Untangling the Black Web Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2017

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, Kindle Scout, and Kindle Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Wednesday is my new favorite day.

  It’s the only day of the week she gets a break from the chemo.

  Two months ago we started with just one day a week, but that was before the cancer enveloped her entire spine like a lion devouring its prey.

  I walk through the doorway, and the heart monitor begins to chirp wildly.

  Her weak smile is electric, and I know that she is happier to see me than I am her, but I smile back, careful to make sure it doesn’t show.

  See, for her I am the last remaining constant in her ever-changing life. I even keep everything the same because I know this is what she needs. I style my short blond hair to the right, just as she likes; I trim my stubble daily; and I wear a fitted navy-blue suit (her favorite), with a pressed white shirt, and ruby-red tie.

  I show up every evening at precisely 5:25 p.m.

  Wednesdays I bring with me a dozen red roses from Monet’s on Grand Avenue. She always smells them the second I hand them to her.

  Tonight is no different.

  “Hey, beautiful,” I say as I kiss her on her forehead. She feels colder today than she did yesterday.

  “Hi, handsome,” she replies. Her voice has a rasp in it that has only started to appear within the last week.

  I sit down in the uncomfortable plastic chair beside her, and the heart monitor begins to slow. Beep. Beep. Beep.

  Taking the flowers from her fragile, arthritic hands, I toss the dying flowers from last week into the waste bin, then put the new ones into the vase adjacent to her IV stand.

  I notice a quarter-size bald patch on the side of her head but don’t mention it.

  The reason I know that she is probably happier to see me than I am her is because, while I represent something constant for her, she represents the opposite for me, something I still haven’t fully come to terms with: a me without her.

  Every day I see my wife, I notice the subtle differences. Sometimes her skin is paler, sometimes her face is stretched tighter, sometimes her bones are frailer, and sometimes, like today, her hair is thinner.

  It isn’t as though I don’t want to see her—this wouldn’t be so hard if that were the case. I love her more than life itself. To see the love of my life deteriorate with so much physical pain hurts me more than she will ever know. Each time I see her, I am reminded that the inevitable end is just around the corner.

  “How was work?” she croaks, her glassy eyes trying to focus on me.

  The medicine is kicking in.

  “Same as always. Screwed over another innocent person who was simply hoping their insurance would cover them. That’s the life of a health insurance lawyer.”

  “You need to quit. That place is toxic,” she says in a voice barely loud enough for me to hear over the machines keeping her vitals steady.

  “We need the money. I’m being dramatic anyway,” I lie.

  The truth is that I would quit in a heartbeat. When I graduated law school fourth in my class, I had ambitions to be the best civil lawyer California had ever seen. I wanted to be the one whom the other side of the bench feared, but that is the exact opposite of where my career in law has taken me. I haven’t even set foot inside a courtroom. I took a contract reviewer job out of college during the Great Recession. It turned out that the one industry that seemed to be booming more than any other was the fucked-up American healthcare system. After being turned down by twenty different firms, I succumbed to the life I never wanted. The only decent thing about the blood-sucking company I work for, American True Care, is the money. I pulled in $100,000 my first year, and just three years later, I am now on pace to do over $150,000. Who would have thought that raking in this much money would still have me in debt? We even had to sell off our second car. Over $400,000 in uncovered medical bills will do it, and I blame American True Care far more than the Big C for that.

  She places her delicate, icy hand in mine and looks as though she is about to say something, but instead her eyes droop shut.

  The meds have fully kicked in.

  Her uneven brown bangs blow ever so slightly in the draft from the air conditioning vent. Her still face, ghost white and dry, is just as beautiful to me as the first day I met her.

  Seeing her like this reminds me of that day.

  About a month into my new position at American True Care, my piece-of-shit ’98 Civic broke down, forcing me to take the rail into work. My apartment in South Pasadena was only a few stops away from headquarters. Every seat in the entire train was taken, aside from one beside an attractive but pretentious-looking brunette woman wearing a black peacoat and jeans. A problem arose when I noticed that her purse sat on the seat, and she was fast asleep.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” I said.

  Nothing.

  I tried to clear my throat, realizing the train was about to start.

  Again, nothing.

  I leaned in and tapped her shoulder. A second later, a mesmerizing pair of hazel eyes glared back at me.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Sorry to wake you—there are no seats left. Mind if I sit?”

  She rolled her eyes and moved her purse. I almost turned around, but the stars set in motion a series of events that I seemed to have no control over, and I sat down before I knew what was happening.

  Within seconds of leaning back into the padded leather seat, something fell onto my shoulder. I glanced to the right to find flowing brown hair just inches from my face. A pleasant scent of something reminiscent of vanilla cookies graced my nostrils.

