Paralyzed

by Alana Terry

  Sandy’s story of her daughter had gotten Kennedy thinking about anyone unfortunate enough to be sleeping out on the streets, especially during a windstorm like this. How many teens had she passed this semester in the T station who didn’t have anywhere else to go for shelter? All this while Kennedy studied at Harvard, ate three square meals a day and all the snacks she wanted until she was well on her way to earning the notorious freshman fifteen pounds. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.

  If Kennedy had learned one thing about life this past semester, it was that the world was a dangerous, cruel place full of dangerous, cruel people. Kids kidnapped. Girls victimized and abused. Families homeless. Addicts selling themselves on street corners, addicts who had parents who loved them just as much as Carl and Sandy loved Blessing.

  There was so much ugliness. People suffering so many different forms of indignity. Besides Carl and Sandy, what was anyone doing about it? What was Kennedy doing about it? Sure, one day she hoped she’d become a doctor, and she’d have plenty of opportunities to help people then. But what about right now? She wasn’t lifting a finger to help anyone less fortunate than she was, and the last time she tried she ended up getting kidnapped.

  She shut her eyes, trying to block out the noise of the howling wind and her accusing conscience. She couldn’t do anything for anybody as exhausted as she was. She would feel better in the morning. She just had to get to sleep.

  Why did knowing the power was off make the dark that much more threatening? This was supposed to be her first semester of real independence. How had she grown so afraid?

  She had to force her mind and her body to relax. Sandy’s story about Blessing and all the hardships the family endured must have gotten Kennedy thinking too hard. Worrying too much. There would always be Blessings. There would always be souls needing to be saved. Kennedy couldn’t help them all. And if she didn’t focus on herself, taking care of her own body and getting the rest she needed, she wouldn’t be able to help anybody.

  She took several deep breaths, deliberately relaxing one muscle after another. She was finally warming up underneath the blankets. Everything was all right now. She was cozy. She was cared for. She was safe.

  A noise from beneath the bed. Kennedy jostled. This was ridiculous. She wasn’t a child anymore. She was sick of being scared. She shut her eyes and focused once more on her breathing.

  Slow.

  Steady.

  She curled underneath the blankets with her back to the window. The wind could howl. The storm could rage. She was relaxed. She would let peace wrap itself around her like an extra layer of warmth. Everything was fine now. Everything was …

  “Don’t move.”

  A hand wrapped over her mouth. She squirmed, thrashing her legs, but he leaned over and pinned her down.

  “Not a sound.”

  Kennedy had never heard that voice before. There were no lights in the room to see his face or form. Still, she knew exactly who it was.

  Gino.

  CHAPTER 23

  “Get up.”

  She obeyed. Something hard pressed up against her back. She should scream. That’s all she had to do. Just scream. Scream and alert the Lindgrens. The police would come, and Kennedy would be safe.

  Right?

  Safe. Was it possible? No. He had a gun. The bullet would pierce her heart or lungs before she finished sounding the alarm, and Gino could dash out the window, climb down the tree, and be off before the police could give him any chase. Maybe they’d catch him, but with all the lights out in the neighborhood and the time it would take them to realize what happened …

  Kennedy held her breath.

  “That’s right.” His voice was gruff.

  She trembled a little in his grasp, and he tightened his arm around her neck.

  “You run, you die.”

  Kennedy had no trouble believing each word. She nodded to communicate her understanding.

  Her self-defense class had taught her some fancy moves to get out of a bear hold. Her instructors never said what to do if the attacker’s got a gun pressed up to your back. She was so weak from fear she doubted she could have fought him off even if he had been unarmed.

  How had he gotten in? For a moment, answering that one question seemed even more important than escape. How did he manage to get in here while the police were outside watching? There had to be some explanation, right? Otherwise she was dealing with something demonic and supernatural. But that couldn’t be. Those kinds of things were only in paranormal novels, which Kennedy avoided as a rule. He had to be human, which meant he had to have entered the house by human means, which meant he wasn’t all-powerful.

