by Brown, Tara
I stared at the back of the closet door, holding my breath.
“I’m going to kill you,” a familiar voice spoke.
Scowling and certain it couldn’t be, I stayed where I was.
“Come on!” my guard, the lady who had stayed with me all day until I lost her at Bergdorf’s, shouted.
Worried I was hallucinating, but desperate to find my brother and Lucas, I opened the closet door, gasping when I saw her. “You came!” I jumped out and hugged her, receiving nothing back.
“Has anyone ever told you, you’re an idiot?” she snarled, and I nodded, almost crying with relief.
“A lot of people.”
“Okay, so telling you isn’t helping.” She grabbed my hand and dragged me from the room. There were dead guards everywhere. One man groaned in the corner. She lifted her gun, shooting him in the back as we passed. The silencer made the shot a whisper instead of a bang.
“Got the package, on my way down,” she spoke softly as we approached what I assumed was a service elevator. “In the carriage,” she whispered when we were inside.
I struggled to breathe as I peered around us nervously. “How did you know—?”
“That you’re an idiot? I mean, I assumed as much when you tried on that hideous pink slip dress at the store,” she mocked me. “How did I know you would come here?” she asked, not meeting my gaze. I could swear she was listening to our surroundings as she spoke, “When your brother was talking this morning and kept saying Lucas should go to Fortinbras, I knew you were paying more attention to that than you should have.” She lifted an eyebrow. “He set you up.”
“What?” I was lost on which “he” she meant and that she was spying on my brother and me in our suite.
She lifted a gloved finger to her lips. The elevator stopped. I slid to the side as I was taught to. Protected by the frame of the elevator doors.
She went to the other side, listening as she lifted her gun.
“Alice, run!” someone shouted. She pressed “close” on the door and the third-floor button.
“What is it?” I was panicking but she didn’t answer. She was listening to whatever chaos erupted in her earpiece.
The doors dinged and she ran to the left. I followed, staying behind her. She handed me a gun as we got to a banquet room. “Don’t shoot yourself or me. Don’t think, just follow.” She ran again, staying low and fast.
My stomach was in my throat, but I managed to grip the heavy gun and keep up. She hurried out onto a terrace, past a pool and an empty dining area. Shadows moved but they belonged to the furniture and my imagination.
At the edge of the terrace, three stories in the air, overlooking part of the park, she pulled another gun and shot it into the side of the building and tugged on the wire attached. It didn’t budge. She fastened the gun to clips on her black vest. “Don’t wiggle.” She stepped up on the ledge, offering me a hand.
I took it, following her advice of not thinking.
She slid her arm around my waist, and I clung to her desperately. My hands were soaked in sweat and I was sure they’d slip as she stepped off the edge. We dropped and I closed my eyes. The wire slowed our journey, bouncing us a little before we landed on a busy sidewalk, but it was New York, and this was probably not the craziest thing the people would see.
My knees buckled and I fell. She unclipped and grabbed my hand, dragging me up and across the road into the park.
We ran as fast as I could, but not as fast as she could. She was hardly huffing when she stopped, whereas I was wheezing. “Before we go any farther, who are the dead guys in the New Denmark harbor?”
“Some college friends of your brothers, Guildenstern or something like it. They were shot. I don’t know who did it.”
I exhaled in relief. I recognized the name but also that he wasn’t a close friend. “So Laertes is all right?”
“As far as I last heard, he was fine.”
“Thanks, Alice,” I said, recalling the name from the elevator.
“You’re welcome, Ophelia. Now let’s get the hell out of New York while we still can.” She hurried through the park to the museums by Central Park West where a car waited. She got the door for me. I dove in, grateful to be sitting.
“You’re out of shape for such a skinny girl.”
“Skinny fat, it’s what Laertes calls it,” I joked but my pulse was too quick to laugh.
A cold sweat, a mix created from exertion and fear, covered my face.
