NOTE: If you haven't already, go back and re-read Chapter 11! It is completely different!
Thank you so much for all the reviews, they make me so happy. Sorry that this chapter took such a pathetically long time.
Chapter 12
Lisa pounded on the bedroom door until she thought she would collapse. The voices had drifted past her now and on down the hall. Lisa pressed her ear to the door, listening, and then threw back her head and screamed for all she was worth. She knew it was useless. She had kept the entire hall empty for O'Hannessy and there was no one occupying either of the rooms next to her. Screaming was really only for her benefit at this point. She renewed her attack on the door.
Standing outside the door of hotel room 613, Sev motioned to Jackson. "Does she sound okay to you?"
Jackson simply stared at him. Another muffled scream filtered to him through the walls and he clenched his fists. "Why don't you just lead me to the supplies you have for O'Hannessy's death and I'll get this over with?" he spat.
"I already gave you the supplies. They were in the van with you, dumbshit. Speaking of which, where's your associate?"
"I'm wondering," Jackson began sarcastically, "why, since you are so much smarter than… ahm… anyone else… Why you aren't just completing this job yourself, sir?"
Sev blinked at him, his expression unwavering, and then he said, "All in due time. You didn't answer my question. What did you do with the supplies?"
"I used it." Jackson said shortly. All in the hotel room next to them was quiet. Jackson fought the urge to break down the door and grab Lisa.
Sev nodded slowly, taking a deep breath. "You used it. You used it. Fuck." He started off down the hall and towards the elevator. "Okay, Rippner, if this is your idea of trying to escape from a job, I'm going to ignore it. You are finishing this job, dammit! God, I've never known you to try to escape a job before…" He trailed off delicately.
Jackson whirled around. "You've never known me to…!" He repeated incredulously. "What in the hell are you talking about? You've been the self-appointed boss for about a year; you've never known me to do anything! You're insane!"
Pure loathing danced across Sev's face briefly, darkening his eyes to black, and then his face was blank once again. He seemed to survey Jackson for a second, and then he started towards the elevator again. "Your screaming girlfriend will never make a sound again if you keep this up. You're going to come to my room, where I will give you a gun. You will not use it on me, because if you do, the remote inside the gun will be activated and your girlfriend will be history, along with the room she's stuck in." Sev turned around to watch the effect of his words. Jackson stood stone-faced. The elevator doors opened and both stepped in. "Any questions?" Sev asked, a sickly smug note to his voice.
Jackson didn't want to say anything, didn't want to show that any of this mattered, but… "How do I know the remote won't go off when I shoot the gun at O'Hannessy?"
Sev smiled wider. "Oh, so you do care!" He exclaimed in mock surprise. "Don't tell me… You love her, don't you?" Cold fury grew in Jackson's eyes and Sev laughed. "Don't worry about your little girlfriend; I'll deactivate the remote as soon as I see that you really are going to follow through." The elevator doors slid open and Sev walked to a room across the hall. He opened the door and Jackson followed him into a room littered with junk. Old napkins lay scattered across the carpet, each seemingly covered in writing, and the closed curtains of the room cloaked everything in gloom. Jackson felt a sudden rush of sympathy for anyone who worked in a hotel.
"God, you ever hear of using paper?" he muttered. Sev turned and looked at him, then went back to rummaging through a suitcase he had next to the unmade bed. Finally he turned around, two guns in his hand. He handed Jackson one. "When did I become a hit man?" Jackson asked in disgust.
"The day you blew up your associate," Sev closed the suitcase and stood up. "The original plan was for Faber to play the part of one of O'Hannessy's security guards, but now that's your job. I'm watching you on one of the security cameras I tapped so don't try anything. Now go." He gestured with his gun.
"I'm just wondering why it is that you want to have O'Hannessy taken out when you have no customers. I mean, we're not getting paid…" Put down the gun, Jackson willed Sev. Put down the gun…
"What a surprising question," Sev smiled in a way that made the room seem darker. Jackson impatiently watched the gun droop slightly in his hand. "I should've known you'd care about the money." The gun was hanging loosely at his side now. "Unfortunately, I regret that this mission might be… ah… What's the word? Personal," He smiled again and Jackson brought back his fist and punched him as hard as he could. Sev crumpled to the ground and Jackson grabbed the gun held limply in his hand and ran out of the room, shutting the door behind him. He regretted that he had no key to lock it. Jackson slammed his now sore fist against the elevator button and waited impatiently. Come on, come on…! The doors slid open and he leapt in.
