Discovered

by E. D. Brady

  “That’s right,” Ben butted in, slowly approaching Jay’s other side. He shuffled slightly over. In one slick move, Jay, Joey and Ben formed a shield in front of Issy and Layla. “Manuel Castillez,” Ben said calmly. “How very nice to see you again, or it would be if you’d remove the stupid mask. And who else do we have here? Oh yes, Sam Sheevers and Jason Shepard.”

  “Clever,” the first man, who was more than likely Robert, said. “So why don’t you hand over what we want before someone gets hurt.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not exactly sure what it is you’re after,” Jay replied. “For the life of me, I can’t seem to figure out what I could have that would be of that much interest, except of course, money.”

  “You have something much more valuable than money,” Robert answered.

  “And what would that be?” Joey queried, feigning confusion.

  “Don’t play games with me,” Robert said bluntly. He reached up and removed the mask from his head, realizing its futility since they already knew who he was. “How old are you?” he questioned, smirking knowingly in Jay’s direction.

  “Eighteen,” Jay said frankly. “Why do you ask?”

  “We both know that’s a lie,” Robert replied. “James told me all about you. I know what it is you have in your possession.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jay responded. “If it’s money you’re after, you can have as much as you want, but trust me, it really can’t buy happiness.”

  “Cute,” Robert answered. “Now which of your friends would you like to say good-bye to first? I’ll make this simple, you hand over the juice, or I start putting bullets in them.”

  “Again, I have no clue what you’re on about,” Jay stated.

  Layla instinctively understood that Jay was playing for time, but had no clue as to what his plan could be. Then from the side of her eyes, she noticed Issy slip a gun from her inside pocket and hold it slightly behind her back. She pushed her foot over next to Layla’s and tapped on Layla’s toes to get her attention. Layla looked directly at Issy, who motioned for Layla to get behind her. Not understanding how that helped, she obeyed anyway, seeing the determination in Issy’s eyes.

  “You asked for this,” Robert said, then lifted his gun and pointed it toward Joey. “How about I shoot this one first?”

  “No, please don’t!” Jay screeched, yet somehow Layla didn’t sense sincerity in his horror. It was almost as if Jay was pretending to be afraid. What could he be playing at? He would get Joey shot for sure.

  “Give me the juice,” Robert said again.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jay replied frantically.

  “Okay, then,” Robert said and pulled the trigger.

  Layla screamed as Joey fell to the ground, blood oozing from his chest.

  Jay rushed at Robert and tried to wrestle the gun from his hand while Ben pulled his own gun and fired directly at Manuel. Manuel crumbled to the ground, horrified at taking a direct hit.

  Issy stood protectively in front of Layla and fired a couple of rounds, causing Jason and Sam to run back to the van, fleeing the onslaught of bullets.

  Just before Jay was able to get the gun from Robert’s tight grip, it went off, and Jay fell over.

  Layla screamed again, shaking uncontrollably.

  “Stay behind me,” Issy warned, sensing that Layla was about to run to Jay. “It’s alright, just stay behind me.”

  Layla tried to come to grips with what Issy had just said. How could this be all right? Joey and Jay lay motionless on the ground, bleeding out. She made a move to run when Issy’s voice grew louder, forceful. “Stay where you are!” Issy demanded as she continued to fire shots in the direction of the men, she and Ben shoulder to shoulder with Layla crouched down behind them.

  Robert, Sam and Jason retreated to the van and climbed in. As they sped away, Robert fired one more shot, hitting Ben in the thigh.

  Layla crawled to Jay, gut wrenching grief and horror threatening to consume her last ounce of sanity. She felt the void of his loss so severe, it made it hard to breathe. She leaned over him, begging him to open his eyes.

  Issy was staring straight at Ben’s thigh as though she expected it to do something other than bleed profusely. She turned her worried glance to Joey then Jay then back to Ben again expectantly, locking her gaze with his. They stared into each other’s eyes silently, the blood seeping through Ben’s fingers that rested over the wound.

