Jessie

Author's note:

This chapter contains a scene of violence - a fistfight - and minor injury to one of the main characters. If this is bothersome to you, skip ahead to the next set of ### in the story.

Thanks again for reading and voting, and all your comments, critiques, and criticisms, both public and private.

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Ain't found a way to kill me yet...

- The Rooster, Alice In Chains

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December

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Christmas Eve didn't look much like Christmas. I looked out the floor to ceiling windows set in the corner of my office. Outside, Christmas lights hung almost limply between the streetlights, seemed to sag from the fronts of the buildings. Thick pea soup fog filled the streets, turned a sick green color by the strings of lights. The winter had been warm so far, and I hadn't needed a coat when I went walking downtown during my lunch hour, hitting media and lingerie boutiques for Jessie.

One more customer tonight, a half-hour appointment at the end of the day. Then a couple of days off.

Right at four-thirty, the door opened and Henry walked in. Mr. Antrim was as handsome as my secretary had described after setting up the appointment two days ago - tall, with close-cropped blonde hair and goatee, a face that was just beginning to show age with a few deep lines. He wore cargo pants and an open leather jacket, thick-soled boots that made no noise on the thin, industrial carpet. His smile was wide and bright when I rounded the desk, and his handshake was strong.

"Mr. Galloway, nice to meet you, I hope I didn't keep you from your family too late."

"It's Gary, please. And no, I'd be here till five regardless. You're Henry? I'm awful with names at the end of the day."

"That's me." His voice had a pleasant drawl, Mississippi or Missouri, central south.

I motioned him to a chair and we sat, my desk in between, laptop off to the side to facilitate conversation. "Big plans for Christmas"? I asked as I logged in.

"Eh, maybe." He drew a folder from an inside pocket of his biker jacket and set it on the table before me.

"Military?" I asked.

This seemed to startle Henry. "The Corps. How'd you guess?"

I smirked. "My father was a Navy man. Your watch is turned in to prevent reflection, nobody wears combat boots if they don't have to or aren't used to them, and if I'm not mistaken that's a Beretta Ninety Two in a shoulder holster under your jacket. Again, if they aren't used to it, I don't think anybody likes those. And even then..."

"Tell your old man thanks for his service."

A pang of regret sliced through my chest. "I'd love to, but he died in a car accident about six years ago. Think it'll be seven this spring."

"Sorry to hear that." Henry Antrim's voice sounded actually sincere.

"Thank you. So. What can I do for you."

He smiled, stretched lazily in the chair across from me. "I'm a community organizer now, got a charity, I'd like to take out a loan to begin merchandising, shirts, hats, stickers, that sort of thing. Bring about some awareness. It's all in there." He pointed at the folder on my desk.

"Mind if I take a minute?"

Henry folded his hands behind his head, leaned back. "I've got all night."

I flipped through the first few pages of his proposal, looking at it with a practiced eye. A name caught my attention, and I looked again. I felt my temperature rise, heard a buzzing begin in my ears, tasted bile. Henry was smiling at me - cruelly - when I raised my gaze. "You're from the Brotherhood Of The Red Flag."

"Keep reading." That southern drawl sounded menacing now, not genteel and aristocratic.

And it sounded commanding.

I flipped through more pages, formulating the denial I was going to enjoy delivering to this asshole. Then I hit the blank page.

Blank except for four words.

"I want her back."

It was hard not to look up. Hard to control my breathing. Hard to not show surprise, or fear, or anger.

Or hatred.

I looked up, forced confusion into my voice, hoped I showed it with my eyes. "What? Who is her?"

"You know." His lips flattened out in an expression of determination.

I shook my head. "No, I don't." I hoped it sounded convincing.

"Sienna. Former student of yours. Former..." His voice grew tight. "...lover. Five nine-ish, hundred and thirty, forty pounds. Red hair. Great rack. Traveling with a two-year-old girl."

"I...I don't know who you're talking about."

"Cut the bullshit, Gary. I found you the same way she did, asked at your old college, said I was a former student, wanted to send you a fuckin' birthday card or some shit."

"Morgan Skolnich."

That look of determination curved up in a grin. "In the flesh. Now we can be level with each other."

I remembered Sienna puking and shivering in the throes of opioid withdrawal. Remembered the burn scar across her body. Remembered her telling me how he'd cut her ties with her family.

