Chapter 30
Nora
I’M NOT SURE if it’s deep-seated betrayal or abstract horror that’s rooting me in place, as I watch Jack rotate to face the woman I thought was my friend. The woman who–though I can’t see much of her with Jack blocking my vision–I know is holding my husband at gunpoint. My husband! The very thing she told me just yesterday that I needed to get myself and now she’s trying to take that away from me!
I surge forward, suddenly ready to confront her face-to-face, but there’s no getting past Jack. He blocks my path as easily as if I were a toddler attempting to rush an NFL defensive line. Impossible man with his overly broad frame and big muscles. Bullets can hurt people with big muscles just as easily as they can hurt people with smaller ones. In fact in my opinion they can hurt them more easily because they’re bigger targets.
Tell me I’m wrong.
“Stay back,” Jack growls at me. Typical. Overprotective caveman.
“Aww, how sweet,” Stella croons. “Of course it won't matter in the end, since I plan on shooting you both. Doesn’t matter to me who I shoot first.”
Okay, so maybe overprotective isn’t a fair assessment. Stella does have a gun aimed our way. Still, why does he get to die first? I don’t want to watch him die!
Ladies first. That’s the principle we should be applying here.
Or better yet, neither of us could die.
That would definitely be the ideal scenario.
“Surely you’re not going to shoot us without at least giving us an explanation,” Jack reasons. His voice is calm and even, and I feel a spurt of hope. Perhaps this situation isn’t as dire as I think. Jack is trained for scenarios like this, right?
“An explanation,” Stella echoes, sounding enthralled by the idea. “I suppose I do have a bit of time to kill before the others arrive. No pun intended.” Through the gap between Jack’s arm and his side I see her check her watch, then reposition her grip on her gun. “I suppose I should start by saying that you were really never supposed to be involved in all of this, Nora. I actually like you, consider you a friend even. I never intended for you to be a part of this whole nasty affair.” She laughs. “Again, no pun intended—even if this did all start with an affair. The one my very first husband had ten years ago with his assistant at the time. A woman named Constance Dupree, or as you know her, Connie Wharfman.” She pauses, as always clearly relishing being the one with information to share. My stomach twists. “That’s right,” she goes on, “I was married to Ian once, back when I was Estelle Goldin, a naive 20-something who thought catching the eye of a successful older man was going to be her big break in life.”
“You were married to Ian?” I ask her, unable to fully process this revelation.
“Crazy, huh?” Her expression turns smug. “Of course he had his own hair back then, not that stuff the drugs grew for him. And of course, I looked a little different back then too. I used to be a brunette, if you can believe it. Guess Ian had a type.” She stands on tiptoes to give me a pointed look. “Me, Connie, Cleo, you. All dark-haired women who worked for him. That pig of a man. Do you know he didn’t even recognize me when he hit on me at a bar last year? I hadn't even dyed my hair blonde yet, and he still didn’t recognize me…” she clucks her tongue in disapproval.
“Well to tell you the truth it reawakened my thirst for revenge. That man,” she seems to shake with anger, “ruined me, you know that? I thought what we had was forever, but he took my heart and stomped all over it. I’ve spent years trying to move on from what happened, married two other men, switched up my careers, changed the way I looked—all to try and get over what he did to me.” Her voice turns hoarse. “But none of it worked. Nothing could undo the damage he did to me by cheating on me, by leaving me destitute and alone. I went from living like a queen as his wife to having to rebuild my life from the ashes.”
“So was it him or the money that you missed?” Jack interjects.
Stella’s mouth twists into a demented smile. “You know, you’re awfully mouthy for a man with a gun to his chest. I’ll have you know I rebuilt my life quite nicely, and I never would have come after Ian if it weren’t for that night at the bar when I realized that I never meant anything to him. Worse, for ten years I’d believed him to be right: I was worthless. Do you know what it’s like to have a man take away your worth?”
