Learning to Trust: Curtain Falls Read online

  "Someone I thought I could trust has been working for someone else. My, so bold to think that you could pull a fast one on old Roland!"

  After so many flare-ups of paranoia, this was it. I was actually about to die, to be riddled with bullets and torn to pieces. These would be my last thoughts, my last flashes of consciousness before I faded to black. Yet, here I was, thinking about thinking rather than anything that mattered. It had been a good run, one that was—

  I felt my body being pulled abruptly to the side by Frederic, cold steel against my head. Wait, what was this? "Don't fucking come any closer or the girl gets it!" Frederic had taken me hostage—he was the rat!

  "Fuck!" I shouted, suddenly overcome by nervous rage. "Let me go!"

  "Shut the fuck up!" he hissed. Frederic had pulled me back and was keeping me strategically positioned in front of him. I had become Marisa the Human Shield. This posed another problem: If these guys were as ruthless as they looked, they'd just shoot through me to get to Frederic anyway and just consider my death collateral damage. What difference did it make to them? And when I saw a flurry of guns rising to the occasion, I realized I my gut feeling was probably correct.

  "Gentleman, keep calm," Roland said. "We need to stay level-headed. Where do you intend to go, Frederic? What if I said I'm not concerned with her one bit. That you could kill her and we'll just kill you anyway?"

  "Fuck you, Roland!" I said. "You're such an asshole."

  What a nightmare! My life was again flashing before my eyes. I couldn't read Roland, couldn't tell if he was just trying to confuse Frederic or if he was being serious. He obviously knew that his gigantic bomb would kill more than just Marcus. What made this moment any different?

  "Don't fuck around with me, Roland. I'll do it!" Frederic's grip was shaky, wavering, uncertain.

  "Okay, big tough man with the gun, go ahead. Kill her if you're up to it."

  The gun hurt against my head, the pressure flaring up as Frederic's emotions did. Everything was so unpredictable, so chaotic. This could go a million different ways. Adrenaline surged in me as I felt Frederic's heart pound against my back. He was weighing his options, a man presumably discovering that he had nothing else to bargain with. It became obvious that he was now fully aware that he had made a grave mistake by coming here.

  "Damnit," he whispered under his breath, only loud enough that I could hear it.

  "What are you waiting for, Frederic? It's your big moment—everyone is watching. You've got all the power now. Make the decision."

  I was shaking rapidly. Sweat trickled down my brow, salty, nervous drops. And then, I figured out what was going on—Roland's eyes seemed to be watching something behind us with great interest. He was being very subtle about it. What was it? I could only assume some sort of ambush. The gun kept digging into my scalp as Frederic weighed his options probably more carefully than he had ever weighed anything in his life.

  Slow motion suddenly became a mere fraction of its own speed. There was a struggle behind me and then I heard the sound of a silenced pistol firing several times, Frederic's body lurching as each shot tore through his body. Frederic's gun pulled away from my scalp and fired a stray shot next to my head, a sound that made me fall to my knees, screaming as my ears rang. I was totally disoriented, the world a blur that I could barely comprehend. Was I dying? Had he shot me? I wrapped my hands around my ears and kept screaming. My dreamlike state was interrupted by a distant shouting, a voice that sounded so familiar.

  "Put your fucking hands in the air! Drop your fucking weapons! The building is surrounded."

  I could feel a faint trickle of blood coming from my right ear. Maniacal laughter seemed to be filling the air. Was it my own or Roland's? I fell to the ground and laid there, the ceiling spinning as I heard the bang-bang-bang of even more gunshots. None of this meant anything; it was all just random sensory data that was going nowhere. I was in an absolute daze, my head matching every stabbing throb of my heart.

  The bright lights of the ceiling gave an ethereal tint to the world as hell raged on around me. I turned my head and saw Frederic's face staring at me with weakness, with regret. He barely seemed real.