And I remembered one of his Red Flag fuckheads hitting me in the head with rebar, nearly getting beat to death in Denver in a riot this shitheel had started.

Dammit, I wished the bank didn't forbid employees from carrying concealed. I wished I'd ignored their rules. I wished I had something more than a letter opener to attack him with. I wished I could split his head into two bloody halves with a three fifty-seven SIG traveling sixteen hundred feet per second.

"I don't know where she is."

He rose, started pacing. "See, that's where I think you're lyin'. Cuz I know she's got nowhere to go but a longshot on you."

"I did see her. She stopped by, looking for help. Gave her some money and a place to crash for a night, and then she moved on." I hoped I was lying convincingly.

"You already lied to me once. I got no reason to believe you."

"Honest, I'm telling the truth. She told me a sad story, slept on my couch, lit out the next morning. I didn't want that kind of trouble around me and mine."

He turned to face me, withdrew the railed Beretta from his jacket, and methodically twisted off the thread protector from the barrel before reaching into his jacket again for a stubby suppressor which he began screwing on. "Now I know you're lying."

I raised my hands. "Killing me isn't going to get you jack shit."

"One, I don't want jack shit, Gary, I want Sienna. I want the rifles she took. I want my flash drive back. And two, I don't plan on killing you, that'd be pointless, I'd lose leverage and a source of information. Call your secretary in here, that mousy little redhead at the desk approximately forty-five feet down the hall."

"But not your daughter," I said softly.

"Huh?"

"All the things you want back, Jane ain't on the list."

He shrugged, gave me a rueful grin. "Kid's a deadweight. Didn't want her, still don't. My fault for assuming Sienna was on the pill. She sure fucked like she didn't have to worry about consequences. Call the secretary."

"I'm not going to call my secretary into my office for you to execute. Are you fucking nuts?"

He sat down heavily across from me, the suppressed pistol hanging loosely in his hand. "You're gonna do it. And I'm gonna shoot that girl to show you what I'll do to your family if you don't give me Sienna and my stuff."

"Go fuck yourself."

"You'll do it for two reasons. One, because if you don't, I'm going to walk out into your lobby and start shooting people until I run out of ammo. And I brought a lot of mags. Two, you have normalcy bias. Hope. You think everything is going to stay just the same as it always is. Men have it, women have it worse. When you realize how serious I am, you'll do anything to keep me from disrupting your life further. Its why victims get into their attacker's vehicles, to be transported to the next crime scene. You think that if you can keep stringing along normal or not-so-bad moments long enough, everything will be fine. And it will be. Give me Sienna, and I'll leave you alone."

I stood, hands gripping the edge of the desk. "I ain't giving you shit."

Morgan shrugged heavily, moved to rise from his chair. "Fine. Then I'm gonna go kill your coworkers until I find someone you give a shit about."

My deadlift and squat plateaued right around four hundred and fifty pounds. I'd spent the last three years of my life - after rehab - in boxing and wrestling classes. He might be armed, might be a special forces killing machine, but I wasn't letting him murder anyone without a fight I'd been preparing for years to win.

I threw the desk at him.

Well, more like flipped it. The expensive piece of particle board veneered to look like hickory barely weighed more than the laptop and monitor sitting on it, and with just a bend of the knees, I could get a LOT of force under it. And that same bend launched me right after it.

To his credit, and the instructors that had trained him, his reflexes were fantastic. Morgan threw his chair back almost in time to avoid the impact, but the hit was there, glancing, and then I fell on top of him, rolling as we fought for control of the gun. We hit the door on the other side of the room, and I based out at his side, gripping the gun and holding it to his chest while pounding my fist into his face repeatedly.

Knees slammed against my side and he reared up, clawing at me with his free hand. If he angled that gun towards me... Time to get rid of it. I leaned back and twisted the grip on his hand, hoping to break his index finger. That'd be a nice treat. Morgan let go but not before pumping a round into the ceiling. The bullet must've been subsonic and the suppressor must've been nice, because I didn't hear anything other than the slide start to cycle. Fuck, I hoped that didn't hit anybody upstairs.

With my grip on the barrel and slide as tight as it was, the gun jammed as it tried to cycle, and when he let go, I pitched it to my left. Better neither of us have it than waste the time trying to bring it into the fight and risk him getting it back.

