Wedding Cake

by Josi S. Kilpack

  “We’re ready,” Pete said into the phone. “Okay.”

  He hung up and slid his phone into his pocket again. He turned his wrist so he could see his watch. “On my count. One—two—three.”

  There was the sound of movement and hinges, but it was quickly gone. A few seconds later, Sharon called out, “Clear.”

  “Michelle, you go next, sweetie,” Pete called out to his daughter.

  “She’s ready,” Miles answered, perhaps because Michelle couldn’t speak for herself. Sadie’s chest constricted in response.

  “On my count,” Pete called out loudly. “One—two—three.”

  Shuffling. Muted voices. Seconds ticked by. “Clear,” the female officer called out.

  Pete checked his watch, waited fifteen seconds or so, and called out, “The next two injured to exit. . . . Ready. One—two—three.”

  Over the course of the next five minutes, the pattern of counting and “Clear” sounded over and over until Sharon said only she and Ernie were left.

  “We’re ready for your exit, Pete,” Malloy’s voice called out from the direction of the evacuation door.

  Pete reached his hand to Sadie and they stood up together, crouched down even though they were in full view of the room.

  Sadie scanned the chaos and destruction that had started as her wedding ceremony. She wondered if Jane was watching them, waiting for her final moment of triumph. Standing brought them in contact with the thicker smoke, and Sadie coughed, feeling the burning fumes in her lungs. She covered her mouth and looked at the door that seemed so far away.

  Malloy was at the southwest doors conferring with a man and woman Sadie assumed were Sharon and Ernie. They stepped out, leaving only Malloy to supervise Pete and Sadie’s exit.

  Pete tugged on Sadie’s hand and led her around the edge of the table. They stayed to the perimeter of the room and went the long way around, avoiding the gaping hole in the west wall. Halfway to the door, they reached a jumble of tables that cut off their route.

  After a moment’s pause, Pete pulled her with him as they cut across the corner of the room toward the southwest door. Sadie looked over her shoulder. With so many tables still on their sides, the room was full of hiding places. Somehow, the cake and the table it was on had survived the melee, standing unscathed and untouched in the northeast corner, near the equipment closet Pete had mentioned earlier.

  Sadie’s eyes lingered on the lavender tablecloth that pooled on the floor, creating another hiding place, and she thought she saw the cloth move. She told herself she was seeing things. Sadie gripped Pete’s hand tighter and coughed as she faced forward, anxious to get out of there as quickly as possible.

  The door was only twenty feet away when a single shot rang out. Sadie felt Pete’s hand shudder before it slipped from her grasp and he crumpled to the floor.

  Chapter 29

  Sadie screamed and fell to her knees beside him.

  Pete rolled onto his back, his teeth and eyes clenched shut. Blood poured from a wound just above his knee—It’s his leg, Sadie thought, relieved—that he held with his left hand. With his other hand, he tried to pull himself behind one of the reception tables still on its side, using his good leg to push against the floor.

  Sadie kicked off her shoes and moved to his head. She grabbed under his arms and pulled. He moaned in pain, but she kept pulling, determined to get him behind some kind of cover as absolute dread filled her head.

  Jane’s here!

  “Put the gun down!” Malloy yelled.

  Sadie looked toward the sound of his voice, thirty yards or more to their left, but she couldn’t see him from where she and Pete were hiding. She assumed Malloy was talking to Jane. She hadn’t left town or detonated the explosives from a distance. She had been right here all along.

  “No one’s been killed, yet,” Malloy continued. “We still have some options.”

  Another shot rang out. Sadie ducked and gasped as the sound of a heavy body—too heavy to be Jane—hitting the hard wood. Malloy. Sadie thought of all the news stories she’d seen of someone going on a shooting spree and killing multiple people in a matter of seconds. It was all happening so fast. Pete’s face twisted with pain but was also hard with the same fear Sadie was feeling.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are, Sadie.” The sound of Jane’s voice caused Sadie’s whole body to recoil.

  “If I come to you, I do it with guns a’blazin’!” Jane called out, her voice closer.