For the first time her icy demeanor cracks, giving us a glimpse of the wounded woman beneath. Stella is clearly crazy, but nonetheless I feel the tiniest bit of sympathy for her. It’s a mistake for anyone to try and get their worth from another person, and I certainly don’t need Jack to give me my worth—but that doesn’t change the fact that when Jack looks at me I feel like a treasure of the highest value.
“Can’t say that I do,” Jack answers her flatly, and despite the peril of our situation, the urge to laugh rises in my chest. Wildly inappropriate, but Jack has always been able to find a way to make me laugh.
“You mock my pain?” Stella’s cold fury is back and my moment of humor vanishes as quickly as it came.
“Nobody is mocking anybody,” Jack tells her, still calm. Still in control. “I actually agree with you—Ian Wharfman was a jerk.”
“Ah, yes,” Stella tosses her hair, “you would think so, given what he tried on Nora last night. You should be thanking me for killing him.”
“I would, but my gratitude is being stifled by the gun in my face.”
“Fair enough.” She eyes her watch again.
“Speaking of, care to explain why exactly you lured us here to kill us?” Jack asks. “Or at least I assume that’s what that frantic phone call to Nora was about—a ploy to get us to the office.”
“Figured that out, did you? Nice to know you’re not just eye candy, Detective man,” Stella replies. “As I said before, Nora was never supposed to be involved in any of this. The events of last night were at once unfortunate and yet quite fortuitous. Sven, who by now you’ve figured out was my partner in all of this, had been meticulously laying a trail that pointed to Cleo as the supplier of Ian’s Minoxidil should the police decide to run an investigation into his unexpected death.”
“The pictures on her dashboard,” Jack says.
“In part, yes,” Stella confirms. “But of course plans changed when we overheard what happened on the bug we placed on Ian’s car. Quite suddenly we had a new fall guy for the murder because someone else had actually murdered him before the drugs killed him!” She shakes her head. “At first we thought it was perfect. Sure, I felt bad Nora was involved, but you did kill the man…that’s not my fault.” For the first time she sounds defensive.
Unfortunately it doesn’t make me feel any better to know that someone I thought was my friend feels a little guilty for framing me for murder. I’m so upset I could swear my ears are buzzing.
“How about moving the body to her front lawn?” Jack’s voice is furious. “Did you feel bad about doing that?”
“Excuse me, but you were the one who was going to help cover the whole thing up, Jack!” Stella’s voice is agitated. “Sven said we had no choice but to move the body to Nora’s front lawn. If we had just let you two hide the body, the police would have launched an investigation into his disappearance. They would have found out about my history with him. They would have found out about Sven prescribing him the Minoxidil and how Ian was the one responsible for getting Sven’s medical license revoked. Those sound like motives to me.”
“Rightly so,” Jack mutters darkly.
“And then we would’ve found ourselves smack dab in the middle of a murder investigation, which obviously neither of us wanted. So you see, it’s not my fault you’re in this mess. Cleo was supposed to take the fall for us, not Nora.”
“Why her and not Connie?” Jack asks.
“Oh, well, it was meant to be her at first, but when I first approached Sven at the gym with the information about his wife’s affair, he was furious. He’d just lost his license a few weeks prior and was more than happy to join my revenge plan. He wanted to destroy Cleo with the same intensity that I wanted to destroy Ian. Since it was his idea to replace the diuretic tablets Ian was supposed to be taking with some lookalike zinc tablets, it was only fair that I agree to frame Cleo for the murder instead of Connie. I figured I could take care of Connie later.” She sighs, checking her watch. “Where is Sven, anyway? I cleared out the office almost an hour ago then told him to get over here. As much as I love putting my brilliance on display, time is of the essence here. I’d hate for Frank to interfere by showing up early for his shift. Not that he could stop us, but I hate to add to our body count.”
“Yes, what’s it at now? Two with Ian and Cleo, soon to be four after you kill us?” Jack is back to sounding conversational, which is quite the feat considering he’s talking about our future deaths.
