by Lee Miller
After five minutes or so of silence, Chris turned to her, “You alright lass? You’ve been awfully quiet.” Concern was etched on the face she loved the most. “Yeah, I’m good sweetie. I was just thinking, that lady could have been me very easily.” She turned to face Chris who had stopped walking. “No. Sara. It couldn’t have been you. That would never have been you. You are far too strong for that.” Chris’s face was set with determination. She could tell he didn’t like the idea of her path taking that left turn when it should have turn right. “Chris, I come from addiction. My Dad was a severe addict. It’s in me to be like that. I’m not, but it’s there. Chris, I’m a recovering alcoholic. I have and will always see myself as such. So I don’t give into the temptation and become a current one.” Sara loved the protective nature Chris showed when it came to her. She felt safe with him. In this life, no, she never could become that lady. Chris would never allow it; but at one time, that path was very real to her.
She looked around the street now, trying to collect her thoughts. She looked up into the sodium vapor lights that lined the street and sidewalk; the snow took on a yellowish tint. The buildings were awash with it, the light splashed on every surface within its reach. It gave Chris a jaundice tint to his exposed skin. “You saved me Chris. I don’t think you realize just how true that statement is. You saved me. From myself, from my past, from who I could have been.” Sara’s eyes were pleading with him to try and make him understand just how monumental of a task he undertook. “Sara, you are one of the strongest and toughest people I know. Yes, physically you could have dismantled that guy back there. I stepped in not to save you, but to save him from you. I saw the look in your eyes. It’s the same look you’ve had before, right before you wanted to destroy someone for something they did. I have and will always love you. You will never be that lady. You will never be your dad.” Chris took her into his arms and kissed the top of her head. “Let’s get home sweetheart. Beth was right, that dress would look good on the floor.” Chris chuckled and pulled away before she could take a swipe at him. They continued the rest of the walk home in better a better mood.
By the time they reached the lobby, Chris had Sara laughing at some of the gossip around the office. In the elevator, Chris had to remind her to behave less they give the night watchman a show he probably wouldn’t forget anytime soon. As they exited the elevator, Sara had just retold the dress shopping story with Beth from her perspective. “That girl is impossible sometimes. I swear. Takes little serious enough but enough to serious. A freaking enigma. So apparently, I’m designing a wedding now. With a June date. Six months isn’t so bad I guess. I can do a lot with that time. Provided Beth doesn’t interfere every five minutes.” Sara chuckled. “Or drag you off on one of her wacky schemes.” Chris added eliciting a laugh from both of them. They each knew Beth to well. The door opened and they walked into the entryway. The music Sara had on this morning was still going. 18 hours later. “Did you leave it on repeat?” Chris asked. “No, I have over 40 hours of music.” Chris shook his head and pulled her in tight for a kiss. They had both been waiting to be alone all night, tender turned into passionate as Chris pushed her gently against the wall, Sara reached down and pulled the dress up to just above mid-thigh. He bent down and cusped the back of her legs and lifted her up, Sara wrapped her legs around his waist as the passion grew in their kissing. Sara couldn’t throw herself completely into it though, something was creeping at the back of her mind. Something was out of place. Something wasn’t right. Something didn’t belong.
