THE GIRL NEXT DOOR
Chapter 12: The Final Blow
As he strode along the corridor to the waiting powerboat, Marcus Gault could barely contain his grin. It had been so easy, so ridiculously easy, to double cross the double crossers. All he'd had to do was exploit their twinned weaknesses of greed and arrogance, and leave the two idiots to destroy themselves. It had been like a game of chess, manoeuvring his two hapless pawns into position, before striking. That, Gault thought smugly, had been nothing short of genius.
So had the plan for Bordonov to get rid of his increasingly volatile boss. Suggesting to Fortescue that he play the supportive friend to the grieving, enraged Russian had been the first step. With the Russian knowing the truth all along, that it had been Fortescue who'd sent the assassins in to kill Hugo, the result was going to be inevitable. And with Fortescue's guards checking so regularly on him, he'd just needed to arrange the meeting – then wait for a misguided bodyguard to find his dead boss, and murder the only other man in the room.
Now he was free to take not only Bordonov's payoff, but also half a million dollars. Free to buy the luxuries he'd once only dreamed of. Perhaps a yacht like this one, he mused, running an appreciative hand along the rich mahogany panelling that graced the walls. If not for the slight 'accident' which was to strike this beauty, he might well have taken it too.
An urgent voice broke into his musings, startling him enough to spin round to face its source. Even as his ex boss' chief bodyguard came hurrying up to him, Gault already knew the reason for his urgency. He'd only just heard the gunshot – but he'd known what it had meant.
"Mr Gault, you – you'd better come . . . it's Mr Fortescue, he – he's been shot . . . killed . . ."
After months of careful planning, lies and deception, the expression of outraged shock that now took over Gault's grin came as second nature.
"Shot? What do you mean shot? Killed?"
"Yes, sir," Price nodded, enraged himself, but genuinely so, as he continued brusquely, "I found him in his office with Bordonov. The Russian was trying to make it look like the Koreans had done it, but . . . well, I could smell the cordite on him, and he was still holding the gun."
"So that shot I heard?"
"Yes sir, Bordonov's dead," Price confirmed, seeing no reason to suspect that, having been exploited in one double cross, he was now embroiled in another.
Gault nodded in calm approval, yet his mind was racing. He should be off the boat by now, speeding to his new riches, not having to tidy up yet another complication, albeit one of his own making.
"Well, there's little point in staying here now," he said at last, keeping his tone brisk and business-like. "Kill the hostages, finish wiring up the boat, then meet me back at the warehouse."
"Kill them?" Price stared at him, oddly shocked considering his profession. He was no stranger to killing, of course, but only to protect the man who'd paid him. To kill four innocent people did not sit well with him. "But sir, El- I mean, Mr Fortescue's daughter, he gave orders that she wasn't to be harmed."
"Yes, well, I give the orders around here now, Price," Gault cut in sharply, his dark blue eyes hardening to cobalt. "Right now those four people are the only ones who can identify us. You're a smart man, Price. Or rather I thought you were. A live witness is a dangerous witness. They can identify us to the cops, and they can certainly name us! But of course if you want to take that chance and risk spending your life serving time, then by all means . . . "
Stung by this criticism, Price nodded, trying, without much success, to keep the reluctance and resentment from his voice. He'd known Ellie for years, even protected her life on several occasions. To be asked to end it now . . .
"Yes, Sir, I'll take care of it personally."
Watching him stride away, Gault's face wore the same expression of deep mistrust. He'd worked too hard, waited too long to risk losing everything now. Price had now become as much of a liability as the people he'd just sent him to kill. That made him dangerous. Expendable. The ride to his waiting fortune was going to have to wait just a little while longer. Checking his gun, loading it with fresh cartridges, Gault startled to follow Price back towards the main guest stateroom.
OOO
After nearly three days of living from one second to the next, an unseen bond had grown between them. A bond strong enough for the vote to have been unanimous, despite Jesse's protests. Ellie had only needed to see the grief stricken expression on Jesse's face as he'd whispered a final goodbye to Steve to cast hers.
"Jesse, I'm staying. After everything we've been through, I can't leave you now, I can't expect you to leave someone you care so much about. So whatever happens to Steve, it happens to me too."
If Ellie's vote had startled him, then that of his other companion had left Jesse utterly floored.
"I too will stay," Nicolayev had insisted, a cynical smile crossing his face. "I have, as you say, back to pay."
