The Choice

by Alice Ward

  “That’s very helpful, Journey.” She leaned closer to me, her expression intense. “Do you think you could recognize the man who pulled the trigger?”

  I closed my eyes and his face appeared. “Yes.”

  Agent Greene smiled again. “That’s good. If that man is who I think he is, you might be the key to finally taking this MC club down. Or at least help us cut the head off the snake.”

  I thought about that.

  I’d lived under the shadow of that club without knowing it all of my life. And I’d been lucky. My brothers and sisters had had it so much worse.

  Before I even knew they were coming, tears burned then spilled in hot streaks down my face. In sympathy, Jaz began to cry too, and I held her hand, waiting for the emotion to pass.

  “I want to help take them down,” I finally said. “I want them to pay.”

  Agent Greene didn’t smile like I expected her to. Her face grew even more severe. “That’s good. But I need you listen to me.”

  A snake of fear traveled up my spine at her intensity. The dark eyes peering at me with such intense focus made me think of Grant.

  Pain so much worse than my shoulder wound began to burn in my stomach, and I would have curled into a ball if I could. “Can I have some water?”

  “Of course.”

  Jasmine got it and held the straw to my lips. I sipped and sipped, the cool water easing some of the ache in my throat, if not my heart.

  “Ready?” Agent Greene asked.

  I nodded, even though I wasn’t.

  “When The Skulls learn that you’re alive and are a possible witness to your… to Rachel Walker’s death, they will come after you. They will come after Jasmine. They will come after anyone they think they can use to get to you.”

  I shivered.

  Grant. Nash.

  I pressed my hand against my chest. No, they weren’t part of my life anymore, that much was clear.

  “I want to put you and Jasmine into protective custody.”

  “That sounds good,” Jazzy said, her voice quiet.

  “That means we have to leave everything behind,” I said, staring at the FBI agent for confirmation. “We have to disappear and tell no one where we’re going.”

  “That doesn’t sound so good after all.”

  I turned to face Jasmine, looking into her precious face. “No, it doesn’t.” I looked back at the agent. “Is that our only option?”

  Her eyes transformed into a look of sympathy, and I had to glance away. “The only safe option. The only option that will also help us put this bastard away.” She opened a briefcase on the bedside table. “Journey, I’m going to show you five pictures and I want you to pick the one you believe is the person who shot you.”

  “I’ve already picked,” Jasmine said proudly.

  My eyes widened. “You did? Did you see the shooting? The car?”

  She frowned, and her chin dipped to her chest. “Yes. I saw everything from the door.”

  My stomach rotated in my belly. “I didn’t know that.” Jasmine could have been shot too. And I couldn’t imagine the horror she experienced when she witnessed me bleeding on the ground. I squeezed her hand harder.

  “Are you ready?” Agent Greene asked, and when I nodded, she placed the eight by ten images on the bed in front of me.

  I saw him at once, and tapped it with my finger, although I waited until I’d studied them all to confirm it. “This one.”

  “For the record, Journey Walker has identified the photograph of Jericho “Skull” Kolenda.”

  Jasmine beamed. “That’s who I picked too.”

  Agent Greene’s face had transformed again. Not by a smile this time. It was hope.

  “Yes, you both have visually identified the leader of The Skulls. And that puts you in grave danger. Do you agree to go into protective custody knowing you cannot communicate with anyone in your former life? By doing so, you put them in the same danger.”

  Grant.

  Nash.

  Pain nearly doubled me over again.

  Not that it mattered. They were plotting to get rid of me anyway.

  I thought of my life. My friends from work. My patients. The ones in my yoga class. That was it. Jasmine had many more friends than I did. This would be much harder for her.

  “Do you understand all this?” I asked my sister.

  Tears formed in her eyes. “Yes. I can’t see my friends anymore. My boyfriends. My teachers.” She looked up at Agent Greene. “For forever?”

  Compassion oozed from the woman’s dark gaze. “I don’t know. I hope not forever. We are going to catch this man, and if you and your sister agree, you’re going to testify against him. Maybe after that, after we put him in jail for a long, long time, you can have your old life back.”

  I thought of school. My job. How and where would we live? I had so many questions, but the answers would come with time.

  “Can we get some of our things from our apartment?”

  Agent Greene shook her head. “I’m sorry. It isn’t safe for you to go back there, but if you tell me what you want… the most important things you want… I’ll have someone get them for you.”

  I nodded and was about to tell her to get Mee-maw’s tapestry from the wall, but there was a knock on the door. Agent Greene straightened, and her hand went to her waist. A gun appeared, and adrenaline shot through my system. “Who is it?”

  A man in a navy suit opened the door. “Doctor’s here.”

  Agent Greene relaxed and holstered the pistol. “Send him in.”

  A harried looking man in a white coat stepped in, followed by a nurse. He looked around the room before focusing on me. “Good evening, Miss Walker, I’m Dr. Howard. Would you like privacy before we discuss your health?”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s okay. They can stay.”