  His lips formed the words carefully. "I didn't mean to do it." There was no sound until a moment later when I was watching his lips mouth "I'm sorry." His voice was so booming and low. Blood trickled from his lip toward the floor. It moved like plants did in those sped up, stop-motion science videos of seeds sprouting and taking root. The redness spread in myriad directions across the floor, a macabre, yet beautiful spectacle that reminded me of new life despite the fact that it was indeed the very opposite. Frederic's life was spilling out of him and pooling on the floor.

  I was living a very slow, disoriented existence. Suddenly there was a rush of sound, a roar as real-life came back to me like a jab to the stomach.

  "Marisa! Marisa! Are you okay? It's Ramón! You're alive!"

  I'm Marisa Taylor, right?

  "What?" I shouted, my voice much louder than I expected it to be.

  "I'm going to get you out of here," he said. "Are you seriously hurt?"

  "I don't think so," I said. He was hoisting me to my feet, lifting me toward the bright lights that had kept me company during the madness. There were bodies all around me, the product of a real-life warzone. Was everybody dead? Was Roland dead? I couldn't tell a thing, nor did I really want to investigate.

  By the way that Ramón was carrying me, I assumed that the battle was still raging on around me. His strides were firm, determined. He was trying to get me to safety. How long was in a daze?

  "You're lucky as hell," he said. "I'm not sure how you got out of that one unscathed." He looked at me with tired eyes, still pulling me away from the warehouse insanity. "Christ, I don't know if I can do this anymore." I didn't respond then. He continued to lug me in his arms until we reached that ambulance stretcher, the hands of paramedics checking me, testing to see if I was a defective model.

  "I don't understand." I sat there playing with my hands, fascinated by how they felt. My head still hurt, the ringing in my ears doing very little to provide any comfort.

  "What are you talking about?" Ramón asked.

  "I don't understand what happened. Frederic was gonna kill me and then everything went crazy. I'm actually not dead, right?"

  "Jesus, kid," he said, his voice weathered and impersonal—like a guy that had been at this far too long to remember what it was like for the rookies. It was weird that he had called me kid, as if it was a telltale sign that I wasn't cut out for this. "Sometimes I forget that not everyone is equipped to deal with the horrors of war. You're alive, trust me." His hair stuck to his brow in disheveled clumps.

  I felt my head impulsively after seeing his, curiously running my hands through my hair. I could feel the mats around where Frederic had held the gun. It was probably blood. I felt so slimy suddenly, so desperately in need of a shower. I felt so weak and pathetic, so humbled and small. "Did I do a good job?" It was the only thing I cared about in that drawn-out moment.

  "You did great," he said. He awkwardly gave me a hug, a professional courtesy he didn't seem that sure about. Even though I noticed his timidity, I grabbed him with all of my might and began sobbing against his jacket.

  "Oh god!" I wept. How could I even sort out what I was feeling? Everyone I knew only a few short hours ago was probably dead. And even then, I had been working around the clock to bring them down. I never thought that this would result in so much bloodshed, so much loss. Should I mourn their deaths? Curse their dead bodies? They exploited people, hurt them in the name of profits—and they hurt me too.

  Still, something lingered, a fragment from those initial times with Roland—Frederic as well to a lesser extent—that made me hurt, that made me cry out in agony like a wounded animal. There had been real feelings, there was no doubt about it. I had trusted both so extensively, giving myself to them and drowning in the confines of Roland's world. Where had that gotten me?

>   "It's okay," Ramón said. It was such a boring platitude, but I didn't fault him for using it in that moment. "I don't think you realize how big of a deal this is. You're the one that ended all of this."

  "I did?" I asked between sobs. I let him go and supported myself with my hands on my thighs.

  "You led us here, Marisa."

  What the hell was he talking about? I led them here? "B-b-but my phone was..."

  "The pen," Ramón said. "It was the pen."

  "Pen?" Shit, how had I forgotten?

  "That GPS pen I gave you the first time we met. After I got all of your calls, I figured something was up. I followed the coordinates of the pen until I got here. When I saw all the cars and the location, I called for backup."

