8
Author's Note: Forgive me the extreme delay with this update. I've been super busy with a play that I'm in, but opening night is soon so updates will be better. Just bear with me for a while. Anyways, thanks for all the reviews and on to the story!
Chapter Seven: The Babysitter
Maggie, seventeen year old Maggie, the flipping babysitter was standing there, leaned against the doorframe holding a semi automatic handgun. She beamed a blinding smile at Jackson and said, "Hello, Mr. Rippner!"
Jackson figured that she looked very much like the cat that got the cream at the moment…then it occurred to him that he was the cream. He didn't like being gotten much. Point and fact, he didn't like it at all.
"Are you surprised?" she asked, that grin not faltering the slightest little bit.
"Terribly," Jackson said, his voice steady and even. Years of training had taught him how to handle shock. "I didn't think they gave gun permits to bitchy cheerleaders."
Maggie was obviously fairly new and hadn't had as much training as he had. She managed to keep the grin, but her eyes widened considerably and then narrowed. "Language, Jackson." She said, gesturing with her head to where Mariah and Luhki sat in the corner with their arms around each other.
Luhki suddenly sniffed, audibly swallowed, and then, in a very tiny voice, said, "Daddy?"
"Shut up!" Maggie screamed, her head snapping in the direction of the children. "Stupid little brats."
As soon as she had raised her voice to his children, without even realizing it, Jackson begun to ferociously jerk at his bindings in attempt to get to his captor. He wanted to rip her throat out for screaming at his kids like that. "Don't yell at my kids, Maggie." Jackson warned, keeping his voice cool and even.
Maggie turned to him, her eyes wide and brilliant as though her mind were bordering at the edge of the map and about to swan dive over it. "You know, I've been following your career for years!" she said coming over to kneel at the side of the bed, putting herself at eye level with him. "I'm your biggest fan. Getting Senator Weinstein's granddaughter to shoot him seven times simply by using your power of persuasion…it was awe inspiring."
"So, you're Clyde's partner." Jackson said, shaking his head. "Little young aren't you?"
"Old enough."
"Here I thought Clyde had better taste."
"Now, don't be mean, Jackson." Maggie said, straightening and walking towards his kids. "Or I'll have to be mean."
"Get away from my kids." Jackson demanded, not even realizing that he was really in no position to be making demands.
"You're right!" Maggie chirped, "We'd much more enjoy the time alone, I think. Okay, kiddies, into the bathroom."
Luhki kept her arms draped around her little sister as she looked back and forth between her babysitter and her father. Then, she turned her little chin up at the woman in blatant defiance. "No." She said. She looked so much like Lisa at that moment that it almost made Jackson smile.
Maggie looked bug eyed at the comment. "What did you say?"
"I…I…I wanna stay with my daddy." Luhki stated, looking down at her feet and away from Maggie's glaring eyes.
Maggie tucked her handgun into the back of her waistband and grabbed Luhki by the arm, a little harder than was necessary to move a five year old, and dragged her into the bathroom. Mariah screamed as her big sister was torn away from her and thrown into the bathroom.
"Hey!" Jackson bellowed, fighting against his restraints.
Maggie stormed back over and snatched Mariah from her feet and shoved her into the bathroom with Luhki. Jack Jr. was screaming as well from his play pen and it wasn't long before Maggie had grabbed the two year old and put him down in the empty bathtub before she slammed the door closed on the three crying children, blocking out the noise of their sobs. Jackson tried to rip his hands out of the handcuffs but to no avail. Maggie flashed him a brilliant smile as she sauntered back over to the bed. "Alone at last."
"If you hurt so much as a hair on one of my kids' heads, I swear to God I will rip your jaw off of your face and feed it to the dog." Jackson seethed.
"You don't have a dog." Maggie countered without losing her smile.
"I'm buying Lisa one for Christmas."
"Oh Lord," Maggie sighed, rolling her eyes and plopping down beside him on the edge of the bed, "Do we have to talk about her? She's just too…common for someone like you."
Jackson wanted to smack the grin off of her face. His lips pressed together in concentration and he tugged yet again on the handcuffs that held him to the bed. In his eyes, Lisa was anything but common and he refused to sit idly by and let her be insulted by the likes of a wannabe assassin. She suddenly swung one leg over to the other side of him so that she was sitting on top of him, straddling his hips.
