No Way Back. Andrew Gross

bedroom.

      Voices. At first I just thought it was Curtis on the phone.

      Then I realized I was hearing someone else’s voice as well. Another man. I turned the water down slightly and listened. This was already embarrassing enough. The last thing I needed was to face anyone else.

      I cracked the bathroom door open and peeked out.

      My heart came up my throat at what I saw.

      There was another man in the room. Gray suit, white shirt open. Salt-and-pepper hair. The second I saw him I realized I’d seen him before. Downstairs in the lounge. He and another man, a black man, had been sitting around a table.

      Except now he had a gun pointed at Curtis, who was on the bed.

      I instantly froze, then drew back inside. I didn’t know what to do. I was worried he would hear the running water. He’d see my jacket and shoes. He’d have to know I was here. Years before, I’d been on the Nassau County police force, but that was basically as a cadet, a lifetime ago. Eleven years. God forbid he did something terrible to Curtis. His next move would be to come in here for me!

      “Pick it up!” I heard the man order him.

      Holding my heart together, I peered back out.

      He’d tossed a second gun onto the bed. It landed next to Curtis, who stared at it with growing terror.

      “I said fucking pick it up!” the intruder said again, leveling his own gun menacingly.

      “No, I’m not going to pick it up,” Curtis said, his voice in between panic and defiance. “I know what you’re going to do. You just want to make it look like I drew on you …” He pushed the gun away and it rolled to the edge of the bed and onto the floor. “You’re going to shoot me, no matter what I do?”

      The intruder just looked at the gun and shook his head. “Doesn’t matter anyway … This is for Gillian, asshole.”

      He pulled the trigger. My eyes bolted wide.

      There was a loud, muffled pop, and Curtis’s body jumped off the bed with the impact. He tried to scream “No!” Then there was a second pop, and to my horror, Curtis jerked and then went limp.

      I drew back inside, muffling a terrified scream. I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen.

      As I stared through the slit in the doorway, it was clear—a hundred percent clear, in that horrifying split second—that he had to know I was in there. His next move would be to come for me. My heart started to race uncontrollably. What the hell could I do? The bathroom door seemed to open on its own. My eyes locked on the gun on the floor, only a few feet from me. Old instincts kicked in, instincts I hadn’t felt in years. I stepped out of the bathroom and picked it up. The intruder had gone over to check on Curtis’s body.

      I raised the gun at him, two-handed, shouting, “I’m an ex-cop! Put the gun down. Put your hands in the air!”

      I hadn’t even held a gun in years, and never to someone’s face. In this kind of situation. My hands were visibly shaking.

      The man just looked at me and put up his palms defensively, as if to say, Slow down, okay, honey …

      But inwardly, I saw him sizing up the situation: My nerves. His chances. How quickly he could raise his gun. I’d just watched him commit a cold-blooded killing. I knew then he wasn’t about to let me call the cops on him.

      “Lady, you have no idea what you stepped into…”

      I leveled the gun at his chest. “I said lay the gun down and put your hands in the air!”

      That’s when I saw it. A realization etched into his face. Something he knew and I didn’t. Like the situation had suddenly shifted, his way and not mine. And then in horror I realized just what it was. The gun I was holding had been a plant. To make it look like Curtis had drawn on him first. He would never have risked Curtis taking it and using it on him.

      The safety was still on!

      Frantically I turned the gun on its side and found the lever. I thumbed it forward, just as the killer took a step to the side and leveled his gun at me.

      I screamed and pulled the trigger, the recoil knocking me backward.

      He staggered back, continuing to hold out the gun.

      I pulled it again.

      The first shot struck him squarely in the chest. I saw a burst of crimson on his shirt, hurtling him back against the wall. The next shot hit him in the throat, his hand darting there as he slowly slid, blood smearing against the wallpaper, his gun clattering against the floor.

      He was scarily still.

      There was this awful, heart-stopping silence. I just stood there, an acrid, all-too-familiar smell filling up the room. My heart pounding like a boom box turned all the way up. Wendy, what have you done? Frozen, I stared at him in disbelief. The guy didn’t move a muscle, the flower of blood widening on his white shirt.

       Oh my God, Wendy, what have you just fucking done?

      Dazed, I put the gun back on the bed and rushed over to Curtis, who was clearly dead, the smoky, dark eyes that had so intrigued me at the bar just minutes before now glassy and fixed. You have no idea what you stepped into, the intruder had said. Okay, so what … what have I stepped into? What have you done, Curtis, to deserve this? I tried to think, but my mind was jumbled and confused.

      My heart still racing, I ran over and checked the man on the floor. You didn’t have to be an MD to see he was dead as well, his cold, gray eyes glazed over and inert; the pool of blood on his chest continuing to spread. You killed him, Wendy … I’d pulled a trigger once before on the job, and it had changed my life. But not like this. Not at point-blank range. Not with my life on the line. I thought, What the hell do I do now? Call security? The police? You just killed someone, Wendy … I knew I didn’t have any choice. I’d just watched the son of a bitch kill Curtis in cold blood. He was about to shoot me too. I was lucky to even be alive.

      Anyone would see it was clearly self-defense.

      But then the reality of where I was swelled up inside me.

      No. I couldn’t do that at all! Call the police. That was the last thing I could do. I was in the hotel room of a complete stranger. A place I absolutely shouldn’t have been. How would I possibly explain that? Not just to the police, even if I could convince them of what had happened.

      But to my husband. To Dave. To our kids!

      That I was up here to have sex with a guy I’d just met at the bar when the whole thing happened.

      My whole life would be torn apart.

      My eyes fell on the intruder. Who are you? Why were you following Curtis? What were you up here to do? Leaning over him, I saw he had an earphone in his ear. Which suddenly unnerved me even more, realizing that there was likely an accomplice somewhere. Probably in the hotel at that moment!

      Possibly even right outside.

       If he has any idea what had just happened in here …

      Terrified, I took the earphone out and held it to my ear. I heard a voice on the other end.

      “Ray? Ray, what’s going on up there? Answer me, Ray, are you all right?”

      His jacket had fallen open, and I saw an ID folder in the breast pocket. I started thinking, What if he was security? Or maybe even the police? What then?

      I was suddenly encased in sweat.

      I opened the ID folder and stared. And whatever panic or fear I had felt up to that moment became just a dry run for what was rippling through me now.

      I was staring at a badge. But not from hotel security.

      It read:

      UNITED