--XvXvXvXvXvXvX--
Lisa was beginning to give up. Her hands were bruised from pounding on the door and one of the legs on the table had broken off. She collapsed against the bedroom door and buried her head in her knees, too tired to even cry. She was never going to get out. O'Hannessy would die, and Jackson would never even care, she would never even see him… Lisa sat bolt upright as a loud thud echoed through the air. She leapt to her feet, grabbing the broken table leg as a weapon. The noise was too near her to have been for O'Hannessy, and so that meant that they were coming for her, they were going to kill her… Oh God! Lisa heard a hand fumbling on the doorknob, and her heart beating so hard she thought it would rip out of her chest, she moved to behind the door and held the table leg above her head like a bat. The door slowly opened and she leapt out and began to bring the leg crashing down when a strong arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her around the door and from the room. Lisa brought the table leg down on part of the door frame. "Shit!"
She heard a laugh and the arm tightened around her waist. She brought the table leg back again and almost in slow motion, her eyes found her captor's face and her hand stopped in mid-air. An avalanche of thoughts crashed through her mind as she stared into Jackson's blue eyes. And then her grip tightened on the leg again and it began to move through the air once more. Jackson's eyes flicked up to the piece of wood coming at his head and his hand jerked away from her waist and to the table leg. He caught it as it was less than an inch away from him, and Lisa continued to try to press it towards him like it was a knife.
"Is your first instinct always going to be to hit me?" Jackson muttered as he tried to push it away.
"You bastard," Lisa hissed murderously back. "Get out of my hotel, go kill someone somewhere else."
Surprise flickered in Jackson's eyes and he wrenched the leg from Lisa's grip and threw it over her shoulder. She made to turn and run from him and he darted around in front of her. "What the hell is wrong with you?" He grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back to the wall behind her.
"I was trapped in a hotel room for who knows how long, that's what's wrong with me!" Lisa felt a tremor pass through her at the warm weight of Jackson's hands on her shoulders. A little hopeful voice in the back of her mind whispered, What is going on? He almost sounds like this isn't his doing… And Lisa realized bitterly that she really did want to see Jackson again, that it was a bad idea to be near him, that she could never move on, because a big part of her would always hope that she had misunderstood and he really loved her.
And so she stood stiffly and stared somewhere over Jackson's shoulder. "It's not my fault," Jackson snapped. He had been so relieved to see Lisa, to just touch her, and now it seemed as though she would rather be anywhere but near him.
"Yeah, right," Lisa muttered.
"Would you please tell me what your problem is?" And then Jackson's brain finally made the connection. "Lisa, you don't think I left on purpose, do you?"
Her eyes snapped to his. She opened and closed her mouth and turned her face away again.
"Okay…" Jackson said, looking around the room. "Okay… I—Shit; I don't think I've got time to tell you everything." His eyes darted around the room and he pulled a gun from his back pocket and walked over to the couch by the window.
"Of course you don't," Lisa said sarcastically.
"Lisa…"
Jackson turned around. He strode back over to her and grabbed her shoulders. She watched his head tilt towards her, and hope froze her to the spot, and he kissed her. "My company…" he murmured in between kisses, "took me back… he's gonna…" he pressed his lips to her eyelids and cheekbones, "…kill me if… don't take out O'Hannessy…" Jackson trailed his lips down Lisa's neck. She smelled so good, and her hands were up pressed against his back… "…He's the… one… who trapped you in here…" Jackson's mouth found her lips again and he sighed. "I love you!" he whispered fiercely.
And then the hotel room door was wrenched open. "Well, isn't this cute," Sev spat, his left eye and cheekbone a purplish color. Jackson leapt back and pulled the two guns from his pockets. Sev held an odd square device in his hands and he pressed a button in the middle of it, cocking his head and smiling. Then he slammed the door. Jackson's eyes widened and he threw the gun that held the remote as hard as he could towards the window above the couch. The window shattered and Jackson grabbed Lisa's arm and pulled her towards the door. He wrestled with the locked doorknob.
"DAMN!"
Lisa could only guess at what was going on. Luckily, she guessed correctly. She ran over to where the table leg lay and grabbed it and ran back to the door. "Watch out!" She slammed the table leg against the lock panel and heard a distinct click. It figured. She wrenched the door open and flew out into the hall just as Sev stepped into the elevator and the doors closed.