“Only one so far,” Stella replies sharply. “Let’s not forget that in the end, your wife back there killed Ian.”
Jack doesn’t correct her. He clearly doesn’t want her to find out that the police will probably be investigating the Minoxidil angle further. All Stella seems to do when she gets information is use it to justify killing more people.
“And anyway,” she huffs, “Sven went off script killing Cleo like that. He was angry that she wasn’t going to go to jail for Ian’s murder after all. Now that’s another mess for me to clean up.”
“Oh stop fretting, Stella.” The door to the stairs opens up and Sven himself steps inside, dragging a bound and gagged Connie Wharfman behind him. “After we stage this fight scene, nobody will come looking for Cleo’s murderer.”
“Stage this fight scene?” Jack echoes. His tone gives nothing away about how he feels about Sven’s arrival, but I note the sudden tensing of his shoulders and the subtle shift backward as if to block me even more from potential bullets. “So that’s your plan then? Shoot all three of us and make it look like we killed each other?”
“Brilliant, right?” Stella drawls.
“Not really,” Jack says dryly. “I highly doubt any of my coworkers would believe that an untrained civilian could get the best of me, especially when there are two of us and only one of her.”
“Ah, but we all know Jack Reynolds would do anything for his precious wife. Even take a bullet for her.” Stella smirks, gloating like she’s just layed down her royal flush and taken the winning pot. I can’t see Jack’s face, but his shoulders slump. I wait for him to deny what she’s saying. Surely he will. It’s in our best interest for him to feign indifference to me. In fact now seems like a good time for him to remind them that our marriage was born of convenience, not love.
“Look at his face,” Stella says to Sven, “he knows we’ve got him there.”
“You hurt her and I’ll kill you.” Jack’s words slice through the air, ominous despite Stella and Sven having the clear upperhand.
A long-held fear deep inside me subsides, vanishing as quickly as a puff of smoke. I thought no one could ever love me enough to stay with me, that I was someone destined to be abandoned by the people who are supposed to love me. But here Jack is showing me that he would give his life for me. That I’m someone worth sticking around for.
A steely resolve comes over me. I need to show Jack that I am willing to do the same for him, that I love him enough to stay too.
Jack’s gun is still holstered at his waist, inaccessible to him with Stella’s gun trained right on him. But Stella can’t see me. Can I get it to it in time to grab it and shoot her?
Do I have the guts to do something like that? I’m not sure I even have the skill to do it. Gosh, what if I missed?
Why, oh, why did I leave my phone on my desk? I would much rather try and hide making a phone call than drawing a gun.
“Bring Connie over here,” Stella instructs Sven. She sounds flustered, like Jack’s threat has unnerved her. “We need to get this over with.”
The problem is, even if I did manage to fire off a shot and hit Stella, there’s still Sven to contend with. He has a gun too. He shot Cleo with it.
And he didn’t miss.
“Connie, Connie, Connie,” Stella drones. “You really messed up stealing my husband from me so many years ago.”
I can no longer see Sven and Connie, but they must’ve removed her gag because she speaks for the first time.
“That’s what this is all about?” she shrieks. “Good grief, Estelle! You can have the man! Or you could’ve if he hadn’t been murdered last night. I don’t want him. Haven’t wanted him for a long time. You think he ended his cheating ways when he married me? He didn’t!”
“Save it, Constance,” Stella barks.
“Please,” Connie whines. “Don’t kill me! Do you want money? I have lots and you can have it all. I don’t want it. In fact I was going to leave town today, so you can have our house too. Yes, that seems fair. I took your husband, now you can have all his money and his house. I’ll leave with Frank and you’ll never have to see me again.”
“Frank?” This takes Stella by surprise, but, thanks to Jack theorizing about the two of them being a couple, I’ve already had time to process the oddity of the match. “You were going to leave town with Frank?” Stella has a tone I recognize. The one where she’s excited to be the recipient of some juicy gossip. “Nighttime security guard, Frank? Obsessed with Ian, Frank?”
