“What do we have here? Your husband?” Vince looks surprised and annoyed at the same time. “How did he get here?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “Why don’t you ask him?”
Vince shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just going to shoot him and then you and I can play. We played your game earlier. Now, we play mine.”
Just then, Zombie pounces on him with a different game in mind. He knocks Vince to the ground and the gun falls out of his hands. Vince fights back, managing to push Zombie off him, and then Randall is the one who gets on top of him, knocking the daylights out of him with just one solid blow.
I heave a sigh of relief.
Now the nightmare is over.
Or so I think, until I see one of Vince’s thugs. He approaches with his gun pointed at Randall.
“Randall!”
I run to Randall, pushing him to the ground as the bullet hits the back of my leg.
Shit.
At once, Zombie goes after the shooter. It’s not a good idea, though, because the man quickly points his gun at Zombie.
“No!” I scream again, covering my ears and closing my eyes as I hear a gunshot, then another and another.
Moments later, I open my eyes, seeing Zombie near me and the shooter on the ground. Randall is standing behind me, gun in hand.
Now the nightmare is truly and finally over.
“Are you okay?” Randall asks, shining his flashlight on my leg.
I don’t answer. I feel okay now that I’m safe but I don’t know if my leg is going to be.
Randall bandages it with a strip of cloth from his own shirt then he carries me.
“Come on. Let’s get you to a hospital.”
Pledge
Randall
I stare anxiously at Sabrina as she lies on the hospital bed.
The doctor already removed the bullet from her leg and said it was going to be fine. Her bones, nerves and ligaments are all intact. She hasn’t been awake since her surgery, though, and so I wait.
There are a lot of things I want to say to her.
In the past twenty-four hours, I’ve been through a lot and I’ve thought of a lot of things, mostly about Sabrina. I thought of the things she said. I thought of all the things we did together in such a short time and all that she made me feel and I came to a conclusion: I do love her.
Sabrina’s right. I didn’t love Dinah. Maybe that was why we started fighting, even about little things. I only wanted to protect her, to take care of her.
Back then, I didn’t know what love was. I don’t consider myself an expert on love, never having experienced it from my family. For the same reason, I couldn’t answer Sabrina when she asked if I loved her.
But then, when I was looking for David, I thought about all I felt for him – how I wanted not just to protect him and take care of him, but to listen to him, to see him happy, to support him, to simply spend time with him and do things with him, make memories together – and I knew I felt the same for Sabrina.
I love my son, and I love my wife.
I take her hand, pressing it to my lips.
“Thank goodness you’re safe. I wouldn’t know what to do if I lost you.”
Suddenly, Sabrina’s hand moves and when I look at her face, I see her eyelids fluttering open. For a moment, she just stares at the ceiling then she looks at me.
“Hey.” She smiles.
“Hey, yourself,” I tell her, still holding her hand. “How do you feel?”
She shrugs, then lifts her leg, wincing.
“Easy there. They just operated on your leg.”
“Yeah. I know that now. At least it’s still there and I can feel it.”
I nod. “Thank goodness for that.”
She looks around. “Where’s David?”
“We’re in a hospital in El Paso. David is with Gil. He’s okay.”
“With Gil, huh? You said it was Gil who found out where I was?”
“Yes.” I grab the stool and sit on it, still holding her hand. “Do you remember when you caught me snooping around in your room?”
“So, you were snooping around.” She pouts.
“Not really. I was getting strands of your hair.”
“Strands of my hair? For witchcraft?”
“No. For a DNA sample. I sent them to Gil.”
Sabrina nods. “I see. You thought I was a criminal.”
“No. Anyway, I thought he didn’t run it, because you already told me what happened, but he still did. As it turns out, your DNA was a match to DNA found at that house where you stayed.”
“What?”
“Apparently, a body was found in that house, probably shortly after you were there. I don’t know if Vince or any of his men have anything to do with it, but it’s likely. The forensics team collected DNA, and one of the samples came back to you. But they didn’t know it at the time because you weren’t in the database.”
“I see. So Gil discovered that I had been in that house?”
“Yes.”
“But how did he know I would be there? I could have been in any other place.”
“Well, Vince did say you were going to a place where you’d been before,” I remind her.
“Ah, so Vince gave it away.”
“He’s not as smart as he thinks. And before the pill stopped transmitting, it looked like you were headed southwest. He made some calculations, said you were likely going to Mexico. Anyway, he said a bunch of things I don’t remember anymore…”
Sabrina chuckles.
“But he was right in figuring out where you were. The main problem was overcoming those thugs and getting into the house but you were already out of the house.”
She nods. “And Zombie found me. Wait. Where’s Zombie? Is he okay?”
“Don’t worry. He’s okay. I checked him into a dog hotel.”
“A dog hotel? Well, he definitely deserves a reward for everything he did.”
“Yup,” I agree.
“What happened to the thugs?”
“I shot them as they were approaching,” I inform her.
“Right. I did hear more than one gunshot.” She nods thoughtfully. “Where did you learn to shoot?”
“At a shooting range. I took lessons. I thought if I was going to be protecting people, I’d have to learn how to use a gun.”
“There goes that protective instinct again.”
“Well, thanks to that, I learned to shoot.”
“And what about Vince?”
“He’s in jail, and no, he’s not getting out, in spite of all his money. I’m making sure of that. There’s evidence against him now.”
“Thank god.”
I squeeze her hand. “It’s over, Sabrina. You’re safe now.”
“So, what does that mean?” she asks. “Does it mean you’re going to divorce me now because I no longer need your protection?”
“No way.” I shake my head. “I’m not going to let you go that easily.”
She narrows her eyes. “Really?”
“I’m sorry about lying to you about Dinah,” I tell her. “I didn’t mean to. I just… I couldn’t tell you the truth because I haven’t been able to live with it myself.”
“Hey.” She touches my chin. “It’s not your fault, Randall. Couples fight all the time. What happened to Dinah was an unfortunate accident, and you’ve been doing your best to be a good father to David since it happened. I’m sure Dinah is happy, watching over him.”