All I Ask of You

Chapter Thirteen

For a long moment nobody moved. An eerie silence had thrown itself over the room and everyone waited for one another to break the quietness. Ian finally found the courage and spoke up.

"That doesn't make any sense? If you guys wanted Rippner why not just nab him at the theater?" Jackson said nothing but let his glaring gaze drift from Ian to the two new men in the room.

"Jackson's a slippery and smart man, but he get's stupid when he thinks he's losing control, what better way to make him slip up then make him think he's losing the one thing he lives for?" Ron said with a toothy grin, "We pressured Ian's boss to fire him and he goes looking for a job. You pay off an actress or two and you find yourself an open position that an out of work actor would jump at the chance for. While we did not expect you to propose… it seemed to do the trick and cause Jackie here to fall flat on his face."

"And you just expect me to hand over my property?" Jackson laughed deeply, "Did you even plan past getting through the door?"

"They didn't have to," Lisa said as she managed to gather her strength and dig her bare heel into Jackson's shin. He cried out in pain and squeezed the trigger in Ian's direction, however, Jackson was not only a terrible shot but also Lisa reached out and shoved his arm to the left to cause him to miss.

xXx

Ian's head snapped to the left as a bullet whizzed past his head and blew a whole in the wall, "Shit!" another bullet blew past his head on the right and his head snapped in that direction, "Shit!"

He heard Lisa cry out in pain and he looked up just in time to see Rippner hit her across the face with the gun in his hand. Lisa fell to the ground with sickening thud just as yet another bullet came whipping through the air and pierced Jackson's skin on his left shoulder causing him to drop the gun. Ian would have pounced him at that point, but Jackson's dog beat him to it. Kicking him in the back, the man caused Jackson to fall to the ground on his stomach.

xXx

Lisa took a deep breath and tried to make it to her feet when she felt a large hand close around her ankle and pulled her back towards the ground. Looking over her shoulder, she could see Jackson's devilish grin as he pulled her closer to him. "No!" she screamed and kicked out at him, she heard him cry out and loosen his grip. She assumed she connected with something and looked over her shoulder again; his nose was bleeding and bent at a crooked angle. She must have broken it.

"You're gonna pay for that!" he snarled and tightened his grip around her ankle and began to pull her closer to him again.

She opened her mouth and screamed again just as a foot came down on Jackson's hand. Jackson howled in pain and completely let go of her this time. With her oxygen entering her lungs in short gasps, Lisa quickly crawled away and curled her legs into her chest. Looking back Jackson, she saw that the man that had stepped on Jackson's hand was the thug from the parking lot. Quickly scanning the room, she could see Ian trying to revive Ron, had one of the stray bullets killed him?

Another gunshot rang out and Lisa's eyes snapped back to Jackson, his dog was standing over him with wide eyes and gapping whole in his chest. In Jackson's hand was one of the three guns that seemed to be running around the floor. Lisa could hear Jackson's ragged breathing as he made it to his feet, his eyes blazed with fire as he took a staggering step towards Lisa. She began to tremble and quickly tried to crawl backwards away from Jackson.

"Don't be scared, sweet heart; I'm not going to hurt you," he grinned, "Much."

Lisa opened her mouth and screamed again. "Get out of here, Lisa!" Ian yelled as he suddenly tackled Jackson to the ground.

"But what about you?" she whispered.

"Go! Go Now!" Ian snarled as he worked on pinning Jackson to the ground.

Lisa slowly made it to her feet and bolted from the room on shaky legs. She stood in the foyer looking for some place she could curl up and hide, or die. She did not care either way as long as she was away from Jackson. Her eyes suddenly fell on the small crawl space under the staircase; Lisa quickly made her way for the hiding place, her feet splashing in the small pool. A sigh of relief passed her lips as she curled her legs up to her chest and huddled in the corner.

A door opened and someone stepped into the foyer. Ian! She smiled and moved to greet him in the foyer.

"Lisa," Jackson sang, Lisa peeked around the corner, all she could see was the tip of a large blade that was dangling lazily from his hand. Blood was dripping off the tip as he walked around the foyer in search of Lisa. "Come out come out wherever you are, I'll tell you what, babe, you come out now and I'll make sure not to leave to many scars, deal?" Lisa had to place a hand tightly over her mouth to keep from screaming again, "Ya know, Leese, that boyfriend of yours is pathetic! We were alone for what, two three minutes? He's already down and out, Leese," Despite the hand over her mouth, Lisa let out what sounded like a cross between a squeak and a sob.

The foot steps abruptly stopped, Lisa saw the water in front of her ripple from sort of movement and before she knew it Jackson was crouching in front of her with soak pants.

"Hello, Sweetheart."

Lisa opened her mouth a screamed yet again.

Two more Chapters and an epilogue left to go! Plz Review.

With All Due Respect
-Nina Rippner-