“Good idea. Let’s go.”
But just at the moment when we started to move toward the van, Alex came out of the bank followed by Wes and his three sons.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
They say that in every life there comes a day of reckoning, a time when unsettled scores demand retribution. This was ours.
And the game was on.
Before Tank could grab my arm and lead me away to the safety the van promised, I saw Alex turn to us and recognize us. Then, his lips parted in shock as he appeared to say “No…” when he realized that somehow we’d come for him.
And then the others noticed us.
At that moment, time flipped a switch—and time seemed to stop. I heard my pulse thrum in my ears. I felt a jolt of electricity shoot through my body. And even though everything that happened next took place within a matter of minutes—if it was even that long—my mind processed all of it as if it were unfolding before me in slow motion.
Tank pulled the gun from the back of his pants, lunged forward, and aimed it at the men just as the civilians on the sidewalk processed what was going down, and ran screaming into the streets.
“Faces down on the sidewalk!” Tank ordered. “Do it now, or I’ll shoot!”
I pulled out my own gun, stood just behind Tank, and pointed that mother straight at Wes’ forehead, whose face had dissolved into a kind of rage that had the weight of determination behind it. With a bright swing of his fist, he spun around and bashed it against the side of Alex’s temple, knocking him hard to the ground.
I heard a gunshot go off, and it took me a moment to realize that it was Tank who had fired first. One of Wes’ sons went down in a bellow of pain, but the other two were quick. They drew their own guns just as Wes went for his own. Tank shot again, and I saw another man fall to the pavement, but not before shots were fired at us.
Shots that missed us in the gathering chaos.
“Arms down!” Tank shouted. “Do it now, or I will kill you, Wes! Do your sons hear me? They’d better. I will kill your father. And then I’ll finish off the rest of you. Your choice!”
I saw one of Wes’ sons sit up and struggle to reach for his gun, but before he could, I instinctively shot him in the face, and watched his head blow apart when the bullet connected with his skull. It was enough to cover Wes with his son’s brain matter, and when that happened, he and his last-standing son opened fire on us.
Tank went flat to the ground and began to shoot when they did.
I flung my back against the building at my right, and also opened fired in an attempt to strike Wes down. Bullets whizzed past us. I saw Alex swing out his legs, which brought down Wes’ last-standing son. He fell hard to the ground, his head connecting first, but he was strong. As if his life depended on it—because it did—he began to fight with Alex while Wes fell back behind one of the bank’s pillars in an effort to shield himself.
“Shoot them all,” Tank instructed me. “But shoot carefully—you have only four bullets left. They’ve had their chance. Shoot to kill.”
And so I shot one of Wes’ sons. I shot him in the chest, and a burst of blood filled the air around him in a deadly red mist. Then, I aimed my gun at the man who was on top of Alex, exchanging blows.
But Tank got to him first.
He fired a shot, and the man suddenly reared back as blood jetted out of his neck in torrents. For a moment, he just lingered there in an odd kind of disbelief before he folded on top of Alex, who took no chances. He pushed the man off of him and turned to Wes, who was concealed by the pillar.
And I knew.
In my soul, I knew what was coming next. With Alex out in the open with no protection, Wes would turn his gun on him and kill him in retribution for all that he had just lost.
Unwilling to allow that to happen, instinct took hold of me, and I mainlined forward with my gun held out in front of me before Wes could turn his own gun on Alex.
Tank shouted at me to stop, but I didn’t. I was going to kill that sonofabitch before he had a chance to kill my husband. And so I didn’t stop, not even when I heard Tank rushing behind me. He fired a shot at the pillar to keep Wes at bay, causing a burst of marble to spray in front of me, but it was all for not. When I neared Wes, he snaked around the pillar with his gun trained on me. I rolled onto the ground before he could shoot me.
And then seconds became milliseconds.
His gun went off.
My gun went off.
With the shattering sound of each shot, I felt a bullet pierce through me.
