Author's Note: Thanking everyone, yet again, for all of the reviews! Although, everyone keeps calling me an evil writer and I don't quite know how to take it. :) Here's the next chapter, I hope you enjoy it. There is more violence in this one, just a fair warning, though it's not nearly as graphic as the previous chapter. I suppose I should have put a disclaimer on the last chapter but I really didn't think about it. I was mainly just trying to stay with what I felt was true to character
P.S. Luning-Ravatic: I love that scene in 28 Days Later , too. I threw something in this one just for you, see if you can spot it!
Chapter Eight: He Won't Come After Me Again
Mellmott slammed into Jackson from behind, knocking him into Lisa, and thereby sending her head crashing into the incredibly hard wall behind her. A realatively safe assumption would be that she had received multiple concussions in the span of about six hours. Mellmott tore Jackson away from Lisa, who immediately slinked to the floor holding her head with her hands. She fought with everything that she had in her to keep her heavy eyelids from closing and her eyes focused on the two men wrestling around in front of her.
"Well, Mellmott, took you long enough," Jackson taunted in his obnoxious singsong voice, "I was beginning to wonder whether or not you really cared."
"Don't you worry about that, Rippner!" Mellmott retorted just as Jackson rammed his back into the wall, "First, I'm gonna deal with you, then I'm gonna have some fun with that pretty girlfriend of yours."
Jackson snarled at him and delivered a swift upward blow to his nose with the palm of his hand. Mellmott grunted and the hold he had on Jackson loosened enough for Jackson to twist himself away and get around behind him. Mellmott spun around to find that Jackson had gotten his hands back on his knife; he had dropped it when Mellmott had made his initial strike. Jackson turned, ready to swing but Mellmott caught him by the wrist and his uninjured shoulder as they struggled through the room, bumping into the furniture and walls. Jackson positioned his hand at the top of Mellmott's forehead and used his thumb to apply excessive pressure to his temple, causing Mellmott's temple to blur as an unbearable pain shot through his head. He responded in the same fashion, pinching at the pressure point where Jackson's shoulder met his neck, causing Jackson to instinctively tilt his head in attempt to protect his joints.
Lisa groped at the wall behind her, trying to rise to her feet, but she feel back to the floor almost instantly. She kept her eyes on Mellmott and Jackson, their movements resembling some kind of sick dance. Mellmott slammed Jackson into the patio door, cracking the glass but not breaking it and Jackson quickly shoved Mellmott back into the bureau. Lisa stared at the fractured glass, knowing the strength and durability of that glass; she winced at thinking of how hard Mellmott would have had to have shoved Jackson against it in order to break it like that. Mellmott straightened and then charged Jackson once again and the two men both lost their balance and fell through the bedroom door and out of sight.
Adrenaline and concern surged through Lisa giving her the energy to leap to her feet and run to the bedroom door to have a look at what was going on between the two men, regardless of the sudden head rush it caused. She found them rolling around on the floor, throwing punches or blows wherever they saw a free chance. Lisa had no doubt that Jackson could beat Mellmott any day of the week and twice on Sunday, but he was hurt. Her eyes followed his injured shoulder and saw that there was a circle of blood that was darker and shinier than the rest which which meant that the bullet wound located there was still bleeding a little too steadily for her comfort.
