by Naomi West
Mark's eyes nearly crossed as he stared down his nose at the barrel of his own pistol pointed back at him. “What do you mean?” he asked, nearly stumbling over his words. “Are you . . .?”
Zed thumbed back the hammer on the small automatic he'd snatched from Mark's hands, seriously considered his options. The man in front of him deserved to die. He knew that. He deserved Kai's looming fate, and worse—much worse—for the resulting deaths of Zed's niece and nephew.
Mark started a low whine, a sound deep in his throat like a wounded animal.
“Shoot you?” Zed asked after a while. “Let you go? What do you think I should do, Mark? What would you do in my shoes if I'd packaged a drug for your brother that got him to kill your niece, nephew, and sister-in-law?” He fingered the trigger, his thoughts on Abby and Kai.
Pharma-Vitae was going down over this, one way or the other. Mark Letterman, though? Who knew? He may do a couple years in prison, if Zed was lucky. But the courts didn't seem to care much about corporate crimes. They just fined people and threw a couple of scapegoats to the wolves.
Look at the banks during the Great Recession. They were bigger than ever. Was that what Mark Letterman was going to be like? Richer than before?
But, then, there was Abby. Zed's soulmate. God, it sounded cheesy just to think it, but deep down he still knew it was true. It was truer than anything he'd ever believed in during his short, miserable life. What would she think of him if he gunned down Mark in cold blood? He wasn't judge, jury, and executioner. He couldn't be, no matter how light a sentence Mark would receive for his horrendous crimes against the first responders and soldiers of this country.
He raised the pistol and aimed it straight at Mark's head.
Mark recoiled in his chair, his eyes wide, his face white as the blood drained. Mark began to cry. “You can't. I didn't mean to hurt anyone like that. I really didn't.”
No. He couldn't do that to Abby. He couldn't saddle her with the knowledge that she'd fallen in love with a cold-blooded murderer, a man willing to gun down another like this.
“Bang,” Zed shouted.
Mark screamed.
“Just kidding, Mark,” Zed said, as he reached forward and yanked the executive to his feet. “Come on. We're walking out.”
Zed sniffed the air as he shoved Mark in front of him, toward the office door. He grinned as he held the gun on him. “You piss yourself, Mark?”
Together, they headed down in the elevator. Zed kept Mark against the elevator wall, opposite him, and away from the control panel. When they hit the lobby, an uneasy feeling hit the pit of his stomach.
“Lotta cops out there,” Zed mused, as they crossed to the front entry way.
“Yeah,” Mark agreed. “I'd be worried if I were you.”
“Why should I be worried,” the veteran replied, as he shoved Mark forward through the doors. “I'm not the one who was basically poisoning all their buddies with fake medication.” The sounds of the outside, the beating of the police helicopter's rotors, the blaring of bullhorns, and the sound of distant sirens all hit him like a wall as he stepped outside onto the little concrete plaza. It was a wall so difficult to penetrate that he actually had to slow a step and take a moment to deal with all the input coming at him.
“Zed Hesse!” roared a familiar voice on a bullhorn, from behind the ring of steel surrounding the building. “Put down your weapon and put your hands in the air!”
Zed hooked the gun's trigger guard over his finger and raised it in the air as Mark ran for the barricades. He could see the dots of the red lasers doing their twists and turns on the concrete in front of him, speedily making their way to his body, but he didn't think anything of it. If they'd wanted him dead, they could have gotten him in the lobby. He hadn’t used Mark as a human shield on his way out the door.
He leaned forward and, with exaggerated motions, so the police would know and understand his intentions, put his gun on the ground of the plaza, then put his hands in the air.
Zed glanced to the left suddenly, his arms going wide like he was making a move. “No!” he yelled, his voice booming out over the assembled police and other first responders.
He saw a blur coming toward him, slipping out from between the barricades. “Zed!” the blur screamed. “No!”
She must have seen the laser sights and thought that meant they were ready to shoot. Now she was rushing out in front of a trigger happy group of cops. “Abby,” Zed yelled back, waving her away. “Get down!”
She was nearly to him when they open fired and the bullets began to come down in a hail of lead and powder. Zed swept her into his arms, tackling her to the ground beneath him. His body shook with pain under the countless impacts of bullets, intended for him and his love. Beneath him, Abby cried out in fear as his body jumped and shook with each bullet that hit him.
They just seemed to continue to come, and Zed's mind groaned under the strain, sending him to a better, happier place.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Zed
Kai flipped the burgers as the kids ran around in the sprinklers. Zed stood on the porch next to his twin brother, looking out over the backyard, ice cold beer in his hand. It was his brother's own brew, in fact. He'd had labels printed up that read ‘Hesse's Hops.’ Zed was going to help him with the next batch.
“Got yourself a good family, bro,” Zed said, unable to wipe the stupid grin from his face as he watched the kids run around, chasing after each other with water guns, their laughter and simple cheers of wordless excitement filling the air.