  “Very good.” He reiterated what Agent Greene had told me about my gunshot injury and concussion, with more medical jargon thrown in. As a physical therapy assistant, I had no trouble keeping up with the lingo, although my head was starting to ache more from listening to his nasally voice drone on.

  He listened to my heart and lungs and admitted that I was doing well, and he saw no reason that I wouldn’t have a full recovery. “Just a little scar on your shoulder.”

  Grant.

  The ache reappeared.

  He turned to go, then flipped through my chart again. “Oh, and the baby is fine too. We’re lucky we didn’t have to do surgery to remove a bullet or that might not have been so lucky.”

  I froze.

  “Baby?”

  Jasmine said it too. “Baby?”

  Agent Greene just stared.

  Dr. Howard frowned and looked directly at me. “You didn’t know?”

  I covered my belly with my hand. “I’m sorry… are you sure?”

  He blinked rapidly and flipped through the chart again. “Yes. We did blood work when you were first admitted to the ER. It’s quite positive. When was the first day of your last period?”

  My eyes were blinking as rapidly as his. I didn’t know what year this was, let alone the days.

  “Tomorrow,” Jasmine filled in, her chin dropping to her chest. “We’re on the same schedule and it’s supposed to come tomorrow.”

  Dr. Howard looked at me with sympathy. “Well, don’t expect yours. Based on that schedule, I’d put you at four weeks pregnant, two weeks post conception.”

  Two weeks.

  That was about right.

  “But… but… we used condoms.”

  He gave me a little shrug. “Sometimes you can do everything right, and one of those little suckers gets through.” He shot me a little smile. “Well, good luck to you.”

  I thought of Nash. I thought of Grant.

  They were both so viral, their swimmers were probably Olympic Champions. But which one took the gold? I covered my face with my hands.

  The door clicked closed, and when I looked again, the doctor and nurse were gone.

 
; Agent Greene still looked stunned. I was sure Jasmine’s expression mirrored mine.

  The agent broke the silence first. “Well, this might change things. What about the father? You didn’t mention anything about a relationship earlier?”

  I stared at her and her face blurred. “It’s over. I’m on my own.”

  Jazzy patted my shoulder. “No, you’re not. You have me.”

  If I wasn’t mistaken, Agent Greene misted over a little at that. She recovered quickly. “So, you’ll still go into protective custody, the two of you?”

  I covered my belly with my hand. The three of us.

  I nodded.

  She asked more questions. She took down our lists of things we wanted from our apartment. When she left, Jasmine plopped down in a chair. “This has been a crazy day.”

  Only my sister could make me smile in that moment.

  When she opened her mouth again, I anticipated that she’d ask about the father. Instead, she said, “Do you think I need a pregnancy test too?”

  In cartoons, when any character gets hit by something hard enough to cause them to vibrate, there was usually a “boing” sound that accompanied it.

  I thought I heard that sound.

  Boing.

  Instead of a hit, I thought it might be the sound of a prism turning, showing the world in a different light.

  I stared at her, and I asked gently, “Did you have sex at camp?”

  She began to duck her chin but stopped and looked at me full-on. “I touched his penis. Stuff came out. It was kinda gross.”

  I took a deep breath. I needed to see this conversation through. “It came out in your hand, or it came out inside of you?”

  “My hand.”

  “Jaz, did you and Jesse do more than that?”

  She shook her head, then her chin dropped all the way to her chest. “But me and Kyle did.”

  Boing.

  My sister and I had been having similar experiences while she was away. Maybe not completely the same, but similar enough to make goose bumps raise on my arms.

  “Did Kyle put his penis inside you.” The head went down farther. “Don’t do that, Jaz. You can tell me.”

  She was practically glowing red as she finally looked up at me. “He put it in my mouth.”

  Boing.

  I inhaled deeply. “Okay. That wouldn’t make you pregnant. Did he put it anywhere else?”

  She shook her head. “I wanted him to, but he said no. He said I had to decide between him and Jesse before we went all the way.”

  Boing.

  “He seems like a very smart man. What choice did you make?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t. They got into the fight and got sent home.”

  I struggled to remember the other man’s name. “What about David? Did you do more than kiss?”

  She threw up her hands. “No. I was completely done with men by then.” She leaned forward. “So, who is your baby’s dad? Grant or Nash?”

  Boing.

  I was so ashamed.

  I didn’t know.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Grant

  “Keep looking! She’s somewhere.”

  “Sir… it’s been eight months. We’ve tried everything. W—”

  “Hire more people,” I shouted into the phone, rage and despair at war in my gut. “Get someone to infiltrate the FBI. The Marshalls. The fucking White House. I don’t care what you do. Find her! Find Journey and her sister!”

  Damn it. I wished I was talking on a phone I could slam down, but I had to make do with stabbing the screen with my finger.

  “Still nothin’?”

  My head jerked up to see Nash in the doorway. “No. You know, in the movies, people in protective custody get found all the time. Not here. They’ve disappeared them good.”

  He set his bag down at the door and came in, flopping into a chair. “You need to eat.”

  I knew I did. I’d dropped twenty pounds since Journey went missing.

  “What are you doing here?” I snapped. I snapped a lot now days.

