A Knock at the Door

by Ellis, T. W.

  I don’t care. I don’t care any more.

  I charge.

  He shoots.

  But I don’t die. Instead, I scream.

  I’m on my knees before I realise I’ve fallen. I’m grabbing my left arm before I understand I’ve been hit. There’s so much pain, so much blood.

  ‘You shot me.’

  Leo steps closer. ‘It’s a flesh wound, and I had to.’

  ‘You shot me,’ I say again.

  ‘You didn’t leave me any choice.’

  I peel away my palm. There’s a shallow groove carved through my flesh, leaking bright blood. Just seeing the wound makes me light-headed.

  ‘It didn’t go in,’ Leo says. ‘You’re lucky I’m such a good shot.’

  I don’t feel lucky. I feel nauseous and cold and weak. I feel betrayed and distraught.

  ‘You’re my wife,’ I hear Leo saying, ‘and I’ll do anything to protect you. I’ve done everything to protect you. But I will hurt you if you leave me no other choice. I will hurt you if you put us at risk. I won’t let you end what we have on account of a stranger you only just met. I’m your husband. You need to remember that. Everything I’ve ever done is for you.’

  I grimace. My teeth are clenched and my eyes squeezed shut.

  ‘I’ll get a first aid kit and take care of the wound,’ he tells me, sympathy creeping into his tone. ‘And then, we’re going. We’re going and never coming back. I need to know you understand that, Jem. I need to know you accept it.’

  Teeth still clenched and eyes still shut, I nod.

  ‘Good,’ Leo says. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  I hear footsteps as he leaves the room.

  My teeth stop clenching and my eyes snap open.

  I run.

  3:25 a.m.

  Out through the front door, down the porch steps and on to the beach.

  So fast I flail with my arms to stay vertical and avoid crashing face-first into the sand. I know my lead will be short. I know Leo is fast and fit and uninjured. I have mere seconds and I cannot waste even a fraction of one.

  The dunes are to my right, prickly with long grasses that sway and rustle in ceaseless synchronicity. The ocean is to my left, black and violent, roiling and foaming. Between lies endless sand, beautiful and glowing silver in the moonlight. I run along that infinite beach, not knowing where it will take me or where I need to go, but I’m not thinking, I’m not planning. My desperation requires only distance, my fear can only be satisfied with separation from the house, from Leo.

  I think I can run away from him.

  I think I can run away from everything.

  My body knows otherwise. I’ve been through so much and rested so little since that knock at the door that I’m fatiguing after mere yards. My legs are weighted with lead and I struggle to lift them, to extend them. My chest is so constricted no inhalation feels like anything close to enough air.

  The wind surging in from the Atlantic buffets me as I run, trying to stop me, trying to push me over. The sand, loose beneath my feet, conspires with the ocean, with Leo, threatening to trip me up, to swallow me whole.

  I’m alone. I’m so alone.

  I’m running into darkness, running into nowhere, running from the only man I’ve ever loved, the only man who has ever loved me in return.

  I hear his voice pushing through the wind, calling for me.

  I’m expecting to feel the searing pain of a bullet in my back at any moment yet Leo doesn’t shoot me. Maybe he’s too far away. Maybe he’s out of range. Maybe he’ll let me go.

  I glance back even though I shouldn’t. I see him leaping from the porch, chasing, gun clutched in one hand. Long limbs powering him to frightening speed.

  He won’t let me go.

  I keep running, fighting through the exhaustion, through pain in my feet, my arm, fighting the wind and the sand. I’m losing pace. I can feel myself slowing and I can feel Leo catching up to me with a terrifying inevitability.

  I can’t outrun him.

  I can’t escape.

  Then, I can hear him. He’s so close I can hear him despite the roar of the ocean. I hear his rapid, urgent breaths. He sounds like an animal, a beast.

  His fingers reach my hair. Their proximity sickens me as much as terrifies me. He fails to grab hold.

  I try to run faster, to tap into some last reserve of energy. I fail. That well is empty, dry. I’ve turned to it too many times already and it can no longer save me.

