The Dark Side of the Rainbow (2 page)

On the way to the causeway, Olivia continued to plead with her brother to not go through with the race. If it had been possible for her to remove the keys from the ignition and swallow them, she would have done so.

Undeterred, Jacob lined his car up next to Landon’s. He glanced at the rich boy in his Bel Air and ordered his sister and two friends out of the Mustang.

Both boys revved up their engines, while eyeing one of Landon’s friends who stood between the vehicles with his arms spread out. On his signal the race would start. Jacob was confident that in a few short minutes his car would outrun Landon’s older one, allowing him to hold his head up high at school. He would be known by his peers as the guy who’d out-finessed the billionaire kid.

Olivia stood next to Shannon, her arm entwined with her friend’s, forcing herself to watch as Jacob’s Mustang sped down the causeway. She wanted to bury her face into Shannon’s shoulder and not look. Moments later she wished she had.

It had been raining all day. The continuous slow drizzle had left the roads slick. Within minutes, Olivia saw the jerking motion of her brother’s car and cried out in terror as the vehicle swerved and flipped.

Screaming her brother’s name, Olivia ran faster than she had ever run in her life, making her way to where his broken and mangled body lay. In his adrenaline-rushed state of mind, he had forgotten to buckle his seat belt and had been thrown from the vehicle.

“Jacob!” Olivia screamed over and over as she knelt beside her brother’s lifeless body. Laying her head on top of his chest, desperate to hear his beating heart, she cried out to him, wailing at the top of her lungs for him to wake up.

Someone tried to pull her away from him, but she jerked them away. She tore at her hair and turned her face toward the sky, begging for him to be all right. Olivia kept her gaze upward, as if looking for hope from an unseen source.

Falling to her knees, guttural, earth-shattering sounds escaped her tortured soul. Turning her face toward heaven, she opened her eyes. Through her tear-filled haze, Olivia saw a slight break of light in the clouds, followed by the brightest rainbow she had ever seen.

Jacob was gone.

On the colorful beams of light, her brother’s soul had left her forever. The rainbow had long been a symbol of promise and hope, yet on the saddest day of Olivia Nelson’s life she found herself on the dark side of the beautiful colors without a single ray of hope. Instead, what filled her was a different kind of promise: a vow of retribution for her brother’s death, no matter the cost.

O
livia knelt before the last of the grave markers. “I love you, Daddy. You were the last one to leave me. I’m sorry I can’t let go of my anger. Please forgive me for what I’m about to do.”

Placing one of the smooth river stones in front of Josh Nelson’s headstone, she stood to lay the other two in front of her mother and brother’s final place of rest. With one last glance downward at the people she had lost, Olivia turned to leave for the airport.

Stepping into the busy terminal of Portland’s International Airport, she said goodbye to Olivia Nelson. She was now Brooke Johnson, an aspiring young photographer from Kalispell, Montana, who was ready to set in motion her plan for retribution—one that had taken years to formulate.

Three days before, she had said goodbye to her Aunt Sarah. Her grandparents were no longer alive and her father’s sister was all she had left in the world. Olivia would miss her surrogate mother. Over dinner, the two of them had talked about the photography work Olivia would be doing under her pseudonym, Brooke Johnson.

Years earlier, when the younger woman had begun her interest as a shutterbug, neither her aunt nor her father questioned the alternate name she had chosen to tag her work. They never would have guessed the name and side career was part of a grander scheme, years in the making.

Olivia’s passion for capturing images behind the lens began during the first semester of her freshman year of college when she met her roommate’s friend, who was studying photography. Realizing she had a natural talent for looking through the eye of a lens and seeing the world on the other side in a profoundly different way, she asked her father for a top-of-the-line camera for Christmas. The bright and talented college student offered her savings to help defray the cost. Unwilling to accept her money, Josh Nelson purchased the expensive piece of equipment before she went back to the University of Oregon to start her second semester.

