If Tomorrow Never Comes (21 page)

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Although
the address on the package seemed familiar, Jordan never delivered to the same
location twice.
 
After worrying it around
in her mind for a few moments, she decided there were so many deliveries over
the years her imagination was working overtime.
 
Besides, sweet reflections of Jake were adding
to the state of confusion clogging all rational thoughts.
 

It
wasn’t until she rounded the corner, with bright clarity, that the environment
became familiar.
 
Gorging instincts
churning her stomach making her heart sprint, and mind wail warned her to,
“Turn around, now.”

The
sky was chalkboard black.
 
The wind
seemed to be holding its breath, just like Jordan.
 
A runaway imagination convinced her, the
monstrous trees lining the street were moving, their arms, and hands stretching
closer and closer preparing to pluck the life from her.
 
The berries on nearby bushes were examining
eyes, the weeds, cover for lurking rodents, snakes and spiders waiting for
sustenance.
 
Straining to see in the
dark, eyes swishing this way and that hoped to find light from a window in one
of the rundown buildings surrounding her.
 
She was never lucky.
 
Unable to
move, minutes stretched before strength came to take a step forward, the sound
of broken glass beneath her feet penetrating the silence.
 
Engulfed by uncommon fear all she heard was
the reckless beating of her heart, like a frenzied bird escaping a hunter.
 
Foolishly, she had trapped herself in a tranquilized
world.
 

Preposterous
sensations, she scolded herself.
 
Margaret and Jake had provided a false sense of security.
  
Damn them, they'd made her soft.
 
Naturally, in this neighborhood, alone in the
earliest hours of the morning, anyone would be spooked, or, could it be before
tonight she never cared what happened?
 
Nothing mattered so convinced was she she'd be better off dead.
 

Tonight,
dammit, it mattered more than she dared to admit.
 
She needed to see Jake one more time.
 
See his reaction when he learned of Scorpio’s
death.
 
Reaching into a pocket, slender
fingers explored the gun she’d stolen more than a week ago from Margaret's
apartment.
 
Thanks to overhearing Jake‘s
instructions, she knew exactly how to load, aim and pull the trigger.
 
Tonight, if Scorpio showed his face, she
planned to put a bullet between his eyes.

Behind,
a garbage can crashing to the ground rolled toward her spewing refuse that
seemed to take on life.
 
A cat
screeched.
 
Gusting wind tugged at her
clothes, shocking occurrences that affected her reflexes and made her drop the
package.
 
Wide eyes jerked wildly.
 
Her legs seemed like mush as she, slowly,
cautiously bent to retrieve the parcel.
 
Across the street, behind a tree, something moved, she was sure of it.

Now,
she wasn't sure she knew anything about anything.
 
Calling upon her ability to block out all
emotions, inhaling several deep breaths shored up what little courage
remained.
 
Leaving her heart on the
sidewalk, she continued to approach the structure twenty feet away the dense
silence magnifying her footsteps tapping out an S.O.S.

Awaiting
his signal, all eyes were on Billy.
 
With
a flick of a wrist, he turned the brim of his hat around, just as his idol
always did just before a raid.
 
It was
too late when he saw the courier in front of the house an innocent victim soon
to be caught between crossfire.
 
Knowing
the person didn’t stand a chance, he justified his actions by deciding that the
courier’s death would be like crushing a cockroach only to have thousands of
others take its place.
 
An insignificant
incident compared to eliminating a contributor to the drug problem in
Chicago.
 

Abandoning
his car a safe distance away, Jake, sprinted, leaping over cans of garbage,
overgrown bushes, fences, the hoods of cars', abandoned bikes'.
 
He tripped, and fell.
 
Regaining his equilibrium, cursing up a
storm, his eyes zeroed in on Billy behind the tree, the building, and lastly
the . . . courier.
 
At once, his body
slammed into a brick wall built by the worst terror he’d ever known.
 
Visions of his mother and John sped across
his mind forcing what oxygen remained in contaminated lungs upward into a
shriek, “Jordan!
 
No!”
  

Billy
spun around trying to assess the man in rags running toward him.
 
Wondering who in hell he was he ordered the
man in the line of fire to hit the ground.

Was
that Jake's voice?
 
Impossible, it was
merely a dream Jordan decided.
 
Determined, stature erect, she, climbed decayed steps that moaned and
creaked beneath her slight weight, stepped over holes in rotted flooring and
faced what suddenly appeared to be a ten-foot blockade.
 

One,
two, one, two, one, two, three, the knuckles of the hand determined to send a
bullet to its mark rapped on the door.
 
Receiving no reply, she tugged and yanked and tugged on the
humidity-swollen wood, a blockade that refused access until pure unadulterated
anger shot adrenaline to her arm.
 
The
moment the door opened, like a gavel in a judge's hand, she was sentenced to
hell.
           

When
Billy raised his arm, the long awaited signal filled the air with sounds of
exploding guns and breaking glass that scattered every living thing.

“Jesus!
 
No, Billy,” Jake roared.
 
Stretching his legs, his torso, his arms, his
fingers beyond the bounds of human ability he attempted to grab Billy’s arm
before he gave the signal, but despite the tips of his fingers grazing cloth,
they fell short of their mark.
 

Billy
heard his name, saw the eyes of the man charging past him on his way across the
battlefield.
 
There was no mistaking
Jake.
 
Billy cringed.
 
So much for hoping his hero would not arrive
until the raid was over.
 

A
raid ordered by McMaster’s more than a week ago that he instructed Billy to
have Jake lead.
 