  “Call an ambulance!” Layla bellowed through heavy sobs.

  “We can’t,” Issy replied in a soft, apologetic voice. She walked over to Joey and put her hand on his neck, feeling for a pulse, and then she walked to Jay and rolled him over. She put her fingers to his throat in a similar manner.

  “Well?” Ben asked, concern for his friends thick in his voice.

  Issy shrugged and shook her head, her expression one of silent panic.

  “Call an ambulance!” Layla yelled again. “What’s wrong with you two? Why are you just standing around like you’re waiting for something to happen?”

  Ben staggered back suddenly and lost his footing, landing on his back, his face ashen from loss of blood. Issy knelt down beside him and put her hand on his forehead, glancing back and forth between his face and his wound, her perplexed expression deepening.

  Layla sat up straight and wiped her eyes with the bottom of the light-blue scrubs. If Issy was not going to do anything, then she would have to. She pulled out her cell phone and turned it on.

  Issy’s head whipped around. “NO!” she bellowed. “Layla, put the phone away!”

  “I’m calling an ambulance,” Layla responded curtly.

  Issy jumped up and rushed over to Layla, holding out her hand. “Give me the phone!” she snapped.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Layla gasped.

  But before Issy could reply, Layla’s eyes widened as she observed the scene some feet away. The bullet that was lodged in Ben’s leg suddenly popped out and landed on the grass beside him.

  “How the…?” Layla trailed off as she watched Issy rush back to her husband, a huge smile of relief spread across her face.

  “Can you sit up?” Issy asked Ben, almost seeming excited.

  “I’m fine,” he replied, pushing himself up from the ground.

  Issy threw her eyes up to the sky. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she muttered.

  To Layla’s utter shock, Ben’s thigh had stopped bleeding completely, and the color had returned to his face, making him look as though nothing had ever happened.

  Issy threw her arms around Ben and kissed him quickly on the lips then jogged over to Joey and knelt down beside him. “Are you in there?” she asked the lifeless young man, her voice almost bristling with glee. When she received no reply, she crawled over to Jay and tapped on his cheek. “Jay,” she called. “Wakey uppey. Come on Arthur, wake up and smell the coffee, brother.”

  Layla couldn’t come to grips with what Issy was doing. She sat gaping at the girl, feeling extreme exasperation at such cold and inappropriate behavior.

  “Issy,” Ben called out. When Issy looked in her husband’s direction, Ben nodded his head toward Layla. “Mi amor, you’re scaring her,” he said.

  Layla glared back and forth between them both, her mind racing to come to terms with what was going on.

  Ben walked without even a slight limp over to Issy and looked down at Jay. And then to Layla’s relief and utter astonishment, Jay opened his eyes and coughed. She felt hope wash over her, thinking that Jay might just be okay. But what she noticed from the side of her eye caused her to forget Jay for a brief second and focus on Joey.

  Joey was pushing himself up onto his elbows. When he was seated upright, he opened his shirt, revealing his wound, then, to Layla’s complete horror, he put the first two fingers of his left hand next to the wound, and the first two fingers of his right on the other side, and began to squeeze into his flesh. She watched, thunderstruck, as the bulle
t popped out of the hole in Joey’s chest and onto the ground. As she sat trying to comprehend what on earth was going on, she saw that the bleeding had stopped and that the wound on Joey’s chest was healing, the skin knitting together right before her eyes.

  “Ah, you’re back from the dead,” Ben called over to him, not the slightest bit shocked that Joey was alive after taking a direct hit in the chest from a bullet.

  Joey looked up, and a broad smile graced his face. “That…was…AWESOME!” he bellowed. “Oh, man, did you guys get how cool that was, how we were all on the same page, figured out the plan with no communication necessary. That’s what happens when you spend so much time around the same people, you just know what they’re thinking and—”

  “No!” Issy said firmly, crawling back over to Joey. “It was not awesome! It was so far past not awesome. You could have been killed. What on earth were you guys thinking?”