An accounting major, Olivia pursued her goal of becoming a CPA. As much as she loved photography, she could not afford the luxury of studying it full-time in hopes of making a successful living out of her natural talent. Her bigger aspirations would not allow it. She needed the financial stability of a well-paid vocation to bolster her efforts.

To compensate, every free moment of her time was spent studying and practicing the art. All the electives she chose had to do with photo taking, processing, and finishing.

Four years later, Olivia graduated and returned home. Her first week back in Portland was spent visiting with her family. Seven days later, she made her way to British Columbia, Canada with her personal effects including her laptop, CPA test books, and her camera equipment. She spent the next six weeks studying for her exam and photographing the Johnstone Strait and the surrounding islands.

On her way back to Portland, Olivia made a three-day stop in Kalispell, Montana. Strolling through the main cemetery, she found the person from whom she would borrow her identity. Before leaving the sparsely populated northern town, she purchased a burner cell phone and paid rent on a post office box, all in the name of Brooke Johnson.

Two weeks after returning home, she passed her CPA test. Having successfully accomplished her first significant goal marker, Olivia then printed her photos and sent them along with her bio to
National Geographic
. As she typed her personal information, instead of listing herself as Olivia Nelson, she used her pseudonym.

Six weeks later she landed her first job with Walter and Fitz, a CPA firm, making sixty-five thousand dollars a year. Several months after beginning her career as an accountant, Olivia received a call from
National Geographic
expressing interest in her photos of The Johnstone Strait. They were unable to use them for their magazine but wanted to include them in a coffee table photo book they were publishing. Olivia had been ecstatic. It was the first genuine moment of joy she had felt in a long time.

On the weekends, when Olivia wasn’t spending time with her father and extended family, she traveled the Pacific Northwest corner of America and Canada photographing all the wonders of creation, making a small name for herself in the photography industry.

During the week, she spent her days and some nights working her way up the corporate ladder at Walter and Fitz. It had taken Olivia four years to make senior accountant, the position she had held for the last two years.

Four weeks ago, when she handed in her resignation, her boss countered with an increase in pay that was nearly twenty percent more than her current salary. Olivia had been flattered and pleased by the offer, but explained that her new opportunity was something she couldn’t refuse. They would never know it was not a new job she was leaving the company for but a destination.

Before her departure to Patagonia, Argentina, she spent every minute preparing for the trip that would change her life. During that time, there were no friends to say goodbye to, for Olivia had none. All of her hard work and focus had made it impossible to reconnect with her high school friends who had drifted back to Portland after college, or to make new ones. She had also known that in order to carry out her revenge, it was essential for Olivia to remain as unattached as possible; the fewer people who knew about her current life, the better.

Six months before her trip, she had finally secured the most critical piece of her fake identity: a passport under the name of Brooke Johnson. It had taken her nearly half a year to acquire the false documents, including a driver’s license and social security card.

During the trying and life-threatening process, Olivia learned two very paramount truths about life: enough money really could buy a person most anything, and diamonds weren’t always a girl’s best friend. In her case, it had been self-defense classes and her Sig Sauer P238 rainbow handgun. Olivia had chosen the aptly named weapon as a reminder of all that she had lost.

While in the dark underbelly of Chicago, the sleek semi-automatic had saved her life during her quest for Brooke’s official identity. As the young photographer left a forger’s dingy, dimly-lit place of business, two men had approached her. Their sickening lustful voices taunted Olivia while their vacant eyes molested her. Without a thought, the young woman removed the loaded gun from her coat pocket and pointed it at the two horrid men with a steady hand. Quelling her nerves, she lifted her chin and told them if they didn’t turn around and leave she wouldn’t kill them, but she would damage them so badly they’d wish they were dead. With one last disgusting taunt the men retreated.

Sadly, the Sig, which was registered under her real name, would be staying behind in Portland.