  I had been so obsessed about keeping my phone intact that I forgot about the very thing that had saved my life. It had been in my purse the whole time, the beacon that had led him right to me. My miraculously unscathed purse was sitting beside me—I pulled out the pen and rolled it between my index finger and thumb, like I was trying to prove to myself that it was real. It felt like an ordinary ink pen. "Wow." I sat there mouth agape, amazed by such a simple object.

  "Comes in handy. You can keep it, if you like."

  "Yeah," I said. Uncertainty crept up on me again. "Why did you shoot in there?"

  "They shot first." As he said it, I recalled those words in my dream. Put down your weapons! The voice had seemed so omniscient in my dazed state, like God himself had entered the room and made his demands. "I hate it when things turn out like this. I'd rather see them behind bars than in the ground."

  "So they're all dead?" I fell silent again, my eyes still moist from the former cry.

  " Roland's unconscious," he said softly. "I don't think he's going to make it."

  "Was he shooting?" I asked. I just couldn't imagine Roland holding a gun, even though I was sure he had plenty of times. He was definitely a get someone else to do it sort of person, Roland Delegate-whatever-you-don't-feel-like-doing Starland.

  "He didn't have a gun, but he's also kind of a magician so..." Ramón trailed off, realizing his joke was falling flat. "I think he just got hit in the cross fire. Like I said, you're lucky you were on the ground."

  "Frederic?" Despite his cruel actions, I still wanted to know.

  "He's alive, but barely."

  I was staring as Ramón talked, the circus of people coming and going intensely distracting to my worn mind. I wondered how long until the media got wind of this. I imagined myself running onto the scene, armed with a camera crew and a microphone. I'd go straight for Marisa Taylor, the young, naive reporter that fell for a billionaire murderer.

  "Ms. Taylor," I'd ask myself, "did you know that Roland Starland was involved in an international weapons smuggling scandal..on top of all the other horrible stuff he's done?"

  I would smile and say, "No comment." The crowd of reporters would be growing by this point, and their voices would swell up together as so many people fought to ask me a question at the same time. In my vision, they were all me, all incarnations of Marisa Taylor that just needed to know more. And by the time I snapped out of it, there was a reporter standing in front of me, microphone thrust in my face. I started crying again, not even aware of what I had been asked.

  "Get away from her!" Ramón yelled. "Go to the hospital and get some rest, okay? I'll come see you when the dust has settled."

  "Yeah," I said. I climbed onto the ambulance bed and allowed them to lift me in to the vehicle. It would be my very first ambulance ride—how exciting. I watched as Ramón pushed away the reporters, herding them like sheep until they were out of the way. I frowned at them, the people in the trenches, the people that were just like me. They just wanted the best story possible—and this would be a helluva story.

  I passed out on the way to the hospital.

  ***

  I awoke to the sterile interior of a hospital bedroom. They had dressed me in a loose-fitting hospital gown, one that felt very similar to the blankets that covered me. My eyes were fixated on a wall-mounted TV that was off. I looked for the remote, but I couldn't find it and didn't feel like climbing out of bed.

  As I lay there, homesickness crept in, a poison washing over my body—and I was acting as a sponge. No, it wasn't just homesickness, it was regret. Where would I be now had I just done the job and went back to the city and left this all behind me? Roland had provided me with a hell of a story, one that would have done the trick for sure. I wanted to see my mom and dad, my boss, my friends that I had left behind because I had felt vulnerable, unable to resist temptation as it came my way.

  I felt so undisciplined, like my backbone had dissolved and left me a wobbly mess to be exploited. Thankfully, my self-flagellation was interrupted by a nurse.

  "Hi," she said. "Glad to see you're up." She sat down next to my bed.

  "Thanks," I said politely.

  "We had to do a few stitches on your scalp. You were already out, so we just injected the analgesic and went to work."

  My hand instinctively shot to my head, feeling the handiwork of the hospital staff. I felt like Frankenstein, actually. "Wow," I said. I traced along that tender flesh, amazed by the idea of them putting me back together. I desperately wished that they could do the same for my mental health. You know, just put me under and I'd wake up feeling like myself again. "Am I okay?" I asked, suddenly feeling stupid and blushing after the words left my mouth.