It seemed like the blink of an eye and they were both on their feet, Jackson slicing at Mellmott with his blade and Mellmott dodging him skillfully. Jacksom rammed into Mellmott and knocked him into the wall and held him there. He had just gotten the knife pressed to his throat when Mellmott head-butted Jackson, sending him flying across the room. Lisa couldn't help but think about the irony in that one. There was a small trickle of blood running down Mellmott's neck from where Jackson's knife had bitten into the flesh and the blow he had delivered only succeeded in further pissing Jackson off. He lashed out at Mellmott with a force that even Lisa had never seen from him, and she had just watched his gut a man. He lunged at Mellmott and stabbed the blade of the knife into Mellmott's thigh so deep and hard that it snapped in two. The blade broke off right at the hilt and Mellmott screamed and groped at his leg as a dark brownish red puddle formed and quickly saturated the pant leg of his slacks. Jackson cast the worthless handle of the knife aside and kicked Mellmott in his injured thigh, driving the blade further into the flesh. Mellmott dropped to his knees, his face contorted in a pained expression. He reached behind him and drew his gun from the holster at his back and aimed it at Jackson. On reflex, Jackson kicked the gun out of Mellmott's hand and it skidded to the far side of the room. Jackson tackled Mellmott, straddling his chest and grabbing the sides of his head and trying to drive his thumbs into the man's eyes. Mellmott twisted his face around, trying to get out of Jackson's grip, his hands groping out to his sides. He managed to get his fingers around the cord of a lamp and he jerked it forcefully off of the end table. Once it hit the ground and he got his hands on it, he swung it and hit Jackson in the neck, knocking him off of him. Jackson somersaulted backwards and came up on his feet as Mellmott also got to his feet, though he favored his injured leg.
This whole time, Lisa just stood there in the doorway, to startled to move. The rational part of her mind was screaming at her to run; to use both men's distraction and head for the door. She could make a clean get away. There was no way she could still possibly want to be around Jackson after what she had just seen him do...but then the connection that she felt to him was so strong. Every injury she had received that night was forgotten; any pain that she had been feeling didn't exist anymore; and it seemed that in between two heartbeats, her fear of Jackson had diminished. Now the only feelings going through her were of concern for the man who had so recently swooped in and completely taken over her world. She made a conscious effort to go for Mellmott's gun, but managed to get no more than two steps further into the room before the coffee table skidded in front of her as Mellmott was knocked into it. She halted and retreated back against the bedroom door jam. Jackson landed on top of Mellmott and both men rolled off of the coffee table and onto the floor, ripping and tearing at each other's throats. Lisa didn't know what she could do. She wanted to help Jackson; she just didn't know how she could.
Both men were on their feet again and somehow, Mellmott had managed to get his hands on Jackson's collar and they were spinning and jerking each other around in circles that looked unnatural to their movements. Mellmott slammed him into the wall, the back of Jackson's head smashing a picture frame that hung on it. His head literally bounced forward, revealing the speckled red droplets that clung to the picture from where the glass had scraped and busted open the scalp at the back of his head. A scream erupted from Lisa's throat without her even knowing it and drawing Mellmott's attention to her as he held Jackson, who seemed to be struggling against unconsciousness, pressed up against the wall.
"Don't worry, sweetheart," Mellmott sneered, "I'll get to you in time."
Lisa had done her job though. She had distracted him long enough that Jackson had managed to pull himself together and deliver a solid blow to Mellmott's ribcage with his knee. It was merely a momentary burst of strength though, as Mellmott immediately flung him across the room with fairly little effort. Lisa had a sudden epiphany and retreated back into the bedroom, her eyes scanning the contents of it frantically. She found what it was that she was searching for and reemerged not a full moment later. She was just in time to see Jackson leaning against the wall, his head lulling from side to side. Both men were covered in scrapes and bruises that were already turning a gangrenous yellow color and their skin was covered in blood, both dry caked layers and fresh, glistening and wet. They looked like a scene out of a slasher flick, not two men in the real world where normal people worked and lived. Mellmott had managed to get his hands back on his gun and he was standing in front of Jackson, aiming it at his head.
"No!" Lisa screamed, aiming Lawsard's gun at Mellmott.
Mellmott looked at her. He seemed stunned for a moment, but then he grinned and narrowed his eyes at her, his gaze screaming nothing but malice. "What, sweetie, you want this psycho in your life? Please."
It was a fair question. She could not remember any time that she had felt more terrified than when she had watched Jackson do what it was that he was apparently born to do to Mr. Lawsard. Did she really want to be around all that death and danger? Lisa started to really consider the question, begging her mind to clear because she didn't have a lot of time to make a decision. Did she want Jackson in her life? It was at that moment that Jackson looked up at her. Well, one thing was for sure, she knew that she didn't want him to not be in her life. He was everything that she wasn't when it came right down to it. Yes, he was dangerous and deadly and had a bit of sociopath in him...but at the same time he was also smart and protective and wicked honest...and those were qualities that she loved about him. The thought nearly knocked her on her ear. She had never imagined that she would think the word 'love' in the same sentence with anything having to do with Jackson...but there it was. The question was a lot more complicated than yes or no.
