M Sellars - The Law Of Three

“We’ve got five minutes,” Ben yelled into my ear. “They’ll have us there in two!”

“What about Constance?!” I screamed back at him.

“The paramedics will be here any minute!” he returned.

“Aye,” Felicity’s voice rose in my other ear. “I’ll stay with Constance, then. You go!”

I snapped my head around to look at her. “Are you sure?!”

She nodded with a quick flourish, eyes glistening and her hair whipping about in fiery tangles. “Aye, but damn you, Rowan Linden Gant, you come back to me!”

I felt like I was stuck in the middle of the year’s biggest box-office thriller. The script was moving forward at a frenzied pace, and we had now arrived at the ultimate stage of climactic melodrama. The point where, just before he rides off to save the world, the hero bares his soul to the gorgeous actress who is playing the part of the love interest.

Had I not been in the middle of it, I think I would have been forced to laugh at just how contrived it all seemed. Instead, I threw my arms around her and squeezed, burying my face against her neck beneath a cloud of spiraling auburn. I didn’t know for sure what was ahead of me, but I knew that something still felt very wrong. I didn’t really want to make a promise that I might very well be about to break.

I suddenly found myself hating the Lord and Lady for putting me in this position, despising them for what had been heaped upon me so unceremoniously in the past two plus years. I knew that I was rushing headlong toward a choice that no one should ever be forced to make. Moreover, with knowing that an innocent life was inexorably linked to my actions, there was no escape for me.

I had no idea what I had done to bring about this amount of horror as a payback, but I was rapidly approaching a crisis of faith.

I choked back a lump in my throat and spoke directly into my wife’s ear, mimicking her penchant for using my full name whenever she wanted to drive her point home. “Remember that I love you more than anything, Felicity Caitlin O’Brien.”

“Come on, Rowan!” Ben was screaming at me. “We gotta go now!”

I barely managed to kiss her as my friend manhandled me away, pushing me toward the waiting helicopter. “I’ll bring him back, Felicity!” he screamed to her as we started to jog. “Promise!”

The frigid gale slapped us about, plastering any bit of loose clothing directly to skin and forcing its way through. We broke into a half run as we hunched over, our bodies almost involuntarily seeking escape from the driving force that beat down upon us as we entered the circular envelope of the spinning blades.

“What about your hand?!” I screamed at Ben as we ran.

“WHAT?!” came his response.

“YOUR HAND!” I shouted again, gesturing to my own then pointing to his. “WHAT ABOUT YOUR HAND?!”

He shook his head impatiently. “FUCK THAT!”

I canted to the left to avoid a chunk of vehicular debris then made a slight misstep on the slushy pavement and slipped to the side. The muscles in my thigh strained as I fought to stay upright, sending a sharp lance of pain through my groin and down my leg. Ben quickly clamped a large hand onto my upper arm and yanked me into balance, driving me back onto course toward the aircraft. I glanced up to get my bearings as I limped and saw the logo of a local television station emblazoned across the side of the helicopter.

“THIS IS A NEWS HELICOPTER!” I shouted.

“I KNOW!” Ben yelled. “THEY WERE ALREADY IN THE AIR! THEY’RE DOIN’ US A FAVOR FOR A CHANGE!”

We both slid to a halt against the metal and Plexiglas skin of the vehicle. My friend immediately levered the front door open and gave me a push as I started to climb aboard. Once I was seated, he slammed the door and wrenched the rear entryway open.

The pilot was pointing and gesturing, and I realized that he was instructing me with hand signals to fasten my seat belt. I twisted wildly about and found the webbed nylon strap on either side of the seat then fumbled to marry the two ends together.

I felt the rear door, as much as heard it, when it slammed shut behind me. I shot a quick glance over my shoulder and saw Ben planting himself into a seat and frantically trying to secure his own harness one-handed. Another figure slipped into view and began helping him.

I felt someone poking me in the shoulder and looked over to see the pilot foisting a set of headphones upon me. I took them and pulled the semicircle over my head, only to have the earmuff-like shells slip down onto my jaw line. I reached up, slid the springy, crescent-shaped headband downward to tighten them and then readjusted the padded cups over my ears. An armature ending in a microphone jutted out from one side to hang in front of my face.

The sound of the engine was muffled but still present as a thick hiss of background static filled my ears. I looked forward through the Plexiglas bubble and saw Felicity in the distance, standing exactly where I had left her. She had her arms wrapped about herself, hugging her coat tightly to her body. Her hair continued to whip about on the man-made wind, slapping across her face and back over her shoulder, but her gaze never wavered as she stared directly at me.

“Welcome aboard SkyCam Two, Mister Gant,” the pilot’s voice crackled in my ears.

“Yeah,” I answered him absently, still gazing out at my wife. “Thanks.”

“Are we okay back there?” his voice popped through again.

A new voice answered; feminine and familiar. “All good, let’s go.”

Even through the barrier of the headset, I heard the high whistle of the spinning rotor as the pilot adjusted the collective to increase the pitch of the blades. My stomach jumped as the aircraft lifted easily from the ground and floated a few inches above the pavement with a slight rocking motion. The scream of the rotors shot through several octaves as we continued to rise on the cushion of air. I watched Felicity as she turned her face slowly upward, following the progress of the aircraft.

The red emergency lights of a life support vehicle bathed the area below us as paramedics arrived on the scene. With a smooth tilt, the helicopter spun in a quick semi-circle, pivoting on its axis as it nosed forward and shot into the night sky.

“We have about two minutes before we arrive on the scene Mister Gant.” The female voice filtered into my ears over the background static.

It was the next sentence out of her mouth that told me why she sounded so familiar. “Do you think you could answer a few questions for our viewers?”

Brandee Street waited patiently for me to respond. At least, I assumed she was being patient. I couldn’t actually see her face, and the only thing I could hear was an even hiss of the background static. Getting my story had long ago become a personal mission to her. It had started right from the first time I had ever helped the police with a murder investigation, in fact.

Ever since, and including our first encounter, I’d given her nothing more than a handful of “no comments.”

“I really don’t think that this is the right time for an interview, Miz Street,” I replied.

I turned my head and looked out through the window at the night, trying to ignore her. Below, the building lights tossed harsh luminance into the blue-black shadows of the snowy landscape. A soft halo of light seemed to rise above the concrete and steel structures, forming a fuzzy dome of cyan and white, streaked here and there with pale yellow. From this height, it made Saint Louis appear almost as a garish pockmark on the land.

We were cruising in what felt like a straight line, floating over the inner crescent of midtown, thirty seconds away from downtown proper. Up here we were autonomous, shrouded by a sea of darkness. There was still a heavy cloud blanket even though the snow had tapered off to nothing more than flurries hours ago. Above us, there were no stars and no moon, only the dark grey underbelly of the low stratum, illuminated by the reflected light of the city beneath.