Jackson reached out and grabbed Lisa's arm and she felt herself being thrown forwards as the room behind her exploded. The wind was knocked out of her and her elbows burned along the carpet. Jackson roughly wrapped his arm around her head. Plaster flew at them and Lisa screamed before she knew what she was doing, visions of herself dead and buried in wreckage overwhelming her.
Finally the shaking stopped and Lisa felt the arm covering her head slowly move away. She heard screams and shouts and then voices down the hallway, "Come on, get him out of here!" There were more shouts and Lisa sat up to dimly see O'Hannessy rushed from his room and surrounded by security guards. Jackson was already sitting up beside her, blinking in the haze of dust that surrounded them and brushing dust off his shirt and hair. He stood and pulled the other gun from his waistband and helped Lisa to her feet just as a tall, bald man came wandering down the hall. Jackson shoved Lisa behind him and cocked the gun.
Jones looked up, seemingly not at all concerned. "Were you two out in the hall during that explosion?" He asked, a note of awe in his voice.
"What do you want?" Jackson asked impatiently. Lisa poked him in the back.
"What are you doing?" she hissed. "That's the guy from the hospital you were in!"
Temporarily distracted, Jackson hissed back, "How do you know that?" His eyes flicked back to Jones, who was now in the process of looking through the frame of the wall that used to separate Room 613 from the hallway.
"I… visited you."
"Why?" Jackson remembered vaguely that Jones had actually told him that Lisa had come. In fact that was the reason he had started that notebook in the first place. Come to think of it, that information had started this whole thing.
"The hospital accidentally sent an announcement to the paper that you had died. I was the first one to find out that it wasn't true."
"I sent that," Jones interrupted dreamily. "O'Hannessy nearly killed me when he found out."
"What?" Jackson asked incredulously. Lisa moved out from behind him.
Jones nodded. He scratched his head and looked like he was about to speak when another security guard appeared from around the corner. "Jones! Are they still--" He stopped at the sight of Lisa and Jackson. "Oh good. Okay, come on, he wants to talk to both of them."
"Who wants to talk to us?" Jackson asked cautiously, the gun still held stiffly in his hand.
"O'Hannessy," Jones answered matter-of-factly. "The hotel's in lockdown, no one can leave."
"Shit!" Jackson whirled around to Lisa. "Go with him," he muttered, checking the bullets in the gun. "Even if he's lying, he's a dumbshit and he won't do anything."
Lisa slowly nodded. "Okay… But you're not…?" Jackson just shook his head at her, his eyes unreadable and cold, and started towards the elevator. "Don't," Lisa stepped towards him. He turned again and looked at her, a little warmth creeping back into his gaze, and then he stepped forwards and gave her a quick hard kiss on the mouth. "We'll talk again," he grinned. And stepped into the elevator.
Lisa turned around and looked at Jones, who was now wandering around inside what was left of Room 613. In other words, basically nothing whole except for a floor and a partially tiled ceiling.
"Ummm…" she called to him. "I'm going downstairs…"
Jones nodded. "O'Hannessy's down there… Is there a coffee machine in the lobby?"
Lisa stopped and incredulously turned around. A coffee machine? "Yes…?" she answered.
"Oh good." He nodded. "Alright, I'm coming with you."
--XvXvXvXvXvXvX--
Jackson stepped from the elevator and to the door across the hall. He cocked the gun in his hand, the click echoing throughout the empty hallway. Everyone was either hiding in their rooms or in the lobby, complaining. His hand moved to quietly open the door when a click sounded in his ear. Shit. Jackson stared straight ahead, at the closed door in front of him.
"I must say I'm flattered," Sev said conversationally from behind him.
--XvXvXvXvXvXvX--
Lisa stepped out of the elevator, Jones at her heels. She saw Cynthia up by the entrance to the Conference room, talking to one of O'Hannessy's security guards, her face set in worried lines. Lisa ran up to her.
"Lisa! Oh thank God. Wait, I thought you had already gone home…?" Cynthia's eyes darted wildly around the crowded lobby and Lisa knew she really wasn't paying attention to her answer.
"Long story. Where's O'Hannessy at right now?"
"He's okay," Cynthia smiled weakly and nodded. "God, this is so horrible. The first VIP we finally get back here and a room explodes again…" The security guard standing next to her cleared his throat impatiently. Lisa recognized him as the one who had talked to Jones just minutes ago. "Sorry," Cynthia said quickly. "Okay, Adam here wants to talk to you and I've… got to go help at the desk." Cynthia darted off, shooting Lisa a questioning glance before she went. Lisa shrugged back.
