by James Hunt
Lena closed the folder, which sent a soft gust of wind that ruffled the old papers of the civil suit. She pushed the folder away and stood, knuckling the top of her desk as she stared him down. “There isn’t anything you can say, or do, to get rid of this bill. Do you understand me? Nothing.” She stepped around the desk and inched close enough to smell the faint scent of cologne that lingered on his tie. “And if you ever go after me and my family again, I will end you.” She looked him up and down, disgust etched in stone across her face. “My town, and my state, aren’t some pawn for you to play with. Get the fuck out of my office.” She picked up the folder and slammed it into his chest with enough force to make him stumble backward.
Longwood appeared and escorted Ken out. Once the lobbyist was gone he popped his head back inside, chuckling. “I knew I voted for you for a reason, Mrs. Hayes.” He tipped his hat and then returned to his post at the door.
Lena sat down and returned to the old files, and though the show of force felt good, a sour pit had formed in her stomach. The more she fought it, the bigger it grew. And when she picked up the pen to jot down a few notes, she couldn’t stop her hand from shaking.
7
The glow of Lena’s desk lamp was the only source of light left in the office. Janine had long since gone home, leaving only Lena and the deputy. The late hour wasn’t anything new. During her days as a lawyer, the addict within had always wallowed in the complete submersion of her casework. But like all addictions, it came with a cost. The absent presence was well documented in her family’s life. It wasn’t on purpose, it wasn’t out of malice intent, it was simply her personality. Whether it was good or bad, self-destructing or building character, she didn’t stop until it was finished.
The joints in her neck popped when she leaned back, and the bubble-wrap-like noises continued as she rotated her shoulders and stretched her back. She reached for her coffee mug and found that it was empty.
In the kitchen Lena tossed the rest of the pot out and reached for a new coffee filter. She had just poured in the coffee when the lights in the kitchen suddenly shut off. She palmed the wall until she made it to the door, bumping into a few open cabinets along the way. The lamp on her desk was off, and the only light in the office shone through the windows from the moonlight outside.
“Mrs. Hayes, are you all right?” Longwood’s silhouette grew larger as he stepped forward.
“I’m fine.” Lena squinted out the window, looking across the street, where one of the window signs in the convenience store still shone brightly. “One of the breakers must have flipped.”
“Where’s the box?” Longwood asked.
“It’s in the back near the—”
Gunshots blasted holes through the front windows. The deputy tackled Lena to the floor, and the impact angered the bruises on her ribs. She cried out, but her moans were muted by gunfire. The deputy reached for his gun and pulled the two of them behind the cover of her desk. “Stay down!” He leapt up, aiming toward the shooter out front, and Lena watched the flash of the muzzle illuminate three quick strikes.
Nearly deaf from the gunfire, Lena watched the deputy mouth something and then sprint toward the door. She rolled to her side, the adrenaline masking the pain in her ribs. She gripped the edge of her desk and pulled herself up.
Spider-like webs crawled over the glass, eradiating from dozens of bullet holes in the front windows. The street was empty. No movement. The din in Lena’s ears slowly faded, and she reached for her cell phone on the desk. With her hand on the device another gunshot thundered into the office.
Lena ducked behind her desk then dashed into the rear office, huddling behind one of the dividing walls. The door hinges groaned as the shooter entered, and she heard the crunch of boots on glass. Her heart caught in her throat, and she covered her mouth to mask her panting breaths.
A bullet splintered the adjacent divider wall where Lena hid, and hoped the sound of the gunshot muffled her scream as she crawled deeper into the office. She opened a few of the drawers she passed, looking for anything she could use to defend herself, and settled on a pair of scissors that she clutched tightly in her fist.
“I know you’re in here, Hayes!” The voice was angry. Two more random gunshots fired. “You think you can take our jobs from us without a fight? That’s our livelihood!”
Lena slid along the back portion of the wall, staying below the divider’s top. She paused once she reached the edge and waited. Footsteps grew louder, and Lena tightened her grip, coiling her arm in anticipation to strike.
