A/N: Thanks so much for all your wonderful thoughts.
Most characters belong to S. Meyer. The rest belongs to me, including all mistakes.
*Almost, almost done!* ;)
Chapter 36 – Run
Edward
Everything afterward follows with rapid-fire frenzy.
The bullet that rips through Kate echoes off the walls. Its reverberation bounces off the windows, and the hanging shards of glass left on the frames splinter and shatter, along with Kate's blood, spraying the space between us. It's as gruesome a sight as it gets, and when Bella buries her face against my chest, I secure her tightly against me.
Desperation runs rampant throughout my system, fueled by an impetus to get her out of here – an impetus that wars with a need to keep her eyes sheltered from bearing witness to the horrific scene. Regardless, at the moment, I'm woefully useless toward either goal.
Meanwhile, the sight of Kate's fallen body pounds like a sledgehammer between my eyes and momentarily eclipses the pain in my side. Her fate is a harbinger of things to come. It's a merciless reminder that, despite all my promises, I've failed at keeping Bella's nightmares at bay. Time is running out.
So, as Garrett's attention is momentarily swayed by the sight of his lover's body twisted and sprawled in a pool of blood, I begin the process of releasing Bella and forcing her to release me by wrenching off her vice grip on me, finger by finger.
"Bella," I whisper with frenetic urgency, "you have to let go."
"No." Violent shudders rack her frame, her breaths erupting in a series of short and spasmodic pants. Her terror spears me to the core, but we have no time to work through her panic.
Garrett abruptly pulls a cell phone out of his pocket and holds it to his ear. "Yeah?"
"Bella, you have to run now," I hiss, "while he's distracted."
Her fingers dig deeper into my shoulder blades.
"Yeah, just a bit of a snag, but I've got things under control now," Garrett speaks into his phone. "What's your ETA? Alright, there's one last thing I've got to take care of in the lab, then I'll be waiting in…"
"Bella, get off," I grind through my teeth, "and get ready to run. You have to get in touch with Jacob."
Though she stiffens momentarily, she neither looks up nor relinquishes her grip, and her defiance both infuriates and breaks my heart. Jesus, it's not as if I don't want to leave and survive this nightmare with her. It's not as if I don't crave the fantasies we created, the one where our bodies lay kindled together on that beach of her dreams; dreams of the shoreline's soft waves ebbing and flowing at our feet. It's not as if I'm not trying with all my might to keep the memories of our lovemaking at bay, and with the suppressed memories, quelling any thoughts of the wondrous life we may have created together…a life I may never meet.
Because I can't allow any of those fantasies to cloud my judgment. Those dreams aren't reality, and the reality is that I'm in no condition to run, and the next bullet has my name written all over it. Instead of shoreline waves ebbing and flowing, it's my time now measured in the ebb and flow of blood. I'll accept this fate for me, but I refuse to accept it for her.
She will escape this.
"All right, hurry up. I want to get the fuck out of here as soon as I'm done." Garrett ends his call with those cryptic words, returns his phone to his pocket, and focuses completely on us.
And with that distraction over, it's up to me to create one final diversion, to come up with one last tactic that'll attract all of Garrett's fury and wrath onto me, an ultimate commotion during which Bella can use those powerful legs to her full advantage.
My lip curls in a snarl. "Hey, Garret, guess what-"
Bella shoves me away with a momentum that knocks my back against the wall. I grunt quietly, all while watching in bewilderment as she crawls backward on her bottom, glaring at me through dark, angry eyes.
"You lied to me!"
She shouts the words with a force that makes the recrimination in her tone both unmistakable and inescapable as if I had any plans to escape them. I have lied to her in countless ways, and this is the result.
"Bella, I- I never meant-"
"You told me you cared about Kate once, but as Garrett said, you were just with her for the case, for the information she could give you! Now she's dead!"
For an eternal moment measured in a couple of seconds, her fury rings out in the space between us, and I merely stare at her, unblinking and failing to understand her actual accusation, therefore unable to verbalize. It must be my injury making me slow and thick-headed, making my mind scrambling her words.
"I don't want to end up like Kate simply because I made the mistake of believing you, of trusting you!"
Further accusations are slung like poisoned arrows, each one hurled in quick succession and each one sharper and more venomous than the latter. Though her voice quivers, her speech is clear, and these words translate with more sense than her previous ones. The truth of them seeps deep into my bones; yes, yes, I was her mistake, and yes, believing and trusting me were her errors.
Yet she keeps launching the spiked skewers, each one giving a loud voice to all my fears and shortcomings and each one exacerbating – no, surpassing – the excruciating, physical pain roiling within me.
"You begged me to stay with you instead of leaving for the safe house, and you promised I'd be safe! You lied! You lied to convince me to testify because the truth is you can't keep me safe!"
