Chapter 52: Stay Calm
I didn't breathe as I watched him come flying through the front picture window. At first I didn't know what, or who, it was that flew from the house and into the ditch of packed dirt below, but everything seemed to happen in slow motion. I closed my eyes, hearing gasps and the clicks as the cops around me leveled their guns at the gaping hole. Emma grabbed my arm, and I think we both stopped breathing.
I looked up, seeing Greg's face flash blue and red though the jagged hole of glass before he was dragged back into the darkness of the house.
People began to yell, Brass' voice rose above the others, SWAT teams moved forward across the no-mans-land of the front yard. They pulled my husband from the ditch, dirty and mud-stained, pushing him to nearly run to the safety of the circle of police vehicles. He stumbled his way across the lawn to the back of the Ambulance, surrounded by the black-clad officers.
I ran hard and fast across the twenty yards between us, Emma clinging to my hand and following. She hitched out a sob, still watching three SWAT officers aim their guns at the broken window where a man had his gun pointed at the head of a teenage girl, screaming back at them.
*~*~*
I was just catching my breath when I saw them running toward me. Sara's face was worried, tear-streaked, unsettled as she stopped a few feet away, Emma right behind her and grasping her hand for dear life. She was near hysterics; I'd only ever seen her as upset when her mother died.
It was almost like my heart stopped beating. The air left me in a rush again and I couldn't think of anything, couldn't care about anything, until they were right there with me.
I stood, pushing away the EMT that was trying to treat me and opened my arms, my eyes welling with tears. They were in my arms so quickly. All I could think about was holding them; my wife and my daughter. I wanted to stop time, eradicate the possibilities of anything like this ever happening again, and hold them forever. It had taken me so long to build my life to this point, so long to truly be happy, that I never wanted to let any of it go.
Before I knew it, I was crying. It had taken all of my strength to stay calm while we waited in that house. Greg had been the one to panic, but I had wanted to. I had wanted to scream, yell, wrestle the criminals to the ground and free us all, but I knew that wasn't really possible. So I'd tried to stay calm. Then I'd been defenestrated, and it changed.
Flying through the air I couldn't think of anything except that somehow I'd still end up dying, if not by a bullet, then by a shard of glass, or the fall. The packed dirt had been hard, harder than I'd expected, and suddenly I was being dragged to my feet, away from the screaming. I still heard Greg call out the window before he'd been pulled back in.
"Take care of them."
Emma's arms were wrapped around my waist, Sara's around my neck, and I had one arm around each of them, my head buried between them. Sara's hands moved up, twining in my hair, holding my forehead to hers as she tried to find an even breathing pattern. "Are you ok?" she asked desperately, over and over. Emma sobbed quietly into my side, her head dug into my shoulder.
"I'm fine," I assured them both. Besides a few aches and pains, more the result of the fall than any real injury, I was fine. Nothing could be wrong; they were with me now. That made everything alright.
*~*~*
"What kind of stupid move was that?"
The first guy, angry guy I was calling him in my head, pistol whipped me again. He'd done that three times already for my little stunt. I'm pretty sure my nose is broken, maybe my jaw, too. Hurts so bad it's gone numb now.
It's at least an hour later- I'm not quite sure being there aren't any clocks in here, but that's what my mind's telling me, anyway. Angry guy and mean guy keep pacing through the room, burnt guy just sits on the couch across from us in the shadows, the gun in his hand always pointed at me or the girl.
At least they're paying attention to me now. I'm not sure yet why they wanted her, or what they have done or will do to her, but they're not paying much attention to her anymore. They're pissed at me and I'm just fine with that. They've tied my hands behind my back; have me kneeling on the floor in front of the sofa. It's dark; they haven't turned on a light. All that filters in is the hypnotic flashing of red and blue and the bright white of the flood lights they have pointed at the house through the cracked window that doesn't quite reach where we are.
The jagged edges remind me of some macabre cartoon, waiting like teeth to eat me up in the night.
*~*~*
"I don't know what happened, except that he panicked." Grissom is holding a force issued blanket around his shoulders, every once in a while rubbing at a smudge of mud on his face that he hasn't quite gotten rid of yet. Sara sits next to him on the tailgate of the ambulance, Emma huddled into Nick's side as they stand close by listening to us talk and keeping a close eye on the house.
"How many are there?" I ask, waiting to relay whatever I can to the people around me. He'd refused to be brought to the hospital adamantly, even though the medics were concerned he may have cracked a few ribs and may have internal injuries. He won't move until this ends, won't leave the people that are his family.
