by Bower Lewis
He reached a hand to her collar and straightened it over her blouse. “In the past, when I’ve introduced girls to Rutherford, I’ve recommended that they say as little as possible. But somehow, I don’t think that advice will get us very far today. Just do what seems right at the time, and know that I’ll have your back. That’s the best I can offer.”
She tugged at his hand and he looked up at her. “Your father is not a bigger man than you are, Zane. He never has been.”
He shrugged back with a tired smile. “Try not to say things like that in front of him, if you can help it, or in front of his security detail. There hasn’t been a good threat on Rutherford’s life in months, so they’re probably getting pretty itchy for a fight.”
“And what I just said could be perceived as a threat?”
“If you framed it right.”
• • •
Rutherford paused in the hallway, and then the muscles of his face set as he continued toward his office door. He scarcely glanced at her black Italian suit and distressingly expensive heels, yet from his expression it was clear that, apart from the singular feature of her attire, the girl on the bench outside his office was entirely unacceptable. Zane had outdone himself.
He nodded to his son and turned toward the door.
“Zane, your car sounds a bit rough. You’re not having it serviced by some neighborhood mechanic, I hope. You must have a man flown in from France.”
“Yes, Sir, I know. It’s nice to see you, Father. You’re looking well.”
“Come in.”
The agent outside his office opened the door and stepped aside. Rutherford pointed to a couple of chairs before his desk as the door closed again behind them.
“Is she pregnant?”
“What?”
“Twins.” Patience held up two fingers as Zane paused in the middle of the room to stare at his father. “One is his and one is yours. It’s all terribly complicated, Mr. Ellison, but the paternity suit will be fantastic.”
“I see.” Rutherford Ellison looked long at her. She glanced at the chairs he’d indicated and he nodded, then turned back to his son. “What’s this really about?”
Zane sat down next to Patience and brought his hands together.
“I need you to publicly endorse Joey Forsyth’s candidacy to the U.S. Senate.”
A line of red traveled from Rutherford’s collar up into his neck. “Joey Forsyth is dead, Zane.”
“Yes, Sir. I know.”
“Joey Forsyth was a wad of gum I could never scrape off the bottom of my shoe, thanks to my business entanglements with his father. That pissant Alexander Rockwell is nothing more to me than a decades-long nuisance. He’s called my office twice a week since Joey took up his unfortunate interest in politics, and it’s been twice a day since the start of this blasted Senate campaign. I’m alarmed to find you here, now, advocating for these men. Explain yourself.”
Patience glanced at Zane once, then looked back at his father. “I’m blackmailing him.”
“No,” Zane said. “She’s not. Settle in, Rutherford. I’m about to do something I don’t believe I’ve done in twenty-five years of living under your roof. I’m going to tell you the truth.”
Rutherford Ellison’s face turned to stone as he stared back at his youngest son. A chill descended through the room and Patience reached for Zane’s hand.
“Zane, maybe I should—”
“Thank you, Patience.” He settled back in his chair, appearing oddly at ease, suddenly. “It’s quite all right. I’ve got this.”
• • •
Rutherford’s eyes were ablaze as he grabbed the phone from his desk and instructed his secretary to get Alexander Rockwell on the line. Apart from the inexplicable detail of The Biz and His ominous prediction, Zane had left nothing to his father’s inference. He’d barely settled back to stare his incredulity at his son when the secretary rang through with the call.
“I understand from my son that he supports my endorsement of the Joseph Forsyth campaign. I don’t consider that sort of thing without meeting a man face-to-face, Alexander. Come to my office at four o’clock this afternoon and we’ll discuss it.”
He hung up without any form of goodbye or, near as they could tell, even waiting for Rockwell’s response. Rutherford stared at a framed picture on his desk for a moment and then back up at Zane.
“You can go.”
Zane smiled down at his fingernails. “I’d love to, Sir, but I hadn’t counted on you inviting the man over for coffee. Alex is dangerous and pretty desperate right now. We’re not leaving you here alone with him.”