  Which meant that if she was very lucky, she might get out of this alive.

  A sudden urge to chuckle welled up from somewhere deep within her belly. She swallowed down the impulse but wondered where it came from. She thought of the campus doctor in his white lab coat scrawling notes about PTSD on his little pad of paper, and somehow it seemed so comical.

  You think I had issues back then? You should see what I’m going through now.

  The desire to laugh made its way to her chest cavity, bringing a lightness completely foreign to her.

  Who needs a psychoanalyst? Just get me some laughing gas.

  No. That was fear talking. Hysteria, maybe. Something was trying to take over her brain. It must be some defense mechanism or other, some primitive instinct designed to shield her from the horrors of death. She wondered how evolutionists would explain it. How in the name of natural selection could people evolve to actually laugh in their final moments before their murder? Sure, it might make their death seem less frightening, but it certainly wasn’t a trait they could pass on to their offspring from the grave.

  Her body was shaking in silent heaves. If she had been brave enough to actually make noise, she wasn’t certain if it would sound more like laughter or sobbing.

  Gino kept his iron grip around her neck. “We’re going to the garage now. No sudden moves. No noise, or I kill you and your friends here. Got it?”

  Kennedy nodded. Hadn’t she read dozens of scenarios just like this in all the mysteries and thrillers she used to devour in her free time? In not a single one of them had the hero or heroine fallen prey to a laughing fit.

  Yet another reason to cross those books off her Christmas reading list.

  “Now open that door real slow.” His breath was hot on her ear, and her body went rigid. The shaking fit eased up, and for a moment her mind was clear.

  He was going to take her to the garage.

  And then he was going to murder her.

  She didn’t think her limbs would respond, and she observed herself with a somewhat detached curiosity as her hand reached for the bedroom doorknob, turning it slightly. She winced, hoping it wouldn’t squeak.

  “Down the hall.” Gino’s voice had an almost hypnotic quality, as if Kennedy were a sleep-walker. No, maybe someone already half-dead. Something out of those zombie movies Willow liked. She could carry out simple commands but had no real will. No real volition.

  She put one foot in front of the other and could feel Gino’s tense body behind her as he pushed her down the dark hall. She prayed Carl and Sandy wouldn’t hear. She prayed they wouldn’t come out. One false move, one scare, and they might all end up dead.

  Was she ready for heaven? No, not really. There was so much more she had expected out of life. Studying with Reuben. Graduating college. Going on to medical school. Falling in love. Starting a family.

  Dizziness seized her, and she reached her hand out to steady herself along the wall. She couldn’t see them, but her fingers caressed the frames of so many pictures. Pictures of children and grandchildren. Foster babies. Grandbabies. Each one so precious. Each one so beautiful.

  God, I want to live.

  She thought about the North Korean refugees her parents took in, Christians with courage to risk their lives to carry the gospel back home. They each expressed their willingness — e
ven their desire — to die doing the work of the Lord.

  Kennedy sometimes figured by the time she was old and gray, she might feel the same way.

  But not now. Not like this. Would her parents fly her body for burial in Yanji? How would you even transport a corpse overseas?

  Her lungs seized up, and she gasped for air. Gino tightened his arm around her neck and pushed her forward.

  Her thoughts turned toward Reuben. What would he say? Would he cry?

  Reuben.

  She had to see him again. She couldn’t just die.

  They turned the corner to the kitchen. A few more feet, and they’d be in the garage. Her self-defense instructor’s voice echoed in her mind. “If he gets you in a car, your chances of survival drop dramatically.”

  No. She wasn’t a statistic. She wasn’t a victim. She would survive.

  She tucked in her chin, ready to fling her head back. She paused only for a second. He might shoot her right then, but how would dying now be any different than dying in ten minutes or twenty minutes or whenever he took her to her final destination? She thought of the poem The Highwayman she had memorized in high school. Bess, the landlord’s daughter, fires a rifle that is jammed up against her breast in order to warn her lover, sacrificing her own life to sound the alarm. It had to be now. Either she would surprise him enough to make her escape, or she would die, but at least her death might alert Carl and Sandy and the policemen outside.