“Your brother set you up. I think he’s traded you to Fortinbras. That conversation this morning was a trap. Telling you not to help and to go to the safe house and then bringing up Fortinbras constantly. He assumed you would act and seek help. But Fortinbras was waiting for you, wasn’t he?” she asked.
“He was. He knew what kind of smoothie I liked.”
“That’s creepy. I get a real skin-suit vibe off that one.” Alice scoffed.
“I always thought he was handsome and cool and young. But he’s just like all our dads. He’s one of them. His coolness is an act.”
“And your brother has taken the bait. He thinks what is best for us all, both kingdoms, is a joint leadership. But Claudius knows Fortinbras, he knows the peace is a lie and it won’t last. It’s why he was against it from the start.” Alice sighed, shaking her head. “Men.”
“Seriously,” I muttered, wiping my face.
The car stopped at Pier 1. She climbed out and was already running before I had a chance to ask questions. Groaning, I got out and followed, tired of running in every sense of the word.
She sprinted for the end of the pier, where a speed boat waited. I moved faster, forcing myself to rush for the railing where she was. She helped me climb over the rail and the man on the boat offered me a callused hand. He dragged me on board while Alice hopped the railing and sprung on deck. He was driving before she sat, racing us down the Hudson toward the Narrows.
Alice offered a grin when we hit the Atlantic. “You can throw up now if you need to.”
“I’m good,” I lied, deciding I would throw up later, when she wasn’t looking.
“Is my brother with Lucas?” I asked.
“I believe so. Our guards aren’t in the Jacobi mansion; they have it surrounded. Laertes left without them about two hours ago. He snuck out of work.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Must run in the family.”
“A lifetime of practice.” I folded my arms over my chest and considered what she’d said about Laertes. There was no way he’d betray Lucas or me, I didn’t believe it. It had to be something else. Something I didn’t know about. In that moment when I was supposed to doubt him, I realized I trusted him more than anything in the world.
Chapter 24
The secret entrance into Elsinore wasn’t easy to find, but it was easier than convincing Alice we needed to come. She fought me the entire boat ride back to New Denmark and was only convinced when I said Lucas was going to die.
Alice and I crept up the tunnel that felt like it went on forever. I didn’t see the light at the end. Instead, the tunnel finished in darkness. A small ladder with a hatch in the ceiling was what we came to.
Alice went first, lifting the hatch and her gun at the same time. “Clear,” she said and I climbed out to join her in the family wine cellar.
“Let me go first, I know the way. The servants’ entrances and hallways,” I whispered and hurried from the cellar. My body had been aching on the boat, pushed to the point of exhaustion. But I was revived with anxious fear.
My hands held the gun tightly, fingering the frame as the shooting instructor had explained.
We hurried along the corridors no one paid attention to, coming to the great hall where voices met us. A man lay dead, bloody from bullet wounds, on the marble floor. But no one else was there. We followed the voices into the music room.
“Smoke it!” Lucas shouted, making my skin crawl. The tone was so cruel.
“Lucas, don’t do this,” his mother pleaded.
“Listen
to your mother,” Claudius growled.
“Smoke it or I shoot you in the face,” Lucas said flatly.
We entered the room to more dead bodies. Guards and Claudius’ men were everywhere, their crimson blood staining the beautiful white marble and instruments.
“Lucas?” I whispered. “What are you doing?”
“Go away, O,” he demanded. His right hand held a gun on his uncle and mother who were across the room from him. His left hand shook slightly and was cradled into his body. He’d been shot in the arm or shoulder and was dripping onto the floor. Claudius was also bleeding from his shoulder, and his face had signs of violence, bruises and cuts.
His mother’s hands were bloody but the rest of her seemed intact.
“What are you doing?” I repeated.
“I tried to set a trap for Claudius to smoke the cigar, but it didn’t work,” Lucas retorted viciously. “Unbeknownst to me, he had hired my college friends to kill me. They tried and failed.” Lucas nodded, a tone in his voice I’d never heard before. It terrified me. “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tried to kill me at the harbor. But my own mother doesn’t believe that. Did I hire them to try to kill myself, Mother? Is that how that happened? To prove my innocence by dying?”