"You just let me deal with him, darling, then I'll come over there and take care of you, huh." Mellmott said and turned back to Jackson, who was in every moment that Lisa distracted Mellmott regaining his wits.
Lisa's mind began to wonder back to those self defense classes she had taken, the ones that had taught her how to be aware of her surroundings and ward off purse snatchers and rapists...but what good were they doing her now? She'd like to know what her instructor would tell her would be the proper move in this situation. When kidnapped, you're supposed to be compliant with your captor. Well, she had already screwed that one all to hell, hadn't she? Why stop there? May as well keep going!
"Don't!" Lisa commanded.
"Oh, and what are you gonna do about it, angel?" Mellmott snickered, "You gonna shoot me? Sorry, honey," every time he called her a pet name it made her want to vomit, "but I don't think you have the balls." He laughed a deep belly laugh and looked back again at Jackson.
Suddenly, on thing that her self defense instructor had told her came flooding into her mind. Turn anxiety and fear into anger. Anger was more empowering than fear. She felt the anger churning in the pit of her stomach like a really good liquor and then tunnel vision set in and her focus zoomed in on one thing. Mellmott. And just like that, it was over. The gunshot was loud and it hurt Lisa's ears. The pistol had kicked so hard that she had smacked herself in her own chin, adding yet another bruise to her list. Chunks of blood and bone and tissue clung to the wall from where the back of Mellmott's neck had basically exploded. Mellmott himself had sunken to the floor, grasping at his neck and making sick gurgling noises as he struggled to breathe. His struggling was futile though, because he was already dead. He was drowning in his own blood. The gun fell from Lisa's hands and she crumpled to the floor as though her muscles had just shriveled up and disappeared. Her shoulders jerked up and down as she gave in to the onslaught of sobs that spewed from her trembling lips. The rational part of her mind told her that by pulling that trigger, she had just saved Jackson's life but the female inside of her mind was screaming at her that she had just killed a human being. She covered her face with her hands, her fingernails bearing down hard into her forehead and drawing tiny trickles of blood. Jackson stepped over Mellmott's mangled body and walked over to where she sat.
When he first reached for her, Lisa retracted violently from his touch, shaking her head fiercely. But Jackson persisted and eventually managed to pull her to him. Once he had her in his arms, Lisa gave in and buried her face in his blood soaked shirt and began to weep openly. She had never killed anyone before, obviously. She had had urges, who hadn't, and hell, look at what all she had been through. But, she hadn't even been able to bring herself to kill Jackson when she had desperately wanted to and the opportunity had presented itself. What scared her the most, was that once she made the decision to do it, it had been easy. She had just squeezed the trigger and now Mellmott was dead...and Jackson was safe. She clung to him, her fingers digging into the wet material of his shirt. She had done it for him, so that she could be with him.
"I...I...I never...I've never..." she struggled to articulate what it was that she feeling, but Jackson didn't need her to. He cupped her face in his hands and shook his head, shushing her with his lips and pressing his mouth to hers.
"It's okay." he whispered, breaking the kiss and running his fingers through her hair. He loved the way her hair felt. "It's okay. Everything is gonna be all right."
"How?" Lisa asked, "I just killed a man!"
"He was going to kill me." Jackson rationalized for her, "And then you."
"How do you do this? How do you just kill people?"
"I don't really kill a lot of people." Jackson said, stroking his hand over her cheek affectionately. "I more or less organize things and make it easier for the lower paid thugs to get in there and get the job done."
After seeing what he had just done to Lawsard, Lisa found it kind of hard to believe that he hadn't killed his fair share of people. She would have bet that he had started out as one of those 'lower paid thugs' and worked his way up the ladder.
"How am I supposed to handle this?" she asked him, her voice sounding very small and vulnerable like a child's.
