Princess, Without Cover (21 page)

She cackled crazily as she stared at Paul’s appalled face. 

“Ignore her.” Randall instructed him calmly.  “She’s beyond reason now.” 

Randall focused on Jillian.  “Jillian, at least let me hug Sydney one more time.  Will you do that? It’s not too much to ask. ”

As he spoke, he leveled his gaze at Stephen and Stephen realized that the senator was entirely aware of his presence. His breathing quickened as he watched carefully for Randall’s next move.

“Oh, whatever. You’re a sentimental fool.” 

Jillian shoved Sydney hard into Randall. He caught her easily and hugged her close, keeping his eyes on his wife.

 “Get behind me,” he whispered.

“What?” Sydney pulled away from him in surprise, but he grabbed her and thrust her behind him before she had time to react.  He guarded her with his body as he addressed his wife again.

“You’re the fool.  And you’re going to have to shoot me first, Jillian.  It won’t look like I shot my own daughter, I can guarantee you that.”  His expression was grim as he continued to shield his daughter. 

“Stop, Randall.  I
will
shoot you.  I don’t want to do it this way, but I will.” Jillian’s voice was venomous and didn’t falter. The gun she aimed at him did not shake in the slightest. 

“Well, darling, what way do you plan on doing it?  Did you plan on kneeling next to me and whispering endearments?  I think not.” 

“Hmm.  You know, if you’re going to make things difficult…”

Her voice trailed off as she changed the aim of her gun.  She swung it around until it was pointed at Paul Hayes’ heart. 

“We’ll just do it this way.” 

Paul only had time to gasp before Jillian calmly squeezed the trigger and he staggered backward, crashing through a window.  Randall’s shout split the air. Time seemed to stand still as they all watched Senator’s Hayes’ body roll to a stop on the ground outside and remain unmoving.

“He’s dead because of you,” Jillian hissed.

“No!” 

Randall broke the silence and lunged forward like a cannon, grabbing Jillian and spinning her around.  She struggled against him, but he moved with the strength of a raging bull and he was much larger than she was. With one hand, he forced Jillian’s gun straight up in the air.  With the other, he held her slim body tightly to his chest.

 “Now!” he yelled to Stephen.  “Do it now!” He glanced at Sydney.  “Syd, get back!” 

Jillian screeched wildly, flailing like a maniac. In the midst of the struggle, her gun went off, shooting a hole in the ceiling. Randall grasped her hand tighter, squeezing until her knuckles turned white. Sydney looked in relief at Stephen before she moved away from her parents.

Stephen didn’t waste another second. He stepped into the doorway, took quick aim and shot Jillian squarely in the chest. The impact sent both she and Randall flying backward into the breakfast bar, sending the bar stools flying into every direction. 

Sydney screamed as blood splattered onto her.  She wasn’t sure whose blood it was, because the entire kitchen seemed to be a scene from a bloody nightmare. Her feet slipped and slid in the pooled blood on the floor and she tripped and fell backward.  Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. 

Her mother hit the ground and flopped over, face down.  She lay still as her blonde hair quickly became saturated with her own blood as it pooled around her. Her gun rested limply in her motionless hand. 

Randall lay beside her, his breathing hard and labored, but his eyes open.  Sydney rushed to his side, pausing only to kick her mother’s gun across the kitchen floor.  She tried not to notice that her father’s hand was covered in blood as she grasped it tightly to her chest.  She swallowed hard and focused on her dad’s face. 

“Daddy, please.  Don’t die.  please,” she pleaded as Randall closed his eyes. 

“I’m trying not to, Princess,” he whispered, but he didn’t re-open his eyes.  She gripped his hand even tighter. 

He struggled to speak.  “Is Paul…” 

Sydney swallowed hard and glanced at Paul.  He was laying completely still outside of the window.  The shattered window was spattered with blood and she didn’t see Paul’s chest moving.  She didn’t think he was breathing. 

“I don’t know, daddy. I can’t tell,” she murmured.  

Even she could detect the doubt in her voice, however.  Randall nodded almost imperceptibly.  Sydney felt Stephen’s presence directly behind her before she felt him lightly grasp her shoulder. 

