A Girl Scorned

by Rachel Rust

  Eddie glared at Thatcher.

  “Emily,” Sergei said with a biting tone. “Be respectful.”

  “Says the man with the gun pointed at my head,” I said.

  Sergei smiled slightly at me. Keeping his gun trained on my head, he spoke to Eddie. “Emily and I have both been watching you since you were just a boy. It took me a long time to find your father, up in Ohio, and then he slipped through my fingers before I could repay him the favor of losing a son. But I knew he would show up once again, and when we discovered you had applied to the FBI, Emily was only too kind to assist me once again.”

  “Assist? How?” Eddie asked Thatcher.

  She laughed. “Why do you think you were chosen for such a high-profile task force right out of the academy? Because you were special? No, no, we wanted you here. I specifically recommended you for my task force, to keep an eye on you, and Sergei wanted an opportunity to watch you work, see you rise … just so he could make you fall. And when your dad showed up on our radar again last spring, helping Natalie’s mother, we had our chance to repay his kindness by bringing down his only child, just like he had done to Sergei.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Eddie said. “You can’t singlehandedly place an agent into a task force.”

  Thatcher laughed with air of arrogance. “No, but I can highly recommend one. And I can be persuasive. And lucky for us, you did well in the academy, so it wasn’t too difficult to get you a spot.”

  Eddie straightened his spine and stared at Sergei. “Well, if you’re waiting for me to apologize for my dad killing your kid, you’re gonna be waiting a long time ’cause that’s not gonna happen.”

  “I don’t need an apology,” Sergei said. “I just need justice.”

  Thatcher stepped forward, gun closer to Eddie’s head.

  “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now,” he said.

  Thatcher sneered. “You’re outgunned, Martinez. Besides…” She turned her gun on me. “You don’t want to threaten me, I have an itchy trigger finger.”

  The little black hole at the end of her gun stared me down, swallowing me whole. This was it. Luke and Krissy were gone. Sergei and Thatcher were about to end it … to end us for good. They had won and any second now my death was going to come out of that gun. Any second now I’d fade to black.

  My body trembled and tears cascaded down my face. I looked to my mom whose own wet cheeks trembled. I looked to Eddie, yearning for one last glance of him.

  Anger flashed in his eyes. He lurched forward, knocking Sergei’s gun to the side and tackling his small frame to the ground. Before Sergei could try to get up, Eddie landed a punch clean across his cheek. Without pause, Eddie spun off Sergei’s form, throwing his arms around Thatcher’s legs, bringing her down.

  Thatcher backhanded Eddie against his jaw, sending him flying off her. She was nowhere near his size, but she had the right training.

  As their scuffle continued, Sergei rose behind them, flicking blood from the corner of his mouth. His gaze fixated on me as he advanced. My feet stumbled against themselves as I scurried backward. He approached quickly and I turned to retreat, tripping over Gerald’s dead body.

  I landed on my back, splayed across his legs, unable to get a solid grip anywhere to pull myself up. Sergei loomed over the top of me, the gun in his hand hanging at his side.

  “Are you watching, Jill?” he called out to my mother, but kept his eyes on me. “This is what disloyalty gets you.”

  As he raised his gun, I knew my mother was watching in a state of panic. Her muffled yells filled the room, even above the sound of Eddie and Thatcher’s ongoing fight. But I didn’t look at her. Not because I couldn’t bear it, but because my right hand had just hit something cool next to Gerald’s legs. My own gun.

  My fingers curled around the grip and when I lifted it up, I spotted a hint of surprise in Sergei’s face—right before I pulled the trigger.

  The bullet hit his shoulder, sending him flying back.

  I stood up over him and kicked his gun away. He smiled with bloody teeth as a pool of blood oozed out from underneath him. His smile froze, his eyes rolled back, and his head fell back against the floor.

  “Untie your mom.”

  I heard the words, but I was too fixated on watching for any signs of movement in Sergei’s body. In the movies, a dead bad guy was never dead after the first bullet.

  “Natalie!” Eddie yelled. Bruises were starting to appear on his cheeks, and there was a bloody scratch near his right temple and a silvery reflection by the outer corner of his left eye. “Untie your mom, quick!” He had Thatcher unarmed, lying flat on her stomach, pressed down by his foot. One of his hands held a gun, while the other had a tight grip on her hair. “Get a knife from the kitchen.”

  I rushed into the kitchen, hurdling over the body of Sean, who had apparently fainted. On the tile flooring, he lay on his back, eyes closed, muttering to himself as I tore open drawers until I found a set of steak knives.

  The ropes around my mom weren’t thick, but they were a tough, flexible material and it took several slices to work my way through. They uncoiled from her body with ease and I removed the gag from her mouth. I rushed the ropes to Eddie and helped him gag and tie up Thatcher.

  My mother spun me around and collected me into her arms, hugging me tighter than she ever had before. We shuddered together in relief, half-sobbing, half-laughing.

  Eddie collapsed down next to Krissy, feeling for a pulse. “She’s still alive! Look through pockets, find a phone and call 911.”

  “Oh, thank God,” I said. But a wet, slimy noise behind me stifled my sudden feelings of hopefulness.