"You need someone who understands you. Someone…who shares in the enjoyment of your job." She leaned forward, exposing him to her cleavage and talking so that her lips were brushing against his face every time they moved. "Someone who can appreciate the art of what you do."
"You mean someone like you?" Jackson snorted.
"You know," Maggie went on as if she hadn't noticed the mockery in his tone or the murder blazing in his eyes, "I admire your work. The only reason I even took this gig with Clyde was because he said that I would get to meet you." She slid her hand down, letting the tips of her fingers knead at his chest. "I think that we could do really great jobs together."
"Don't touch me." Jackson hissed, attempting to throw her off of him but unable to do so.
Maggie's eyes lit up. "Don't fight me, Jackson." Maggie said as she began to rotate her hips and grind herself down on his pelvis, searching for any hint of arousal and finding none. However, she would not be deterred. "Don't you see? We shouldn't be fighting each other. We should be helping each other."
Jackson looked up at his hands, refusing to give Maggie the satisfaction of having him looking at her. He would have liked nothing more than to throw her down to the floor and beat her to death with a baseball bat. Threatening his family was not acceptable. The fact that she was touching was unacceptable. The entire situation at hand was pretty much unacceptable.
"Get your hands off my husband, bitch!"
Jackson broke into a full fledged grin as he turned and looked to see his gorgeous Lisa standing there in all her glory. She was dripping wet from head to toe, covered in mud and what appeared to be hey, her hair was matted to her head, and she was aiming the 9mm at Maggie's head.
"What if I don't want to?" Maggie said, running one hand over Jackson's hair, though he twisted his head to get away from her touch.
"Then I shoot you in the head." Lisa answered.
Maggie threw back her head and laughed from deep in her stomach, "You think you can stand there and threaten me with my own gun?"
"You think I'm gonna let you rape my husband in my own house?" Lisa countered, stepping forward.
Jackson wanted to shake his head. Once again, people were underestimating Lisa. It seemed that no matter how many guys she managed to kill, they were never going to understand just how dangerous she really was. True, when had first began watching her, he thought that she was an ordinary workaholic type of woman who would be easy to scare, easy to control. She had surprised him with her resilience. He had never doubted her again, but these other idiots apparently didn't learn so well. Mellmott had mistaken her for a weak little woman, Larsard had thought her to be easy pickings, and now Maggie thought that she would be able to intimidate her. Fools.
"This is what the great Jackson Rippner wants? This common little mouse of a girl! I can't believe it." Maggie said.
Jackson winced. That wasn't going to go over well with Lisa.
"Mouse?" Lisa asked, her eyes narrowing.
"Rape your husband in you own house, huh?" Maggie went on, stroking Jackson's cheek. Suddenly, she leaned down and ran her tongue along his face then looked back up at Lisa with a twisted grin on her face. "How do you plan to stop me?"
Without even thinking about it, Lisa squeezed the trigger. Actually, in the sudden rage at seeing Maggie touch lick Jackson, she had pulled the trigger. The gun had jerked and instead of hitting Maggie between the eyes, she had hit her in the shoulder. The force was enough to throw her off of Jackson though, so Lisa chalked that up to a point for her.
"You bitch!" Maggie screamed from the other side of the bed, her hand clutched to her now bleeding shoulder.
Lisa trotted over to the edge of the bed and with one hand, held the gun fixed on the other side of the bed in case Maggie should expose herself. With her other hand, she untied one of Jackson's ankles. Her plan was to get Jackson untied and to let him deal with Maggie. She may have been more than embodied with impulse to survive and protect her young, but she lacked in the killer instinct that Jackson possessed. She hurried up to the head of the bed and jerked open the drawer of the nightstand. After rummaging through it as quickly as she could, she found the keys to the handcuffs were missing. Her gaze snapped to Jackson, who shrugged as best he could, then she looked to the other side of the bed. Lisa swallowed the lump in her throat and slowly made her way around the foot of the bed, but when she reached the other side, there was no one there.
"Shit!" she said.
"Lisa!" Jackson's voice rang out just as a bullet flew past Lisa's head and shattered her beloved picture window.
Lisa turned and saw Maggie standing with her gun poised to fire again. She had a swath of material tied around the wound in her upper arm, soaking up the blood. She squeezed the trigger again and Lisa dropped to her knees, tucking her chin to her chest to keep her head as low as possible. She saw that the corner of the bed skirt had been torn off, which was what Maggie had tied around her arm.
