by Peter Darley
Belinda turned her head and gazed with wonder into the face of her rescuer. His clothing was torn and his face was cut, bruised, and blood-caked, but there was no mistaking who it was. She knew she wasn’t dreaming because she would never have dreamed him up in this condition. But how could it possibly be? “Brandon?” she said with a combination of shock, bewilderment, exhilaration, and above all, indescribable joy.
“Hi, honey. I’m sorry I’m late,” Brandon said breathlessly. “I got held up.”
Forty-Two
Ultimate Vengeance
“Brandon, look out!” Belinda yelled.
Payne was stunned by the impact of Brandon’s boots, but only momentarily. He stood and attempted to lunge toward his assailant. Brandon sidestepped him with ease, causing Payne to fall again.
That was when he saw Payne’s open zipper. He glanced at Belinda. In the heat of the moment when he’d swung through the window, he hadn’t immediately noticed his lover’s nakedness from the waist down. Instantly, he knew what Payne had been preparing to do to her.
And he knew what he had to do.
Possessed by a murderous rage, Brandon hurled himself upon his adversary. He saw Payne reaching for his gun, apparently unaware he’d dropped it on the other side of the table.
Shaken and struggling to stand, Payne attempted to punch Brandon in the groin. Brandon’s right foot shot up with dazzling speed and curled inward, breaking Payne’s arm in one move.
Payne’s scream and the terror in his eyes seemed to feed Brandon’s inner beast. Hatred for the man before him possessed every iota of his being.
Or perhaps it wasn’t only Payne that was causing such hatred within him. This monster could have been likened to the incarnation of himself he’d seen in David’s video. Was it truly just Payne he wanted to destroy? Or was Payne simply a convenient scapegoat? No! I know what you were going to do to her.
Infused with an overwhelming sense of justification, he grasped Payne by his broken arm and an ear-piercing cry filled the building. “You bastard!” Brandon roared.
“P-please stop.”
Brandon dug his steel-like fingers deep into Payne’s fractured bone and pulled him to his feet. “You hurt the only woman I ever loved, the only family I have, and you were going to rape her, you son of a bitch.” With that, he bludgeoned his fists into either side of Payne’s face with ferocious speed.
The scar on Brandon’s forehead deepened and Belinda finally realized what it meant. It was the injury that had led to the end of his former persona and the birth of the new. She couldn’t be sure if it was an effect caused by increased blood pressure, or something in his subconscious. But it always became more pronounced under times of extreme stress, appearing almost as a harbinger for a visitation from his true self.
She watched as he rendered Payne senseless. Blood spewed from Payne’s nose and mouth. Crimson strings flew from Brandon’s knuckles.
She’d seen it before on the day in the woods in Wyoming. It had disturbed her at the time, but not now. Payne had shown her no mercy. He’d been vicious in his treatment of her, and the unforgivable fact was that he’d enjoyed every minute of it. He was going to rape her as a final gift to himself before killing her. Payne was someone who existed only to be cruel: an irredeemable parasite and an opportunist who could only find pleasure in the suffering of others.
She would never forget what he’d done to her colleagues and her employer. She again recalled her absolute terror as she watched him through the restroom’s air vent grill. At any other time, she wouldn’t have condoned what Brandon was doing. But there was one thing of which she was absolutely sure—the world needed to be rid of the savage he was beating.
Brandon grasped Payne by the hair and looked into his blood-caked face. The fugitive agent was unconscious, perhaps even comatose, but Brandon wasn’t satisfied. Tears of rage rolled down his cheeks as he thought of Belinda’s terror and how Payne had violated her in almost every conceivable way. The sudden uncontrollable impulse consumed him again, and he drove Payne’s head into the wall repeatedly. “Die!” he cried with every thrust of his arm. “Die! Die! Die!”
The bludgeoning continued in a frenzy of ultimate vengeance. Payne’s bloodied face caved in and became a mangled, unrecognizable crater by the time Brandon had exhausted himself. He finally pulled away leaving his foe’s blood spattered across the wall. The lifeless body slipped from his fingers into a heap on the floor.
Physically and emotionally drained, he fell to his knees beside his victim.
“B-Brandon,” Belinda said quietly behind him. “It’s all right, Brandon. I’m OK.”
He came to his senses, stood slowly, and turned to see his half-naked lover tied to the table. “Oh, my God, baby, I’m so sorry.” Urgently, he ran across to her, hurriedly untied her wrists, and noticed her bleeding fingers. “Oh, God. What did he do to you?”
He helped her to her feet and she hugged him tightly. “It doesn’t matter,” she said stoically.
“Yes, it does, goddammit. Yes, it does.”
Belinda broke the embrace, picked up her panties and jeans from the floor, and pulled them back on. Brandon couldn’t help noticing her wincing as her tender fingertips gripped the fabric. He was seized by an overpowering need to take the pain away from her, but was powerless to do so. He felt so helpless.
“I can’t believe it,” she said, shaking her head.
“Can’t believe what?”
“You’re here. You’re alive. Just the thought of seeing you again . . . on the other side. It got me through.”