"Back to . . . ?!! Oh, uh, you mean payback," Jesse had automatically corrected him – wryly thinking this was one hell of a time to start correcting people's grammar. Jeez, I sound just like Mom! Swallowing down the cold terror that he might never see his mother again, Jesse had instead spent several moments staring into Nicolayev's eyes, trying to find signs of duplicity. He'd trusted the Russian once already, and had been chillingly rewarded by the end of Steve's gun. And after three days of being held at gunpoint, Jesse didn't feel up to a repeat performance. To his surprise he'd seen only calmly appraising approval there, and something else he couldn't quite believe, a genuine, admiring respect.
Seeing his surprise, Nicolayev had simply smiled, nodding slightly while shrugging his shoulders.
"You are brave and resourceful, so is your lady. If we stick together, I believe you can get us out of here."
Seeing the same determination on Ellie's face, Jesse had sighed, realising there was no point arguing. Then he'd nodded, offering them both a slight smile that expressed every word of his appreciation.
"Thank you," he'd said at last in soft, still tense but heartfelt gratitude.
Although her injured arm prevented her from physically helping them, Ellie had been determined to play her part. Now, from where she stood listening at the door, she called urgently for Jesse's attention.
"Jesse, I can hear voices, someone's coming!"
"Okay, Ellie, get clear," Jesse called softly, offering her a reassuring smile as she retreated to the far end of the stateroom, before turning to Nicolayev. "Ready?"
"I am ready, Jesse," the Russian assured him, smiling too while he gave the fire extinguisher in front of him a final, vital check over.
Nodding his acknowledgement, too distracted to notice this sudden informal use of his name, Jesse glanced down to study his own meagre choice of weapon.
Oh sure, he thought wryly, draping a swamping toga of bedding further around his shoulders.
Like Russell Crowe ever faced those gladiators with half a bed of sheeting wrapped round his arm!
Remembering where that bedding had come from, Jesse then glanced briefly across at Steve, shock and fear at his friend's appearance sending another rush of adrenaline through an already pounding heart. He was going down fast now, real fast, his breathing little more than strangled gasps for air. His face had taken on a deathly greyness that Jesse recognised all too well. If Steve didn't get to a hospital within the next hour . . .
Shaking himself out of his fear and worry, Jesse finished winding the loosened sheet around his arm, his eyes now trained on the door in front of him. This was it. This was his last chance to get Steve, and the rest of them, out of this mess alive. Unless he could get them safely through the next few seconds and minutes, it was all over.
The door clicked, swung open, and Cheslav Nicolayev made his move.
Distracted in giving orders to his team, Price never knew what hit him. A high-speed jet of foam and water hit him full in the face and eyes, painfully blinding him. As he doubled over, something soft and small leaped onto his back, wrapping him in a tangle of arms, legs and sheets. With the element of surprise, and Nicolayev's help, Jesse managed to force the bodyguard down onto the floor. In the ensuing struggle, the gun which Nicolayev had instinctively grabbed fired into the furiously wriggling pile of bodies. On a high of adrenaline, the person who'd been hit felt a sudden pain along his forearm, but put it down to yet another painful whack on the dresser which he'd been pressed up against.
Finally succeeding in pinning their struggling quarry under a combination of arms legs and sheeting, Jesse was just starting to dare to believe that this crazy, desperate scheme of his might actually work. Ellie's scream of warning, a gunshot over his head, and a chilling voice behind him put paid to all that.
"The next one, Dr Travis, goes straight through your girlfriend's pretty little head."
OOO
From where he stood at the base of the yacht's transfer ladder, Mark Sloan froze in utter horror.
"Oh God, no! Steve! Jess!" he whispered, shaking his head in numb disbelief. "Oh dear God, no, I – I can't have lost them now! Not when we're so close to getting them out of there!"
Staring down at him from the deck above, Ron Wager felt the clinical calm of his training wage war against his own shock and grief at what those two gunshots had inevitably meant. In the end the clinical training won – but only just.
"Stay here, Mark. I – I'll let you know when we find them," he said at last – knowing full well what Mark Sloan would say to that.
"Like hell I will!" Mark growled, recovered enough now to climb up the ladder to stand with Ron, a glare of frightening intensity telling the agent that he wasn't 'staying' anywhere.
Knowing better than to even try, Ron just nodded, handing Mark a Kevlar, motioning for him to stay behind him while he led his search and subdue teams down into the cruiser.