  Leo reaches again, this attempt finding enough strands of hair to grasp at, tug at, unbalancing me.

  Only for a second, but that’s all it takes.

  I stumble.

  It’s enough for him to make up the last of the distance.

  He tackles me from behind, arms around my waist.

  I fall, hitting the beach elbows-first before the rest of me crashes down after them. Air exits my lungs in a painful blast and my eyes close the instant before my face whips against the sand and I’m dazed and disorientated, sliding, rolling laterally, Leo holding on to me, on top of me, under me, on top of me again as we tumble over and over.

  We roll from dry sand on to wet sand and into seawater that’s so cold it takes my breath away with even more ferocity than the fall and I scream without sound.

  I come to a stop on my back, Leo on top of me, pinning me with his weight to the beach as a wave breaks against me and icy black seawater rushes over my head. Some gets into my eyes, my mouth. I cough. I gag. I retch.

  I blink my eyes clear to see Leo pushing himself to his knees, either side of my abdomen, but no further. There’s no gun in his hand. He must have lost it in the fall.

  Leo, sitting atop me, looks down and there is so much sadness and regret in his eyes I almost don’t recognise him because for that instant he looks like the Leo I once knew, the Leo I married.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jem,’ he says, ‘but this has to stop. I didn’t want this, I promise. Anything but this.’

  To make himself heard over the raging wind and breaking waves he’s shouting, yelling the words at me, yet the voice that reaches my ears is quiet and almost soft, almost gentle.

  ‘I don’t know how else to fix this.’

  He places both palms on my shoulders and pushes down.

  The wet sand beneath me gives way under the pressure and I sink into it. Only a little – an inch or two – but it’s enough for the seawater at my ears to rise up and cover my face in a freezing shroud that stings my eyes and slips into my nostrils and mouth.

  I gasp and cough and yank my head up enough to clear my lips and nose and manage to suck in air before the next wave comes and I’m underwater, unable to see even with my eyes open, unable to breathe, trying to hold my breath and not inhale the black ocean hungry for my life.

  I’m gripping at his wrists, trying to pull his hands away from my shoulders. Those hands are immobile. He’s too strong, or I’m too weak, or both.

  I’m aware of Leo’s voice, somehow far away, disembodied and muted by seawater and my own soundless screams.

  The wave withdraws and I gasp and cough.

  ‘Let go, Jem,’ Leo yells in his faraway whisper. ‘Let it happen. Let it be over. Go to sleep, baby. Just go to sleep.’

  He raises himself higher on his knees so he can lean forward further, so he can apply more pressure on my shoulders.

  I sink deeper into the sand. I can no longer force my head forward enough to clear my face from the seawater. It sloshes around my lips, sluicing down my nostrils, icy, thick and coarse with salt and sand.

  Every breath is accompanied by a gag, a retch, a cough. I’m drowning and choking at the same time.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says as he continues murdering me.

  Another wave hits us hard and I don’t get the chance to suck in even half a breath before my head is beneath the ocean once more and I grow faint in the airlessness, but I’m no longer cold.

  Darkness blacker than the ocean, than the night, encroaches on my vision and
I feel no fear. I begin to welcome this blackness because it means release from all the hopelessness, all the pain.

  Go to sleep, baby. Just go to sleep.

  Yes, that’s what I want.

  I stop fighting. My grip loosens on Leo’s wrists. I’m so tired. I’m ready to sleep. I’m ready for this to end.

  The surge of another incoming wave buffets me back to a wakefulness I don’t want, jabbing at me, at my ribs, hard, painful.

  Too hard.

  I release one of my hands from Leo’s wrist, fumbling with numb fingers to feel something solid and angular against my side.

  Leo’s gun, washed into me by a merciful ocean not as hungry as I thought.

  I have so little dexterity it feels like many seconds go by before I manage to take it in my grip, finger slipping through the trigger guard, and I elevate my arm so that as the seawater pulls back, my hand and the gun rise above the retreating wave and the weapon is pointing up at Leo.

  ‘Don’t,’ my husband begs.

  I do.

