The Reynolds/Bradshaw Connection: Chapter 14 - Revenge
The Reynolds/Bradshaw Connection
Thanks for all the hard work you put into this Keaira. It will indeed be missed in the sequel.
This chapter is largely unbeta'd, by the way, if it's worse than any of the previous chapters.
See if you can find the name of a famous historical figure in the chapter…it’s a bit hidden, but a hint - it involves a new character’s first name, along with a phonetic similarity to his last name. Labor union leader too; end of the hints.
Opening lyrics come from The Dave Matthews Band’s The Space Between; end lyrics belong to Patti Smith’s Revenge
Chapter 14: Revenge
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The space between
The tears we cry
Is the laughter keeps us coming back for more
The space between
The wicked lies we tell
And hope to keep us safe from the pain
But will I hold you again?
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Lucy’s POV
“Ma’am, I’m going to shut the door now. Let me know if you need anything,” said the nurse, Joy, shutting the door to the hospital room behind her as she exited the room.
Amy was staying at the hospital at the American Embassy, where she had been transferred from the Hospital of Barcelona. It had been almost four days since Chastity had mutilated her, and from what I’d been told, she had not been conscious yet. For the first two days, it had pained me greatly not to be able to see her. I myself had been admitted to the hospital for the panic/anxiety attack and hysteria from which I had suffered. Upon entering back into a rational state, the first question I had asked was about Amy. Was she alright?
After she was rushed to the hospital, the medical staff had taken a sample of the blood and, determining that Amy was O-, had been forced to subject her to a blood transfusion. I was told that for about two days after the transfusion she was still in critical condition, but around the same time that I was released, she had been moved to one of the inpatients’ rooms. Her body had accepted the blood.
The only problem was that she was still unconscious. She was diagnosed with a score of fifteen in the Glasgow Coma Scale, which meant that the coma was right between moderate and severe. That, along with the fact that she hadn’t even opened her eyes was extremely disconcerting to me.
I sat down in the chair between Amy’s bed and the window, and took Amy’s hand, clasping it in between my two. Even though I knew her unconscious body would not be able to hear my words and confessions, I just needed to talk to her.
“Amy, I love you, you know that. In a couple days we’re just going to walk out the door and be done with the whole hospital.” I paused, trying to avoid my true feelings, just as they bubbled to the surface, “God, Amy, I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t gotten involved with Corleone or Chastity you wouldn’t be here. We’d still be off somewhere pretending like we never used to be spies or villains, or any of it,” at this point, my emotions escalated, and tears flowed freely from my eyes. “God, Amy…don’t do this to me. I can’t live without you. Without you, I’m nothing. I love you, and I just got you back. Please don’t let me lose you now. Please, Amy, just…”
My heart-to-heart with the unconscious body of the only person I loved more than life itself was interrupted by three loud knocks on the door. I looked up at the rectangular piece of glass in the middle of the door to see Scud’s face, a pained, sympathetic smile on his face. Behind him, Janet walked around, pacing, visually unnerved. As soon as I had my wits back with me, I had called and asked them to come down. That they had dropped everything and come meant a lot to me, and I’m sure it would have meant just as much to Amy. I beckoned them in with my hand, and they opened the door.
“Hey Luce,” Scud said, a slight hint of sorrow in his voice. “How is she?”
“She’s alive…” I trailed off; I couldn’t stand to say much else.
“What were you thinking Lucy?” Janet asked accusatorily. “If you’d never involved Amy in this stupid problem with your ex-girlfriend, she’d still be here.”
“Janet, she’s not dead. But you’re right…I shouldn’t have ever gotten her involved …” I cast my eyes downward and guiltily stared at the floor.
“Lucy…I’m sorry, that was mean,” Janet admitting, walking over to me and laying a hand on my shoulder, “It’s not your fault, it’s your psycho bitch of an ex-girlfriend’s,” Her hand fell to the small of my back and she enveloped me in a tight bear hug. With the exception of Amy and Scud, I really wasn’t one for physical contact, but it just felt so good to be able to hang onto someone, to share in mutual feelings. I wrapped my arms around Janet.
“Janet…I don’t know…if she’s going to be okay…I’m so worried,” I managed to get out, emotions taking hold again and choking the words.
“Ssh, it’ll be alright,” Janet assured me, patting a hand on my back.
“Hey, I’m still here!” Scud said, jokingly, as he walked over and joined in what was now a three-way hug. For a time, we just stood like that, arms around each other, just basking in the solace and shelter from pain that it provided.
“Luce, Amy’s going to be alright. I know it,” Scud said as we broke the hug and the door opened. I turned to the entrance to see a doctor standing in the doorway.
“Lucinda Reynolds,” the doctor said, glancing down at the clipboard he held. I looked up and he met my eyes. “You are the companion of Miss Bradshaw here, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“I just wanted to let you know that we ran the tests on Miss Bradshaw and her body has officially accepted the blood. There’s no telling when she’ll wake up, but we’ve downgraded her GCS to twelve. She was showing signs of improving, and, because of that, we do not believe that her coma is as bad as was once thought.” The tenseness that I had been feeling was relieved just a bit by that news, and the darkness in my face lightened a bit. The doctor smiled, “If you need anything else, just let me know…” The seriousness faded from his voice, as he offered up one little comforting piece of information, “she’ll be fine.”
