heart.
He hoped to breathe again.
He hoped.
Seth reached for his cell phone and hit a private investigator he had on speed dial. The man was a pig both in size and appearance, but had proven professional, trustworthy and damned good at finding Angel’s whereabouts over the years. He finally answered on the third ring. He spoke in a sleepy voice. The other man, Lawson, listened to Seth’s latest complaints about Angel. Seth knew putting the man up in motels in Atlanta would be expensive—but instead of the private dick quoting him a rate on his retainer he said, “Doc, why don’t you invest that money in a good lawyer. Or even a bad lawyer.” Seth felt the phone slip from his fingers and fall to the carpet, but the speaker had been engaged. “Man, you’re a surgeon. I know you are used to fixing things.” The other man hesitated, clearing morning bile from his throat. “You’re not going to fix her, Doc.”
The private detective hung up the phone without saying goodbye. Seth got to his knees, crawled to the nightstand, got the phonebook out to find Lawson’s replacement. He flung the phonebook and toppled an expensive vase from the other side of the room instead and found himself sitting on the carpet as he had before.
Another hour later Seth had gotten himself together enough to make two more phone calls; the first was a straight forward call to the HR department of Atlanta’s General Hospital. Dr. Seth Dupree had been assigned to a statewide trauma team. They’d already seen action after last month’s earthquake and subsequent tremors. He was required to train with the team out of their main base of operations at the Atlanta General Hospital location for four weeks out of the year.
He couldn’t see a more ideal time to train than right now.
The General’s HR department would contact his own workplace and finalize the deal. If he needed more time in Atlanta, he’d had some vacation weeks available to him.
He began dialing the second number…stopped with four digits still remaining…thought long and hard about completing the call…and pressed the end button, terminating his call to the other party, for now.
The Gray man got to his feet, grabbed his own travel bag from his side of the walk in closet, pulled out the pistol that he had stored inside of the bag, filled the chamber with bullets, set the alarm on the door and remembered his wife’s answer to his formal question about them moving forward before she had turned and walked away from him.
Our vows say through sickness and health, Seth. She had said. I think I qualify for well beyond sick. I want a divorce, Seth. Please grant me one.
For all of his life, Dr. Seth Dupree felt he was holding his breath…waiting; he hoped to still mend his broken heart.
He hoped to breathe again.
He hoped.
And then he locked the front door behind him.
Chris
He realized that the events that had transpired first thing this morning had mirrored the final, traumatic events of the previous night. He wished, not for the first time that these events have fared differently— without the loss of life especially, and yet the civilian…the human inside of him wished he’d attempted to run to freedom with the one woman who had made it.
A pregnant woman and her mother had used the need to go the bathroom as their excuse to disappear out of sight for a few minutes. The lounge in front of the women’s bathroom bore a fountain for decoration sitting in front of it. There was a pool of blood now flowing along with the water. A significant trail of blood and brains and marrow led back to the great room he and the other hostages were being held.
In his mind’s eye, Chris could see that woman’s mother stuffing her daughter, who was in the latter stages of her pregnancy, out of one those windows in the bathroom. But you folks took too long. Pandora became suspicious. They sent a guard to find you. Agent Christopher Prince remembered hearing the shots clearly. He also remembered feeling knots tie in his gut when two of these guards drug the mother’s limp corpse back into the great room.
The next thing that transpired next frightened him worse.
Luna Belle, who he had come to recognize as the second in command of this operation, fired a handful of rounds into an already dead body as an act of imitation. It worked. Chris could see the shift in attitudes from the hostages. It wasn’t about the pleas and prayers for mercy, or even at the maddening screaming at the act of horror they’d all witnessed, but an overall sense of hopelessness and dread that fell over the crowd was like a dark cloud hovering above the theatre. The hostages thought they might die before. They knew it now.
“Prince,” He heard a voice whispered his name.
