Justice for Daesha

by Deanndra Hall

  Amos recognized it―Lucy Kelso. And the voice that replied was Marshall’s.

  “Honey, please … This is getting you nowhere. Just let me go and I’ll take Daesha with me. Come on, sweetheart, you really don’t want to hurt her, do you?”

  “Of course I don’t want to hurt her!” Lucy screamed. “But she has to be stopped. That agent what’s-his-name has to be stopped. If they dig too deeply, they’ll find out about our miscreant sons and your tenure will be over.”

  “They’re not miscreants, Lucy. They’re men who loved a woman, and you ended that for them,” he heard Marshall say.

  “I didn’t mean to end it! It was an accident! I just went over there to talk to her, but she wouldn’t listen! Then she started to fight with me, and I just … It just happened, okay? I didn’t mean for it to, but she slapped me, so when she turned, I hit her with that block. And she still wouldn’t stay down! She just kept getting back up!”

  “But I don’t remember seeing you all scratched up from the fight,” Marshall said.

  Lucy’s voice was filled with rage. “Of course you don’t! Like always, you weren’t here! You were off in Washington, doing whatever, or whoever, it is that you do when you’re there!”

  “I’ve never been unfaithful to you, Lucy. Never. We’ve had a lot of good years. Why do they have to end this way?”

  Amos and the three brothers were growing closer to the sounds of the voices and when they turned the corner, there they were. Lucy stood in front of Marshall, who was tied to a chair, his wrists and ankles bound. And she had a gun. Before Amos could stop him, Ainsley cried out, “Mom! What the hell are you doing?”

  “Trying to clean up your mess, you idiot. You three are an embarrassment to this family. You’re going to cost your father his position in Washington. You realize that, right?”

  “No, Mom. But this will do it. So put the gun down and we can talk, okay?” Benson said, his voice almost a whisper.

  “And you!” Lucy railed at Amos. “You started this! If you’d left everything alone, it all would’ve been fine!”

  “No, Mom, it wouldn’t, because you killed Dorinda. You took her from us. You broke our hearts. And now you’re trying to hurt Daesha, and she hasn’t done anything wrong. Don’t you see what you’re doing?” Chance pleaded.

  “Me? Don’t you see what YOU’RE doing? You brought them here. It’s all your fault!” With a shaky hand, she pointed the gun at Chance. “I should kill all three of you. That would take care of the problem, now wouldn’t it?”

  “Mom, do you hear yourself?” Benson shouted.

  Amos heard a shuffling sound behind him. SRT agents. He was sure of it. “Mrs. Kelso, please, put the gun down. Nobody else has to die,” he warned quietly.

  Then he got a look at Marshall’s face. The senator was looking past Amos at the SRT agents and his face contorted. In a broken, gasping voice he whispered, “I … I’m … I think I’m … having a … heart attack.”

  “Oh, god, somebody get his nitro!” Benson cried out. “Please! Help him! He has a heart condition!”

  The senator was panting. “Oh … pain … not gonna …” His head dropped.

  “Mrs. Kelso, we need to get medical help for your husband. Can you let us do that?” As Amos took a step toward her, she lifted her weapon.

  It all happened so fast that there was no time to throw up a halt signal. He heard the click of the weapon behind him as it fired, saw Mrs. Kelso drop, heard the sons scream. Everything around him ground to a screeching halt. “NOOOOOO!” he bellowed, but it was too late.

  “Suspect down, suspect down,” one of the SRTs called out. “We need medical here STAT!” There was a flurry of footsteps around him, but Amos couldn’t make sense of anything. All he knew was that he hadn’t gotten the one piece of information he needed.

  Where was Daesha?

  The Kelso brothers were sobbing out loud, and EMTs were rushing in, checking Senator Kelso’s vitals and trying to get a central line in, working over Mrs. Kelso as a pool of blood seeped from the wound in her shoulder. Amos wheeled on the three men. “Where is she!”

  “I don’t know!” Benson screamed. “Daesha!” he yelled, but with the racket from all the officers and emergency crews, they couldn’t hear anything.

  “Think, damn it! Think! Where would she be?”

  He could see Chance panicking. “Um, trunk of the car? Uh, I don’t know! Oh, fuck it all! Where is she?”

