Beyond Physical

by D Pichardo-Johansson

  “Drop the gun!” demanded Richard in a fierce voice, pointing his gun at the armed man.

  Recovering from his surprise, the man moved his gun cannon to Joy’s temple. “No! You drop the—”

  Richard didn’t let him finish. He pulled the trigger, shooting him straight in the forehead.

  The sound of the loud explosion was followed by Joy’s faint scream as the blood of the man splashed her on the face before he collapsed on the floor.

  The man holding Joy’s arms stood frozen and then reacted, reaching for a knife on his belt. Before he could grab it, Richard’s gun was already at his forehead.

  “Do you want to be next?”

  The man didn’t move or answer.

  “Let her go. Now!”

  The man let Joy’s arms go. She stayed frozen in place with a terrified expression on her blood-splashed face. Richard took the knife off the man’s belt and threw it on the floor before pulling Joy toward him, hugging her with his left arm while pointing his gun alternately at the two men left.

  Richard wanted to turn to Joy and make sure she was okay, but he didn’t want to let any of the men out of his sight. He let go of her for a moment to reach in his pocket for the phone, hoping for cell signal, when he felt the cannon of a gun on his own temple and heard a somewhat familiar voice behind him say, “Drop the gun.”

  He dropped his gun and slowly turned around. It was Charles Clark.

  “You’re one stubborn bastard, Fields. Why did you have to show up and ruin everything?”

  Another half a dozen men, all dressed in black, had entered the room with Clark and now filled it. From the corner of his eye, Richard looked at Joy pressing her back against a wall while one of them held a gun against her. Another man rushed to pick up Richard’s gun from the floor and pointed it at him.

  “Stop it!” Clark demanded. “Do not pull that trigger, idiot! This man’s a federal agent. If we kill him here and splash his DNA all over the place I work in, I’m DEAD! The whole FBI will be hunting me!”

  Shaking and cussing under his breath, Clark paced around the room. “I’m so pissed off with all of you! How did this happen? You assured me nobody was following her when she left the house!”

  He inhaled deeply, as if trying to calm himself down. “The first thing we need to do is get the hell out of here. Someone must have heard the gunshot, and it’s only a matter of time until someone comes to investigate. You! Get this corpse out of here and clean every trace of blood. And you, Pete! Tie these two up. And you two take their cars away and hide them until I decide what to do!”

  Rapidly, one of the men took Joy’s purse while another man emptied Richard’s pockets until he found his keys, taking his cell phone and his wallet too. Richard couldn’t believe Clark’s transformation from the soft-spoken, polite politician he knew to this man bossing around a gang of criminals.

  Clark continued pacing around the room nervously. “Maybe if we keep the original plan of killing her and making it look like an armed robbery and then hide him for a few weeks. Or maybe if we kill them both in a motel and make it look like a crime of passion . . . Never mind. Chances are that the whole FBI knows he’s here right now. Damn it!” He stopped to think. “We’ll need to do it the old-fashioned way: kill them and hide the bodies well. Keep the FBI busy looking for them, and that may buy me some time to get the hell out of this country. We have to get them as far away as possible from here.”

  Shaking his head, Clark walked toward Joy and held her chin. “I didn’t want it to be this way. Rachel and I really like you. We tried to give you a chance to forget your obsession about the Hospice House and move far away from Fort Sunshine, but you insisted on fighting and staying. Now you don’t give me any other choice.”

  Richard wondered desperately what to do, but he had no time to think. The huge guy Clark had called Pete was throwing him chest down on the floor, taping up his hands with duct tape that he was cutting with his own knife.

  All the men abandoned the room except for Pete, who was now turning him around to stick a large piece of tape over his mouth, shutting it tightly.

  Richard now saw him turning to Joy and dreaded witnessing that violence against her.

  For the first time, Joy appeared to be back from her trance. She looked at the giant in front of her with no anger and little fear. As unbelievable as it was for Richard, the look in her eyes was of compassion.

  “You remind me of someone I know. The son of a patient,” she said, smiling softly and calmly extended her hands to him.

  Something in the look of her eyes must have softened the man’s heart, as he didn’t try to push her against the floor as he did with Richard. Instead, he said, “No, honey, the hands go in the back.”

  Obediently, she turned her back to him, allowing him to tie her up while she was standing.

  The man was cutting the piece of tape to put over her mouth when she said, “Sir, would you please leave my mouth free? I have bad allergies and can’t breathe through my nose.”

  Richard couldn’t believe Joy’s innocence. It seemed obvious to him that the man in front of them was unable to empathize or feel compassion for anybody. He was surprised when the man said, “Oh, those damn allergies and sinus troubles. I’ve suffered from them every single day since I moved to Florida.” Richard realized Joy was winning the man’s cooperation by applying the “instant bonding” technique she’d taught him months ago.

  The man hesitated. “You know that if you scream I’ll have to shoot you, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “I’m too much of a coward to scream.”

  The man put the tape roll back in his backpack.

  Another man entered the room. “Let’s go, damn it! Joe and Martin went ahead and took their cars. We’ll be following them.”