She may be fine, I thought, my fears assuaged a bit, but Chastity won’t be. I’m going to make her pay…she won’t know what’s coming to her.
“Thanks, doc,” I said as he exited the room. He didn’t close the door fully, and I could hear him ask one of the other doctors whether another doctor at the hospital was still missing. I’d heard about it too, apparently he had been reported as a missing person about a week or so ago.
I turned back to Scud and Janet. “So, how’d things go at headquarters, any problems with the ice queen?”
“You mean Max?” Janet asked.
“The one and only.”
“She was pissed at Amy for leaving without telling her,” Scud said, “but no, she kinda encouraged us to come. I think even she’s worried about Amy.”
“She’s still an über-bitch, though,” Janet added, visibly annoyed at Max, “she’s still treating me like crap about my decision to marry my muffin here.” At the mention of the pet name, I shot Scud a look of friendly ridicule and an evil, mocking grin as I chuckled to myself. Scud’s cheeks rouged as he put a hand on Janet’s shoulder.
“So…anything we can do to help with the Chastity situation?” Scud asked.
“Actually…any chance you two could gather info and see what she’s been up to?”
“Sure, we’ll just need a key to the house…I’m assuming you’re staying here,” said Scud.
“Yeah, I’ll be here. I’m going to keep an eye on Amy.” I tossed the key to Scud, who put an arm around Janet as they started to walk out of the room. He bent down to her ear and, from the limited lip-reading skills I possessed, asked her politely not to use pet names in public anymore.
“Hey, Scud, Janet…” I called after them. They turned around. “…thanks for coming. It means a lot to me.”
“Not a problem…after all, it’ll give us a chance to bond,” Janet said, a sweet smile on her face.
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About fifteen minutes after Scud and Janet left and I had drifted off to sleep, I was awakened by a sharp and sudden cry. Reflexively, I jolted out of both my state of sleep and my seat, and prepared to confront whoever was in the room.
That was when I saw Amy sitting upright in the hospital bed, eyes open, sweat covering her brow, and a frenzied, panicked look in her eyes.
“…Amy?” I asked softly. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and I was hoping it wasn’t just a dream.
“Lucy? Where am I?” she asked, looking at me. I rose from my seat as tears started their accelerated descent, flowing from her eyes. “Oh my God…Lucy!”
I walked to the bed and flung my arms joyously around Amy, eliciting a cry of pain.
“Owww…Lucy, I’m glad to see you too, but I hurt all over. What happened?” I obeyed her wishes reluctantly, withdrawing my arms. I didn’t want to hurt her, but at the same time, I just wanted to feel her in my arms.
“You don’t remember?”
“No, not really, last thing I remember was getting some phone call from Petrie at the house.”
“From what I can tell, Chastity cut you pretty bad, apparently you and her got into some major firefight, too, judging from the state of the area. The police have barricaded the area off after they found the bloody desk, and all the stolen computer equipment.”
“Huh? Chastity? Firefight? What the hell are you talking about?” Amy asked agitatedly. The doctors had told me she may be like this for a bit, it was one of the steps of recovering, diagnosed with the Rancho Los Amigos Scale - basically she’d be going through stages of agitation/aggression, confusion, and such, which should improve rapidly. At least, I hoped so - Amy could be extremely annoying when she was agitated.
“Never mind,” I said. “At least you’re back.”
“What do you mean, never mind? I want to know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Fine…the mission Ms. Petrie gave us - it was to check out Pink Thunder headquarters. Looks like Chastity was expecting us though. She kinda ambushed us.”
“Oh, geez…oh…I think I remember now…she shot a tranq at you, right?”
I smiled, the doctors were right, she was recovering quite nicely and quickly. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“Oh, God, Lucy…I thought I was going to die,” Amy said, glumly, her face morphing into a depressing frown.
So did I, I thought solemnly. “Well, I’m just glad you’re back.”
“So am I.”
“You know everything I said the other day, about not being able to live without you?”
“Yeah…”
“Well, this kinda drove that home. Amy, if you had died, I don’t know what I would do…you’re everything to me. I love you more than I love myself. I…” I attempted to continue with my little soliloquy, but was interrupted by the shrill ring of the hospital’s phone. Damn it! The phone always seemed to ring at the wrong moment.
I picked up the phone, “Hello?”
“It’s Scud…umm…Lucy, there’s a problem.”
My eyes grew wide in agitation. “What problem?”
“Well, it looks like someone broke in. Everything’s all disheveled, the door was unlocked, sofa knocked over, that kinda stuff.”
“Shit. Anything missing?”
“How the hell would I know? Not that I can tell, but you’re the one who lives here.”
“Scud, there’s always the chance that it was Chastity, check for bugs or anything, make sure the phone’s not tapped.”
