by Joe Pascente
He placed the tie and the kitchen knife on the sink and found the medical kit stashed under the sink. Before he began to sew himself up with a needle and thread, he grabbed Angela’s cell phone from her beach bag (where she had put it after her phone call to her parents) and put the phone in his pants pocket. He wanted her to have it when he met up with her just in case they were to separate again.
The house was eerily silent. There were no dogs barking outside and no commotion anywhere in the safe house. The sun had set just a little bit ago and the darkness was beginning to creep into this empty house. Jacobi knew he was alone here, safe for the time being, but he needed to meet up with Angela as soon as possible—especially if the assassins were still after her.
As he was applying the antiseptic lotion to his cuts and bandaging them as fast as he could, he heard a single piece of glass being compressed by someone’s shoe. The sound came from the bedroom just a few steps from the adjoining bathroom he was standing in. Without making a sound, Jacobi picked up the kitchen knife from the countertop and held it at eye level in front of him. The bathroom door slightly cracked open, so Jacobi cautiously stepped behind it, trying to peek through the crack of the doorway.
There hadn’t been any other noises of glass cracking since he heard the first piece, but he knew whoever stepped on it, was still out there, making sure not to move again. Sweat was forming on Jacobi’s brow, as the temperature was still quite high outside, and in the house. Jacobi’s grip on the knife was tight in his left hand—since his right arm was still pretty impaired—and he was ready to attack if necessary, even in his wounded state.
There it was again, another crunch of the glass under a foot from outside the bathroom door. This time, there was no pausing afterwards. The person outside the bathroom knew someone was here and they wanted Jacobi to know they were waiting for him.
“I know you’re in there. I’m not going to hurt you, but you need to come out so we can have ourselves a chat.”
Jacobi had no clue who this mystery man could be, but he knew damn well what a ‘chat’ entailed from an assassin’s point of view. And if this man was another assassin, there would be another fight; but this time Jacobi wasn’t evenly matched due to his beat up body. If the man was anything in stature like the previous assassin he had just fought, he was surely in trouble.
“Honestly, man, I just want to speak with you. I feel like—”
WHAM!
Jacobi kicked the bathroom door wide open, hitting the man square in the face, knocking him back a few paces. The man was dressed all in black, quite handsome and had a gold cross around his neck. Jacobi held the kitchen knife close in front of his right shoulder, ready to attack.
“Whoa! Keep it civil! I don’t want to hurt you. I know you’re one of Dr. Haven’s bodyguards. I need to see her.”
“So you can kill her? You’re one of them—one of the assassins after her, aren’t you?” Jacobi was shouting, demanding answers.
He was now standing over Ace, ready to plunge the knife into his chest.
“The name’s Ace. And, I don’t want to kill her. I want to save her.”
III. 7-3-3-0
Angela had made her way through the dark tunnel that smelled like a sewer. In fact, for all intents and purposes, this tunnel was a sewer. There was a small stream of dirty water passing through that she tried to avoid stepping in, but it was unavoidable. This was the type of water Angela wasn’t fond of.
Trudging on down the tunnel, she wondered how long it could possibly be and where she would end up. There were a few twists and turns, but for the most part, it was just one long tube of darkness. She had left her cellphone in the safe house, so there was no flashlight app to help her see. That also meant there was no way she could contact Jacobi. They had exchanged numbers when they had stayed the night in the hotel.
But even if she could contact Jacobi, it didn’t mean he would answer. Last she saw him, he was lying on the grass looking dead as could be. She wanted to come to his aid, but there was no way out of the panic room but down the ladder and into this tunnel.
When she finally reached the end of the tunnel, there was another ladder leading up to another hatch. But this hatch had a code lock on it. One could only open the hatch from the inside with the code—therefore removing any possibility of someone coming through this hatch and into the panic room from the other side. The code was written on a piece of paper inside an envelope that was duct taped to the hatch.
7-3-3-0 #
Angela put the piece of paper back into the envelope and taped it back to the hatch.
This code better be right. I’m done with this tunnel.
Typing the code in the code lock, the hatch unlatched, and Angela pushed it open. Without any hesitation, she popped her head up and looked up at three individuals wearing all black. At first, she thought she was a dead woman. The assassins were smarter than her and were waiting for her to come up and out of the tunnel. But then her eyes adjusted to the bright lights coming from the fluorescent lighting in this room and she noticed they were all wearing aprons.
Looking around the room the hatch door was in the center of, Angela decided to climbed out and see where she had arrived. It was a kitchen full of coffee makers and whizzing machines. There was a label on one of the coffee cups she saw in the sink labeled, Hornsby’s Coffee House.
The three baristas had stunned looks on their faces as they had no idea the metal looking square on the kitchen floor was a hatch to a secret tunnel leading to a panic room inside a safe house for Mr. Hornsby’s bodyguards and their charges. One of the baristas dropped her coffee cup in shock when Angela stepped out of the hatch and onto the floor.
“Uhh…what the?” the barista with a mullet haircut muttered.
“I was just looking for the bathroom. Must’ve gotten lost. Excuse me,” Angela said, not knowing what to say. “I’ll just be going back to my seat now. But, I could definitely go for a cup of your strongest coffee.”