Jackson smiled, "Sorry, Leese. I can't tell you how to do that. But you're a tough girl. You'll figure it out and you'll cope. It's what you're good at, remember? Surviving in the day to day."
"This isn't day to day."
"Yes, it is. And the sooner you realize that...the sooner you'll move on."
"You expect me to just move on from this!" Lisa exclaimed.
Jackson chuckled at her sudden outburst and nodded his head. Lisa felt her brows draw together and without thinking about what she was doing, she slapped him across the face. On any normal day, Jackson would have responded in kind, however at the moment he was feeling a bit under the weather so he just laughed again and pulled her tightly against his chest. "See?" he said, "you're moving on already."
Lisa shook her head and continued to cry into his shirt. He was insane. He was completely out of his mind. She was not moving on already. She didn't know if this was soemthing that she would ever be able to move on from. She had killed a man. Defending herself against an attacker was one thing, but killing someone who hadn't even been coming after her...but he would have come for her as soon as he had finished off Jackson. Perhaps, it could be construed as preemptive self defense.
Jackson hooked her chin between his thumb and index finger and forced her to look up at him. Her eyes looked so sad. He brushed his hands through her hair, pushing it back away from her face. It was damp and sticky to the touch from all the blood and sweat. She sniffled and tried to get her crying under control and Jackson did his best to give her a warm smile and even leaned in and gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead. Lisa was taken aback by the sudden tenderness. It was so not Jackson. She sat there for what felt like an eternity, staring into his eyes, rendered completely speechless by his show of affection. This was what she wanted from him; what she needed from him.
Their moment was interrupted by the muffled sound of police sirens and Jackson jumped to his feet and slid open the balcony door and the sound grew clearer and louder. Lisa wiped the tears from her face and looked urgently to Jackson.
"The calvary's here." He said with a grin.
"What's going to happen?"
"Don't know." Jackson said, "But, we'll talk again soon."
"What do you mean? Are you leaving me? Again?" Lisa began sputtering.
Jackson simply smiled at her and then, as if he were some kind of a ghost from another realm, he disappeared from the room without another word. Lisa felt as though something in her mind broke the second that he walked out of the room and she slinked back to the far corner of the bedroom. She should really be relieved that he was gone, but instead she felt strangely empty without his presence. She knew that she would have to tell the police about him and she was terrified of what the consequences of that would be. She needed a really good therapist and she had the feeling that Dr. Phil just wasn't gonna cut it anymore. Arms crossed tightly, she hugged herself as in protection from a nonexistent cold and stared blankly into empty air. Everything was way too much and way to heavy a burden for her to carry. Sitting back and thinking about everything she had went through that day, everything she had done...it really was a wonder the she was still breathing, and on her own no less.
When the police found Lisa, she was curled into a little ball in the corner of the hotel room clad only in her skirt and a bra. She had been shivering violently which the paramedics had attributed to shock. They had carried her down to an ambulance and Cynthia rode with her to the hospital, leaving Rodney in charge of the goings on of the hotel for the rest of the night. Once they arrived at the hospital, they had, without cleaning her up, discerned that she had not received any serious injuries...and she had had to go through the humiliation of a rape kit again which had brought back a flood of unwanted memories. After all that, they had sat her down in a small white room, handed her a blanket and told her that an officer would be with her shortly.
She was soon joined by an officer Haggarty, a tall handsome man with light brown hair flagged with gray at the temples and an 'L' shaped scar on his chin just below his bottom lip. He wore a rumpled gray suit that made Lisa think he had been on the job since about the same time that her life had gone to hell on a hayride. He looked burnt out and like he would rather be doing anything else besides sitting in a room with some chick with some cockamamie story about hired assassins and stalkers who murdered their wives in the middle of their lavish five star hotel rooms. She felt no sympathy for him.
"Hello, Ms. Reisert." He said, flipped through the file folder he carried with him, "I'm detective Haggarty. I know you've been through a traumatizing ordeal but I need to ask you a few questions."
"I know." Lisa said dryly.
"May as well jump in where the water's warmest." Haggarty said, an attempt at humor Lisa was certain, she just couldn't figure out what was funny, "What exactly happened?"
