by John A. Daly
The imposing brightness nearly blinded Sean, but through the narrow slits of his eyelids, he recognized Jessica’s loose red hair whip inside the room.
Sean yanked his hand from Carson’s teeth and placed both hands on his gun to steady it as he stood. “Let me see your hands!” he barked out like a police officer.
“Mommy!” the little girl shouted in terror. Her confused eyes looked up in horror at the large stranger hovering over her with a drawn pistol. She slipped from Carson’s lap. He tried to latch onto her arm, but he was too weak. She fell to the floor with a thud.
“Anna!” Jessica screamed.
“Your hands!” Sean yelled. “Let’s see them!”
Jessica wore a mask of sheer terror. Her empty hands shot to the ceiling and she spread her fingers. Sean ordered her to turn around. When she did, his eyes examined her for weapons. No bulges. She was dressed in jeans and a loose t-shirt. The jeans were wet at their ankles, suggesting that she had been walking around outside. Her feet were bare.
Sean told her to close the door and she did. “Who else is here, inside this building?” he roared.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the frightened little girl crawling across the floor toward Jessica. She moved in an awkward motion along the carpet in her pink nightgown, only using her hands and arms. It was as if she was partially paralyzed from the waist down, though she did manage to tuck a knee into the floor a couple of times.
“Tell her to stay where she is!” Sean demanded, nodding the gun at Jessica.
“Let her go to her mother, for God’s sake!” Carson snapped angrily. “You aren’t going to shoot anyone!”
“Shut up!” warned Sean. He backhanded Carson across the scalp, drawing from him a sharp wince.
Jessica lowered her head to meet the girl’s wide, fearful eyes. She forced a calming smile and said, “Stay where you are, Peanut, okay?”
The girl stopped and nodded. Her eyes were wide with fear and they quickly filled with tears. Her body shook as she cried.
In no logical world should Sean have felt guilty for how he was handling the situation; still, the child’s tears drew remorse from him. He had never known that Jessica had a daughter, let alone a sick one. Yet, the revelation made strange sense. While watching her at GSL all those weeks, he’d seen a nurturing, maternal side to her. It cut through her otherwise cold exterior whenever she attended to donors. Her gentle, warm touch served as a ray of comfort, the way it would to an anxious child. It was one of the things that attracted him to her.
What also became quickly apparent was the source of her emptiness and detachment over that time. He had noticed it from the first day he had met her. The standoffishness; the expressionless gazes; the apparent absence of happiness or even a stray moment of contentment. They were all driven by the hopelessness of a mother who was living with the agonizing trauma of watching the health of her young, precious daughter deteriorate. Her daughter was dying. There was no room for joy in Jessica’s life.
It was her daughter, Anna, that Jessica had referred to from the other side of that freezer door in the basement.
“Have you ever had anyone in your life that you would do anything for?” she had asked him. “Someone who you cared about and loved so much that you would stop heaven and earth for them?”
She wasn’t talking about covering up a crime for some boyfriend, as he had believed at the time. She was talking about crossing the moral and legal boundaries of kidnapping—a kidnapping in which the hostage’s body was his own ransom. Her rationale was her daughter’s life.
Sean forced himself to breathe and again asked Jessica if anyone else was inside the building.
The request triggered the expression on her face to suddenly melt back into panic.
“Oh my God,” she said in an appalled whisper. “Where’s Adam? What did you do to Adam?” Her head shook as she spoke.
“Who the hell is Adam?”
“My brother!”
“How the hell would I know your brother?” Sean yelled.
“The man from your house, dammit! The guy you beat up. What did you do to him?”
Anna peered up at Sean through large, drained eyes and asked, “Did you hurt my Uncle Adam?”
The innocent tone of her voice again pulled guilt from Sean’s heart. He recalled the broken coffee mug on the floor of the other room. “Best Uncle Ever.” It was likely a gift from an adoring niece.
“He’ll be fine, honey,” he answered with a reassuring wink. He offered her a cordial, calming grin and added, “He’s just taking a nap. Probably dreaming of tasers.”
Jessica censured Sean through narrowed eyes.
“Is anyone else inside this building?” he asked again, this time in a more restrained tone.
“Just us and Adam,” she replied.
Sean raised a brow and asked, “And not the man of the hour, Norman Booth?”
Jessica’s eyes shifted to her daughter as Carson shook his head sourly. Anna questioned her mother with a confused look, the name clearly foreign to the little girl. Sean could see she likely had no idea that a man was being held against his will somewhere nearby.
“No. Not here,” Jessica muttered in answer to Sean. She raised her finger to her mouth to pre-empt the barrage of questions she anticipated coming from her daughter.