“Already done, we found a bug, and there’s no tap on the phone. Unless there’s another bug somewhere, you should be fine.”
I glanced at Amy, who was looking at me with an inquisitive stare. I mouthed the word ‘trouble’ to her, but she didn’t seem to comprehend.
“Thanks for letting me know, Scud. I’ll check things up. Hey, let Janet know that Amy’s awake.”
“Really? That’s GREAT!” Scud shouted, sounding a bit like Tony the Tiger. “Hey Jan! Amy’s awake!” He shouted, a bit muffled to the phone.
“She wants me to ask if she can talk to Amy.”
“Let me ask her,” I said, turning to Amy. “You feel like talking to Janet?”
“Sure, put her on. If I said no, I’d hear about it for years,” Amy laughed. Good, she was out of that mood she had been in.
“Yeah, let me just give the phone to Amy, it’ll only be a sec.”
“YAY!” Janet’s voice came out of the phone.
“Honey, put the phone down, you can pick it up down here.”
“Hang up the phone, muffin. This is some girl talk we’re about to do here.”
Scud sighed. “Fine…See you Lucy.”
I couldn’t help but smile. If this was their pre-marital life, their marriage would certainly be a fun adventure.
I handed the phone to Amy, who proceeded to have a lengthy, energetic talk with Janet. I stood by the window, looking out at the darkening sky, both thanking my lucky stars that Amy was fine, and cursing Chastity, especially if she had broken in the house.
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After a few more days at the hospital, the doctors monitoring Amy’s behavior, Amy was deemed ready for release. She would have to come back in a few days so the doctors could remove the stitches from her abdomen, but otherwise, she was good to go. I was just as excited to go home as Amy - I hadn’t been home since the incident with Chastity, and I hadn’t left Amy’s side much, either. They had advised her not to engage in any physical activities. I just hoped that she could follow that order. Chastity may not have been planning on giving her that option.
Scud drove the car around to the front of the hospital, and Amy and I got in the back seat.
“Good to see you again, Amy,” Scud said. “Good to see you awake, I mean,” he quickly corrected himself.
“It’s good to see you too, Scud.”
“So Jan and I’ve been working on getting that armory you talked about ready, Lucy. If Chastity’s after us, we’ve gotta be the first to strike, I think you two have learned your lessons.”
Amy nodded her head in agreement.
“Ooh, and I’ve got some gadgets and stuff that I want you to try out, Luce. Eugene - D.E.B.S.’ CIA liaison and I cooked them up a while ago at Jamison.”
“Sure, no thing,” I said nonchalantly. I had no use for gadgets, and I certainly didn’t need them, but Scud always had an affinity for James Bond, and I figured that it wasn’t necessarily horrible to indulge his fetish.
Having deprived myself of sleep over the last four or five days, I drifted off in the car during the fifteen minute ride, my head lolling to the side onto Amy’s shoulder.
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Chastity’s POV
So, Scud had found the bug…no big deal. It was just a distraction anyway. He’d never find the real bugs…not until it was too late anyway.
Shortly before I killed Corleone, he had invented what were, potentially the smallest microphones/bugs in history. Literally the size of a flea, they were virtually undetectable. Of course, if someone was looking for taps, they may have been able to find it, but that’s where the good, old-fashioned smokescreen worked. Put one or two larger bugs in a house, and they’d never notice the smaller ones.
Sometimes, I amazed myself with my brilliance.
With the alerts I had put on my records in various government computers, utilizing Heidi’s brilliant hacking skills. I had been notified via e-mail of the viewing of my phone records and such. I was sure that it was Scud or his D.E.B., and I was sure that they knew by now about my reinstatement into the LeFleurs…not that it would help them immensely. They were still going to die within a few days.
Scud had suggested that they needed to make the first strike. I wouldn’t let them have that luxury. All I needed now was my own little militia. I would know ahead of time about anything the four were planning, so a little preemptive strike would work wonders…as would initializing Corleone’s little death traps to the warehouse.
The warehouse had been easily regained…the police were so easily swayed by a flash of green and yellow, (€100 and €200 bills, respectively). Now, if Heidi could only hack into the security of Corleone’s last masterpiece, we could virtually assure that the D.E.B.S., Lucy, and Amy never made it out alive.
“‘Ow’s eet coming?” I asked Heidi.
“Just one more thing…there,” she said, triumphantly banging a key on her keyboard a bit harder than needed, and suddenly various lights in the room lit up. A monotonous feminine voice broadcast the message, “Security functions now online and operational.”
I sauntered seductively over behind Corleone’s desk where Heidi was sitting. She had a good seven years on me, but didn’t look it. Walking over to her, I threw my arms around her neck and locked lips, giving her a lustful but loveless kiss. I so do love a nice female body.
“Zat’s my girl,” I said.
Now she could get her reward.
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Lucy’s POV
After we had gotten home, Scud had excitedly led us down to our basement, where he had set up a soundproof room for tests, I would guess. He grabbed a leather suitcase off the floor and placed it on a table he had set up. Inside were various normal objects, and a few oddballs, including something that looked like a duck…anyway, the objects may have looked like normal household objects, but if I knew Scud, they were anything but normal.