He didn’t look around right away. Instead, he got a feel for where the dozen gunmen…or women were. All of the Pandora agents involved in the operation, with the exception of the leader, were all women. That is one reason they took this building with such little resistance. Who would have expected a group of women who had gone out for an evening show capable of such violence they’d truly had the element of surprise on their side. In fact when they begin roping in from all areas of the theatre, Prince, like many others in attendance, thought the act was part of the show. They looked like bats flying around a belfry.
Chris turned around at last to put a face to the voice that called his name.
“My people are positioned the best they can be under the circumstances, they are prepped, and ready to counterstrike on my command.” The man said, Chris cursed to himself, unable to place the other’s name with the dark, hard face hovering ten feet in front of him. “Are you with us?”
“Your people,” Chris made the statement a curse. “No. Call off whatever you have planned. There are too many guards here and they are too armed with semiautomatic and fully automatic weapons. What you are planning is nothing short of suicide, not only for your followers, but these innocent civilians as well.”
Special Agent Christopher Prince:
He was of average height and was 39 years old now. He’d gained twenty pounds around his middle but most friends thought he carried the extra weight well; which means that I look worse than I already thought. He was one shade darker than midnight, his shading so absolute and finite it was almost beautiful in its own opaqueness. He was clean shaven from his Adams Apple to the nape of his neck: No mustache, no goatee, and no eyebrows; No hair of any type adorned his skin.
The other man rested his weight on his elbows before laying all the way back on the floor and closing his eyes for a moment. His people, Chris thought. Okay, so you’re one of the Peacekeepers…no…you’re something, somebody even further up Xavier’s chain of command than even that.
“I only wanted to know if you stood with us or not. I wasn’t asking for a tactical analyst of the situation or your consent, Agent Christopher Prince.”
“You know who I am?”
His smile betrayed the confidence of someone who was in clear control of the conversation. He reopened his eyes, carefully pulled…a penny…from his pocket and began tossing it up once and then again and again. “Number One suggests that the other members of The Circle familiar ourselves with all of our adversaries. Even if one of the antagonists is his own flesh and blood. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, especially tonight. How are you holding up?”
Chris finally put a name to a face and cursed in a low voice. “You’re Morgan aren’t you, Quincy Morgan?” He scanned the room’s perimeter to update himself on the female guards positioning. The hostages had been allowed to converse amongst themselves but Chris wasn’t willing to risk them spying in on this conversation. He lowered his voice until it was damn well soft and faint as if he were singing a lullaby to hush a crying baby. “You are The House in Chains Sargent at Arms, and the number three in command of The Circle. Well, at least that’s the hypothesis being shared back at the field office.”
Morgan nodded.
Quincy Morgan:
He was an olive skinned black man who Chris thought was the picture of fitness and all the handsome features of Man of Color could wish for. He had big thoug
htful eyes, a clean shaven face, an expensive diamond stud in each ear and a fresh haircut. He kept tossing that penny in the air once and again and again. You don’t come off as the nervous type, Quincy; the experienced investigator inside his gut told Chris, that penny represents unfinished business with something…or someone. I’d give a king’s ransom to know who. Chris found himself staring at the other man’s physique longer underneath his silk shirt longer than he intended, hoping Morgan wouldn’t take his interest as anything sexual. I was you once, Quincy. Instead, he was again reminded that how he was bulging along his own midsection. In fact he’d made an appointment and finally seen his private doctor a few days earlier. The follow up appointment was scheduled for today. He’d been from suffering occasional stomach pains and his energy level hadn’t been up to his usual standards.
Concentrate on the present, he told himself. The holding area stank of piss and other waste as the remaining hostages had been forced to urinate in the flower pots that were located within. Again, Prince reminded himself they’d been allowed conversation and even some movement, but they were encouraged to keep their voices low and absolutely forbidden from standing up. A weighty gentleman asked for permission to approach one of the makeshift toilets, one of the lithe shaped guards sneered, patted him down, and