Richard Doetsch - The 13th Hour

“You listen to me,” Dance said. “Since when did you become my keeper? You work here by my grace and my grace alone, not the captain’s, not anyone but me. I got you the job and I can take it away. And mind you, if I take it away it’ll be by blowing the whistle to Internal Affairs.”

“Give me a break,” Shannon shot back. “Neither you nor they have anything on me. I’m lily-white.”

“Really? How about that five grand you took off the drug bust last year?”

“Bullshit. You gave me that money, shoved it in my pocket.” Shannon jabbed his finger at Dance. “And I gave it right back to you. I never want anything to do with your scheming bullshit.”

“Funny, that’s not how I remember it,” Dance said mockingly.

“You’d make up a story to have your own flesh and blood thrown in jail?”

“Cousins doesn’t make us flesh and blood. Our parents couldn’t have been more different, thank God.”

“You’ve done something,” Shannon said. “I see it in your eyes. And it didn’t go well, did it? If it did you’d be smiling ear to ear even with two hundred people dead in a plane crash. What the hell did you do? And what does this Quinn guy have to do with it?”

Dance opened the door to the jailroom, stepped in, and turned back to Shannon. “You go to the crash site and think long and hard about the future you want.” Dance paused. “And remember who controls it.”

DANCE SLIPPED THE jail key in the slot, opened the heavy barred door, and stepped inside the cell, pulling it closed behind him as he stuffed the key in his pocket. He carried the small wicker basket of Nick’s belongings and stared down at him as he sat in the middle of the confined space in a metal folding chair staring at the beaten-up clock on the wall.

He waved the basket before Nick’s eyes. There was Paul Dreyfus’s wallet, his own wallet, his cell phone, his keys, all of which he ignored, choosing to stare at the wall, but then his eyes were inexorably pulled toward the gold watch lying there, its appearance belying its power. And it was all he cared about, not the jail key in Dance’s pocket that could free him from these confines, not his keys, so he could drive away. All that mattered right now was getting the watch back into his possession.

And Dance pulled the basket away, a taunting reminder that Dance controlled the moment.

“Some nice watch you have,” Dance said as he pulled it from the basket. He rolled it about in his hands, running his thumb over the golden case, about the winding stem on top. He thumbed it open, staring at the old English face. “An antique. Was it your dad’s, maybe your grandfather’s? Big sentimental value to it? Fugit inreparabile tempus,” he said, reading the inscription. “I bet it would probably crush you if you lost it, huh?” Dance deposited it in his right jacket pocket.

The two envelopes in Nick’s jacket pocket felt as if they were on fire. If Dance was to find them, to see the Wall Street Journal page, to read the letter explaining the watch… Marcus’s words ran in his ear, “… in the wrong hands…” Nick knew there were no worse hands then Ethan Dance’s.

Dance reached back into the basket and lifted up the silver St. Christopher medal. “I know if someone stole something of mine, something I held dear, something that was given to me by mother… well, I would be angry, to say the least.”

Dance slipped the small wicker basket through the bars, laying it on the floor. He turned around and stood over Nick.

“Where did you get this?” Dance said as he dangled the St. Christopher medal in Nick’s face, swinging it back and forth like a pendulum. “Were you in my locker? Was it Dreyfus? How the hell did you get in there?”

Nick remained silent as he watched Dance’s eyes lose focus.

“I got this for graduation,” Dance said as he turned it over and read the worn engraving. “ Miracles do happen. My mom had that engraved because my father said it would be a miracle if I graduated, it would be a miracle if I amounted to anything. She always called me her miracle kid.”

For the briefest of moments, Nick thought he saw a twinkle of humanity in Dance’s eyes as he slipped the chain over his neck, the medal falling against his chest, lying oddly upon his shirt and tie, as if it was an award bestowed by royalty for service above and beyond the call of duty.

“I take it off at work because I never want to lose it. It’s just about the only thing I hold dear in this world. I’m not sentimental about much, but its meaning to me is something you couldn’t understand. You know, I should kill you for stealing it.”

Dance reached into his pocket and pulled something out, clutching it tightly in his hand. “You’re going to tell me what the hell is going on. Where did you get that medal?”

Nick didn’t answer.

Dance looked at his right fist, the one clutching whatever it was he had pulled from his pocket, and without a second thought, drew it back and unloaded it into Nick’s face, knocking him out of his chair.

“You better start talking,” he said as he stood over Nick.

Nick rolled about the floor in pain, his right brow split open, blood boiling up, but he shut his senses down, his eyes fixed on the clock on the wall: 12:56.

“How did you do it? What kind of trick are you trying to play with me?”

And with that, Dance hit him again. The blow glanced off the side of Nick’s head; Dance’s aim was off from his anger.

Nick watched Dance pace around the small cell. He stopped and looked out through the bars before turning back.

Dance crouched over Nick and held his fist before Nick’s face. The seconds ticked by as the two stared at each other, and then Dance opened his fist, palm-side down, and let the chain fall out of his hand, holding the dangling medal between his fingers, the medal swinging and spinning about in the air.

The St. Christopher medal hung there, a medal identical to the one that hung about Dance’s neck, identical in every way. Not in the sense that it was identical to the one Shannon had, that he had also gotten when he graduated St. Christopher in Brooklyn. This medal was a carbon copy of the religious piece draped upon Dance’s shirt and tie. Every nick, every scratch, the slight indentations from life. Everything was a spot-on match, and as it hung before Nick’s eyes, it spun about and Nick could plainly see the engraving, Miracles do happen.

“How the hell did you do this? Is this some kind of sick joke to mess with my head? It’s something you and Dreyfus cooked up, isn’t it?” Paranoia laced his every word. “You thought that you could play me, with some twisted kind of magic?

“Well, Nicholas Quinn, Shannon was going to let you go, but I know who you really are and what you have been doing.”

Nick glared Dance.

“You’re working with the Dreyfus brothers, aren’t you? Helping them to screw me.” Dance paused, a grin forming on his lips. “You should know, your buddy, Sam Dreyfus, is dead. He’s dead because he knew I was going to kill him and he ran off like a coward clutching the prize he stole from us. I couldn’t have dreamed up a better death for that twisted fuck. His brother, Paul? No doubt he was involved in trying to double-cross us, too. I’ll take care of him right after I deal with you. And your wife.” Dance paused. “I know who your wife is. I know she’s Hennicot’s attorney and she’s got the security video of the robbery in her office. Maybe I’ll kill her in front of you; I’d take pleasure in that.”

And with those words, Nick snapped. Everything that had happened-seeing Julia dead, her face torn apart by the gun blast; her living in peril; Marcus’s death; his own frustration at chasing shadows, living in a microcosm of time separate from the world, knowing the future and struggling to figure out how to change it; and now this son of a bitch pulling him from his destiny as Julia had been pulled from the plane crash-all seemed a cruel mockery, letting him get so close, but killing him before he could save her from what fate had in store for her.