Bleeding Heart

by Taylor Holloway

  Now I knew what the team on the roof was for.

  “You knew this could happen.” I managed to growl at McKinney. My voice sounded like an actual growl from a bear. It was gravelly, rough, old, and nothing like my regular voice. “But you didn’t warn us.”

  McKinney shook his head defensively but didn’t meet my eyes. “We always prepare for the worst-case scenario,” he replied, “but we don’t expect it. We definitely didn’t expect this. Believe me, we didn’t think for a moment there was more than one compromised person. We thought it was just Luisa. She received a call last night in her hotel room that all but confirmed it was her. Possibly neither she nor Frank knew that the other was even compromised until Salvador walked in.”

  “But you knew it could happen,” Madison’s dad snapped before I had a chance to, “You let us all walk into a very dangerous situation without knowing all the facts. Now my daughter is a hostage because we were not prepared!” he continued. Clark looked like he’d aged considerably in a short time and had the same multicolored hazel eyes as Madison. I looked away from him, unable to stand the similarity.

  McKinney frowned deeply and made a quick, dismissive gesture with his hands. “If being angry with the FBI is comforting right now,” he said, “so be it. I understand. Desperate people are by definition unpredictable.”

  Tèo and Giovanna hadn’t said a word since the shit hit the fan in the conference room. Tèo looked somewhat green around the gills and had slumped over a bit in his chair. Giovanna was as placid and dignified as ever, a truly impressive feat given the circumstances. I could only imagine that they were extremely confused, but they must be putting the pieces together from context by now. Giovanna raised her manicured hand politely to get McKinney’s attention. McKinney looked at her in surprise.

  “Ma’am?” McKinney asked her.

  “What is your name, sir?” She said in a small, but even voice.

  “Agent Miles McKinney, ma’am.”

  “Mr. McKinney,” she continued “I need to call the Colombian consulate and our home office in Bogota immediately. Is there somewhere private where I could make those calls?”

  “Of course, of course. I’m very sorry for not offering that immediately,” McKinney replied. It distantly occurred to me that McKinney was probably the perfect person to deal with the formal, dignified Giovanna and visa-versa. Instead of seeming obsequious to her, he probably hit just the right tone. “Please follow me.”

  “McKinney,” my father barked before they could depart, speaking up for the first time. I realized he looked far more ruffled and upset than I’d seen him in many years. He had his hands clasped in front of him on the table like he was calm and in control, but his eyes were wide and panicked, and a vein was popping out in his forehead. “How long are you planning on leaving that Salvador fellow in there with Frank and Madison? How long before your man takes the shot?”

  McKinney opened his mouth to answer, but no noise came out. Instead, three sounds from across the hall caused us all to tense as if paralyzed. We froze instantly in place like deer in the headlights.

  My father had his answer.

  The first sound was the sudden thunderclap of a gunshot. On television and in movies you really have no concept how loud gunfire is. On film people fire guns all the time and just get on with their conversations like it’s no big deal. In real life, it isn’t like that at all. Gunfire is painfully deafening up close. It physically hurts your eardrums to hear it. Even through two sets of closed doors, the sound was clear and unmistakable, like a large firecracker going off right next to us.

  The second sound was the crystalline cracking and twinkling of breaking glass. Right on the heels of the gunshot, even before it finished echoing, we heard the glass shatter. I wouldn’t know until later that it belonged to the conference room window.

  The third sound was the high, frightened scream of a woman. The piercing, bone-chilling shriek rose up out of the silence in the wake of the other noises, desperately calling out in the most primal way possible. All of the hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood up. I’d heard that scream once before in my life, once before just this week. I remembered hearing it before I lost consciousness after the car bomb, and it was seared into my sensory memory forever like a scar.

  It was Madison’s scream.

  The woman I loved was screaming for help.

  32

  Madison

  Having a gun pressed to your head is a very unique experience.