Rutherford picked the phone up again and instructed his secretary to send the agent outside his door into the office.
Zane laughed and held a hand up. “Don’t trouble yourself, Sir. You win. It’s been a pleasure as always, Rutherford. I’m very sorry about the mess.”
Rutherford just grunted in response. Zane took Patience by the arm and turned her toward the door. The mogul was scribbling something onto a pad behind them, but the writing stopped as Zane reached for the knob and the pen dropped back onto the desk.
“Did you really shoot the prick?”
Zane paused and turned back to his father. “Yes, Sir. I really shot the prick.”
“Good.”
• • •
They hid the car out of sight from the road up to the main house and slipped back to the edge of the grounds. Zane kept watch for Rockwell’s Porsche as Patience hid behind the stone wall and changed from her “acceptable” clothes into something a little more serviceable.
“Shouldn’t we just try to cut him off now, before he even gets to the house?”
He shook his head. “Not on my father’s property, I can’t risk it. We need to get him alone and as far from here as possible. Rutherford may not be the warmest man on the planet, Patience, but this is a hell of a thing I’ve just laid at his doorstep.”
“I know,” she said, as she laced up her boots. “I’m sorry.”
He just turned back to the road with a shrug. “It is what it is, I suppose.” The phone chimed and he nodded. “Here we go.”
They crouched low as the black 911 sped past and screamed up to the gates of the estate, revving its engine impatiently at security. The gates opened at last and Rockwell gunned it up to the main house. He paced erratically until the door opened and he pushed his way past a housekeeper.
Patience and Zane stood idly by, kicking at pebbles in the dirt at the side of the road and not saying much to each other. The inactivity felt strange after the labyrinths they’d been forced to navigate at warp speeds over the past few days. They were still getting accustomed to being in love as well, which was a whole other thing of its own. Zane looked up finally and seemed about to say something, but he was interrupted by another chime.
Patience checked the message and turned back to him. “Oh, no.”
They sprinted back to the car as a rumbling arose in the distance. The Hummer blew past them and smashed through the estate’s gates. Two of Rutherford’s guards sprang from the booth and fired after it. The bullets just bounced off the armored vehicle as Zane cornered onto the driveway and overtook the guards. John screeched to a halt and jumped out, armed with a rifle larger than the one he’d had before. Zane pinned the Hummer in and burst through the open door of the estate. They followed the sounds of shouting back to Rutherford’s office.
The agent at the door was unconscious on the floor outside and John was moving in fast on Rockwell. The campaign manager had lost his sling, and John appeared blind to the gun he was holding to the still-seated mogul’s head. Zane dove at the SCUD as the rifle discharged, sending the round into the wall above Rutherford’s chair, and John tossed him back. He righted himself and lined up another shot.
“Uncle John, no! That man is Zane’s father.”
A throng of black-suited agents raced into the hall from both directions. John backed off just long enough to kick the office door shut and loc
k it, and then he was right back at the center of the room with his rifle ready. The agents lost no time starting to break the door in until Rutherford slammed a fist down on his desk.
“Stop!”
Everyone in the room turned back to stare at him. The banging ceased and there was a moment’s silence in the hall. Rutherford looked up at his youngest son and then turned back to the door.
“This is a family matter!” he shouted. “Go away now, please.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ellison,” an agent’s voice replied, “but, you know we can’t do that.”
“I want you gone from the hall immediately. If I have to tell you again, you’ll all be fired. Now, get out.”
The pause of approximately one second was a testament to their respect for Rutherford’s authority.
Then the agent spoke again. “Break it down.”
John kept his aim locked on Rockwell as he reached into his bag for a canister. He pulled the pin with his teeth and backed up to the door again. He punched the butt of his rifle into it several times.
“Don’t trouble yourself, Sir. No bodyguard worth a damn is going to leave his charge unprotected in a room with shots fired, and I’d be willing to bet those men of yours are worth a good sight more than a damn.”
