Gold Promise

by Ninie Hammon

  Aaron is talking to the man he pulled out of the sports car, seems to be shouting at him, but the sounds are coming from a great distance. Everything feels indistinct, slowed down. Each raindrop that splats in her face is an individual event, falling independently of every other raindrop, slowly moving through the air to make contact with her skin, hitting it with a tiny stinging sensation, and she feels each of them, one at a time. Aaron's words are garbled, slowed down and elongated.

  "… think … you're … doing …?"

  "… red … light …"

  "Drunk!"

  Jessie doesn't run to the car seat, which lies face-down in a puddle. She hurries to it — it's face-down in the water! — but it's an incredible struggle, fighting her way through air that has taken on substance, air that resists like water, like molasses, air that tries to hold her back, keep her away, not let her see.

  Then she's standing beside the car seat, watching someone's hand, it's her hand, reach down and turn it over, lift it out of the puddle and lay it face-up on the street so that the rain splats down on the baby strapped into the seat. Washes the blood slowly down the baby's face. Tiny baby. Three, four months old maybe. Dressed in a blue terrycloth sleeper with footies, the kind that has snaps on the bottom so you can open it up to change the baby's diapers. Bethany had had an army of those, in all colors, pink, white, yellow, some with flowers on them, daisies, and bees, and she'd outgrown them so fast. Jessie would try to fasten it around her fat little bootie and the snaps wouldn't meet—

  None of them had been blue, though. Not like this one. Blue. But the red blood running in a rivulet out of the baby's right ear and seeping up out of the baby's chest is slowly soaking into the fabric, turning it purple.

  The baby's eyes are open, but he isn't looking at Jessie. He isn't looking at anything at all, and as she watches, his open eyes begin to fill with rainwater. It puddles there in the indentions his eye sockets make in his face until they are full and begin to overflow—

  "—hear me?" Aaron's voice. She turns, sees him looking at her as he holds the guy from the red car upright by his shirt. "I said get your phone, call 911!"

  She doesn't want to leave the baby. Leave him lying there like that. She should unbuckle him, pick him up, comfort him, get him out of the rain—

  "Now! Call 911!"

  Then Jessie's running through the rain, splashing through the rain back to the car, where she and Aaron both had left their doors open and where a woman — who is this woman? — stands beside the closed back door of the car holding an umbrella over her head.

  Maybe that's when it happened, when Jessie got to the car, knelt down to get her purse out of the front seat. No, it had to be before that because she saw it.

  A big gray car, not a limousine but the kind of big car that has a driver, like a chauffeur, coming from the same direction as the red car, screeches to a halt in the intersection under the traffic light and men, three of them in dark suits, jump out of it.

  Jessie's hands are wet and she fumbles with her purse, drops it into the street. She gets down on her hands and knees beside the open door and digs through it. Her hands are numb, though, and she can't feel what she's touching. In frustration, she sets it on the front seat of the car, intending to upend it and dump out the contents, but her fingers find her phone. She pulls it out of her purse, tries twice before her shaking hands hit the right numbers.

  9. 1. 1.

  "Nine-one-one dispatch, what is your emergency?"

  Jessie can't remember how to talk, can't form words.

  She wants to tell the dispatcher there's been an accident, but her tongue is dead in her mouth. They'll want to know where! But Jessie isn't sure where she is. On her knees behind the open passenger door, she has to lean over and peer around the door to see the street signs.

  Two of the men from the gray car are half-carrying, half-dragging the young man from the red car back toward the gray one. Aaron is in the street, yelling at the third man. He is older, wearing a fedora — nobody but older men wear hats like that, older men with money. He has a neatly trimmed beard, steel gray, and it comes to a ridiculous point at the base of his chin. And there's an eyepatch covering his right eye, the kind held in place with a piece of thin black elastic, like a pirate.

