by Nancy Adams
Joe looked shocked to see him, and in the confusion fired immediately, hitting Jordon in the chest with his powerful handgun and knocking the poor guy to the floor, where he lay on his back, stunned, his pistol thrown out of his hand.
Joe came silently upon him and looked down at Jordon with a look of supreme bewilderment.
“Who the hell are you?” Joe asked with a frown, his eyes bloodshot and full of tears.
But Jordon couldn’t reply; the pain in his chest was too severe and all he could do was lie there and look up at Joe, a pleading look in his eyes, wondering if Prior would put another bullet in him just to make sure. But Joe merely shook his head, stepped over him and continued on his way, checking each room as he went along, until he’d decided that they weren’t downstairs and began making his way swiftly up the steps, worried that another man, such as the one in the kitchen, could be hidden somewhere else in the house.
It wasn’t long before he’d found the bathroom and when he called out his wife’s name, he heard a barely concealed scream reach out from behind the locked door. He instantly began kicking away at it with his heavy foot until it had burst open on its hinges, before proceeding to bound into the room, where he ripped the shower curtain to one side and found the two women huddled up together in the tub.
At that very moment, Sam, Claire and two of his security men arrived at Agnes’s, immediately spotting Peterson’s abandoned car at the bottom of the driveway. They leapt out of the vehicle and were met outside the house by Jeff, who’d only just arrived.
“The neighbors said they heard one gunshot,” he said the moment the other four came to him. “Jordon’s in there with him,” he then added. “But I’m not a hundred percent certain all is okay in the house. Jordon would have brought them out by now if it was okay.”
“Is he in there?” Claire asked in a frightened tone.
“If you mean Prior, then yes.”
Without thinking, Claire sprung toward the house before anyone could stop her.
“CLAIRE!” Sam screamed out and ran after her, his security men doing the same.
The second Claire was inside the house, she heard her mother’s screams from upstairs and headed up toward them. Soon she came upon the bathroom and saw her father standing over both Agnes and June, aiming a gun at them as they cowered in the bath in a fit of tears.
“JOE!” Claire shouted and he turned to her.
“Oh! You’re here,” he said in a chillingly cold voice. “Then there’s no time to waste.”
With that he placed the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger, his body blown violently against the far wall, blood spraying everywhere from the cavity that opened up in his head, the women in the tub screaming even louder. Sam rushed up the stairs and found Claire with her hand held over her mouth.
On reaching her, he instantly placed his arms around Claire’s body and cradled her protectively as he gazed into the bathroom. When he realized what he was seeing, he escorted Claire away, her eyes shimmering with horror and glaring at the corpse of her father.
As they walked away, two of the security team, Jeff having found Jordon in the kitchen, came running up to them. Sam nodded in the direction of the bathroom and told them to get the women out of there. In deep shock, Claire walked out of the house with Sam, and when they made it across the threshold, she went limp in his arms and he almost dropped her.
Placing Claire carefully on the ground, Sam sat with his arms around her while she shivered and glared blankly into space.
The next moment, the police and ambulance arrived and June and Agnes were taken out of the house, both of them covered in blood, shivering, shocked and completely silent. They were seated on the floor with Sam and Claire, no one saying anything, while the paramedics and police entered the premises.
While she sat within Sam’s tender arms, Claire began to hear the sounds of June’s sobbing. She’d forgotten about her poor mother completely. She glanced to the side and saw the woman wrapped in Agnes’s arms, the two of them crying forlornly into each other. Claire got up from Sam, the latter letting her go, and made it to her mother, placing her arms warmly around the poor woman.
Looking up, June saw that it was Claire and grabbed ahold of her tightly as they all cried wretched tears together.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The first day of their stay at Varanasi, Jenna and Alex had gotten something to eat and then rested after the very long bus journey. It was now the morning of the next day and the two were getting ready for a day of wandering around the markets, temples and other sights of the place. First they took a shower each, individually of course; things weren’t running quite that fast, and Jenna felt that there was no rush in any of it. Shanti!
However, the shower wasn’t exactly what Jenna would have imagined by the word ‘shower’. What she actually got consisted of a bucket that was continually filled by a boy who would heat water in the kitchen and then bring it to her. A constant back and forth process. The boy coming, emptying his bucket into hers, and then going again, Jenna having to constantly put her towel back around her when he arrived. Then she would mix cold water with the boiling hot water and wash a little, before the inevitable knock on the door for refilling. Jenna also observed that the water smelled a little of rotten eggs and, later on, Alex told her that it often came from the Ganges itself, which, of course, disgusted her.
Once they were changed and ready, Alex took Jenna into the chaotic streets of Varanasi and to a very nice eatery nearby that he knew, where they ate a simple breakfast before he took her down to the Ganges, where they walked along the stone steps, Jenna with her camera constantly out, clicking away.
“Be careful who or what you take a picture of,” Alex advised her as they strolled along. “Don’t take pictures of holy men, because they will hound you till the ends of the earth for money. Don’t take pictures of the poor, and definitely not of temples, shrines or the fires; especially not the fires. You can ask to take a picture of a holy item. If you are given permission then it’s okay, if not, then no. But always ask.”