The security guard motioned to Lisa and she followed him into the conference room, her mind in work mode. Sort everything out. Be calm.
"Lisa Reisart!" A short, portly man sat in a chair by the table directly to her right. He stood up and shook her hand. "Pleased to meet you! Keefe has told me some wonderful things about you!"
Lisa blinked. "Charles Keefe?"
"Yes, yes, good friend of mine. Please sit down." The Secretary of State gestured to a chair across from him. Lisa slowly sunk into it. "Now, where is that fool I sent to get you? And where is Jackson Rippner?"
"Oh my God," Lisa sunk back against the chair, fear finally hitting her. Jackson was insane! What if he was killed, trying to get that Sev Ronning…?
"Yes, I do know about him," O'Hannessy said, misinterpreting her reaction. "I'm the reason he stayed in that hospital without ever having a trial or jail time."
"What?" Lisa asked weakly.
"Alright, this is a long story," O'Hannessy sighed, placing his hands on top of his slightly large stomach. "I am good friends with Charles Keefe, have been for quite a while. Naturally I was concerned when I heard that he had been… targeted. Now--" O'Hannessy broke off suddenly. "I do wish that Jackson was here with you right now! Oh well.
"Alright, first of all, when I had heard that Charles had been targeted, I was interested in the company responsible. We both agreed that it seemed stupid to arrest one man who seemed mostly at fault when there was obviously a larger force behind him. And so I wanted to find out more, perhaps stop this terrorist--" He said the word with a shiver, "—company. So I hired Jones here—Jones! Get over here!—to pose as a… ahm… traitor to our government, supposedly willing to pass information on to the company behind Keefe's attempted assassination. The whole idea was to get him to talk to Jackson while he was in the hospital, hence the fake doctor job, and worm his way into the company. Unfortunately, I think he may have forgotten that plan along the way." O'Hannessy sighed.
Lisa was listening now. This was ironically unbelievable. She had spent that entire month of her life thinking that everyone had moved on but her, that no one seemed to even notice that the Deputy of Homeland Security had nearly been assassinated. But here was proof that the Miami police simply didn't have better things to do, that instead operations had been taking place that she couldn't have even imagined.
"Anyways, so he found some way to worm his way into the company before he even started at that hospital job, I'm still not quite sure what happened," O'Hannessy continued. "But the plan worked—He was able to feed their plans to me, and we could effectively prevent whatever they were planning next. And then your Jackson Rippner came along, and killed off the head of the company, and that worked doubly in our favor. And I'm sure you've noticed Jones acts like such a moron that he would never be suspected."
O'Hannessy nodded at Lisa from across the table. She stared at him, shocked. "So… So then I'm assuming you knew they were planning to kill you?"
"Of course."
"Then why would you still come to this hotel?" Lisa asked incredulously.
"Well, I hoped to catch the company in the action, because you know I had Jones with me and he could go back and forth from me to them. But somehow the wrong room got blown up, and here we are!" He raised his hands in the air.
--XvXvXvXvXvXvX--
"We're going up, my friend," Sev said quietly, his voice harsh in Jackson's ear. He felt the gun jab him in the back and started towards the elevator. The doors opened almost immediately due to the fact that no one was very eager to travel around the hotel right now. "To the roof. Press the button."
"Why?" Jackson spat.
"So I can watch to jump to your death, Jackson Rippner. I've never liked you and it will greatly please me."
"Sick bastard," Jackson muttered. He pressed the button and then brought his heel back slightly and onto Sev's toe. "Sorry." He quickly pressed one of the other buttons while Sev was distracted and deftly slid his hand towards Sev's pocket. A weapon, he needed some kind of weapon…
After what felt like five minutes, though, he began to get worried. The elevator was supposed to stop at the lower floors first. What the hell had he pressed? Finally, a faint ding sounded and the elevator stopped. Jackson unsheathed the knife he had pick-pocketed from Sev and let the leather cover fall quietly to the ground. The doors slid open. Jackson jabbed the knife as hard as he could into Sev's side and ran out of the elevator, a slightly delayed and surprised shot echoing behind him.
Fuck. They were in the ballroom. The room was huge, at least as big as a football field, and scattered throughout with tables. Jackson darted around to the far side of the room, behind one of the big pillars that graced it. His mind was now focused on one thing—Survival. And hate. Cold hate could keep him rational.