  Nash didn’t look offended. “Six-day break from the tour. Thought I’d come check on you.”

  Part of me was glad he was here. A part of me wished I never had to see him again. He reminded me too much of her. Hell, everything reminded me too much of her.

  Since I saw that bracelet on that sidewalk, my life had been nothing but a living hell.

  My only consolation was that I knew she and Jasmine were alive.

  Late in the evening, the same day of the shooting, I’d received a single text. It had been from her.

  Journey: Jaz and I are okay. I can’t be bought. Goodbye.

  I’d tried calling her after that but had gotten a message that the line was disconnected.

  I’d camped out at her apartment, where everything looked exactly the same except that the tapestry frame was missing in addition to a few other items and pictures.

  From the news about the shooting and from the private investigators I’d hired, I puzzled enough together to have some idea of what happened.

  She must have heard me and Nash joking about buying her off and left. Because I’d wanted to let her sleep and thought she was in my bed, I hadn’t realized she was gone.

  When I did, it was too late.

  I still didn’t know exactly why they were outside her apartment, but some motorcycle gang had been involved in the shooting, leaving Journey and Jasmine as witnesses. They were in protective custody. But where? And for how long? From what I was learning, trials like this could take years.

  Fucking years.

  Years of her thinking I was going to pay to get rid of her.

  “What’s that?” Nash asked, pointing toward the TV. I kept it on practically all the time for company, but it was muted.

  I turned to look.

  Notorious Motorcycle Gang Leader Dead flashed across the screen.

  I scrambled for the remote and turned up the volume.

  “Holy shit,” Nash breathed.

  I hushed him and turned it up louder.

  “Jericho “Skull” Kolenda was pronounced dead last night after what is being called an alleged prison hit, even though Kolenda has been in solitary confinement since his arrest eight months ago. In what is expected to be a connected event, the clubhouse of The Skulls was bombed, killing at least sixteen of the gang members, including Rusty “Cross” Smyth and…”

  I turned to Nash, who was staring back at me with what had to be the exact same expression. “I’ll be damned.”

  A hundred possibilities flew through my mind, but my heart caught only one of them. Journey was free. There would be no trial for a dead man. There would be no need for witnesses either.

  I dropped my face in my hands.

  Would she return?

  And how long would it take for me to convince her to marry me?

  No. Scratch that last question.

  It didn’t matter how long.

  I’d do whatever was necessary to get her back.

  I looked at my friend.

  As only mine.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Journey

  It looked the same.

  Same sidewalk.

  Same concrete steps.

  Same enclosed bike rack that hurt my heart to look at.

  The wind blew, reminding me that it was February now. Not the warm late May day when I last stood at the foot of my building.

  “Are we going in?”

  I smiled over to my sister. “I told you, all of our stuff is probably gone and someone else lives here now.”

  Jaz nodded, and I could see how sad that made her. It made me sad too.

  “But like I promised, we’ll ask and see if they stored any of our old stuff.” I squeezed her against me. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  Linking our hands together, we plodded up the steps for what was probably the last time.

  Whew.

  Walking up them now was certainly different. I rubbed my hand over
my huge belly and felt the baby kick in return.

  A baby boy.

  A little Nash or a little Grant, I didn’t know.

  I followed Jasmine to the front door, but when she pulled to open it, it was locked.

  “That’s weird.”

  I looked around, and sure enough, Grant had secured the front, and there was a panel of buttons by the door. Each was neatly labeled with the apartment number. The first button said “Super.”

  Please don’t be Charlie. Please don’t be Charlie.

  I pushed the button, and a woman’s voice came through the box. “May I help you?”

  “Hi, this may be really weird, but my sister and I used to live here and—”

  “Miss Walker?”

  I looked at Jasmine. We were officially the Cannon sisters now. We were able to keep our first names during protective custody, but the last name needed to go for security reasons. But now that all the bad guys were dead, I didn’t think it would hurt to confirm our old identity. “Yes.”

  The door buzzed. “Come in. Come in out of this chill. I’ll be with you in one moment.”

  I followed Jasmine inside and looked around. The lobby had gotten a fresh coat of paint and the wooden floors gleamed.

  True to her word, it was about one minute before a grandmotherly type woman joined us, smiling big.

  “Thank you,” I said to the woman who was now frowning at my belly. In an instant, her smile was back in place and she was meeting my eyes again. “My sister and I had to leave suddenly last year.”

  She nodded, her expression grave. “I heard about that, dear. I’m just so glad you and Jasmine here are free of that whole mess.”

  The baby kicked, and I stretched my back, which was starting to ache. It was weird that she knew so much about us. But the shooting had probably been the local gossip for months.

  “Thank you. It’s good to be back. The thing is, we were hoping that some of our belongings might still be here, maybe in storage?”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh honey. They’re not in storage at all.” My heart sank, and she must have noticed because she added, “Follow me.”

  Instead of walking up the steps, she led us to the elevator. He got it fixed after all.

  On the third floor, we followed the supervisor to 3C. I looked at Jasmine and she looked at me while the older lady searched for the key.