Gertrude cried. “You’re acting so—”
“What? Like a man who lost his father and apparently his mother in the same week? Very moment. Dad died and you abandoned me? For him?” He pointed the gun violently at his uncle. “Claudius not only killed Father, but he was fucking Jane too. They did it together! She’s the mother of his child, for God’s sake. Why you would dare trust him, is beyond me.”
“The same has been said of you,” Claudius offered pathetically.
“Only by you, Uncle. Whispering into my mother’s ear to pollute her against me. No one else believes I killed my own dad. Do they, Laertes?”
“No.” My brother stepped from the shadows behind Claudius, a gun in his hands as well. But I couldn’t tell where his gun pointed. His eyes were on me, wide and confused.
Alice stepped in front of me, her gun on Claudius as well.
“Please stop this,” I pleaded, trying to get past Alice but a guard I hadn’t noticed behind her grabbed my arm.
“The cigar Dad smoked in his office, killed him and Romeo. Mom, you don’t want to believe me that I didn’t kill my dad, surely you must know I would never kill my own dog?” Lucas’ voice cracked as he begged his mother to see reason. “I would die, take my own life, before I hurt either of them. I loved them.” He sounded as broken as he appeared.
Gertrude’s eyes were wide as she glanced at Claudius, then the cigar. She took a step away from him. “He’s right. He would never harm a hair on that dog. Not for anything.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean to kill the dog,” Claudius sneered but the nervousness in his eyes suggested he knew. He was caught. His right eye twitched as he grabbed the cigar. “You want me to smoke it?” he challenged Gertrude, holding it out.
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t want any more death.”
“I do, just one more,” Lucas said weakly as he pulled the trigger. His face a picture of torment.
I dropped as Alice brought me to the ground, covering me with her body.
“Lucas!” his mother shouted. Claudius fell to the floor, clinging to his chest where blood poured from.
Lucas dropped the gun on the floor, his shoulders slumped and his body moved as if he were gently crying.
I needed to get to him. To hold him. To protect him. But I couldn’t get up.
Footsteps behind Laertes came out of nowhere. Fortinbras and his guards entered the room from the gallery where they had to have been hiding, all of them with their guns up. Laertes lifted his hands, not even trying to defend himself or any of us.
“Pick up your gun, Lucas. You don’t want to die with no weapon in your hand.” Fortinbras laughed as he crossed the room.
“Claudius is dead, we can negotiate,” Lucas said though his heart wasn’t in it. He had killed off a piece of himself in murdering his uncle.
“I don’t need to negotiate now. You’re weak. The moment your father died, I knew I could take your kingdom from you.” Fortinbras scoffed. “Everything that was yours, will be mine.”
“Why?” Lucas asked.
“Revenge, of course. Your father killed mine.”
“You hated your father,” Lucas gave a single laugh, defeated and confused. He wasn’t the mastermind Fortinbras was.
Fortinbras answered and the men continued to trade insults and bitterness.
Alice lowered her weapon, nodding her head at the massive doorway behind us. It was out of sight of the scene unfolding before us, blocked by the piano in the middle of the room and chairs and tables next to it.
Was this the tarot card, the black-and-white one?
Selfishness meant survival.
I closed my eyes, contemplating fleeing. I could escape into the great hall and back to the cellar and live. It was what every person in the room wanted. And even if I did stand up, there was no chance my interfering would save anyone.
But maybe I could distract them.
“Stop, please,” I pleaded with Fortinbras as I stood.
His eyes narrowed. “I was wondering what became of you, my darling. This is exactly what I was talking about. This is the adventure that will keep our marriage fresh.”
Lucas jerked back to life, his stare floating from me to Fortinbras and finally landing on my brother. He squinted at Laertes. My brother met his gaze, a single tear dripping from his eye.
Panic built in me as Laertes pointed his gun again.