“Alive? Of course I’m alive. Why would you think—?” And then he realized. “The grenade.”
Belinda shuddered. “Yes. I saw the SUV explode. I saw you die.”
“No, you didn’t. You must have missed what we did. Come to think of it, it was just before a bend in the road when we jumped out.”
“Jumped out?”
Sniffing his tears back, Brandon moved across to the dangling cable he’d swung through the window with. “You remember how I got you off the roof of the Carringby building that first night?”
She smiled fondly. “How could I ever forget? Hold on!”
Brandon cringed. Being quoted in endearing terms wasn’t something he was comfortable with. “It’s called a spider cable. When we saw the grenades coming at us, I gave one to David. We knew we had only seconds to act. David threw open the door, fired the cable, and the claw dug into the edge of the cliff. With the car moving, it just pulled him out and over the edge. At the same time, I threw myself out the other side and banged myself up pretty badly on the roadside.”
“You did what?” she exclaimed.
“Just in time too. It was a micro-second before the bend in the road. The cliff shielded me from the explosion. The grenade blew a couple of seconds after we bailed out.”
“So that’s why you look the way you do . . . The torn clothes and the cuts and bruises.” She threw her arms around him again. “Oh, thank God.”
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “You thought I was dead?”
Belinda was startled as the garage door creaked. Brandon looked across to see David Spicer entering sheepishly with his arm in a makeshift sling.
“Is it safe to come in yet?” David said.
Brandon smiled. “Sure, man. Come on in.”
David held up a small semi-spherical object. “I thought you might want this back. I took it off of that asshole’s car.”
“What’s that?” Belinda said.
“That’s how we found you,” Brandon replied. “When he took you, I threw it onto his car. It’s a magnetic homing device. When we bailed out of the car, the last thing I took out of the glove compartment was the tracking device. It led us straight here.”
“Yeah,” David said. “Dra—Brandon—had to pull me up a cliff and then we had a four mile hike back to my car.”
Brandon turned to Belinda and shrugged coyly. “Told you I got held up.”
Belinda
gestured to David’s arm. “What happened to you, David?”
“He did.”
“It happened when he hit the side of the cliff, but it’s not that serious,” Brandon said, initiating a little banter with his old/new friend. “Just a broken wrist. That’s two you owe me, bud.”
David walked past Brandon and Belinda and noticed Payne’s body and the condition of his face. “Another Drake special,” he muttered. The sight of Payne’s corpse was so ghastly he questioned the degree to which Brandon had actually changed.
Then he moved over to the table and discovered the bucket, the ropes, and the filthy wet towel lying on the floor. She’s been waterboarded.
As he looked across to see the two lovers in a loving embrace, it was clear they didn’t want to let go of one another. David finally made up his mind. The old Brandon Drake would never have been caught holding a woman in such a way.
David questioned if he would have beaten to death a man who had waterboarded the woman he loved. In a heartbeat, he knew that he would have.
Breaking the embrace again, Brandon turned back to him. “Are you going to be able to drive with that busted wrist?”
“I really don’t have much choice but to try.”
Brandon approached David and extended his hand. There was an uncomfortable moment of unresponsiveness, but David finally took it with his good hand.
“Thank you for everything, David,” Brandon said sincerely.
“Don’t mention it. My biggest problem is going to be explaining this busted arm.”
“This never happened, all right? You never met with me. You never saw me, no matter what. We make a pact. Agreed?”
“Whatever you say, soldier,” David said. “I just pray we never have to call it in. But I really appreciate you thinking of my wellbeing. I never thought I’d see the day.”
“It’s been great seeing you again, Dave.”
“And it’s been a pleasure meeting you finally, Brandon.”
After a moment, David let go of Brandon’s hand and made his way out of the gas station.
Brandon and Belinda watched as David walked across the dusty yard, disappearing through the trees, and back to his car parked on the other side of the lot.
Brandon bowed his head as an attack of sadness came over him. He didn’t know if he would ever see David again. His life was now that of a fugitive. Belinda was all he had, and it was essential that he get them both back to their only home. The question remained, with all of his petty cash blown to smithereens, how was he going to get them back to Aspen?
He spotted Payne’s car keys on the floor next to the table and picked them up. That, at least, gave them the ability to travel. However, even in the unlikely event the car had a full tank of gasoline, there was no chance of it taking them fifteen hundred miles. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
And then he noticed Belinda’s gaze was fixed on the table she’d been tortured upon—the table she’d come within a hairsbreadth of being raped upon. He desperately wanted to get her as far away from there as possible.
Without a word, she turned and hurried out of the building. Brandon followed her toward the Mustang.
She suddenly stopped in her tracks.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“What happened when you went behind the shack with David? You remember? Just before that guy grabbed me?”
He knew there was no way he could possibly tell her, especially after what she’d just been through. On the iPhone screen, he’d seen himself in a way that could have been likened to Payne himself. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter.”
He lowered his head again as a sense of shame came over him. What he’d seen on the phone wasn’t a person he could relate to in the here and now. It was a doppelganger—a look-alike. It was a distorted reflection of how he perceived himself. But it was the truth. He could only mouth a barely-audible, non-specific response. “I was a monster.”
