An Unfinished Life (36 page)

B
efore leaving the bar, I called Max and filled him in on everything that had gone down the last hour. He was giving me the lecture about Jacob and to watch my back, but after what we talked about in my office, I believed I could trust Jacob to honor our agreement. Max wanted to inform Dominick of what was about to go down, but I wasn’t in any position to order Max not to. I understood his loyalties were divided between me and his pledged allegiance to the family. I just wanted him to assure Dominick that I had the situation under control, and I would meet with him as soon as I could.

Max called me back and told me that I wouldn’t be going in alone. Dominick refused to play nice, especially now, knowing that I was partnering with the FBI, so to speak. He ordered Max and members from his crew to cover me if it deemed necessary. Most of the time Dominick was a prick, and at times resented the hell out of me, but he would never let me fall if he could prevent it.

I could handle myself against Dante. It was Jacob who I worried for. He was stepping outside of himself and getting angrier by the minute. He’d been here before, and now his limits were being tested once more.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, probably Max telling me everything was in place. I hit the button on my dash, and he was now on speaker.

“Hey, Max, I’m about twenty minutes out.”

“That’s good, Jack, really good. Just enough time for what I have planned for Sleeping Beauty tied to my bed.”

Motherfucker! It was Marino!

Jacob turned red and was gripping my dashboard with such force, I heard a crackling sound. I raised my hand to silence him.

“Hello, Agent Paulson. Did you miss me? You’re too quiet. Our usual conversations are always so entertaining to have. Maybe it’s because you haven’t gotten laid in a while. But no worries, Paulson, and I have taken really good care of your girl. She can be quite loud when she wants to be.”

“You sick, motherfucker! I am going to kill you! If you hurt one hair on her head, I’m going to rip your throat out!”

“Well, which is it? Are you going to rip my throat out? Or kill me? It didn’t have to be this way, Jacob. Don’t say I didn’t give you every opportunity to take down the very man you are now trusting to help you. It’s her funeral.”

The line went dead, and so did Jacob. He screamed at me to pull the car over. He jumped out and began vomiting all over the side of the road. The screams coming from deep inside of him were his rage and his desire to kill Marino. Every man could be pushed to his limits, and Jacob Paulson was no different than the rest of us.

“Drive,” he commanded.

“Jacob, he’s trying to get a rise out of you, and you’ve played right into his hands. We are almost there. You must keep yourself in check. Stay focused on rescuing Zoey. That’s all you need to do. We don’t know what we are going to find once we enter that building. He’s crazed, but he is not too delusional to not have a back-up plan, so be careful.”

“Jack, whatever happens in there, he’s mine. Do you understand me?”

“More than you will ever know.”

I parked in the same location where Max and I were last time. I scanned my eyes around to the surrounding buildings and suspected where Max and his guys would be.

Jacob was armed and ready to take Marino out. I was carrying, but nothing compared to what Jacob had. He looked as if he was going to war. He probably was already there in his mind and heart.

It felt like deja vu all over again. Another Marino was behind the door of apartment 4G, only I would be the one to break down the door this time around. Jacob had secured himself on the adjoining fire escape, where he could charge in when the time was right.

I slowly walked down the hallway that would bring me face-to-face with Dante.

“Okay, coward, I’m here! Now show yourself.”

No sound came from the inside of the apartment. I opened the door slightly, and immediately the mattress came into view. And just like he said, Zoey was tied down on it. She was on her back with ropes going across her nearly naked body. She only had a thin sheath covering her. Her eyes were covered, and tape was over her mouth.

Jacob is totally gonna kill him. He’s so dead.

Looking at this poor girl brought me back to my conversation with Dominick:
“We don’t hurt women. Not ever!”

I knew at that moment that I had to save her and take my chances walking into this trap he had set for me. There weren’t too many places to hide in this place. I pulled out my gun and broke down the doors. I checked the closet, it was empty. The bathroom was also clear. Where the hell was he hiding?