Angela figured why not take a load off as she waited for Jacobi to meet her at this random coffee shop. He had to know where the tunnel led. That was, if he was still breathing. If not, she’d stay here until they closed and then she’d make a decision of what to do next.
IV. Hit and Run
“I don’t know why, but I think I’m actually starting to believe you, Mr. Ace. Your story seems legit, it’s just hard to trust someone that’s apart of a team that keeps trying to end my life,” Jacobi said. “So, forgive the precautions I’m taking with you.”
They were walking down the staircase, Ace in front of Jacobi, holding his hands up above his head. Ace wanted to speak to Jacobi without turning around to face him.
“It’s understandable. And it’s just, Ace. No ‘mister’ necessary. I know you must think my story is crazy, but it’s true. I want nothing more than Dr. Haven to be safe and protected from my team. Well, my ex-team now.”
Normally, Ace would never have his back to a stranger like this, but he had no choice if he wanted Jacobi to believe in him. He had to give him some leverage at this point. They reached the bottom of the staircase and Ace looked around the foyer, still hands above his head, fingers interlocked.
“Just through this room, Ace.”
“Let me guess, the same brut that fought you also drove this bulldozer through the house too, right?”
“You’d be correct in that assumption.”
“For the record, he’s a class-A asshole.”
Stepping around the chaos that was the dining room, Ace placed his feet around the semi-caved in floor that was barely holding up by shreds of wood and plaster. The grenade really took a toll on the dining room’s foundation, especially with the weight of the bulldozer upon it.
“You know, I’d have to agree with you there. I hate that prick,” Jacobi said, stepping around the fragmented pieces of the floorboards.
&n
bsp; “Can I just tell you, I really appreciate you believing me in this insane situation. I tried to communicate all of this to the rest of my team and they couldn’t even—”
Ace had no time to react. Jacobi shoved Ace with all his might into the front of the bulldozer and onto the fragile collapsible floor. With the sudden added force of Ace’s body weight, the floor had no chance of staying intact and down went the bulldozer, along with Ace through the disintegrating floor.
Ace didn’t even have time to shout more than a “Fuuu—,” which Jacobi couldn’t even hear because it was all but silenced by the deafening sounds of the collapse. The bulldozer hit the basement floor hard, along with the dining room sofa and the rest of the damaged floor. Jacobi looked down into the large open hole that now looked down into the basement and saw Ace, face down under the couch, but out of the way of the bulldozer. Ace couldn’t know for sure, but he didn’t look dead from the fall. He was most likely just unconscious from the fall.
Either way, Jacobi would’ve been fine with the result. He didn’t believe a word Ace had told him about taking Pure and falling in love with Angela. It was all too farfetched and seemed like the perfect ploy to get close enough to kill her. All that Jacobi was concerned about was getting to Angela. He was praying she would be at Hornsby’s Coffee House. That’s where the tunnel led. That’s where he was on his way to.
Unfortunately, the motorcycle he had stolen from the man at the ice cream shop was now gone. One of the assassins must’ve taken it as they fled the safe house. Jacobi had no choice but to hot wire one of the neighbor’s cars a few houses over. He briefly thought about whose car he was stealing—some random mother with two kids that was already late for her Pilates class, coming out onto her driveway and trying to figure out what happened to her car. And then he snickered, thinking her day wasn’t half as bad as his had already been.
Angela was now on her third cup of cappuccino and was buzzing from the caffeine. At this point, the sky was a deep velvety purple and dark blues. There were no more shadows cast from the sunlight, just an overall darkness from the night sky. Angela was getting restless as she looked out the front window and knew the coffee house would be closing in a few minutes. She brushed the golden locks away from her eyes and bit her lip, almost on the verge of having a mild panic attack, not knowing what was to come next. But, that’s when she heard the sound of tires squealing in front of the coffee house.
The black SUV pulled right into the first spot, and a beat up Jacobi stepped out of the front door, still not moving his left arm. They made eye contact through the front window and the anxiety melted from each of their bodies. Angela came running out of the coffee house at full speed and dove into Jacobi wrapping her arms around his body. They each grimaced in pain from this embrace, but they also didn’t care about the aching discomfort their bodies were in. They each needed this moment.
“I knew you weren’t dead. I just knew it. Thank god you found me,” Angela said, holding Jacobi as tight as she could.
“I couldn’t die on you. Not when we’re having so much fun today.”
“Yeah, there’s that. But also, Vanessa is still waiting to be paid for my cappuccinos.”
And she was. Standing there by the register looking at the ‘domestically abused couple,’ hugging one another.
“What do you think happened to them?” The mullet barista asked the other barista at the register.
Vanessa continued to chew her gum and rolled her eyes. “I don’t know Sebastian, maybe they get real freaky in the bedroom. Did you notice his tie matches her eyes? That’s real cute. That’s a couple in real love.”
V. Confrontations
Back in the car, Jacobi handed Angela her cell phone, knowing how badly she wanted to speak to her parents to tell them she was safe. While on the phone, Angela didn’t get into specifics to worry her anxious parents. She told them they should stay in a safe place for just a little bit more time, as Jacobi focused on driving.