  Eddie darted up to his feet, gun pointed. I turned around as Sergei rose up from his pool of blood, his shirt caked in sticky red. He took some time getting back onto his feet. And when he managed to do so, he was slouched over, his right arm dangling helpless at his side, leaving a trail of crimson drops on the floor.

  In his left hand, he held a knife. He leered at me with bloodshot eyes, laughing and choking. He hobbled toward me, knees weakly bent as though ready to give out from under him any moment.

  Without taking my eyes off him, my fingers curled around my gun. I raised the barrel to the man who had torn apart my family, and made me believe I had been rejected by my own mother. The man who was seconds from jamming a knife into my belly.

  He smiled, his teeth bloodied. “You really are a beautiful girl, Miss Mancini.”

  “I’m not a girl anymore—”

  I fired and the shot hit directly between his eyes, throwing him back into his red puddle of blood.

  “—and you can go to hell.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I sat on the back bumper of an ambulance, following a bright light with my eyes. Left, right, left again. The middle-aged paramedic asked me a few more questions and had me sign a waiver stating that I refused any further medical treatment.

  Police lights whirled red and blue. Police officers and FBI agents swarmed the premises.

  The evening sun hadn’t set yet, but in the hills, the horizon rose high, creating early evenings. And the shadows of trees made the woods around us dark and ominous.

  I couldn’t smell the pine trees, only the metallic scent of blood. Though I wasn’t sure if I was actually smelling it or if it was all in my head. Olfactory hallucinations that were going to haunt me for years to come. My hands shook, as memories of pulling the trigger played over and over again in my mind. I had killed him. I had ended the life of another human being. Self-defense was a good legal justification, but I made a mental note to call my psychologist in the morning.

  From around the ambulance door, Eddie appeared.

  “Déjà vu,” he said.

  “No shit.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t need to go to the hospital, if that’s what you mean. But other than that? No, I’m not okay.”

  He nodded in understanding and things went silent between us.
Hands in his pockets, he looked down at the ground as I stared up at the darkening sky. It was over. Sergei’s operation, the running away, the hiding out. It was all done.

  No more deadly encounters. No more fearing for our lives. The events that had shoved Eddie and me together four months ago had been put to an end with one final bullet. We were now free to live however we wanted—unbound by evil circumstances beyond our control.

  I hopped off the ambulance bumper and took a step toward Eddie. He took a step back.

  “Look, Natalie,” he said, running his hands through his hair. “I think—”

  “Natalie!” another familiar voice rang out.

  My father.

  Eddie glanced at his approaching form, then looked at me and motioned with his head. “Go to him. We can talk later.”

  I ran to my dad, hugging him tight, not caring in that moment that I had a lot of explaining to do. Starting with why I wasn’t in New York.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, pulling back to inspect me. “What is going on here? They didn’t tell me much on the phone, only that you’re okay but there were casualties and—” My father cut off his own words, eyes set on something—or someone—over my shoulder.

  Behind me stood my mother.

  “Jill?” my dad asked.

  “Hello, Nick.”

  I wasn’t sure the last time my parents had seen each other. Ever since Josh and I had been old enough to fly alone, we had accompanied ourselves to and from both their houses.

  “Dad,” I said. “Mom has a lot to tell you. And you’re gonna want to hear it, trust me.”

  They stood, several feet apart, just staring at one another. I grabbed my dad’s hand and dragged him to her.

  “Talk,” I instructed. “Please. Don’t leave anything out, Mom. I’ll be right back.”

  I hustled back to Eddie at the ambulance, alive with the hope of an eight-year-old—my eight-year-old self with braids who had watched my mom slip into a taxi and out of my life. I knew that if my parents would just talk, they could piece back together the fragments of our family. Even if it took multiple talks and things were confusing at first and no one knew quite how to fit things together … I was patient. My mom was back and there was nothing that could bring me down from that high.

  I leaned against the ambulance and nodded to my parents. “That’s going to be awkward for a while. But I have hope.”

  Eddie let out a long, low sigh. “It’ll take a while for them to work through it though. Trauma is hard on relationships.”

  A second ambulance next to us left, lights whirling and sirens blaring. In the back was Krissy, headed for surgery and a long slog of physical therapy. The bullet had shattered her shoulder, but the paramedic said it looked like it had missed some big armpit vessel. All I knew was that she was going to live, and that was yet another positive moment in this dump heap of a mess.

  “She wasn’t working for Sergei, was she?” I asked Eddie.

  “No. When I arrived at the cabin, Krissy was under the control of Sergei’s men. They had captured her. That’s how they knew my and Luke’s phone number, and that we were working together behind the FBI’s back.”

  “Good,” I said. “I like Krissy, I want her on our side.”

  Eddie nodded with a small smile. “Me, too.”

  “Let’s go, Martinez,” a tall man with a bald head said. Dressed in a blue FBI windbreaker, he motioned to the vehicle behind him.

  “Five minutes?” Eddie asked.

  The man looked at me, then back at Eddie. “Five minutes.”

