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THEY SAY THAT IN EVERY life there comes a day of reckoning, a time when unsettled scores demand retribution. This was ours.
And the game was on.
Before Tank could grab my arm and lead me away to the safety the van promised, I saw Alex turn to us and recognize us. Then, his lips parted in shock as he appeared to say “No...” when he realized that somehow we’d come for him.
And then the others noticed us.
At that moment, time flipped a switch—and time seemed to stop. I heard my pulse thrum in my ears. I felt a jolt of electricity shoot through my body. And even though everything that happened next took place within a matter of minutes—if it was even that long—my mind processed all of it as if it were unfolding before me in slow motion.
Tank pulled the gun from the back of his pants, lunged forward, and aimed it at the men just as the civilians on the sidewalk processed what was going down, and ran screaming into the streets.
“Faces down on the sidewalk!” Tank ordered. “Do it now, or I’ll shoot!”
I pulled out my own gun, stood just behind Tank, and pointed that mother straight at Wes’ forehead, whose face had dissolved into a kind of rage that had the weight of determination behind it. With a bright swing of his fist, he spun around and bashed it against the side of Alex’s temple, knocking him hard to the ground.
I heard a gunshot go off, and it took me a moment to realize that it was Tank who had fired first. One of Wes’ sons went down in a bellow of pain, but the other two were quick. They drew their own guns just as Wes went for his own. Tank shot again, and I saw another man fall to the pavement, but not before shots were fired at us.
Shots that missed us in the gathering chaos.
“Arms down!” Tank shouted. “Do it now, or I will kill you, Wes! Do your sons hear me? They’d better. I will kill your father. And then I’ll finish off the rest of you. Your choice!”
I saw one of Wes’ sons sit up and struggle to reach for his gun, but before he could, I instinctively shot him in the face, and watched his head blow apart when the bullet connected with his skull. It was enough to cover Wes with his son’s brain matter, and when that happened, he and his last-standing son opened fire on us.
Tank went flat to the ground and began to shoot when they did.
I flung my back against the building at my right, and also opened fired in an attempt to strike Wes down. Bullets whizzed past us. I saw Alex swing out his legs, which brought down Wes’ last-standing son. He fell hard to the ground, his head connecting first, but he was strong. As if his life depended on it—because it did—he began to fight with Alex while Wes fell back behind one of the bank’s pillars in an effort to shield himself.
“Shoot them all,” Tank instructed me. “But shoot carefully—you have only four bullets left. They’ve had their chance. Shoot to kill.”
And so I shot one of Wes’ sons. I shot him in the chest, and a burst of blood filled the air around him in a deadly red mist. Then, I aimed my gun at the man who was on top of Alex, exchanging blows.
But Tank got to him first.
He fired a shot, and the man suddenly reared back as blood jetted out of his neck in torrents. For a moment, he just lingered there in an odd kind of disbelief before he folded on top of Alex, who took no chances. He pushed the man off of him and turned to Wes, who was concealed by the pillar.
And I knew.
In my soul, I knew what was coming next. With Alex out in the open with no protection, Wes would turn his gun on him and kill him in retribution for all that he had just lost.
Unwilling to allow that to happen, instinct took hold of me, and I mainlined forward with my gun held out in front of me before Wes could turn his own gun on Alex.
Tank shouted at me to stop, but I didn’t. I was going to kill that sonofabitch before he had a chance to kill my husband. And so I didn’t stop, not even when I heard Tank rushing behind me. He fired a shot at the pillar to keep Wes at bay, causing a burst of marble to spray in front of me, but it was all for not. When I neared Wes, he snaked around the pillar with his gun trained on me. I rolled onto the ground before he could shoot me.
And then seconds became milliseconds.
His gun went off.
My gun went off.
With the shattering sound of each shot, I felt a bullet pierce through me.
I crumpled hard to the sidewalk. As I lay there on my back, I was aware of another shot going off. I heard Wes yelp, I watched the sky begin to dim, and then Tank was at my side.
“Jennifer,” he said to me. “You’re bleeding heavily.”
The world started to spin, but as much as I tried to right it, I couldn’t.
There was only one thing I needed to know.
“Is Alex alive?” I asked.
“I’m right here,” Alex said. He came up behind me and lifted me into his lap. “I’m here,” he said again. “Help her,” he said to Tank. “Please!”
In a haze, I watched Tank remove the very shirt he’d wrapped around Alex’s throat after we crashed. So, this is how it would end—with Alex’s blood pressed against my own blood.
As it should be...
Even though I could feel Tank working on me and could hear my husband telling me that he loved me even while he began to weep, I was aware that I was beginning to slip away.
I locked eyes with Alex, reached out an unsteady hand, and placed the palm of that hand against the rough of his beard. “I had to do it,” I said. “I couldn’t not help you. You’re alive now. Some will say I made a stupid mistake, but I didn’t. You’re alive. If I’ve lost my life to save yours, I can die knowing that.”
“We need an ambulance!” Tank shouted out. “Somebody! Please! Call for an ambulance!”
“Stop the blood, Tank!” Alex said.
“She was hit hard. I’m trying my best.”
“I need you to listen to me,” I said to Alex. “If I die from this, I need you to find someone else. I need you to find love again. A love better than what we shared together. It’s possible. Please, tell me that you’ll do that.”
“I won’t,” he said. “No one can replace you. And besides—you’re going nowhere.”
“That’s the thing,” I said. “I’ve been here before—right after we crashed. I remember this feeling, only this time it’s somehow worse.”
“Don’t leave me,” he said.
My voice was barely a whisper when I spoke. “I’m trying not to.”
“Promise me that you won’t. We’ve been through so much together, Jennifer. What happened here can’t be the end of us.”
“Please do as I asked,” I said.
“You can come through this!”
“And I might. But my mind is fading right now. If I don’t make it, I need you to promise me that when you’re ready, you will find another woman, you will marry her, and you will have the child I failed to give to you.”
“You didn’t fail,” he said, his voice choked with emotion.
“We both know that I did. Take care of Cutter. Get the others out of here. Tell everyone that I love them. Give Lisa and Barbara a hug and a kiss for me. I don’t want to go just yet, so try your best to keep me here.”
“We will. We are. You can’t go. Please don’t go.”
But I felt that I was going. I wasn’t sure where I’d been hit, but it was significant enough to make everything around me become wildly iridescent—almost hallucinogenic. I felt Tank tug his shirt somewhere around the upper part of my body. I thought of my best friends Lisa and Blackwell and of the crazy life I’d lived up until that point, and then I looked hazily up at Alex. He was crying. Tears were streaming down his cheeks and disappearing into his beard. I could feel him holding me, I could feel his love coursing through me, and I told him that I loved him again just before I lost control of my body and slumped into his arms.
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