  Most people will never know what it’s like to be directly threatened by someone who is willing to take your life, and that’s a good thing. It isn’t a nice feeling, obviously, but it’s a profound one. Bent over the conference table with one of Frank’s hands on my back and the other holding the gun against my forehead, I was instantly forced to acknowledge the fact that I might be about to die. And someone I barely knew, someone who barely knew me, was going to kill me so that someone else entirely could continue to make money. It didn’t seem like a worthwhile death at all.

  Some people deal with crises well. They thrive off it, becoming more focused and alert. Those people become firefighters, police, soldiers, snowboarders, tightrope walkers, ER doctors, stuff like that. Not lawyers. Because the type of person I am—the type of person who enjoys reading law journals and complicated acquisition agreements—this type doesn’t do well with crises. Especially crises of the existential variety.

  First, I started shaking like a leaf. Shock, or some other chemical process in my brain, fired off some confusing signals to the rest of me that made it think that shaking was a really good survival strategy. I needed to shake a whole bunch right away. My muscles responded obediently, making my body tremble violently.

  Next, I started crying. I’d been crying a lot lately and it wasn’t something I did often as a general rule. My tear ducts were getting a workout this week. The tears ran down my face horizontally since I was bending over with my head tilted, and it blurred my vision. I was too afraid to move to wipe them away.

  Finally, I started to pay attention. If I were one of those people that knew how to handle crises well, I probably would have skipped straight to the paying attention phase and not bothered with the shaking and the sobbing, but I’m not. So, by the time I was paying attention again, I’d missed a couple of important things.

  The conference room was now empty of people except Frank, Salvador, and me. The room was pretty messed up, too. In addition to the spilled coffee and ruffled up papers, several chairs were up-ended and the breakfast pastries box must have been somehow launched into the air since there were cinnamon rolls all over the place. Alexander liked cinnamon rolls. I’d seen him snag one earlier. That seemed like forever ago.

  Salvador, who I knew absolutely nothing about except that he was huge, scary, and on my side, was talking.

  “Listen Frank,” he said, “why don’t you tell me what you need that will make you let Ms. Clark go? Ok? Let’s start from there.”

  With my face forced to the side and the door ahead of me, I couldn’t see Frank or the window behind me. I also couldn’t see Salvador. The only thing I had a good view of was a blank wall.

  “I told you already,” Frank answered with almost enough venom to conceal the anxiety beneath, “I need Durant Industries and Durant Properties International to sign the deal. I will sign on behalf of Propetrolas.”

  “Ok Frank,” Salvador said calmly (how was he so damn calm?), “we can make that happen right away. I’ve already got someone working to get the two Durant signatures. Do you think you could let Ms. Clark go now? I’ll stay in here with you instead.”

  I wished I could see their faces. All I had was their voices, and expression and body language counted for a lot. Salvador was trying to trade himself for me. That was very brave. Frank seemed to be taking a long time to respond. Behind me, I could hear him making snuffling noises. Was he crying?

  “I think you should let Ms. Clark go, Frank. Keep me instead. I know you don’t
want to hurt her.”

  “No. No. I can’t do that. I have to get the deal signed, and I have to get it to Marco. I can’t trust you. Don’t come any closer!” Frank’s voice was thick with tears. He was definitely crying.

  “Is that Marco Chacón?” Salvador asked gently.

  “Yes,” Frank said miserably. Apparently, he decided now was a good time to monologue, or maybe he felt we deserved some explanation, because then he added, “when they found out the car bomb hadn’t killed or scared off Alexander Durant, Marco called me. Can you believe that? He just called like we were friends. I knew what he was up to in our plant, obviously, but I couldn’t do anything to stop him. We live in separate worlds. He’s a crime lord. But then he called me. He said that he knew about me and Luisa. He had proof, a lot of it. I’m a married man with three daughters. I’ve got a lot to lose. Even more than Luisa. I had no idea anyone knew…”

  Even considering the circumstances, I couldn’t help but wonder at Frank’s distress about his infidelity becoming known. He was fairly blatant about his mutual interest with Angelica. Maybe he didn’t care if we knew, just his wife and family.

