by Amber Lacie
“This is going to be harder than I thought. There are more people outside, but I don’t know who they are. I’m so sorry.”
As she began to take the first step down, I heard Ben’s voice above us. “Stop.”
“What?” she asked, turning to look over her shoulder at me.
“I can’t leave him.”
“Who?” she asked, her voice laced with confusion. “Have you gone mad? This is our only chance.” She reached for my wrist, but I took a step back towards the other staircase, which led to the floor above us.
“Ben’s in there.” It might not have made sense to her, but it did to me. As quickly as I could make my legs move, I rushed up the stairs. My side was screaming in pain, my breaths were short, and the pain in my head had intensified a hundred-fold. When I reached the top, I grasped onto the railing, taking a second to catch my breath. I knew he was behind one of the doors. Which one, I had no clue. I also didn’t have a plan.
Trying the first door I came to, it opened into a large bedroom, adorned with incredibly ornate furnishings and detail. Just inside the door was a long skinny marble table. There sat large brass candlesticks on the corner closest to me. Quickly knocking the candle to the floor, I lifted the heavy brass holder with both hands. It was almost as tall as the length of my forearm and was too heavy for me to hold in one hand. I could, however, easily swing it with both hands.
I quickly ran out of the room to try the next door I found. It opened to a closet full of linens. Closing it, I made my way toward the last door, which was across the hallway from me. Once I was closer, my memory of the night before came rushing back. That is the room they had taken me to.
The door was already slightly open, so I carefully pushed it farther with my foot. Suddenly, the woman from earlier grabbed my arm, pulling me back out of sight from the men inside the room.
“No! They’ll kill him, you, or both of you.”
“You don’t understand, Ben’s in there. I can’t leave without him. I love him.”
Her lips curled into a soft smile. With sadness in her eyes she looked back at me. In that moment, I understood. I knew those eyes and I recognized that sadness. The woman was Ben’s mother. “He’s my boy,” she whispered. She nodded toward the candlestick in my hand. “That won’t do much against a bullet, but you hold onto it, just in case.” Wrapping her hands around mine, she tightened my grip on the heavy brass holder. “He really is a good boy, he’s just a little lost.” With those words she let go of my hands and stepped towards the room. I reached for her, but she held one finger to her lips, while using her other hand to pull a small handgun from the inside of her dress. “They never check there,” she whispered.
I stood nervously against the wall as I watched her step into the room. I couldn’t just stand there doing nothing, so I followed her in. My heart shattered into a million pieces at the sight of Ben, kneeling on the floor. Blood covered his hands and part of his face, but I wasn’t sure it was his. Nearby, Ox lay awkwardly on the floor, his body twisted with blood pooling underneath him. My eyes immediately flashed up to the person standing behind him. A cruel smile stared back at me.
“Piper.” Ben’s broken voice shattered my already obliterated heart. A garbled sob escaped my mouth before I could cover it up.
“You let my son go!” Ben’s mom stood in front of me, gun raised, aimed directly at Alton. He laughed. It was such a horrific sound, digging under my skin, scratching against my bones like nails on a chalkboard. My body shivered in response.
“How about I kill her, then you,” he pointed the gun in my direction, “and make him watch?” He nodded towards a man all dressed in black holding a gun aimed at Ben’s mom.
Stepping to the side of her, I pleaded, “Alton, stop.”
Ben’s eyes widened at the mention of my former friend’s name. “Alton Beckett? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“How adorable. You finally figured out our connection.” Alton snapped at Ben before smiling sweetly back at me, “Confused on how I know your boyfriend, mouse? I was playing both sides of the coin. At the same time, I was working for the bureau trying to bring Tate Oxley in, I was also working for him as his eyes and ears at the bureau.
“But why?” Ben whispered in shock.
“I have my reasons, none which you are privy too.” Alton leveled his gaze on me as he adjusted his grip on the gun. “Tell me, mouse, how far are you willing to go to save him?”
“Alton, please. I’ll do anything. Just stop it. What did I do to you to deserve this?” Hot, angry tears burned my flesh as they slid down my cheeks.