  I contemplated moving my shoulder to wake her but decided better of it after remembering how she’d reacted to me waking her the first time.

  I sat as still as I possibly could for five stops.

  The truth was that I actually enjoyed the physical touch of another person. Being single for more than a year can do that to a guy. Coming home every night to an empty apartment with no one to talk to is utterly unsatisfying. People looked over to see her head on my shoulder, and a part of me wanted them to think that we were together. Maybe that’s weird, but that was how I felt.

  Soon my stop approached. I moved my shoulder an inch to see how she would react, but instead of waking, she readjusted her head closer to mine.

  I took a deep inhalation. Being late for my brand-new job wasn’t exactly the start I was hoping for.

  But I let her be.

  I rode the rail four more stops past my own, already ten minutes late.

  The train banked hard to the left, and her head slammed into my chin.

  “Dammit
,” I said, biting my tongue.

  “Ugh,” she grunted. When she turned and saw me holding my face, she softened.

  My jaw throbbed, but I knew it wasn’t broken.

  She scrambled to grab her purse when she saw the Second Street exit outside.

  “Crap. I missed my stop.”

  “Me too,” I mumbled under my breath. She paused to look over at me again.

  “Because of me?”

  I shrugged.

  She bit her lip, clearly upset.

  I got up and walked toward the door to get off the train. She followed right behind.

  On the platform, I turned the corner and started up the stairs to get across to the other side. A second later, she booked it past me. I laughed under my breath.

  A set of gates blocked us from entering without a ticket. I approached the gate next to her and slid my ticket in. She fumbled with her purse.

  “Shit! I lost my ticket.”

  She dug through the contents of her purse but clearly wasn’t having any luck. Part of me wanted to press on through the gate as sweet revenge, but the other part of me wanted to help her.

  After looking around to ensure the coast was clear, I whispered, “Walk in behind me before the gate closes.”

  She hesitated but conceded soon after, and the next moment she was directly behind me. I pushed the gate forward knowing it would only stay open briefly before slamming shut.

  Her body pressed firmly against my back, and right as the gate snapped backward, we were both on the other side.

  I stumbled from the sudden commotion, and then she did the same.

  When we both got to our feet, I noticed she was staring at me.

  “Thank you,” she finally said, breaking the silence.

  “No problem. We better get down the stairs before the next train comes.”

  Then for the first time, she smiled at me. The pretentious-looking brunette woman looked pretentious no more. She had a new radiance to her that beguiled me.

  The noise of a locomotive thundered through the hallway, waking me from my temporary daze. She darted down the stairs, and this time I followed behind her.

  A moment later, we were inside the train.

  There were three open seats, one in the front and two toward the back.

  She looked to be approaching the single seat, and realizing my time with the woman had come to an end, I walked past her.

  I took one step, then felt a hand at my elbow.

  “Mind if I sit with you?” she asked. She was smiling again.

  “Not at all.”

  We sat together at the back, and the train set off. A moment later we hit an abrupt turn in the track, and our knees bumped a little. My heart started to beat faster from her touch.

  Houses blurred by through the window. I knew we only had a couple minutes before I’d be back at my stop, but something in the moment felt right.

  I looked over to see if the woman was asleep again, but this time she wasn’t. Her gaze was fixed on mine.

  “What’s your name?”

  “David. And what’s yours?”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Lexi.”

  “Good to meet you, Lexi.”

  She nodded, then looked ahead for a long moment. When we neared our stop, I felt her eyes on me again.

  “David, do you like me?”

  Taken aback by her bluntness, I didn’t know how to respond.

  “You are different, aren’t you?”

  She raised her eyebrows as if signaling for me to continue.

  “You’re intriguing. I’ll admit I find you attractive, but I also found you rude when I first approached you.”

  She let out a quick laugh. “Rude, huh? You aren’t so good with women, are you?”

  “Well then. I better get going,” was all I could say. When the train came to a stop, I stepped onto the platform.

  “Wait,” she interrupted after catching up to me. “Would you like to grab coffee with me?”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. She was asking me out.

  “Why would I do that?”

  It was my turn to play hard to get.

  She scoffed.

  “Look, I’m not normally such a bitch. Or maybe I am. I don’t know. I’m running on three hours of sleep, and I’m late for a job I loathe. You’re cute and seem like a nice guy.”

  I didn’t say anything. She was attractive, no doubt, but she was the opposite of the women I normally dated. She was bold and unpredictable.

  “All right,” I finally answered.

  “Give me your phone,” she insisted. I hesitated, thinking it might be one of those scams where she’d run off with it, but realizing full well I was making a potentially very stupid move, I convinced myself she didn’t seem the type to pull a heist. She was well dressed and in heels, not a good outfit for sprinting away.