A pant leg crossed her plane of vision first, and Lena drove the tip of the scissors into the man’s calf. She dug the metal tip deep and felt muscle tear. The man screamed and she threw her weight into his body, knocking both of them to the floor.
The gun skidded across the tile and under the desk of another cubicle. Lena clutched her side, drawing in sharp breaths that stabbed her ribs. She stretched a hand to reach for the gun, and a hand gripped her ankle and pulled her backward, her stomach skidding across the cold tile.
“You fucking bitch!” The shooter wore a black mask, only the whites of his teeth and eyes visible in the darkness.
Lena kicked and her heel cracked the shooter’s jaw. His hold loosened but didn’t fully release. She tugged viciously to free herself, all the while still trying to stretch her body across the floor to reach the gun only a few feet away.
A quick punch to her kidneys buckled her body, and she was suddenly flipped to her back. The shooter mounted her and raised his hand. “Should have done this a long fucking time ago.” The harsh crack of his knuckles against her cheek drew blood. Lena countered with a quick jab to the man’s nose, but her efforts were blocked, and she felt both her wrists pinned to the floor. “Feisty, ain’t you?” He raised his hand again, but Lena shifted her knee to his crotch and thrust upward. He doubled over, grabbing his privates and moaning.
Lena pushed herself backward with her elbows and then lunged for the pistol under the desk. Her fingertips had just scraped the handle when she felt something metal and cold press into the back of her skull.
“Don’t move, bitch.”
Two gunshots. Lena shuddered. When she turned around the shooter had collapsed. Suddenly hands were on her, and she smacked at them, but when they cupped her face she saw that it was Jake.
“Are you all right?” His eyes were wide, as they used to get when he was scared as a boy.
Lena threw her arms around her brother’s neck and squeezed tight. The flash of blue and red lights flooded the office walls and floors, and Jake helped Lena to her feet. On the way out her gaze was drawn back to the shooter, who now lay in a pile of blood.
Outside, another masked man was cuffed and thrown into the back of a squad car, and there were at least a dozen deputies outside, including Longwood, who had tracked down the second shooter. Jake threw a space blanket over Lena’s shoulders and shoved a bottled water in her hand. He examined the fresh cut. “We need a medic over here! Tell Johnson to get his ass out of bed!”
Lena did her best to hide the shaking, but even after the time it took for Mark to get a ride from the house and meet her in town, she still hadn’t calmed. She mumbled words incoherently, crying into Mark’s shoulder as they held on to one another. But while the fear of death had gripped its icy hands around her throat, dying wasn’t what she feared most. What if these men had chosen to attack the house and go after the girls? They had the deputies watching over them, sure, but all it would take was a stray bullet to ricochet off the wall, or a careless moment by one of the deputies. If they were trying to kill her, how much longer would they wait until they tried to kill one of her family?
Once Lena had been cleared by the paramedic, Jake helped her over to the squad car and made sure he sent an extra unit over to the house to keep watch. After she left, he turned his attention to the suspect that survived, still sitting in the back of the squad car, his head down and his hands cuffed behind his back.
; “Sheriff?” Deputy Longwood approached wearily. “We’ve finished up with the crime scene inside. Should I send the paramedics in to take care of the body?”
“Yeah.” Jake kept his eyes glued to the suspect’s profile through the car window. “Have we filled out his report yet?”
“No, Sheriff. Not yet.”
“Good.” Jake left Longwood in charge and instructed his deputies to scour the streets, questioning anyone in the area about what they saw and heard. He wanted everyone out of the station, so he could interrogate the survivor alone.
The second shooter shifted uneasily in the backseat when he watched Jake climb behind the wheel. Tires screeched to a halt in the parking spaces outside the sheriff’s office, and without a word Jake yanked the man out of the backseat, handling him like a rag doll. He kicked the man into the interrogation room, where he smacked hard against the tile and slid to the back wall.