The alarm ceased and an eerie silence fell around us. Something had changed, and I could tell in the way his expression dulled that it wasn’t in his favor.
“Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing. You’re just a casualty of war. Whether he rescued you or not, you still had to die. There can’t be any witnesses.”
More tears slid down my cheeks, burning me as they went. At the same time, Ben yelled, “He killed Brooke.” A small pop sounded in my ear, followed by another. Before I could even register what was happening, Alton fell forward, tripping over Ben and stumbled to the floor. My head swung to the side just in time to see the guard slink to the floor, grasping at one of the leather chairs near the desk. Ben’s mom shot Alton, but who shot the man in black?
I watched in shock as Ben’s mom swayed in front of me. Dropping the candlestick in my hands, it landed with a loud thud on the wooden floor as I held out my arms, catching her just as she began to fall. I looked towards Ben for help, but he didn’t move. Out of the corner of my eye, a movement caught my attention. Turning, I caught sight of Bull walking into the room.
“Someone start talking.” He waved his gun angrily in the air. His movements were erratic, skittish, as he walked toward Ben. Turning his back on Ben, he stared down at Ox. “He was my father.” Bull lowered his gun to the floor and Ben lurched forward, grabbing Bull by the knees and knocking him to the floor. The gun flew from his hands, skidding across the wood, just out of his reach.
“Jesus fucking Christ. I leave you alone for thirty seconds and shit hits the fan.” Jim’s deep voice surrounds me. Thank the fuck.
“That was a lot longer than thirty fucking seconds. What took you so long?” Ben shouted.
“There were a lot of bodies to detain out there. Do you know how many zip-ties it took to secure them all?”
“No.” Ben shifted his knee into Bull’s back, pinning him to the floor. “How about you tell me after you help me with this one?”
“Bet.” Jim’s large frame stepped cautiously around me as he walked towards Bull. Kneeling down, he picked up the gun and bound Bull’s wrists together with a zip-tie he pulled from his back pocket. “That’s got to be like seventeen now.” Jim stood, helping Ben up from the floor. Grabbing Bull by the arms, they both dragged him over to the wall, propping him up into a sitting position.
“Why didn’t you just kill them?”
“Couldn’t. I called the suits. I was on strict orders not to kill anyone and to wait in the car.” He shrugged his shoulders. “You know how well I follow the rules. I wasn’t going to wait in the car, so I figured if I tied them up they’d be out of the way.” Ben just stared at him like he had lost his mind.
As I watched the two men in front of me, something warm began to seep onto my hand. With all the craziness going on around me, I hadn’t even thought to check on the woman still lying in my arms. Looking down, I noticed a dark red spot spreading across her side. She was silent. “Ben. Your mom,” I rasped.
Ben quickly turned around and rushed over to me, pulling her from my grasp. “Mom.” He gently smacked her cheek. “Mom, come on, open your eyes. Please.” He shook her shoulders and a soft whimper fell from her lips. “Jesus. Fuck. Jim, help me!” Ben looked up at Jim with tears in his eyes. Jim nodded and took off his shirt, handing it to Ben.
“Hold it on her side. I’m getting help.”
Help? Where was
this help a few minutes ago?
Stepping back out into the hallway, Jim yelled out, “Yo’, we need help in here. Get your asses into gear.” As he walked back into the room, he shook his head. “Fucking suits. Always slow as fuck.”
Ben looked up at me, his eyes dark with hate. I knew it wasn’t aimed towards me. He was hurt, broken, and desperate for revenge. Gently laying his mom on the ground, he stood up, took the gun from Jim’s hand and aimed it towards Bull, who was leaning up against the wall with a blank look of defeat.
“Benjamin, stop! I need you think about this,” a voice said from behind me. Turning, I spotted a man in black suit pants and a long-sleeved white dress shirt with a solid gray tie walking in behind me, followed by three other men. One of the men approached me, carefully lifting me from the floor and carrying me into the hallway. The other two quickly tended to Ben’s mom. Two women wearing red and white coats rushed up the stairs with a stretcher and into the room. I could hear voices talking back and forth as I tried to pry myself out of the grip of the man who was still holding onto me. I screamed as he pulled me away from the room and down the stairs.
