by David Beers
Nope. Too late.
The sugar ignited and flew off the chopping block, a spray of explosive fire raining down on the men and women sent in this kitchen to kill him.
They turned into human torches, their weapons falling to the ground and screams pouring from their mouths. Dropping to the floor, rolling, but the cloud of fire still descending on them.
Matthew turned the torch to the fryers, taking a step back as they exploded in grease and flames. People were running everywhere, not towards him, but away, trying their best to escape the inferno he was creating.
Matthew walked out of the kitchen, people in front of him—trying to dash away—catching fire from the burning torch he aimed in front of him. Flames were creeping up the walls now, the entire building heating up, and still he sprayed the fire forward, out into the dining room.
He saw Rally standing fifty feet off, at the door to the patio. She hadn't run, hadn't been grabbed by the police sitting at the curb. She had waited for him. She knew what this was, that he was here for her, and she had walked in to greet him. Tears welled in Matthew's eyes as he held flames in his hands like some kind of mutant. He dropped the torch and canister, the source of all the madness around him ending, although too late to stop the raging fire.
Matthew walked forward, ignoring the people rushing around him, the screams, the people writhing on the floor in flames. He saw only his wife. The love of his life. The person he had come for. She wasn't looking around either, her eyes only on him. Once again, they were together; chaos running rampant around them but they looked on in peace.
Walking forward, people blitzing back and forth, Matthew went to his wife.
They stood a foot from each other, him in makeup that was melting off his face and no longer wearing glasses. Her, looking as beautiful as the first day he met her.
"Hi," he said.
"Hey," she answered.
Her hand darted forward as quick as a bee's stinger. The pain opened up in his abdomen like a molten sun creating itself in the blackest of space—one minute nothing but calm and the next pain greater than any birthing agony ever felt. He looked down and a knife stuck out of his stomach, attached to Rally's hand. He watched as she pushed harder and the knife sunk deeper. His mouth opened but no noise came. He raised his eyes to hers; she didn't look away.
"Ral?" He whispered.
"It's got to end," she said, her hand moving again and the knife twisting into a suffering Matthew hadn't believed possible.
He understood then, understood everything. She had agreed to come to him, even stayed while those around her fled and burnt and died. All of it for this, so that she could stick him with a blade and save everyone else he would eventually bring down. She hadn't let the cops do it and she hadn't turned him in. She would kill him herself.
Here, in this strange restaurant without their son.
The tears that had welled fell onto Matthew's cheeks.
He raised his hands to her face, wanting to touch her one last time. He cupped her head and she didn't turn him away. The knife no longer moved in his gut, and they looked into each other's eyes like two lovers reunited.
He grabbed her head between his fingers and with a jerk, snapped her neck. A brief second of shocked pain crossed her face and then she fell to the ground, dead.
He looked down at the knife, no longer attached to anyone else besides him. He left it there, not wanting the blood to flow freely once he pulled it out, and staggered from the restaurant.
Part III
Dreams and Nightmares
Chapter Thirty Two
Allison hadn't called and Jerry knew why. The television showed him everything that she couldn't. He knew it wasn't good for her career and he wasn't completely sure that it could be good for their family.
A video shot from a helicopter continually replayed across the television. The second Marley asked what was going on, he turned the television off and didn't look at it again until she went to bed. He didn't worry that the helicopter or images would disappear because of the words that continually wrapped around the screen in bright red letters: Matthew Brand Strikes Local Restaurant. The producers in those news studios had nothing more pressing to show.
With his daughter in bed, kissed and tucked in, he came back to the living room and turned on the television to look more closely at the wreckage he glimpsed earlier.
"They still haven't apprehended him, and the F.B.I. has completely shut down the city. It's honestly baffling how this one man can continually evade the government's entire police force. I'm beginning to feel that if he was in a room with nothing but cops, he'd be the first person to walk out."
The woman's face showed on the corner of the television, the rest of the screen filled with burnt destruction.
"Two F.B.I. agents were burnt alive today, and from what we've gathered, Brand wasn't touched at all. I mean, this is a real disaster for the entire F.B.I.”
It was a disaster for Allison certainly, but it might mean she came home quicker. It might mean he had a wife again and Marley a mother...but was that what he wanted anymore?
In the past month, he had heard his wife's voice but not seen her face.
In the past month, he voiced his concern about the effect her absence was having on him, on their family.
In the past month, Allison told him all of that would have to wait.
When she came back from this, either through losing the case or capturing Brand, what would really change? Was she just going to give up on the career she had chased her whole life? Was she going to accept that her daughter was more important than the people she went after? Did he even want to have that argument with her? Hear her say what he knew she would, that they had agreed on this years ago and to change the rules now was unfair. Asking something of her that she wasn't willing to give, while knowing she wasn't willing to give it, was wrong.