With that hand free now, he punched my face repeatedly, then went for the gouge, gripping the side of my head and trying to jam his thumb into my eye. I rolled back to avoid being blinded, came up in a boxer's stance. He dove for the Beretta, came up short and bounded to his feet, fists matching mine. The look on his face was grim, bloody death.

He fired off a low, feint kick at my knee and I twisted, charged in with short jabs to his ribs and guard. He defended with a couple of powerful, painful body shots, each one feeling like it was cracking ribs, and he realized too late that had been my feint too, tackling him around the waist, picking him up by the backs of his thighs and dumping him hard on the ground. Morgan managed to gain control of my arm on the way down, and his widespread legs climbed up my back, his hips rotating in a familiar pattern as he pulled me into the trap. My arm was pulled across his chest and legs squeezed my shoulders and neck powerfully as he reached back to pull his knee down over his leg to lock in the choke.

Panic began to grow as my already rapid breathing was cut short, and Morgan looked at me victoriously down the length of my arm.

Fuck this.

I got my feet under me and flexed my arm, picking my assailant up by the limb he was using to choke me. His eyes widened and he realized what was coming. Morgan was heavy but I was used to heavy, and I didn't have far to go anyway. I turned, took a step, took another, and let myself drop, elbow first.

Morgan was beneath my elbow. The pile of particleboard and computer and office supplies that had been my desk was beneath Morgan. That could not feel good.

He let go with a shout of pain and I used momentum to roll across him. I staggered to my feet as fast as I could, grabbing my throat. Across the room, the muzzle of the suppressor looked as wide as a manhole cover. Morgan had gotten to his feet first. His hands moved almost too fast for my eyes to follow as he tap-rack cleared the jam, and part of me knew my number was up.

Another part of me was too incredibly, violently pissed off to care. I knew the statistics - only twenty percent of people shot with handguns die, and the slower round coming out of the suppressor should do fractionally less damage. If I could get to him without taking a CNS or heart shot, I'd have a couple of minutes of fight left in me at least.

I charged.

I don't think he was expecting that reaction. His eyes widened and his lips set in that same grim, angry line and he shot me. Multiple times.

I could feel the impact of the bullet against my skull, a sledgehammer to my brain, and I dropped to the ground as bullets sliced through the space I'd occupied. He dumped the magazine, pocketed it without adjusting his aim down to me, reloaded in a blink.

"We'll do this again, Gary. Real soon."

I could barely hear him over over the ringing in my ears. Was I dying?

The lights weren't going out. I wasn't dying. At least not yet.

One hand pressed to the bright, hot pain on the side of my head, the other pushed off the floor and I staggered to my feet. I screamed with rage as I stumbled into Morgan's path, trying to tackle him again, and his foot swept mine, and I tumbled to the floor as he ran past.

He hadn't been aiming for me, I'd blundered into a bullet. He'd been aiming for the window, and his run turned into a shoulder-first dive through the shattered glass.

Huh.

I shook my head, instantly regretted it, and pushed myself weakly to my feet, put one foot deliberately and drunkenly in front of the other until I was leaning against the window frame. My office was on the second floor, and there was a massive planter about eight feet down. Below, a leather-jacketed blonde guy sprinted into the street and into traffic.

Hot liquid was leaking around my hand, and I pressed delicately with my fingers. Torn flesh, but it didn't feel like there was a hole into my skull. That was great. I still felt disoriented as shit though. I barely made it to the door, and pulling it open made me notice all the aches and pains of accumulated in the seconds-long fight.

Oh dammit, that hurt.

I stumbled out into the hall, staggered, fell to a slouch against the wall, and looked around at the horrified staff staring at me. "You guys ok?"

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Jessie drove me home from the hospital around nine that night. I'd answered questions from the police at the bank, answered more at the hospital, gotten the slash in my scalp over my left ear sewed shut, taken a shit-ton of pain killers, and held a shit-ton of ice to my aching body. I wanted nothing more than to go soak in a tub of near-boiling water for about twelve hours, but I needed to have a conversation first.

"Can I get you anything?" Jessie asked for about the eight hundredth time when we walked into the kitchen. She was even more pale than usual, shocked at the violence that had intruded into our lives.

"Alcohol, but that's probably not a good idea right now."

She snorted. "Probably not."