  8:01 a.m.

  Jem Talhoffer looks exhausted.

  No, she looks beyond exhausted, so physically and mentally drained that the fatigue has transcended mortal experience and has become spiritual, as if her very soul is tired. Rusty struggles to think if there is even a word for such a state. If there is in fact such a word, she can’t think of it now. Maybe when she’s next sat on her porch with just the night, her thoughts and her weed for company she might just work out the proper way of describing such exhaustion.

  Rusty has walked the scene. Shuffled the scene. She can’t move fast. She never could, of course, but now she’s a slow-motion version of her previous self. Like she’s walking on the moon or into a hurricane. It helps if she doesn’t move, but breathing is the worst part and the only thing she can’t stop herself doing. Each inhalation is a red-hot poker stabbing into her sternum. Each exhalation is that same burning spur of metal yanked back out again.

  Why couldn’t she have been shot in the belly? she thinks. Probably wouldn’t have even felt it.

  She’s still alive thanks only to her body armour, she knows. Tightly woven layers of Kevlar to be precise. Bullet didn’t even get halfway through. The vest didn’t do a whole lot to stop the blunt force trauma dropping into her chest like a pebble in a duckpond, however.

  She toughs it out in front of the local law enforcement who were first to the house, followed closely by the EMTs. They found Jem sitting on the porch, wrapped in an old blanket, with lank, wet hair draped over her face. That face is bone pale and her eyes are focused on a point far, far away. She’s been shot in the arm, but it’s not serious. There are superficial injuries all over her. Cuts and scratches and bruises and grazes turn her flesh into a tapestry of brutality the likes of which Rusty has rarely seen. It’s all going to be photographed, of course, once she’s been examined at the hospital and those injuries have been treated.

  ‘She’s in no danger,’ a paramedic explains, ‘but she’s going to be suffering for a long time.’

  Rusty nods.

  Two bodies have been found at the scene. One in the house itself and the other on the beach. Both men. Both shot.

  Another is at Leo Talhoffer’s empty warehouse.

  She deals with one violent death per year at the most. Now, it’s four in one night.

  Formal statements can wait but Jem has talked them through her day from hell. How it happened, as it happened. From eating avocado on toast for breakfast and kissing her husband goodbye all the way to shooting him dead. Everything in between too. The two corrupt government agents, Wilks and Messer, the Good Samaritan Trevor, now sadly deceased by Leo’s hand. And the mystery man, Carlson. Who is he? Rusty thinks she knows. Rusty has a theory.

  She spends a lot of time discussing the details with her local counterpart. There’s a lot to go through and he’s happy to talk.

  ‘What do you think?’ Rusty asks him.

  ‘It’s a miracle she’s alive,’ he tells her. ‘That’s one tough cookie.’

  Rusty agrees.

  She is not surprised when a black SUV arrives on the scene and a pair of trenchcoat-wearing government types climb out and head her way. They introduce themselves, showing National Security Agency ID and not complaining when she asks for a moment to check they are who they proclaim to be. A quick phone call and Rusty is content she isn’t dealing with another Wilks and Messer situation. These two are Percival and Hirsch, as their IDs state.

  Percival does the talking. She seems too young to be in charge of anything, but Rusty is at that age where anyone young looks too young. Is Percival thirty or is she some child prodigy who went to college at twelve years of age and became a government agent the day she was old enough to drive?

  Percival gets straight to the point.

  ‘We’re hoping this can be handled with a degree of discretion.’

  ‘I figured you might say something of that ilk.’

  Percival is unsure of Rusty’s tone. ‘Is that a problem for you?’

  Rusty shakes her head. ‘Not at all, but I would like to know why.’

  ‘That I can do,’ Percival says in return. ‘We screwed up. Hugely. Embarrassingly. We’d rather not advertise that fact.’

  ‘I was sure you were going to hit me with the national security excuse.’

  Percival shows a tight smile. ‘I doubt you’re the kind of woman who’d be satisfied with being deflected. I expect you’d be insulted. I know I would be. In my experience it’s the people we offend we have to worry about the most. They’re the ones who will spend their spare time checking facts and asking questions.’