Scud picked up a silver fountain pen and brought it over to Amy and me. “Behold,” he began, a bit theatrically, “the electronic interference pen. One of your father’s favorites, Lucy,” he handed me the pen. After he handed me the pen, he brought out a normal handheld camera. “Go ahead, twist the top, Lucy. You know, you’ve used it before, but I bet Amy’s never seen it.”
I twisted the top and waited for the camera’s feedback to drop out and become static.
It didn’t happen.
Instead, an ominous ticking sound emanated from the pen. “Uh…Scud?” I asked cautiously. He wasn’t paying attention and was busy explaining the functionality of it to Amy. “SCUD! IT’S NOT WORKING!”
He turned the camera around, which I guess was when he heard the ticking. “SHIT! Throw that thing, Lucy…NOW!”
I followed his orders and not long after it impacted the floor about twenty yards from us, the pen exploded, causing a tiny crater in the floor.
“Okay, so that was our grenade pen…damnit Gene, changing everything on me. The man’s a genius, but extremely disorganized…At least there’s more where that came from…as you can see though, they’re not extremely powerful, but they’ll injure anyone within close vicinity. Anyway,” he picked up another pen and handed it again to me. “THIS one should be the right one.” Amy turned her head and looked at me skeptically.
“Scud, you didn’t color code them?” Amy asked.
“No…never thought I’d need to use them again. Eugene and I were just watching some Bond films, and we were thinking how cool the gadgets were, and well, we tried to make ‘em.”
I sighed and shook my head. “Alright, so Scud, are you positive that this is the right one?”
“Umm…try it out?” he laughed nervously, which I took as a ‘no.’
Apprehensively, I twisted the top slowly, waiting for either the screen to go to static or the ticking noise. Thankfully, it seemed Scud had actually grabbed the correct pen this time, as a pleased smile appeared on his face and he turned the camera back around for Amy to see.
“Ah…here it goes. Anyway, Amy, as I was saying, the pen lets off high-pitched beeps as interference that’ll disable most security systems, cameras and everything. My father invented it for Lucy’s father.”
“Lucy never told me your dad worked for hers,” Amy said, with an annoyed tone, giving me a playful glare.
“Oh, yeah, it’s been the family business since I was a boy. Lucy’s grandfather, Jonathan saved my grandpa’s life, and then my dad worked for Robert, and I grew up alongside Lucy, so I naturally just started working with her. Anyway, that’s a story for another day. Moving on, next gadget,” he pulled out a Glock 23, the same model as the gun Amy and I currently used. He handed me the gun. “Press the button on the side there.”
Sure enough, there was a button on the side of the gun that did not come standard with most Glocks that I was familiar with. I pressed it, and a chamber at the bottom of the gun opened and a curved ramp opened.
Scud smiled like a proud father. “You put a smoke pellet in there and BAM! You make your escape. Nifty, ain’t it? Okay, now the watch.”
I put the pen and the gun down on the table next to Scud’s suitcase and took the watch that he handed me. Scud lifted a compartment in his suitcase and retrieved a sheet of glass; he placed it on the table. “So, aim the right side of the watch at the glass and pull out the time-setting thing.”
I did as instructed and was genuinely impressed when a red laser beam shot out of the watch and started to slice through the glass.
“Heat-emitting-laser-beam-equipped watch. If you pull the knob out further, the quartz shifts and amplifies the beam, enabling it to cut through most metals. Oh, and it tells the time too - it’s analog, but sets itself according to the atomic clock. Cool, huh?”
“Definitely,” Amy agreed.
Scud went on to show us various other gadgets, most pointless, like the glasses that fired tranquilizer darts from the side that also came equipped with heat and night vision. That one would have been useful, if either of us wore glasses…unfortunately, wearing glasses would be a dead giveaway in this case. The only other useful gadgets he showed us were a ring that, when the outer shell was turned, had the capability to shatter glass, a rebreather with fifteen minutes worth of oxygen, and nose plugs that doubled as makeshift gas masks.
Finally, seeing the oddest object in the suitcase, I couldn’t help but ask, “Scud, what the heck is that duck?”
“Oh, that…” he laughed, a bit embarrassed, “It’s a snorkel with a fake duck on top. When you’re underwater, it looks like a normal duck just going across water.”
“Scud, we’re not going underwater, what’s the point?”
“Well, Gene and I were watching Goldfinger and we thought it was cool, so…”
“No, don’t want to hear it. I’m going back up…Amy?”
“Yeah, I’m going too, thanks Scud.”
“Wait, so you guys don’t want to hear about the crocodile-shaped two-man submarine?”
Amy and I simply ignored him.
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Over the last few days, Amy and I had found nothing out of place or stolen. We had deduced that the point of the break-in had been to plant the two bugs that Scud and Janet had found. Nothing compelled us to look elsewhere for the bugs. We trusted those two…perhaps too much.