  “We had to take the chance,” Joey said defensively. “Those idiots were not going to stop until someone was dead anyway.”

  “He’s right, mi amor,” Ben added. “What other choice did we have?”

  Layla blinked rapidly, too confused to even begin trying to make sense of what was going on. She pinched her cheek to make sure she wasn’t dreaming.

  Jay threw his arm over his eyes but didn’t make any move to sit up.

  Issy looked at Jay momentarily, her eyes narrowing, then she turned back to her husband. “I guess the cat’s well and truly out of the bag now,” she said.

  “Poor Jay,” Ben answered with a chuckle. “He’s going to have some splaining to do.”

  Layla looked back down at Jay and noticed that the bullet that had been pumped into his abdomen was rolling off his body onto the grass and his wound, like Joey’s, was knitting closed right before her eyes.

  “What the hell is going on here?” she moaned.

  Jay pushed himself up quickly and reached out for her, but she backed away. “Layla,” he moaned, looking completely healthy but remorseful.

  “Will someone tell me what just happened?” she yelled.

  Jay let out a loud sigh and turned to Layla. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  “No kidding!” she blurted out.

  “Let’s get into the house, and I’ll explain everything,” he said pleadingly.

  As they walked toward the parked car, Layla’s mind raced all over the place, trying to come to terms with how bullets just pop out of wounded bodies, and skin closes up in a matter of seconds. All she could conclude was that whatever Jay and the others were working on must have been at the back of the miraculous recoveries. But hadn’t they told her that the serum was nowhere near finished?

  “What should we do about Manuel?” Ben asked when he was seated behind the wheel of the blue SUV.

  “Call the police and claim self-defense,” Joey suggested. “They’re going to trace the bullets in the body to your gun anyway.”

  “We can’t risk an investigation,” Issy replied.

  “We’re a few miles from your house, and he lives in Queens,” Joey responded. “You fired him; he came to your home to get revenge…”

  Ben nodded and pulled out his cell reluctantly. “They’re on their way,” he said when he’d hung up.

  When the police arrived, they spoke with Ben mostly, but asked everyone else present to give a report while Layla was told to remain in the car. Obviously, she was too shaken by the ordeal to give a proper account of the details. She had no idea what excuse they had given for their bloody clothes, and didn’t really care. She was too freaked out and shaken to care about anything at that particular moment.

  When the police were done with them, they were told to go home and stay home until they were contacted for further questioning.

  Layla sat in a thick daze as they surrounded her in the SUV, and Ben turned the keys in the ignition.

  They arrived moments later at a tall wrought-iron security fence. Ben punched a code into the keypad to the side. The gates floated backward, allowing them entry onto a cobblestone driveway with moss growing strategically and stylishly between the cracks. They drove up to the tutor-style mansion of sharply pitched roofs and thick timber surrounding a combination of bricks and stones. Ivy-draped arbors flanked both sides of the structure.

  Issy unlocked the front door and ushered Layla into a foyer of gleaming hardwood floors, and a twisting staircase adorned with oak railings and scrolled wrought-iron balusters in old-world copper tones.

  “The first door on the left is the guest room with private bathroom,” Issy said, gesturing up the stairs. “You can go wash up there, and I’ll bring you a change of clothes.”

  “Thank you,” Layla replied quietly. She walked up the stairs still in a stupor, caught between trying to understand what she’d just witnessed and trying very hard to bury the thought all together.

  She felt a hand grab onto hers and turned slowly. Jay stood a few steps behind her, his face twisted with worry. “Are you alright?” he asked.

  “I don’t really know,” she answered truthfully. Jay walked up to stand next to her. “I thought you were dead…and then…” she trailed off, too baffled to find the correct words. She shook her head then felt tears well up at the memory of him lying on his stomach obviously dead, or so she thought at the time. She threw her arms around his shoulders and buried her face in his neck, letting the tears flow easily.