Her words are jagged-edged daggers aimed straight for my heart. Unable to withstand the deserved attack, I cringe visibly, slump under their massive weight. I've failed her. I've failed the one person I love most in this world, and now she's here, at the madman's mercy, and I'm helpless to stop him.
"Bella," I choke, reaching for her, but she scrambles further away.
"Don't touch me!"
And in the middle of that dark, dank, chemically-scented room, Bella hangs her head and cradles her face in her hands, releasing a series of sobs that rack her frame, that ring like thunder in my ears.
"I don't want to die!" Folding her legs, she takes up rocking back and forth on her bottom and chanting, "I don't want to die!"
Physical and emotional agony constrain my limbs and crush my lungs, forcing me to suck in a strangled breath.
My eyes sweep up to Garrett.
"Garrett, goddamn you, just let her go!" I howl. "Let her go, and then we can finish-"
"Shh. Don't cry, Isabella. Don't cry."
He croons the words, and after what appears a few seconds of deliberation, he approaches her slowly, with his weapon at his side but lowered. When he halts just behind her, his free hand lingers in midair for a moment; then, he rests it on her shoulder.
"Shh. It's okay, Isabella. It's okay." He strokes her shoulder as he coos.
"I don't want to die!"
His hand skims to her hair, raking his fingers through her long strands. Meanwhile, Bella's mournful, disconsolate cries continue, only vaguely muffled by the hands with which she covers her face.
"I wanted a future! I wanted love and children! I don't want to end up like Kate!"
"You can still have all that, Isabella. You can still get married and have a family if that's what you really want."
"It is! But you're going to-"
Cutting herself off, her cries reach a crescendo, and Garrett swiftly drops to his knees, circling to face her.
"Isabella, listen to me," he pleads, but she keeps her face covered. "I never wanted to hurt you, but this isn't the way things were supposed to go. You weren't supposed to see me this way."
"And do you think I would've ever wanted anyone…you to know what a fool I've been for buying his lies? For being as stupid as Kate-"
He grips her shoulders – still holding the gun – and gives her a shake.
"Don't ever compare yourself to her! Do you hear me?" he hisses. "You are everything she could never be! You're strong and brave and…and with the right man at your side, you can put all this behind you."
Bile rises thick in my throat, threatening to expel itself at any moment.
"We can leave, Isabella," Garrett offers her in a heady rush. "You and I can get away from here and leave all this behind us. We can start over somewhere, somewhere where we owe no one explanations."
My heart races at a precariously maddening pace, forcing all my other organs to work overtime. My vision blurs, and I hear Bella's reply as if spoken from a far, far distance.
"No more lies," she breathes in between her palms, "and no explanations?"
Garrett inches closer, and as his mouth brushes the top of her head, my eyes squeeze shut, vision tinged in red.
"No lies," he echoes, "and no explanations."
Bella doesn't answer immediately, but I see and hear how her accelerated, anxious breaths lose some of their tension.
"What about…what about Tony?"
Garrett draws in a deep breath and exhales it heavily. His eyes pan to me, lingering silently until Bella finally drops her hands from her face. His gaze briskly returns to her, but with her back to me, I have no idea what Garrett sees in Bella's expression.
"Garrett, I don't want any more blood on our hands. You said he'd bleed out on his own, and despite his lies, I…I cared about Tony, and I know you once did too," she breathes. "No more blood or…guns," she adds with a visible shudder. "Please, let's just go and leave him, leave it all behind."
Screwing my eyes shut against nausea enveloping me, I throw back my head against the plaster and bang it a few times. Total blackness threatens behind my closed lids, and as much as part of me aches to give into it…
I reopen my eyes to the sight of Garrett's arm wrapped around Bella's shoulder. He brushes his lips against her forehead, his mouth remaining there, pressed to her skin, then offering her a nod in agreement to her plan. He stands and helps her to her feet with a sigh, threading his free hand through hers.
"And what about whoever you just spoke to? Are they still coming?"
"Yes," he smiles at her tenderly. "They'll be here in a few minutes to pick us up and to…clean up after us."
"But you said no more blood-"
"Uh-uh-uh," he shakes his head, grinning indulgently, "you said no more blood on our hands. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to make sure all loose ends are tied up – for our own well-being, Isabella."
For an eternal moment, Bella stands there; her head angled upward to meet his gaze. Then, her head bobs.
"Okay."
Garrett turns and leads her forward, gripping her hand. He crouches down to pick up the backpack.
And Bella lifts one of her powerful legs, ramming a foot straight into Garrett's gut. He falls to his knees with a furious grunt, simultaneously raising his gun to her face.
"NO!" I howl.
Bella kicks his arm, and the bullet explodes against the wall. An eruption of white plaster sprays into the air and falls like thick flakes of snow. Garrett's quick and outraged reflexes recover with horrific speed. He lifts the gun again, and when Bella tries to kick it once more, he grabs her foot and yanks her down. I watch Bella fall in sickening slow motion, her back hitting the floor with a loud thud. He jumps on top of her, grips her shoulders, and begins slamming her body against the concrete.