  “Frank,” Salvador replied in the same soothing tone he’d been using this entire time, “Frank, you know that signatures made at gunpoint aren’t going to be enforceable, don’t you?”

  “It doesn’t matter. He wants this deal even more than he wanted to shut down the other one.”

  “But this deal isn’t real, Frank. It was only put together like this to trick you.”

  “Do you think I’m fucking stupid?” Frank yelled now, pushing the barrel of the gun more forcefully against my skin. I winced and cried harder, unable to do anything else but surrender to hysteria. “He thinks it’s real.”

  “Ok Frank,” said Salvador, still using that soothing voice, “I hear you. Hey, I’m gonna go grab that agreement from the other room. The guys say it’s ready. I’ll be right back. Why don’t you sit down, huh?”

  Salvador was leaving? I heard a shuffling in the direction of the door, but then Frank yelled for him to stop.

  “Wait. Don’t open that door!” Frank said after his outburst and his voice sounded almost like he was hyperventilating. Frank’s fear and anxiety made mine a hundred times worse. What if he accidentally shot me? Was the safety on or off? I didn’t even know if the type of gun he had pressed to my skull had a safety.

  “Ok Frank,” Salvador said, “that’s ok. I don’t need to go anywhere. Why don’t they just slip it under the door? Is that ok? You can come around and pick it up yourself if you want.”

  Salvador had to wait a long time for Frank to reply. Behind me, Frank was gasping for breath. He sounded as hysterical as I was. When he finally did reply, there seemed to be a note of something new in his voice, but I wasn’t quite sure what.

  “You’re trying to trick me,” Frank stated, “This is all a trick. I’ll never get out of this now. I’ve made too many mistakes. Luisa. And Angelica. There have been others over the years. I tried to be so careful. There’s no way I can cover up what I’ve been doing anymore. I love my wife, Anna, none of this is her fault. Be sure you tell her that. Even though you’re just trying to trick me into ruining myself…”

  “Why would you say that Frank?” Asked Salvador, “All I want, my only goal, is to make sure that all three of us leave this room together and unhurt.”

  “No,” Frank replied, and he sounded a lot calmer now, “no that isn’t true at all. I’ll never… either you will… or he will… or my Anna… It’s all over.”

  “Frank,” Salvador entreated, the first hints of tension beginning to come through in his voice. Hearing Salvador getting rattled made me even more upset. The more despondent Frank became, the more concerned Salvador sounded, “just take a deep breath and tell me what’s going through your head. Whatever it is, whatever you need to feel safe, we can make that happen.”

  “You don’t have the power to do that. You can’t save me. It’s all over for me now. One way or another.”

  Salvador was really good at this. He was doing everything he could to keep Frank calm and communicating. It just wasn’t working. I felt and heard movement behind me but stayed completely still. I held my breath so only my tears were moving.

  All I could think about was that I wouldn’t get to see Alexander again. I hoped it wouldn’t hurt when I died. I hoped it would be quick.

  “Frank. Hey Frank, let’s talk about this. You gotta’ talk to me…” Salvador coaxed.

  I never got to hear what Salvador needed to talk to Frank about.

  Frank pulled the trigger.

  33

  Alexander

  Eleven years ago…

  “Listen faggot, if you don’t pay the cigarette tax, you can’t use the toilet. You gotta piss in the sink,” the extremely large, extraordinary hairy man told me while he took the loudest and most noxious shit in the history of the universe. I tried desperately not to look at him as this conversation transpired. I was as far away from him as I could get, which was only about six feet. The man laughed like he’d just told the most hilarious joke of his life and then got on back to the noisy business of public defecation. By this point I pretty much just wanted to die.