  ‘I’m no one to worry about.’

  ‘You misunderstand,’ Percival says. ‘I’m being straight with you as a courtesy, but I also recognise it is the most tactically assured course of action.’

  ‘Then you won’t mind telling me how you screwed up?’

  ‘Lacy Wilks and John Messer were useful agents. Two of hundreds, if not thousands, like them. Not special. Efficient, no more. That they had any extracurricular activities going is something I’ve only recently become suspicious of. They were being investigated internally. Or not, when you consider large sums of cash money are involved. I vouched for them, so it’s my fault. My embarrassment.’

  ‘They fooled me too. I thought they were legit.’

  ‘I’m going to take heat for this for years to come. I’m not angry about this and I’m not bitter. I’m disappointed in myself and I wish to keep it as the only stain on my jacket. I’m going to have to work twice as hard just to get back to where I am. If this becomes publicised we will have it shot down and any reporter discredited in a matter of days. We do it all the time. That’s not what I want to happen here because even an extinguished bonfire was still lit, however temporarily.’

  Percival doesn’t want to advertise the stain on her jacket.

  Rusty says, ‘You can survive it privately.’

  Percival says, ‘Publicity is worse than screwing up in the first place. It will bury me.’

  ‘I don’t want to bury you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No need,’ Rusty says with a shrug. ‘It’s nice to be nice, right?’

  Percival nods.

  ‘What about the money, the information?’

  ‘We’ll seize what’s obvious and keep an eye on any accounts or businesses in Leo Talhoffer’s name. But between you and me, recovering money is not a priority. What might be large sums to an individual aren’t even on our radar.’

  ‘Four people have died because of that money.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say about that,’ Percival says.

  Rusty says, ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘People have died for less.’

  Rusty nods.

  ‘How’s the wife?’

  ‘A mess. Do you need to talk to her?’

  Percival is silent for a second, then shakes her head in a short, efficient movement. ‘At some point further down the
road to fill in inevitable blanks, but I think she’s been through enough tonight without having me quizzing her all over again, wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Makes you think, doesn’t it?’ Percival looks to the middle distance. ‘Never can tell who people really are. Even those closest to us.’

  ‘Especially those closest to us.’

  Percival meets her gaze. ‘And what a sad truth that is.’

  ‘Most truths are.’

  Hirsch, silent and subservient until now, checks his watch with an exaggerated movement and says to Percival, ‘We need to be making a move if we’re going to make the debrief.’

  She nods to him without looking at him, then says to Rusty, ‘Thank you for making this simple.’

  ‘No problem. I like simple.’

  ‘I owe you one.’ Percival hands Rusty a business card. ‘Cash in any time.’

  Rusty watches Percival and Hirsch stride back to the car. Maybe it’s the suits, Rusty thinks, that makes government types walk like that. They never stroll. They never saunter. They never traipse. It’s always a stride. Strong. Purposeful. As if every step is necessary, as if any direction is the correct one.

  Rusty likes the way Percival walks.

  Rusty carefully slides Percival’s card into her wallet.

  Rusty needs to go home. She needs to sleep. She needs to smoke on her porch and try and put this out of her mind for a little while. Maybe give her friend in LA another call and arrange that long-awaited visit.

  Before all that, though, she’s going to drive up to Trevor’s cabin and pick up the little dog, Merlin. Rusty’s never been big on the idea of pets but she feels that perhaps she’ll take him home with her instead of to the pound and that thought takes enough shape for Rusty to begin imagining what having a pooch might be like. It would give her an excuse to get more fresh air now and again. Perhaps given enough long walks and throwing balls Rusty might shift the dread of climbing a set of stairs. Plus, she’s heard that dogs are therapeutic, that they’re calming, which sounds pretty good to Rusty. She needs all the calm she can get. Could be a dog might even help her mother, although Rusty isn’t going to put any expectation on that. It would be unfair, even to a pet, to load it with such responsibility. Either way, she’s liking the idea of a dog more with every passing moment. She might change the name, though.