The guilt in his tone was unmistakable and his face became contorted. He struggled not to lose control of himself, but it conquered him. He hadn’t been given the opportunity to grieve. When David had been showing him the video of his former self, the love of his life was being taken from him. It had been immediately followed by a car chase, a leap out of a moving car, a four mile hike, a race to the rescue, and the murder of his lover’s torturer.
He fell to his knees as the shock finally took its toll. His body trembled, his chest convulsed, and a fit of sobbing overcame him. The force of the trauma caused him to vomit. “P-please . . . help me.” He looked up for her response and saw her eyes were also filled with tears.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m here. Forget what I said. It doesn’t matter what you were. It only matters who you are, and who that is, is the most wonderful, most incredible human being I have ever known.”
For long moments, they held one another until his spasms of grief began to abate. He couldn’t help but love her more for helping him through this anguish.
“Do you feel better now?” she said.
He looked into her eyes. “God, I love you.”
“And I love you too, baby. Now, let’s go home.”
Brushing himself off, he stood.
As they walked to the car, Belinda seemed to be distracted by something in the distance. “Did you see that?” she said.
“See what?”
She pointed to where she was looking. There appeared to be a flash of light. And then it happened again, illuminating the dull gray of the overcast sky. “There. What is that?”
Brandon stepped forward to afford himself a clearer view. It wasn’t an occasional flash, it was continuous and it was blue. And then another appeared behind it, and another, until there was a long line of them coming closer.
“Is that the police?” Belinda said almost rhetorically.
Brandon didn’t answer until the lights came closer. Panic seized him. “Oh, my God.”
“What?”
“That’s not the police. That’s a federal task force.” He placed his hand on her shoulder and moved her toward the car with frantic urgency. “Let’s get out of here, right now.”
Forty-Three
To The End
Brandon and Belinda climbed into the Mustang. Dust filled the air as Brandon spun the car around, tires screeching across the earth.
He noticed the fuel needle showing the tank was a quarter full. “Oh, Jesus.”
The reflection in the rear view mirror showed the task force convoy was alarmingly close. There was no way for him to speed away without them spotting him, but he had no choice. As far as he knew, Belinda was still wanted, and if they discovered him he’d be arrested and returned to Fort Bragg for his court-martial. That could mean life imprisonment, especially given the number of offenses he’d committed while absent without leave. With Payne dead, there was also the possibility of murder being added to his list of ‘transgressions.’ It all depended on what would be believed.
Brandon bolted forward and raced onto the dusty, badly-maintained road. With his eyes on the rear view mirror he could see a number of task force vehicles racing onto the driveway of the gas station. However, four of them continued along the road and they were speeding up. It was obvious they’d spotted them racing away from the scene.
“Oh God,” Belinda said. “They’re getting closer.”
Brandon slapped his forehead as he realized his stupidity. It would have been safer for him to have run with Belinda into the forest where David had parked his car. The feds wouldn’t have even known they were there, but in his distress, he hadn’t been thinking rationally.
Heart pounding, he pressed his foot to the floor. The car shuddered as it touched ninety miles an hour along a desperately ragged stretch of road. He and Belinda were thrown around mercilessly by the repeated bumps in the road.
They’d been racing away from the task force for ten miles when they finally came upon even road. Brandon accelerate
d to one-hundred-ten miles an hour, but the flashing lights were still in pursuit. The fuel needle was dropping rapidly and he knew he had to come up with a contingency plan.
The task force was approximately two miles behind them, although on this straight, deserted, North Carolina back road, wherever they stopped would be noticed.
Up ahead, Brandon saw another wooded lot and knew it would likely be the last forest they would see before they ran out of gas. “All right sweetheart,” he said. “I’m gonna stop at those trees and we’re gonna make a run for it. We stand a chance of losing them under cover of the woods.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“We’re almost out of gas. We have no choice.”
He brought the car to an abrupt halt by the trees and threw his side door open. “OK. Now, run!”
Belinda leaped out and sprinted into the forest. Brandon caught up to her in seconds. The federal agents were coming closer with each fleeting moment.
He grasped Belinda’s hand and led her through the trees. The uphill climb quickly exhausted her.
“Brandon, I can’t,” she said, gasping for air.
“You have to. We can’t stop.”
Belinda felt faint and couldn’t continue. Her legs felt leaden and stopped moving. Her lungs burned from the exertion, and her breathing came in deep, desperate gasps. It had been over a month since she’d last seen a gym, but even if it had been a day, she wouldn’t have been prepared for such exertion. What she was doing required Olympic-level fitness. She knew Brandon was already used to it from scaling the ridge behind the cabin every morning.
“I am so sorry I got you into this,” he said.
“Don’t be. I’m with you . . . to the end.” She pulled her fingers up from her lap as her breathing gradually became easier. “Do you hear me, Brandon? To the end.”
She saw his sad smile. His eyes misted over as though he was filled with guilt and the belief he wasn’t worthy of her.
