The Cain Deception

by Mike Ryan

  “Can you see it?” the man asked.

  “Yes.”

  As soon as the words left her mouth the man withdrew a gun from his jacket and fired three shots through the door. He knew she was standing in the middle of the door, looking through the hole, so he was sure he’d hit her. He heard something that sounded like her body dropping to the floor. He dropped the pizza box and kicked the door open, only opening part way, as Heather’s leg blocked it from opening entirely. The man squeezed his way inside and looked at her. Such a shame for a woman as beautiful as that to come to such an end, he thought. Blood was pouring out of her stomach as the life began draining out of her. She hardly moved an inch.

  “Sorry, lady,” the man softly told her. “It’s just business.”

  He took one last look at her as she gasped for breath. Satisfied that his work was done, he left, closing the door behind him as if nothing happened. Heather laid motionless on the floor, blood staining the floor underneath her, two bullets lodged inside her. She wanted to crawl along the floor to get to her phone to call for help but had no energy left within her. Her eyes slowly flickered until she could no longer keep them open.

  Although Cain had gotten tired of waiting after sitting there for four hours, he was determined to wait it out a little while longer. It didn’t look like Chapman was clearing out his house and the refrigerator was packed so Cain figured he wasn’t leaving anytime soon. He assumed Chapman was out on some kind of business. Cain’s wait finally came to a close during the sixth hour as he finally saw the headlights flashing through the window. He had to control his emotions though as his first instinct was to rip a few bullets into Chapman’s body as soon as it emerged through the doorway. Cain needed answers first. Answers that he hoped Chapman could provide. Cain took cover in the corner of the room, tucked in between a couch and a sofa. There was no lamp in the vicinity which made it pretty dark, perfect for Cain to wait until he was ready to pounce.

  Chapman walked through the door and locked it, including the deadbolt, then proceeded to go into the kitchen. Cain could hear him getting something to drink from the sound of the pop from the beer can. He peered around the edge of the couch and saw Chapman walking into the living room from the kitchen. Chapman grabbed the remote from the coffee table and turned the TV on. His back was to Cain which provided Cain the opportunity he was looking for. He sprung up from between the furniture and rushed at Chapman’s back, getting him in a stranglehold. Chapman immediately dropped his beer as he tried to get his attacker off him. Chapman managed to elbow Cain in his gut, causing Cain to loosen his grip. Chapman wriggled his way free from Cain’s grasp and punched him in the jaw, making Cain stumble backwards. Chapman saw the opportunity to end the struggle quickly and reached for a gun he had stashed by the TV stand. Cain noticed the gun before Chapman grabbed it and quickly withdrew his gun. It wasn’t quite how he envisioned it going down but Cain had no other choice but to fire, striking Chapman in the shoulder. It temporarily stunned Chapman, knocking him to his knees. It didn’t deter him though, quickly getting back to his feet, as he made a move for the gun again. Cain fired again, this time hitting Chapman in the leg as he stumbled to the ground, grabbing his thigh.

  “Bitch,” Chapman moaned.

  “Don’t make me kill you,” Cain stated.

  “Go to Hell.”

  Chapman once again made it back to his feet. Cain knew he wasn’t going to stop reaching for the gun. Cain quickly cut him back down, firing one more time, hitting Chapman in the stomach. Chapman dropped to the ground, clutching his stomach as he fell to his knees. Chapman’s hands were drenched with the blood coming out of his stomach as he looked up at Cain. Cain turned on a light so Chapman could get a better look at him.

  “It’s you,” Chapman whispered.

  “Sure is. Why’d you come after me?”

  “It was never about you,” Chapman revealed.

  “What?” Cain asked, astonished.

  “Not you. It wasn’t you,” Chapman said, falling on his side.

  Cain knelt down beside him and put his hand on Chapman’s arm.

  “You weren’t the target,” Chapman told him. “You can’t protect her anymore.”

  “What’s that mean?” Cain asked, agitated.

  “You’ll find out,” Chapman responded, struggling to get the words out.

  “Who hired you?” Cain angrily asked, pulling on the dying man’s shirt collar.

  It was too late to get an answer out of him though. Chapman’s eyes closed and he stopped breathing instantly, Cain letting him roll face forward on the ground. Cain immediately thought about Heather and knew she was in more danger than he had realized. He pulled out his phone and dialed her number, his fingers not quite going as fast as his mind was racing.

  “Please pick up,” he said to himself.

  With each passing ring in which she didn’t answer he increasingly grew worried. Maybe she just fell asleep, he hoped. Or maybe she went to the bathroom. He came up with half a dozen reasons why she wasn’t answering her phone. Each time it went to voicemail he just hung up and immediately dialed again. Five separate times he rang her phone. Each time was more frustrating than the previous try. He tried not to let the negative thoughts overtake his mind but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was seriously wrong. Cain took one last look at Chapman and sighed. He was an hour away and if something had happened he was worried he couldn’t get there in time. He then called the only other person he trusted.

  “Shelly,” Cain hurriedly greeted.