  The man who had entered didn’t notice that Joy’s mouth was uncovered. Pointing at Richard with his gun, he made him get up from the floor and walk to the door.

  Pete lifted Joy easily over his shoulders, as if she was a sack, and asked, “Where are we going?”

  “We’re going to Jacksonville. We’ll throw the corpses in a lake there. We’re taking my truck.”

  Soon they were out of the building, into the dark night. As they were thrown into the back of a pickup truck, Richard’s whole body ached. Soon, a tarp was covering them, making it impossible to see out.

  He felt the engine running and the bumpy movement of the truck taking off.

  Chapter 38

  Lying against the hard floor of the back of the truck, Richard could feel that the ride had become faster and smoother, suggesting they were on a highway.

  He sensed Joy crawling on the floor of the truck until her body was lined up with his. She moved her face toward his and, with her teeth, started peeling off the tape holding his mouth shut.

  After a few tries, she was able to lift a corner of the tape, grab it with her teeth, and peel it off completely. It hurt, but if felt great to be able to move his mouth.

  “Joy, that was brilliant!”

  He could hear the fear in her voice. “Richard, how can we get out of here?”

  He thought for a moment. “Do you think you could also get the tape off my hands?”

  “I can try.”

  Richard turned around, and Joy tried with her teeth for several minutes; but it was soon obvious it was a lost cause.

  “I can’t. I can’t find the edge of the tape.”

  She had at least loosened up the tape from his skin. He pulled his hands forcefully, trying to loosen them free, but there was little give. He then made her turn around and tried, with his teeth, to cut the tape tying up her hands. Nothing. He lifted his feet and kicked the tarp on top of them; it was tightly tied and didn’t move. He sighed in despair and turned to face her.

  After a few moments of silence, Joy said, “Wait. I have another idea.”

  She twirled around until she was on her back. Lifting her foot, she punched a hole in the tarp with the stiletto heel of her shoe
. She maneuvered the foot around until the hole had become a tear.

  “Joy, you’re a genius!”

  He put his own shoe inside the tear, and they worked together, widening it until it was big enough that they could see outside.

  It was a relief to be able to breathe fresh air. Richard lifted himself as much as he could and, through the dark, caught a glimpse of a sign reading I-95 North, confirming his suspicion that they were on the highway.

  They continued using their feet to tear up the tarp until half their bodies were outside of it.

  “Joy, would you be willing to jump off the truck with me?”

  “What? We’re going to kill ourselves! They must be going seventy miles an hour. And we can’t break the fall, tied up as we are.”

  “If we manage to fall on the bushes beside the highway, we have a chance of making it.”

  “But chances are, we’ll fall straight in the way of another car. We’d be jumping to a near-certain death.”

  “Joy, you do realize that if we don’t jump, we’re riding to a sure death?”

  The truck engine was the only sound for a long while.

  “Richard, are you saying we don’t stand a chance either way?”

  Despair filled his heart. He felt certain that soon they’d both be dead no matter what they did.

  “You may be right. It’s too risky to jump.”

  “They said they’re taking us to Jacksonville. It will be hours. They need to stop at some point, even if only to go to the restroom.”

  Richard nodded, but he knew it was a matter of time before one of the other members of the gang riding behind them noticed they had ripped off the tarp and then tied them up more. He felt certain they were going to die anyway, and he could only hope that they’d kill her fast so she wouldn’t suffer.

  “Richard, I’m scared. What else can we do?”

  Now that his eyes were more accustomed to the darkness, he could see she was shaking. He wished his hands were free and he could hug her. He crawled to her so their faces were close.

  How could he kill her hope, telling her what he knew, that there was nothing else they could do? How could he let the last moments of her life be of total desperation? He remembered her words the first day they met, saying there was no such thing as false hope.

  He shrugged. “I guess you can pray.”

  She didn’t answer. Her silence and her gaze seemed to ask if he’d pray with her too. He wished he could do it, but not even in that dark moment of the proximity of his death could he force himself to believe in prayers.

  His thoughts went to Carl and everything he’d been learning from him and was still trying to understand. He’d said that nothing was impossible and manufacturing miracles was natural. In a moment like that, he envied anybody who could believe in miracles.

  And then, as if in a miracle, he heard Joy say, “Have you ever heard of a man called Carl Andrews?”

  Richard froze. “Yes. Why?”

  “He was my spiritual master for years, before Michael forbade me to see him.”

  Richard was perplexed. Joy had denied having ever heard of the Co-creators; but due to the confidentiality agreement with Carl, they couldn’t ask her if she knew him.

  “Carl is . . . kind of my spiritual master too.”

  She seemed encouraged. “Did you learn to manufacture miracles already?”

  He shook his head. “Did you?”

  She nodded. “Carl let me read his book draft years ago.”

  His shock deepened.

  “It’s not that different from praying. It’s been a while since the last time I did it; but if you’re willing to suspend disbelief for a moment with me and help me, we can try to manufacture one.”

  He agreed. He had nothing to lose.

  * * *

  Richard wondered what the plan was, as they’d been breathing in and out deeply for a while without doing much else. She finally spoke.