  Sadie’s eyes moved to the leather holster Pete wore beneath his jacket. The handle of his gun stuck out over the top of the brown leather.

  She reached for the gun.

  “Sadie,” Pete said quietly. She met his eyes for just a moment, but still pulled the gun from his side. He didn’t try to stop her.

  Her hand wrapped around the grip, warm from having been nestled at Pete’s side while they promised to spend the rest of their lives together. She held the gun firmly as she peered around the edge of the table. Jane was only about forty feet away from her, dressed in a pale yellow dress that made her look like a wedding guest and holding a gun at her side. Had she run in when the officers had run out?

  She was walking quickly toward them from the direction of the wedding cake, and though Sadie pulled behind the table, she could hear Jane’s quick footsteps getting closer. Would she ambush them? Come around the table and finish the job she’d started when she’d shot Pete in the leg?

  There was no time to argue with herself about her options so Sadie took a breath and came to her feet, pointing the gun at Jane, who stopped fifteen feet away, her gun pointed at the floor. She had shoulder-length dirty blonde hair, curled into soft spirals. Her eyes were hard and sharp behind her glasses. She smiled at Sadie in a way that made Sadie’s blood run cold. You’ll never be free of me, Jane had said all those months ago. Sadie had had no idea how far Jane would go to make good on that threat, but she refused to be held captive by it.

  A quick glance toward Malloy’s large body lying in a heap on the other side of the hall made Sadie’s breath catch in her throat. He wasn’t moving and Pete was injured. It was down to Sadie and Jane.

  Sadie steadied the gun with both hands and stepped around the edge of the table, stopping once she was in front of it. The smoke nearly gagged her but she couldn’t release the gun so she coughed toward her shoulder. No way would Jane get past her. She locked her elbows and pointed the barrel directly at Jane’s chest.

  “You’re going to shoot me, Sadie?” Jane said sarcastically, raising her eyebrows. “You’re ready to watch me bleed to death right in front of you?” She coughed as well, not immune to the acrid air that was only getting worse.

  “If it spares the lives of the people I love, you bet I am,” Sadie said.

  Jane laughed—laughed—and shook her head, the honey-colored curls of her current wig moving a half second behind. “You’d never do it,” she said, wrinkling her nose in a sneer. “It’s against your moral code.”

  Sadie clicked off the safety as though to prove that she would shoot if she had to.

  Jane’s gun was still at her side, but her finger was on the trigger. She was not surrendering either.

  “Why are you doing this?” Sadie demanded, unable to keep the emotion down. She blinked quickly, wanting to keep the tears away but unable to do so. Her body shook with both adrenaline and fear. Maybe she could hold Jane off long enough for help to arrive. “What did I do that made you so angry?” The rising emotion made her coughing worse. She had to release the gun with one hand to try to keep from taking in a mouthful of the smoke each time she coughed.

  “Everything,” Jane said in a harsh tone. The smile finally fell from her face. “You give so much, but not to me. You comfort and help, but not me. From the first moment we met, you measured me and saw me as missing pieces, and no matter how hard I tried to convince you that I deserved your attention—the same attention you give to everyone else so freely—you have refused it.”

 
; Jane had said similar things before, but Sadie hadn’t understood it. She understood now, though. After learning Valerie Smith’s history of finding and fixating on motherly figures in her life, Sadie understood that she had become Valerie’s next attempt at that kind of connection. But Sadie had never played into it. Not the way the others had. Not the way Jane—Valerie—wanted and expected her to. Sadie had not allowed Jane to get her fix, so to speak, and Jane was punishing her for it.

  “Obviously, I was right not to trust you, Valerie,” Sadie said. She worked hard to keep the fear out of her voice. Cough. She needed to be strong, needed to take control of this situation somehow.

  Jane narrowed her eyes at the sound of her real name. “You think you know me?” she said, a hiss in her voice. “You think that digging through my past and talking to people as idiotic as yourself gives you any kind of upper hand?” She started to lift her gun, and Sadie was suddenly and completely focused on her opponent again. “I’m the one in charge here, Sadie, not you. Not Pete. Not anyone!”