Sara pushed Chris back and whispered urgently “Something isn’t right here Chris. Something feels very off.” He released her legs so she could stand on her own. “What do you mean?” “Something is wrong here.” she said again just as a shadow in the dark moved. “It’s not something that doesn’t belong, it’s someone” she said as she turned to face the dark end of the hallway. Realization hit Chris like a thunderbolt. Just then a voice from the dark came as a figure appeared. “Hello, I have a present for you.” Chris and Sara immediately went on the offensive until they saw the revolver in the intruder’s hand. “Present?” Chris asked with calm voice “We have enough firearms, thank you.” The intruder was entirely visible except for his face, Sara reached for the hall light but was pulled up short. “You don’t want to do that Miss.” came the quiet yet steely voice in the shadows. “That voice” Sara thought. It was eerily familiar to her, yet she couldn’t quiet place it. They needed to keep the intruder talking until they could figure a way out of this. She couldn’t scratch the itch. She couldn’t figure out where she heard this man’s voice. She could tell he wore a smile on his shadowy but she could also see his body was tensed, as if expecting a major fight to break out. “Hands were I can see them please. No sense in rushing this along any faster than we have to.” the intruder instructed. Chris and Sara looked at each other, neither able to believe this was real. “So, should I tell you who sent you this present? I believe it’s something I owe you, since I’m going to take one of your lives tonight and shatter the other. At least you can know why this present is being delivered to you.” Chris took a slight step forward, “Too kind of you. Yes, I’d very much like to know who I should thank for this.” “Ah, Chris” the voice said “if you take another step and I’ll blow your wife’s brains all over the front door.” Chris stopped his movement as the intruder shifted his arm over to aim the gun at Sara’s forehead. “Your dear friend, Tony Diego sent me. He wanted me to leave you with a message. Well, a message for anyone else who may consider crossing him I suppose; since there is no guarantee you’ll live through this. He hates to lose Chris, and you made him lose in a very big way. It’ll please you to know that I have as much love for him as you do. Frankly, I can’t stand the SOB. Tonight is my last night on the job for him. You are my retirement.”
If she couldn’t stop him, she was going to damn well figure out who he was. She listened to his voice and tried to match it to a memory she knew was creeping in the back of her mind. She replayed the events of that day. It was a place to start from. As she ran through the events that had happen since waking up this morning, it didn’t take her long to get to the memory she sought. This was the guy that approached her at her first stop of the day, right outside the entrance to the building. He had made a veiled threat. Now she remembers what he looked like, but still, where had she seen him before? She knew the intruder had pale blue eyes and a strange hook to his nose. Like it had been broken and never set properly. “He really was a handsome looking guy, despite looking like he had head-butt a mac truck.” Those where Beth’s words. Words she had used to describe the new guy she had started seeing. Words she had said to Sara almost 11 months ago. Shock jolted down her spine. Beth’s fiancé was a hitman? This was Tommy. She grew even more furious. Not only was he toying with her and Chris’s life, but he was bound to destroy Beth in the process “How in the hell can this be?” Sara thought to herself.
“If you’re supposed to leave one of us alive, why would you tell us who sent you?” Chris asked. “Well, like I said, my retirement. I don’t really care if my former boss goes down for murder.” Tommy said seeing the humor in it all. “You aren’t worried Tony will throw you under the bus for this? Make you take the fall?” Chris inquired, trying to stall for time so he could think of a way out of this. Chris watched Sara out of the corner of his eye as she crept back behind him, he knew from there Sara could hit the silent alarm on the intercom system near the front door without being noticed. Chris turned his attention back to the gunman to keep him talking so he wouldn’t know what Sara was doing. “By the time any of this gets to the point of me getting caught up in it, I’ll have disappeared. Changed names and everything. It’s all set up actually.” Tommy pointed out. This got Sara’s blood boiling but she stayed silent. She stepped from behind Chris and began looking for a way to get closer to the gunman as she thought “What? Was he planning on bailing on Beth too? What an asshole!” Tommy seemed to keep his entire focus
on Chris; this gave Sara the chance to slowly move closer to him. She thought she was getting away with it until Tommy swung the gun over to her. “Stay put miss, you don’t want me to make this decision out of haste do you?” He asked in a cold somber voice without looking at her. “No matter how you slice it, one of you is catching a bullet tonight.” Tommy said emphatically. Several things started happening at once. Sara’s senses heightened. The music coming out of the radio seemed to fill the room, as did the breathing of all three people present. She tuned into the music; hoping it would help relax her like it always had over the years. When she was stressed or worried, she could always rely on the music to sooth her and help her put things in perspective. She closed her eyes and let the melody wash over her. She let the lyrics fill her mind. With a bit of a shock, she realized the song that was playing. “I’ll stand By You” by the Pretenders. Chrissie Hynde’s melodious voice was just starting up but Sara knew the song word for word. She tried to clear her head and look at the facts in front of her. The intruder was a good ten feet away with his weapon already raised up, however what unnerved Sara and brought the quick realization was his body posture. He was ready for anything. With the quick assessment of the situation, she realized that neither she nor Chris could get to him before he killed one, or possibly both of them. Sara felt helpless for the first time since that night when she was seventeen. There was nothing she could do to save her and Chris. She hoped for a mistake on the gunman’s part. “How in the hell did it come to this?” she wondered. “Nothing is making sense.” she fumed.