Glancing up at him, she asked hurriedly, “Stephen, can you call an ambulance, please?”      She let go of her father’s hand only to use her own to try and staunch the bleeding from the wound in her father’s shoulder.   She gasped as she saw how much blood pumped out around her hand.  He was losing far too much blood.  

“Daddy, you’re going to be fine,” she insisted.  She wasn’t sure if she was assuring herself or Randall.  She began praying so quickly that it sounded like a mantra.  “Please, God.  Please, please, God.”  She couldn’t even manage to finish the prayer.  She knew that God would know what she was praying for.  And she just kept repeating it.  “Please, God.  Please, please…”

She could hear Stephen speaking on the kitchen phone, rushing his words as he requested an ambulance.  At the exact same time, she heard loud footsteps charging through the house and men yelling “FBI!” 

She didn’t feel any relief, however, because she could feel her father’s life slipping from him as his body started to shake.

“Please, daddy.  Don’t die…”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The fact that she should be devastated didn’t escape her.  Her mother was lying in a pool of blood in front of her, but somehow Sydney couldn’t bring herself to react.  She knew that it would hit her later.  All of the pain from her mother’s betrayal and hatred would sink in when this was all over, but for now, she only felt numb.

She stood silently in the corner of the kitchen with Stephen’s arm wrapped around her shoulder, watching the paramedics work on her father.  He was on a gurney now, strapped to an oxygen mask and an IV bag.  The paramedics were working so fast that their hands seemed to be a blur.  He was still alive, though, and that was the important thing.

Paul Hayes was not.  Neither were Ben Keyes, Stella Wilkinson, Harrison Daniels, Deidre Wilcox or Jillian Ross.  Six lives had been taken in one afternoon.  It seemed like she should feel differently, now that the balance of life had shifted so much directly in front of her.  But she still only felt the strange numbness consuming her.  It all felt almost surreal. 

She sank to the floor and Stephen sat next to her.  Someone brought her a blanket and she didn’t bother telling them that she wasn’t cold.  She was shaking from the shock.  Stephen wrapped it around her shoulders anyway and held her hand. 

“Sydney, I’m so sorry.  This shouldn’t have happened. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” 

His voice was pained and it caught in his throat.  She turned her watery hazel eyes to stare at him, blankly at first and then with compassion.

“Stephen, none of this is your fault.  I’m alive because of you. My dad is alive because of you.  Thank you.  You saved me.  Again.”  She leaned into his shoulder, resting her head against him.  “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he murmured back, rubbing her shoulders lightly.  She closed her eyes, enjoying the comfort that she found in his touch. His were hands that would never hurt her. 

“Sydney?”  They both looked up in surprise at the tiny voice.

“Danny!  Where have you been?”

With everything that had happened, Sydney had completely forgotten about the little boy.  She hadn’t seen him since she left him in the bath tub.  It seemed like ages ago now.

Danny was incredibly pale as he stood silently in the doorway, taking in the bloody scene in front of him. It took a moment before Sydney realized that blood was running down his arm and dripping onto the floor in droplets.  She jumped up and rushed to him, pulling him down onto her lap on the floor so that she could examine him.

“Danny, what happened?” 

“I don’t know. I was upstairs, resting after your mom gave me a snack and tea.  And then a little bit ago, a bug bit me.  And I started bleeding.”

A bug bite?  Stephen and Sydney’s eyes met over the little boy’s head, and in unison, they looked at the hole in the ceiling. 

Jillian’s errant bullet. The guest bedroom that Danny had been in was directly over the kitchen.  Sydney quickly pushed Danny’s sleeve up to his shoulder to find an inch-long cut on his bicep.  The bullet had only grazed him although it might be deep enough to require stitches.  All of the breath in her lungs exhaled in a whoosh of relief.

She hugged him tightly to her. 

“Danny, I’m so sorry that you got mixed up in all of this.  So, so sorry.  If you go with Stephen, he can take you to call your parents, okay?  And then a paramedic will have to look at your arm.” 

She hugged him again and then handed him off to Stephen.  “I’ve got to check on my dad.”

She stepped carefully through the mess in the kitchen.  It was like a warzone.  Jillian and Harrison’s bodies were outlined by tape and tiny flags.  FBI agents were busily taking samples and photographing the scene.  Shattered glass and pools of blood seemed to be everywhere, so Sydney carefully watched where she stepped, although she tried to avoid looking at her mother’s body. 