  “God, we’ve got to find her! Where could she be?” Benson screamed aloud. “Somebody, think! Where could she―”

  Bless his heart, it was Ainsley who said quietly, “The freezer.”

  Amos spun to stare at him. “Is it operational?”

  Ainsley’s hair swayed as he shook his head. “No. It’ll be hotter than an oven in there, and no air moving. If that’s where she is, she may not … It’s back here,” he said and began to run, Amos right on his heels and the other two brothers trailing.

  Sure enough, there was a freezer back there. It was the size of two rail cars, and the door was locked tight. Amos pounded on the metal. “DAESHA! Are you in there, baby? It’s me! It’s Amos!” Oh, god, his brain screamed, we can’t be too late! He shrieked across the building, “We need jaws! STAT!”

  To his relief, he heard one of the SRTs yell toward the front, “Victim may be in the freezer back there! Get the first responders and their jaws back here!”

  Amos could hear feet running and in what seemed like hours but had to only be seconds, two firefighters appeared with the huge contraption in their hands. One yanked a pull cord on a portable generator and the thing roared to life. “Everybody back!” he yelled and headed toward the door.

  The door was sealed so tightly that the spreader couldn’t get between the layers of metal, so they attached the cutter, but it couldn’t make a hole large enough to get through. The metal was unusually thick, and there was layer upon layer of some kind of insulating material. Amos tapped the firefighter on the shoulder. “Will it work on the hinges?” he yelled over the device’s din.

  “I doubt it, but I’ll try it.” With the spreader back on it, he tried to jam it under a hinge, but there wasn’t room. He reattached the cutter and tried going from the top of the hinge to the bottom. It took a few tries but eventually he managed to cut through it, then attacked the other two huge hinges. When the last one was destroyed, the door pivoted crookedly on the latch and fell, its gaskets too rotted to create the vacuum that it had in its heyday.

  It was pitch black inside, but before Amos could yell for a light, the freezer was illuminated with a tactical flashlight one of the SRTs was holding. And there, against the back wall, lay Daesha, quiet and still. Oh, god, we’re too late! Amos’s heart whimpered. “Daesha! Baby, it’s Amos! Wake up!” Even though her skin was dry, she lay in a puddle of sweat and urine, and her pulse was weird and weak. “I need medical!” Before the words were even out of his mouth, a gurney loaded with a trauma bag appeared beside him.

  “Step back, sir. We’ll get her.” Two EMTs worked over her, snapping a cervical collar around her neck for safety purposes and sliding her onto a backboard. They lifted her and placed her on the wheeled apparatus, but she never moved. “I’m having trouble getting a line in. No veins. She too dehydrated.” In a split second, Amos heard him say, “Ah. There we go. Let’s roll.” They each grabbed an end of the gurney, lifted it and yanked upward, and the wheels fell to the ground. In mere seconds they were out the door.

  As they loaded her into the ambulance, Alex ran up with an older man. “Amos! This is Mr. Wilkerson. Sir, this is Amos Fletcher, the agent in charge.”

  “My daughter! Where’s my daughter!”

  “The EMTs have her, sir. They’re taking her right now.” Amos had every intention of forcing them to let him ride with her, but they were pulling out. He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to once again find his little brother.

  “Hey. Cruiser’s right here. Alex, take over,” Jack said, and the younger ag
ent lifted his chin in reply. “Let’s go. Both of you. Hurry.”

  Amos and Lawrence Wilkerson piled into the back of Jack’s cruiser and in seconds, they were racing to catch up with the ambulance. A solitary tear rolled down Amos’s face, and he hoped nobody noticed it, but when he looked up, Jack caught his eye in the rearview mirror and smiled. “She’ll be fine, brother. I’m sure of it.”

  “Wish I were,” Amos mumbled.

  “That makes both of us,” another voice said. It was the first words Lawrence had spoken since they’d left the scene.

  Of course he was terrified. She was his only living family member, and she was being rushed toward the hospital. “Sir, I’m really sorry. I feel like I fell down on the job, and I―”

  “Young man, you have nothing to apologize for. I’m sure Daesha saw Lucy and thought everything was fine. No telling what she told my daughter. Might’ve told her something had happened to me or to Marshall. But Daesha wouldn’t have hesitated to go with her, not for a minute. They were really close when the kids were little. She trusted Lucy. Had no reason not to.”

