The Dark Side of the Rainbow (30 page)

Looking back at the black bag, Brooke decided her past could wait a few more hours.

* * *

“W
hen Landon called me about the shooting, I couldn’t believe it. I’m glad he and Tomas carry their handguns when they travel, especially under the circumstances of this trip. It could have easily been the other way around with Javier shooting at others. When backed into a corner, you never know what someone will do.”

Nodding at Natasha’s statement, Brooke added, “It’s exactly what I thought was happening when I heard the shot. I was afraid for Landon to leave the conference room.”

The noonday meal was over, and Gaston had returned to work. Nicholas was asleep in his stroller and Isabella was busy drawing at the table.

Brooke told Natasha about the visit to Celia.

Landon’s sister sighed. “It’s heartbreaking. I remember vividly the day he told me he was naming the ship
The Absolution
. We were in a planning meeting with the ship builders. I had written the question on my legal pad about the name; when he told me I nearly crumbled to pieces. I’d always known how elusive forgiveness was for him, but I guess I didn’t realize how much until that moment.”

“Has Landon ever tried to reach out to Jacob’s family?”

“While he was under house arrest he wrote several letters. All of them were returned unopened.”

“Now that years have gone by, do you think it would be worth him trying again?”

“I don’t know, Brooke. I really don’t know. What if the same thing happens? These past two months I’ve seen him taking steps in the right direction. Maybe it’s better to leave things alone.”

Brooke was relieved by his sister’s words. If she had agreed with the idea, it would have been hard for her to hear. The thought of him trying to reconnect with the woman he once loved—might still love—caused her pulse to race.

“Maybe you’re right.” With a sigh, Brooke added, “He has to be the most wonderful man I’ve ever known.” She told Natasha about the terror she had felt in the conference room and the flash of recognition. “It was as if a similar moment of fear had been trying to emerge from my memory.”

“What did you do?”

“I pushed it back into the darkness. I was too afraid to look.”

Natasha didn’t chastise her for being wary. She didn’t feel compelled to encourage her to remember. She simply said, “I know, Brooke.”

Later that afternoon, Landon took a break to call Brooke. “I’m glad you had lunch with Natasha.”

“Me too. I really like your sister and see why you love her so much. I’m having dinner with them tomorrow.”

“That’s great, I wish I could be there. And she likes you too, baby. She knows how happy you make me. A few months after Isabella was born she chastised me, in her loving way, about me getting on with my life and making some children of my own.”

“That was four years ago. What took you so long?”

Landon was lying on Olivia’s bed in the suite. He had given housekeeping specific instructions about not changing the sheets. The smell of her perfume lingered on the pillows. It made him feel closer to her.

Before calling Olivia, he had been lying there thinking about the afternoon on the beach. She had a way of making him feel extremely vulnerable. He would never have cried like that in front of anyone, maybe not even Natasha. It was as if the very essence of his emotional being was wrapped up in Olivia’s wonderful frame. Only she held the power to move him in such a way.

When he heard the words she had spoken out loud, about wanting to deserve him, Landon had known something inside was attempting to push its way out. Her conscious mind may not have been aware, but her subconscious knew why she had felt the need to deserve him. Thinking about her plans for revenge, Landon didn’t question whether his heart was in capable hands—he knew that it was. If her memory returned today, she would never move forward with her desire to make him pay. Whether or not she would want to remain with him was a whole other question.

The Olivia he knew was exactly the same as Brooke. Without her thoughts of hatred to hide behind, she had returned to that sixteen-year-old girl he had come to know during a summer of encounters in the Espresso Room back in Portland. She was the girl who smiled at him with a light in her eyes, brightening up his whole world. Olivia loved him.

Answering her question about what had taken him so long to move on with his life, he said, “It took me a while because I have been waiting for you.”

There was a long pause on the on the other end of the line before Olivia spoke. “Do you have to stay in Chile? Can you fly back tonight and return Thursday evening in time for the funeral? You’re only three-and-a-half hours away,” she pleaded.