Order's that were
deliberately ignored until the last minute so optimistic was Billy that his
team could, out maneuver, out shoot Scorpios' men.
 
After all, they had received their training
from the best, someone who always lectured never to take unnecessary
chances.
 
Then why, in hell, was Jake
entering the war zone?

Torn
apart by despairing choices, someone he feared more than life itself, and
someone he loved, left Billy two choices,
 
kill Jake, or face the consequences.
 
For a long time he succumbed to expectations hoping to protect his
friend, and, as he raised his gun, and aimed at Jake's back, as his finger
began squeezing the trigger, everything that was once black and white took on
clarity.
 
He couldn’t kill his hero, his
best friend.
 
Choosing the path forged by
his leader, Billy fired providing Jake with the necessary cover praying a bullet
would find him before he had to face Jake or worse, Scorpio.

The
moment Jordan entered the house and the barrels of guns raised, she hit the
floor.
 
While the roar of ricocheting
bullets hurling wood splinters and glass into the air tore at her ear-drums she
frantically clawed at the floor crawling like a reptile toward cover while the
ghastly odor of gunpowder made, her cough, and her eyes water.
 
She screamed as a bullet, lodging in the wall
less than an inch above her head, powdered her face with plaster.
 
Even in her worst nightmares, she never
envision dying this way, the way she lived, alone, filled with terror.

Engulfing
pain slammed her eyelids closed as a hard-soled shoe came brutally against her
fragile ribs curling her eyebrows into a tight ball.
 
Her teeth bit her lips with such tremendous
force she gagged from the taste of blood.

 
“Get, to hell, out of my way, bitch,” a man
snarled in a frantic attempt to escape gunfire.
 
There was a sickening groan, a thud.
 
Natural instinct pried Jordan’s eyes open hoping to avoid the demon of
death chasing her, closing in, groping her clothing, tugging, tearing.
  
Eyes glazed with a veil of recognizable
death were staring at her, blood gushing from the victims’ twisted mouth as his
desperate last breath gurgled from his throat.
 
Snatching her clothing from the death grip threatening to pull her into
a whirlpool of blackness, she bravely slithered over the body.
 

Brandish
gunfire unmasked a doorknob an arm’s length away.
 
Wildly twisting and jerking she gained
asylum.
 
Thrust into the nightmares of
the past, as she did when a little girl, she crouched into the corner, tugging
her nightgown over bare feet, pressing her palms over ears to shut out the
blasts of accusing bullets.
 
Every
microscopic speck of her twitched relentlessly as starved lungs sucked in quick
breaths.
 
Burying her face, into her
dolls hair, harsh, rasping sobs sounding as if torn from her, though believing
she was screaming and crying, her vocal cords never wavered nor did tears give into
the potential rising flood.

Crazed
from worry left Jake no room for rational thought.
 
In his mind, all he saw was Jordan's
face.
 
All he heard were her
screams.
 
Dear God, she was in pain,
suffering, bleeding to death, dying alone.
 
After promising to protect her, knowing himself the results of broken
promises, how they wring hearts and drain life, he had to save her.
 
He couldn’t save his mother, or John but this
time, if it cost him everything he would find Jordan, and if he couldn’t
protect her, at least she’d die in his arms, then he’d summon the wrath of God
to avenge her.
 

Jake
along with the door crashed to the floor, a shocking incident that made
Scorpios’ men wide-eyed with disbelief.
 
The person they expected was supposed to be in uniform, not in rags like
the creature boldly entering.
  
They
could not waste their ammunition on a pitiful street bum besides the idiot
wouldn't live much longer anyway.

Jake
had given his men the advantage; their raining bullets offered the protection
required to crawl to safety.
 
As though a
roaring fire had engulfed the building, gun smoke too dense to permit visual
penetration made his eyes sting and water. Depending solely on touch, with the
odor of death encompassing him, he began searching for Jordan.
 
When the tips of his fingers grazed a body,
believing it was Jordan, he grabbed, tugged, and shook fear sifting through his
body heaved his stomach, and tossed his heart into a savage sea of bile until a
flash of light exposed a man’s face.
 
Jake’s hand jerked back.
 
Struggling to see through the darkness and thick smoke, insanity
continued to thrash him with its invisible power until a foot away he saw a
door.
 

New
hope banished the exploding sounds and pungent smell so busy was Jake praying
Jordan found refuge.
 
All that mattered
was reaching her in time to confess his love before it was too late.
 
Resolve iced his blood.
 
Chills shot the length of him, senses that
were telling him he’d tempted fate for the last time.
 

All
at once, a great wave of relief clawing at his resolve brightened his
countenance.
 
Was it real?
 
Did he hear muffled screaming, crying?
 
Dear God, let it be Jordan, he prayed.
  
The possibility that she was still alive
made his heart beat to a different drum and gave strength to determined hands
that wrenched the door open.
 
There was a
shrill scream.
 
The door slammed.

Again,
he was coming after her.
  
It was
time.
 
He would tear more of her dolls'
hair as he ripped it away and flung it against the wall.
 
He would take her to bed, strip her, and do
all the horrible things he'd done so many times before.
 
Even through the impenetrable blackness, she
recognized the face, the hooded eyes.
 
Survival dictated there be, no sound, no breathing, not even a
flinch.
 
It was either him or her.
 
Tugging the gun free, Jordan aimed.
 
This time she’d, win, end the madness
forever, and finally follow through with the plans her mind repeatedly
envisioned.