  She looks from the men to the street signs. Akron Street. It's the intersection of Akron and … what street had they been on? She can't read that sign from this angle.

  Baxter, she thinks. Yes, Baxter Street.

  She opens her mouth to force those words out, to tell the 911 dispatcher there's been an accident and to tell her where. But before she has a chance, there's a sudden bang, like a firecracker.

  Then a scream. The homeless woman, standing on the other side of the car screams, not just once but in a continuous shrieking wail. Jessie swings her vision back and looks at Aaron. He's holding his belly and he slowly drops to his knees like he's praying. The man, the older man with the eyepatch is standing in front of him … pointing a gun at him.

  The phone clatters to the pavement out of Jessie's suddenly lifeless fingers. She can't breathe.

  The man shouts something in a language Jessie can't understand and one of the men who was helping to shove the man from the red car into the back seat of the gray car stops what he's doing and turns toward her car. He reaches into his coat, like he's going to take a wallet out of a breast pocket and pulls out something — it's a gun! — and starts forward.

  "Jessie … run!" Aaron's voice cries.

  Another gunshot rings out. The eyepatch man has shot Aaron again. Shot him! He flies backward onto the wet street and lies still.

  Jessie screams, shrieks with every fiber of her being, but can't make a sound. She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out except an awful, guttural grunt, like she had been kicked in the belly with a pointed-toe cowboy boot. The homeless woman screams, though, makes enough noise for both of them, drops the umbrella and goes running back up the street trailing a high-pitched wail behind her like the tail of a kite.

  There's a third gunshot and the screaming cuts off and Jessie hears the woman's body hit the street with a sick, plopping sound.

  Jessie drops down onto her belly and looks out under the car. Between the wheels she can see the woman lying face down on the street. She turns back toward Aaron …

  Aaron!

  The old man shouts again more unintelligible words, harsh, staccato words. She can only see his feet, but the man who'd shot the homeless woman rushes to Aaron's body, grabs his arms and begins dragging him up the street toward their car.

  That's the first time Jessie is afraid. It comes all at once. Confusion and horror morph into a panic that hits her with the force of a wrecking ball square in the chest.

  Hide, hide, hide — she has to hide!

  Looking around frantically, she spots the dumpsters. Without even getting to her knees, she commando crawls toward them. The nearest is only ten or twelve feet away and the car blocks her from the view of the men in the street. There's only about eighteen inches of clearance, but she scoots under it, jams herself beneath it and shoves her way through the mud and filth, pushes as far back as she can go.

  She can't lift her head to look out, her right cheek is jammed into the mud and all she can see is the bottom of the front door of her car and her phone lying on the street beside it. She hears footsteps, see shoes. Someone has come around to that side of the car. The man is only ten feet from her. The panic in her chest explodes like some Navy dinghy when you pull on the strap. If she'd had any air, if she could have breathed at all, she'd have screamed, wouldn't have been able to stop herself, and he'd lean over and see her. But she has no air and remains silent. He stoops down, picks up her phone and tosses it into the car on top of her purse. Then she hears scuffling feet, can't tell …

  The other man has picked up the body of the homeless woman and is dragging it across the street. He drags it around the car and the two of them pick it up, toss it into the front seat on top of Jess
ie's purse and phone and slam the door.

  Then she sees Aaron.

  Aaron!

  A man is dragging him by his arms. One shoe has come off. She can see a bloody snail trail behind him that the rain is washing away. Aaron!

  She makes a noise, an involuntary sob, but the two men are on the other side of the car now, helping to shove Aaron's body into the driver's side of the front seat, and don't hear her. Then the car begins to move. The engine isn't running but it's moving. The men are pushing it, the man beside Aaron's open door leaning in to steer — pointing it down the hill toward where the mangled wreck still sends tendrils of steam or smoke into the rain falling softly from the sky.

  It isn't hard, the incline is steep enough that once they get it moving, the car rolls easily, gathering speed as it goes.

