Chapter 30
Chapter thirty
Roger
My team barely holds me back as we listen to Whitman spill his plans without a care in the world. Then, I nearly lose it when he threatens to remove Harper’s fingernails. “One. By. One.” Disgusting.
“Harper is fine,” Savannah says reassuringly.
“She’s not fine!” I whisper shout. “Does Whitman sound like he’s operating with a full deck? No, he’s not. He’s not bluffing! He’ll kill Harper to get what he wants.”
The team stares at me as if I’m the one who’s losing it. “What?”
Ethan smiles. “It’s just different seeing you all kerfluffled. You’re the most level-headed one in our group.”
“Ben’s fairly level-headed,” Jessie argues. “He rarely smiles. He’d give the British guards a run for their money in the stoic department.” Jessie mimics one of the royal guards who rarely blink or move a muscle.
“I’m right here, Jessie,” Ben says, not cracking a smile.
“See what I mean?” she asks.
Ethan chuckles. “He hasn’t always been that way. But you should have seen him when his now wife, Claire, was kidnapped. Woo wee. Talk about emotion overload!”
Ben pushes Ethan. “Shut it. This is not the time for jokes.”
Carter mumbles, “It’s always the time for jokes.”
We watch from a distance as Zurkowski and the rest of his team are apprehended and marched inside the dilapidated barn. “That’s our cue,” I say, moving in.
We spread out and circle the building, five of us stacking up on each side of the two open entrances. Whitman shouts, “Cut their restraints!” and I know that time is up.
“Move! Move! Move!” I shout.
I lift up my weapon to the “ready” position and am the first of us to breach. It takes me less than a nanosecond to locate Harper and train my weapon on Whitman, who has a gun to her head. The rest of the team files in, each picking a target.
“Drop your weapon, Whitman, or I’ll drop you,” I yell.
Whitman takes a step back, dragging Harper with him. “What are you waiting for? Kill them! They’re terrorists!” he shouts.
Like a choreographed dance, all of Whitman’s men release the magazines in their weapons and replace them with fresh ones. They return the weapons they had confiscated back to Finnegan’s men, who also reload. As one, they turn and aim their guns at Whitman in a united front.
Agent Simms and Agent Monroe already have their weapons drawn, but they shift their position and train their weapons on Agent Smith and Agent Jones. Whitman had no idea the number of agents loyal to Finnegan.
Robert and Eloise pull their hands apart and shake out their wrists. “Is that the sound of victory I hear?” Robert says scathingly. “Let Harper go, Marshall. No one has died yet, and no one has to.”
Whitman moves back another step. “If you want your daughter to live, you are going to let me walk out of here, Robert. I don’t understand why you can’t see the big picture. I want a country that’s protected by the best—by us!”
I slowly creep forward. “The FBI’s motto is Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity. When did you lose sight of that, Whitman? What was your breaking point?”
“I didn’t break!” he shouts, pressing the gun harder into the side of Harper’s head.
She winces in pain, but all that comes out is a grunt since she still has the duct tape on her mouth.
“The Bureau is my life! It always has been! I want the agency to stop being the villain in so many movies and books. I want the agency to be recognized for all those who serve diligently, giving up a normal life so that the American people can live in peace. I want the agency to be known for its greatness!”
“Do you consider yourself a righteous man, Whitman? Are you a religious man?” I ask, holding my weapon at eye level.
“I’d like to think so,” he replies. The gun he has to Harper’s head is pulled back a fraction of an inch.
“Matthew 23:27-28 states, ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of impurity. In the same way, on the outside you appear to be righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.’
“Whitman, I know that you believe your actions are justified and that sacrifice is necessary for the greater good. You want to project an image that the FBI is free from blemish and any wrongdoing. But fake greatness is just that. It’s fake, and the truth is always revealed in time,” I tell him.
“If you want to achieve greatness, then it starts from within.”
Robert clears his throat. “Marshall, a false flag incident is not the way the FBI operates. If we mess up, we accept responsibility for our actions, make the necessary changes, and move forward. If it results in a black eye for the agency, then we probably deserved it. But those wounds heal over time. Do the right thing.”
Whitman removes the gun from Harper’s temple and places it on his own. “No!” I shout, and everything that happens next feels like it happens in slow motion.
Harper drops and pivots her body simultaneously, sweeping her legs across the back of Whitman’s knees. His legs buckle underneath him, and he falls to the ground, smacking his head on the hard-packed dirt that makes up the floor.
Whitman manages to keep hold of his weapon and rolls out of the way.
He aims his gun at Harper and glares at her with hate and contempt.
Right as he’s about to pull the trigger, I fire my weapon, sending a simunition round into Whitman’s leg.
At the same time, Harper ducks down and tases him with the ring on her finger.
Four other shots are fired, and a searing heat pierces my thigh. I go down hard, nailing my shoulder into the ground. I hear Harper’s scream and see my Angel run toward me as two other bodies drop behind me.
Blackness creeps around the edge of my vision, and just before my world goes dark, I hear someone yell, “Roger’s been hit! It’s an artery!”
I hear the sweetest voice pull me from the depths of darkness. “Roger, stay with me!”
Blackness.
“I love you! Fight, dang it!” my Angel pleads. A sob is followed by, “Please don’t leave me!”