“That’s the one,” Connie sniffs. “And he’s not obsessed with Ian. That was all an act to avoid suspicion. He and I are in love. We were going to run away together and start over. But then Ian had to ruin everything and get himself killed! Suddenly I’m being kidnapped by a giant psychopath while Frank is in the shower.” Connie seems to be teetering on the edge of hysteria. “And to think I was happy when Ian never came home last night. I thought, this makes our getaway even easier! Of course then Frank heard on his police scanner about the dead body found on Nora’s lawn and–since he saw her get in the car with Ian last night–pieced it together that she must’ve killed him. We were thrilled. With Ian dead, we thought we could start over here— with money. But of course,” she goes on hastily, “we’re happy to go back to our original plans and give you the house!” She breaks off breathing hard.
“You and Frank the security guard?” Stella is still stuck on this point, and I realize this is my moment. Stella’s biggest weakness has always been gossip, and she is completely enthralled by this discovery. I can see through the gap in the doorway that, though her gun is still trained on Jack, her eyes are focused on Connie. Sven too is looking down at Connie, his gun hanging loose at his side.
I only hesitate for a second and then I reach forward and grab the gun from Jack’s holster, ready to shoot.
There’s only one problem: in my haste to act I forgot about the safety. Which is totally on. Jack could have easily disabled it as he drew the gun, but I’m a far less experienced shooter, who for the life of me can’t actually remember how to switch it off.
Before I can completely panic, though, Jack’s hand grips the gun over mine, warm and reassuring. He flips the safety off just as Stella and Sven turn their attention back our way. Stella’s gun goes off a millisecond before Jack fires. Time seems to temporarily slow down as the bullets ring through the air, then it picks up speed again as Stella’s bullet miraculously misses both me and Jack, striking the far wall of the office with a burst of drywall.
“Get behind the desk!” Jack cries as he fires another shot in their direction, using his body to scoot me away from the doorway and behind the wall. “Get behind the desk!” he shouts again as another bullet whizzes into the room, exploding the bowl of mints on Ian’s desk.
Not wanting him to be distracted by worry for me, I do as he says, positioning myself behind the three drawers on the right side of the desk.
I can’t just leave him to fight alone, though, so I do the only thing I can think of and grab the heavy brass paperweight Ian keeps on his desk, then turn and launch it blindly out the door. I hear Stella curse, but don’t dare look to see if I hit anything. Instead I continue to grab random items and hurl them out the door: a tape dispenser, a stapler, a water bottle. When I’ve emptied the desk of anything worth throwing, I move onto the drawers. There’s nothing much in the top one, but the bottom one is full of random junk. I launch a pair of socks, a stick of deodorant, and another paper weight.
I’m about to start rapid firing pens (last resort item), when I realize the bullets have stopped firing. Still, I don’t dare move from behind the desk.
Is Jack okay? Fear clenches my stomach.
“Nora!” His voice speaks my name into the eerie silence. “Nora, are you okay? You can come out now. It’s over.”
“Jack!” I cry, pushing myself up. And there he is, hurrying across the small space to me, wrapping me up in his strong arms and holding me tightly to him. I can hear his heart beating, feel the tension easing from his body. He pulls back, looking me over with concern.
“Are you hurt?” he asks, his thumbs—those sexy appendages that I love— graze across my cheeks, then run down my arms, scanning for injury.
“I’m fine,” I assure him. “Are you okay?” I look him over, certain there must be a bullet wound somewhere on him, but he appears unscathed. Jack doesn’t answer me, just pulls me against him again, holding me tenderly and yet so fiercely. His lips press a kiss onto the top of my head.
“I have never been more terrified in my whole life,” he breathes. “I thought I might lose you when I’d only just gotten you back.”