Jerry walked into the kitchen, opened a drawer and found a notebook and pen. He went back to the living room and sat in front of the T.V., different people speaking while the same pictures and videos rolled.
The only thing he had ever written down for Allison was on cards for holidays.
* * *
I'm trying to remember how I got to this point. I'd like to know what changed in my mind that didn't change in yours.
I love you, Allison, that hasn't changed and I don't think it ever will.
Even with that love, I can't remain married to you any longer. This is me asking for a divorce in the shittiest way I think a human can, through a piece of paper. Maybe I'll get the guts to tell you in person and perhaps this is just me processing everything. I hope so, but I'm not sure.
We weren't too young to get married and I won't act like that is what caused this rift. I understood you when we married. I understood the importance of your career. I understood that while I wasn't secondary; I wasn't primary. I understood it and I loved you enough to not care. Being on your periphery was better than being in anyone else's line of sight.
How many times have we spoken on the phone rather than in person? For how many years? Fifteen? Five before Marley and ten after. When I should be holding you at night, I'm curled up with our dog. There are worst things in life, for sure, but it doesn't make any of this right. You were gone 192 days last year, do you realize that? One hundred and ninety two days that your daughter didn't see you and that I slept alone. For what? A bigger paycheck? Upward mobility with the all-important F.B.I.? You sacrificed all those nights and days for those two things, and more, you sacrificed me as well. I love you, Allison, for who you were and who you are. I love you for your tenacity; I love you for your dedication to the things you care about, but I can't keep watching myself and our daughter falling further and further behind to that dedication.
I think if Marley wasn't here, if it was only you and I, then I could put up with this forever. I could go to my job every day and not need you at home every night. I could accept life that way and I could probably even enjoy it. I won
't sit here and watch it happen to Marley; I won't watch her grow accustomed to the people in her life not being there when she needs them. She wasn't even upset when you didn't come to her chorus recital last week. I didn't say anything because...well, why? To make you depressed? To hurt you?
She wasn't upset, Allison. She accepted it as a course of nature: that her mother wouldn't be there. I didn't even have to say anything; she didn't mention it and neither did I. We rode home, her smiling and asking me for McDonald's. I was barely able to sleep that night. That's what this family has become. Mom is away and Dad will have to suffice.
I don't care in the slightest about Matthew Brand or the cops he could possibly kill. I didn't care when it first happened, and if anything, I care less now. I don't care whether he lives or dies; I don't care whether anyone else on the case does either. This man has taken away my family, has broken it apart. I should hate him, probably, but I don't. He's showed me what this is, our marriage, our family—it's a nuisance to you.
I'm not saying you don't love us, but I am saying if society didn't say we needed to marry and have children, you would have been perfectly fine coming home to an empty house and living out of hotels for half of the year. You would have been content marrying your job and chasing these criminals all over the country until you retired or died. We're something that's nice to have when you're home, when you're at your desk job, waiting on the chase to take off again—but once you're out there, we don't matter. You don't want us to bother you. I don't say this as any sort of insult, only as the truth as I see it.
I won't ask you to come home, to give all of that up. That wouldn't be fair to anyone, not me, not Marley, and not you. Would you hate your life? I don't know. Would you resent me? Probably. That's not what marriage is; that's not what love is. You give, when you're in love. So I'm going to give you the life you want and do my best to give Marley the life she needs. You and I have to separate, and I'll take Marley with me. She won't expect Mom to come home because Mom won't live with her. I don't want any long, fought out custody battle. You take her when you're home; I'll take her when you're not. Hell, when you're home, we can still do things as a family if you want.
I'm just not going to leave her in this house anymore, a house where her mother should be, but isn't.
If you decide you'd rather have us than your career, I'll come back. I'll bring Marley too. All I want more than anything else in life is to have us together, as a family.
Your father told me this might happen, after we were engaged but before we married.
He said, "You won't be able to tame her."
"What do you mean?"
"She's wild, Jerry. Not like a shark, but maybe a wolf? A wolf's relatives are tamed daily by humans. Your kids probably won't be like her, if you raise them right. I won't say I raised Allison wrong, not by a long shot, but there's something in her that won't let her quit. That makes her reach and reach and reach. You won't be able to cut that out of her, I don't think. Not you or your children, and that could lead for a rough time down the road. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
I told him I did and I loved you, so that didn't matter to me.
I didn't have any clue what he was talking about. I was in my early twenties and about as knowledgeable as a Coke can.
I love you, Allison, but I can’t continue on like this.
* * *
Jerry tore the paper from the notebook, folded it into thirds, and set it down next to him. He felt like he should be crying, but he wasn't. The images of the destroyed restaurant had been replaced with smiling kids running over a beach, an advertisement for a resort on some Caribbean island.
Was he going to leave the letter for her?