"You little bitch! You lying little bitch!"
Terror, as I've never known, electrifies me and sends a bolt of lightning shooting through my core. Like Frankenstein's monster, it injects me with adrenaline.
He raises the gun and points it at her, realizing too late that I've somehow stumbled my way over. So when he turns the gun on me, I've got just enough time to knock it away. It lands somewhere off in the darkness while I simultaneously slam a fist into Garrett's face.
He falls backward, off of Bella, and before he can shake himself off, I'm on him, raining blow after blow.
"You fucking bastard! You murdering piece of shit!"
But I'm wounded, and though I'm already operating with blurred vision, the unabated loss of blood causes an untimely bout of dizziness. My head spins in a nauseating circle, the entire room pirouettes like a child's toy top, and I topple off of Garrett. As I sit there like a drunk swaying on a sidewalk, Garrett stands and steps forward. Heaving, I hold my fisted hands up in front of me while struggling to remain upright and to figure out which one of the three figures heading toward me is actually real.
Garrett chuckles at my attempt.
Like a flash, Bella drops into a crouch in front of me.
"You take one more step, and I will castrate you." Her voice is even and unequivocally deadly.
He halts. "Trampy little liar, just like Kate."
"Try me, motherfucker."
My head rolls back, and I watch through a fogged haze as Garrett sneers, though he deliberates for a moment. When his eyes flash toward the darkness, my breath hitches.
"Bella, he's going for the gun!"
They both tense, poised to outrun one another, but neither actually moves. With sickening dread, I realize why. Bella won't leave my side in search of a gun she's terrified of using, while Garrett waits for her to give it a try so he can attack me and thereby foil her.
The point becomes moot in the next moment anyhow. The sound of car doors slamming and anxious voices murmuring reach our ears. Garrett's eyes now pan toward the broken windows. When he grins, my stomach churns, and growing alarm coils around my insides.
"Even if you could find it, what good will a gun do you both? A detective's daughter," he scoffs, "yet a firearm might as well be a feather in your hands. And you," he chuckles my way, "good luck even holding the weight of a weapon with the time you have left, much less aiming it." He rushes to the windows. "They're up here!" He jerks his head, gesturing them up. "I've got to clear the lab!" Then, he turns back to us.
"I would've taken you away from here, Isabella," he scowls, then snaps his jaw in my direction, "but you chose the asshole who's about to bleed out. Once he's dead, and you've changed your mind, good luck getting past my guys."
With that, he grabs the backpack and sprints away.
And I slump forward, every ounce of energy seeping out along with my blood.
Bella drops to her knees and grips my shoulders, holding me up.
"Edward." Her voice is strangled, her dry eyes wild. "Edward, baby, get up; we have to go."
Even the weight of my head as I shake it is almost too much to bear.
"You…you have to go without me."
"No," she grits through her teeth. "That's not happening."
When I force my head up, Bella's beautiful, bruised face swims in my vision.
"Jesus, look at what I allowed them to do-"
"Stop this!" she hisses. "Edward, focus! FOCUS!"
Blinking a few times, and force my eyes to focus, to think. Meanwhile, she props me up carefully, the way a child props up a ragdoll, hoping it won't sag forward as soon as she releases it.
"I'm going to search really quickly for your gun, but either way, we have to get out of here, Edward! Edward, do you hear me?"
"Yes," I nod.
She presses her lips together but then nods briskly. When she releases me and disappears for a few seconds, my heart pounds against my ribcage, threatening to expel itself. Finally, she returns with the gun in hand. Nonetheless, as she kneels in front of me once more, she shoves the weapon into my hand and curls my fingers around it.
"You hold on to it. Now, let's go."
"Bella…I can't. You have to go without-"
She fists my hair in her hand so hard I see stars, then dips flaming eyes to my field of vision.
"Special Agent Edward Cullen, I. am not. leaving you," she seethes, "so unless you want us both to die here, you'll stand the fuck up! Now, are you ready to do your goddamn job?"
Her bravery, my awe and love for her, my need and desire to be a person worthy of her courage and determination all weave and blend and deliver another dose of adrenaline, like a line of heroin straight into my veins. I gasp wildly from the force of it, my eyes rounding, a heat as fiery as her gaze enveloping me.
"I said, are you ready, Agent Cullen?" she repeats.
Borrowing her strength, I offer her a nod. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm ready."
"Good." She locks her hands under my arms, and both of us grunt as she helps me to my feet. At the same time, we both hear the sound of feet pounding up metal staircases, nearing.
"We have to head for the roof," I breathe.
Bella nods, and with one hand pressed against my side and the other around Bella's shoulders, we run for our lives.
A/N: Thoughts?
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