  “You’re right,” Sadie said, her voice shaking as the gun continued to rise. She did not want to shoot Jane—how would she live with that? “Which means you can stop this.”

  “Why? So I can spend the rest of my life in prison? You think I don’t know what happens next? You think I would put this amount of time and planning to simply let you go on with your life?” Jane leveled her weapon at Sadie.

  Sadie looked between the barrel and Jane and put both hands on the gun again. She put pressure on the trigger of Pete’s gun, and her mouth went dry. Her heart rate increased. Would she really shoot Jane? Pete had told her that every gun’s trigger had a different pressure point. That was why it was important to know your gun so that you knew where that pressure point was. Sadie had never shot Pete’s gun; she had no idea when she would pull a millimeter too far and fire a bullet.

  “I’m not going to prison,” Jane said.

  “You can get help. There are—”

  “I don’t want help!” Jane screamed, her hand shaking. Sadie took an involuntary step back and hit up against the table. “I’m not crazy, Sadie. I don’t need to work through my choices, and I’m not going to get stuck on something as juvenile as regrets. But I made you a promise. I promised that you would never be free of me, and if it means you live with the knowledge that you killed me, so be it. It will destroy you.”

  “No, it won’t,” Sadie said, shaking her head even though she couldn’t imagine the effect killing a person would have on her. She watched Jane’s finger closely. Jane still had the gun’s safety on; she wasn’t committed to this path . . . yet. “I’ll learn to live with it, and I will know—without a doubt—that I did everything I could to avoid it. You said I would never be free of you Jane, but I will be—I already am. I’m not running from you. I’m not hiding. I’m facing you with my own weapon drawn, and I’m not backing down.” She coughed and then blinked; the smoke was making her eyes water. She couldn’t afford to lose sight of her target.

  Jane’s eyes narrowed, just enough for Sadie to know she’d made her point. She coughed, but didn’t seem to be having nearly the trouble Sadie was.

  Sadie continued, “My heart makes me free of whatever you may want to burden me with. I will not question whether or not I could have done something different because I will know you are the one who created this situation. If you choose, we can end it a very different way and neither of us has to—”

  The safety on Jane’s weapon clicked off, and Sadie’s heart tripped. She squeezed the trigger a bit more and felt the resistance increase, reminding her that this action was a final one. Another ounce of pressure could fire a bullet Sadie wouldn’t be able to call back. Would she fire a shot to kill, or could she aim slightly to one side and risk missing? The chest was the largest target, the easiest place to hit. If she missed, what would Jane do?

  Jane took a step toward her.

  “I’ll do it!” Sadie nearly screamed, lifting her hands higher. She moved her feet apart in the A-line stance Pete had taught her for balance. It pulled the skirt of her dress tight against her legs, and for the first time she noticed Pete’s blood on the three-quarter sleeve of her wedding dress. The thought made her stomach roll but also reminded her what was at stake. “But I would really, really, rather not.”

  Something about Sadie’s words made Jane smile a little. Her eyes narrowed and a new intention entered her expression. She shifted her arm to the side, moving slowly enough for Sadie to know exactly what she was doing as she turned the gun toward Pete’s hiding place.

  Pete was still behind the table—could a bullet go through the plastic top?

  “Don’t,” Sadie warned, watching Jane’s finger carefully, not letting go when she had to cough yet again. The shaking of each cough terrified her. What if she pulled the trigger on accident? She blinked as quickly as possible to keep her vision clear. How long would Sadie consider her options before she could no longer protect either one of them?

  Sadie would not live with the regret of choosing Jane’s life over Pete’s—such a thing would be impossible to cope with. She had to act. She closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger just a little more, unable to breathe. Unable to think. Unable to—

  A shot rang out. Sadie opened her eyes in time to see Jane’s body jolt before she fell backward, the gun falling from her grip. It hit the floor and clattered away, useless without a hand to make it lethal.

