Chris Jordan - Torn

Under typical circumstances, the Hostage Rescue Team would have been inside minutes after arriving on-site. As it is, a couple of hours have passed. An eternity, given the volatile circumstances.

Maggie’s hoping for the best-Randall Shane has been surviving on guts and luck for years, why should these run out now?-but she’s got a bad feeling. This is about as far from a typical hostage scenario as you can get, complicated by a cult leader in close alliance with an individual, Kavashi, who has been getting away with cold-blooded murder for years, and who has ways of making his victims vanish, never to be seen again.

Pacing the area as A.D. Bevins confers with the rescue team by two-way, Maggie concentrates on walking without a limp. No cane today, the latest flare-up of her RA having subsided, and she had wanted to demonstrate her physical well-being to Shane, if only because he’d looked so stricken when she came off the plane in Denver leaning on her cane.

She’s hoping against hope that Randall Shane’s luck will hold, but what gnaws at her is the unspeakable fear that when the rescue team finally does get inside, Shane and the mother and child he’s trying to save will be gone without a trace. Torn from the world.

She hates that it might all end here, in this way. And then she admonishes herself not to give up. This is Randall Shane. He can’t die, not like this, not with a child’s life at stake. Buck up. Think positive.

At precisely that moment Monica Bevins comes striding up, clutching her two-way. Her face is ashen, her eyes desolate.

“Oh, Maggie,” she says, choking up.

“Tell me.”

“They finally broke through into the Pinnacle. The entire structure has been flooded with some sort of lethal gas. They’re all dead, Mags. Everyone inside is dead.”

So that’s it, Maggie thinks, that’s how it ends. Strange, but when she’d envisioned such tragedies in the past, she had always imagined that when the moment came she would collapse or faint, and yet here she is, standing on her own not-so-sturdy legs.

Maybe this is what shock is, standing in one place, unable to speak, when you should be running around and screaming your head off.

Slowly, she becomes aware of a humming sound. Is that in her head? No? Has the wind come up? Instinctively she looks around, expecting to see some evidence of a storm approaching-that seems fitting: a violent electrical storm-and then she sees it.

“Monica, look.”

High overhead, the tram cable is turning. A tram car comes into view, slowly descending from the Bunker. Without a word, Assistant Director Monica Bevins takes off in a sprint, heading for the lower terminal.

Maybe a hundred yards uphill, at a steep incline. No way can Maggie run that distance without blowing out her hips. But she can walk fast, and she doesn’t falter, and when the tram finally arrives at the terminal, she’s there waiting with Monica. Her hands clasped over her heart to keep it from leaping out of her chest.

“We don’t know who it is,” Monica warns, drawing her Glock 23, holding it at the ready position.

“Sure we do,” says Maggie. “Are you kidding?”

But when the car shudders to a stop and the door slides open, the man who emerges is Wendall Weems, recognizable from his photographs as perhaps the homeliest individual Maggie has ever laid eyes on. Except for his eyes, which are startling in their intensity. He spots Monica with her weapon at the ready and says, “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. If you wish to arrest me, I shall go willingly.”

Monica lowers her gun. “Good. You’ll be taken into custody. Please turn around.”

“Kidnapping the boy wasn’t my idea.”

“We’ll let the lawyers sort it out, shall we?” Monica says, pulling out her handcuffs.

As she clicks the cuffs on his wrists, Weems looks around and says, “I wonder, has anyone seen Mr. Kavashi? The security chief? I expected him to be here. He was supposed to meet me outside, at the terminal.”

Monica looks startled. “I’m confused. We thought he was your enemy.”

Weems shrugs his misshapen shoulders. “Until very recently. The last hour or two, actually. But he indicated to me that he wanted to change sides. I got the distinct impression he intended to betray Eva and cast his lot with us.”

When Monica informs him that Evangeline and her followers are dead, the victims of a toxic gas released into the Pinnacle, Weems’s face turns a whiter shade of pale. “So if Vash remained on the premises, he is among the victims?”

“It looks that way, yes.”

To Maggie’s eyes, he appears genuinely shaken by the news.

When Weems is finally clear, several frightened-looking individuals emerge from the tram, among them a woman with raccoon eyes and a swollen nose who Maggie barely recognizes as Irene Delancey, the bond-trader-turned-schoolteacher-turned-kidnapper.

Then, ducking his head, Randall Shane steps out into the clear light of day.

“Hey, Mags.”

“You okay?”

“I’m good.”

He looks exhausted, but somehow happier than she’s seen him in years. Clutching his left hand is one of the most beautiful women Maggie has ever seen, scared but gorgeous, and somehow radiating strength, and attached to Shane’s big right hand, like he doesn’t intend ever to let go, is a ten-year-old boy with a big smile on his face.

They look like a family.

Five Months Later

Things don’t always work out the way you want them to. Nobody knows that better than me. You meet someone, fall in love, imagine you will be together forever and always. You tend to forget the ‘until death do we part’ part. And when it happens you’re sure, you’re absolutely certain, you will never love again.

Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’re wrong.

That’s what I’m thinking as we drive back from Donnie Brewster’s Humble Mart Convenience Store with a pound of hot dogs, and a dozen buns, and Noah’s favorite pickle relish.

Plenty of mustard at home. Again, the kind Noah likes.

Okay, hot dogs may not be the healthiest food, and I know I shouldn’t be indulging his every whim, but it’s a warm summer evening and he’s a growing boy, and how much harm can a few tube steaks do?

Tube steaks. That’s what Jed used to call them.

In the backseat Noah has the window rolled down and the wind is fluffing his hair and he looks as blissfully content as any kid who is about to stuff himself with delicious nitrates could look. He’s had an amazing recovery, all things considered. For the first couple of months he did share my bedroom, in his own little bed, and he insisted on a night-light. He was leery about going outside, didn’t want to see any of the kids from school. Indeed, he stayed home for all of the semester, with me acting as tutor and feeling, to put it delicately, challenged. I don’t know squat about prime numbers, which may have something to do with Noah’s recent decision to return to school in the fall. I’m hoping he still feels that way when September rolls around, but you never know. One day at a time.

As to the events in Colorado, they managed to prove that Bagrat Kavashi, the horrible man with the mustache, had perished in a scheme of his own devising when he rigged the poison gas for the Pinnacle instead of the Bunker. He thought he had the perfect way to lay all the blame on Evangeline, who would be conveniently dead via ‘suicide,’ but he failed to escape his own trap. I don’t think of myself as a vengeful type, but, really, the scum bucket deserved it.

Noah leans forward in the seat belt harness, taps me on the shoulder. Apparently unaware that I’ve been watching him in the mirror.

“Are you happy, Mom?”