Hearing the longing in her voice nearly caused him to cave.

“Temptress,” he said with a groan. “Why do you think I sent you back to Argentina?”

“If I returned to Chile, I could get my own roo . . .”

“No,” he said quietly.

There were several moments of silence. “I’m making this difficult for you, aren’t I?

“Very difficult.”

“I’m sorry. Will you come see me as soon as you arrive on Saturday?”

Should he tell her now that they needed to talk; prepare the way?

“When I enter the elevator at the Grand Vue Saturday morning, your floor will be the first button I push.”

* * *

A
fter saying goodbye to Landon, she was once again faced with the black bag resting on her coffee table. Unable to open the sturdy leather case, Brooke shoved it into the hall closet and took a cab to downtown Bariloche. She strolled by the museum, smiling at the memory of the night she had spent there with Landon. She paused to stare at the old building before making her way to the all-night café they had stopped at afterwards.

Finding a seat, she placed her order with the waitress. From her purse, she removed the journal she had purchased earlier from the gift shop. Glancing up at the acoustic guitarist who was playing in the corner of the restaurant, she remembered the night in Chile when she and Landon danced for hours. She opened the leather-bound book.

Talking with Landon earlier stirred within her an incredible urge to write about every thought and emotion, and all the events that took place from the moment she awoke from the accident. The thought of ever forgetting what she felt for him drove her to fill the pages.

Dear Sweet Landon,

The moment I opened my eyes in the hospital and saw you standing there, I didn’t remember who you were, but I knew you were safe
.
It was if my mind was blank, but my heart was full of you. Since that moment, it has been overflowing with your goodness . . .

Several hours later, Brooke looked up to a nearly empty café. She looked at her watch. It was one in the morning. She hadn’t stopped writing since she sat down around dinner time. After asking the waitress to call for a cab, Brooke closed her journal, left a very generous tip on the table for taking it up the whole night, and made her way back to the hotel.

The next morning she finished the last of her entries, the pages full of her thoughts and expressions of love for Landon. She took the gift-wrapped book to Landon’s assistant, Camilla, telling the older woman it was a surprise, and asked her to tuck it away somewhere safe—a place where he would stumble upon it, making the surprise all the sweeter.

When Gaston was finished with work that evening, she rode with him to his house for dinner. Spending time with Landon’s family helped her not to miss him as much. He called shortly after dinner. Brooke placed him on speaker so everyone could say hello. Her heart melted when Isabella told him how much she missed him and Nicholas gave an excited “me too!”
Such a wonderful family
, she thought on the ride home. She hoped one day they would belong to her too.

Gaston had insisted on driving her back to the resort. She vehemently refused, urging him to call her a cab. It was late, and the drive to and from the hotel would take Landon’s brother-in-law an hour. He reluctantly agreed to do as she wished.

As she put away her coat in the hall closet of her room, she spied the black bag. Deciding she could no longer put it off, she placed it on the dining table in the corner of her room. After changing into her pajamas, she began to empty the contents: a notebook, a thumb drive, and a cell phone was all the bag contained.

Picking up the cell phone first, she pressed the on button. When nothing happened, she realized the battery must be depleted. It was identical to the one she carried with her. Using her cord, she connected the phone, allowing it to recharge.

The small notebook contained odd numbers and what appeared to be a pass phrase. The concern she was beginning to feel ignited. What was so important about these three items that she felt compelled to lock them away? Picking up the thumb drive she pushed it into one of the USB ports on her laptop. A password screen appeared. Opening the notebook she entered the combination of alpha and numeric values and pressed enter.

At first, Brooke was dazed by the number of files. She clicked on the first file labeled
Absolution
. It was an article on the launching of Landon’s cruise ship. There was a picture of him as he broke a bottle of champagne against the bow. Natasha was standing beside him. The next file was one of him and his family: a Christmas card photo of Landon, Natasha, and his parents. It was before his sister had married Gaston.