I contemplated the refrigerator, and grabbed a can of Coke, enjoyed the bittersweet sting down my throat. "Cmon."

We trudged up to the third floor, and every step reminded me of the beating I'd taken, the exhaustion aching in my muscles. I kept replaying the fight over and over in my mind, trying to find that one instance where I'd lost. Then I remembered I'd fought a Force Recon Marine and survived. I should be counting my lucky stars right now.

Jane was in the kitchen watching something goofy on a tablet and Sienna was packing. Her clothing was going into the same ratty duffels and backpacks it had arrived in, and the Glock I'd given her three years ago lay on the bed.

She looked at me like she was seeing a ghost. "Gary, you're..." She started to come around the bed, arms lifting to throw around me, and then caught herself when she realized Jessie was there.

"I'm banged up, but I'm ok. Looks worse than it is." It looked awful. The side of my head was bruised angrily from the bullet I'd run into, and my face looked like I'd taken a beating.

I had.

"We're leaving, Jane and I. I don't want anything else happening to you and Jessie. We'll hit the road tonight."

"No, you won't. That's the last place you should be."

"But he - "

"Doesn't know where you are. Unless you walk through the downtown shouting 'Morgan, come and get me!' I don't think he's gonna find you. That's why he came at me. You start running, all you're gonna do is risk exposing yourself."

"He knew I'd come to you though."

I shrugged, looked at Jessie. She shrugged. "If he knew you were living here, I have no doubt we'd have a couple of dozen of those Brotherhood assholes trying to climb in the windows. And even then, this'd be the safest place for you, brick walls, hurricane shutters, and a shitload of guns."

"I'm not letting you guys risk yourselves for me. You've given me too much as it is."

"He's already coming for Gary," Jessie told her quietly.

"So he's coming here." Sienna sounded resigned. I could see her fight the fear welling inside, stiffening, straightening, try to draw herself up to face the coming horrors.

I grinned ruefully. "Not likely. The house is in Jessie's name. I had it in mind that if we broke up, I didn't want her back in her old apartment. So unless he has access to bank payment or HR records, he doesn't know where I live. You should be safe for a while. But I need you to do something for me."

"What's that?"

"I need you to go to the police. Let them know this asshole is after you, that you're running from an abusive ex, that he attacked me. I already told the cops at the bank that his name was Morgan Skolnich, but you need to file a report. They need as much info as possible, and hopefully, we can get them out ahead of this thing. Maybe get him arrested for a busted tail light or something."

"No. Nuh-uh. Not doing it. I told you, he owns some of them."

"See, that's just nuts. You're paranoid."

"No. I'm not." Her voice was firm and she clenched her fists by her sides.

"If I need to smoke-check this asshole or anyone connected to him, I want the police knowing the ugly details of his life."

"He already tried to - "

I cut her off. "I got my arm blown off by literal terrorists, and I still had a year's worth of paperwork and court shit to deal with just for returning fire. This guy is a darling for dozens of mayors and who knows how many other political dickheads like you told me, I want every single misdeed he's ever misdone on file if I kill him."

"No. Won't do it."

"Miss Schneider, will you please do as you're fucking told, for once in your life?"

"Or what? You'll spank me?"

Beside me, Jessie snickered.

"No, I'll go back to the police and tell them everything you told me. They're hearing the story from one of us tonight, I'd just think you'd want them to hear your side of it. I gave you that courtesy, I didn't say word one about you at the bank or hospital. But this is happening. You do it or I do. I'm happy to go with you if you want."

Sienna glared daggers through my face, and I wondered briefly if she might pick up that gun and point it at me. Then Jessie walked around the bed and put her hand on Sienna's arm. "I'll go with you. Gary can stay here and watch over Jane."

The redhead tilted her head to look at my love from the corner of her eye, and the tough-girl façade started to break. "You don't want to or need to spend Christmas Eve with me in a police station. It's ok. Stay here with Gary and Jane."

"I'm going with you. I imagine you'd probably like another girl there for support."

After a long inhalation turned into a long sigh, Sienna nodded. "Yeah, yeah I would."

"Gary will make dinner, we'll just eat a little later. C'mon, I'll drive."

Sienna went to say goodbye to Jane, and Jessie stood up on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around my neck and give me a soft kiss. "You're gonna be ok here?"