Everything about her true person would remain in Portland. Seated in first class on United Airlines Flight 879 to Buenos Aires, Argentina was Brooke Johnson. For the next six months, the life of Olivia Nelson would lie as still as her brother’s lifeless form had twelve years ago on the causeway. The only thing she regretted about her plans was the extravagant lies she had told her aunt, who believed she was on her way to the Antarctic’s “warmer” season to photograph wildlife and ice formations. “It was an opportunity of a lifetime,” she had commented to her surrogate mother when she first told her about the project.

Olivia took a drink of the ginger ale the flight attendant had served her, cringing as she recalled the depth of her deception, specifically the part about being unreachable while on her trip. She had told her Aunt Sarah that there would possibly be a break half way into the project where the team would have a quiet reprieve in South America, somewhere on the warm beaches. Olivia would try to contact her then, but there was no guarantee.

To add believability to her tale of deceit, she added that the group would consist mainly of young, unmarried photographers who were not emotionally attached to wives, husbands, or children. Sarah had been thrilled at the idea, telling her niece that she might finally meet the man of her dreams.

When Olivia’s aunt asked her to provide at least a number where she could be reached in case of an emergency, she was given the number of a burner cell phone that Olivia had acquired during her weeks of preparation. If called, the prerecorded voicemail would greet her aunt in a practiced and carefully disguised British accent, announcing that she had reached Melissa Clark, leader of the Ice Project. The message would direct her aunt to leave a message with no promise of a return phone call.

The burner phone had nearly a year of pre-paid time under the name of the project leader. It would never be turned on and would remain tucked away in the bag Olivia held in her lap.

Pulling the medium sized leather bag closer to her, Olivia locked her arms around the carry-on, trying not to worry about it remaining secure in her arms. Everything she needed to execute her grand design was contained in the black Kate Spade tote. It would be impossible for her to stay awake during the eighteen hour flight to Buenos Aires, so having it in her arms would add a modicum of protection.

Soon the humming of the jet engines relaxed her, causing her mind to drift off toward unbidden memories.

PORTLAND, OREGON

TWELVE YEARS AGO

There were no words to speak as Olivia and her father sat in a black Lincoln Town Car, headed toward the church. There had been very few words spoken between them since the night of the accident.

Josh Nelson had arrived at the hospital as quickly as his car and traffic would allow. Somehow in the haze of her anguish, Olivia had managed to give the police officers her father’s office number. Despite her desperate protests, they had carted her off to the nearest hospital.

The last thing she remembered seeing while in the back of the ambulance was Landon Gray being cuffed. He had made eye contact with her on his way to the police car. The tortured look on his handsome face had been unexpected. The surprise she felt had been quickly replaced by the dark seething rage already staking its claim upon her heart.

Later at the hospital, when she saw her father rushing in behind the curtain that was used to quarter her off from the rest of the patients in the emergency room, her grief-stricken face momentarily filled with relief at the sight of him.

“Daddy!” she nearly shouted as she threw herself into his arms.

Expecting to see Jacob with his daughter, Josh Nelson asked with fear in his voice, “Honey, are you all right? Where is Jacob?” He had only been told there was an accident. Thinking his son might be in surgery, his heart collapsed when he saw the look on his daughter’s face. “No, no, where is he, Olivia? Where is Jacob?” he cried.

The nurses must have heard his raised voice and quickly entered the partitioned area.

Josh looked at the nurses, demanding, “Where is my son? I want to see Jacob, now.”

In the background, he could hear the hysterical cries of his daughter, testifying to what his mind was desperately trying to deny.

“Mr. Nelson, we will take you to your son as soon as he arrives. There was an accident. I’m sorry to tell you, he did not survive.”

The same agony with which Olivia had cried out on the causeway escaped from Josh Nelson’s tortured soul.

“Jacob, Jacob!” the broken father cried over and over.

Josh Nelson saw his son for the last time the day of his funeral. The closing of the casket lid was like a solid oak door shutting firmly over the father’s life. He wanted to get up in front of a standing room only crowd and shout, “It shouldn’t be this way. I shouldn’t be alive while my son is lying here dead.”