Bile began to rise in her throat. What were all these files? Had she known Landon before arriving in Patagonia? She closed her eyes, searching her mind but found nothing but darkness. Why had she kept these hidden? Reaching for the cell phone that was charging, she clicked the on button. The screen lit up with a passcode option. Remembering the one for her phone, she entered zero, eight, one, two, zero, three. Access was granted. The first thing to appear was a call log. There was one missed call. Brooke dropped the phone on the table when she recognized the caller’s number. It was hers. The date of the message was the day she was released from the hospital. Memories of her and Landon sitting on the bed in his guest bedroom while she agonized over having only one known contact in the world filled her mind.

Standing, she went to her purse to retrieve her phone, and dialed the only contact number on file, Melissa Clark with the Ice Project. Brooke began to shake when the other device rang. Why would the only contact on her cell belong to one she already owned, locked away in a bank safety deposit box? Angered by her lack of memory and her mounting concerns, Brooke flung the phone from the black bag against the door of her room, smashing it to pieces.

Like the phone, the small beautiful world she had known for such a short time lay shattered around her. She forced herself to look at the rest of the damning files. Her mind raced as she read the instructions on how to load the Trojan horse onto Landon’s computer. When triggered, it would release a cache of data linking him to a series of thefts from many of NLG’s long time investors. During the investigation an offshore account in the Cayman Islands, worth millions, would be discovered. No one would ever know the money wasn’t real.

Long after Landon was tried, sentenced, and serving time in jail, the money would be released from evidence with the intent of returning it to its rightful owners. The moment a transaction was processed against the account, the data would implode. No one would be able to explain the sudden disappearance of the funds and all traces that it ever existed. It would take months for anyone to prove that Landon Gray was innocent, months that he would spend in prison, his reputation forever ruined.

“Why?” she screamed at the walls of her elegant room. Pulling the thumb drive from the computer, she reached for the notebook, then the broken pieces of the cell phone, and threw them all into the gas fireplace. With a flip of a switch, she watched the damning items catch blaze and burn.

Her heart melted into a pool of agony as she watched the flames consume her treachery. For the first time, she knew what Landon had felt like when he no longer wanted to live. Speaking to the fire, she said, “Oh, Landon, how wretched must I be to plot against you in such a way. You who are kind, gentle, and forgiving. Your generous heart shames me. The ghosts in my mind were right—I don’t deserve you.”

L
andon was frantic. It was an hour before the funeral, and he hadn’t heard from Brooke. He had been calling her all morning and afternoon with no answer. Unable to push aside his concern any longer, he called Gaston on his cell phone.

“Landon, how are you?”

“Gaston, I’ve been trying to reach Brooke all day and she hasn’t answered. Have you seen her?”

“Not since last night at dinner. Do you want me to go to her room to make sure she is all right?”

“Yeah. If she is there, please ask her to call me, and let me know if you speak to her.”

Twenty minutes later Gaston called Landon. “Hey, Brooke has been in her room all day because she’s not feeling well. She looked like hell and told me to tell you that she would see you tomorrow when you get back from Chile.”

“At least she’s in her room. Thanks, Gaston.”

When Landon hung up the phone, the odd feeling that something was wrong took hold. He couldn’t shake the sensation. Needing to hear Olivia’s voice, but not wanting to disturb her, he stopped calling and made his way to the church.

Celia had decided on an early evening funeral service with the wake directly following. Immediate family would attend the sunrise burial in the morning. The service was heartbreaking. Seeing Javier’s children in the front row with their mother, their tender hearts filled to overflowing with sorrow, caused him to realize how close he had come to doing the same thing to his family. Natasha had been right to rage at him for being a coward. Knowing his and Javier’s situation, he could honestly say they were both cowards.

He stayed for the whole wake. In spite of the grief, there was a lot of laughter. Javier really had been a good man in many ways. Whatever reasons Javier had for cheating on his wife were lost on Celia. Either that or she was a brilliant actress. She spoke wonderfully about her deceased husband. It was obvious to everyone that he treated her well. Was it possible for a man to love two women? Inwardly, he shook his head. When you loved someone as Landon loved Olivia, it was inconceivable.