Within seconds, more men rushed towards me. I was bombarded with people checking on my injuries as I was strapped to a gurney and placed in the back of a waiting ambulance. Loud sirens filled the air, making my head hurt even worse. My vision blurred from the pain in my head, which was rapidly catching up with me. With no other option, I watched as a mask was placed over my face. Almost immediately, I slipped into a dark dream full of terrors.
“Benjamin, I need you to hear me. Right now, you’re on a path I can’t protect you from. You’re not your father.” My uncle stood behind me, warning me of my choice. Even though he was family, he was still a suit. He didn’t know what it was like to be me. He didn’t understand how much hate and evil ran in my blood.
“No? Cause I feel like him.” I took another step towards Brendan, my eyes focused solely on my target. “The one thing you never forget when you take a life is the look in their eyes when they realize that they’ve underestimated me and what I was capable of all along. I’m going to enjoy watching yours haze over as your breath leaves your body.”
“Ben.” Aaron tried desperately to stop me. “You’re not hearing me––I can’t protect you if you go through with this. Think about Piper. Don’t leave her alone to deal with all of this. She’s going to need you to survive this.”
Fuck. My girl, my beautiful girl. If it weren’t for me, she wouldn’t be caught up in this mess. Then again, if it weren’t for them, she never would’ve been at their mercy locked in a dark basement. Thinking of everything they did to her made my blood boil. Fuck. Them. I aimed the gun perfectly between Brendan’s eyes.
“Ben––let him go. I have men in-place. We will get him.”
“And if he tries to run?”
“I promise you he will never see the light of day.”
Aaron’s promise fell on deaf ears. “Tell me, Uncle, if he’s armed when he runs and turns to shoot at me and I fire first, what happens?”
“No, Ben.”
“Tell me,” I roared.
“Self-defense could be used as a reason, but taking a life isn’t something you want to live with.”
What he didn’t realize is I already was. “Jim, cut the ties.”
Jim raised Brendan up from the floor and slid a knife through the plastic ties. Brendan hesitated to move, so Jim gave him a little push. I stood motionless, holding my aim.
“Jim, do you see him running?”
“Yeah, Benny, I do,” he calmly answered as he stepped out of the range of my aim.
“You see his gun too. Right?”
“Yeah, Benny, I do.”
“Me too.” Before my finger could even squeeze the trigger, a pop sounded over my shoulder, and Brendan fell to the floor. My jaw fell slack as I turned to look at my uncle who was slowly lowering his arm. “Why?”
He shrugged his shoulders in reply. “Fucker should’ve run faster.” My uncle couldn’t protect me, but no one would question him. It was over, but she still wasn’t in my arms.
“Piper?” I whispered.
“They took her outside. She’s injured, Ben. There’s a good chance she’s already in the back of an ambulance on the way to the hospital.”
“Then that’s where we’re going. Jim,” I shouted, motioning for him to follow me. As I stepped past my uncle, he quickly grasped my shoulder.
“They have my sister too. I’ll get us a ride.” I nodded my head and followed him out into the hallway and down the two flights of stairs with Jim trailing behind me. Black suits, white dress shirts, and gray jackets had engulfed the house. They swarmed like bees, zipping in and out, as we made our way to a black suburban that was just pulling up to the door. Climbing in, Jim sat up front while Aaron sat with me in the back. The scenery blurred around me as we made our way to the hospital. I paid no attention to my uncle as he spoke on the phone to someone else, most likely recalling the details of the day’s events or giving orders. Instead, I sat in silence praying Piper was safe, and pleading for my mom’s life. She wasn’t the greatest mother, but she had saved Piper. That was a debt I could never repay.
When we arrived at the hospital, there wasn’t an empty chair in the emergency room. The place was buzzing. They tried their best to get me to sign in so that I could get looked at, but I refused. I just kept telling them that nothing was broken. Sadly, they didn’t care what I thought. Due to the amount of blood on me, they took me straight back and before I knew it, I was sitting on a hospital bed with only a paper sheet covering me.