I was about to go to Zoey when Jacob crashed through the window, making me pull my gun on him. He had one in each hand and was ready to shoot.

“Jacob! It’s me, Jack. He’s not here. Marino is gone.”

His eyes were glazed over, almost catatonic. I stepped over to him, lowered his hands, and forced him to look at me.

“Jacob…” I said again, and he was back in the room with me. The killer in him calmed down.

He rushed over to Zoey and began cutting the ropes. I tried as gently as I could to remove the tape from her mouth without hurting her. I felt her wrists. Her pulse was weak, but she was alive. Her wrists and ankles were raw and sliced open. She had a bruise on the side of her cheek and scratches along her arm. But this girl was a fighter, just like my Nickel.

“Zoey, baby, can you hear me?” He was crying over her still body.

No response. He picked her up and held her close to his chest, begging her to wake up.

“We have to get out of here, Jack. I need to get Zoey to a hospital.”

“Any sign of Marino?” I asked.

“No, I checked the entire fourth floor. He’s running again.”

“We will get him, Jacob. I swear it on my life.”

“Yeah, Jack, that makes two of us.”

He carried her ever so gently down all four flights of stairs. I was looking all around for any sign of Marino, but the area was vacant with no one around. Jacob climbed in the back of my car with Zoey still in his arms, while I drove us to the nearest hospital. I called Max, and he told me that the building was covered. He could see everything from where they were positioned, and there was never a sign of Marino.

“Where is he then?”

We were close to Northwestern Memorial, the same hospital I kept bedside vigil with Sara only a short time ago. I hated to go back in there, but I couldn’t just leave Jacob and not know what the night would bring for him or Zoey.

Jacob called ahead and demanded we be met with a trauma team at the emergency room doors. He fired off a list of orders to whoever was on the other end of his call. He was in full police mode now. His phone rang again. All I heard him say was that he had her. I pulled up in front, and a team rushed the car with a stretcher to assess Zoey’s condition. Jacob ran alongside her as they got further into the hospital.

Max pulled up not a minute later. He looked beside himself.

“What the fuck Jack? Where is this guy? We had the building surrounded.”

He kicked the ground, and then it hit me.

“He wanted me there, but not to find him, but to distract me.”

“What are you saying, Jack?”

“He’s playing us, Max, has been all along. He knew that once Jacob made contact with me, I would begin to piece it all together. He had no way of knowing what Jacob would or wouldn’t say to me, so he probably counted on Jacob revealing his duplicitous side, and change direction. It was clear he had taken Zoey, but he only brought her there today to the apartment. She was being held somewhere else until he made the call to me today. Something didn’t seem right when we were first in the apartment. It appeared to be staged to look as if someone was hiding out there, but he wasn’t.”

“Why would he go through all of this trouble of snatching this girl, and then disappear? Don’t you think he would want to settle the score with you once and for all, like an eye for an eye?”

An eye for an eye?
I repeated over and over in my head until it became clear. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end again.
No. He wouldn’t.

“We have to go, Max, right now!”

I jumped into my car and made my way to my bar with Max close behind me. I quickly called Sara, and got her voicemail. No one was picking up at the restaurant either.

“Where the hell is everybody?”

I banged my fist on the steering wheel. I called again and again, and no answer. By the time I got to the restaurant, the bar was closed. Something was very wrong. Sara wouldn’t have closed this early, unless she was forced to.

“Jack, what’s going on? Why is the place shut down?”

“Something is wrong, Max. No one is answering the bar line, or their cell phones.”

“You don’t think that crazy fuck came here now? Do you?”

“That’s exactly what I think. He’s in there waiting for me, and holding my Sara and restaurant hostage.”

“Jack, you have one piece on you, and so do I. It’s two against one. We can take him.”

“No, Max. We have to be smart about this. I can access the camera feed from my phone. If I can see where he is inside, then maybe I can get a jump on him while you grab Sara.”

