Ficlet from Facebook Group
You know how you never think things will change? That your Saturdays will always be the same? I don’t do that anymore.
It started off so normal.
“I’m not freaking out!” Hannah yelled from the kitchen on Saturday afternoon, which was my first indication that she might actually be freaking out.
Getting up from the couch, I walked into the kitchen and leaned on the counter, glancing first at Jake, who appeared unsure, then at Kola, who was glaring and had his arms crossed, and finally at Harper, who was on his phone.
“Trouble?” I asked.
She whirled around to face me, took a breath, and then spoke. “The lovely woman who usually gives me my globosa flowers for my Beltane candles doesn’t have any this year.”
“Okay.” She needed me to confirm that I heard her, but I had no idea what that was beyond the obvious. “So, can we substitute something else?”
She shook her head. “They have to be beeswax scented with magnolia, peony, sage, and I like to add pineapple to really give it some zip.”
“Of course,” I agreed, smiling at her.
“I have my carnelian pieces, and the garnet. I have the chamomile and straw flowers, all needed to represent fire, warmth, summer, and fertility.”
“But we need Gomphrena globosa, commonly known as globe amaranth or globosa, to finish them,” Harper chimed in. “And I found a woman over in Hyde Park who has some.”
Hannah spun and rushed over to him, looking down at the screen before letting out a squeal and wrapping her arms around him tight.
He chuckled as he draped an arm around her and turned his head to Kola. “Road trip?”
“Road trip,” he agreed, turning for the back door and suddenly stopping to look over his shoulder at me. “Hey, you want us to stop by Reza’s on the way and pick up some dinner?”
It had been happening lately that my son, who had always counted on me to cook, or to figure out what we would eat if I didn’t, had been volunteering to not only prepare a meal for the rest of us but playing delivery driver as well.
It was an interesting turn of events that Sam credited to him growing up.
I wasn’t as sure about the reason for the change, but was thrilled, whatever the impetus was.
“That would be great,” I assured him. “Just put it on the house credit card.”
“Will do,” he apprised me and then turned the corner, rolling his left shoulder, as he’d been doing since yesterday when he got his first Covid-19 vaccination.
I was thrilled to have gotten appointments for both Kola and Hannah, and while Kola’s reaction to the Pfizer vaccine had been the same as mine, both of us with sore arms, Hannah got a headache, which she went to bed early for the night before, and, I suspected, was not helping with her mood at the moment.
Normally nothing flustered her, she was pretty unflappable, but the flower thing had upset her.
I was glad Harper, who really rowed a super steady boat, had been the one to go into search mode as soon as the issue had arisen.
Sam wasn’t home, as there were some issues with the transportation of a prisoner who had initially slipped FBI custody.
I used to think things like that only happened in the movies, but it turned out it happened more often than anyone liked to talk about.
And while Sam personally—meaning his team—had never lost a prisoner, the marshals service had.
Sam could be a bit judgmental about it, and I reminded him that mistakes were something everyone made.
But at the moment, what was supposed to have been a simple transfer from a supermax to a psychiatric facility for testing, had apparently gone very wrong.
Ian Doyle had led the team that recovered the escaped prisoner, but Sam had gone with them to return him to federal custody, as was procedure.
When my cell phone rang as I returned to the kitchen after cleaning the cat box, doing Hannah a favor since it was on her chore list for the day, I answered without looking, picking it up off the counter where I’d left it.
“Hello?”
“Jory?”
I smiled into the phone. “Hey, Chris, how’re you?
” I greeted Sam’s second-in-command, Supervisory Deputy Chris Becker.
“Are you stuck with Sam at his transfer thing, or are you trying to get your backyard summer-ready?” The last time I’d talked to his wife, Olivia, she told me all the things that needed to be done before she was inviting people over.
He cleared his throat. “Jory, have you turned on the news at all?”
Instantly I was cold. Freezing. My heart dropped into my stomach, I actually felt it go, and I couldn’t breathe. I had to grab for the counter so I didn’t fall down. I tried to speak, but there was no possible way.
“Don’t turn on the television, just listen to me, all right?
Sam and four other people were taken hostage at Elgin.