  "That was the only serious thing. Your pulse was all over the place, but I attribute that to shock. We'd like you to stick around for at least today, but you're free to go after that." She looked around the room and then stood up. "Is there anything else I can get you right now?"

  "Is there a remote for the TV?"

  "Oh, yeah, of course," she muttered. She shifted some things around on the table beneath the TV. "Here it is," she said.

  I took it from her hand and cradled it like it was a newborn. "Thanks."

  "Call if you need anything else." She stepped back out into the hall and closed the door.

  Intrigue was once again getting the best of me. I wanted to turn on the news and see what they had made of everything. My finger slowly moved toward the power button and stayed there once it arrived—but I didn't press it.

  No not now.

  I wasn't sure if I could handle it. I set the remote next to the bed and did my best to clear my mind. I wanted a blank slate. I wanted to be numb.

  My mind roared to life again. I wondered if I was under police protection. Would someone be after me now? Well, if there was one thing I knew, it would be that my name wouldn't be used publicly, due to the fact that I was officially undercover. Okay, whatever.

  I laid in silence for a while, trying my damndest to nap during the day. Right when I was about to doze off, the door opened. It was Ramón.

  "Hi, Marisa," he said. "I've got visitors for you."

  My mom and dad walked in behind him. I almost fainted. The tears returned again, flowing more freely than they ever had in my life. They both look tired, like they had found out I was in the hospital and took the next available flight to get here. In fact, I was pretty sure that I was right about the source of their fatigue.

  "Marisa!" they both shouted together. I forgot Ramón was even there as I hugged them, weeping as they told me how glad they were that I was alive. Nothing else mattered in that moment. We rejoiced in the fact that I had made it out alive, made it out of that hellish reality. I expected my mom to scold me for my ridiculousness, but she didn't. I appreciated that.

  They stayed for a short while until Ramón sent them on their way, at least temporarily. Once they left, he shut the door and sat down next to me. "You did a great job, okay? I can't say that enough."

  "Thanks."

  "You stopped it. I just want you to know that. It doesn't matter how it turned out, because you saved lives, Marisa, you really did. You might have even prevented genocide. Some of those guns were going to cartel leaders in—"
r />   He rambled on while my mind did something else entirely. I didn't feel like I deserved any of this praise. I felt pathetic and weak, and Ramón just served to remind me of my weakness. "I was stupid and impressionable," I said. To whom, I wasn't really sure.

  "I don't fault you for anything," he said. I could tell he wanted a cigarette. "You're going to have to come to terms with a lot, but you'll do it, and you'll do just fine. You aren't to blame for anything that happened. If it wasn't you, it would have been someone else. People like Roland don't just sit still when there's an obstacle in their way." He was giving a monologue, and as hard as I wanted to resist his words, they were started to break through my hardened skin and actually soothe me.

  "You shouldn't talk to the press, at least not for awhile. Maybe not ever. Obviously, we've admitted we had someone undercover, but said nothing beyond that."

  "How are...they doing?" I asked.

  "Roland's in a coma. I don't think you need to worry about him ever again." His face was solemn, yet optimistic.

  "What do you mean?" I wasn't entirely sure about what he was getting at.

  "No one is going to come after you, Marisa. You'll be fine."

  Great! The last thing I needed was a reminder that Roland had threatened to track me down if I ran away. "Ramón! Can we drop the scary stuff for now?"

  "Yeah, I'm sorry," he said pathetically. "As for your buddy Frederic, he just got out of a long surgery—and he may never walk again. They won't know for a while. He's headed to prison one way or another."

  Ah, Frederic. That image came back to me, his lips mouthing that he was sorry as the life slowly evaporated from him. Had that actually happened?

  In a way, it felt like something that I had just seen in a movie, something my mind had super-imposed over that chaotic warehouse shoot-out. No, it had been real. I could hear his words echoing in my mind. It was tugging at my heart, even though he had tried to kill me right before he was flat against the floor. The threat of death made ambiguity so much more accessible. I was mourning the fate of someone that had tried to kill me.