He shoved his arm through the splintered hole in the door and tossed the canister into the air, smiling as a couple of the agents grabbed hold of him and tried to wrestle the arm back on his elbow. There was a hollow-sounding plunk on the marble tiles, followed by a dull pop and a hiss.
They let go and fell back, retreating from the gas. He caught one of them by the wrist and held tight as the agent’s body turned slack. Then he pulled the crisply tailored arm back through the hole to plug it. It hung at the center of the door like some macabre showpiece in the workroom of a taxidermist who’d lost it.
John nodded back at his niece’s horror-stricken face.
“They’ll be fine, Pax, after a nice, restful nap. Try not to breathe too deep, though, if you can help it.”
He stepped back toward the desk and looked down at Rutherford Ellison, never lowering his rifle. “I’m very sorry about this, Sir. This corpse has got to be stopped, I assure you, but I promise to do the very best I can for you while taking him down.”
A shot rang out and the rifle flew from John’s grip. Zane lowered his gun and retrieved the weapon from the floor as John gaped down at the bloody streak across the back of his right hand. He turned to look at the slug in the wall behind him as blood trickled between his fingers.
“Did you not hear Patience tell you that this man is my father?”
John pressed the fingers of his good hand over his wound and narrowed his eyes at Zane. “So help me, rich boy, you and me are going to have a real go-’round when this is through.”
“Name the time and the place, SCUD.”
“Excuse me.” Rutherford pointed to the gun at his head. “Do you think we might move this along, Zane?”
“Sorry.”
“Staying on task has never been your strong suit.”
Rockwell smiled and pointed to the desk. Zane reset the safety on his revolver and lay it down. He looked at Rutherford for a moment and then he set the rifle down beside it.
“You too, Pink.”
Patience smiled coolly at him and relinquished her weapon. Rutherford leaned back as he watched the performance, making it clear to everyone present that he was as unimpressed with the gun at his head as he was with the man who was holding it.
“I’ve had about enough of this, Alexander, and I wouldn’t count on those fumes keeping my men down for very long. You’ve got thirty seconds to tell me what it is you want me to do. In thirty-one, you’re going to have to confront how successful you think you’ll be once you’ve pulled that trigger.”
Rockwell shook his head and waved them all toward the coat closet. “We’ll talk about it in the car.”
John sneered up from his injured hand. “You’re going to need a lot more than what you’ve got to get me in there,” he spat. “And you’ll keep your mitts off my niece altogether, you sissy, sociopathic fuck.”
Zane sighed and punched him in the jaw. The SCUD went down and Zane turned back to Patience as he shook out his hand. “Your uncle is really getting to be a lot of work.”
She turned her eyes to the ceiling for a moment and then she helped Zane drag John to the closet. They wedged him in sideways with his legs up along the wall, leaving just enough room for them to squeeze in with him. It wasn’t an easy fit, but it was what it was.
Rockwell pulled Rutherford up from his chair and the older man turned away, ignoring Rockwell’s repeated yanking at his arm as he snatched an earnings report from his desk and flipped it over. He grabbed a pen and scratched a note across it in large black letters, slapped it to the back of his chair, and drove the blade of an onyx-handled letter opener through its center.
ED-
NO POLICE
-RCE
Rockwell smiled as he lifted John’s bag from the floor and waved goodbye. Zane looked up at his father as the door slammed between them, and then something thudded to the rug, followed by a pop.
“For the love of God, Zane!” Rutherford shouted. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
The sound of breaking glass was the last thing they remembered as Rockwell disappeared with Rutherford Ellison and their guns.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Patience tore north up Route 3 with her uncle tied to the passenger seat of the Hummer, as the sun played hide-and-seek with the trees and overpasses at the corners of her eyes. She was miles behind Zane, who was a good forty minutes behind Rockwell and his father, but doing everything in the Bugatti’s power to close the distance. She glanced down at the phone in John’s hand, which she’d tethered to the armrest so he could hold it for her, and then she glanced up at the man himself.