“But you seemed so calm and in control,” I murmur, nestling myself further into him. Safe.
“Yeah, well…the only plan I had was to keep her talking, so I pulled myself together and made it happen. Luckily,” he adds wryly, “Stella is prone to talking too much.”
“True.” I agree. The sense of betrayal I’d been stifling in the name of survival rears its ugly head. My friend tried to kill me tonight. Sure, she expressed regret over the deed, but I’m not sure that makes it any better.
“She fooled me too, you know,” Jack says, correctly interpreting the direction of my thoughts.
Tears spark my eyes.
“It’s not as if Stella and I were best friends or anything,” I tell him. “She was my work friend, you know? Someone to eat lunch with and complain about Ian with. Still, friends we were. And all along she was plotting a murder.”
“Which means she was the one in the wrong, not you.”
“That’s one way to look at it.”
“It’s the only way to look at it,” he says firmly. He reaches down, using one finger to tip my chin up until I’m looking straight into his gray eyes. “Understood?”
Speech evades me, and I can only nod.
“Good.” Jack releases my chin and I settle back against him, breathing in his scent. Now that we’re back together maybe I can finally throw my emergency Dove shampoo away.
“So what happened?” I ask, my voice muffled by his chest. “Did you,” I swallow, “shoot them?”
“I shot at them,” he replies, “but in the end it was your siege by office supplies that took them down.”
“Wait, really?” I pull my head off his chest only to find him smirking fondly at me.
“Sorry, Babe Ruth,” he teases, “but while your efforts were valiant, their impact was…indeterminable.”
“Indeterminable!” I exclaim indignantly. “I’m pretty sure that the paperweight I threw did some damage.”
“That it did,” he agrees, then he takes me gently by the shoulders and turns me to face the doorway. I gasp. There’s a paperweight-sized gash in the wall by the door. Below that, scattered across the floor, are all of the items I thought I was hurling at Stella.
A pitcher I am not.
“Well, obviously I was setting up a booby trap should Stella or Sven have decided to try and breach our citadel.”
“Oh yes, obviously,” he says with a laugh, pulling me back against him and placing another kiss on my head.
“Okay, fine. So I didn’t help much,” I relent.
“You helped plenty,” he corrects. “You got me my gun didn’t you? And without it I wouldn’t have been able to hold them off until the cavalry arrived.”
“The cavalry?” I query. As if on cue, Stafford sticks his head in the room.
“They finally stopped hugging, guys,” he calls over his shoulder. A second later Montgomery, Anderson, Lucy, Emily, Mel, Becca, and some guy I don’t recognize appear, trickling one by one into the office.
“The cavalry,” Jack says wryly.
“Oh my gosh, Nora! You’re okay!” Lucy exclaims. “You scared us half to death! And then Reynolds made us all wait to come in here and check on you!” She rearranges her face into a stern expression, mouthing, “Give us a minute!” while waving a finger in the direction of the door.
Jack waved them away? Yeah, totally missed that. Probably because I was too busy sniffing him and lusting after his thumbs.
“Okay, Lucy,” Emily says, grabbing her by the shoulder. “Take a breath. It makes perfect sense that Reynolds would want a moment alone with Nora after what they went through.”
“You know, your husband is making you entirely too pragmatic,” Lucy retorts, but with no real ire.
“And yours indulges far too many of your romantic whims,” Becca teases. She’s standing next to the man I don’t recognize, and I watch as he slides an arm around her waist. So that must be Seth.
“Darn right I do!” Stafford says with a wink. “How do you think she got this way?” He pats her fondly on the belly.
“Wow, Stafford, thanks for that,” Anderson says with a shake of his head.
Standing here, taking them all in, I’m reminded of that scene in the movie While You Were Sleeping where Sandra Bullock’s character Lucy announces that she’s in love with Jack and doesn’t want to marry Peter. The whole Gallagher family erupts into chaotic conversation. This group is just as loud and chaotic as the Gallagher family, but, also like the Gallaghers, is the overwhelming sense of love behind the chaos. The feeling makes my chest squeeze. These people–half of whom I only met today–all came here for us. To make sure that Jack and I were okay. We’re surrounded by so much love.