  “Hey.”

  “Listen, I think something’s wrong.”

  “What’s the matter?” Lawson quickly asked.

  “I’ve been following up on something and I can’t get a hold of Heather. I’m worried something’s happened.”

  “Calm down, I’m sure she’s fine. Probably sleeping.”

  “I’m about an hour away, do you think you could stop at the apartment and check on her?” he asked.

  “You realize it’s after midnight right? If I go knocking on her door I might scare her half to death.”

  “But what if she’s in trouble? Please?”

  “All right,” Lawson relented. “I’m only doing this for you though. I’ll grab one of the security guys and go check on her. I should be there in about fifteen minutes.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  Cain hung up and raced out the back door, jumping over a couple fences to get to his car. He sped off, hoping he could shave off a few minutes of driving time.

  Lawson called one of the security agents and had him meet her at Cain’s apartment. Lawson walked up the steps to Cain’s floor, not really expecting any issues. She was actually kind of nervous about being there so late and maybe startling Heather. They walked down the hall and Lawson instantly noticed a pizza box laying by the door. They both withdrew their guns as they slowly walked toward the door. Once Lawson saw the holes in the door, she knew Cain was right to be worried. She hoped that whatever happened here that Heather somehow managed to get away. The security agent held Lawson back so he could get ahead of her. He turned the handle of the door and slowly opened it, though Heather’s fallen body prevented it from opening fully. The agent went in and immediately noticed Heather and motioned for Lawson to come in and check on her while he cleared the rest of the apartment. Lawson knelt down beside her and checked for a pulse, which was faint, but at least she still had one. She pulled out her phone and immediately called for an ambulance.

  “We’re getting help, just hang in there,” Lawson hurriedly told her.

  “Everything’s clear,” the agent informed her.

  “Get Sanders on the phone and tell him what happened.”

  “Right.”

  Lawson dreaded telling Cain about her condition. She wasn’t sure how she could tell him. She was undecided whether she should’ve called him right then and tell him what was going on or if she should wait until he got there. She worried about his state of mind driving if
she called him immediately. After a few minutes of debating with herself she just figured she’d wait a little before she called him. At least until the ambulance got there and she could update her condition. Luckily, the paramedics arrived within five minutes. They quickly put her on a stretcher and wheeled her down to the ambulance, hoping to stabilize her. Lawson was by her side the entire way until they put her in the truck. She wiped her eyes as they closed the doors. Her vitals were not looking good and they raced to the hospital.

  Cain called her once he was about twenty minutes away, wondering what was going on.

  “Hey, did you get there? Is she OK?” Cain hopefully asked.

  “How far away are you?” Lawson wondered.

  “About twenty minutes.”

  “We’ll talk when you get here.”

  Cain’s heart almost dropped out of his chest. He knew that response meant it was bad. “What are you trying to tell me? Is she OK?”

  “I’d rather just talk to you when you get here,” Lawson insisted.

  Cain immediately hung up, angrily tossing his phone on the floor of the passenger side of the car. He wished Lawson would’ve just told him something about her condition. Was she alive? Was she dead? Hurt? His mind wandered in a million different directions, wondering how Heather was. He wiped a few tears from his eyes, assuming the worst had happened and that they’d tell him when he arrived that she was gone. It seemed like he got there in a matter of minutes because he couldn’t even remember driving in the time it took him, his thoughts only concerned with Heather’s well-being.

  Cain rushed up the steps in his apartment building, getting there faster than if he had used the elevator. Seeing men standing in the hallway that looked like they worked for the government didn’t help to put his mind at ease. He saw the bullet holes in the door and ran into his apartment. He immediately saw blood on the floor and looked around, seeing Lawson and Sanders talking in the kitchen. They halted their conversation once they saw Cain enter the room. Cain walked up to them and looked at Lawson, his sorrowful facial expression obviously expecting the worst of news.

  “What happened? Where is she?” Cain asked.

  “We’re still trying to piece everything together but it looks like someone posing as a pizza delivery man lured her to the door. Once they knew she was there they fired a few times through the door,” Lawson explained.

  “Where is she?” he somberly asked.

  “She’s been taken to the hospital. She’s alive but in critical condition. She was unconscious.”

  “Any leads on who did this?”

  “We’re gathering up leads now,” Sanders answered. “We also have a few cameras in the area that we are analyzing now. I would think we should be able to have some concrete answers within a few hours.”

  “Good. I wanna see her.”

  “I figured you would,” Lawson said. “I’ll drive you there.”

  Cain wasn’t much for prayer but pray was all he did on the drive to the hospital. He didn’t utter a single word to Lawson. Instead, he stared out the window and thought of what he could’ve done differently. All he could think about was how stupid he’d been for leaving her alone. He was beating himself up over how she paid the price for his lack of awareness. For all he knew they could’ve been waiting outside his apartment, just waiting for the chance that he’d leave and they could get her alone. Lawson fought to hold back tears as she was driving. She didn’t figure her crying would help matters any. It wasn’t a long drive to the hospital but for Cain it seemed like an eternity. Each red light seemed to take forever to change to green. Twenty minutes later they arrived at the hospital, Cain rushing in. A few minutes in the waiting room didn’t help his mind from wandering. After pacing around the room for five minutes a doctor came in to update him.

