared suspicious, an occupational habit.
Moretti had stationed what he referred to as “plainclothes agents” amongst the crowd to keep an eye on everything. Alexander could pick his “undercover” agents out of a lineup, and not just because he recognized them from the briefing room prior to the press conference. They were dressed all in black and wore dark sunglasses, despite the relative lack of sun. They stood out like a baby in a bar at last call.
Refocusing his attention on the reason he stood in front of this crowd of relative strangers, Alexander gave them a solemn smile. “When I was seven, I put bubblegum in my best friend’s hair. When I was ten, I broke the window in my bedroom and lied about it. When I was sixteen, I stole my father’s shiny new sports car and took a girl to the movies. I told her I was a sophomore in college, not a sophomore in high school. You can imagine the sting of her hand across my face when she found that out.” The crowd chuckled.
“When I was twenty, I killed a man.” The audience grew silent, their former light expressions turning serious, intrigued. “I didn’t know his name. I didn’t know if he had a wife, a family. All I knew was I had been given orders and my job was to carry them through to the end.” His voice remained even, calm, unwavering, as if speaking of something as mundane as the weather.
“I felt no guilt or remorse for what I did. It was necessary for the greater good…our freedom. I couldn’t tell you how many people I killed during my enlistment in the navy. I’ve made quite a few enemies over the past twenty years of my life. I’ve taken lives, destroyed families, all for what I thought to be a noble cause…ensuring our safety from foreign and domestic threats. Now, I fear that someone I’ve wronged has decided to get back at me the only way they know how…by hurting me where it counts.”
He drew in a breath, closing his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, he scanned the crowd, unable to make out any distinct faces through the camera lights and black dots obscuring his vision.
“I wish I could stand here and tell you I’m a good person who doesn’t deserve this, but I can’t. I probably do deserve this…”
Out of the corner of his eye, a short figure wearing a tattered overcoat caught his attention, a ghost of his past. Despite the faded Burberry scarf covering her signature red hair, he knew who it was this time. It wasn’t just someone who looked familiar. She had come back.
It took everything he had not to jump off the platform and run to her. His gut shouted at him that she was the missing piece of this huge, convoluted puzzle he couldn’t put together.
As she walked through the crowd, she kept her eyes downcast, only looking up every so often to avoid running into anyone. Most people barely even noticed her, and those who did seemed to turn their noses up in repulsion, as if she didn’t belong there.
Alexander felt a nudge and snapped his head to his left, seeing Moretti furrowing his brow at him. He gave the agent a reassuring look and returned his attention to the crowd.
“I may deserve this,” he continued, glancing at Moretti briefly, then facing front once more, “but Melanie doesn’t. Melanie is everything I’m not. She’s caring. Kind. She gives and gives until she has nothing left. I’ve woken up every day since she was born wondering what I did in my life to deserve a daughter as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside. This morning, I’ve been forced to do quite a bit of soul-searching. I know I’m not a good man. I’ve done bad things for what I believed to be good reasons. I’ve ignored friends and family who needed me because I was too busy working. I’ve been selfish. But Melanie has done nothing wrong, apart from the unfortunate circumstance of having my DNA running through her. If whoever took her did so because of something I’ve done, your issue is with me, not Melanie. Please…”
He scanned the crowd, his eyes locking with Rayne’s. He felt compelled to speak directly to her for reasons he couldn’t quite explain.
“It’s cold. It’s wet. They’re forecasting a Nor’easter to hit us tomorrow evening, dropping over a foot of snow. All I can think is that my little girl is somewhere out in the cold. I beg all of you. If you know anything that could help, no matter how small or insignificant you think it is, please call the tip line the FBI agent provided earlier. We can’t find Melanie without you.”
Silence rang out as Alexander narrowed his gaze at Rayne. Peering into her haunting eyes, his suspicions mounted with every passing second that she might know something. Just as he opened his mouth to speak one last time, so did she, her voice strong and tenacious, at complete odds with the frail and broken woman looking back at him.
“I took her!”
Everyone turned toward her, photographers snapping photos incessantly as FBI agents sprang into action. Rayne straightened her back, her chin held high, paying no attention to the commotion around her.
Alexander glanced at Olivia, who seemed just as surprised as he did, despite her earlier speculation. They never expected someone they considered to be almost family at one time to do something so harmful, so hateful, so devastating. Rayne, of all people, should have understood how soul-wrenching and torturous it was to be in a state of constant purgatory, not knowing whether or not your loved one was still alive, every minute that passed with no answers another coal on the fire.
“Rayne?” Alexander asked, his voice almost inaudible as he stepped away from the podium. “Why did you take her? Where is she?”
“I thought it was the only way!” Rayne answered, her voice frantic. Her eyes grew wide, her expression agitated. There was a wildness about her that was completely at odds with the calm, lively woman Alexander remembered her to be when she was still part of their lives.
“What do you mean?” He stepped toward the stairs, hearing Moretti issuing orders to his agents in the crowd who were having difficulty reaching her through the blockade of reporters and their equipment.
Shaking her head violently, she let out a loud sob. “I’ve been so angry and it just hurt too much. It took finally meeting someone who had been hurt like me to realize that this needed to happen, that you needed to feel my pain, too! I can’t—”
With a flash, a deafening boom filled the air, a brilliant blaze rushing over the crowd before everything went dark.
Part Two
Honor
Honor: /noun/ Chastity or purity in a woman.
Chapter Sixteen
Three Years Ago