Innocent People's Lives
Chapter Twenty-four
"The last twenty-four hours have been full of twists out of Washington as presidential hopeful Charles Keefe was caught on tape admitting to arranging the murder of his wife, Sarah. He also admitted to attempting to have his campaign coordinator killed as well."
Click.
"The latest in this bizarre case includes the shooting death of Lisa Reisert. She was shot on live TV at the site of an upcoming rally for Keefe. Keefe was found later that day by his secretary, dead, in his office. Police are investigating it as a potential suicide in response to the leaked audio recordings."
Click.
"Lisa Reisert is being hailed as a hero for tackling government corruption, even as she paid with her life. She is survived by a mother who has declined to be interviewed. Her father, retired Florida attorney Joseph Reisert, died of a heart attack three years ago. Miss Reisert was first hailed as a hero a decade ago in Miami, Florida when Charles Keefe, then Deputy Director of Homeland Security, survived an assassination attempt. Recently gathered audio recordings however seem to point to Keefe as having arranged both that attack and the one that killed his wife, Sarah, just this week."
Click.
"Recently received audio recordings reveal that Charles Keefe was taking bribes from Deputy Director of the CIA, Gerald Cooper. These allegations have launched an investigation into both Keefe and the CIA. Further information suggests that a team of CIA agents were placed undercover and authorized to act within US borders to assist Keefe. Many are speaking out about this egregious abuse of power."
Click.
"At least one member of the team is dead. Agent Ben Danvers passed away from an infected bullet wound sustained in an altercation at Keefe's campaign headquarters earlier this week. He was thirty-eight. Due to the clandestine nature of Agent Danvers's work, we are unable to share any photographs."
Every reporter had their own angle; their own bias. The occasional misinformation amused him to no end. He wasn't surprised that Cooper's death had yet to make the news. He assumed his buddies would make him disappear. No body, no crime. He would simply cease to exist.
That was perfectly fine with the man who had once been Jackson Rippner. Let the media eat them alive and run themselves into circles. As long as Lisa was known as the innocent victim she was, he could sleep at night. That's all the really mattered to him now.
He clicked the TV in the office off late that night, his injured leg stiff from lack of use. He'd been flipping through the channels for at least three hours when he wasn't scrolling through websites on his iPad. He hobbled through the penthouse to the kitchen where he found himself making scrambled eggs.
As far as he was concerned, it was over. Cooper was dead. His team was dead. Everyone assumed Agent Ben Danvers was dead. He could disappear and start over.
Lisa Reisert was dead. Keefe as well. No one close to him or this mess remained to hunt him down or point a finger at him. The ten year long nightmare was finally over.
He flipped the finished eggs onto a plate and shuffled back down the long hallways to the master bedroom. A light peeked out from underneath the cracked door. He nudged it open, then used his good foot to kick it shut.
A messy haired brunette looked up from the bed, the bedside lamp still on. She sat up as he approached, easing on the edge of the bed with the plate in hand.
"You didn't…" she asked, green eyes staring down at the food.
"What else was I gonna make at, oh, 3:45 in the morning?"
"You're insane."
He shrugged. "Eat up, Leese."
The dead woman in his bed shook her head at the pet name and reached for the plate in his lap. "You're a menace."
"You know you love it."
He maneuvered his way to the other side of the bed, stretching out as she ate. He liked to sit and watch her still, no matter what she was doing. It calmed him to see her alive and breathing.
It was his new normal. Their new normal.
Moments After the Shooting
Her first thought was "Oww, motherfucker!"
The second was that it was really hard to breathe. The third was, yup, she definitely had a broken rib, maybe two. The fourth was that fake blood tasted disgusting.
And the fifth, was "holy fuck, how am I still alive?"
Before the Shooting
He strapped the body armor, lined with blood packets, over her bra. The packets were cool against her skin and make her skin pimple into goosebumps at the sites. She lifted her arms over her head and Jackson tugged one of his undershirts over her head and over the vest. Fitting her blouse over it strained the buttons a bit, but luckily her jacket covered the worst of it. For the most part, she looked normal.
Well, whatever normal looked like when someone planned to go on national TV and accuse their boss of murder. Oh, yeah,
"You okay?" he asked.
She nodded. "What if they shoot me in the head?"