“Is that who gave you the shiner?” Sean asked, eying the bruise she still wore on her face. “He woke up, didn’t he?”
She didn’t answer.
Carson did. “He got an arm loose. Wacked her good.”
“Someone hit you, Mommy?” asked Anna, her eyes flowing with concern. “You said you fell down.”
“It was just an accident, Peanut.”
Jessica turned to Carson and asked him if he was okay. When he nodded, she queried, “Did he drag you in here?” She nodded toward Sean.
“No,” replied Carson. “Anna couldn’t sleep because of the wind. I had finished reading to her when he came in.”
“Let’s save all the chitchat for the next barbecue,” said Sean, reciting a line he’d once heard Telly Savalas speak on an old episode of Kojak. He’d always liked the quip. He turned to Jessica. “Why didn’t you just leave me at my house last night? Why did you bring me here?”
“Because you knew who I was,” she quickly answered, visibly uncomfortable that the sensitive conversation was taking place in front of her daughter. “You would have told the police about my connection to Andy’s disappearance. We needed you out of the way for a few days.”
“Until this was over,” Carson broke in. “Then you and I would both go home.”
Sean’s eyes leapt to Carson. “Are you sure about that?” he asked, holding his stare.
Carson’s face tightened. “What do you mean?”
“Who’s Dr. Phil?” Sean asked the room before turning his attention back to Jessica.
Carson and Jessica exchanged anxious glances.
“Come on. Who is he?” badgered Sean.
“From Oprah, Mommy?” asked Anna in a whisper.
Sean f
ought back an impulsive smirk.
Jessica ignored Sean and replied directly to her daughter. “He’s talking about Uncle Phillip, Peanut,” said Jessica.
“Another uncle?” asked Sean.
“My uncle,” Jessica reluctantly responded. “My father’s half-brother. He’s a doctor—an extremely good one. A specialist. He came halfway around the world to save her, a little girl he had never even met before. He’s going to save her. He’s convinced us that he can.”
Sean lowered his gaze to Anna, watching her delicate face stiffen as she struggled to wrap her young mind around the words being spoken by the adults around her.
“If you’ll let us,” Jessica added.
Her pleading eyes pulled at Sean’s heart, but he didn’t let her see a hint of emotion. He kept his gun drawn. He understood how desperate the family was to save their little girl’s life. A million thoughts spun through his head.
Jessica’s reaction outside the GSL parking lot a day earlier now made sense. When Sean had approached her there, claiming to know about her uncle, she wasn’t thinking of Andrew Carson. The panic in her eyes came from the belief that Sean knew about Dr. Phil—her real uncle—and the connection he had to Carson’s disappearance.
It was a wonder she didn’t have a heart attack at that very moment, believing for a few seconds that Sean had somehow figured out everything. By the time Sean had finished explaining himself that day, she had come to understand that her secret was still safe. Posing as Carson’s niece was a good way to pacify any suspicions Sean may have had from their conversation, or so she thought. She couldn’t have envisioned that he would further pursue Carson’s disappearance, meet Carson’s family, and discover that she wasn’t who she said she was.
Just why she was at Carson’s house and helping with the search for his body that day the newspaper photo was taken was still unclear. Maybe she was trying to determine how much the police and family knew about Carson’s disappearance, and if they had linked him to Norman Booth. Maybe she was trying to clean up some evidence left behind from the night they snatched the two men. Or maybe she was just curious about the people whose lives had been affected from what she and her family had done. The empathy she felt for Carson’s daughter was clearly what drew tears from her eyes the night Sean confronted her in that back room at GSL.
He thought of Norman Booth—a lifelong violent criminal who viewed life as cheap, stabbing a stranger for getting in the way of something he wanted. What was his life worth? Could Booth ever willingly give a gift more positive and meaningful to the world than the one he could give to Anna—even if that gift came at the expense of his own free will and, also, his life?
Sean wondered what kinds of terrible things he could somehow convince himself to do if it meant saving the life of someone he loved. What would he do to a man like Norman Booth if it meant he could bring Uncle Zed back from the grave? Sean had been taught throughout his life, growing up in a rural mountain town, that the sanctity of life was a precious thing, and it was something he truly believed. He had trouble at that very moment, however, determining which argument that belief more accurately favored: Booth’s life or Anna’s life.
He had only been around the girl for mere minutes, but he read nothing but innocence and reverence in her eyes. It was clear that Carson had grown tight with her in a relatively short period of time. He seemed to look upon her like a daughter, perhaps longing for the old relationship he once had in happier times with his own daughter.
It was possible that Carson was right about Booth. Maybe the thug would recover from the dangerous quantities of plasma being drained from his body. Perhaps as Carson and Sean had each been promised, he’d be dumped on a roadside somewhere and go on to live the rest of his life however he saw fit.