  Amos hung his head. “Thanks, but that really doesn’t make me feel any better.”

  Everyone was silent for a few minutes until Lawrence spoke. “You know, I talked to her on the phone earlier in the week. She loves you, Agent Fletcher.”

  “That’s Amos, sir.”

  “And that’s not sir. It’s Lawrence. She went on and on about how great you are, how you’d do anything for her, how you’d give your life for her. I think she was right.”

  Amos couldn’t hold it in anymore. His heart was breaking. If she didn’t make it, he wasn’t sure what would happen to him, but he knew he wouldn’t give a damn about anything ever again. “She was. If I could trade places with her right now, I would.” Tears rolled down his face. “I just keep thinking about how terrified she must’ve been, in total darkness and not understanding what was happening. I’m sure she kept wondering why I didn’t come for her.”

  Lawrence laid a hand on top of Amos’s. “But you did!”

  “Not fast enough.” Amos turned away and stared out the window, tears pouring down his face. “There was very little air in there, and it had to be a hundred and thirty degrees. I missed it. I should’ve known it was Lucy. I should’ve caught the fact that she was bitter. I―”

  “Don’t ‘should’ on yourself, son. It’s a waste of time. All you’ve got is now, and all you can do is keep moving forward. Everything else is a waste.”

  Jack’s voice interrupted them. “Mr. Wilkerson?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Not sir. Jack. I’m Amos’s brother. And I have to tell you, my wife and I have grown to love Daesha. She’s a wonderful person. But we knew she had to be. My brother’s never been this head-over-heels in love with a woman before, so she has to be special.”

  “She is. She’s a one-of-a-kind,” Lawrence answered and smile.

  Yes. She’s a one-of-a-kind. And if she doesn’t make it, there’ll never be another Daesha. Never. Amos watched the miles roll by as they barreled toward Elizabethtown and the nearest hospital. She had to make it. He’d only known her for two weeks, but he’d be lost without her.

  They could hear the EMTs calling out vitals as they ran down the hallway. “Female Caucasian. Suspected heat stroke with obvious dehydration. Approximately thirty-five years. Pulse, one sixty and thready. Blood pressure, seventy over fifty and unstable. Respiration …” Amos couldn’t hear everything they were saying. He was trying too hard to keep up.

  When they reached the trauma area doors, the gurney sped through but a nurse blocked their way. “No one allowed back here. We’ll be out in a minute to talk to you, but right now, they need their space to work with her.” The three men were left standing there, staring through the tiny windows in the doors that had closed in front of them.

  Amos was almost out of his mind. Jack tried to talk to him, but he was having none of that. They’d been waiting about thirty minutes when a familiar voice cut through the silence of the waiting area. “Son?”

  He turned to find his parents standing there. Denise’s cheeks were wet with tears, and Henry held out his arm to their son. When Amos reached them, he pressed his face to his dad’s shoulder. Henry had always been their rock, the person who could fix anything that went wrong, but he couldn’t fix that situation, and Amos felt lost and alone, no matter his mother’s arms closing around him.

  It was at least another ten minutes before a doctor stepped into the waiting area. “Wilkerson?” Amos and Lawrence both shot up and the doctor approached them. His voice was quiet and even. “She suffered serious heat stroke, but we’re encouraged that she was still sweaty when she came in. That means her dehydration hadn’t gone too far. Unfortunately, the chance of brain damage is very high. Her core temperature was about one-oh-six. That’s way too high. We’ve brought it down to normal, and her blood pressure, respiration, and heart rate have stabilized. The next few hours will tell the tale. We’ve put her in a medically-induced coma to let any brain swelling subside.” Amos wanted to ask questions, but he wasn’t sure what to ask, when the doctor asked, “Would you like to see her?”

  “Yes!” both men answered in unison.

  The doctor swept his gaze from one to the other. “I’m only supposed to let one person at a time go in, but I don’t give a damn. Come on.” They followed behind him as he led them to a small cubicle. “As soon as we know she’s stabilized, we’ll move her to ICU, but for now, we’re monitoring her.” The nurse standing to the side nodded at them.