Apparently, there was a hack that happened early this morning, and a doctor and two others had their identities compromised, so when their credentials were checked and double-checked, as we do, they passed scrutiny, but were then discovered to have been falsified. ”
He was being very proper with me, and I had to wonder if he was alone on his end.
“At this time, we know that these individuals were there in order to assist in the release of this prisoner.”
I tried to speak around the lump in my throat, but my words came out raspy. “Where is he now?”
“Sam just negotiated to have Ian Doyle”––him saying Ian’s last name answered my question; he was definitely not alone––“and two other marshals released. They just got to the command center and reported that Joel Osborne, the prisoner who was being transferred, had agreed to let them go in return for a van and safe passage to the executive airport in Wheeling.”
“Okay.”
He took a breath. “During the initial hostage-taking, several inmates were released, and Sam was taken. Ian reported that he was beaten.”
I was back to not breathing.
“A couple of the inmates wanted to…hurt the nurses who were there, and when Sam interfered, he was shot.”
It wasn’t a gentle slope to the floor; I fell. One moment I was standing, albeit leaning, and the next I was sprawled on the tile in my kitchen.
“Ian tried to get to Sam, and he was shot too. Osborne then shot and killed the men who wanted to violate the nurses, because apparently that was not on his agenda, and the two of them walked out with Ian and the other two marshals.”
“But Sam…” I managed to gasp.
He cleared his throat again. “Ian said Sam was shot in the abdomen. Ian was shot in the shoulder. We don’t know the severity of the wound, but Ian said Sam was lying down holding a hand over his stomach when Ian and the others were made to leave.”
My vision blurred as I rolled over and sat up, banging into the cupboard, my head clipping the stainless-steel knob. It hurt, which helped clear my head.
“You’re not going to let them get in a van and drive away, are you?”
“No, we’re not,” he assured me. “Wes Ching and his team are going in ahead of SWAT, and we’re going to retake the ward where they are.
The problem is that to get there, they’ll see us coming.
Even if we take the camera feed down, that will tip them to the fact we’re breaching.
This isn’t the movies, we don’t have time to replace a live feed with a fake one, and as other noncompliant prisoners are also being held hostage, we have to go in. We have no choice.”
“But Sam is already hurt.”
“Yes.” He choked out the word. “And when Osborne sees that we’re not keeping our word, as he’s already shot Sam once––”
“He might just kill him.”
No answer, which basically was one.
“But we have to breach, as Sam’s not the only hostage, and he may—Jory…there’s a possibility he’s already gone.”
I knew that. I’d been married to a man in law enforcement for well over a decade. I understood how things worked.
“But the news doesn’t have these details. That’s why I don’t want you to watch. Don’t answer calls, and don’t talk to the media, who will probably be on your doorstep soon.”
“Okay.”
“Are the kids there with you?”
“No.”
“Good. Wherever they are, don’t have them come home. Have them go somewhere else, all right? I’ll contact you the second I know anything,” he concluded and hung up.
I called Dane then, because it was something I did when I was overwhelmed. “I need a favor,” I told him, and my voice, I was sure, the pain in it, the fear, and the way I couldn’t even out my tone, made him skip the usual banter and simply listen.
“I’ll call them,” he apprised me the second I was done. “Aja and I will be ready. Don’t worry, they won’t go home.”
But I knew my kids. They would insist; they would argue with him and want to be with me; and more than that, they’d want to know what was happening with Sam.
Hannah was on her phone constantly, and she had alerts set up for her father and Aaron, for Dane and everyone she knew who could possibly make the news.
“Dane,” I whispered, “you have to make sure.”
“I will,” he promised. And for a moment, just knowing he could make that happen, I was comforted.
He hung up, and the doorbell rang, which startled the hell out of me.
No one rang your doorbell in the middle of a pandemic.
I reached the door and looked out, and there was a man there in a suit and tie.
When he took a step back, I could see who it was, and opened the door—Eli Kohn, who worked for Sam.
He was the director of the Public Affairs Division, so I understood why he was there.
Opening the door, I peered out at him.
“Where are your kids?” he asked me softly.
“At my brother’s,” I answered, stepping aside so he could come in if he wanted.
He shook his head. “I’m going to be out here, but we’re going to block off the driveway, and we’re going to stand at the gate. I’m going to put a couple of CPD officers in your backyard as well. We’re going to be here as long as it takes.”
I nodded.