“Thanks for the advice,” Jenna responded with a smile.
As they walked along, the glowing red sun hovering in the shimmering sky, Jenna instinctively took hold of Alex’s hand. It was crazy! In the six days that they’d been together, he’d expected very little from her. She still wasn’t even sure if he knew who she was and was simply being coy, or if he really had no clue. When he’d asked her about the suddenness of her decision to come to India, she’d told him that she’d recently split with a long-term partner and needed to begin the journey of finding herself as soon as possible. At this, he hadn’t said much, probably having heard this type of reason for wanderlust so many times already; the whole ‘finding myself’ thing would not be new to his ears. He hadn’t pried any further and didn’t ask any details about the relationship. For her part, Alex’s company put her at ease and she didn’t feel that she owed him any explanations. And not once had he put pressure on her to give him any. Their relationship had been very casual from the beginning and, only six days into knowing him, Jenna felt extremely relaxed around Alex. There was no pressure or expectation in any of this, and Jenna had come to the decision of taking his hand as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Would you like to take a boat to the other side?” Alex asked as they strolled along.
“Yeah, I was thinking that earlier, that it would be nice to take a boat across.”
Alex smiled and they ventured down the steps to the men renting boats. After a short scuffle between the boatmen as to who would take the tourists, they were shown into an old boat of long, narrow design with a small petrol engine at the back. It was painted blue, but so many suns ago that most of the paint had peeled from the boat, revealing the gray wood. When they got inside, Jenna looked with alarm at the inch of water at the bottom of the rickety vessel, but observing Alex’s casual air as he sat down, did likewise.
Once the boat was pushed out onto the river an
d the boatman had struggled to get the old engine started, they were bumbling across the water slowly, the thick, smoky air hanging over them, an indescribable stench lifting up off of the holy waters of the river and filling Jenna’s nostrils.
While they crossed, Jenna spotted pieces of odd-looking debris floating on the surface and wasn’t sure what it was, so she asked and was informed that it was probably the unburned remains of a dead body that had been cremated earlier. Often the bodies aren’t entirely burned up into ash, especially those of the poor who can’t afford the best woods for burning, so their bodies end up intact in many places when they are finally shoveled into the river.
A little further along, they found people who were swimming in it, gleefully passing buckets of the stuff up to people in boats, who stood up once the bucket was full and poured the horrifying contents all over them. Jenna couldn’t imagine how they ever thought it would enrich them at all; it was more likely to make them sick for several days afterwards, so polluted did it seem.
Eventually, they made it to the other side, which was nothing more than a sand bank that revealed itself during low tide, and therefore everything upon it was temporary and makeshift in appearance. Alex led her to a little shed that served as a tea hut and changed place along the bank depending on the tide. When they were seated outside it with many other people, all of them drinking chai, Alex glanced at Jenna and felt pleased that he had brought her here, pleased to see the huge grin that alighted upon her face as she surveyed the activity that surrounded them. All around, babas—holy men or hustlers, whichever way you look at them—danced and cajoled people. A little further along, a fire served to prove the most loyal devotion. Jenna gasped as she watched men and women throw themselves into the embers and roll about, one man standing in it for several minutes until he screamed out and they had to drag him from it.
As she watched this, someone came in front of her and she looked away to see who it was. Standing before them was an old man in an orange robe that hung loosely over his torso, out of which sprouted a single leg that he stood on, the other bound up at the knee, much skinnier than the standing leg and tied so that it remained tucked away. He reminded Jenna of a stork standing in the mud for some reason. Alex smiled at him and the old man returned his warm look, but didn’t appear to recognize him.
“He’s been standing on that one leg for eight years,” Alex commented with a sidelong glance at Jenna. “I’ve seen him here for many years, though I doubt he recalls me. He never does.”
“Why has he been on one leg for eight years?”
“It’s a sign of devotion.”
Jenna couldn’t help but be amazed by his sacrifice. They both gave the old man alms and he was soon on his way, hopping along to other people. Jenna watched him go and couldn’t help but see something of herself in the man. There was something in him that mirrored a part of Jenna, and his devotion, she felt, held in it a poignant message for herself. She felt that she too had bound one leg away; she too had sacrificed a part of herself for Sam. And what for? Like the old man, she believed in something so much that she had enfeebled a part of herself, like the old man’s limp, twisted limb. She couldn’t comment on if the old man had reason to continue his self-abasement, but she realized that hers had been for nothing.
Sitting there with Alex and pondering these new thoughts, Jenna suddenly felt free. Much freer than she had for a long time, and something inside of her breathed for the first time in ages. An epiphany struck her like a flash of lightning and it came to her for the first time that splitting with Sam had been inevitable and only now was she really living her life once more. She didn’t need to redecorate apartments to keep herself busy, or shop for hours on someone else’s money; she had something worth a thousand times that: she had her autonomy, her own freedom to self govern her destiny.