OOO
As the dust and ceiling plaster settled around them, Gault watched three stunned faces stare up at him with a sadistic pleasure.
"Better, much better," he said at last, nodding in mocking approval. He'd soon seen the closeness between his ex-boss' daughter and the young doctor who'd been snatched with her, and known exactly how to turn that closeness to his own callous advantage. Just as he knew how the boy would react as, deliberately jarring Ellie's arm, he shoved the sobbing girl away from him and, with brutal calm, pointed his gun towards Steve.
"Of course, I could have gone for your friend here, but, well, he's so far gone already, I'd be wasting precious ammunition."
"No!" Jesse screamed in powerless horror, knowing just how accurate Gault's sickening claim was. Scrambling to his feet, he then placed himself between Steve and the gun that now aimed certain death into his heart. Determined not to give Gault any more satisfaction than he had already, Jesse made his next words a flat statement instead of the grovelling plea for mercy that he knew Gault wanted. "You've got us, you don't need him."
Watching this astonishing stand off, Price felt his respect for this tiny young doctor multiply tenfold. This was the fourth time he'd stood facing certain death, and refused to back down. If he got the chance to help him, Price now vowed that he would – assuming the kid didn't get blown away first.
Either through his own admiration or a perverse pleasure in prolonging the agony, Gault nodded.
"True, Dr Travis, very true, a dead hostage would be such a liability," he agreed, the false smile slipping back into a sneer of unquestionable menace as he gestured for Jesse to move away. "Okay doctor, you've made your stand and impressed your girlfriend, now move!"
With no choice but to obey, Jesse moved away – a final stricken glance back to his dying friend breaking him where Gault had failed.
"Oh God, Steve, I'm sorry," he whispered, tears of regret and helplessness stinging into his eyes.
"I tried, I really tried. Oh God, Mark, I'm so, so sorry. . . "
If Gault had heard these anguished words then he wasn't bothering to crow over them. Besides he had plenty else to gloat about.
"You know, Price, you really disappoint me," he said at last, prodding four unresisting hostages along the corridor. "I send you, a supposedly highly trained killer, to kill four supposedly helpless prisoners, and you allow this boy, this puny boy to outwit you with the oldest trick in the book."
For the past three days, the fuse leading to Jesse Travis' temper had been doing a slow, silent burn.
Now it hit five foot six inches of tired, aching, thoroughly hacked off dynamite.
"God, damn it! I am not a boy!" he yelled, driving his right elbow back into Gault's ribcage, catching his winded, startled captor totally unprepared for the knee that slammed, hard and high, between Gault's legs, with enough force to end all hopes of the Gault family making it to another generation.
As Gault collapsed, howling in agony, and Ellie stared at Jesse in utter shock, all hell broke loose.
Price instinctively grabbed the gun that had fallen from Gault's hand, while Nicolayev vented his own fury with a punch to Gault's jaw that ended his suffering far more mercifully than he deserved. The oath that he spat at him in fierce, furious Russian needed little translation.
Jesse was now leaning against the wall, struggling to believe the scene before him – wondering if he dared believe that this seemingly hopeless, endless ordeal really was over. It was hard to concentrate though, since his head just wouldn't stop spinning.
His eyes, for some reason, were refusing to come back into focus. It was left to Ellie's shocked cry of realisation to explain a worsening dizziness, and the pain which was now flaring through his right arm.
"Oh my God! Jesse, you're – you're bleeding!"
Jesse stared downwards, numbly studying the rivulets of blood which now dripped from his fingers.
The pain was really hitting him now, as the adrenaline which had dampened it left his system – realisation dawning on a suddenly groggy mind. He'd not hit his arm against that dresser at all.
The mass of bedding he'd had wound around it had clearly protected him to a point, but the bullet had still seared a deep graze beneath his elbow, the blood from it hidden by the darkness of his clothes and, no doubt, the tangled pile of sheeting they'd left back in the stateroom.
"Damn, it – it must have opened up when I hit Gault," he said at last, pain and shock causing his mind to irrationally wander. "Awww jeez, that's ruined one of my best shirts!"
That mind was now hallucinating as a familiar voice yelled his name. Mark? What the hell is Mark doing here?
"Jesse? Jesse!"
