Ain't Doin' It

by Lani Lynn Vale

  “What do we do?” I breathed. “Do we get out? Do we tell other people to get out?”

  Then some movement out of the corner of my eye had me turning to see a dog sitting on his haunches, his entire body quivering with expectation.

  His eyes were fixed solely on Tyler, and he was slobbering up a storm.

  “Hey,” I whispered. “Is that Brutus?”

  Luca’s eyes scrunched as he started letting his eyes roam around the hospital, and then he froze with his gaze on who I thought was Brutus.

  Luca shook his head. “Brutus is dead, sis. That’s not Brutus.”

  The dog that looked remarkably like Reagan’s old dog, that I did now remember had died a few years ago, was sitting in the hallway, slobbering away, quivering with excitement.

  Now that I studied the dog, he was a little different than Brutus, though not by much.

  “What’s the dog doing here?” Luca whispered. “That dog has to be Reagan’s. Do you see her?”

  I looked around but didn’t see her anywhere. “I don’t see her.”

  “Fuck, this is the biggest clusterfuck ever,” he whispered. “Oh shit.”

  That ‘oh shit’ was because the dog was done with his sitting.

  He took two slow steps in the direction of Tyler, the police chief, and then stopped when Beatrice started to really lose it.

  What happened next was comical, to say the least.

  Beatrice started to scream, Brutus’s ears went back, and Coke lost his patience.

  Tyler, the poor man, finally realizing that the dog was in the hospital with everyone, tripped over the dog as he and the big fluff of fur both lunged at Beatrice.

  The dog stayed on his feet. Tyler didn’t.

  Coke reached forward and ripped both Beatrice’s phone and her purse out of her hands.

  The phone fell to the floor, and the dog bent over and…ate it.

  Coke, unsure what to do, started to run with the purse in his hands—and my heart leapt into my throat.

  Luca finally left his spot at my side and moved to help hold Beatrice down as she started to thrash.

  I watched in stunned horror at the intensity with which she was fighting not just Luca but also now my father.

  Tyler hurried out in Coke’s wake, and I was left standing there, staring at the spectacle before me.

  Frankie was up on her knees, staring at her mother in horror, as was Amadea from an almost identical position in the opposite corner of the nurses’ station.

  Doctors and nurses flooded the area, temporarily cutting off my view of everyone—and that was when the man that I hadn’t realized was there struck.

  A hand went around my mouth, and another went around my throat.

  “Move and you die.” I felt something shoved up underneath my chin.

  A gun.

  I swallowed thickly.

  “I’m going to let you go, but if you scream, I’m going to shoot you in the head. I’ll get away. Trust me. Everyone in the ER is down there right now instead of right here. And if they’re not down there, they’re outside because the stupid, crazy bitch decided to bring a bomb into the hospital.” He chuckled. “Nice touch, though. Would’ve been a perfect distraction.”

  I didn’t say a word to that as the man slowly let me go.

  “The plan was to keep him distracted by you to get to the girl,” the man said as he taped my wrists. “The girl was who we wanted all along. But the girl is smart. She’s never alone. She is so aware of her surroundings that it’s insane. Almost as if she was looking for us. The first time, we should’ve known that you weren’t her. You looked older and had more curves. You also weren’t ghost white. But…the boys got a little excited, thinking that it was really easy. But…it wasn’t. Got a few of them in trouble, but little tight ass Beatrice paid for their bail with the boss’s money, allowing us to finish the job. Just didn’t realize that you were so resourceful…or that you would have the girl covered. It’s unfortunate that you got here today. Otherwise it would’ve been her and not you…but you’ll have to do at this point. Hopefully the big boss won’t care. He said only a young white girl would do—Beatrice’s girl. Hopefully he won’t notice you’re not all that white. I’m not going in there empty-handed. He said this was our last chance.”

  It wasn’t just a tan.

  Not even fuckin’ close.

  I consistently had this ‘tan’ for 365 days a year. I could thank my father’s heritage for my beautiful skin.

  Unlucky for boss man.

  Plus, I would not be leaving this place with him.

  No sir-ree.

  The tape on my hands tightened, and I tested the strength.

  It was tight, but not unbearable.

  I could lift my arms under my legs and have my arms in front of me pretty easily if the man left me alone for a few seconds, and then I could bite the tape off.

  But then the man, as if reading my thoughts, turned me around and covered my mouth with a piece of tape.

  I glared.

  It was the man I’d stabbed in the throat with a screwdriver.

  Fucker.

  I should’ve stabbed him in the heart.

  The man practically took the thought right out of my brain.

  “Yeah, you remember me, don’t you?” he asked.

  I didn’t bother to nod my head.

  I’d remember him forever, now.

  “Let me tell you something,” he said. “You should have done it right the first time.”

  Then I was being pushed through the stairwell door and forced to walk up the stairs.

  We made it to the last level before he shoved me into the corner near the fire hose at the top.

  “Put your hands there,” he ordered.

  I wrapped them around the wheel that was used to wind the hose back up, and he taped me to it.

  “I’ll be back, sweetheart.”