The paramedics finally seemed to have her father ready to transport to the hospital, so Sydney stepped up to his side.  His olive complexion was drained of color and his eyes were closed.  She grabbed his hand.

“Daddy?”

Randall Ross opened his eyes and looked at his daughter.  She felt the weakness in his grasp as he squeezed her hand.  Anxiety creased her brow as she stared down at him.

“Sydney, I’m going to be fine.  It’s a shoulder wound.  They’ve stopped the bleeding and everything is going to be okay.  I love you.”

A lump formed in her throat that she found extremely difficult to swallow. 

“I love you, too, Daddy.  We’ll see you at the hospital.”

Two paramedics began pushing him rapidly toward the door, so Sydney took a step back to allow them to pass.   She was still standing in the same spot a few minutes later, lost in her thoughts, when FBI Agent Briggs approached her.

Short and middle-aged, Briggs was nondescript in appearance. Without his blue jacket with the yellow “FBI” letters, she would never have guessed who he was.  But his eyes were kind. 

“Miss Ross?” He seemed hesitant to interrupt her reverie.  She offered him a small smile and extended her hand with all of the grace of Jackie O.

“Agent.  Thank you for coming here to help.”

He reached out and shook her hand. 

“I’m sorry that we couldn’t get here sooner. The courage that you’ve shown is admirable, young lady.” 

“Thank you,” she murmured softly, still looking absently around the room.  “There are so many things about today that I’m never going to understand.”

“I can imagine.” Agent Briggs solemnly evaluated her bloodied face, not a drop of which was her own. “Well, actually, maybe I can’t. You’ve gone through hell.  Anyone who thinks that money can buy happiness should come and talk to you.” 

Sydney stared at him with clear eyes. 

“You’re right, Agent Briggs.  Money certainly cannot buy happiness.” She gazed at her mother’s lifeless body.  “Obviously.” She sighed a sigh heavy enough to contain the weight of the world in it while Agent Briggs stared at her sympathetically.

“It’s going to be awhile before we can piece everything together, but from what we’ve gathered, your mom and Harrison Daniels have been plotting this for awhile.  Revenge and money are two of the most common motives that I see in my line of work and between the two of them, they had them both covered.”

“I just don’t understand how my mother could turn on us like that.  I’ve never done a thing to her.  It’s unfathomable.”

Sydney couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from her mother’s body.  It was macabre and morbid, but she was fascinated by the way her mother had threatened her life just minutes ago, and was now dead herself.  Sydney was safe and her mother was dead.  Her mind just couldn’t comprehend everything…it couldn’t keep up.  It had been overloaded today.

“Miss Ross, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if your mother had mental issues that she kept carefully hidden from everyone.  Just like Harrison Daniels.  No sane person could have done what they did.” 

His eyes beseeched her with an unspoken message- that it wasn’t her fault that her mother didn’t love her.  She appreciated that and she had been right.  Agent Briggs was a kind person.

“We’re going to need your statement regarding everything that has happened, but it can wait until tomorrow.  I think it’s best if you go to the hospital to be with your father today.” 

She nodded as he squeezed her elbow, before he left her to continue working on the scene. Stephen sidled up to take the agent’s place. 

“Danny’s mother was beyond relieved.  She’s on her way over.  I told her that the FBI was here and that they would more than likely want to talk to her, as well.  What a nightmare, Sydney.”

“Well, that’s the understatement of the decade.”

She turned and kissed him on the mouth, savoring the feel of his soft, warm lips as he wrapped his arms around her and held her close. She was safe in his arms. If she had ever doubted it, she knew it now.  Thirty minutes ago, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever even see Stephen again, let alone stand and talk to him.  She soaked in his presence now, happy in an I’m-so-happy-we’re-alive type of way.

“How are you holding up?” Stephen examined her face and wiped at the blood droplets that were dried onto her cheek. It was hard telling whose blood it even was.

“Oh, you know.  Like any other girl who… oh, forget it.  I’m a wreck.  I should be crying, but I’m not. I can’t and I don’t know why. I feel numb, my mother is dead, I thought you were dead, my father almost died and I feel like I could sleep for a week. I just want to pull the covers over my head and hide from the world.  But on the same token, I know I’m going to be scared to close my eyes.  I’m afraid of what I’ll see when I do.”