Back up on the ground floor with Janet, we were discussing the plan. We were to strike Chastity, and strike hard. Scud and Janet had discovered phone records between Claude LeFleur and Chastity, so we were under the assumption that she had been accepted back into the family. That would potentially cause a problem, but we would have to be ready for that possibility.
Thankfully Scud and Janet had been able to get a good supply of guns and ammunition as part of a limited armory. In addition to the Glocks and gadgets, Scud had also been able to get two Uzis from an anonymous source, according to Scud, and we had a decent number of grenades.
“So we do it tomorrow?” Amy asked.
I turned to Amy. “I don’t know if it’s smart for you to go too,” I admitted, concerned.
“No. If you’re going, I’m going. I won’t risk losing you,” she stated bluntly. It was times like this when she reminded me why I loved her. Scud and Janet just looked at each other, sharing the same pact without words.
“I don’t want you stretching yourself too far though,” I told Amy.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
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Chastity’s POV
So we do it tomorrow? Amy’s voice asked through the bug in the house. So that was their plan. It wouldn’t work. No chance they would catch me off guard. I had called my father and borrowed ten employees of the LeFleur family. Ten of the toughest guards we had to offer. In addition to the twenty Pink Thunder pawns I had, I doubted four people could legitimately take out thirty, especially if I pounded their ego by sending the goons in waves. It was brilliant.
“So,” I started, giving those thirty agents, as well as Heidi, the counter-plan. “Tomorrow we will trap them. First, we let ze warehouse do eets best to kill ze rodents. If zey happen to get through the warehouse alive, zen eet’s time to do our work.
“I know many of you do not eizair know me, or whether it’s familial or political, you do not care for me. But I do know zat you all hate Lucy Diamond even more zan you hate me. Don’t do this for me. Do zis for revenge.
“Tomorrow we strike. We will show them no mercy. We move in four waves, like ze four ‘orsemen of ze Apocalypse - Pestilence, War, Famine, and finally, my favorite, Death.”
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Lucy’s POV
The night before the strike, I lay in bed, with Amy’s warm body next to me. I was upset with Scud’s idea to attack and surprise Chastity so soon, but I understood why. We may not have had much time before she attacked us instead, and we needed to have the upper hand, rather than acting in retaliation.
I was just extremely worried about Amy. It was around one o’clock in the morning, and I couldn’t sleep. Amy, however, was asleep, but visibly having a nightmare. “NO! NO, LUCY!” Amy suddenly screamed, starting to hyperventilate a bit.
Fretting over her even more, I shook her, and quickly wakened her. “Amy, Amy, I’m here, you were having a bad dream.”
“Oh, God, Lucy, I’m just worried about tomorrow. I dreamed that you…I dreamed horrible things.”
“Amy, I won’t let anything happen to you, and you know I’ll protect myself at all costs.”
“Yeah, but I’m worried, that’s all.”
“We’ll be fine,” I said, leaving the last two words - I hope - off just as a thought. I readjusted myself, lay a protective arm around Amy and kissed her tenderly. “Let’s get some sleep.”
All the while, I was hoping this wouldn’t be the last sleep we ever had.
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Thought you were some perfect read-out
Some digital delay had obscured
And phased my view of the wicked hand you played
Ah, the sands and hands of time have run out, you better face it
This thing's run amok, this luck
I do know how to replace it with revenge
Oh, sweet revenge
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So, even with Scud’s James Bond obsession, some of those gadgets were original - the nose plug gas mask, the interference pen, and the smoke pellet gun shaft.
Okay, just for clarification, yes, the climactic and explosive conclusion to The Reynolds/Bradshaw Connection is just about to happen.
~Dan
Next Chapter - ( Chapter 15: The Four Horsemen )
Thanks for all the hard work you put into this Keaira. It will indeed be missed in the sequel.
This chapter is largely unbeta'd, by the way, if it's worse than any of the previous chapters.
See if you can find the name of a famous historical figure in the chapter…it’s a bit hidden, but a hint - it involves a new character’s first name, along with a phonetic similarity to his last name. Labor union leader too; end of the hints.
Opening lyrics come from The Dave Matthews Band’s The Space Between; end lyrics belong to Patti Smith’s Revenge
Chapter 14: Revenge
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The space between
The tears we cry
Is the laughter keeps us coming back for more
The space between
The wicked lies we tell
And hope to keep us safe from the pain
But will I hold you again?
---------------------
Lucy’s POV
“Ma’am, I’m going to shut the door now. Let me know if you need anything,” said the nurse, Joy, shutting the door to the hospital room behind her as she exited the room.
Amy was staying at the hospital at the American Embassy, where she had been transferred from the Hospital of Barcelona. It had been almost four days since Chastity had mutilated her, and from what I’d been told, she had not been conscious yet. For the first two days, it had pained me greatly not to be able to see her. I myself had been admitted to the hospital for the panic/anxiety attack and hysteria from which I had suffered. Upon entering back into a rational state, the first question I had asked was about Amy. Was she alright?