  “It’s alright,” he cooed, rubbing her back. “It’s going to be alright, Layla.”

  “I thought you were dead,” she said again through heavy sobs. “And I don’t understand what happened.”

  “I’m going to explain everything to you,” he vowed. “I’m going to change out of these bloody clothes, then we’ll have a long talk, okay?”

  She pulled away, nodding and wiping her eyes.

  “I’ll see you downstairs shortly,” he promised.

  She nodded again.

  She walked through the first door on the left, into a large room that was awash in a sea of soft pinks and beige, with a four-poster bed and dresser, intricate paneling, and antique lamps.

  She walked over to the bay window and knelt on the pink flowered window bench to stare out at the Atlantic Ocean swishing gently against the shore. There were no gardens at the back of this house. The back door opened up right onto the beach and was nestled in a groove in the shoreline, making it look as though it was on its own tiny peninsula.

  She sighed and made her way to the bathroom to clean up.

  After throwing water over her face, she heard a knock on the door and went back into the bedroom to open it.

  Issy stood outside holding a pair of black lounge pants and a long gauze shirt. She handed the tiny bundle of clothing to Layla and asked her to join them in the living room when she was ready.

  Layla changed quickly and sat back down on the window bench to look out at the sea once more, reflecting on the last five days. She realized that she’d come to consider Issy, Ben and Joey friends, and as far as Jay was concerned, well, she loved him, plain and simple. She had tried to fight the feeling for so long, but there was no denying that somewhere in the last few days her shield had come down completely. For good or bad, she loved him.

  But what were they up to? What had they invented that could make deadly bullets pop out of bodies? All of them had been so quiet on the drive to Issy and Ben’s, as though they were all deep in thought, anticipation hanging thick between them.

  Sighing, she stood up and made her way to the door, deciding that it was best to get the explanation over with as soon as possible.

  She walked down the stairs into the foyer and followed the hushed, serious voices into Issy and Ben’s living room.

  Jay turned around when she entered and smiled sadly, his wet hair pushed back off his face, wearing faded blue jeans and a tight black T-shirt that looked amazing on his perfect chest. Layla felt weakened at the sight of him, despite the more pressing matters.

  He gestured for Layl
a to sit on the couch.

  He jogged out of the room but returned a second later carrying a kitchen chair that he angled to face her. He sat down on the chair and took both her hands in his then looked deep into her eyes while Issy, Joey and Ben sat around, quietly observing the scene before them.

  After a moment of heavy silence, Layla was growing impatient. “What is it?” she asked. “What is going on here?”

  Jay sighed. “There’s something else that I didn’t tell you,” he admitted, “something that we’ve never told anyone.”

  Jay

  Chapter 21

  Jay felt his heart race faster. This was something he’d never anticipated telling anyone before. But Layla was worth it. Regardless of the outcome of today, he cared about her too much to keep anything back anymore.

  He wanted to be exposed for once in his life, to be completely visible, and he wanted Layla to be the one to see him in his entirety. Irrespective of how she felt after he was finished telling her everything, he wanted her to be the one to know it, to see him for who he truly was.

  “I’d like to begin this story in the fifteenth century,” he said, looking up into Layla’s eyes to gauge her reaction.

  “Why?” she asked suspiciously. “I know that most of the rich families in this country can trace their ancestors back to the Mayflower, or in your case, years before that, obviously, but is it really necessary?”

  “It is,” he answered bluntly.

  “Okay,” Layla replied, holding up her hands in defeat.

  Jay reached up and took her hands again, resting them on his knees. “In the latter part of the fifteenth century, in the eastern regions of Spain, there lived a young man by the name of Fernando,” he began. “Fernando was a nobleman, lord of his estate and manner. He was also a distant relative of King Ferdinand of Aragon and her majesty Queen Isabella, and had been invited to their court on at least two occasions.”

  Layla nodded, still looking mildly baffled.