"Isn't that my statement in your hand?" She had known him for about ten seconds, and already she did not like him even a little. He had a look in his eye that really bugged her. It was a look of blatant disbelief.
"Yes, it is, but I'd like to hear it from you if you don't mind."
She did mind. Very much. But what choice did she have? The entire time she was sitting there telling him her story, she felt like he was judging her; like he didn't believe a word that was coming out of her mouth despite the fact that Cynthia was one room over telling them everything that she had been through which would corroborate one hundred percent with what she was saying herself.
After what felt like days of him asking her the same questions over and over and her repeating herself what seem much more than an adequate number of times, the skeptical detective to finally accept that her story was not going to change more to his liking. He tossed his pen down on the table in front of him and leaned back in his chair.
"So, this Rippner character is the one who set you up a while back with the misile launch at the Lux?" He said.
Lisa lifted her head from where it had dropped to the table and nodded wearly at him, her eyes puffy and red from sleep deprivation.
"And then he came after you again?"
"Uh-huh." Lisa said over a yawn. She didn't want to be there anymore. She was just telling him the same story she had told the cops who had found her at the scene, only they had received her a little more warmly than he was. She wanted to go home and take a shower to clean away the layers upon layers of blood that were slathered across her usually creamy skin. Then, she wanted to snuggle into her couch with a cup of coffee, safely locked up in her apartment where no one could get to her.
"Why does this Rippner guy want you so bad?" Haggarty asked.
Lisa glared up at him, "Ask him."
Haggarty finally got a clue. "All right. I think we've got all we need from you, Ms. Reisert. We'll be in touch if we need anything further. Would you like a police escort home in case this guy comes back for more tonight?"
Lisa thought for a long moment and then shook her head with a sort of somber smile tinting her lips, "No, I don't think that that'll be necessary. Besides, seeing the police with me would just piss him off."
"Well, I'd like to send one with you just in case. I mean, you never know do you?" Haggarty went on.
"Wanting to keep an eye on me, detective?" Lisa quipped.
"Just in case." Haggarty said, "Just in case he shows up."
"Really," Lisa said, her voice sounding small and far away, the way a voice can get after the person has suffered a great loss, "there's no need to worry about me. He won't come after me again."
It was nearly seventeen hours before she had been released from police custody and allowed to go home. Seventeen hours sitting in an uncomfortable bright orange plastic chair wrapped only in a stiff itchy blanket, sipping bad sludge disguised as coffee, and wishing like hell that she had taken up smoking when she was younger just so that she could have had something to do with her hands. The entire time that she was being questioned, all she could think about was where Jackson had gone and when the next time she would see him would be.
Over the next few weeks, the police would trace Lawsard's credit cards and find that he did in fact place an order for a dozen long stemmed white roses to be sent to one Lisa Reisert. They would discover the evidence that he had in fact murdered his wife. They would find that the fingerprints on Jackson's knife handle brought up a dozen or so red flags with Interpol, but no real matches and that the matching blade was embedded in the third victim's leg. And as for the way that that victim had died; it took the ADA, a woman in her early forties with a no nonsense face and frightening chestnut eyes that bore into anyone she looked at, about two seconds to look over the case file, laugh, point out that Lisa's life had clearly been in serious jepardy and that there was no way she would ever get a conviction and dismiss the case. The assistant district attorney, Leslie Cates, was also quick to point out to detective Haggarty that he should be focusing his energy on finding the fifth person who was in that room and not on harassing Lisa. Lisa had liked Mrs. Cates but she would not hang around the woman long because she had the feeling that she could tell that she was hiding something. Lisa was afraid that if she were around Mrs. Cates for a prolonged period of time, the woman would be able to see right through her.
Plus, it had been over a month and she had still not heard anything from Jackson. With every day that passed, she grew more and more concerned for his wellbeing. Where was he? Was he safe? Was he thinking of her as much as she was thinking of him? Did he even want to see her? She didn't know the answers and what was worse was that she had no way of finding out.
Author's Note: This is not the end. It kind of has a feeling of finite to it, I know but it is not the last chapter. Let me know what you think, kay!