After she was rushed to the hospital, the medical staff had taken a sample of the blood and, determining that Amy was O-, had been forced to subject her to a blood transfusion. I was told that for about two days after the transfusion she was still in critical condition, but around the same time that I was released, she had been moved to one of the inpatients’ rooms. Her body had accepted the blood.
The only problem was that she was still unconscious. She was diagnosed with a score of fifteen in the Glasgow Coma Scale, which meant that the coma was right between moderate and severe. That, along with the fact that she hadn’t even opened her eyes was extremely disconcerting to me.
I sat down in the chair between Amy’s bed and the window, and took Amy’s hand, clasping it in between my two. Even though I knew her unconscious body would not be able to hear my words and confessions, I just needed to talk to her.
“Amy, I love you, you know that. In a couple days we’re just going to walk out the door and be done with the whole hospital.” I paused, trying to avoid my true feelings, just as they bubbled to the surface, “God, Amy, I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t gotten involved with Corleone or Chastity you wouldn’t be here. We’d still be off somewhere pretending like we never used to be spies or villains, or any of it,” at this point, my emotions escalated, and tears flowed freely from my eyes. “God, Amy…don’t do this to me. I can’t live without you. Without you, I’m nothing. I love you, and I just got you back. Please don’t let me lose you now. Please, Amy, just…”
My heart-to-heart with the unconscious body of the only person I loved more than life itself was interrupted by three loud knocks on the door. I looked up at the rectangular piece of glass in the middle of the door to see Scud’s face, a pained, sympathetic smile on his face. Behind him, Janet walked around, pacing, visually unnerved. As soon as I had my wits back with me, I had called and asked them to come down. That they had dropped everything and come meant a lot to me, and I’m sure it would have meant just as much to Amy. I beckoned them in with my hand, and they opened the door.
“Hey Luce,” Scud said, a slight hint of sorrow in his voice. “How is she?”
“She’s alive…” I trailed off; I couldn’t stand to say much else.
“What were you thinking Lucy?” Janet asked accusatorily. “If you’d never involved Amy in this stupid problem with your ex-girlfriend, she’d still be here.”
“Janet, she’s not dead. But you’re right…I shouldn’t have ever gotten her involved …” I cast my eyes downward and guiltily stared at the floor.
“Lucy…I’m sorry, that was mean,” Janet admitting, walking over to me and laying a hand on my shoulder, “It’s not your fault, it’s your psycho bitch of an ex-girlfriend’s,” Her hand fell to the small of my back and she enveloped me in a tight bear hug. With the exception of Amy and Scud, I really wasn’t one for physical contact, but it just felt so good to be able to hang onto someone, to share in mutual feelings. I wrapped my arms around Janet.
“Janet…I don’t know…if she’s going to be okay…I’m so worried,” I managed to get out, emotions taking hold again and choking the words.
“Ssh, it’ll be alright,” Janet assured me, patting a hand on my back.
“Hey, I’m still here!” Scud said, jokingly, as he walked over and joined in what was now a three-way hug. For a time, we just stood like that, arms around each other, just basking in the solace and shelter from pain that it provided.
“Luce, Amy’s going to be alright. I know it,” Scud said as we broke the hug and the door opened. I turned to the entrance to see a doctor standing in the doorway.
“Lucinda Reynolds,” the doctor said, glancing down at the clipboard he held. I looked up and he met my eyes. “You are the companion of Miss Bradshaw here, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“I just wanted to let you know that we ran the tests on Miss Bradshaw and her body has officially accepted the blood. There’s no telling when she’ll wake up, but we’ve downgraded her GCS to twelve. She was showing signs of improving, and, because of that, we do not believe that her coma is as bad as was once thought.” The tenseness that I had been feeling was relieved just a bit by that news, and the darkness in my face lightened a bit. The doctor smiled, “If you need anything else, just let me know…” The seriousness faded from his voice, as he offered up one little comforting piece of information, “she’ll be fine.”
She may be fine, I thought, my fears assuaged a bit, but Chastity won’t be. I’m going to make her pay…she won’t know what’s coming to her.
“Thanks, doc,” I said as he exited the room. He didn’t close the door fully, and I could hear him ask one of the other doctors whether another doctor at the hospital was still missing. I’d heard about it too, apparently he had been reported as a missing person about a week or so ago.
I turned back to Scud and Janet. “So, how’d things go at headquarters, any problems with the ice queen?”
“You mean Max?” Janet asked.
“The one and only.”
“She was pissed at Amy for leaving without telling her,” Scud said, “but no, she kinda encouraged us to come. I think even she’s worried about Amy.”
“She’s still an über-bitch, though,” Janet added, visibly annoyed at Max, “she’s still treating me like crap about my decision to marry my muffin here.” At the mention of the pet name, I shot Scud a look of friendly ridicule and an evil, mocking grin as I chuckled to myself. Scud’s cheeks rouged as he put a hand on Janet’s shoulder.
“So…anything we can do to help with the Chastity situation?” Scud asked.
“Actually…any chance you two could gather info and see what she’s been up to?”
“Sure, we’ll just need a key to the house…I’m assuming you’re staying here,” said Scud.
