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“We won’t shoot, because we’re not in danger. However, I don’t have drones sitting in every city and state of the country, so I’m working with the machine I had closest to you. That one just so happens to come with a gun on the front, and one-point-five kilos of TNT.”
“What the fffff— Sophia!”
“It’s secure,” she giggles. “You’re safe. Un-bunch your panties and chill out. Oh, head’s up,” she continues, too relaxed. “Mayet’s heading toward the door.”
“Fuck.” Searching the street, and counting feet to make sure everyone is as far back as Slade requested, I kill our call and slip my phone into my pocket.
I curse again when I realize the mayor is too close. His hands in his pockets, and his eyes on the door.
I don’t give a fuck about his safety. I don’t care if he dies. In fact, if he’s the reason Slade shoots and Minka catches a belly full of bullets, I’ll kill him my damn self.
“Mayor Lawrence!” I charge forward and grab his arm, feeling no remorse when his suit jacket tears at the seam.
His security detail swarms to stop me, but I drag him back and clear the fifty feet Slade requested. Then I look up just as the door opens and Minka emerges.
Her gaze searches for me. Pleading. Exhausted. She looks first to her left, in the direction I was standing minutes ago, then scans toward the right until finally, our eyes meet, and her shoulders slouch in relief.
She stares for a long beat. Screaming a thousand words with her eyes. Her lips remain closed. Firm and unshaking. Then her hand comes up to hold the delicate chain she wears around her neck.
Our wedding bands.
I reach up to mine, too. To my wedding ring. To our promises. I slip my finger through the steel and hold her eyes for as long as she wants it. For as long as she needs me.
When she breaks it, I feel the loss, the emptiness inside of me, as she drops my gaze and looks toward the stacks of pizza instead.
There’s too many to carry on her own. The pile is precarious. Her Factor pack sits on top, and we both know she’ll need to move it soon. The liquid is supposed to be at room temperature, not a hundred degrees, heated by a steaming pizza.
Stepping forward and bending at her hips, she grabs a pile smaller than I expect: just four pizza boxes and the first bag of meds. Then, grunting as she stands, she slowly turns on her heels and shuffles inside.
Everyone out here, all hundred of us, watch her move in pain. Her slow steps, her rigid movements. Her stiff shoulders and bruised arms.
“Wh-what’s wrong with her?” Seraphina steps through the crowd, away from the command truck, and stops between me and the mayor, her eyes on Minka. “What’s wrong with the chief, Detective Malone?”
Aubree knows about Minka’s hemophilia. Tim knows. Fletch knows. But Seraphina is still kind of new to our group, and medical information is not something Minka gives out freely. She’s a private woman. Proud. And I’m not willing to expose her when she’s already in pain.
So I shrug in dismissal. “She’ll be okay.”
“She’s coming back out.” Fletch strides across the street, breaching the fifty feet rule for a moment, but stops at my side and turns to watch Minka make her second trip. “They’re gonna be fed and looked after.” His fingers flex around the gun strapped to his thigh.
He’s ready to go. Ready to fight. But our hands are tied—metaphorically, at least.
While my wife makes her laps, each one stiffer than the last, bringing her more pain, the rest of us watch on. Unable to help. Unable to do a damn thing, because the brass are unwilling to give the man what he wants.
Finally, on her fourth trip, Minka hangs the final plastic bag of meds—her’s—from her left arm and picks up the remaining couple of pizzas. On her way back inside, she stops in the doorway, silhouetted by the lights coming from the building. I see her search for me in the crowd. Skimming over the faces of the hundred cops and reporters and EMTs who’ve already been called on site.
When her eyes catch on me, she drags her bottom lip between her teeth before turning on her heels in silence and pulling the door shut behind her.
“Fuck.”
She’s gone again. Out of my sight. Back inside the den of guns and bad decisions.
And here I am,watching! Like a fucking pussy.
I glare at the mayor and wait. For him to fix this, for him to make a fucking decision, for him to order a little girl’s surgery, or to send in a SWAT team who can take down a gunman with zero casualties… But he says nothing.
The bastard has nothing to say.
Spinning away with disgust, I bring Fifi, Tim, and Fletch with me. “We have ears in there now,” I tell them. “And Sophia has eyes. So let’s find a way in and finish this bullshit.”