  “Are you the victim’s boyfriend?” the doctor asked.

  “Yes. How is she?”

  “Well, I’m not gonna sugarcoat things for you or give you false hope. She’s got some major abdominal trauma going on.”

  “Will she make it?” Cain asked.

  “I’m afraid that’s a question I can’t answer right now. In abdominal trauma cases eighty percent of deaths occur with 24 hours of admission and 66 percent die at the initial operation. So she doesn’t have that going for her.”

  “Where did the bullet hit?”

  “Well it penetrated her stomach and hit portions of her liver and intestine. Luckily it didn’t go through the center of either organ but it still did some pretty extensive damage. She suffered a rather large amount of blood loss and was going into shock when she was brought in. Another issue is the possibility of infection,” the doctor informed him.

  “How likely is that?”

  “I would say it’s probably more likely than not at this point.”

  “What are her odds?”

  The doctor made an agonizing face, the kind that Cain recognized as a face of someone who didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news.

  “Truthfully,” Cain stated.

  “It’s difficult to say. I don’t do percentages as a rule as there are so many variables that come into play, but if you want my honest opinion, I would say she’s gonna have a tough go of it.”

  “Less than fifty percent?”

  “I would say that’s probably accurate. But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen and she can’t overcome it. As I said, the next 24 hours are the most critical. If she can hang on that long, her odds will keep increasing past that point.”

  “I understand,” Cain said.

  “So we’re preparing her for surgery now. Between the surgery and post-op it’ll most likely be a few hours before we update her condition again.”

  “Thank you, doctor.”

  “Sure. I’ll keep you updated and let you know if anything changes.”

  Cain wiped his eyes and finally sat down next to Lawson, feeling pretty helpless. He wished he could do something but knew there was nothing he could do except wait. And hope. And pray. Lawson put her hand on Cain’s knee to let him know she was there for him.

  Sanders stopped by for a visit an hour later to see how everything was going. He tried calling their phones first but neither answered and he assumed they either didn’t have their phone on them or weren’t getting a good reception. Cain was a little surprised to see him walking through the doors. He knew Sanders didn’t really care about Heather and had no feeling on whether she lived or died.

  “How’s she doing?” Sanders asked.

  “No change yet,” Cain answered.

  “I tried calling first so I just decided to come down to let you know what was going on. We’ve got some footage from a building only a couple doors down from yours.”

  “And?”

  “It’s a clear shot of Kurylenko. He was wearing some type of hat and was holding a pizza box. I don’t think there’s any question who the shooter is,” Sanders said.

  Cain wrestled with whether he should tell him that Kurylenko was dead. That he shot and killed him earlier that night. But something was nagging at him, something that was telling him not to say anything. He wasn’t sure who was behind the Kurylenko deception but until he knew who it was, he thought it was best not to say anything about it.

  “I have a few analysts trying to pin down his location now so we can get rid of this son of a bitch,” Sanders told him. He broke from his thought pattern as his phone started ringing.

  “Yeah?” Sanders answered.

  Cain watched him intently as Sanders seemed to answer everything in short sentences without revealing much. Sanders smiled once he hung up and put the phone away.

  “Looks like good news,” Sanders stated.

  “What’s happening?” Lawson wondered.

  “Looks like we’ve got him cornered.”

  “Really?” Cain asked.

  “Some abandoned warehouse a little east of here. I’m gonna head down there and take charge of the situation,” Sanders said. “Wanna come?”

  “No
. I’m sure you guys will take care of it. I think I’d be better off staying here in case anything changes,” Cain replied.

  “Understandable. I’ll let you know what happens.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Well at least there’s some good news,” Lawson stated.

  “I guess so.”

  “Hopefully it’ll be over soon.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Why? You don’t think they’ll get him?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” Lawson asked.

  “Because I don’t think they have him cornered like they think they do,” Cain answered.

  He contemplated telling Lawson what happened but quickly reconsidered. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her but didn’t want to put her in a position to have to lie or cover things up for him. So it’d be easier to just keep her out of the loop for the time being. The pair continued waiting, waiting for word from either a doctor or Sanders to let them know what was going on. Though Cain’s mind was predominantly focused on Heather, he did wonder how they had a man cornered that he had already killed. Either Sanders was deliberately lying to him or Sanders himself was being duped. Either way, he was interested in what the final result would be.

  Two hours went by and Lawson was starting to get a little antsy about Kurylenko, waiting there for information. Cain though, knowing Kurylenko was already dead, was calm and nonchalant about hearing from Sanders. Lawson couldn’t believe how calm Cain was being about Kurylenko. She figured he’d be angry about what happened and either try to kill him himself or be waiting on the edge of his seat until he found out what happened with Kurylenko. A few minutes later, Lawson’s phone started ringing. It was Sanders.