I opened up the app on my phone to view the live feed from all the cameras that cover the bar, dining room, kitchen, and corridors. Everything looked in order with no sign of Marino…or Sara. Dammit! The place was empty, which could only mean one thing: he was upstairs in my house…with my wife.

“I’m going in, Max.”

“Jack, the guys are on their way. You can’t go in there on your own. You don’t know what is going through his mind right now.”

“I have to get to Sara. Did you see what he did to that poor girl back at that apartment? I can’t wait, Max. I’ve had enough of this shit. If he’s hurt one hair on her head, he’s not coming out alive.”

I entered our home as quietly as I could. The entire first floor was an open floor plan. There would be nowhere you could hide here, which means they had to be upstairs. I crept up the stairs in slow motion until I reached the top, where our bedroom was located. Gun in hand, I opened the door to find the room empty.

“What the hell?”

I searched the entire room, including the closets, and no one was here.

“Sara!” I called out for her. I continued to scream her name until I made it back downstairs, and that’s when Max ran in.

“Jack, you hear the chopper out there? He’s on the roof, and he’s got Sara with him. Your boy, Jacob, must have called it in. The place is surrounded.”

“Fuck! Marino has nowhere to go now but down. He’s just that crazy to take Sara with him. I have to get up there.”

“Jack, those cops out there are not going to let you on that roof.”

“Max, how do you think he got up there in the first place? Use your head. The top floor leads to the roof where Sara has her garden up there.”

“Shit! I forgot. I feel like freaking Spiderman today with climbing fire escapes and shit.”

“I have to call Jacob, and then I’m heading up to the roof.”

I called his cell twice before he finally picked up. His girl was whisked away by doctors, and he was still waiting to hear news. He had called the Chicago FBI Field Office after we left the apartment. He had Marino on tape, and his threat was heard by not only Chicago, but by Wade himself. He was the one that authorized the takedown of Agent Dante Marino by any means of force. What no one anticipated was Marino grabbing my wife to use as his fucking shield.

He was cornered with nowhere to go. I reached the entrance to the roof with bright helicopter lights shining down on me. Jacob was put through to the field commander on the ground and ordered them to hold their fire and not take me out as one of the potential threats. I didn’t care what happened to me, though, as long as Sara wasn’t caught in the crossfire.

The helicopter pulled back and scanned its lights on another area of the roof. I called out for Marino and then realized where he was holding Sara. We had a small greenhouse to one side and then a rooftop patio that covered the rest. Up here was where Sara came up with the Rooftop Burger. It was the best thing we had on our menu.

“Oh please, God, let her be alright.”

There was a strong smell of gasoline. The odor was stronger as I got closer to the greenhouse, and that’s when I saw Sara inside, bound to a chair, and surrounded by unlit candles. Standing by the door was Marino, who was holding a flare.

“
Jack be nimble. Jack be quick. Is Jack quick enough to get my candlestick?
I used to love that nursery rhyme. I read it to my brother when he was little. When I was taken away from him, I left the book with him…you know, to remember me by until I could come for him. He was a good kid, Jack. Just fell into the wrong crowd. I tried to help him, but I was young and could only do so much. By the time I was able to, it was too late for my kid brother. He wouldn’t get off the streets, Jack. He said he was part of a family that didn’t abandon him like I did.”

“That destroyed me, Jack. He wouldn’t listen to me, and I had no choice but to leave. But I promised to come back for him when I could take care of us both. I didn’t get a second chance with Mikey, because of you…Jack. You hurt my brother and made sure he would suffer for the rest of his life. But he didn’t have a long life, because of you...Jack. He had nothing left, so he sliced his fucking wrists to bleed out in a dirty, lonely jail cell. They didn’t find him until the next morning. He had no blood left in his body, because he bled out and died alone in his bed…because of you…Jack.”