A smile flooded her face as she sipped her chai and a new happiness completed her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Jules, Juliette and David were all sitting at a picnic table by the roadside eating fruit that they’d bought. Jules was deep in thought and kept glancing up at his wife, who looked about her as though nothing made sense at all any longer, David with his arms around her, cooing into her ear and urging her to eat some papaya fruit. Jules was in the middle of deciding whether to contact Sam and turn himself in. With each passing second, he realized that he hadn’t a hope in hell of keeping his family together out here in the chaos of Mexico, especially with no real plan of what he would do next.
Juliette was getting much worse. Her mind was washing into itself and at times she didn’t even recognize Jules, or chastised him for looking so odd with all his gray hair and wrinkles, obviously only remembering a much younger version of him. David had now permanently become Danny, and the boy didn't worry his mother by disagreeing, instead just playing along for her benefit. The endless car journey was making her much worse and they constantly had to reassure her that they were safe. No sooner would they calm her, though, then she would begin making a fuss all over again, and Jules or David would have to calm her once more. It was a mess, and Jules realized that the more they continued with their escape, the more messy it was likely to get.
Talking hold of her hand from across the table, Jules gazed compassionately into his love’s eyes and said, “Juliette, sweetie.”
She continued to flash her gaze around the place, as if it all made no sense to her, and his words appeared not to resonate with her.
“Juliette, my love,” he said softly, rubbing his thumb across the back of her hand.
It was only with this delicate touch that Juliette took notice of him and fixed him with her emerald eyes. For a moment she looked upon him as she would a stranger and only registered his touch. But soon her mind cleared a little and she saw before her Jules, the love of her life, and she let out a smile.
“Juliette,” he went on, “we need to turn back. It’s like you said before; we can’t keep running. I need to take you and David back. I can’t do anything more out here.”
But as he watched her eyes while she listened to him, he could see that she didn’t grasp a word of what he was saying.
“Are we going back to the hospital, Jules?” she asked after a moment.
“What hospital?”
“The hospital for Danny. He’s sick. We should take him back.”
Jules let out a withered sigh, almost breaking into tears as he did, so wretched did he feel. But he held it together and played along.
“Yeah,” he said with a grin, trying his best to put her at ease. “We’ve gotta get Danny back to the hospital.”
“Well then, let’s go,” she said.
Jules now turned his attention on David and said softly, “You ready to go back?”
“Only if we get to keep Momma,” he replied in a worried tone. “That man on the phone said he can help. Do you think he can, Pa?”
“I hope so, Davey. I hope so.”
It was at that moment that a Mexican police car screeched up to the family and two officers jumped out, holding their pistols firmly on the three of them.
“On the ground,” one of the policemen called out to them.
Placing his hands in the air, Jules slowly stood up.
“It’s okay,” he said. “But my wife is sick and my son is only young. We ain’t armed, so there’s no need to scare people with the guns.”
“On the ground!” the officer shouted at him again. “Just you. They can stay where they are.”
Jules did as he was asked and got belly-first on the dusty floor, his hands held to the back of his head. A policeman came up to him and began cuffing his hands behind his back. Juliette immediately began shouting at them to leave him alone and Jules tried to reassure her from where he lay, telling her that it was okay. Nevertheless, he continued to hear Juliette struggling with one of the officers and David remonstrating with them to leave his momma alone.
“What do you want?” she cried at them. “He hasn’t done anything.
”
“We are from Señor Burgess,” one of the officers explained.
This pricked up Jules’s ears and he cried out to Juliette to let it all happen, to calm down and do as they say. Listening to him, as he repeatedly cried to her to calm down, she gave in and allowed the officers to escort her and David to the car, the boy crying and holding onto his momma the whole time. They picked Jules up from the deck and escorted him to the back of the car.
While he sat there, trying to cool Juliette’s frayed nerves with constant, soothing words of comfort, Jules felt a strange feeling of relief spread over him. It was all over, no more running away, no more driving his family toward oblivion.
Only a short drive later, they were taken from the car and into a police station, where they were placed in a furnished room with a fan, the place obviously not a cell but some kind of office. Jules was immediately released from the handcuffs; it had merely been a precaution to stop him running, and now that he was safely in their custody, the police no longer feared that he would bolt. The family were then asked if they required anything, and Jules requested water. They were even offered food, but Jules stated that they’d already eaten that morning and weren’t hungry.
After that, they were left alone, Juliette sobbing with David. Jules took this opportunity to join them and he cast his protective arms around the pair.
“What’s going to happen, Papa?” David asked, throwing his tear-filled eyes up to his father.
“Nothing, David. They’re simply gonna take us back to America.”
“Will they be taking Momma away from us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe this Sam guy will help us.”
The door was unlocked and a man in a rather official-looking uniform came in with a large jug of water and three glasses. He set them down on the table and then took a seat opposite the family.
“Are we under arrest?” Jules inquired of the man, who took his hat off the moment he was seated and stroked his hand through his balding hair.