"You slut!" Lisa screamed, "That's Egyptian cotton!" With that, she came back up, just in time to see a flash of blonde hair as Maggie made her way to the bathroom.
"Leese, the kids!" Jackson exclaimed.
Lisa jumped to her feet and shot toward the hallway of the bathroom just as the bathroom door flew open to reveal Maggie standing there, one hand clamped around Luhki's arm and the other pressing the barrel of her gun to Luhki's temple. Maggie was staring at her with bright beaming eyes that were wide and watery and wild. She looked like she had lost whatever mind she had had. "Mrs. Rippner!" she exclaimed, her voice high and peppy, "I've been meaning to talk to you about my salary."
"Has all that bleach you put in your hair seeped through to your brain?" Lisa hissed, "Let my babies go or I will shoot you between the eyes."
"If you so much as twitch an eyelid, little Luhki won't be livin' up to her namesake for very long." Maggie retorted, visibly pressing the gun harder against the small child's head.
"What is this, psycho teens take Miami? Is Charlie the video store clerk gonna come waltzing in with an AK in a second?" Lisa said, trying her best to distract Maggie. It was one of Jackson's strategies; throw her off balance and attack when she's weak. If she could get her attention on something else, anything else, she could tear her apart.
"Not unless he's managed to reattach his head to his neck." Maggie spat.
"So, you killed Charlie?"
"I just wanted the bike."
"Get away from my kids."
Maggie's face suddenly contorted into stone seriousness, "You're not good enough for him." As soon as the words had left her mouth, the wolverine smile was back on her face. But, she had blocked out the other two kid's cries so well, that she didn't even notice it when Mariah stopped.
It's amazing how perceptive children are when it comes to their parents, particularly their mothers. The three year old didn't understand what was going on, but she could tell that her mother and her older sister were scared and it was Maggie's fault. She was probably gonna get in trouble in the end, but she didn't care. Maybe her momma would stop being scared if she had something else to think about. So, little Mariah wiped her nose with her hand and crept over to Maggie's side. Then, without hesitation, she chomped her little razor sharp teeth down through one of the holes in Maggie's jeans. She bit down so hard that she drew blood.
Maggie shrieked and kicked the little girl away from her into the wall. Lisa took advantage of the distraction and rushed the younger woman. She didn't want to fire her gun and risk hitting one of her kids, so she grabbed hold of the wrist of the hand that held the gun and pointed it up at the ceiling, wincing as it went off. Luhki got out from in between the two women as they wrestled and joined her younger sister at the wall.
Maggie slammed Lisa into the sink, drawing a grunt of pain from her. Lisa brought up her knee hard between Maggie's legs. Don't listen to what they say, just because women don't have balls, it still hurts like hell. Then, taking a cue from Jackson, she head butted Maggie right between the eyes. Apparently, being able to head butt somebody was a talent that she didn't have, because it affected her just as much as it affected Maggie. She was always telling Jackson that he was thick headed. Both women fell and crashed onto the edge of the bathtub. Lisa hit shoulder first and thought that surely she had knocked it out of the socket as she somersaulted into the actual tub as Jack Jr. scampered out of the way. Maggie, on the other hand, hit the back of her head and her body went immediately limp as she lost consciousness on top of Lisa. Lisa groaned and tried to right herself in the narrow confines of the porcelain tub, shoving the dead weight of the babysitter off of her when she spotted the handcuff keys lying on the floor near Luhki's feet. They must have fallen out of Maggie's pocket in the midst of their struggling. The blonde groaned and moved slightly. She wasn't that far out of it. Lisa had to act fast. She hoisted herself out of the bathtub, accidentally turning the faucet on as she did so. She didn't bother to turn the water off and left Maggie in the tub in hopes that the bitch would just drown. Quickly, she palmed the keys as she scooped Jack Jr. out of the bathtub and ushered the girls out the door at the same time she kicked both guns through the doorway. Maggie stirred again as Lisa pulled the door to. She set Jack Jr. on his feet and grabbed a pair of dirty pantyhose from the floor. She tied one end to the doorknob and the other end a coat rack that was mounted to the wall, stretching them as tight as they would go. They hose wouldn't hold long, but they would slow her down when she woke up. She snatched the handguns from the floor and turned to her children.