The streetlights they were driving so swiftly past were beckoning the buzzing insects towards their welcoming orange glow. The night air calmed Jacobi’s sense of being. For the first time all day, he felt he was in control of his own destiny and wasn’t running away from someone. As of now, he was running towards someone; the same someone that had apparently given him up, also known as, Mr. Hornsby.
For a few blissful moments, Angela felt safer than she had all day. She was sitting next to the man who was protecting her, and she was speaking to her parents who were her ultimate calming presences. She felt as if the worst was over, and wherever they were headed now, couldn’t be worse than the safe house.
“You are safe here.” Yeah, my ass.
The look on Jacobi’s face was a bit frightful from Angela’s perspective. She knew it wasn’t about her, but she didn’t understand why he looked so intense at this moment.
“Everything all right?” she asked, reaching for his hand. Jacobi took her hand and squeezed it.
“Everything is fine.” He responded, giving Angela a quick smile. She didn’t know Jacobi long, but she knew him well enough to know that smile was bullshit.
“You don’t look like everything is fine. What’s going on?”
“I just, I need—I have to do something right now that I honestly don’t want to do.”
“What are you talking about? What do you have to do?” she asked. Angela was prying, but this wasn’t the time to keep secrets from one another. She needed to know what the plan was.
“When I woke up on the ground outside the safe house, my first thought was of you. I was so scared they had gotten to you before you made it to the panic room. I had confidence you would figure it out and you did, but I was still a wreck.”
“I’m safe. And that’s mostly because of you. You don’t have to worry about me now. We made it out of there—beat up and cut to hell, but we made it.”
“But that’s just it. We almost didn’t make it. And we were in my agency’s safe house. So that got me thinking, how did those assassins find us? There was no trail.”
“They seem quite resourceful. Rocket launchers and driving bulldozers through houses. They seem quite capable of finding us, somehow.”
“But that’s twice now. I can understand finding your location at the hotel. As much as we hid your identity and made arrangements so you’d be protected, they must have someone on their crew to acquire that information—but the safe house location? That’s just too improbable.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying there were only a select few people who knew the safe house’s location. And those people were myself, Mr. Hicks, and Mr. Hornsby—my boss.”
“The ‘Mr. Hornsby’ of Hornsby’s Coffee House?” Angela said, quite confused, but putting all the pieces together.
“Yes. So if I didn’t give the assassins the location, and Mr. Hicks damn well couldn’t have given them the location, then it only leaves one man.”
“And so we are headed to meet your boss, I take it. This is the something you don’t want to do, but feel you have to.”
“I’m meeting him, you are staying away from him. If he compromised us, you aren’t safe to be around him. But, I have to know for sure, otherwise we’re in more trouble than I thought.”
Of course, Angela tried to argue with Jacobi about staying in the car while he confronted his boss, but she didn’t win that argument. The drive took them an hour or so, all the while they spoke about different subjects, mostly first date topics. There was never an awkward silence between the two, and even a couple of laughs along the way. But the closer Jacobi drove to Mr. Hornsby’s house, the quieter he became.
By this point in the night, Duke had driven to Angela’s boss’ home as well. Rocky was sweating bullets in the backseat, shaking as the drugs were starting to wear off. As Duke pulled up to Dr. Rayne’s home, he handed Rocky the bottle of pi
lls for the pain he was experiencing.
“Take a few more, I need your assistance in this,” Duke barked. He didn’t have the patience needed for a gun shot sufferer. He only had one thing on his mind and that was successfully kidnapping Dr. Rayne. He was the crucial part of phase two of the plan. Since chasing after Dr. Haven and her bodyguard was such a miserable failure for his team, he needed Dr. Haven to surrender to him.
Rocky put the bottle to his mouth and ingested quite a few pills from it. Crushing them with his teeth and swallowing a heavy amount, it only took a few minutes for his aggressive nature to come to life. He was jerking around in the backseat like a crack addict. Duke had planned to help him out of the car, but Rocky wasn’t having it. He wanted to scoot out on his own, since he wasn’t feeling any pain at the moment.
Duke held Rocky’s face in his hands and went over the plan with him again; since the first time round he was too out of it to comprehend it. The pupils in Rocky’s eyes took up his whole eye and Duke was almost taken aback.
“Are you up for this? You’re my right-hand man now, Rocky. I need you with me on this.” Duke pleaded.
“I’m here with you, boss. I have this. Wait right here and I’ll be back in no time.”
With a jump in his step, Rocky went around to the back of Dr. Rayne’s home. There was a single light on in his house, coming from his home office. Dr. Rayne was working on his computer, and Duke was watching him through the window. He was on the first floor of his home, sipping on some coffee and typing away.
Unbeknownst to him, Rocky had made it inside, and was tiptoeing into the office. Duke looked both ways, making sure they were still alone on this street. When he looked back through the office window, he saw Rocky smash a glass vase over Dr. Rayne’s head. At once, Dr. Rayne hit the floor and Rocky dragged his unconscious body out of the room. Once outside, Duke helped Rocky tie up Dr. Rayne and lay him in the backseat.