Sarah was surprised when Tommy replied to what she thought was unspoken thoughts. “How did it come to this you ask?” Tommy turned his gaze to her for the first time. “I’ll tell you and maybe it’ll start clicking together for you.” Tommy knew he had spent way too much time here already. He should just pick one and get the deed done, but anything he could do to help destroy his former boss was worth spending time on. “Your husband here, Chris, was supposed to represent Tony in a legal case several months back. For unknown reasons, Chris dropped the case at the last second and then had the balls to aid the DA’s office in bringing murder charges down on Tony for Chris’s grandfather’s death a little over 5 years ago.” Tommy looked smug as he contemplated releasing his last ace in the hole. “Wanna know who the other guy in the video was Chris, the one you had no way of telling who it was? It’ll surprise you to know it’s the same one who snuck back in and got the video footage from the CCTV system the old man had set up.” Chis steeled himself and let anger boil through him. “Who?” He asked in a flat tone. He had to keep his voice neutral for fear of letting his emotions override good judgment. Tommy waited. Enjoying the anticipation. “It was me Chris. I took the footage. Hoping one day to be able to use it against the rotten SOB. That night was a simple shack down. Nothing was supposed to happen. Yet Tommy wanted to make a point and killed the old man behind the counter. Imagine my surprise and joy to find out that not only did it remove you from his case, which he ended up losing, but that the old man was your grandfather!” Tommy shook his head. Chris stood their silent, waiting. “So Tony not only gets a thorn in his ass and does six months in state, he catches a first degree murder charge and may get the death penalty. Now that is a proper retirement gift!” Chris knew when the hitman was finished with the retelling of the video and its aftermath; he’d get back to the business at hand. He needed to keep him talking but time was surely running out.
“So, back the matter at hand. Which of you ends the year in the morgue and which of you goes on to get Tony another murder charge?” Tommy slowly and methodically moved his gun between his two targets.
Sara listened to Tommy’s retelling of the saga with the video tape and now that he had come to the end of his story, she knew they were minutes away from his decision. She tuned into the music that seemed to surround and embrace them. The tension mounted as Chrissie was hitting the crescendo of the song. The lyrics punctuating the silence in the room as Tommy waved the gun between her and Chris. “When you’re standing at the crossroads and don’t know which path to choose. Let me come along…” Sara felt ever word of one of her favorite songs. “Chris, no matter what, I’ll stand by you.” She said as she moved to his side. “How touching!” Tommy sneered. “All you know is hate. All you know is vile. You think in this life someone could ever love a monster like you? One of us may be staring death in the face in a few seconds, but at least we lived. You may walk out of here but living isn’t something you’ll ever be able to do!” Sara roared. He had finally pushed her last button. If that made her his victim tonight, then so be it. She didn’t care. “Make your choice you self-loathing piece of shit and get it over with already.” Chris added on. Sara turned to look at Chris “Always know, I have and will always love you.” Chris looked into her eyes and saw the future they were going to be robbed of. He saw her with a child in her belly; walking their toddler to preschool; teaching their 16 year old how to drive; graduations; weddings; and old age. None of that would be theirs now. If he lived, he would make sure the killer wouldn’t. Both Chris and Sara turned to the gunman and saw in his eyes that he had made his choice. Sara grabbed onto Chris’s hand and held it for dear life. Feeling the warmth of life still in it. She stared the gunman dead in the face. The time was now.