That scenario, however, seemed like pure fantasy to Sean. He couldn’t envision Booth remaining silent about what happened to him. Booth knew his captors and could put every one of them in jail by simply pointing a finger. That was the best-case scenario. With Booth having his own troubles with the law, he’d more likely choose to settle the score himself.
Either way, a freed Norman Booth could easily result in Anna being left without any family—possibly even losing her life as well, depending on how sick of a man Booth was. Sean was convinced the family would never let that happen, especially not Dr. Phil, who was fine with taking out the one guy who was an innocent party to the whole mess. In all likelihood, Booth would never make it out of that building alive. Sean glanced at the man in the rocking chair.
Carson seemed he had some doubts about his own fate. “What did you mean by that? When you said, ‘Are you sure about that?’”
Sean glared at him. “Good old Phil wanted good old Adam to kill me if I didn’t behave myself down there in the basement. These people aren’t as harmless and noble as you think they are, Carson.”
“That’s not true!” Jessica said angrily. “Those were empty threats! Adam only made them to scare you!”
“It wasn’t Adam who made them!” Sean snapped, spinning his head toward Jessica. “They came right out of the doctor’s British ass.”
“Australian,” corrected Carson.
“Who gives a shit?” Sean dug his fingers into his front pocket and held up the cellphone for her to see.
Jessica was speechless. Her daughter watched her face, shaking her head in the confusion of it all. Seconds dragged by without anyone speaking.
“He could be right,” said Carson to Jessica. “The things Phil’s said. How angry he was when Adam wanted to bring me here. Phil’s the doctor, yet Adam was the one desperate to keep me alive that night. Part of me’s been wondering if Phil . . . if Phil would have preferred that I died on my driveway. Anna’s life might be the only one he values in this at all.”
Jessica closed her eyes, seemingly trying to dislodge Carson’s words from her head before they could sink into her psyche. When her eyes opened, their intensity burned a hole through Carson. He looked away, making him look like a child who was being scolded by a parent. She focused the same glare on Sean.
Sean didn’t look away.
“What are you going to do, Sean?” she asked somberly. “You’re the one holding the gun. You’re calling the shots. You can either let us finish what we’ve started or you can end it all right now by blowing the whistle on us. If your decision is the latter, I want you to look into my daughter’s eyes and tell her that you’ve made the decision to sign her death warrant.”
He stared bitterly at Jessica. The notion that he was being put in the position of a judge over blood rights—deciding who lived and who died, whose blood would be traded or sacrificed for whose life—infuriated him. His eyes soon dropped to Anna, whose aura of innocence now tugged at his soul like a magnet. The girl didn’t understand any of what was being said. She couldn’t possibly understand. Her wide eyes and her slightly opened mouth made that painfully apparent.
There was no fairness in the situation for anyone. Not an ounce. There was no fair trade for life-saving blood.
Sean felt his blood boil under his skin. He was angry at himself for ever pursuing the path that had ultimately brought him there. That path began with what he thought was a harmless crush on someone he hardly knew and was fuelled by a lust to honor
his uncle’s life.
Now he found himself sitting on a jury of one. He, the man who stood before Anna—the man who she now looked up at with heartbreaking fear—was the sole decider of her very fate.
If Norman Booth had been a willing participant in what Dr. Phil was doing, the decision would have been easy, even if laws had been broken. But he was far from a willing participant. For Anna to live—or even have a shot at living—Booth had to die. Maybe it would be from his body shutting down. Maybe it would be from a bullet to the head.
Anna swallowed and turned. “Mommy?” she said.
“Don’t look at me, Peanut,” Jessica answered, keeping her eyes on Sean. “Look at him.”
Anna did, and Sean’s gut tightened as his gaze traced her bald head. She had to have already been through so much. Chemotherapy. Long hours in hospital beds, undergoing tests. Probably surgeries. The emotional turmoil alone had to be unbearable, not just for her, but clearly her entire family.
His gaze fell from her head to her damp eyes. They glistened from the lights above and penetrated his conscience. Despite the chemo, her skin looked as soft and pure as any other child her age. Her small nightgown hung from her petite shoulders and went down to her knees. She looked like a doll that a healthy girl her age might play with. Sean’s gaze dropped to the floor, much the same way Carson’s had only seconds earlier.
“Tell her, Sean,” Jessica persisted relentlessly.
He wondered if it was the same technique that had been used to turn Carson to the family’s line of thinking. He understood that guilt could be just as effective of a weapon as a gun or knife, and Jessica was wielding it with precision. She had no other choice. Her daughter’s life was on the line.