Running up to them, with Ron close on his heels, Mark's broad grin of elated relief quickly vanished as he noticed the blood dripping from Jesse's hand, the telltale glassiness in unfocussed eyes.
Years of training and experience pushed that shock to the back of his mind as Mark gently coaxed Jesse to sit on the floor, supporting him against the wall behind him while yelling for a medical team.
Yet even when Mark set to work on his arm, Jesse's thoughts and concerns weren't for himself.
"I – I'm okay, Mark, get – get to Steve," he insisted weakly, gritting his teeth against the pain of the pressure that Mark was now applying to his arm. "He's bad, Mark, real bad, I – I had to leave him . . . the – the guest stateroom, back there along the hall . . . you gotta help him, Mark . . . "
"Easy now, Jess, it's alright, we've already found him. He's alright, he's being airlifted straight to Community General," Mark assured him gently, slipping a supportive arm around his shoulders, both to comfort his young friend and to stop him from moving. It was almost a relief when he saw Jesse's eyes close, felt his head settle against his shoulder in what Mark assumed, and hoped, was an exhausted faint. The stricken agony in his young friend's eyes had torn at his heart.
He should have known better as first one and then two pained blue eyes popped open again, squinting up at him in hopeful appeal.
"Hey, do – do I get a helicopter ride too?!?"
By the time Mark stopped laughing, received a 'sure, why not?' grin and shrug from an equally amused Ron Wagner, and looked back again, Jesse's eyes had closed once more. And this time, despite gentle calls of his name and hustle of activity around him, they did not re-open.
Even as Jesse slipped into his faint, Mark was still smiling as, holding Jesse protectively against him, he glanced up at Ron once more. His boys were safe. The nightmare was finally over.
OOO
"You kicked him where?!?" Steve echoed, staring at his red-faced roommate in utter disbelief. From where he sat perched on the edge of Steve's bed, Jesse remained resolutely, sheepishly silent.
The last thing he wanted to do was repeat himself, to give his wickedly grinning friend any more ribbing ammunition than he'd done already.
Unfortunately Ellie Fortescue did it for him instead, with a most unladylike relish.
"Right in the family jewels, Steve, hard enough to knock them loose!"
A shocked, outraged voice cut through the resulting laughter like a hot knife slicing through butter.
"Eleanor! Language!" Pausing for effect, until the laughter died down, Lucinda Fortescue then delivered a regretful afterthought that left Ellie, Jesse and Steve staring at her in wide-eyed surprise.
"My only regret, Jesse, is that you didn't kick that repulsive man harder!" Taking full advantage of Ellie's stunned silence, she then slipped a gently prompting hand under her daughter's sound elbow. "Well now, Ellie, I think we need to leave Jesse and Steve to their rest. In fact you should be resting too, darling, you're still looking dreadfully pale."
Rolling her eyes at the coddling she knew was coming, Ellie glanced back at Jesse and grinned.
"I'll see if I can give her the slip later and make it back for that poker game we started last night," she whispered under cover of a quick kiss on Jesse's cheek, winking slyly back at him before leaving him to Steve's mischievous mercy.
"So, let me get this straight, Jess," Steve continued, casting his still sheepish friend a familiar glance of admiration, affection and much abused patience. "You . . . um . . . re-arrange Gault's family jewels because he called you a boy?!?"
"Hey! I was unknowingly in shock, and didn't know what I was doing!" Jesse retorted defensively, hoping against hope that Steve would let the matter drop. Guessing from the widening of his friend's smirk that that just wasn't going to happen, he then sighed, suddenly finding the bandage around his arm and the state of his boots of unusually deep interest. "'sides, he also called me puny."
Making a mental note never to call his friend a boy, or puny, no matter what the provocation, Steve just nodded – sensibly masking his laughter behind a less than convincing cough. Before he could comment further, though, Mark arrived to check in on his convalescing patients.
Jesse had only needed an overnight stay for rest and observation, but Steve's recuperation was taking understandably longer. For Mark to see him now, grinning at an oddly pouty faced Jesse, it was hard for Mark to believe that, just a week earlier, his son had been airlifted to Community General more dead than alive.
That week had seen an odd reversal in the usual big brother/ little brother protectiveness between them. Despite his own injuries and exhaustion, Jesse had rarely strayed from Steve's room. He'd spent hours standing or sitting next to Steve's bed, unaware of Mark's own discreet doorway vigil, just watching his friend sleep. When his own exhaustion had caught up with him, he'd simply fallen asleep where he sat, his hand still resting against Steve's shoulder.
