"There's the van," Cody puffed excitedly and pulled his Jeep along side. "Get a weapon and let's go."
"Got it covered, Forrester," Renquist informed, reaching into his jacket and pulling out the Glock holstered at his side.
Cody nodded his appreciation and both ran toward the warehouse.
--
Shay turned her head slightly, the gun embedding itself further into her throat. "Mother...how...why..."
The woman scowled at the younger version of herself. "Don't try to play on my sympathy. I have no daughter, but I do have a job to do." She trained hardened eyes on her objective. Once he was eliminated... "Lower your weapons!" she demanded. "It's you who is meant to die, but I have no problem in taking out the woman to achieve my goal."
Frank held steady aim on the woman. He could easily take her out with one shot. His only fear was the woman's hold on Shay and the gun held steadily to her throat. He could see the firm grip the woman had on it and the finger that continued to squeeze the trigger. If he fired, the woman could, and probably would, finger that trigger out of pure reflex and kill his greatest love. "Back off!" he ordered his team.
"Smart move," Ariana Dennison spat, but grew agitated when none of them responded. She shoved the gun harder into Shay's throat, causing her to choke spasmodically.
Frank locked eyes with his wife in desperation. If he lowered his weapon he was as good as dead. Chances were that she would be, too. Even if Jake, Frankie, or Alex managed to get a shot off, Shay would be caught in the crossfire. Silently she begged him to shoot and save himself, but he knew that was the one thing he could not do. Deciding to take the chance that the woman would kill only him, Frank hissed, "lower your fucking guns...now!" He glanced left and right, making sure his orders were being followed as he slowly lowered his own guns.
Frank watched as a disconnected expression washed over the face of Shay's mother and she slowly pulled the gun from her daughter's throat to take aim at her target.
Shay cried out in anguish at the sight of her mother's finger squeezing the trigger of the gun aimed at her husband's head. Reflexively she wrenched at the arm that held her and slammed an elbow into the woman's stomach. At the same time, the sound of a thundering boom echoed the warehouse as Ariana's gun fired.
"Frank!" Jake and Frankie screamed, watching his body lurch backward to fall to the ground. Alex stood paralyzed as distant memories flooded over her, remembrances of watching their previous commander die in front of both her and Jake.
Shay watched with horror as he fell, but he was removed from her line of sight when she was pulled suddenly to the floor. Opening her eyes, she found she lay atop her mother, their faces only inches apart. She stared into eyes so like her own, lifeless from the bullet that entered through her forehead.
Shay croaked out a groan and pushed away from her mother's body to see the unmoving form of her husband. Scrambling forward, she lunged for him, pushing both Jake and Frankie out of her path. "Frank, Frank!" she screamed, cupping his face tenderly.
Hearing her frantic screams, he fought through the pain and breathlessness that had rendered him unconscious and he managed to choke in a short breath. "Alive...can't...breathe...."
Tears of relief cascaded down her cheeks when he spoke and his eyes fluttered open. While Jake and Frankie worked at releasing him from the confines of his vest to allow him to breathe easier, Shay looked behind them to see her father holstering his gun. My God! It was Daddy that shot Mother!
Thomas, along with Cody, knelt to help Frank to a sitting position before moving to the dead body a short distance from them. He shook his head softly and removed his jacket to place it over Ariana's face. When he turned back to the group, he found his son and daughter in a tight, loving embrace. To him, there was no better sight in the world.
"I only heard one shot," Shay said, looking up at her father.
Thomas nodded and sat down on a nearby crate. "Simultaneous shots, I suppose. I..." he looked at her, trying to gauge her feelings, "I...Shay..."
Shay sat back a bit, still wrapped in her husband's arms. Looking from the prone body of her now dead mother back to her father, she said, "Daddy...why? All those years...you let me believe she was dead."
Thomas released a heavy breath. "For all intents and purposes, she was, honey. Your mother was sent in to seduce me, to make me love her, make it easy for her to keep tabs on me," he began and looked off to the distance as the memories flooded his mind. "It was years later, after you were born, that she could no longer deal with her assignment. She was never meant for love and family. She missed the action, the excitement. Each day she drank herself into a stupor...each day she became less and less like the woman she had pretended to be. Finally one day, in a drunken rage, she let it slip...who she really was. I was devastated. All those years, lied to by the woman I loved...being spied on by my own peers. It was..."
"Betrayal," Shay whispered. "But...the funeral...I remember it..."
Thomas touched a finger to her cheek as he continued, "yes, baby-girl. I wanted her gone from your life. You were nearly ten years old then, and already she had taken pains each day to make you hate me. Each day she told you it was my fault that she drank, that I stayed away from you because you were such a disappointment as my child. I wanted to erase her from our lives."
"So that's why Shay's files were locked so tight!" Cody exclaimed.
"You should have told me." A deep frown furrowed her brow as she watched her father intently. "I hated you for so long because I believed you had made her life such a hell she would rather have not lived it...if I had known."
"You would have hated what little you loved about your life, and I was not about to take that away from you. Better you continue to hate the man you despised, than to hate the only person you ever loved."
"Dad," she whispered as she went from her husband's arm to the tight embrace of her father. "I do love you."
"I've waited a lifetime to hear those words," he admitted.
Cody moved to Alex and slid an arm around her shoulders. "You okay, Cross?"
Alex gave a hesitant nod. "I will be, Code. I will be."
Shay pulled back to see her father's face clearly. "Dad, was that my mother pulling out of your driveway that day?"
Thomas chuckled as he kissed her forehead. "No, kiddo. I was interviewing housekeepers."
"Oh!"
Jake stared for a long moment at the body lying on the floor. "What sick, twisted mind would send the mother of your wife to take you out?"
"What sick, twisted mind, indeed?" Thomas answered quietly.
"And there was no other way...than to kill her?" Frankie asked incredulously. What repercussions would this situation hold for Shay?
"No," Thomas answered emphatically. "If there were, believe me, I would not have killed her. The conditioning that Ariana went through for such a job would have made her oblivious to anything but completing her objective. If we would have stopped her this time, she would have found a way to come back and finish the job."
"I want to know who set this up," Frank demanded, fixing coal black eyes on to Shay's father.
"When I know; you'll know." The President had already promised a probe into the situation. If Wingard were behind this, he would pay.
************
to be continued...