  Eddie turned back to me. I reached for his hands, but he pulled away. He stretched his neck back and forth and didn’t speak. Maybe he was nervous, seeing as how he had to go answer questions for the FBI. But with Thatcher and Sean in custody, plus the nerdy man’s laptop of information, and Krissy’s testimonial, Eddie was in a good position to clear his name and get his badge back, even if it took a lot of time and bureaucratic measures to do it.

  But as he avoided my gaze, I realized his nerves centered on me. On us. On this conversation that wasn’t yet happening—but had better happen soon because the bald man was standing near his FBI car, watching us, probably timing our five minutes down to the last second.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, fearing the answer. Every muscle tightened in preparation for words I didn’t want to hear. The good feelings—my parents were talking, Sergei was dead, Krissy was alive—all dissolved when Eddie finally looked at me.

  And then I knew what was coming. I think I might have always known, ever since that gravel road back in May. We were different ages, from different worlds. If not for an evil madman, we never would have met. And maybe that was the way nature had intended, although now that I did know him, I didn’t want to change anything. Sergei had twisted our fates together, and despite the horror of the situations we had faced, Eddie was the one fiber I didn’t want to be untwined from.

  My face scrunched as I fought to stop the burning sensation behind my eyes. “No, Eddie. Don’t do this.”

  “Natalie, just listen…”

  A crease formed between his eyebrows and he gave me a pathetic look of sorrow, as if he couldn’t help the situation. But he damn well could have, he was just choosing not to. He was choosing to walk the other way, to leave me. As if I hadn’t been left enough in my life. First Sergei had ripped my mother away, and now the circumstances Sergei created were ripping Eddie away. But at least my mother had left only because she wanted to save my life.

  Eddie was slipping through my fingers of his own volition. He was straight up rejecting me.

  “I’m going to have a lot to take care of in the upcoming months,” he said. “I don’t know how long it’s going to take to get my badge back, and I need to concentrate on that right now. And you’ve been through a lot, and you need to concentrate on taking care of yourself. Continue your counseling, go to school, make friends, get lost in New York … like a normal college student.”

  I smiled an unamused grin, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from crying. “You’re asking me to leave you. To forget about you and move on?”

  He looked away. “Yes. At least for a little while, until we can both deal with what’s happened and get ourselves into better places. I can call you in a few weeks to check in, or in a few months we can meet up and—”

  “Stop.” I put my hand up to emphasize the word. I closed my eyes and tears spilled loose. He was asking me to do something that rubbed against every fiber of my being. Something so unnatural. How was I supposed to turn away from the one I loved? He may as well have asked me to jump off a bridge, it felt so dreadful.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I do care for you, and I want you to have the best future possible. And trust me, that would be a future without me.” He spread his arms out to the chaos around us. “Look around. We didn’t even meet under normal circumstances, we were thrown together by a madman. And as much as it pains me to let you go—and trust me, it does—you deserve to live your own life, to see where it naturally takes you. You don’t deserve to be forced with someone because of a school assignment.”

  “It was more than just that assignment and you know it,” I snapped. I glanced around before speaking my next words. “I was there for all our kisses, I was in those beds with you, and you cannot stand here and tell me that what you felt wasn’t real, because I know it was.”

  “It was real,” he whispered. “It still is real. I still do care, a great deal, actually. But I’m letting go for your own good.”

  “You’re a coward.”

  He eyes closed. “This is hard enough. Please don’t make it any harder.”

  “Why should I make it any easier?”

  He opened his eyes and stared at me. I wanted to look away, but couldn’t. His dark eyes lured me in just like they had so many times before. Deep brown, fringed with black lashes. He was beautiful. And he was a jerk. A jerk with his hand inside my chest, ripping out my heart.

  I crossed
my arms and turned away from him.

  “Time’s up, Martinez,” the bald guy said.

  Eddie stepped to me, gently taking my arm and not letting me wiggle my way free.

  “I’ve gotta go,” he said. “I know you’re pissed, and believe me when I say that this sucks for me, too. But I know it’s for the best.”

  I spun around to face him. “How dare you presume to know what’s best for me! I’m not a child, and you of all people should know that!”

  Eddie dropped his hand from my arm. “Take care of yourself, Natalie, and please know that I’ll never regret the you part of any of this. And like I said, in a few months we could talk and—”

  My jaw clenched. “Get out of my sight.”

  He stood idle for a moment and my chest squeezed in anticipation of him changing his mind, taking me into his arms, saying what an idiot he was being. Then he’d kiss me and tell me he loved me.

  But that didn’t happen.

  “Goodbye, Natalie.”

  And then he was gone.

  The first sob rose up from me like a bubble, bursting loudly into the air. I clasped my hands over my mouth, but more came. And more, until I sobbed for all to hear. My knees gave out, sending me into the gravel below. Hands grabbed my arms on both sides, hoisting me up. The paramedic on one side, my dad on the other.

  And then I was in the back of my dad’s car on the way to the hospital. They were worried about post-traumatic something or other. But me? All I saw in my mind were a pair of brown eyes leaving me when I needed him the most.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Autumn in New York City was just as lovely as people had said it would be. Trees of orange, reds, and yellows. Cool, crisp air. Boots and scarves and warm cups of coffee.