“Hey, man! Fuck you!” The shooter flopped on the floor like a fish out of water.
Jake grabbed the chair at the table and then slammed it down in the corner just below the video camera. He stepped up, plucked the cord, and the red light switched off.
The suspect gulped a wad of his own spit. “Look, we were never gonna actually hurt her. We just wanted to scare—”
The crunch of cartilage replaced whatever words were meant to come next. Jake’s fist throbbed, but he gripped the suspect by the collar and slammed him against the wall. The man’s skull whipped backward and cracked against the concrete. “You the same pricks that roughed up Mark?” The man’s eyes lolled back and forth, and Jake backhanded him, leaving behind an imprint of knuckles. “Answer me!”
“Yeah.” The man nodded his head quickly. “It was us.” His breathing was labored, and a small trickle of blood flowed from his left nostril.
Jake tossed him aside, and with the man’s hands still cuffed behind his back, he landed hard and awkwardly on the floor. Bones cracked, and the man screamed. Jake slammed the toe of his boot into the man’s stomach, giving him a distraction from the pain of the fall. “Were you working for someone at the oil company?” Only groans answered back, and Jake picked the big man up once again and slammed him onto the table, wrapping his hands tight around the man’s throat. “Who told you to do it?”
The man’s face turned a light shade of pink, then purple as he grasped at Jake’s arms and hands. He shook his head, throaty gargles and spit bubbling from his lips. Jake leaned in close. “What was that?” He slowly loosened his grip.
“It was Frankie’s idea. He just told me to come along.” He drew in a ragged breath, struggling to get the words out. “He never mentioned anything about killing her. Just. Wanted. To scare her.” The shade of purple in the man’s cheeks grew a deeper hue, and just when Jake thought the last breath had been drawn, he let go.
The man rolled back and forth on the table, sucking in huge gulps of air and coughing a painful wheeze. Jake’s hands trembled, but he hid the spasms with clenched fists. “You’re telling me this was all Frankie Lucas’s idea?” He’d gone to school with Frankie, and though he was four years older than Jake, the two had the same math class his freshman year. Not exactly the criminal mastermind. “Bullshit.”
“No, I swear to god. He’s the only person I talked to. He never mentioned anyone else.” He backed up until he collided with the one-way glass.
Jake wrapped his left hand around the man’s neck one more time, his right hand raised in a fist. “You run her off the road too?”
The man’s cheeks wiggled back and forth as he furiously shook his head. “N-No, I never did that. Maybe Frankie, but he never mentioned it.” Tears burst from the corners of his eyes, and Jake felt him tremble. “Jake, I wasn’t gonna hurt her. I swear to Christ I wasn’t.”
Finally, Jake let him go. The man slid to the floor, blubbering all over himself. Jake’s knuckles cracked, and he reached for the door handle, leaving the man cuffed and crying on the floor.
When he stepped out of the room, Longwood was there in front of the one-way glass, alone. “Sheriff, there’s someone here to see you. A Mrs. Kelly Coleman? She said it’s about her husband.”
Jake gestured inside the interrogation room. “Get him to a cell. And he doesn’t call anyone until the morning. Understand?” Longwood nodded quickly, and Jake headed toward his office, wondering what the hell that woman wanted now.
The deputies who escorted Lena home waited outside while Mark helped her into the house. Not much was said, but they held onto each other tight. Mark shouldered the door open, and Lena limped into the living room, the scene horribly familiar. The combination of the late hour, the foggy haze, the fear-induced panic that had overtaken any semblance of coherent thought and motor function—all of it reminded her of the nights she stumbled home drunk or high or both. The memories made her sick.
Lena took a seat at the kitchen table, and Mark poured her a glass of water, which remained untouched. He sat across from her, the two illuminated under the hanging lamp light. “I never thought it would come to this.” The shock had worn off and was replaced by a numbness that consumed her body. “What if the girls—”
“They’re going to be fine.” Mark squeezed her hand and smiled, the bruising on his eye beginning to shade into a darker blue and purple. “We have the deputies here.”