"I doubt it. They don't want to make it an obvious hit. They'll aim for center mass. You just have to remember to play dead. Move with the force. If it knocks you off balance, let it. If you fight it, it will become obvious. You can do this."
"What about you?"
"I'll be right here, watching. I'm not going to let anything bad happen. I promise. If you still want to back out, there's time…"
"No, no, it has to end. It has to end now," Lisa insisted.
After the Shooting
Playing dead looked easy on television. In real life, it was incredibly hard to keep her breathing shallow enough that it looked like her heart stopped. She'd kept her eyes open and still for the cameras.
It took Jackson several minutes before he made it to her side and "forced" her eyes closed. Another hour before she was loaded into the waiting ambulance in a zippered bag.
By then, Jackson had left her side. He left her to finish the job.
One of the ambulance workers injected her with a drug, slowing her heart rate before they reached the hospital. The doctor assigned to her signed off on her death certificate with no hesitation. Not with the blood splatter all over her body and a lack of vital signs.
She'd lost the vest at some point, though she didn't quite remember how. She also gained a toe tag while drugged.
She woke up what felt like hours later after the antidote.
Her body was cold and shivered on the metal tray she woke on. Jackson was there, a pile of clothes by her feet. She covered her bare chest with her arms for warmth.
"It's done," he said softly.
He used a cool wipe to remove the dry and crusted blood from her skin as he helped her into all new underwear and finally clothes, her teeth chattering from the chill in the morgue. She had fresh bruises on her chest from the gun shots.
"You… sure…?"
"The world thinks you're dead. And I just neutralized Cooper. We're free."
He helped her off the table and she looked up at him, a sudden warmth filling her body. He could have left her; gone his separate way after the shooting. But he didn't. He came back yet again for her. He had the money and means to disappear. Instead he kept coming back for her.
"Why me?" she breathed, her voice barely louder than a whisper.
"It was always you, Leese. From ten years ago when I first took the job. I couldn't quit you then. What makes you think now would be any different?"
"It should be."
"And it isn't. We should hate each other, but we don't. I love you, Lisa. You don't have to—"
She cut him off with her lips pressed firmly against his. A few beats later as they parted to breathe, she breathed, "I do, too."
Author's Notes:
Did you really think I was cruel enough to kill Lisa? Really? Show of hands? That many of you? Have I ever steered you guys wrong before? Oh, yeah, I have killed Jackson before… ooops.
Next chapter will serve as kind of an epilogue. I don't forsee a sequel for this story, but that doesn't mean I won't write another Red Eye fic of some sort (probably some one-shots, just for a change of pace). I do hope to have the last chapter up this weekend if my health allows it and things settle down at my work. I've just been too drained to function afterwards lately.
Please keep the reviews coming! I do allow anonymous/guest reviews.
trudes193 - It's all good! I'm guilty of the same thing as a reader. Oh, I seriously thought about killing one of them for real in this story. There was a lot of consideration and internal debate. I thought a nice fakeout was in order.
Thank you, thank you! Those types of scenes can be such a pain to write. It's part of why I included the earlier scene with Lisa and Mark - the contrast between the two relationships and how different each of the men are and how she reacts to being around them.
I love, love, LOVED writing Keefe as a creep. It was soooo much fun! Ahhh! One of the two tracks for this story when I started planning it, oh, like last June because I'm a nerd like that, was Lisa having MARRIED Keefe after he divorced his wife AND THEN him still trying to have her killed. Then I was like, ummm, no, Lisa wouldn't marry him.
The original script I got my hands on ages ago for the film hinted at a relationship between Lisa and Keefe and honestly that's always been in the back of my mind... like what if Keefe had a creepy ass crush on the young hotel employee he interacts with? Plus, dude's a politician. He wouldn't be the first to have an affair. Plus, power corrupts. Or so I've been told. The people I supervise laugh when I try to be tough or scary. Plus I share the power with a co-supervisor. They sense my soft-hearted nature. (I was a lot tougher when I worked in a restaurant as management.)
Have you been reading my outline? The final chapter will show them at different points in time after the present day scene we saw at the start (the one where Jackson made eggs) so it should pretty well sum up what happens to them in the future to a point... so we'll see if they're happy, sad, indifferent... if there's mini Jacks... etc. I think you'll be happy. :)
Thanks again for all your reviews throughout!