Sara never heard the crack of the gun as it went off, only the flash of the muzzle and a loud ringing in her ears. She began to fall as the weight of her own body seemed to be too much for her to hold up any more. Her gaze went from Tommy and the smoking gun in his hands to the ceiling. The world was in chaos and she couldn’t force herself to make sense of any of it. She felt as though an enormous weight was dragging her to the ground. Her knees buckled and her stocking feet begin to slide out from under her. She turned to face Chris and realized he had fallen into her and because she was still holding her hand, he was dragging her to the ground with him as his lifeless body collapsed to the floor. Rage shot through her as she forced herself to let go and let Chris finish his journey to the polished hardwood floor. She gazed into his still open but now dead eyes. Blood began to creep across the floor from the back of his head and ooze out like syrup on a hot day. She saw red. Bile came up her throat and threatened to shoot out of her still gapping mouth. She turned to face the gunman. The man who just stole her world away from her. The monster who ended her life as she knew it. She had only one thought in her mind; his death.
With a loud roar she lunged at him. “Stop Sara.” He asserted calmly bringing the gun back to bare on her. “One life is lost tonight, you don’t need to give in and make it another. Please, just stop.” He pleaded. “You sanctimonious piece of shit! You come into my home, murder my husband and you beg me?! Are you freaking serious?!” she yelled. “Shoot me now Tommy or you’ll never leave here alive.” Calm surprisingly returning to her voice. She could tell her words had an impact on her target. “You… you know my name?” he asked with no attempt at suppressing his own fear. “Oh yes Tommy. I know your name. I know everything about you. Well, everything your fiancée Beth told me.” Sara knew she had the upper hand but he still held the gun. The tables could turn instantly and she had to move quickly. She looked into his eyes, not in the way a lover does, but in the way a predator assesses their target, watching for any sign of movement, weakness or vulnerability. She eased towards him, for a fleeting moment she imagined she looked much like a cat while it stalks a mouse. “Stop!” Tommy yelled and brought the gun to bare on her once more. “Shoot me or don’t, time is running out Tommy boy.” She purred. She saw his finger flinch back on the trigger but it only made a soft clicking as it fell on a dead primer. Tommy’s eyes went wide with fear and surprise yet again, and yet again he squeezed the trigger on a useless chamber. “Somebody should have checked their ammo.” Sara let out half singing. Tommy busted the cylinder of the revolver open and saw that every shell casing in the gun already had a dimple on the primer. Realization hit Tommy that he had come to this job with only one round
; the job was fixed. That was what the old man tried to tell him. “Shit!” Tommy let out as his pray became the predator.
Sara bent slightly at the knees and while her prey’s attention was on the now useless gun, she sprang. Throwing her whole body, shoulder first, into his midsection. She and tommy went flying back and the gun was launched into the air. She knew that even though he no longer held a gun on her, he was still dangerous. They landed with a solid thud on the floor and both went sprawling across the hardwood. Sara was first to her feet and ran to plant a solid kick in Tommy’s ribs. Her foot landed with success and an audible crunch was heard in the room along with her prey’s yell of pain. Tommy rolled with the kick and caught the back of Sara’s heel with his hand and flipped it up, he had to buy himself sometime after the bone crunching kick. She was sent into the air but was able to turn her body so she was faced down when she landed on her hands and knees. Sara noticed a loud ripping sound penetrated the air, as she got back to her feet, she noticed the dress had been ripped almost in two at the knee level, she bent down and ripped the last little bit, freeing herself a little. She looked down at her quarry and threw the bottom half of her dress in his face as she went to plant a kick to the side of his head. The dress missed and Tommy rolled to his other side, again catching her foot in his hands, this time not letting go. He struggled back to his feet while keeping a death clutch on the capture foot of the crazy woman. Sara was taken off guard when he give her leg a hard pull as he attempted to smash his elbow into her face. She was able to turn her head to the side and caught a solid blow that made her neck pop, she knew it would be stiff later. Tommy, seeing his opening, planted his palm on her chest and shoved hard while sweeping the free leg forward, he heard her hit the floor and the air whoosh out of her lungs.