  Amos took one of her hands and Lawrence took the other. Her dad leaned down and whispered, “I love you, sweetheart. I’m so sorry this happened. These people will take good care of you. I’ll be right out there in the waiting room. I’m going to let Amos stay here with you. I can see he loves you. Everything will be fine.” With a pat on Amos’s shoulder, Lawrence stepped out of the cubicle and Amos was there alone with Daesha. Even the nurse moved to stand on the other side of the curtain.

  He bowed his head, closed his eyes, and let the tears fall. Losing her … He couldn’t. He’d finally opened his heart to someone, and that was the result. As they were growing up, over and over, Jack had gotten knocked down by life, but he’d always gotten back up. Amos, on the other hand, had seemed to lead a charmed life. Everything he tried he’d excelled at, and every obstacle had somehow dissolved. I suppose this is karma’s way of catching up with me after all these years, he told himself.

  Smoothing a hand over her forehead, he thought about Jack and Heather. They’d been together for years and fought her disease valiantly, only to lose the battle in the end. But by damn, they’d had years together, and some of them were very good. He’d only had Daesha for a couple of weeks. Yes, Heather’s illness and death had been unfair, but there was something just as unfair about having love for a little while and then losing it.

  Oh, dear god, Fletcher, listen to yourself! a voice in his mind scolded. He was standing there, holding the hand of a woman who might never wake up, and all he was thinking about was his loss and how unfair it was to him. What about her? Her sister had been brutally murdered, and until that morning, no justice had ever been found. Her mother died. And then, to try to ease her pain, she’d gone off to war, only to come back with part of her body missing and a monumental task ahead of her, to forge some kind of life out of the rubble of what she’d been handed. Not only that, but she’d dedicated that life to helping others, human and animal alike, with a depth of compassion he’d never known.

  He knew in that moment he had nothing to complain about. He’d been given a wonderful gift, the gift of that strong, compassionate woman’s love, for a few days. If those few days had to last him a lifetime, then so be it. Without her there beside him, her memory would have to do, and he’d make it work. He’d show more love and caring for the people he served. He’d be quicker to take cases no one else wanted because they were so emotionally draining. He’d show appreciation
for his supervisor, his coworkers, his parents, and by god, for Jack and Aleta. No more teasing his baby brother. No more calling him names or putting him down. Jack was a hero. He’d been right beside Amos every step of the way, and his big brother would never let Jack down again.

  “Sir, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to leave. We’ll come out and let you know if anything changes. Okay?” The nurse’s hand on his shoulder held a tiny bit of comfort, and he was thankful for her too, for all the people who were working so hard to do what they could for the woman in that bed.

  He was weeping openly when he pressed through the doors back into the waiting room. Jack was still there, and a crying Aleta stood beside him. She ran straight to Amos and wrapped her arms around his waist. His sister-in-law. God, he hoped they’d have kids because any children they had would be an asset to the world they lived in. Denise and Henry were sitting with Lawrence, speaking quietly and trying to comfort him. And along the back wall were his fellow agents, Mack, Alex, and Jesse. Those guys had become his family as surely as the Fletchers were, and he was grateful to them and all the troopers, deputies, and first responders who’d come to help. When he reached Mack, he held out his hand, but his supervisor swept him up in a bear hug that was tightened by Alex and Jesse. “Believe, agent,” Mack whispered in his ear. “You’ve got to believe.”

  Amos pulled back and looked into Mack’s eyes. “I’m trying. I swear, I’m trying, but it’s hard.”

  “Let’s sit down, okay? We need to talk.” Once they were all seated, Mack pressed his hands to Amos’s knees to help him focus. “Senator Kelso is okay. He’s going to have to have heart surgery, but right now he’s stable. His sons are with him, them and their boatload of regret for having blamed their dad all this time. Their mother is in surgery. She lost a lot of blood, and she’ll probably lose the use of that arm, but she’s expected to survive. As soon as possible, there’ll be an indictment brought down and she’ll go on trial when she’s well. That’s if she pleads not guilty. We’re all hoping she doesn’t do that.”