––––––––
Connie’s eyelids fluttered open and she was startled at the foreign room, but then she remembered.
She and Ryan had checked into a hotel somewhere along the Northern State Parkway. She knew it had been Zach that shot at them last night. He was crazy, but she had to tell Ryan what was really going on so that he’d understand who they were dealing with.
If anyone had ever told her that she’d get involved in a mess like this, she never would have believed it.
Her divorce had been bad, really bad. Jake had taken everything and he and his new bitch girlfriend were living the high life in her house. She had been put out, evicted by the courts when the judge had granted him the divorce. She’d had to find an apartment, quickly, and it hadn’t been easy. Her life was in the toilet, her bills were mounting and she couldn’t handle the pressure of all of it.
It was no wonder she had gotten involved with this.
One hundred grand wasn’t chump change.
She needed it.
Connie jolted a bit as Ryan snorted loudly on the other side of the room. She looked over to where he lay on the other bed, deeply asleep as if all the shit they’d gone through last night hadn’t even happened.
Connie had barely been able to sleep, the visions of that man aiming the gun at them and repeatedly pulling the trigger as they ducked and dodged for their lives.
It had been insane.
Worse yet, she had left her purse in the car so now this guy knew exactly where she lived. She had only met him once, before all of this went down, and he had met her in the parking garage at the hospital.
She had given him the security credentials and employee badge to give to Morgan so that she could get in and out of the hospital without a problem and in case she ran into any problems with security. Even if she had, Connie would have been the responding officer anyhow and she would have handled it.
Ryan sighed as he turned over, burying his face in his pillow as she got up from her bed and slipped towards the door. She grabbed the keycard off of the dresser before she opened the door.
She went out to the hallway to get the elevator to the lobby. The hotel offered a complimentary breakfast, so she loaded up some to-go containers full of a bit of everything and brought it back up to the room.
Ryan was awake now and sat staring at the dismal gray sky that was rapidly darkening with each passing moment.
A bad storm was coming, she knew. In more ways than one.
She could no longer put it off, and Connie decided that after they ate she would have to tell him everything.
***
Zach urged the two women to hurry up so that they could get out of there. He didn’t like the fact that Connie and Ryan were together now. That bitch would ruin everything, and he’d worked too hard on this gig to fuck it up now.
The baby was sound asleep as Joan and Carrie finished dressing quickly and packing their meager things into the shopping bags they’d been using. He sneered at Joan as she gave him a once over, and then turned her back on him.
Bitch.
The little dyke was jealous of him, that he knew. She had kept those beady eyes on him every time she wasn’t staring at her precious Carrie. As he looked over Carrie’s firm ass and large, rounded tits he could readily admit that he’d hit that.
Easily.
Zach briefly wondered if Carrie would object if he acted on his fantasy. He caught her eye as she smiled softly at him. Joan caught the look too, cutting her black eyes to him and then to Carrie.
He didn’t know what the hell a hot number like Carrie saw in this weirdo, but Joan wasn’t going to be his problem for much longer.
He would entice Carrie, she would submit to him and he’d show her what a real man could do for her.
Joan picked up the baby and took it over to the other bed for a quick diaper change. Carrie finished putting the baby’s things in her bag and then she headed for the door.
“I’m going to put this down in the car. Be right back.” She said, but not before giving Joan a kiss, as if it were their last, and then whispering between them before more kisses.
Zach twisted his lips at the scene.
“I’ll be right there.” Joan said, her eyes still on him as her expression grew cold.
Carrie left the room as Joan put the baby in the infant-carrier and then she turned to face him.
“Come on, Joan.” He goaded, aware of the expression on her face, “Spill it.”
“Stay away from Carrie.” She threatened. “I’m serious.”
“Give me a fucking break, okay?” he said, finally fed up with her attitude.
“I mean it, Zach. “ Joan snapped, her eyes blazing, “You need me, you know.”
“That was true, once.” Zach said as he moved closer to her, “But here’s a little newsflash. Your friend Connie has made contact with Ryan and now I’ve had to handle that. I knew I never should have gotten involved with you..”
“Too late for this.” Joan said, hands on her hips. “You were hired to get the baby out of the hospital. Nothing more.”
“Joan, why don’t you just man up and realize that you’ve lost?” Zach taunted her, “You think I don’t know that you killed your mother to get all that money after you took out an insurance policy on her? Huh? How much more of it do you have left, anyway?.”
Joan’s face paled as Zach laughed and she realized that he knew more than she thought. In fact, he knew too much.
“What do you want?” she finally asked.
“A million dollars is not a lot of money these days, but it’s a helluva lot more than I ever had or will ever get.”
“No.”
