by Gary Sapp
saw the first signs that they may indeed be too late.
Chris felt the first stab of pain strike the walls of his stomach when he saw drops of blood on the floor. The pain transformed into nausea and eventually numbness all together when they nearly stepped on the first dead body. Grace stooped down and scanned for a pulse, but Chris could tell by her reaction alone that the victim was long dead.
A half dozen Peacekeepers were found scattered across another corridor. Chris hypothesized that the men and women paid the most particular interest to the ones who were loyal to herself and the man she loved. When she finally rose to her feet after tending to the sixth fallen Peacekeeper he could see in her face that her hopes of finding Xavier and extracting him out of this place alive was fading.
His beloved brother hadn’t given up on finding him when Louis Keaton held him so long ago.
He could at least return that determination.
He put a hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
“Lead on, Grace.” He said to her. “For better or worse, we need to find Xavier.”
She lifted her long legs and did as she was asked, peeling a rifle off of one of the carcasses and continued taking the point. Blue had trailed them from the rear so far by a few yards, scanning everything in her site, saying little, and leaving nothing to chance. She was sweating.”
The entered a small room after a few more minutes that fed into a far more grand setting of a courtyard. There were at least ten more bodies spiraled about it. It smelled of bruised blood, marrow, urine and gunfire.
They were deep into an abyss.
And there they found Xavier at last.
Blue holstered her gun and pushed her tied down hair out of her eyes to give herself something to do so she wouldn’t focus on what she was seeing. Grace found a nearby wall without looking for it to support her weight as she struggled to hold herself up right any longer. Chris…Chris Prince didn’t move for a very long time. He wanted to ease his frame over to where he saw a bloodied, dying Xavier sitting up with his back resting on an adjacent wall, stroking the equally blood nappy mane of a dead young man who looked to be no older than his step daughter when she died. The younger man looked very much like a child who had settled in for a long nap.
Special Agent Christopher Prince couldn’t tell whether his brother’s blood ended and the younger man’s began. He glanced to his own left and recognized Warren Washington’s frame, still athletic, even in death. Chris had trained with men and women who’d taken a great pride in piecing impossible crime scenes like this together like one would piece together a jigsaw puzzle.
The professional in him did not envy them this task.
But the Christopher Prince who had a personal stake in this rediscovered his resolve, and stepped over the final dead body that separated he and his dying brother and made his way over to him. Chris sat on his knees on the floor in front of him as close as he could.
“Xavier…it’s alright, man.” He examined two or three bullet holes pouring blood out of his chest and side. “It’s…it’s not that bad…really, we can fix this—“
“Liar,” Xavier said. And then he smiled at Chris and the action broke the agent’s heart all over again. “You should stick to the truth, big brother; it’s what Dad always said you were best at. And he was right.”
And even if time allowed me to, do I send you into eternity knowing the ugly truth about our father?
Instead, Chris squeezed both of his brother’s forearms bruised by blood. He looked back only for a moment: He saw Tabitha Blue squatting over in a corner, protecting their perimeter against any attack and giving him a respectful moment to grieve. Grace Edwards had planted her face into her skinny hands and began to openly sob. The man she loved was dying and Chris was sure that she was wrongly blaming herself for her inability to protect him from Quincy Morgan’s power play.
Chris sat all the way down in front of his brother.
“Who did this to you?” Chris asked through clenched teeth.
Xavier remained tight lipped, but when the tears started flowing ever so freely and his stroking of the boy’s hair increase simultaneously it clued Chris in. Nevertheless he said, “I’ll find Quincy. I’ll make him pay for what he orchestrated here.”
Xavier wiped at his tears and then glanced down at the boy. “We’ve already paid the price, Chris. My vengeance has been served. It’s too late for anything else. I’ve already forgiven Quincy…I’ve forgiven Serena Tennyson as well—just as I hope my God can forgive me for all of my sins.”
“I wanted to save you, Xavier.” Chris said as his tears now came. He knew Grace’s misery. He understood it all too well. “I wanted to save you the same way you rescued me when we were just boys.”