  “This is a three-step process. Step number one: know exactly what you want.”

  “I want to get out of here.”

  She shook her head. “No, Richard, what you are saying is I don’t want to be here. Don’t focus on what you don’t want, focus on what you want—where you want to be—to the point that you get to feel thankful, as if you already had it. Then step number two is to focus all your energy on that feeling of gratitude.”

  Hearing her talk almost made him smile. “How can I feel gratitude when I’m in a situation of hopelessness—when I don’t see a way out?”

  She shook her head softly. “That’s step number three. You have to have enough faith to let go. If you’re asking out of fear, you’re blocking your own energy; you’re holding up your request and not allowing it to fly up. It’s like throwing a Frisbee or a basketball; you have to aim and then let go.”

  He sighed. “How?”

  “It is a matter of focusing on the outcome we want with the confidence that the means will take care of themselves.”

  She paused. “Let’s try this: Let’s think about what we want and why we want it. Let’s forget about the how and think about the why.”

  She rested her forehead against his and closed her eyes.

  “I want to be alive, and I want to be free. I want to be back home with my children. I want that because . . .” She paused. “Because I love getting home and seeing them run to me, laughing and squealing. I want to be home because I love feeling Alex’s little hands on my face and his little lips kissing me. I want to run behind Edward, trying to catch him while he laughs and screams. I want to be alive, free, and at home so I can hug Arthur while he tells me the never-ending stories he tells everybody.”

  She opened her eyes. “Your turn.”

  Her tension had decreased; he could feel the difference in the quality of the energy she radiated. He decided he’d try it.

  “I want to be alive, and I want to be free so I can go back home to Ray. I want to take him surfing with me again. I want to feel the sunshine on my skin and hear the sound of the waves, to see the shades of blue of the sky and the water and to feel the scent of the ocean.”

  The images were vivid in Richard’s mind. He almost felt as if he was there on the beach with Ray. He couldn’t believe the peace he was feeling at that moment.

  Joy continued. “I want to be free because now that we saved the Hospice House, there are many projects I want to do. Because I feel excited about all the new people joining us, willing to help. Because now I know that it’s true that love is healing; and someday, I’ll prove it to the world.”

  Richard moved his head back so he could look at her. “I want to be alive, and I want to be free . . . because the world is better when I know that you’re there. I want to be alive because, for as long as my heart is still beating, I can still have hope—hope that no matter how much I may have hurt you, someday, before I die, I’ll get you to forgive me.”

  Tears filled Joy’s eyes.

  “I want to be alive, and I want to be free,” he said, “because I still have to fulfill my dream of waking up one morning next to you, knowing that you’re mine.”

  They kissed, softly and slowly. The peace that always invaded him whenever he touched her filled Richard’s heart; and for an instant, he got lost in the blissful feeling and completely forgot where they were.

  A loud noise and sudden bouncing of the pickup truck brought them back. For a moment, he feared they’d be thrown out of the truck. The ride had turned bumpy.

  “What happened?” Joy whispered.

  Richard assessed the situation for a moment. “I think the truck got a flat tire.”

  He was careful not to get up too high so the motorcycles and cars behind them didn’t see him.

  “Joy, they turned the emergency lights on, and they are slowing down. This is our chance.”

  They twirled and turned until they were kneeling on the floor of the truck.

  “They’re looking for an exit. When they take the ramp off, we’ll jump off the right side
of the truck and try to land in the bushes. The moment we land, get back up and start running as fast as you can. Got it?”

  “I got it.”

  Just as Richard had said, the driver turned on the turn signal and took the next exit.

  “Now!”

  They jumped off. The grass and the bushes broke their fall and scratched their bodies. They rolled several times on the ground before they stopped and were able to get on their feet.

  “Run, Joy!”

  They ran as fast as they could, following the lights in the distance.

  “That must be a rest area! Let’s make it there and look for a police car, or for anybody willing to help.”

  By then, the gang behind them realized what they’d done and several motorcycle riders were coming after them.

  Instructing Joy to follow him, he went deeper into the woods and kept running. Now they couldn’t see the lights of the rest area, but he tried to guess the direction.

  His plan worked. The riders had to get off their motorcycles and follow them by foot.

  It was already difficult to keep their balance, running with their hands tied behind their backs. Now, trying to do it in the dense part of the woods was a task. Richard feared that at any moment the men behind them were going to catch up with them or they were going to run into a group of people waiting for them ahead. He kept running, turning his head back from time to time to make sure Joy was running behind him.

  He noticed she was lagging behind. He’d forgotten she wasn’t trained for this type of race.

  “Are you okay?” he whispered, stopping.

  She was breathing so hard she couldn’t answer.

  “Let’s rest for a second,” he said.

  Joy was making an effort to control the noise of her wheezing, but he could see she was exhausted. She’d gotten rid of her heels and was running barefoot. He imagined there must be all sort of bruises and scratches on her bare feet and legs.

  Searching the air with his ears, he could hear the voices of the people following them in the distance. They were getting closer. In another direction, he could hear music. They needed to run in that direction if they wanted a chance to find people who could help them.