M Sellars - Perfect Trust

I heard heavy breathing and the shuffle of feet behind me but didn’t turn. I knew full well who it was.

“POLICE! Step away from her now!” my friend’s stern voice ordered.

“SHE’S MINE! CAN’T YOU SEE THAT?! SHE’S MINE!” Harold screamed once again.

Ben was moving slowly forward. On the periphery of my vision I saw the muzzle of his nine-millimeter move into view. The tip of the sidearm was followed by his arms, which were locked into a rock steady firing position. Finally, the rest of his body filled the corner of my eye as he came alongside me.

As I directed my attention forward, I could see my hand shaking-the polished surface of the revolver flickering in the dim light.

“I’m ordering you to step away now, sir!” Ben returned, keeping his attention fully focused on Harold. In a quieter but no less demanding tone he issued a command to me. “Put the gun down before you get yourself killed, Rowan!”

“GO AWAY!” Harold demanded wildly. “GO AWAY, SHE’S MINE! SHE’S PERFECT AND SHE’S MINE!”

“Put the fucking gun down, Rowan,” Ben snarled at me again.

I knew he was right. I needed to heed the order and be done with this. In my mind, I knew it was over for me. Ben had control of the situation and he was the professional. The emotions that were driving me had no choice but to give wide berth to the reality of the situation. It was a given that I couldn’t pull the trigger and risk hitting Felicity. As much as I wanted this man dead, there was literally nothing I could do, so I started to lower the gun.

Or at least that is what I tried to do. My arm wouldn’t move.

“Rowan, Rowan, you’re the guy! You found our killer, now don’t be shy! We wanna make him suffer, don’t you know. We wanna make him die, don’t let him go!”

The angry ditty rang inside my skull, audible only to me and the cheering section that was chanting it. My hand continued to shake but never wavered from its target.

“Dammit, Rowan, we’ve got a problem here,” Ben hissed. “I can’t take this guy down if I’ve gotta worry about you shootin’ me in the back!”

I could feel my finger tightening on the trigger, and as I watched, the cylinder of the revolver started to perceptibly rotate.

“STEP AWAY FROM HER!” Ben ordered Harold again and then said to me, “Help me out here, white man. I don’t think this asshole is real stable.”

“I…can’t…” I managed to stammer before gritting my teeth.

It was taking every ounce of will I had to keep my finger from squeezing the trigger any tighter. The colors in the room were blooming in a kaleidoscope of contrasts, and my head felt like an echo chamber. An urgent voice bounced from every corner, riddling my brain.

“Come on, Rowan! Do it! Make him die!”

My entire body was shaking now. Harold was staring at me as if he was completely unaware of the guns that were trained on him. I looked past him at my wife’s slackened face and in the dim light saw a dark line running down her cheek. Even at this distance I knew it was a tear.

“This would be so much easier if you were using your left hand like a normal person!” Debbie barked in my ears.

“Jeezus, Rowan, put the fuckin’ gun down!” Ben ordered again.

I felt the control over my index finger slip and watched in horror as the cylinder began turning again. It was less than a second away from rolling over and being struck by the hammer when I made my decision. If Debbie Schaeffer needed to exert that much force on my finger and arm because I was using my right hand, maybe her control over the rest of my body was severely weakened.

In a final bid I gave up fighting against her and thrust every ounce of energy I had left into changing the target instead. With a scream I twisted hard at the waist. My finger squeezed tight on the trigger, but I was already swinging to the side and brought the weapon to bear on a blank wall just as the hammer released. There was a loud roar and fire flashed from the muzzle in a bright burst. Dust flew as the projectile punched a hole in the sheetrock well away from any human targets. The gunshot echoed in my eardrums as the explosive sound bounced from the walls. My ears instantly felt clogged, and they began to ring with a painful stab deep inside. The recoil jerked my arm upward and its force allowed me to loosen my grip on the weapon. As my hand opened, it went flying and clattered across the concrete floor.

As I continued to spin I detected motion from the corner of my eye, and I saw Ben rushing toward Harold, then slamming into him full force, and knocking him to the floor.

It was all over in the proverbial blink of an eye. Harold was screaming, “SHE’S MINE, SHE’S MINE… FELICITY, HONEY, TELL THEM!” as Ben snapped a pair of handcuffs onto his wrists and patted him down. I scrambled across the floor, putting as much distance as possible between the discarded revolver and me before finally climbing to my feet and bolting for my wife.

I fell to my knees and wrapped my arms around her, not saying a word. I was simply listening to the soft sounds of her breath and feeling the rhythmic thump of her heartbeat. Tears were streaming down my face as I hugged her close and felt her warmth against me-alive and unharmed.

We were starting to hear sirens and squealing tires in the near distance as squad cars from the Briarwood Police Department arrived outside. Whether summoned by a silent alarm or by Ben, I didn’t know. I was glad to hear them nonetheless.

Ben slipped his Beretta into its holster beneath his arm then folded himself to the floor next to me with a tired sigh. Harold was on his stomach, several feet away, hands securely cuffed behind his back. His head was turned to face us, and he wore a pained mask of loss. Through choked sobs he continued to call out, “Felicity…tell them…you’re mine…”

My friend pulled out his badge and held it up in preparation for the impending invasion of local police officers that would be descending upon us at any second. Somewhere inside the building, a clock finished chiming out the hour with the final bong in a series of twelve consecutive notes.

Still holding his shield and ID aloft, Ben looked over at me and said, “Merry Christmas, Kemosabe. Merry fuckin’ Christmas.”

“I am actually very proud of you, Rowan,” Helen Storm told me as we stood at the railing of the outdoor smoking lounge in her office building.

She was working on a cigarette, but for a change I was not. I hadn’t had a craving for one since Christmas, go figure. I did, however, have a Maduro Cruz Real #2 hooked under my index finger, and it was slowly growing a grey-white ash at its tip.

I took a puff, consciously placing the cigar in the left corner of my mouth to avoid the pair of stitches that were holding my lip together on the right. The bruises had worked their way into the reddish-purple and yellow haloed stages, so I still looked pretty frightening. My injuries had come from crashing the van into the building for the most part. Mainly just the bruises and split lip, although the jolt had fractured my left wrist, and it was securely taped. My shoulder was sore, and my entire body had ached for several days, but even that was now subsiding.

“What for?” I asked. “Waiting until you were out of the van before running it into the building?”

This was the first chance I’d had to talk with Helen since Christmas Eve; not that it had been all that long ago. New Year’s Eve was tomorrow, so less than one week had passed. Still, it seemed like forever.

“For not killing Harold McCree,” she answered. “You retained your strength. That is very important.”

“I think it was more along the lines of luck,” I offered as I stared out across the dull sky. “Because I can guarantee you that it wasn’t for a lack of desire.”