It hadn't been difficult for Mark to find the reason for Jesse's reluctance to leave his friend. Being forced to leave him to die alone like that would have torn Jesse apart. And knowing Jesse's aversion to 'getting all mushy' he'd simply allowed his young friend these moments with Steve alone, allowing Jesse to heal and recover in private.
Now his son had an unofficial roommate. And as far as Mark was aware, Steve hadn't raised much in the way of complaint or protest. Well, apart from the fact that Jesse had munched his way through both of their get well baskets, a whole bag of donuts, and anything else that wasn't nailed down. So, Mark now reflected fondly, nothing new there then.
Equally familiar and welcome was Jesse's barrage of questions as he greeted Mark with, he noted in some amusement, an unusual degree of relief. Or maybe it was the sight of fresh un-nailed down donuts on Steve's lunch tray which accounted for that happy enthusiasm.
"Hey, Mark, did Ron find the containers? How did the hearing go? Will Gault go to trial? And did Price and Nicolayev agree to testify?"
"Yes, Jesse, they've both agreed to turn state's evidence," Mark replied, gently patting his shoulder.
"After the way Gault treated them, neither owed him any favours. And yes, Gault finally revealed where the money was. I suppose he realised the game was up after Ron took him into custody."
"Yeah, Jess, that's something I've been wondering," Steve chipped in, serious now as he glanced at his friend, frowning in puzzlement. "I mean, Price was one of the guys who grabbed you, so how did you get him on your side?"
"I can answer that one," Mark smiled, casting an equally confused Jesse an admiring glance of his own. "Apparently Price was impressed by the way you stood up to him, and Gault, even at gunpoint.
In his book, that took a lot of guts."
As Steve nodded in heartfelt agreement, Jesse nodded too, although he was understandably reluctant to dwell on the memory of either standoff. Instead, as usual, he deflected the attention away from himself by changing the subject.
"So Fortescue was framing Hugo for the theft of the money, Bordonov was double crossing Fortescue to find out where it was, and Gault was double crossing them both?"
"Yes, Jesse, that's right, and Ron's asked me to thank you for saving the FBI an awful lot of trouble with getting that counterfeit money off the streets," Mark replied, trading a wry smile with Steve as the beaming hero rewarded himself with an especially large jammy donut. Placing one on Steve's plate while he still had the chance, pretending he didn't see Jesse's pout of disappointment, he then aimed a distracting nod towards an unfinished game of chess on Steve's bed-table. "I must admit, though, I'd have hated to play him at chess, the man was a tactical genius. He knew exactly how to exploit both Fortescue and Bordonov. Of course, as such a trusted aide, Fortescue would never have suspected him of masterminding such a double cross."
"Yeah, but he was still taking one hell of a risk," Steve pointed out, taking a long drink of his coffee. "Remembering what Lucinda told you and Ellie told us about him, he had one almighty temper."
Remembering the teasing he'd been subjecting Jesse to before Mark arrived, he then smirked wickedly. "Of course, so does our Jesse . . . as . . . um . . . Gault found to his very painful cost."
Seeing the glare with which Jesse responded, and also knowing the still unbelievable cause behind it, Mark did what any other long suffering father of two bickering boys would do. He became conveniently blind and sensibly deaf.
"Yeah, well, he deserved it," Jesse said at last, another narrow eyed glare warning Steve he would pay big time for that one. "For a start, he insulted our menu at Bob's, called it pig swill, reckoned he wouldn't even feed it to his dog."
"Really?" Steve too looked suitably outraged, before the mischievous grin returned to his face. "Well, I wonder what he'll think of prison food for the next fifty years to life?"
"Probably the same as I think about that," Jesse retorted, studying Steve's lunch tray in open disgust. "Aww, jeez, Steve, how can you eat that stuff?"
"Maybe because you've beaten me to everything else," Steve shot back, raising a meaningful eyebrow.
As Jesse pulled an appropriate face back at him, he then held a conciliatory plateful towards his friend. "Hey, you want one of these pancakes?"
"To use as what, a Frisbee?" Jesse zinged straight back at him, the disgust all too evident on his face as Steve tucked into his lunch with gleeful relish, deliberately exaggerating the pleasure of every mouthful.