While in the back, I tried to look around to see which door Piper was behind, but it was useless. They all looked the same. After a little while, the nurse came in to check me over. Once my face and arms were cleaned up, only a few cuts existed on my face. My lip was busted and my ribs were sore as fuck. They sent me for an x-ray and ended up taping me up. Turns out, the bastard that kicked me had fractured two of my ribs. Asshole.
Once the doctors and nurses had cleared me, they released me to go back out into the waiting room. We sat for almost four hours, waiting to get any information on my mother and Piper. Irritated, I was pacing back and forth in front of a vending machine, while Jim nursed a cup of crappy coffee and snacked on his third bag of chips. How can he eat? My nerves were shot, my muscles were sore, and my whole body ached.
Jim looked up at me as I continued to wear a hole in the floor and offered me some of his chips, but I just waved them away. All I wanted was Piper. Aaron was already back there with her with another suit, trying to connect all the pieces from her side and mine in an effort to build a better picture of the shit-show that had occurred. She was going to be moved to a regular room, and after that I could be with her.
Based upon the information we received, my mom had substantial blood loss and had to have surgery. When Piper caught her, she’d been shot. She had stepped in the way to protect my girl. Her punishment was a bullet wound in her side. The doctors said she was lucky. It had missed her vital organs and simply tore through her muscles. They removed the bullet and repaired the muscles as best as they could. She also had to have several blood transfusions. She was already up in a room, but I wasn’t ready to see her just yet. My main priority was my girl.
“Are you ever going to sit?”
I glared at Jim. “I’m fine.”
“Right, and the cuts on your face, along with the tape under your shirt say differently. Benny, you gotta calm down. How do you think she’s going to feel if you come in her room all nervous and shit? You’ve got to be the one to show her it’s going to be okay.”
“Benjamin Oxley.” I whipped around at the mention of my name. A man in blue scrubs was standing in front of a set of white double doors with his hands folded loosely in front of him.
“That’s me.” I hurried over to him and followed him through the doors. We wound through what felt like a hundred never-ending hallways before reaching an eleva
tor, which we took to the third floor. When the doors opened, I continued to follow him until we reached a room with 325B marked beside it. Below the number was a plastic binder in a clear holder with a label that read: Matthews, P. F. Piper was just behind the door.
Peeking into the window, I could just barely see Aaron standing beside her bed. Catching my gaze, he approached us as we walked into the room. “Hey.”
“Hey.” My voice was tight in my throat. “How is she?”
“As well as can be expected. She’s got a lot of questions.”
I nodded my head, swallowing my nerves. “Did she say anything about Beckett?”
“I told her I’d let her tell you.” He gently clasped my shoulder before giving me a soft hug. “You did good. A lot of men go to prison, Ben, and not many learn from their mistakes. You did exactly what we asked of you, and more. I’m proud of you.” He patted me twice on the back before exiting the room. It was my time to be with her.
Hanging my head low, I walked around the teal curtain hiding her bed. I was so scared to look her in the eyes. I was terrified she was going to hate me.
“Ben?” her sweet, soft voice whispered a heavenly tune.
My gaze met hers as my eyes swept over her, noting every detail. Her face was swollen with cuts under her right eye. Her bottom lip was split, and a large purple bruise encased most of the left side of her face. My stomach sank as I noticed bruising around her collarbone. I took a few more steps until I was standing right beside her. Slowly, I began to lift the blanket off her. A tear slid down her cheek as she gently grabbed my wrist to stop me.
“Don’t,” she choked.
“Why?” I looked down at my beautiful girl as more tears slid down her cheeks. My worst nightmare was coming true right before my eyes. Leaning down, I softly pressed a gentle kiss to the back of her hand that was holding onto me. When she let go, I pulled the covers all the way down to her toes. My eyes were immediately drawn to the red score marks wrapping her right ankle. Doing my best not to touch her skin, I lifted the edge of her gown. There were definite handprint bruises on the inside of her thighs. Jesus.