If . . . At The End

                                                                      Prologue

Three years and seven months, all flooding back in the moment she said his name. The laughter, the joy in feeling right for once in his life… even the tears they shared – and then nothing.

And the continuing nothing over six months of frantic searching, of swirling worry, of fear that had left him sleepless and sick – aching… all brought back in a simple, “Frank… I need to talk to you.”

So much so that he missed the tone… missed the body language that that would have warned of trouble before he heard the sound that halted his long strides toward the door of the bar.

It wasn’t the way she almost at once called after his retreating back, almost begging him… imploring…

“Frank please… just two minutes… I need you to hear what I have to say.”

Or the way she raised her voice in desperation, “Don’t walk away from this… don’t walk away from me…”

But the soft click of a weapon being cocked.

He stopped walking, ignoring the screams and panic erupting around him, and turned to look at her again, this time taking everything in, including Jake and Alex who had appeared, seemingly from nowhere and were pointing their own weapons in her direction.

She was pale and in the bar’s flickering dim lights the dark circles under her eyes were heavy on her cheeks. She’d lost weight, but it had been over a year… almost a year and a half, and her eyes – he knew they were blue – were wide with fear.

“Saran, it’s okay,” he said outwardly calm. “I’m sorry, okay, we can talk.”

“Tell… t-tell them to put the guns away,” she was shaking so much he worried that the gun would go off in her hand. Her normally soft voice was taught and discordant with emotion.

“Nobody needs the guns,” he said, taking a hesitant step forward when the heavy weapon started to dip in her hands. He stopped when she brought it up again, bringing her left hand to cradle the right. He held his hands out to the side.

“Tell them…” she squeaked, then almost screamed, “And shut these people up! I can’t think… I can’t…”

He nodded to his two agents. “Alex, secure this area. Call it in…”

“Wait!” Saran instructed. “What do you mean?”

“I’m assuming the last thing you want is this place crawling with cops,” he said to the terrified woman and then added, “Do it Alex. Jake…”

He waved his hand closest to Jake down toward the ground and out of the corner of his eye saw Jake lower his weapon, but knew he held it still ready for use.

“They’re always heavier than you think they’re going to be,” he continued softly, nodding toward the weapon she held. “Why don’t you give me the gun and we can sit down and talk, hmm?”

“I… I tried your cell phone… it was disconnected.” It was a totally ridiculous thing for her to have said, shaking her head as she was, but he understood. Her mind was bouncing around like a rubber ball. That made the situation dangerous. Any other stand-off and he would have been confident he could resolve the incident without bloodshed, now he could only pray that he could.

“I’ve moved on, Saran,” he said, taking a slow and careful step forward. The noise behind him started to dissipate as Alex cleared the bar. “I have a new job now – a new apartment.”

He slowly continued to take step after step toward the trembling woman.

“T –there… I could never get through at work. I… I don’t know where to start,” she said. He could see she was fighting to keep the weapon raised, pointing in his direction.

“Why don’t you start by giving me the gun?” he suggested softly.

“Why,” she implored, “couldn’t you just leave it alone?”

“What, Saran?” he took another careful step toward her. He was almost there, but saw her flinch. He held his breath as her finger shook against the smooth metal of the trigger. “I can’t help you unless you tell me what’s going on.”

Her face creased in emotional pain and she let out a sudden shuddering sob, tears beginning to flow down her face. The gun twitched in her hand and Jake started to raise his weapon. Frank flung out a hand to stop him.

“Stow it, Agent Shaw,” he growled, and started to reach forward toward Saran Farlain, the woman that had shared some of the best times in his life.

“I’m scared Frank,” she barely managed to force the words out past the sobs and the tears.

“I know, baby,” his whispered for her only, “I know. Give me the gun.”

He reached forward a little more closing his opened hand around each side of the gun barrel as she started to relinquish the weapon.

“That’s it…” he barely dared to breathe as he felt the weight of the gun starting to settle into the palms of his hands, the barrel of the gun was still pointing at him and he needed to turn it aside.

**

He peeped up over the top of the bar. There were just two of them now, and the woman with the gun. They had her distracted; one of them almost had her in his grasp. They were Feds. He didn’t like having Feds in his bar. It discouraged a certain kind of clientele that more than doubled his revenue from time to time.

He needed to get them out. He needed to end this, and end it more quickly than Mr Softly-softly was getting things done. With the woman distracted…

He reached for the weapon stashed under the counter of the bar.

**

“Put it down!” Alex suddenly cried out from behind him, she may have said more, but he didn’t hear it. The air in front of him exploded into sound and heat and pain.

A white hot fist slammed into him, against his chest, exploding through him as a fiery destructive trail. A second, hard on the heels of the first, higher and more centrally – knocked him and he staggered back.

A third gunshot vaguely registered somewhere a long way outside of the dark blanket that was descending over him. The tried to take a breath and felt as though he were drowning, and hardly noticed the impact against his knees as the ground leaped up toward him.

**

Just as she turned back from ushering the last of the customers out of the door she caught a flash of movement out of the corner of her eyes. She watched the barman straighten up from behind the bar, holding a gun pointing in the woman’s direction.

“Put it down!” she yelled, snatching out her own weapon.

The woman in front of Frank let out a small scream. Tightly wound, as she was, it was all that it took and before Alex’s horrified eyes, in reflex her finger tightened on the trigger.

“Jake!” Alex yelled, covering the bar keep she couldn’t also deal with the woman. She flicked her eyes his way and saw his gun come up, but it was not quick enough.

Two clear shots rang out in the horrified heartbeat of silence that descended in the wake of the woman’s scream, and Frank staggered back, as a third shot – Jake’s weapon – followed.

She crossed the room and caught her boss before he fully hit the ground. She ripped off her jacket and screwed it up into a ball to press it as hard as she could against his chest, trying to stem the flow of blood. He was coughing, and where she wrapped her arm bare across his back, she felt the heat of his blood.

“Al-ex,” he gasped, blood flecking his lips as he forced the air – precious and irreplaceable – over his teeth and tongue to make the words. “Not… h…”

“Frank no,” she moaned. “Don’t try and talk.”

She flicked her head around in search of Jake and took the time to pull her cell phone out of her pocket and throw it in his direction as he stood up from checking the woman he’d winged with his disabling shot. Then she pressed her hand back against the jacket with which she vainly tried to stop Frank’s bleeding. He tried to push her hand away, but had no strength.

“Frank Donovan don’t you dare do this to me!” she snapped at him through clenched teeth, fighting with the emotions rising in her memory of another place and time – and another man, whom she had love, and who died in her arms.

“I won’t accept this,” she said firmly. “I won’t accept this!”

“EMT’s are already on their way.” Jake crouched beside her. Moving her hands away from the jacket and peeling it aside to look at the damage. She saw him wince. “From when you called it in.”

“He’s not going to make it,” she whimpered, sitting back on her heels and bringing a shaking hand, that was red with Frank’s blood, to wipe away tears she hadn’t even realised she was crying.

“He’ll make it,” Jake said, without looking up from the dying man on the ground. “He’s too bloody minded not to!”

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                                                 If . . . In The End - Chapter 1