I crumpled hard to the sidewalk. As I lay there on my back, I was aware of another shot going off. I heard Wes yelp, I watched the sky begin to dim, and then Tank was at my side.
“Jennifer,” he said to me. “You’re bleeding heavily.”
The world started to spin, but as much as I tried to right it, I couldn’t.
There was only one thing I needed to know.
“Is Alex alive?” I asked.
“I’m right here,” Alex said. He came up behind me and lifted me into his lap. “I’m here,” he said again. “Help her,” he said to Tank. “Please!”
In a haze, I watched Tank remove the very shirt he’d wrapped around Alex’s throat after we crashed. So, this is how it would end—with Alex’s blood pressed against my own blood.
As it should be…
Even though I could feel Tank working on me and could hear my husband telling me that he loved me even while he began to weep, I was aware that I was beginning to slip away.
I locked eyes with Alex, reached out an unsteady hand, and placed the palm of that hand against the rough of his beard. “I had to do it,” I said. “I couldn’t not help you. You’re alive now. Some will say I made a stupid mistake, but I didn’t. You’re alive. If I’ve lost my life to save yours, I can die knowing that.”
“We need an ambulance!” Tank shouted out. “Somebody! Please! Call for an ambulance!”
“Stop the blood, Tank!” Alex said.
“She was hit hard. I’m trying my best.”
“I need you to listen to me,” I said to Alex. “If I die from this, I need you to find someone else. I need you to find love again. A love better than what we shared together. It’s possible. Please, tell me that you’ll do that.”
“I won’t,” he said. “No one can replace you. And besides—you’re going nowhere.”
“That’s the thing,” I said. “I’ve been here before—right after we crashed. I remember this feeling, only this time it’s somehow worse.”
“Don’t leave me,” he said.
My voice was barely a whisper when I spoke. “I’m trying not to.”
“Promise me that you won’t. We’ve been through so much together, Jennifer. What happened here can’t be the end of us.”
“Please do as I asked,” I said.
“You can come through this!”
“And I might. But my mind is fading right now. If I don’t make it, I need you to promise me that when you’re ready, you will find another woman, you will marry her, and you will have the child I failed to give to you.”
“You didn’t fail,” he said, his voice choked with emotion.
“We both know that I did. Take care of Cutter. Get the others out of here. Tell everyone that I love them. Give Lisa and Barbara a hug and a kiss for me. I don’t want to go just yet, so try your best to keep me here.”
“We will. We are. You can’t go. Please don’t go.”
But I felt that I was going. I wasn’t sure where I’d been hit, but it was significant enough to make everything around me become wildly iridescent--almost hallucinogenic. I felt Tank tug his shirt somewhere around the upper part of my body. I thought of my best friends Lisa and Blackwell and of the crazy life I’d lived up until that point, and then I looked hazily up at Alex. He was crying. Tears were streaming down his cheeks and disappearing into his beard. I could feel him holding me, I could feel his love coursing through me, and I told him that I loved him again just b
efore I lost control of my body and slumped into his arms.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Somewhere over the Marshall Islands
The light didn’t come for me as it had before. Instead, as I fell into Alex’s arms, darkness claimed me, my body gave itself over to an odd kind of stasis, and the edges of everything I knew spun out into the universe in a wicked, whirling blur.
Between each stretch of silence came the occasional ebb and flow of voices, the rise and fall of chaos, the piercing shrill of sirens, and the sense that a great unrest had been awoken.
And then there was nothing but the silence again.
Time was lost to me. Time didn’t exist. Did I exist? I wasn’t sure. It was as if I was hovering just along the periphery of a doorway, listening for something I couldn’t quite hear while waiting, questioning what would come next.
* * *
When the light did come, it was sunlight, and I woke to the roaring, unmistakable chopping sounds of a helicopter. I parted my eyes, and the first person I saw was Alex, who looked at me with a crashing sense of relief before he turned around and said to somebody I couldn’t see, “She’s awake!”