  Justice would be served.

  She sucked in her breath and prepared to give him a head butt he would remember for weeks, even if it was her last act on this earth.

  “Not so fast, buddy.”

  Kennedy’s body froze, and her eyes squeezed shut in the blinding light of a flashlight. Gino rammed the gun even harder into her back. “What do you think you’re doing?” he snarled.

  Kennedy blinked one eye open to see Carl in the kitchen. In one hand was a flashlight. In the other was a gun pointed right at her.

  CHAPTER 24

  “How ’bout you put that gun down, boy.” Carl’s voice was threatening, like the neighbor’s pit bull that had terrorized Kennedy when she was growing up.

  She was so startled, for a moment she forgot her fear entirely and only wondered if Sandy knew how mean her husband could sound if he really wanted to.

  “What’re you gonna do if I don’t?” Gino crouched to hide most of his body behind Kennedy.

  Carl kept his gun poised at them both. “I’ll give you one guess.”

  Gino shifted from one foot to another but stayed planted behind her. “You can’t do that. What’s gonna stop you from shooting the chick?”

  “First of all, she’s not a chick. She’s a young woman, and a very bright and capable one. Second of all, I assume you plan to kill her anyway.” He squinted one eye and took aim.

  “Yeah, but …” Gino’s voice was infused with an infective nervousness. “You take me out, you take her out, too.”

  Carl shrugged. “Probably. But I know her soul is saved. And I seriously doubt yours is. So she dies and goes straight to heaven, and you … Well, I’d be willing to bet my retirement savings that you wouldn’t join her there.”

  “This is crazy, man.”

  Kennedy had to agree with Gino’s assessment. Something was wrong. This wasn’t Carl. This wasn’t the pastor she grew up with. What happened to him?

  “Crazy or not, you let her go, or you’re a dead man, Gino.”

  “Dude, you’re insane.”

  Carl cocked his head to the side. “Might be. But I won’t even need to plead criminal insanity in this case. You’re in my house. My house is my castle. And I’ll do anything and everything within my power to protect my castle and the people in it.”

  Kennedy wondered how heroines in her mom’s historical fiction novels could faint at the slightest sign of trauma or fear. If she could pass out on cue, she definitely would have by now.

  “It’s up to you, Gino.” Carl talked as smoothly and as easily as if he were practicing for a Sunday sermon. Kennedy’s mind couldn’t take in the rest of the words. It was too real to be a dream. Maybe she really had lost her mind. She could hear Carl’s voice in her head, could understand the individual words he spoke, but they didn’t make any sense when she strung them together.

  Maybe he’s as insane as I am.

  Then she had a thought. What if Carl wasn’t really talking to Gino? What if he was talking to her? What if his words contained some secret code? Didn’t people do that in spy movies sometimes? Kennedy could swear she saw something like that once with her dad. What was it? Morse code with the eyelids, maybe? She had to focus.

  “You see, what Kennedy and I know is that none of us are worthy to go to heaven. We’re all sinners. None of us worse than any other, at least in God’s eyes.”

  Was Carl preaching to him now?

  Pay attention, she ordered herself. There has to be something in his words. Some hidden message. Think.

  “And that’s why Jesus came, to be the perfect sacrifice, to take away the penalty for all our sins.”

  No. They were all insane. Carl. Gino. Kennedy. That’s all there was to it. They had all gone mad, and somebody was going to die.

  “So now’s a good time to ask yourself, Gino,” Carl went on, “who do you really serve? Are you willing to bow your knees to the God of the heavens, the one who made the earth and the sky and the sea and all that is in them? Or are you going to keep on worshipping the devil, the father of lies?”