"Three, one badly burned, all with guns. Then there's the girl, and Greg." He winces when he says that, not wanting to voice the situation any more than it has to be.
"Any idea what they want?"
"We caught them by surprise, Jim. Whatever they were planning wasn't this." Grissom reached for Sara's hand, twining their fingers together.
My chest tightened at Emma's small voice. "Is he ok, Dad?"
"For now… he was. I don't know what they'll do, though." His reply is sad and honest. It looks like his heart is breaking to say the words.
Emma nods, tears resuming. Nick tightens his arms around her and whispers into her hair. I can't hear it from where I am.
*~*~*
Maybe another hour, maybe five minutes has passed. The girl is lying on her side, her arms still tied behind her. Her eyes are closed, but she's not sleeping. No one could sleep in this situation.
I'm still kneeling, but my knees are numb now. I'm still waiting, letting the flashing lights hypnotize me until I won't remember where I am, what I've done, all the things that have gone wrong today… won't remember that I have a sparkling engagement ring sitting in my locker. A locker I may never open again.
"Let's just kill them and get the hell out!" That was angry guy.
"You think we're anything but dead if we do that?" Mean guy has a point.
Burnt guy has passed out. He might be dead, but I'm not sure. They haven't noticed yet.
"First you get the wrong girl, then you make us hide in the fucking ceiling then…THEN we end up with these idiot scientists pretending to be cops! How do you plan on getting out of this?" Angry guy was getting angrier by the minute, but he had a good question.
How do I plan on getting out of this?
*~*~*
It's when the EMTs finally coerce Grissom to allow them to do a more comprehensive exam that I pull Emma away from all of the confusion. She hasn't been able to tear her gaze away from the façade of the house all night, and it's going on almost four hours now since we first arrived. "Come with me," I whisper, pulling my step-daughter away to the edge of the circle of cop cars, where the night is a little less exciting and the sound is a little more muted.
"Yeah?" She asks, her gaze flickering between me and the house.
"Tell me."
I can see in her eyes that she wants to pretend she doesn't know what I'm talking about but she doesn't have the strength to fight with me. "I freaked out. I just… Greg did this fabulous thing. He took me to see a house- a townhouse in the next development over from ours- and said that if I liked it we could buy it right there and then. He had all these ideas and plans and all of a sudden it was too much." Emma sighed.
I rest my hands on her shoulders, gently turning her away so that she'll look at me, not the house as she speaks. "I saw him before he… before. He told me you gave back the ring."
She nodded, sniffling away the tears. "He mentioned having kids. And I love kids, I want kids, you know that. But I didn't realize… and then we were fighting and it was all too much!"
I hug her, tight and long. "Slow down, you stopped making sense." When she pulls away I push her hair back, smoothing it down. I pull her to the curb across the street, making the reality of the situation fade away just a little more.
She hiccupped as she sat, rubbing her eyes tiredly. "He didn't know about my Dad's hearing, didn't know that I could be affected, too. It shouldn't have set me off, but I got scared. I got scared that maybe we were rushing into this and really weren't ready. I panicked. I gave him back his ring and ran." I take her hand and she squeezes back. "I overreacted, I knew it as soon as I was a block away, but I was still too upset to explain to him what had gone through my head. I wanted to take some time to calm down. I was about to call him when Nick called."
I wrap an arm around her shoulders and we sit silently for a minute before I notice the increase in activity across from us.
The SWAT team is gearing up.
We run back to the center of the circle of cars. Nick, Brass, and Grissom are all standing, waiting expectantly as the black clad forms of SWAT officers surround the house. We join them, waiting.
*~*~*
When Brass asked, all I could tell him was what I remembered. The door exploded in, Burnt guy catapulted to the floor across from us. The girl screamed, and my knees gave out. The room filled- with people or darkness, I wasn't sure. I think I'd hit my head again.
Someone untied me, tried to help me up. The girl was crying. Burnt guy was definitely dead and Angry guy was bleeding. Maybe shot. Mean guy was on the ground, hands behind his head.
I remember SWAT members pulling me out of the house.
I remember the lights getting brighter, the sounds getting sharper as they helped me out of the house.
I remember them running towards me; Emma, Sara, Nick, and close behind Grissom and Brass.
I didn't remember anything else until the next morning when I woke up in the hospital. Emma was sitting by my bedside. She was wearing her ring.
(TBC...)
A/N- The Epilogue will be posted in the next few days as soon as it is back from Beta. Thank you again to everyone who is reading and reviewing.