“Yeah,” Kai said, his face wistful and pained. “It feels good to be back with them after all those years in the sandbox. Wish I could be a little better, you know, but I've been trying my damndest. Gotta embrace the suck, you know. Make it work for me.”
“Medication still not working, then?”
Kai shook his head and began to flip the burgers. “It's just so fucking hard all the time. You know, first, they say they want you to admit to having it—the PTSD. Then, they want you out because of it. Then, they don't want to give you the help you need.”
“Come on, Kai,” Zed clapping his brother on the shoulder and squeezing, “I know you're trying. It's tough coming back. I know it is. But, you're a good father, at least you try to be. Better than Mom and Dad, right?”
Kai laughed. “Yeah,” he said, still flipping burgers and rolling hot dogs. “Don't I know it.”
“Just keep taking the medication the doctor recommended. Things'll get better, and you'll still be there for your kids. You'll see. You'll be the best dad any kid ever hoped for in this fucked up world.”
His twin chuckled. “Yeah. My kids don't deserve this world, I'll say that for sure. They deserve heaven.”
“Don't we all?” Zed asked, laughing. He took another drink of his beer and looked back out to the kids, watched them rolling around and fighting on the green lawn.
“What about you?” Kai asked. “You dating anyone yet?”
“Me?” he asked, shaking his head. “Still getting used to civilian life. Haven't really started to get settled in, yet. Figure it'll happen when it happens.”
“Well, I hope you find that special someone,” Kai said, as he stepped away from the grill and, beer in hand, went to stand next to Zed. “Spencer and Caitlyn need cousins, you know. And maybe, if she gets a niece or a nephew, Marilyn will back off about our third one.”
Zed laughed. “Number three?”
Kai rolled his eyes. “I can hardly keep up with these two. And, just my luck, twins will end up running in the family.”
As they both laughed, the day began to fade, the world disappearing into a blanket of shrouded darkness. The vision ended, drifting away no matter how hard Zed tried to hold onto it.
His ears rang from the shock, and his world seemed to be coming apart at the seams. Instead of Spencer and Caitlyn's laughter, there was the sound of stomping feet. Instead of the taste of Hesse's Hops, there was salt and copper.
&nbs
p; The men tore him from Abby, pulled her away as she screamed, and reached out for him. Abby’s hands grasped at empty air as they took her back to the barricades.
With his last bit of waning strength, Zed reached out for her like a lifeline. His hands touched nothing but empty air, though, and fell to the plaza.
This was it. It was all over. Even if Kai's family wouldn't ever come back, he'd still be vindicated. Zed had seen to that. But, like in all things, there was a price to pay. Now Zed had his own crimes to take responsibility for.
# # #
Abby
The world was a blur as Abby was pulled from Zed's strong embrace by more hands than she could count. With her ears ringing, she screamed for him as she reached out across the distance, her fingers grasping vainly as she was dragged away.
The only person who mattered to her now was being taken away from her by gray, indistinct shapes that seemed little more than ghosts. “Zed!” she screamed, her soundless words raw in her frayed throat. “Zed!”
He just looked on, his eyes haunted and distant as the EMT's and paramedics surrounded him, blocking him from view. Abby realized she'd been wounded, too, as she tried to stumble toward him, her leg giving out beneath her wait.
No, this was all happening too fast, like the worst nightmare anyone could conceive of, and she was thrust into the middle of it, like Alice through the Looking Glass. They began to drag her back to the ambulance, trying to gently subdue her as her hearing resumed.
The world of sound, previously dimmed from the gunfire, returned in with a crash. The sound of helicopter blades pounded above her, sirens whirred, and men shouted orders. “Get him in the stretcher! We need to see how bad these gunshots are!”
“Get her back to the ambulance! I want a tourniquet on that leg! We need to stop the bleeding!”
They dragged her back to the ambulance as she kicked and screamed, fighting against every inch they put between her and Zed. “Please,” she sobbed, her throat ragged and raw as she sobbed out her tears. “Please, let me go to him!”
“Ma'am, we need you to settle down,” they replied, their voices one step away from tense shouts as two burly medics finally lifted her into the air and got her into the rear of the ambulance.
“Zed!” she screamed again, the tears streaming down her face now as she fought against their hands and grappling arms. Men in uniforms strapped her to the stretcher and tightened her bonds as she thrashed violently, trying to break free to get back to her love.
“Get a god-damn sedative in her,” growled one of the men. “She'll bleed herself out with all this kicking.”
“Surprised she's going so strong, with all this blood gone.”
Then there was a sharp pain in her thigh, followed by blissful, omnipresent darkness that encompassed all. She drifted like a lost soul over the inky waves of blackness, the only thought she could form a wordless blob that coalesced into the shape of Zed Hesse, his shirt bloody and ragged, his eyes hollow and haunted as he watched her torn from his protective embrace.
She came-to a while later in a hospital bed, her clothes gone. One of those scratchy cotton gowns covered her. Her right leg ached like hell, a throbbing, hot pain that seemed to pierce all the way to the core of her body, like nothing she'd ever experienced.