Was he really going to talk to Marley tomorrow, begin picking up their things and head to his parents?
Was that really what was best for his daughter?
He didn't know the answers to any of those questions. The letter hadn't been completely truthful. He didn't want to leave Allison at all; he was terrified of it. He wanted her to wake the fuck up and see what she was missing out on. He wanted her to come home at night and eat dinner and talk and live outside of her work. Jerry was angry with her and with himself for how far they had let this go. Half a year spent on the road, and neither of them really even spoke about it. It had somehow just become normal. He wanted her to read the letter and he wanted her to come find him and Marley; he wanted her to say that she wouldn't leave anymore, that she would be the mother and wife they both needed.
Marley and he would leave. Tomorrow, the day after at the latest. When Allison called, he would answer and tell her what he'd done, tell her about the note. Then he would wait and hope this gamble paid off. Hoped that she realized what was more important: her family or her job.
Chapter Thirty Three
The fire had nearly consumed the building. Not much remained, and it would take dental records to make sure the body Allison stood over was the person she believed it to be. The only reason she thought the charred body, whose head sat turned around on its spine, was Rally Allen was because her husband watched the whole thing from the cop car at the curb.
They had stayed at the goddamn curb.
Allison couldn't get over that. The two police officers hopped over the barrier between the sidewalk and the patio, tried to bring the couple with them, and when she refused, they simply ran with the man and let her walk into the building. Allison would lose her job for this, probably tonight or tomorrow, but she would make sure those cops in that car did too. The woman lying at her feet, looking like some kind of barbecued meat left far too long over the grill, deserved better than this. Rally had tried to do their job for them. While they hid in their car and watched the building burn, she had come inside and tried to kill the man intent on killing the rest of the world.
They taped off the building, but the city outside wasn't going to allow any privacy. The network vans were here, all of their star reporters standing in front of the smoking shack and giving reports of Matthew Brand's newest strike. He had come for his wife and now she was dead. Matthew Brand? Oh, he walked off with barely a knife wound to his stomach. No sightings of him anywhere. Her boss, Art Brayden, was flying in now, and when he got here, Allison would be relieved of her duties. She showed up here for two reasons: appearances and Rally deserved it—there wasn't really any use in her being here. She wouldn't be allowed to do much else, and to be honest, she didn't know what else to do. She was at a loss, hopelessly outmatched. They all were. Malone had been given Matthew on a plate and everyone in the bureau knew it. They might bring him in to consult now, if for nothing else than to quiet down the growing furor. What would he be able to do? What would any of them be able to do? The man they were after came and went like a ghost, showing up with disaster to every spot he went before disappearing back into the night as if he'd never existed. An entire nation mobilized for him, and he burnt down this building by himself, killed his ex-wife, and from what witnesses told the investigators, ran off with a knife in his stomach.
Let them fire her. She'd done all she could here.
Cops walked around her, all wearing rubber gloves and looking just about as busy as they could. Only Allison stood staring at the mess.
* * *
"You know what happens here, don't you?" Art Brayden asked.
Allison nodded, sitting in back of the large black sedan. She wanted to end up here one day, except sitting where Art sat instead of her spot, his body taking up space as if he actually owned the car and it wasn't a gift from the taxpayers. She had hoped to one day be driven around by someone, and to have ten agents just like her reporting upwards. That was gone now though, those hopes burnt up in the restaurant.
"I'll be honest, I don't think you're the right person for this job. I'm not going to say there's nothing you could have done, because buildings don't just burn down on their own. I think you're a good agent though, just not right for this."
He looked at her and there was that a
t least. He could have looked out the window or at his feet, or straight ahead, but he met her gaze.
"What's going to happen next?" Allison asked.
"For you or for the case?"
"Both."
"You'll go back to Arizona and be reassigned to something else. I'm not going to stick you on a desk job or anything like that. The case? I'm going to be taking it over and probably bringing Malone back on."
Allison sighed, breaking their eye contact and looking out the window. "I figured that would happen."
"At the very least it'll take some of the heat off me, and that's about all I can really ask for right now. I don't know if he'll be able to help, I doubt it, but he seems to think he can. It's probably just bluster though. You got anything you can tell me that you haven't already?"
It was a few seconds before Allison spoke.
"I don't think you can stop him. I've been on this for almost two months and he simply does what he wants. He's too smart. You might want to let him finish this. Let him grab whoever he is going to and do whatever science experiment he wants, and stop chasing him. You put out a press release saying he's been apprehended and hope that he takes that as a truce. A few missing people come up here and there, and maybe he brings his kid back and maybe he doesn't, but you probably won't hear from him again. That's what you should do, give up."
"You know we can't."
"Why not?"
"Because if it leaks, everyone in the F.B.I. will have to find new jobs. From the people who empty the trash to the director. You might be right, but it still can't be our move."