Two shots hit the ceiling above him from the middle of the room. "RIPPNER!" Sev roared, his voice curdling with fury. Jackson wished vaguely that he still had his gun. It wasn't really a fair fight, gun against knife.
"In all the time I've known you, had to work with you," Jackson heard Sev hiss as he headed towards the table at the opposite side of the room, "I've never liked you. Everything was so easy for you." Jackson grit his teeth and he saw Sev kick at one of the chairs next to the table out of the corner of his eye. He thinks I'm under the tables! Dammit, this was going to be a game of hide and seek until someone else came into the room and saved his ass. Shit! Jackson darted around the pillar and to the one next to it. He wiped the bloody knife on his pant leg. Maybe if he could just sneak up behind Sev…
"And then finally," Sev spat, limping slightly and pressing his hand to the wound in his side, "Finally, you got your ass kicked by a girl! And all the dumbasses that thought you were so great all assumed you were dead, what a pity. But I knew. I knew the great Jackson Rippner couldn't be dead. You know how I knew? Because that idiot Jones told me! He thought I was the boss!"
"Yeah," Jackson murmured. "That's because, as you just said, he's an idiot." Instantly he regretted saying anything as a shot whizzed past him, brushing his arm.
"You just didn't want to work anymore, wasn't that it?" Sev mocked, his voice growing louder, coming towards the pillars now. Jackson crouched down and shuffled over to the table a couple feet away.
"Well, it could've worked out better for me with you gone. I got your old job. But then the idiots finally realized you weren't dead. And you ruined everything for me. You, with your little fake-death, your fake death that killed so many of the people in my company that had finally begun to respect me. Tell me, Rippner, how did you manage to take out all your enemies and keep all your friends?" He jerked forwards and shot at something he seemed to have mistaken for Jackson. "TELL ME!"
Jackson held the knife tighter in his hand and scuttled around to the table to his right. He was closer now; he could sneak up behind him… Sev staggered away and towards the next wide square pillar. Damn!
"And then you killed your boss. And I finally had the power to do whatever I wanted, but I was in charge of a group that hated me. All thanks to you. And do you know what I decided then, you bastard? I vowed that--" He broke off and coughed, and Jackson watched a bit of red come out of his mouth. "I vowed that I would kill you. You made it only too easy. I could threaten you with your little girlfriend, and for the final blow, you would die right at her hotel, so she could watch you. It only worked out too perfectly that O'Hannessy was coming at the same time. It gave me a perfect excuse."
Jackson felt the hate rise and bubble in him, threatening to overwhelm him. It was beginning to overcome rational thought. Still crouched, Jackson shuffled around to a different table. He was directly behind Sev now. Jackson leapt up, his knife held tightly in his hand. Sev whirled around, the gun pointed directly at Jackson's chest and less than three feet away. Jackson stopped, the hand holding the knife frozen.
"Ah, here you are." Sev coughed again and Jackson watched his stomach heave. Blood dribbled from the hole in his side. Sev took a deep breath. "Any last words, Jackson Rippner?"
Jackson pretended to consider. "Umm… Go to hell?" He smirked and heard the gun cock. An odd sense of denial was coming over him and mixing with his hate, and he kept thinking, This isn't happening. I will not be shot. "Ooh, wait, I have something else," Jackson tapped his chin sarcastically.
"You'll never win. You've destroyed your own company. All the power you wanted is gone and killing me won't give you it. So go on!" Jackson was feeling dizzy. He pulled open the top buttons of his shirt. "Go on, kill me!"
Jackson waited for pain to come. He was determined to keep his eyes on Sev and not look away, and what he saw next he thought to be a product of his imagination. Sev Ronning looked at the gun in his hands, and slowly, he brought it to the side of his head and pulled the trigger. The gunshot echoed through the ballroom and Jackson waited for pain. And then, Sev fell, almost in slow motion, to the carpet, and Jackson realized that he really hadn't been seeing things. He looked up at the sound of a door opening and security guards flooded into the room, lead by Lisa. She ran to him and he held her wonderingly against him, his nose buried in her hair.
Lisa pulled away and tried to look over his shoulder, but Jackson turned and blocked her view. "Don't look," he said, disgusted. "You don't want to look."
Alright! Please tell me what you think, I will post an Epilogue soon (and I really mean it this time). If you think I need to fix anything with this chapter, or anything, just please tell me! I can't thank everyone who read this fic and reviewed enough!