  The man piloting the car steps back and the car continues to roll until it hits the tangled mass of wrecked cars pushed up against the lamppost. Jessie can't see well now since she can't lift her head to—

  Something brushes against her leg!

  There is a squeaking sound.

  Jessie would have thought it impossible to be more horrified than she already is but she's wrong.

  Rats!

  There are rats under the dumpster and Jessie is lying in the middle of them.

  The panic that steals her breath and takes complete control of her body is primeval, there is no thought to it, she plans nothing. Horror hijacks her and she scoots frantically away, only barely able to apply enough reason to her retreat to shove herself out the back side of the dumpster rather than the front. The rain hits her, splashing cold, as she clears the dumpster and leaps to her feet, holding onto a scream with her fingernails, looking around on the ground — there it is, they are, crawling out from under the dumpster toward her—

  And then she's running into the weeds behind the dumpster, tall weeds that reach almost to her shoulders. She only makes it a few steps before she trips, falls into the mud, and then crawls as fast as she can, mindlessly, blindly, not looking back, crawling in terror.

  The crash of an explosion tears open the world while she's still in the field of weeds. It's a blast like a bomb. Only then does the car horn, that had wailed nonstop as a mournful accompaniment to the carnage, fall silent. The explosion is followed a few seconds later by another blast, as loud or louder than the first. The sounds come from behind her, from beyond the dumpsters and horror from which she fled. She leaps to her feet then, looks back. She has crawled … thinking, if she had thought at all … only of away, get away, not considering a direction or a destination.

  Standing in the chest-high weeds, she is disoriented, can't make out where she is. She doesn't recognize any of the buildings, but when she turns around she can see boiling black smoke rising up into the rain and she realizes that she has crawled back up the hill parallel to Baxter street, crested it and gone down the other side.

  There is no sound now coming from the other side of the hill beneath the pall of smoke. Only silence.

  Then she hears another sound that makes her knees weak and she sinks back down into the weeds.

  Sirens. A symphony of sirens.

  She puts her head in her hands then and collapses into the mud, sobbing.

  Chapter Sixty

  "Who is that man?" T.J. asked.

  "He shot Aaron. Twice. Killed him!"

  "Who's Aaron?" Brice asked.

  "My husband." Then she let go and did sob, cried so hard she lost her breath. Cried for all the times she'd swallowed tears. And some part of her tears were tears of relief. Finally, after all this time, she had admitted the truth to her friends.

  When her tears had finally ratcheted down to the hitching breathing of a little kid who'd just thrown a tantrum, she looked up into the concerned faces of the three men who had come to mean so very much to her in the past few months. Men she'd lied to every breath, pretending to be somebody she wasn't. Men who had helped her forge a new life … to replace the life the monster with the gray beard and the eyepatch had stolen from her.

  Only maybe now … now he was back.

  "You's in the Witness Protection Program," T.J. said matter-of-factly. "We all knew that. Is this" — he pointed to the man in the photo — "is he why?"

  Bailey was so surprised she looked from one man to another, unable to speak.

  "You knew?" she said.

  T.J. managed a smile.

  "Of course we knew," he said. "Mountaineers ain't near as dumb as we look." His face softened. "Your real name's Jessie Cunningham, the name you gave me the day I stopped by your front porch to see your kidney painting."

  "The day we came barging into the rest of your life," Dobbs said.

  She looked at Brice.

  "You … you checked me out, found out—?"

  "No." Brice's voice was decisive. "It wasn't any of my business." He looked around at the others. "We figured you'd tell us when you were ready."

  The revelation that they'd known all along should have been no revelation at all. Of course, they did. She pointed to the man in the photo. "It's a long story."

  "We ain't got plans."

  She told them. Every horrible detail. Cried through most of it.

  At some point while she was telling them about that night, someone had refilled her mug of cider and T.J. urged her to drink when she was finished with the tale. The slow, rhythmic act of swallowing calmed and centered her.