Even now Lena still felt the percussive blasts of the gunshots. “Have I pushed this too far?” The question penetrated through the noise of her mind, begging for an answer. “I poured nearly all of our money from my practice into the civil suit, and then what was left over we used on the campaign.” She shook her head. “Maybe I wanted to see something that wasn’t there. Use this to help right some of my own mistakes.”
“You took this case because there were people who needed help. You understand what it’s like to live at the bottom, feeling your way through the darkness.” He glanced to the hallway where the girls’ rooms were, then back to her. “You did it so your daughters wouldn’t suffer the same fate as the children of the families you’ve helped.”
Lena leaned over the table and kissed Mark, ignoring the pain in her body. When she pulled back she lingered near his lips. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” They held onto one another for a moment, and it wasn’t soon after that Mark announced that he was heading to bed.
“I’ll be in there in a minute.” Lena lingered at the kitchen table and looked out their front window to the two squad cars parked in the yard. She turned the light off in the kitchen, and when she walked down the hallway to Kaley’s room she felt the weight of the day slow her pace. Hell, it was the weight of the past two years.
Lena pushed Kaley’s door open and saw her youngest twisted up in her bedsheets, sound asleep. She rested her head against the doorframe and watched the steady rise and fall of Kaley’s chest. She walked inside and kissed her forehead. Kaley squirmed from the intrusion but didn’t wake.
Gwen was sound asleep as well, and just like her father, she slept on top of the sheets instead of under. She lay on her stomach. Her long black hair fell across her back and almost reached her waist. She had a lot of her father in her, more so than Lena would like to admit. She was stubborn and not quick to trust, but those faults rested on Lena’s shoulders. Gwen didn’t ask to have an addict for a mother, and Lena didn’t ask for an addiction. But both handled it as best they could.
With the girls asleep and Mark waiting in the bedroom, Lena lingered in the hallway. She closed her eyes and knew how close this was to being over, but there was still the long fight ahead to keep the bill alive in the state house. A victory tomorrow would make the journey a hell of a lot easier. She just hoped she survived long enough to see it happen.
Jake saw Kelly through the cracks in the blinds of his office. She sat with her back to him, and he watched her for a moment before he entered, trying to gather the nerve for what he needed to say. She shot out of her chair when he burst through the door, and he kept his tone quick and brisk. �
�Sorry about the wait. It’s been a crazy night.”
“What’s going on out there?” The tone suggested fear, and when she tried to get close to Jake he crossed his arms, and she backed off, her tone less eager. “I saw Lena’s office all shot up, with squad cars out front.”
“I’m handling it.” Jake cocked his head to the side. “What’s going on with Reese?”
Kelly sheepishly lowered her head. “I didn’t want to tell you because I wasn’t sure… well, how to tell you.” She clasped her hands together. “But I called the oil company, and they said that Reese didn’t show up for his shift tonight.” She swayed back and forth on her feet, the large hooped earrings dangling from her lobes. “Jake, something’s wrong.”
“I’ve put in a request for a warrant to check their personnel files and their security footage. I should have it by morning.” He gestured toward the door. “I’ll let you know if I find anything. I’ve got a lot of work to get ready for tomorrow. The town hall—”
“That’s it?” Kelly raised her voice. “That’s all you’re going to say?” She shrugged her shoulders, looking around the office in disbelief, as if the answers were in plain sight. “You’re unbelievable, you know that?”
“Now’s not the time for this.” Jake kept an even keel to his tone, looking through the blinds to ensure that none of his deputies had entered the building. “You need to go home, and when I know something I will call you.”
“Fuck you, Jake!”
The shriek triggered him to jump from his chair and grab Kelly by the shoulders. He pulled her close, and she winced. “What the hell did you think was gonna happen? You were gonna leave Reese and then I’d marry you? Is that it?” He looked her up and down. “Why would I marry trailer trash?”