“Yeah, I’ll be here. I’m going to keep an eye on Amy.” I tossed the key to Scud, who put an arm around Janet as they started to walk out of the room. He bent down to her ear and, from the limited lip-reading skills I possessed, asked her politely not to use pet names in public anymore.
“Hey, Scud, Janet…” I called after them. They turned around. “…thanks for coming. It means a lot to me.”
“Not a problem…after all, it’ll give us a chance to bond,” Janet said, a sweet smile on her face.
---------------------
About fifteen minutes after Scud and Janet left and I had drifted off to sleep, I was awakened by a sharp and sudden cry. Reflexively, I jolted out of both my state of sleep and my seat, and prepared to confront whoever was in the room.
That was when I saw Amy sitting upright in the hospital bed, eyes open, sweat covering her brow, and a frenzied, panicked look in her eyes.
“…Amy?” I asked softly. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and I was hoping it wasn’t just a dream.
“Lucy? Where am I?” she asked, looking at me. I rose from my seat as tears started their accelerated descent, flowing from her eyes. “Oh my God…Lucy!”
I walked to the bed and flung my arms joyously around Amy, eliciting a cry of pain.
“Owww…Lucy, I’m glad to see you too, but I hurt all over. What happened?” I obeyed her wishes reluctantly, withdrawing my arms. I didn’t want to hurt her, but at the same time, I just wanted to feel her in my arms.
“You don’t remember?”
“No, not really, last thing I remember was getting some phone call from Petrie at the house.”
“From what I can tell, Chastity cut you pretty bad, apparently you and her got into some major firefight, too, judging from the state of the area. The police have barricaded the area off after they found the bloody desk, and all the stolen computer equipment.”
“Huh? Chastity? Firefight? What the hell are you talking about?” Amy asked agitatedly. The doctors had told me she may be like this for a bit, it was one of the steps of recovering, diagnosed with the Rancho Los Amigos Scale - basically she’d be going through stages of agitation/aggression, confusion, and such, which should improve rapidly. At least, I hoped so - Amy could be extremely annoying when she was agitated.
“Never mind,” I said. “At least you’re back.”
“What do you mean, never mind? I want to know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Fine…the mission Ms. Petrie gave us - it was to check out Pink Thunder headquarters. Looks like Chastity was expecting us though. She kinda ambushed us.”
“Oh, geez…oh…I think I remember now…she shot a tranq at you, right?”
I smiled, the doctors were right, she was recovering quite nicely and quickly. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“Oh, God, Lucy…I thought I was going to die,” Amy said, glumly, her face morphing into a depressing frown.
So did I, I thought solemnly. “Well, I’m just glad you’re back.”
“So am I.”
“You know everything I said the other day, about not being able to live without you?”
“Yeah…”
“Well, this kinda drove that home. Amy, if you had died, I don’t know what I would do…you’re everything to me. I love you more than I love myself. I…” I attempted to continue with my little soliloquy, but was interrupted by the shrill ring of the hospital’s phone. Damn it! The phone always seemed to ring at the wrong moment.
I picked up the phone, “Hello?”
“It’s Scud…umm…Lucy, there’s a problem.”
My eyes grew wide in agitation. “What problem?”
“Well, it looks like someone broke in. Everything’s all disheveled, the door was unlocked, sofa knocked over, that kinda stuff.”
“Shit. Anything missing?”
“How the hell would I know? Not that I can tell, but you’re the one who lives here.”
“Scud, there’s always the chance that it was Chastity, check for bugs or anything, make sure the phone’s not tapped.”
“Already done, we found a bug, and there’s no tap on the phone. Unless there’s another bug somewhere, you should be fine.”
I glanced at Amy, who was looking at me with an inquisitive stare. I mouthed the word ‘trouble’ to her, but she didn’t seem to comprehend.
“Thanks for letting me know, Scud. I’ll check things up. Hey, let Janet know that Amy’s awake.”
“Really? That’s GREAT!” Scud shouted, sounding a bit like Tony the Tiger. “Hey Jan! Amy’s awake!” He shouted, a bit muffled to the phone.
“She wants me to ask if she can talk to Amy.”
“Let me ask her,” I said, turning to Amy. “You feel like talking to Janet?”
“Sure, put her on. If I said no, I’d hear about it for years,” Amy laughed. Good, she was out of that mood she had been in.
“Yeah, let me just give the phone to Amy, it’ll only be a sec.”
“YAY!” Janet’s voice came out of the phone.
“Honey, put the phone down, you can pick it up down here.”
“Hang up the phone, muffin. This is some girl talk we’re about to do here.”
Scud sighed. “Fine…See you Lucy.”
I couldn’t help but smile. If this was their pre-marital life, their marriage would certainly be a fun adventure.
I handed the phone to Amy, who proceeded to have a lengthy, energetic talk with Janet. I stood by the window, looking out at the darkening sky, both thanking my lucky stars that Amy was fine, and cursing Chastity, especially if she had broken in the house.