“Oh gosh, Nora, are you going to cry?” Mel, noticing my affected state, steps forward in concern. Everybody stops their chattering and turns to look at me. Then, like a quartet of synchronized dancers, the women surge forward and envelop me in a giant hug, pushing Jack out of the way in the process.
The tears start falling in earnest then, but they’re happy tears. Tears of gratitude and relief and release. All of my worry about not being enough leaks out of me tear by tear.
Maybe relationships aren’t about being enough for the other person, maybe they’re about finding people that love you regardless of what you have to offer them.
None of them show any signs of loosening up on the hug, so I just soak in the sweetness of the moments passing by. At least until Becca says, “Oh, Monica, I’m so glad you didn’t actually vacuum Ian,” and we all break apart laughing.
“Why is that funny?” Stafford demands, never one to be left out of a joke. “And who’s Monica?”
“Don’t worry about it, Nate,” Lucy says, going back to her husband and kissing him on the cheek.
“How did you all end up here anyway?” I ask as Jack wraps his arms around me once again.
“Jack told us you were here when you first arrived,” Anderson explains. “Said you’d gotten a phone call from your coworker and you were worried Connie Wharfman was going to hurt her. But then our dispatcher got a frantic phone call from a security guard named Frank saying that someone had kidnapped his girlfriend, one Connie Wharfman.”
“Something wasn’t adding up,” Montgomery adds. “And then we couldn’t get ahold of Reynolds.”
“Thankfully my phone was silenced,” Jack says. “So even though I knew you were calling because I could feel the vibration in my pocket, Stella had no idea. If she’d known, she might’ve hurried things along.”
“That was the buzzing I heard!” I exclaim, thinking back to how I’d thought anger was making my ears buzz.
“Yup.” Montgomery nods. “And when he didn’t answer any of our calls, we knew we had to race over here and check things out.”
“And a good thing too!” Stafford declares. “We got here just in time.”
“Hey, we were holding them off pretty good on our own,” Jack protests.
“‘My friend, two guns against one is never ideal,” Stafford tells him. “But yes, you were keeping them at bay between your shots at them and whatever Nora was doing with the office supplies.” He gestures to the ground. I can’t help it, I laugh.
In the moment, throwing office supplies at them seemed like the right move. In retrospect it’s just funny.
“And what about all of you?” I ask the women. “How did you end up here?”
“Oh, well…” Mel chews her lower lip, exchanging looks with the others.
“Is it really important how we got here?” Lucy asks. “The point is, everyone is okay and you two make the cutest couple.” She gestures to me and Jack, beaming.
“Okay, now I want to know too,” Jack says and Stafford nods.
“Me too actually.” He eyes Seth. “You came with Becca, Seth, surely you must know.”
Seth looks apologetic as Becca whirls on him, finger to her lips. “Sorry, man,” he says with a shrug. “All I know is that one second Becca and I were driving to get smoothies and the next she’s telling me to make a U-turn and head here.”
“Mel,” I press, certain she’ll crack after having to hold secrets in all day long.
“Don’t do it, Mel!” Emily cries, but it’s too late, her eyes have widened and her mouth has popped open.
“We asked Moore’s new girlfriend to ask him to keep us informed of the goings-on of the case, and she called us and told us the guys were headed over!” she bursts out. “Don’t blame him,” she adds with a glance at Anderson. “Men do the stupidest things for the women they love.”
There’s a beat of silence in which the eyes of every man in the room settle on the woman they love: Montgomery on Emily, Stafford on Lucy, Seth on Becca, Anderson on Mel…and Jack on me.
“You can say that again,” Jack laments, then in unison all five of them throw their heads back and laugh.