  “Sadie!” Pete called out.

  She looked at her hands holding the gun, her finger still poised on the trigger she hadn’t pulled.

  She turned her head toward the doors on the southwest side of the ballroom and her eyes locked with those of Detective Malloy, lying on his side several yards away. One hand was covered in blood, holding his side. The other hand held his service revolver still pointed at where Jane had stood a moment earlier.

  Chapter 30

  “Sadie!” Pete called again. He’d pulled himself around the edge of the table and was looking at her with wide eyes. He blinked and then looked at Jane, who was lying on her back, kicking at the floor as though trying to push herself up.

  Sadie dropped the gun; it clattered to the floor as uselessly as Jane’s had. She looked from Pete to Jane, and then to Malloy, who had rolled onto his back.

  “It was Malloy,” Sadie said in answer to Pete’s unspoken question. He looked past her, and she finally broke through her shock to admit what had happened. Malloy shot Jane.

  Everything was frozen for a beat and then a rush of adrenaline pushed through her as a thousand thoughts slammed into her brain all at once.

  Pete was hurt.

  Malloy was hurt.

  Jane had been shot but she wasn’t dead.

  The room was filling with smoke.

  They needed to get out of here.

  Sadie grabbed several dinner napkins off the ground, handing them to Pete before she ran in the other direction and fell to her knees beside Detective Malloy.

  “Someone help us!” she yelled toward the closed doors, then coughed into her shoulder. Why was no one was coming? Had it been only a minute since Jane shot Pete? It seemed as though it had lasted forever. “Help us!” she yelled again. “The shooter’s down.” A door opened and she yelled, “Two officers are down.”

  “The shooter?” the man asked without coming in. Sadie glanced at Jane, she wasn’t moving.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  The man nodded then waved over his shoulder as though beckoning people to follow him. Sadie returned her attention to Malloy. There was so much blood. She looked around and found some napkins that she balled up. She moved Malloy’s hand out of the way so she could press the napkins against the wound in his side.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, feeling tears finally overflow as she took in how pale he was. So much blood. “I’m so sorry for all of this.”

  “Not . . . your fault.” His voice was raspy and his eyes were closed.

  Sadie felt someone’s ha
nd on her shoulder and looked up as Jared knelt beside her. “He’s lost so much blood,” she said to him.

  Jared nodded and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He’d already removed his jacket and tie.

  “He saved your dad’s life,” Sadie said.

  Jared met her eyes, then scanned the room. “Where is he?”

  There were a dozen or more officers swarming the area where Sadie had left Pete. “Over there,” she said, waving a hand in that direction.

  “Go to him,” Jared said, taking over the pressure Sadie was applying to Malloy’s injury. “I’ve got this covered.”

  Sadie got to her feet, wiping her hands on the front of her dress. She hurried toward the table where Pete had hid, and couldn’t help but glance toward Jane. Two SWAT members were attending to her. That meant she wasn’t dead, right? Did Sadie want her to die? She knew in an instant that she didn’t, not really. But did she believe Jane could get well and not be a threat?

  “Sadie?”

  Pete was lying on the floor, a blood-soaked napkin tied tight around his knee. He reached a hand toward her, and she hurried the remaining distance. She fell to her knees and took his hand; both of their hands were covered in blood, dark and drying. She buried her head in his chest, sobbing and coughing against him in relief that he was okay and trembling with the shock of all that had happened.

  “It’s okay,” Pete said. She could feel his other hand in her hair as he consoled her. She couldn’t stop sobbing, completely overcome. Thoughts moved in and out of her head faster than she could focus on them, swirling and pushing and pulling at her.

  “Ma’am?”

  Pete shook her shoulder, and Sadie lifted her face, looking up at a middle-aged woman dressed in a paramedic’s uniform.

  “We need to get him on a stretcher, ma’am.”

  Sadie looked at Pete’s face that was contorted and pale. She straightened. “Of course,” she said, embarrassed to be in the way of Pete getting the help he needed. She moved to stand up but Pete grabbed her hand.