Jennifer D. Bokal - Rocky Mountain Valor

An arched doorway on her right led to the same kitchen. The room beyond was dark. The lights were off and the curtains had been drawn.

Petra caught a glimpse of her dress, her hands. She was covered in splatters of red. Not wine this time. Blood? Icy tendrils of panic reached for her throat and squeezed. Was she bleeding? She scanned her body. Scrapes, bruises, a single cut to her arm. Beyond that, she had the expected residual headache that came after a migraine, and nothing else. So what had happened after she lost consciousness? Why was she covered in blood?

Her handbag lay in the middle of the foyer, the contents were scattered about. Lipstick. Sunglasses. Keys. Wallet. No phone. She dove for her purse and dug into the interior. It was empty.

“Joe?” Her throat was dry, her voice hoarse.

Petra took a step. Her legs trembled, and her vision wavered. She breathed deeply, trying to stay calm. She had to call someone. The kitchen... There’d been a landline in the kitchen. She peered around the corner and found nothing but darkness. Dark floor. Dark walls. Dark forms blending in with the gloom.

“Joe?”

Petra took another step, then another. The floor underfoot was sticky. The odor of copper and meat was thick in the air. The shadow of the island loomed before her. Her foot connected with something solid but not hard. Petra’s heartbeat raced.

Scrambling, she reached for the wall. Her hand danced along the surface until she found an electrical switch. She turned it on. The room blazed with light. A pool of black spread out around her feet. Joe lay sprawled at the base of the island with a knife protruding from his side.

Petra sank to her knees next to him. His shirt was soaked and crimson, his breath nothing more than a gasp. She dared not touch the knife, lest she hurt him more.

“Joe? Joe? Can you hear me?” The alarm continued to scream. Petra couldn’t even hear her own voice.

He didn’t respond.

A loud knocking was heard and above the din a voice called, “Police. Open up.”

The police. She scrambled to her feet, lightheaded with gratitude that someone had arrived who could help Joe—help her.

A large man in a suit stood on the stoop. He held up a small leather portfolio. His badge and photo ID were visible. “I’m Detective Sergeant Luis Martinez with the Denver PD. I’m responding to a home alarm.” He looked her over from head to toe. “Are you injured, ma’am?”

Petra’s legs went weak with relief. She held tight to the doorjamb. “I’m fine,” she managed to say, “but you need to help him.”

“Help who?” the detective asked.

“He’s in the k-kitchen,” she stammered, “and hurt.”

The detective swept past her as three more black-and-white police cruisers rushed up the drive. Half a dozen officers exited the vehicles and ran to the house.

“That way,” she said, pointing to the kitchen as they approached. One of the police officers disabled the alarm. The silence was more terrifying than the noise. In the quiet, Petra could hear a single question echoing in her mind: What have I done?

She leaned on the wall for support. Her throat burned. She wanted to pass out. But she needed to know what had happened to her client.

She stepped toward the kitchen, but Martinez blocked her path. He had removed his suit coat and splatters of blood stained his wrinkled shirt and tie. Over his shoulder, she saw the uniformed police officers administering first aid to Joe. In the distance, she heard another siren, and through the open front door she caught a glimpse of an ambulance racing up the drive.

“I need to ask you a few questions,” Martinez said, steering her to a dining room that was situated on the other side of the foyer. Two EMTs bearing a stretcher entered the house and immediately went to the kitchen, disappearing from Petra’s view.

It didn’t mean that she couldn’t hear what they said. “Starting IV fluids,” said a female.

“Starting IV fluids,” repeated her partner, a male.

“I see seven stab wounds,” said the female.

Seven wounds? She tried to picture herself in a frenzy of what—rage? Fear? In her mind’s eye, she saw nothing.

“Ma’am? Are you okay?” the detective sergeant asked. “Can you answer a few questions?”

She nodded.

“Let’s start with your name and why you’re here.”

“I’m Petra Sloane, Joe’s agent.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

A thousand images flooded her mind at once. Nothing seemed real. “I have no idea. I can’t remember a thing.”

“You might be in shock,” said the detective. “Take a moment...”

Martinez’s words trailed off as the EMTs came from the kitchen. Joe was strapped to the stretcher. His eyes were closed; an oxygen mask covered his mouth and nose. An IV was attached to his arm. Petra watched in silence as they placed her client in the back of the waiting ambulance and sped away.

“I should call someone,” she said, as the final scream of the ambulance’s siren faded into the quiet morning. “His estranged wife, Larissa, maybe. Or...he has a sister in California.” Petra could not recall her name.

“That’ll hold for a few minutes,” Martinez said. “Let’s get back to why you were here. What can you recall?”

Why had she come? Petra closed her eyes and brought back as many details as she could muster. The blinding sunlight. The heat wafting off the pavement. Joe’s voice in her ear, quick and clipped, his tone low and almost a whisper.

“Joe called me earlier and asked me to come over right away. He needed to tell me something. I figured there was another scandal.”

Martinez removed a notepad and pen from his shirt pocket. He flipped past a few pages before scribbling on a sheet. “Another scandal?” he echoed.

“He’d done some pretty stupid things lately. The stories were all over the press. It’s my job to portray Joe in the best light possible in the media. So if he’d had any more missteps, I should be the first to know.”

“And did he say what kind of misstep he’d made?”

Petra tried to recall exactly what Joe had said. In reality, he hadn’t told her much beyond that he had something important to tell her and heads were going to roll. “I guess he didn’t say anything in so many words. Only that something bad had happened.”

Martinez wrote in his pad and Petra was forced to wait, grappling with memories that she couldn’t quite make clear.

“What time did you arrive?”

Finally, a question she could answer. “About nine thirty.”

Martinez looked at a fitness tracker he wore around his wrist. “And what transpired between then and now?”

Petra went cold. She began to tremble. “What?” The word caught in her throat. “What time is it now?”

Martinez pinned her with his dark stare. “Quarter after ten.”

The detective thought she had stabbed Joe. She could tell, from the hard set of his jaw and his unwavering gaze. She looked away, because the worst part of it all was that Petra feared he was right.

* * *

Ian had gathered his team at an RMJ safe house, a dump of a place in the heart of downtown Denver. The small house had a tiny living room and kitchen on the first floor and two bedrooms upstairs.

He remembered each and every person they’d hidden away in this little house. A presidential candidate after an assassination attempt. A cleric wanted by a terrorist group. Yet he’d never pictured that he’d be here personally, along with his team, in desperate need of a place to lie low.

Was this raid, the one that should’ve been their crowning glory, really going to be their downfall?

They’d gathered in the kitchen, crammed around the small Formica table—Roman, Cody, Julia and Katarina, along with the rest of the team. The air was filled with the electricity of tension and too many unanswered questions.