Again, night falls.
The next time I come to, I hear a deep and familiar voice say, “Sweetheart, give him some space.”
I glance at my Angel and croak out, “She’s my Sweetheart, not yours. Give her back.”
“He’s coming around!” another woman says, her voice making me want to swat at her like a pesky fly.
It’s got a smokey quality to it, but it’s definitely feminine.
An image of a short pixie with dark hair cut in a bob floods my mind.
Jessie. “And he’s doped up on oxycodone!
This is going to be sooo good! Ladies and gents, get out your phones and start recording! ”
“Are you thinking the same thing I am, Jessie?” a masculine voice asks. I crack open my eyes a bit further to see a man with a mop of shoulder-length curly hair. Carter.
“Wall of Shame!” they shout in unison.
Harper leans over me, smiling a wide smile. “I thought I lost you there for a minute,” she says, looking tired. There’s a red patch staining her lips that extends from cheek to cheek.
“You look like the Joker,” I tell her, giving her a goofy grin.
She touches the redness and sighs. “That’s what happens when you wear duct tape as lipstick. Easy to put on, not so much to get off.”
“You don’t need that lip gunk. Your mouth tastes like raspberries. I like raspberries,” I say dreamily.
“Please tell me you’re getting this,” Ethan says as he walks up.
“Oh, we’re getting this all right,” Jessie titters.
“Would you two leave him alone?” Harper scolds. “He’s been shot!”
“It’s but merely a flesh wound,” I say, waving my hand around flippantly. When my hand comes into my line of vision, I stare at it in awe. “Ooh, a butterfly!”
“How much oxycodone did you give him?” Ben asks someone I can’t see.
“The minimum dosage to manage the pain,” says a man who comes over to take my vitals. “We need to get him into the ambulance.”
“I’m coming with him,” Harper announces.
“No, you’re not,” replies her father. “I’ll go with him. You can meet us at the hospital, Harper.”
I grin and then sing-song, “I’m going for a ride with my bestie. He’s not a righty. He’s a lefty. If you make him mad, he gets testy. He likes to puff out his chestie!”
The next thing I know, I’m being lifted into the ambulance on a stretcher. Robert sits beside me, and Harper glares at him as the paramedics close the door. “Bye, Baby! I love you!” I yell.
A few minutes pass, and my head lolls to the side. I stare at my best friend. “I thought you were guilty for like two seconds. Okay, maybe three. Four. No, it was five. Definitely five.”
“I can’t blame you, Roger. I should have come to you in the beginning. It all got out of control so quickly,” he says.
“You should have told my sweet Angel. She was worried about you. She came to me, you know.”
He sighs. “I figured she would, but I thought it would be for protection. I had no idea she would rope you into an investigation.”
My lips curl up. “She roped me into marriage! Yee-haw!”
“I assume you plan on getting it annulled, now that the charade can end?” he asks hopefully.
“Why would I do something as crazy as that? I love her.”
“Because you’re old enough to be her father!” he says, raising his voice. “She’s like a daughter to you!”
“I never said that. She’s your daughter. Besides, you’re ten years older than me and have a full head of gray hair. I still have some color left in mine. We’re good.” I narrow my gaze at him. “I take that back. You don’t have a full head of hair. It’s thinning on top.”
Robert rubs his head as self-consciousness grips him. When he realizes what he’s doing, he drops his hand. “Eloise warned me this would happen. She said Harper has been in love with you since…forever.”
“Forever is a long time, so I doubt that’s true.”
“Fine, not forever, but since she was 18,” he admits.
“One day, she wanted to be a ballerina, and the next, she was taking martial arts classes. Her whole life shifted, and I thought it was because she wanted to follow in my footsteps. Then, one day, she said it was because she admired Savannah. Eloise never believed it for a second, but I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.”
I laugh and point at him. “You don’t even like fishing!”
He smacks my hand away since I was waving it in his face. “I’m going to ask you one question, and I want a truthful answer. Are you able to do that in your condition?”
I furrow my brows and contemplate his question. “I’ve never lied to you before. There, I’ve answered your one question.”
“That wasn’t my one question.”
I frown. “You phrased it like one.”
“You got me, but I have one more. Is that okay?”
“Is ‘is that okay?’ your question?” I retort.
“Good grief. I feel like I’m talking to a toddler,” he mumbles. “Here’s my question. If you had the choice to keep 24 years of friendship intact or my daughter, which would you choose?”
“That’s the dumbest question I’ve ever heard. Don’t forget, I work with Jessie, and she can say some pretty dumb things.”
Robert’s face twists up in frustration. “It’s not dumb, Roger.”
“Oh, but it is, Robert. You’re asking me to choose between you and Harper.
As my friend, you should want me to be happy.
As her father, you should want the same thing for her.
The question is selfish. So, if you put me in a position to choose, you will lose.
Ya’ wanna know why? Because she would never ask me to choose. ”
Robert sinks back into his seat and doesn’t say anything for some time. It’s not until the ambulance slows down to pull into the entranceway to the emergency room that he says, “I don’t think you could have given me a better answer. You have my blessing.”
The doors to the ambulance fly open, and the medics pull me out. Before they can wheel me inside, I yell and point to the sky. “It’s not your blessing we need, Robert. It’s His.”