“Um, yes.” Zach said, a wicked smile spreading across his face, the small awl screwdriver he’d hidden up in his sleeve sliding slowly down into the palm of his hand. “Your little girlfriend told me everything. And I’m sure that the police will want to hear what I have to say. Unless we can come to some sort of...arrangement, of course?”
Of course, Joan thought as her eyes went dead and flat.
“Carrie always did talk more than she should.” Joan revealed, quietly as she turned her back on him and put her hands on top of the dresser.
Zach moved up behind her, the awl out now as he suddenly lunged. Joan dodged out of the way just as he crashed against the dresser she’d been standing in front of a moment before.
In the infant-carrier, the baby screamed, startled by the sudden commotion.
Zach grunted as the tool clattered from his hands, and before he knew it Joan had it in her hands, the needle-like steel gouging deep into the side of his neck.
He gurgled as the blood gushed from him, his vision growing hazy as Joan stood over him triumphantly.
“Like I said before, Carrie always talks more than she should. She already told me how you’ve been coming on to her, trying to cut me out of the picture.” Joan said, quietly, crunching her foot down into his nuts as he quickly faded, “But I’m more man than you’ll ever be. Prick.”
***
“Last year, when your wife first got pregnant, her friend Joan sought help in getting your baby. She reached out to an old acquaintance of hers from high-school, some guy named Zach. He’s always been one of those shifty types, you know, the kind of guy that knew how to get things done. Always running with a bad crowd and that sort of thing.” Connie said, as she fiddled with a loose thread on the coverlet of her bed while Ryan sat on the other one, listening intently.
“Well,” she continued, a heavy sigh expelling from her, “Joan called him, told him what she needed done and said that she could pay. Zach wanted two-hundred and fifty grand, and Joan told him it wasn’t a problem. She said she could pay. I guess she had money from somewhere...”
“Her mother. She took out a life-insurance policy on her mother a few years ago, for like a million dollars or something. Doris just died about six months ago. She also sold her house, out of the blue.” Ryan said, starting to get a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, because he knew now that Carrie had to be involved with this as well.
“So she paid.” Connie said, “Zach got a hold of some girl he was sleeping with, Morgan Pines, and told her what she needed to do. She impersonated a nurse at the hospital, a maternity nurse.”
Connie paused now, obviously very uncomfortable with what she had to say next.
“Carrie came to visit me at the hospital a couple of weeks before she had the baby, and Joan was with her. They approached me in the parking lot as I was coming in one day. Said they had been watching me.” Connie paused, shame coloring her face as she spoke, “They propositioned me, offered to pay me one-hundred thousand dollars to allow the abduction to happen. All I had to do was disable security from the fire-doors in the stairwell near the maternity ward so she could get out with the baby. All infants are fitted with an electronic bracelet that has an alarm feature that alerts hospital staff if they leave the area. With the stairwell open and cleared, Morgan got the baby out before anyone even knew what was going on.”
Connie flinched as Ryan’s eyes widened and he stared at her, his body shaking with anger.
“After that, you arrived at the hospital and Carrie acted like she didn’t know what was going on, but she knew. Joan created an alibi by going to the cafeteria, but she stopped in the stairwell on her way back to make sure that Morgan got out. She didn’t know about the camera there and I didn’t tell them, either. I wanted insurance in case things went bad.”
“Why.” He said after a very long silence, almost in a whisper.
“WHY???” he repeated, the anguish in his voice as Connie’s eyes filled with tears.
“They painted you as a drunken, abusive monster....told me that you’d never give her up...then when I saw you hit Joan...”
“Your job is to secure the fucking hospital!” Ryan thundered, “Not get into someone’s business when you don’t even know what the fuck is going on!”
“I’m sorry....” Connie wept.
“They were stealing my child!” he roared, leaping up off of the bed to pace the room. “Of course they would lie to you!”
Connie nodded as the tears dripped off of her cheeks and fell onto her lap, her shoulders shaking with sobs.
Ryan’s hands trembled as he paced the room. Of all the things he’d imagined Connie would say, he would have never seen something as outlandish as this coming out of her mouth. When the feeling of nausea passed and he felt it was safe enough to speak again, he faced her.
“What else can you tell me about this. I know you’re not telling me everything.” He said, in a surprisingly calm tone.
“Your wife, and Joan Addams....” Connie said, sighing as she shook her head. “They’ve been involved for years.”
“Yeah, Joan started coming around right after we moved in...”
“No, I mean for years and years.” Connie interjected, “They actually went to grade school together, high school too. It was no mistake that Carrie fell in love with the house you live in, because she already knew that Joan was only two houses away and wanted her close.”
Ryan stared at Connie, finally comprehending what she was saying to him.
“They’ve been in a relationship for nearly twenty years.”