How much time had passed? She looked around groggily, trying to find a clock. She didn't see one, and just flopped back onto the flat, unfluffed pillow. She groaned, a deathly rasp coming from her dry-as-dirt throat.
“Oh my God, you're awake!” came a familiar voice, a lilting sound that seemed to drift through the room beautifully. “Abbs, you're back!”
Abby groaned, turning her head to the source of the voice. Jackie! “Hey,” she said, smiling as she saw her executive assistant.
“Hey, yourself,” Jackie said, as she came to the side of the bed and put her hands on the railing. She looked as ragged as Abby felt, but wracked more with worry than physical pain. Dark rings stood out beneath her eyes, her hair looked like it could use a brush, and her makeup needed to be touched up. To Abby, it appeared Jackie hadn't left her side since she'd been admitted.
“How you feeling?” Jackie asked, reaching down and taking Abby's hand in her own, squeezing it gently.
“Like I got shot in the leg, then sedated.”
“Funny you should say that,” her friend said, squeezing her hand.
“Water?” Abby asked.
“Yeah,” Jackie said, reaching over and grabbing a cup of ice chips. “Here, they said to give you these when you woke up.”
Abby took the cup and shook some chips into her throat, the cold wetness like iced tea on a summer's day, refreshing and rejuvenating. She never knew frozen water could taste this good.
“I ran into someone earlier today,” Jackie said, her words sounding carefully and deliberately chosen. “Never guess who.”
Abby groaned. She didn't have time for this. “Who, Jackie? Just spit it out.”
“Zed Hesse. Saw him at Pharma, in fact, just this afternoon.”
Abby groaned again. “Oh God,” she whispered. “Is he okay?”
Jackie shook her head, her eyes narrowing. “He put a gun to my head, Abbs.”
Abby turned her face away. She couldn't deal with this. Not now. Not with her whole world coming down around her. She knew she owed some explanation to Jackie about Zed, but what could she say that would make everything better?
“He used me as a hostage to get in to see Mark,” she continued. “Do you know what that's like? To be held as a fucking hostage?”
“Kind of,” Abby whispered, her face still turned away.
“What?” Jackie demanded.
Abby just shook her head. “Look, I'm sorry about what you had to go through.”
Jackie sighed. “It really wasn't that bad, Abbs,” she groaned. “I mean, I knew he wasn't going to hurt me. Zed just doesn't seem the type to do that. But, with all that, I know you're not telling me the truth about who he is, or what happened between you two.”
“Is he okay?” Abby asked, as she turned back to him. “Have they said if he's okay?”
Jackie crossed her arms and tapped her foot. “He's out of surgery, and doctors say he'll be fine. The cops, though . . .”
Abby felt numb. She was too weak to cry and too emotionally exhausted to not. It was like a sick limbo that seemed to consume her, one that wouldn't let her go free no matter how much she struggled. She wanted to let herself go, to let big, fat, salty tears roll down her cheeks so they could dot the hospital blanket. But she just couldn't.
Zed was in custody. He was safe, and would live. But, still, he was gone from her. No more would he be her guardian, or her captor. She wouldn't feel his hands on her throat, feel his fingers in her hair, or the sting of his hand on her backside. She'd never feel the same safety in his arms, or the quiet strength encircling her and keeping her upright as the world tried to tear her down.
“You still didn't answer my question,” Jackie said.
“I can't,” Abby whispered. “I just can't. It's as much for you as it is for me, Jackie. Believe me.”
Finally, though, as the words left her mouth, she felt her eyes begin to fill with the tears she needed. She felt them fill up and brim over, beginning to trickle her down her face.
Jackie sighed and, seemingly not knowing what else to do, gathered Abby up in her arms and held her. “It's okay,” she whispered to her boss, as she stroked her hair. “It's okay, Abbs. Everything'll be fine. I promise.”
Abby tried to believe her, but she just couldn't bring herself to.
Nothing was going to be fine with Zed gone. Nothing would ever be fine again, and she knew it.
Chapter Thirty
Abby
One Year Later
Abby felt like she had about ten pounds of pancake makeup on, and the stage-lighting beat down on her like the Sahara sun. Her chair was uncomfortable, reminding her of the ones Zed had used so well for her time-outs, and forced her into the perfect
posture Natalia Winters had drilled into her from the time she could stand on her own two feet. She sat there, legs crossed, with her hands folded on her knee like a prim and proper lady.
Across from her sat Kara Singh, newly elevated to talk show personality on cable news. It wasn't one of the major shows, but it was still a step up from her job as a news reporter.
A long year had passed, one filled with trials, headlines, bankruptcies, recriminations, and tabloid press. Abby, though, had come out on top. Or, as much on top as one could be when it came to a media dogpile like the one after Zed took Mark Letterman hostage. But Abby had escaped all the stigma of Dimalerax when the gravy-train ended, and the FDA and the Justice Department had come in. Mark and the rest of the board had been left holding the bag, and had taken most of the heat. The board itself, of course, got off scot-free, with Pharma-Vitae only getting sued into the ground and fined into non-existence.