"Okay, babies," she said, "Luhki, take Jack Jr. and Mariah to your room. Lock yourselves in the closet and don't come out for anyone unless it's me or daddy. No one, do you understand?"
Tears streaming down her face, Luhki nodded.
Lisa nodded along with her, "Yes. Okay." She sniffled, fighting back the tears that were building. She heard Maggie begin to fight with the bathroom door and knew that she needed to wrap things up. She kissed each of them on the head and then stood and looked away from them. She couldn't watch them leave the room. She didn't know why, she just couldn't. "Go."
She took two breaths to compose herself, then rushed to the bedside back to Jackson. He didn't look pleased. "It's about time." He snapped.
Lisa glared at him as a single tear slid down her cheek and his expression softened considerably. "Untie me." He said gently.
Lisa set the guns down on the nightstand and struggled to unlock Jackson's wrist, but her hands were shaking so badly. Maggie's pounding on the door seemed to be growing louder and Lisa couldn't seem to make herself focus. She finally got the one wrist undone and lean across him to get to the other one. The thumping on the door suddenly turned into the sound of splintering wood and not two seconds later, Maggie flew at Lisa like a football player and tackled her. The women went tumbling over the edge of the bed, sending the keys flying through the air where they finally came to rest by the wall. Maggie charge Lisa, but Lisa threw her foot up and caught Maggie in the stomach to send her flipping over her head. Maggie grabbed Lisa by the arm and dragged her across the floor to her. Lisa swung her arm and hit Maggie across the side of the head at the same time Maggie managed to get two handfuls of Lisa's hair and slam her head into the side of Jackson's bureau.
Meanwhile, Jackson had half of his body off the bed and was willing his arm to stretch in length of about three inches so he could reach the damn keys to the handcuffs.
Maggie and Lisa were back on their feet again. Maggie still had a hold of Lisa's hair and Lisa had both fists tangled in the material of Maggie's tee shirt. Maggie rammed Lisa back into the bureau and Lisa countered by shoving Maggie into the wall. Jackson looked on helplessly. He couldn't help but think about how this scene was most men's fantasy come true and all he could think about was ripping that little bitch away from his wife and blowing her brains out. Wait a second!
His head snapped around to the other side of the bed where he spotted the two handguns laying on the nightstand, completely undisturbed and completely within his reach. He scooted back up onto the bed and then over to the other side, grabbing the 9mm and swinging it across his body to take aim.
"Lisa!" he called.
Lisa looked over her shoulder, tugged herself out of Maggie's grasp and dove to the floor. Maggie didn't even notice that Jackson had the gun until after he had fired. Blood exploded from her side and the impact sent her smashing back against the wall. Her face held a sort of wide eyed shock as she slowly slid down the wall to the floor. Lisa peered up at Jackson from the floor, then leapt to her feet and flew at him. As soon as she landed on top of him, she attacked his mouth with her own.
"Who says you're a lousy shot?" she said breathlessly.
"Leese, babe," Jackson said, licking his lips and looking at her with a dark smoldering look, "there's something I really want you to do for me."
"Anything." Lisa said.
Jackson grinned but didn't say anything. Instead, Lisa's attention was drawn to a clinking sound. She looked up and saw Jackson shaking his still handcuffed wrist back and forth.
"Oh, right!" Lisa exclaimed, climbing off of him and grabbing the keys from the floor.
She got him uncuffed in no time and as soon as his hand was free, both of his arms were around her. Lisa threw her own arms around his neck and squeezed him tightly against her. She just needed to be closer to him.
Then, as if from nowhere, Davey, soaked to the bone, came bumbling through the bedroom door. His hair was caked to his forehead and releasing a steady stream of water down his face. His hands were over his face and he seemed to be rubbing his eyes vigorously. "Lisa, couldn't leave without say…well…I'm sorry. That was so wrong of me." His hands dropped and he saw Jackson, but it was too late. The words were out of his mouth. "I shouldn't have kissed you."
Lisa felt Jackson's body tense under her touch and she instinctively tightened her grasp on his shoulders in preparation to hold him back.
"What?" Jackson growled, his eyes narrowing as his gaze zoomed in on his target: Davey.
But, Jackson wasn't going to get his shot at Davey just yet, because at that exact moment, a .38 snub nose revolver came into view, the barrel resting right at Davey's temple. Along with the gun, Clyde came gliding into the room.
Author's Note: Be sure to let me know what you think! Am I slipping up anywhere?