Xavier stopped brushing the dead boy’s hair and reached for the living. He wrapped his arms around his brother Chris and pulled him close.
“You still can save me, big brother,” He said, his voice fading with every syllable. “I saw our father in a vision tonight, Chris. I don’t understand everything that seeing him was supposed to mean…I know that if you can save his legacy, that the both of us will live one. Don’t let his dreams die here. I want you to promise me that you won’t let them die when…I die.”
“I promise.”
Other than the sobbing of the two people closest to the one dying, there is only silence. Grace walks over, falls to her knees and wraps her slender figure around the both of them. Chris only listens as she tells her brother that she loves him and regrets not telling him earlier. Xavier’s voice had been reduced only to a whisper. Chris had wedged himself so close that he could feel his brother’s heart beating. It is louder than his voice at this point. Blue is silent…still…so still in fact that Chris cannot recall ever seeing her so motionless before.
Xavier whispered to him to tell his boys that he loved them and that he hoped to see them again soon. Chris wasn’t sure what that meant, but he nodded nonetheless.
And then with strength of voice that defied his condition, Xavier said, “Do you remember the track that was playing through the church’s speakers being piped in even in the bathroom I met you in?”
Chris nodded slowly through his tears.
“I do.”
“Do you remember what I said to you when I heard it?”
“You said that when you died, you wanted a song so beautiful to playing for you.”
Xavier smiled.
“Will you hum it for me, big brother?” Xavier asked. “Will you do this one last thing for me?”
Chris hums the melody of the song as best as he could remember.
“Yes…yes…that’s it, Christopher. That’s it exactly. It’s called A Death is in the air tonight. I never thought that I would have done enough in this world to earn my own theme song. I never…”
And then Xavier Prince, the One, the most dangerous man in the world—all of him died.
Special Agent Christopher Prince sees his own reflection as he glared into his brother’s lifeless eyes one last time before he gently closes them with two fingers.
Grace cries audibly and Blue bites back her own tears with every fiber of her being.
Chris begins humming his brother’s theme song from the beginning.
Xavier had died without even saying goodbye to him.
He never could say goodbye.
Roxanne
She watched Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree awake from her slumber at last. The other woman rubbed at the corners of her big brown eyes, shook the cobwebs out and then turned her attention to what should have been a tremendous know on the back of her head.
So this is the woman who Chris called his best friend?
The doctor noted Roxanne’s presence and she tell that the memories of what had transpired over the past few minutes and hours were pouring back into her. Angel went to stand, but Roxanne pulled her and gun and the doctor slid back into the Marta’s uncomfortable seat where Roxanne had directed her.
“Roxanne, listen, I’m only goin
g to say this once so listen up,” Angel said. “I don’t have the time to do—whatever in the hell it is you’re hoping that we can do right now.”
Roxanne waved the barrel of the gun at her again.
“Oh, you have more time…and less time than you’ll ever believe, Doctor. I’ve waited so many years for this moment right here. And I promise you that I won’t be disappointed.”
Angel cocked a brow. “This…all of this is about Marie isn’t it?” She dared to mention Roxanne’s dead sister’s name and began to rise from her seat once more without permission.”
“Sit down, Doctor. Please don’t have me tell you that again.”
Angel flashed her sad smile on her processed lips. Was there anything about this woman that wasn’t fake or enhanced or some shape or form? “You blame me for what the FBI did to your sister.”
Angel got to her feet over Roxanne’s objections…just long enough to seat herself next to her—violating all pretenses of etiquette and space. She then leaned on the gun’s barrel causing her to gasp for breath. Roxanne saw two or three Marta patrons glance over their shoulders, curious at what was going on in the farthest seat in the back of the car.
“Don’t insult either one of our intelligences, Doctor.” Roxanne held her gun steady, even with Angel brushing her side up against it repeatedly. “Don’t deny your full involvement in the FBI’s blatant murder of my sister.”
“I can’t speak to your version of past events, Roxanne.” Angel pushed her hair out of her eyes. “I was just as in the dark