  He was inching his way to the side, and for the first time Kennedy guessed what he might be doing. He was distracting Gino, or at least trying to. Maybe he thought Gino wouldn’t notice his movements and let him sneak around from the side to get a clearer shot. She stood with her body tense, her ears already ringing in anticipation of gunfire.

  “Freeze! Police!”

  Kennedy must have closed her eyes because she didn’t see anything. She heard the forceful shouts, felt the vibrations of heavy boots on the floor. A scream. Someone plowed into Kennedy, knocking out her breath, tackling her and crashing to the floor.

  After that, it was like she was hearing everything from underwater — a strange, high-pitched squeal humming above the muffled noise.

  “You have the right to remain silent.”

  Was that the policeman? He wasn’t arresting Carl, was he? He had only been trying to help.

  She glanced over to see Gino on the floor while one of the cops cuffed his hands behind his back.

  Sandy rushed up and knelt on the floor. Carl was doubled over beside Kennedy, and she realized he had been the one who threw her to the ground.

  “He’s been hit.” Sandy’s voice rose higher in pitch with each word. “Someone help. My husband’s been shot.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Kennedy had never experienced a tornado, but she imagined it must be like this, only she was in the middle, sitting right in the eye of the storm while the chaos swarmed and spiraled around her. One of the policeman led Gino outside in his cuffs while his partner knelt down by Carl and radioed the ambulance. Kennedy didn’t want to look at Carl. Didn’t want to face him. The bullet had been meant for her. If something happened to him ...

  Sandy put a hand on Kennedy’s shoulder. “You okay, hon? You didn’t get hurt, did you?”

  Kennedy clinched her throat shut and shook her head. No, she hadn’t been hit. Only Carl.

  Dear God, you can’t let him die.

  It wasn’t fair. How could someone like Carl lie there bleeding on the floor while Gino just walked away in cuffs? Silent sobs shook her body. The world was even more topsy-turvy than she had previously imagined.

  Sandy wrapped her up in a warm embrace, but it only made Kennedy feel even more wretched. She wasn’t the one bleeding. She wasn’t the one who had taken a bullet to save someone else. What had she done to deserve Sandy’s love and comfort?

  A hand reached out and grasped hers. It was tough. Calloused.

  Pastor Carl.

>   “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have ...”

  Sandy tried to shush him, encouraged him to save his energy, but Carl wouldn’t be dissuaded.

  “I never meant to scare you. You know I never would’ve done anything to hurt you.” His voice sounded so pained. Kennedy started shaking even more uncontrollably.

  “Ambulance will be here in about two minutes.” It was the policeman talking. Kennedy tried to hold onto his words, but it sounded like his voice was receding and then rushing ahead at full speed. “Are you going to want to ride with your husband, ma’am?”

  Sandy didn’t answer.

  “You can’t leave Kennedy here alone,” Carl breathed.

  Kennedy wished the earth would just open up its mouth and swallow her up, forever burying her and her mortification. Even as he lay bleeding to death next to her, Carl was still thinking of her comfort, her safety.

  Sandy took in a deep breath. “I think Kennedy and I will take the Honda and meet you there at Providence.”

  The policeman cleared his throat. “Beg your pardon, but the car’s taped off right now.”

  “The car?” Sandy repeated. “Why?”

  “We’re pretty sure that’s how Gino got in the house in the first place. In the trunk.”

  The trunk? So he had been inside the car while Carl and Kennedy were driving? But when would he have found the time to hide in there? While they were at the hospital, maybe? Kennedy remembered Carl talking to the policeman before he opened up the garage door and parked, safe and secure, locked up in his little castle. Only Gino had been in here the whole night. Just waiting. Just biding his time.

  “I can stay here with Kennedy,” Sandy suggested.

  No. No, they couldn’t do that. Carl and Sandy needed to be together. They needed ...

  Sirens wailed outside and came to a stop. Their lights flashed through the window. Kennedy forced her eyes to focus on Carl. The top of his back was bloody, but there weren’t huge puddles on the floor as she had feared.