I was lying on a narrow bed of some sort, and when Alex looked down at me again, he took my hand in his and lifted it to his lips. As he kissed the back of it, his eyes filled with tears.
“You’re awake,” he said. “Thank God, you're awake.”
My head was so thick, I felt as if I’d been drugged. I just blinked at him.
“You’re in a rescue helicopter,” he said as a man in an orange jumpsuit came up beside me with a stethoscope around his neck. “You were shot in your left shoulder. You lost a significant amount of blood, but you’re going to be fine, Jennifer. They’re giving you blood now, and pain medication to keep you comfortable. The best hospital that’s nearby is in Singapore. We’re flying there now. The bullet shot clean through you. It broke no bones, but you still need to be assessed and treated.”
“The baby,” I said.
When I said those words, Alex tried to conceal the concern that flashed across his face, but even through the haze of whatever drugs they’d given me, I could tell that it was a struggle for him to answer the question—and my heart went out to him. He wanted this child as much as I did.
“We won’t know until we get to Singapore,” he said.
I shook my head at him. “I can’t believe we’re actually going to Singapore, and not back home. How long?”
“Another four hours. We’ve been en route since mid-afternoon. We’ve already refueled in Manila—now it’s on to Gleneagles Hospital. We’ve reserved the best suite. It has a private room for you, a bedroom for me that’s just off your room, and a conference room that I can use to connect with Wenn via video conference.”
I felt myself gradually becoming more alert.
“How long have I been out?” I asked.
“At this point? A good ten hours.”
I furrowed my brow at him. “How could I have been out so long?”
“The blood,” Alex said. “There was a lot of it.”
“Tell me that bastard is dead.”
“He’s dead. Tank shot him.”
“Where is everyone else?”
“Barbara and Tank are with us. Lisa and the girls are on another helicopter flying just behind us.”
The absence of another name was not lost on me. “What about Cutter?”
“It’s complicated,” he said.
“How complicated?”
“He fell into a coma, but he’s on the helicopter with the others and he’s getting a massive dose of intravenous antibiotics, as well as fluids. They're trying to bring his temperature down.”
“So, he’ll live?”
“We have to believe that he will.”
“Are you saying that he won’t?”
“I’m saying that we need to pray for him.”
“What about Catherine?” I asked. “And the other people who wanted off the island?”
“Authorities are looking into their situation now. My understanding is that all of them will be sent back to the States. But that’s all I know. Right now, my only concern is for you and Cutter.”
“And Wenn?” I said. “Have you heard anything?”
“Not yet. I’ve been at your side since you were first shot.” He looked up at the thirty-something man in the orange jumpsuit, who appeared to be reading my vital signs on the monitors at my left. “This is Dr. Cross. He saved you.”
“How are you feeling, Jennifer?” the man asked.
“Groggy, but I’m not in pain. Thank you for everything that you’ve done for me.”
“It wasn’t just me,” he said. “Tank is the real hero here. If he hadn’t used his shirt as a tourniquet on your shoulder, this could have turned out much worse.”
“He’s used that shirt before,” I said. “He used it to save my husband’s life after we crashed.”
“He knew what he was doing, but a former SEAL would.”
“Can I see him? And Barbara?”
“You should rest.”
“Just for a few minutes. Please. I’d love to see my friends. Then I’ll sleep.”
He looked at me for a moment. Then, he appeared to make a decision and nodded. “All right—but only for a few minutes. Then you need to sleep. Who would you like to see first?”
“Is that even a question?” I heard Blackwell say above the din of the helicopter’s beating blades. “Naturally, that would be me. No offense, Tank—you know I love you. But that girl needs her mother, and with those pecs of yours, you don’t fit the type. Would you mind?”
“If you insist,” he said.
“Always so sensible. Alex, may I?”