  He turned to leave, and something overcame me.

  Something big.

  A voice in my head said kick him and, not one to ever argue with my inner superhero, I leveraged myself up using the wheel between my hands, lifted both of my feet off the ground, and braced my shoulder against the wall.

  When he took a step forward, I let them fly, straight into his lower back.

  He went awkwardly forward, falling face first down the stairs.

  And I closed my eyes the moment I heard the audible snap of a bone breaking.

  Then I leaned over and swallowed bile just as the man’s body hit the landing below the one I was on.

  Closing my eyes, I started counting to ten.

  Then fifteen. Then a hundred.

  I didn’t stop counting until somebody found me over thirty minutes later.

  ***

  Frankie

  I wasn’t too sure how I ended up in this man’s arms, but I wasn’t complaining.

  I’d never, not once, been held like this by someone that wasn’t my father.

  I never knew what I was missing.

  Holy shit, but the man was beautiful, and I wasn’t quite sure where he fit into all of this in the grand scheme of things.

  What I did know was that it took all of three seconds for me to see him and fall for him, despite my life swirling down the drain around me.

  And now, hours after first seeing the man, I was in his arms.

  “Let me go!” my mother screamed so loudly that my already battered head started to pound.

  Then she started to thrash. “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you.”

  One second, I was on the ground with the man’s arms around my shoulders, and the next I was being lifted and taken away.

  I started to shiver.

  “Where are you taking me?” I breathed into the man’s chest.

  “Down the hall to where my sister is,” came the man’s reply.

  “I don’t remember your name.”

  Such lies. I knew his n
ame. Hell, it was burned in my memory.

  “Luca.”

  Chapter 27

  I’m polite, but I’m also an asshole. I’ll hold the door for you. While you’re thinking that I’m nice, I’m thinking that you need to hurry the fuck up, stupid.

  -Cora to Coke

  Coke

  I didn’t know what to do with it.

  I was standing in the middle of the parking lot, staring at the purse, my heart hammering.

  “Give it to me.”

  I looked over my shoulder to see Tyler behind me, holding out his hands.

  “Do you know what to do with it?” I asked.

  Gabe hunkered down at my side as he took the bag from my hand, then gently pulled out the bomb that was now reading 3:32.

  “Do you know what to do?” Tyler asked my earlier question.

  Gabe shook his head. “No.”

  That was because upon closer inspection, there were upwards to twenty wires, all of them connected to something or another. Dummy wires, but there was no way in hell that we could decipher which one it was that we needed to disarm the bomb.

  “Fuck me.” Gabe sat back.

  I didn’t.

  I picked it all up, reached for the keys that were in the purse next to it, and started hauling ass toward Beatrice’s Beemer.

  The moment I was inside, I floored it out of the parking lot and headed straight for the most unpopulated place I could think of—my yard.

  With it being Sunday, nobody would be there.

  Instead of stopping at the gate and opening it, I ran the Beemer straight through the lock, taking happiness where I could when I saw the Beemer’s front-end splinter and break due to the force of the impact.

  My destination was the car crusher, and I arrived just as the clock read 1:03.

  Parking it in the crusher as best as I could, I bailed.

  After pressing the button for it to crush, I sprinted for the back of the lot, the furthest away from everything that I could get under the circumstances.

  I hadn’t made it but half of my intended distance when the bomb detonated.

  I hit the ground and rolled underneath an old Ford pick-up missing its wheels and covered my head.

  Dirt, debris, and metal started to fly.

  I closed my eyes and hoped that I was far enough away from her car that it wouldn’t penetrate the metal shielding me.

  I was wrong.

  ***

  Frankie

  “Where is your sister?” I asked, looking around, finally coming back to myself.

  The dog from earlier whined at the stairwell door in front of us, and Luca put me down as he called for his sister. “Cora?”

  I reached for the stairwell door once I was down on my own two feet, and the dog bolted.

  “The dog…”

  Luca looked in the direction the dog had went and cursed when he began to follow.

  I did, too, coming to a stop at floor five where Luca held his hand out and said, “Don’t move.”

  I didn’t.

  Couldn’t, really.

  Because there was a dead guy on the floor, his neck obviously broken.

  Luca didn’t bother sparing the man a glance as he continued up the stairs.

  It was then, while I was standing there and trying to calm my breathing when I heard the quiet whimpers.

  “Oh, fuck,” Luca said. “Shit, shit, shit. Frankie, go get a doctor.”

  I did as requested, poking my head out of each level until I saw a doctor in his white coat.

  “You!” I screamed and pointed. “Come with me! We got hell and chaos in the stairwell.”

  The doctor stopped at the dead man once he’d joined me in the stairwell where Luca was, but I shooed him away. “Not that one, he’s already dead.”

  The older man in his late forties ignored me.

  He stopped, felt a pulse, then shook his head before moving farther up the stairs.

  There, we both found Luca frantically trying to remove tape from Cora’s wrist—her obviously broken wrist.

  And, just sayin’, Cora wasn’t home.

  She was in a trance-like state, and her eyes were blank.