Lucas shook his head in tiny twitches.
Laertes whispered, “Goodnight, sweet prince.” He pulled the trigger, and the sound of the shot rang in my head. Echoing forever. My stare darted to Fortinbras, but he was fine, standing tall. It was Lucas who clutched his chest, a red spot blooming in his pale blue shirt. Gertrude tried rushing at her son, but Fortinbras’ men held her back as she kicked and fought and screamed.
“Nooooooooo,” I shrieked and tried to run to Lucas as he turned his head, his eyes meeting mine.
“Run,” he whispered, and I heard it over everything else. “I love you, run.”
Hands grabbed me but I was blinded by tears, losing Lucas in the kaleidoscope my eyes became and unable to see who was behind me. Shots fired but I was dragged into the great hall, Alice ran backward, shooting behind her as she pulled me to safety.
I fought to go back but another guard was with us; he was too strong. He lifted me and they ran for the cellar.
The last thing I saw of the fight was a bullet hitting a wall behind us, exploding and littering the air with debris.
When we made it to the tunnels, Alice locked the hatch, preventing anyone from coming after us. She paced, her head shaking back and forth. “Holy fuck. What do we do now?”
“Wait for orders,” the other guard said softly, his eyes glistening in the limited light we had from the flashlight. “Laertes went full rogue. He killed Lucas, that was insane.”
I’d seen it with my own eyes, but I didn’t believe it. My brother loved him. He wouldn’t hurt anyone. The terror on his face when he pulled the trigger was so contrary to his actions. There had to be something I was missing. Not that it mattered. Lucas was dead. My love was gone.
Alice stopped pacing. She scowled and glanced at me with a blank stare. Her brow knit as she pressed her lips into a thin line and lifted her gun. With a whisper she shot the other guard in the head. His blood sprayed in the tunnel, making our limited light red for a second. She pulled the earpiece out, sinking to her knees. “I’ve just been directed to give you over. It’s you or my family,” she said softly, and I could hear a decision being made. She pulled her phone out texting someone. The glow of the phone lit up her face well enough that I saw the tears streaming her cheeks as well as the hatred burning in her eyes.
“What are you doing?”
“Telling th
em to run. The same as we’re going to do.” She put the phone back in her pocket and sniffled away her remorse. “They know the drill.” She stood and stared down the dark tunnel.
“We should go back into the mansion and hide.” My motives were not survival but to see Lucas again. “They will be searching the grounds. You know the first thing guards are taught is a five-mile search. They never check the house.” I recalled my mother being in the house with us all along, waiting in the shadows. She had to have hidden there for hours. She shot my father and ran back to the house.
“Okay. You’re right. We’ve waited too long and there’s no way our vehicle’s waiting for us where we left it.” Alice agreed after a moment. “We go up into the house, we hide out with a good vantage point until the herd thins. Then we bolt.”
“All right,” I said and stood. She unlocked the hatch silently. Both our hearts were pounding—I could see her heartbeat in her neck.
We climbed out into the cellar, listening for anything. There was a ton of movement towards where Lucas was. There was no way to get back there.
Alice moved ahead of me, her gun ready. When we were back to the butler’s pantry, I opened the door to the escape stairs. We entered them slowly, closing it back up before climbing. On the second floor of Elsinore, I listened and crouched behind Alice. She paused, likely not knowing which way to go. I led the charge, moving right to the wing where Lucas’ room was. Footsteps along the hallway scared us. We moved into a sitting room with a large TV. The person passed us, moving quickly and sobbing to themselves. It sounded like Gertrude and the dogs. Alice poked her head out when the hall was quiet again. She stepped forward, always watching behind us. I led us to the far-right wing, Lucas’ massive suite.
As we entered, I closed the door, locking it. She moved to the windows but I pointed to the stairs tucked in the wall. “Lookout is up there.”
We walked in opposite directions.
She headed for the lookout, a place I’d been a hundred times. It was made to resemble a lighthouse, the perfect place to play.