  It was obvious I had no idea what was going on in this place. I’d never been as thankful for being six-foot-three. As much as I tried not to project weakness, the men around me could smell that I was a pampered, educated, spoiled little rich boy from the suburbs. They liked that smell a lot. It made them hungry, and in some cases, horny.

  When you get arrested, you realize how quickly the veneer of civility, respect, and basic decency can be stripped away. Prisoners, even those who are innocent, have precious few rights. And the process is designed to drive home that point in the most visceral, efficient way possible.

  By the time someone finally arrived to bail me out, I’d been in jail for almost three days. During that time I’d been interrogated, formally charged, booked, strip searched, had my clothes and possessions taken from me, been put into a literal pen with a bunch of really scary guys, been arraigned, moved around to several other holding areas containing a selection of other really scary guys, experienced my first shower with said scary guys, eaten the world’s worst food with those same scary guys, and spent two sleepless nights wondering where my dad was. If there was a hell, I was in it.

  The guards were maybe the worst part. They treat you like you’re less than a man. Less than an animal, even. I would never talk to a dog the way the guards talked to me. I liked dogs. Talking back was not an option, either. I saw one guy try to do that and the next time I saw him, both his eyes were swollen shut. Jail is not a good place to be blind. For three days, I basically pretended I was a mute.

  After about twelve hours, I started to wish I had done something better to get myself in this situation. I wished, for instance, that I had corrupted a minor named Madison Clark instead of assaulting someone. At least if I’d taken Madison’s virginity and we’d fucked all night in the hot tub until the police showed up, this experience might have been halfway worth it. Beating up Andrew McMillan wasn’t nearly as satisfying as deflowering Madison Clark would have been. And now I was in jail anyway.

  It had never occurred to me that my dad might just leave me there. Sure, my dad and I had our differences, and yeah, those differences had been seriously exacerbated by my mom’s death, but I was one hundred percent sure he would get out of here. He was sort of a jerk, but I was his only son. He loved me.

  But as the hours ticked by, I became increasingly concerned. I worried that something had happened to my dad. Maybe he’d been in a car accident or had a heart attack? Maybe my grandfather had a stroke and was on his deathbed? There must be a reason he wasn’t coming to help me.

  Even when I was at last extracted from my pen, had my things thrust back at me, and found myself face to face with a complete stranger, I was still concerned for my dad’s health and wellbeing.

  “Is my dad ok?” I asked the
middle-aged, mustached man in front of me, not waiting for him to introduce himself, “Where is he?”

  “It’s nice to meet you too, Mr. Durant. My name is Ethan Wilder. I just bailed you out. You’re welcome.”

  “I’m sorry. Thank you for bailing me out. Ok? But can you answer my question? What’s going on?”

  “I just posted your bail, that’s what’s going on. You can go home now,” he replied. Wilder was mildly amused, which would have ordinarily made me angry, but my typical emotional responses were momentarily on hold.

  “I just…but…is my dad in the car?” I asked, beginning to worry that he was dead or something.

  Wilder, whom I had never seen before and would never see again, looked at me with genuine pity. “No,” he said, “your dad isn’t in the car. There is no car. I’m not sure where your father is. They gave your phone back though, right? You should be able to call him.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know where he is?” I asked incredulously, “didn’t he send you to bail me out?”

  “No, Mr. Durant, he didn’t. I’m a bail bondsman. Look, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I guess it’s better than seeing it on the news. Your dad chose not to bail you out because the governor of California, that liberal bitch Ann McMillan, tried to blackmail him over your alleged assault of her son Andrew. He publicly disavowed you to embarrass her. She’s still pressing charges against you.”

  I didn’t want to believe it, but it was hard not to. It was an explanation, one I didn’t like, but an explanation that conformed to the facts nonetheless. My dad was objectively capable of doing this to me, although I didn’t think he actually would. The information sunk into my brain like a poison, killing off any respect or affection I felt for my father. It would be a while before I’d be able to look at or speak to him again. And a lot longer before I’d stop hating him.