When Alex stood and stepped away from me with the doctor, Blackwell came into view. She looked tired and drawn in the filthy Chanel suit she’d worn since the day we’d crashed, but beneath her weariness, I could sense determination, resolve, and a new sense of hope. She sat down next to me, took my hand in her own, and squeezed it gently. “How are you?” she asked.
“Alive,” I said.
“And so you are.”
“It’s going to take more than a bullet to take me away from that man,” I said, nodding over at Alex, who was consulting with the doctor. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him.”
“So you prove time and again. What you did was very brave, you know?”
“Tank might say that I was stupid.”
“I might say the same once you’re feeling better, but not yet. Not now. You were indeed brave. Once again, you put your husband’s life ahead of your own.” She shrugged at me. “You never cease to amaze me, you know? How terribly I misjudged you the first day that we met.”
“Well, there’s that,” I said.
“Don't be smart. Now, listen to me—be honest with me. How do you feel?”
“I’m probably slurring my words a bit, and if I am, I should be happy about that because I don't feel much of anything.”
“Actually, you’re not slurring at all, which means that you’d make a wonderful drunk if you ever want to fully give yourself over to the martinis that you clearly love. Physically, however, you look as if you’ve been in a barroom brawl.”
“Oh, thank you.”
“Just trying to make you smile, my dear.”
“The truth is that you can’t help yourself.”
“Well, I could, I suppose—but what’s the point? You know how I am. You’ve seen how I cope under pressure. Either with theatrics, unmitigated evil, or humor. Right now, with this situation thrown into the mix, let’s also throw in gratitude. Thank God you’re alive.”
“I’m lucky.”
“On one level, yes. But don’t overlook your tenacity, Jennifer—it’s part of who you are.”
“Tough to fell a Maine girl,” I said.
“And here I thought we New Yorkers were tough. I’ve since reassessed.”
I looked at her for a moment, and then I said in a low
voice, “I’m worried. You know why.”
Her face softened. “I do. But we're all here for you.”
“The drugs I'm being given. The doctor knows about the baby, doesn’t he?”
“Of course he does. And the drugs are safe—I made certain of it. So did Alex. Both of us terrorized that poor man about them before he administered whatever is flowing through your veins right now. Well, all right, fine—I did most of the terrorizing. Alex just wanted straight answers from him. If you are with child, those drugs will not harm the baby, so let’s put that right out of your head.”
“What about Cutter?” I asked. “Alex wouldn’t say much of anything to me about him. Is he just trying to protect me?”
“I heard what he said to you, and he told you how it is. All we know now is that Cutter is in a coma, and that a doctor in the other helicopter is treating him. He is not dead. The hospital in Singapore has already been alerted about his condition and yours. They are prepared to act the moment we land.”
“Will I need surgery?”
“We don’t know yet. They’re going to have to take some X-rays before we know the extent of the damage. From what I understand from the doctor, the bullet tore through muscle, but it didn’t connect with any bones. So, let’s count our blessings for that.”
“You're going to have one hell of a time dressing me now,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll have two scars you’ll need to cover up.”
“Well, temporarily you will. But I know the best plastic surgeon in New York City, and when the time is right, he’ll make you look as good as new. Now, look,” she said. “You’re eyes are starting to grow heavy—especially the left one, which is making you look strange and kind of horrific in ways that are making me feel uncomfortable. You can talk with Tank after we arrive in Singapore. Try to sleep the rest of the way, OK? For me? For Alex and Tank? And for yourself? Mostly for yourself?”
“I’m scared,” I said. “Not just about the baby and Cutter, but also about Wenn.”
“Don’t worry about Wenn. At this point, the entire world knows that Alex is alive. There will be a groundswell of support for him—and for you. That—along with the goodwill Alex has built up and maintained since he took over Wenn—is a powerful elixir that won't go ignored. You’ll see that I’m right about this.”
Annihilate Me 2: Omnibus (Complete Vols. 1-3, Annihilate Me 2) Page 37