  Pointing to the man who'd been standing not ten feet behind her, she said, "His name is Sergei Wassily Mikhailov. It was his son, Ivan, who was the drunk Aaron pulled out of the red sports car."

  She took another long drink of the cider — underwear cider. Only a few minutes ago, they'd all been laughing about the name. How quickly life changed.

  "According to the federal marshals, he has no soul. He's a Russian mafia boss who makes his way in the world by killing anybody who gets in his way and—"

  She discovered it was hard to say the words out loud.

  "—and by murdering their families, too."

  "But he thinks he got rid of all the witnesses," Brice said, putting it together. "He shot your" — there was a hesitation there, or Bailey thought there was — "husband and believed the homeless woman was you."

  "Nobody looks for somebody they think is dead. That's what Bernie said."

  Bernie. U.S. Marshal Bernard Jordan. She had heard the other officers refer to him as Bernie, but she'd never used the name. Didn't know why it had popped into her head just now.

  "He said I'd be safe while a hush-hush grand jury issued super-secret indictments against Mikhailov and Ivan and the henchmen. Then I'd come out of nowhere and testify, they'd stick a needle in the monster's arm and I could have my life back. Bada boom, bada bing. But before they could serve the indictments, Mikhailov returned to Russia. And vanished."

  "And you've been stuck ever since … waiting," Dobbs said.

  She saw understanding dawn on T.J.

  "And because you're supposed to be dead," he paused and looked at her tenderly, "you had to leave your … little girl behind."

  Bailey bleated out an involuntary sob.

  "Yes," she said. She whispered the name, "Bethany."

  Said her name, actually said it, "Bethany!"

  "And … Oscar was because …?"

  "I couldn't stand the thought of missing another of her birthdays. She … turned three June 27."

  The room grew quiet then, each of them digesting what she'd said. She realized that it felt like she'd shed chains that had been around her chest for so long she'd forgotten them. Telling these guys the truth unlocked the chains and they fell away. She felt light without them. Like she might float away, Forrest Gump's feather on a breeze.

  "And now …?" Brice asked.

  "I … don't know. I guess I call Marshal Jordan." His was the number she’d been given to call in an emergency. U.S. Marshal Bernard Jordan. She felt disoriented. "It's just … I don't call them; they call me. Actually, they don't
call. They just show up and tell me …"

  She realized she was babbling but couldn't seem to grab hold of the bubble of pure joy that had swelled up in her chest so big she could barely breathe.

  Inhale.

  Exhale.

  She spoke slowly. "Now I call the marshals and tell them … Tell Wit Sec I want my life back!"

  And what exactly did that mean? This was her life, too. Here with these three. Somehow she would fit it all together. She'd figure that out … work it out somehow.

  She took a long, slow drink, drained the last of her cider and set the cup on the coffee table. Then, she let it wash over her, watched the urgent message flash in red letters on an LED screen in her mind: BETHANY! BETHANY! BETHANY!

  T.J. looked at the brilliant smile that lit Bailey's face. He had never seen her look so happy.

  And he was happy for her.

  Happy and scared.

  He glanced at Brice and saw unnamable emotions play over his face, too. Their eyes caught and held. They were both thinking the same thought.

  Bailey had watched a ruthless Russian Mafia boss commit murder.

  He thought he'd killed all the witnesses. Once he found out different, that he'd missed one, he'd come looking for her hidey hole. He'd pull out all the stops, turn over every rock, look under the chewing gum on the bottom of the picnic tables.

  Would the federal marshals really be able to keep Bailey alive long enough for her to tell a jury what she saw?

  THE END

  A Special Request

  Thank you for reading Gold Promise.

  If you enjoyed this book. would you please consider writing a review of it on your favorite bookseller’s website so other readers might enjoy it too. Just a couple of sentences. That would mean a lot to me.

  Thank you!