Never to be outdone, Jesse leaned across the bed to snatch up an unwisely unguarded bagful of donuts – revelling in the fact that a still bed-bound Steve was powerless to stop him from a double jammy whammy. "Mmmmmm!!" he enthused, licking his fingers with the same deliberate enjoyment.
Sensing that brotherly warfare was imminent, Mark decided this was a good time for a strategic withdrawal.
As the familiar bickering began in earnest, he closed the door behind him, adding a very happy afterthought.
"This might be a good time for me to take a vacation…"
OOO
Two weeks later, in the main concourse of LAX, Mark gratefully deposited a large, very heavy suitcase on Virgin Atlantic's check-in scale. Passing across the relevant documents to the attendant behind the desk, he then followed his son's concerned gaze to where Jesse and Ellie stood quietly chatting nearby.
Although excited by the thought of returning to London, Ellie Fortescue had been dreading this moment.
She'd expected nothing more from him than simple friendship. Instead she'd involved him in a nightmare that had nearly cost both their lives. Now she had the chance of a fresh start – one that, only a few days ago, had appeared to be impossible. She had her whole life to look forward to. So why did she feel like crying?
"Jesse, I really don't know how to thank you," she said at last, finding it oddly difficult to meet his eyes.
"Not just for everything you've done with this mess with Hugo and my father, but, well, just for being such a wonderful friend. Even before all this happened, you've been so kind and supportive towards me. I owe you so much, Jesse, and now I feel as though I've taken advantage of you."
"Hey, you haven't taken advantage of me at all," Jesse assured her, slipping his arm gently around her.
"And you don't owe me anything. The only thanks I need, the best thanks you can give me, is to be happy.
Hugo's learned his lesson, and he's getting help. But most important of all, he's still in love with you."
"Yes, I know," Ellie conceded, glancing to where her newly re-instated fiancé sat in a courtesy buggy, chatting with Mark and Steve – all three trying, without much success, not to watch this poignant farewell. "Yes, I know he still loves me, and I still love him, but, Jesse, I feel that I'm running out on you."
"You're not," Jesse cut in softly, flashing a smile that made her forget the point she'd been trying to make.
"Ellie, I care about you, very much. And you'll always have me as a friend if you need one. I'll be here. But I'm not the one you're in love with. You know that as well as I do."
Faced with such logic, and the kind understanding in Jesse's eyes, Ellie sighed and nodded agreement – her new resolve faltering back into a shaky smile as she realised the time had come to leave him.
"Well, I guess I'd better go," she said at last, wrapping her good arm around him in a sudden, fierce hug.
"I'll never forget you, Jesse Travis."
"I won't forget you either, Ellie," Jesse assured her, hugging her back as the others came to re-join them.
Once all the hugs and handshakes were over, Ellie followed her mother and Hugo into the departure lounge.
Pausing at the gate, she turned to give Jesse a final smile, one last wave, and then she was gone. Jesse kept waving back at Ellie until he could no longer see her – and for several moments after that. Then he smiled, in grateful realisation, as a familiar hand settled gently onto his shoulder.
"You okay, Jess?"
"Yeah, Steve, I'm fine," Jesse replied softly, reassuring his ever protective big brother as only he could.
"Though I'll feel even better once we get some lunch, I'm famished!"
"You're famished?" Steve echoed, casting his young friend a glance of purest, deepest scepticism. "Okay, Jess, just humour me here, how on earth can you be hungry when you managed to eat your way through most of our fridge this morning?"
"Body mass," Jesse explained without missing a beat, taking full advantage of Steve's puzzled silence to give more credence to his theory. "No, really, Steve, it's a scientific fact that short people burn off energy more quickly than tall people. So they need to eat more. Your dad'll tell you, right, Mark…?"
Wryly wondering when he'd been volunteered into this highly dubious claim, Mark just shook his head. "Oh no, you don't, Jess, you can keep me out of this," he warned through a helpless chuckle of laughter.
Rolling his eyes at the debate that inevitably started, he glanced wistfully towards a nearby window display. Out of a cloudless scene of sun, sea and sand, a bright bold headline called invitingly across to him.
"COME TO SUNNY HAWAII, AND LEAVE YOUR TROUBLES AT HOME !!"
"I wish," Mark sighed, ruefully shaking his head while steering his two ever-bickering boys out to the car.
It was only a ten minute drive to BBQ Bob's, but it promised to be a very long ten minutes. A very long ten minutes indeed.