  I gave in.

  A second later, she handed the phone back. My phone book was pulled up with a new contact front and center: Lexi.

  “Friday at five thirty. Text me,” she said.

  “It’s a date,” I replied.

  “Wow, don’t get ahead of yourself, mister. It’s coffee, not a date.”

  I grinned.

  She winked, then set off up the stairs through the bustle of the crowd.

  We met for coffee that Friday, and it went so well that she agreed to continue the night at dinner. Her sarcasm was even stronger than when we’d first met, but I found it refreshing.

  I let her pay for coffee, since she insisted on repaying me for helping her at the train station, and I paid for dinner.

  She told me about her life growing up in Seattle and about her parents who both died from cancer a couple years apart. She told me about the depression and insecurity that it left her with. She told me about how she’d become a “yogi” and ended up finding herself again. I soon learned that “yogi” was just the name for someone who did yoga. She told me about her days at UCLA, where she decided to study philosophy, then ethics, then art history for a brief stint, and ultimately settled on advertising.

  She told me about how she had dated a professor, then her roommate, then another couple guys she couldn’t even remember, because she’d banished them from her brain.

  Then she told me that she hadn’t been on a date in two years. She wanted to quit guys after the last one cheated, and after she talked herself into taking him back, he cheated again. She’d gotten her revenge when she left his MacBook, PlayStation, and television on the curb for anyone to take while he was at work. I told her how, as a lawyer, I had to inform her that leaving his stuff on the curb for anyone to take was technically illegal, but that he had it coming. Needless to say, she didn’t care for my legal advice.

  I told her about my days growing up nearby in the affluent small town of Glendora with both of my parents, who are still alive but divorced. I told her about how after their divorce my mom had crashed her car into my dad’s parked Porsche. I told her about not seeing my dad for a couple years after it happened, but that eventually my dad and I made up.

  I told her about how I’d always argued with everyone as a kid, including my brother, Evan, who I was still close with. Because I was so good at arguing, people had told me I would make a great attorney. I told her about my dreams of being the best lawyer California had ever seen, and how the Great Recession took those dreams from me.

  I told her that I, like her, loathed my job.

  I told her that I wished I was in the courtroom doing what I do best: arguing. These days the only arguing I did was with my brother over whether the Lakers or the Clippers were the better team.

  Lastly, I told her that she would never be able to be my girlfriend because she wasn’t a nice girl like the ones I normally dated.

  She took that as an invitation. She leaned in over the table and kissed me. And yes, I kissed her back.

  It was at that moment that I knew I was in trouble.

  After two hours at the restaurant, we took the hipster-
mustached waiter’s hint after he asked us for a sixth time if we were ready for the check.

  Later, she invited me to her place, but I refused. She seemed taken aback, but I could tell she also liked that I treated her as a true gentleman should.

  We saw each other the next night.

  And the next.

  And the next. It was on the fourth night at my apartment that I turned the corner and found her standing in front of my bed, completely naked. I couldn’t resist her, and she knew it.

  She was the sarcastic, say-anything, do-anything, absolutely beautiful, genuine woman who I never would have guessed would end up being the one.

  I was the witty, charismatic, well-mannered yet argumentative, and (some might even say) handsome man whom she too grew to love. I was her rock. She was my air.

  We got married on a bluff overlooking Laguna Beach two years later.

  It wasn’t until our honeymoon in a villa in the Bastille district of Paris that the pains started to appear. Don’t ask me what the timing meant.

  All I know is that the pains got worse, and six months later we learned she had cancer. The exact same type as her mother’s—spinal.

  It wasn’t ever something we talked about, but in the back of our heads, I know we had both thought about it being a possibility given what had happened with her parents.

  She told me that I was better off leaving her. I told her that leaving her would be the death of me. There was no me without her.

  And that’s when everything went to shit.

  The doctors insisted she needed to be at Hope Hospital for the best chance of survival. Hope Hospital, conveniently, wasn’t in my insurance network, and thus it became quite costly. At first she refused, but I told her that money was only an object and that love and time were ultimately more important to me. I also told her that I was stronger than her, and that, if need be, I would use physical force to get her to Hope. She hit me, playfully of course, and conceded.

  One appointment a week became two. Then treatment got thrown into the mix. Then checkups on top of the treatment. Then surgery. Then another surgery. One doctor would have an idea and it wouldn’t work. Then another. And so on and so on. We got charged for all of it.

  Working as a contract reviewer for the healthcare industry, I knew what I was getting into. I saw this type of thing all day. The sick ones are the ones who get screwed over first. Insurance companies cover generally healthy people with mild to average problems. Outside of that, insurance companies purposefully put clauses in contracts that get them out of the costly stuff.