  Chapter 28

  Do you ever listen to your ex-wife talking and think ‘damn I wish I treated you better so you would shut the fuck up?’

  Yeah, me neither.

  Coke

  I knew for a fact that I wanted to give her everything.

  I wanted to get married. I wanted to make her happy. I wanted her to outlive me. I wanted everything. And for her, I’d even be happy with kids.

  I’d made some mistakes in my life. A lot of them. Beatrice being one of the major ones.

  But, Cora had shown me that she loved me despite my downfalls. She’d been there through everything.

  “Yo, you just gonna lay there, or are we going to go back there to figure out what the fuck happened?” Gabe asked.

  I grunted and continued to walk across the yard, ignoring the way my car crusher was now a twisted hunk of metal.

  Many of the cars surrounding the twisted hunk of metal were in much the same predicament, and the car that used to be Beatrice’s prized possession was now a charred mess with a hole the size of a small person in the door where the bomb had exploded outward.

  Oh, and the roof was missing, too.

  I’d seen it over by the Ford part of the lot at least eight rows down.

  Gabe’s eyes sparkled as he watched me walk gingerly toward his truck.

  “I brought the bitch mobile especially for you,” he drawled.

  I grimaced and carefully settled myself in the seat.

  “Look at you, being all superhero-like. Like the Flash, only a little bit slower and older,” Gabe said.

  I flipped him off. “Fuck you.”

  “Where did it get you?” he asked.

  I lifted my shirt where a piece of metal was embedded in my skin.

  “Is that a shifter knob?” he asked, leaning closer to get a better look.

  “Yeah,” I said. “From Beatrice’s Beemer, too.”

  “At least it looks pretty…”

  The reason I knew that it was from Beatrice’s car was due to the sparkly shifter sequins topping it. There was no mistaking who that belonged to.

  Tyler, who’d ridden with Gabe over to the yard, got out of the truck and waved. “I’ll hold down the fort.”

  I gave him an ‘okay’ sign with my finger and thumb, then sat in the passenger seat of Gabe’s truck dripping blood in his pristine car seat.

  “Gonna need to get this cleaned,” I murmured.

  He grunted. “I know some people. They’re good at getting blood out of things.”

  I didn’t miss that threat.

  Nor did I miss the way he glared at me out of the corner of his eye.

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  The ride to the hospital lasted less than five minutes—twice what’d taken me earlier in Beatrice’s Beemer—and I’d never been as happy as I was to arrive as when we did.

  “Did you get a new piercing?”

  I looked up to find Johnny standing there, looking at me with humor written all over his face.

  I flipped him off, too.

  “Did you…”

  “Dad!”

  “Daddy!”

  Gabe’s head whipped around just as mine did, and suddenly Luca and Frankie were standing next to us, explaining something that we couldn’t understand because neither one of them would let the other one talk.

  “Stop.” Gabe held up his hand.

  Frankie’s lips thinned, but she shut up.

  “One at a time, please.”

  “Cora’s hurt.”

  ***

  “I think you need to see a doctor,” a female nurse said as I entered Cora’s ER room with Gabe on my heels.

  I ignored her, and the pain in my side, and continued walking into the room until I arrive
d at Cora’s bedside.

  She was curled into herself, breathing rapidly, eyes squeezed tightly shut.

  I bent over, winced slightly, and whispered into Cora’s ear.

  “Baby, it’s okay.” I pushed her hair back. “You’re okay.”

  “She’s having a panic attack,” a doctor explained.

  I knew that without him confirming it.

  “We were going to give her Ativan, but we had to run blood tests first since her pupils were dilated which was conducive with a concussion. We didn’t want to give her anything without knowing if anything else was wrong, which was a good thing we did because she’s pregnant as fuck.”

  Someone hit someone, and the doctor grunted in pain.

  “Sorry. The patient is pregnant,” the doctor apologized for his language.

  “The patient is what?” I repeated.

  “The patient is pregnant,” a nurse repeated, shooting the doctor a furious look.

  The room went quiet at that, and I looked up to find Gabe, Luca, and Frankie all staring at me in shock.

  “What the fuck?” Gabe snarled.

  “What do you mean the patient is pregnant?” came a screeching bellow from the room across the hall from mine.

  Johnny, who’d followed us all in, turned and watched as Beatrice tried to get out of the bed and rush toward us, but the metal handcuffs stopped her before she could make it half a foot off the bed.

  He moved and closed the door on her, effectively muting her screams to a dull roar instead of an intense shriek.

  “Dad…I thought you had yourself fixed,” came Frankie’s furiously whispered question.

  I hesitated. “I did.”

  “Apparently you need to go get that botch job checked out after you get that shifter out of your side,” Gabe drawled.

  Though he’d been startled at first, he actually looked sort of ecstatic.

  I found myself grinning despite the pain.

  “Yeah…I guess I do.”

  Chapter 29

  Just so we’re clear, I’m fatter in person.

  -Cora’s secret thoughts

  Coke

  3 months later

  I moved my cock in and out of her pretty little pussy.

  Cora’s eyes stayed locked on mine as her orgasm overtook her.