He looked a bit worse for wear. She’d bandaged his right hand quickly as Zane shattered his father’s gun case and pulled a couple of handguns from the racks, and then she’d bound it to the roll bar in order to keep it elevated. He’d anesthetized the wound (and himself) with a fair amount of Rutherford’s Johnnie Walker Blue.
John had been the first in the house to come to, and to his credit, he’d stuck around after punching his way through the closet door and roused them with a few blasts of seltzer from Rutherford’s office bar—only to find himself subdued by Zane for the second time that hour. The deed and its result had earned him a few drops of goodwill in the sea of mistrust between Patience and her uncle, and she loved him very much, but she was beginning to wish she loved him just a little bit less.
He grunted and shifted in the seat, and she grabbed his hand as the phone dipped from view. She was keeping an eye on the live feed The Biz was streaming from Beacon Hill. The footage of Rutherford and Rockwell on the State House steps was helpful in many ways, and Patience was trying to be conscientious about acknowledging that from time to time. She also made a concerted effort to let Him finish His thoughts without cutting Him off at the power button, regardless of how she felt about what He had to say. She didn’t trust herself to broach the subject of the time-out at all, or the photographs Rockwell had captured of Zane, or even her anxiety over the fact that Zane had just drawn blood again (regardless of how little choice John had left him in the matter). She was trying very hard to honor her promise to try harder with The Biz, so she pushed the thoughts that provoked her from her mind. The result, thus far, had been a marked decrease in His emoticon reliance since they’d left Hyannis, and He hadn’t LOLed at her once. Her uncle’s inebriated interjections notwithstanding, the drive north had been relatively noncombative.
John shifted again and Patience took the phone from his hand. The cameras on Beacon Hill pulled to a close-up of Rutherford’s face and Patience raised the volume. The mogul was nothing if not convincing, as he voiced his support for the late Joseph M. Forsyth as the next representative from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to th
e United States Senate. Only the most astute of mental health professionals or his late wife could have picked up on the meaning behind the glance he shot Rockwell as they stood together beneath the gold dome.
Patience shook her head and nudged her uncle to take the phone again. “He doesn’t even look scared.”
“He’s pissed.” Zane’s voice cut through the speaker. “Everything appears fine on the surface, but inside, he’s ready to take someone’s head off. It’s a look I know well.”
John snorted. “I’ll bet you do.”
“What’s that?”
“Uncle John says thank you,” Patience yelled back. “How far are you now?”
“About five minutes out. And, Patience, I’m not going to wait for any traffic lights, if you know what I mean.”
She nodded. “Do what you have to do. Uncle John will take care of any bail that’s needed. He says it’s the least he can do after everything that’s happened.” John grunted and she pointed a finger at him. “Just sit there and be drunk.”
“I’m coming off the highway,” Zane broke in. “I’m going to hang up now.”
She frowned at the phone. “Please be careful.”
There was no response for a moment. “Back at’cha.”
He hung up and her gut tightened. She looked over at her uncle. “I can’t stand this. I made him do it, and now I can’t even be there with him. It would be one thing if I could at least see what was happening, but the not knowing is something I don’t think I can ever be good at, Uncle John. I’m just not built for this.”
The scene from the State House gave way to a split screen, and a live traffic copter feed materialized beside it. The cameras seemed fixated on a red Bugatti screaming around Leverett Circle. It wove between a couple of cars and slid up onto Staniford Street.
Patience realized her mouth was open and she shut it. She hadn’t a clue how to respond to an answered prayer she hadn’t even thought to make.
UR WELCOME
She nodded and pushed the hair back from her eyes. It almost made her wish she believed in Him—believed the way her uncle did, or even Zane, who’d accepted His intrusion into their lives with less strife than she experienced upon finding a new receptionist at her dentist’s office.