---------------------
After a few more days at the hospital, the doctors monitoring Amy’s behavior, Amy was deemed ready for release. She would have to come back in a few days so the doctors could remove the stitches from her abdomen, but otherwise, she was good to go. I was just as excited to go home as Amy - I hadn’t been home since the incident with Chastity, and I hadn’t left Amy’s side much, either. They had advised her not to engage in any physical activities. I just hoped that she could follow that order. Chastity may not have been planning on giving her that option.
Scud drove the car around to the front of the hospital, and Amy and I got in the back seat.
“Good to see you again, Amy,” Scud said. “Good to see you awake, I mean,” he quickly corrected himself.
“It’s good to see you too, Scud.”
“So Jan and I’ve been working on getting that armory you talked about ready, Lucy. If Chastity’s after us, we’ve gotta be the first to strike, I think you two have learned your lessons.”
Amy nodded her head in agreement.
“Ooh, and I’ve got some gadgets and stuff that I want you to try out, Luce. Eugene - D.E.B.S.’ CIA liaison and I cooked them up a while ago at Jamison.”
“Sure, no thing,” I said nonchalantly. I had no use for gadgets, and I certainly didn’t need them, but Scud always had an affinity for James Bond, and I figured that it wasn’t necessarily horrible to indulge his fetish.
Having deprived myself of sleep over the last four or five days, I drifted off in the car during the fifteen minute ride, my head lolling to the side onto Amy’s shoulder.
---------------------
Chastity’s POV
So, Scud had found the bug…no big deal. It was just a distraction anyway. He’d never find the real bugs…not until it was too late anyway.
Shortly before I killed Corleone, he had invented what were, potentially the smallest microphones/bugs in history. Literally the size of a flea, they were virtually undetectable. Of course, if someone was looking for taps, they may have been able to find it, but that’s where the good, old-fashioned smokescreen worked. Put one or two larger bugs in a house, and they’d never notice the smaller ones.
Sometimes, I amazed myself with my brilliance.
With the alerts I had put on my records in various government computers, utilizing Heidi’s brilliant hacking skills. I had been notified via e-mail of the viewing of my phone records and such. I was sure that it was Scud or his D.E.B., and I was sure that they knew by now about my reinstatement into the LeFleurs…not that it would help them immensely. They were still going to die within a few days.
Scud had suggested that they needed to make the first strike. I wouldn’t let them have that luxury. All I needed now was my own little militia. I would know ahead of time about anything the four were planning, so a little preemptive strike would work wonders…as would initializing Corleone’s little death traps to the warehouse.
The warehouse had been easily regained…the police were so easily swayed by a flash of green and yellow, (€100 and €200 bills, respectively). Now, if Heidi could only hack into the security of Corleone’s last masterpiece, we could virtually assure that the D.E.B.S., Lucy, and Amy never made it out alive.
“‘Ow’s eet coming?” I asked Heidi.
“Just one more thing…there,” she said, triumphantly banging a key on her keyboard a bit harder than needed, and suddenly various lights in the room lit up. A monotonous feminine voice broadcast the message, “Security functions now online and operational.”
I sauntered seductively over behind Corleone’s desk where Heidi was sitting. She had a good seven years on me, but didn’t look it. Walking over to her, I threw my arms around her neck and locked lips, giving her a lustful but loveless kiss. I so do love a nice female body.
“Zat’s my girl,” I said.
Now she could get her reward.
---------------------
Lucy’s POV
After we had gotten home, Scud had excitedly led us down to our basement, where he had set up a soundproof room for tests, I would guess. He grabbed a leather suitcase off the floor and placed it on a table he had set up. Inside were various normal objects, and a few oddballs, including something that looked like a duck…anyway, the objects may have looked like normal household objects, but if I knew Scud, they were anything but normal.
Scud picked up a silver fountain pen and brought it over to Amy and me. “Behold,” he began, a bit theatrically, “the electronic interference pen. One of your father’s favorites, Lucy,” he handed me the pen. After he handed me the pen, he brought out a normal handheld camera. “Go ahead, twist the top, Lucy. You know, you’ve used it before, but I bet Amy’s never seen it.”
I twisted the top and waited for the camera’s feedback to drop out and become static.
It didn’t happen.
Instead, an ominous ticking sound emanated from the pen. “Uh…Scud?” I asked cautiously. He wasn’t paying attention and was busy explaining the functionality of it to Amy. “SCUD! IT’S NOT WORKING!”
He turned the camera around, which I guess was when he heard the ticking. “SHIT! Throw that thing, Lucy…NOW!”
I followed his orders and not long after it impacted the floor about twenty yards from us, the pen exploded, causing a tiny crater in the floor.
“Okay, so that was our grenade pen…damnit Gene, changing everything on me. The man’s a genius, but extremely disorganized…At least there’s more where that came from…as you can see though, they’re not extremely powerful, but they’ll injure anyone within close vicinity. Anyway,” he picked up another pen and handed it again to me. “THIS one should be the right one.” Amy turned her head and looked at me skeptically.
“Scud, you didn’t color code them?” Amy asked.
“No…never thought I’d need to use them again. Eugene and I were just watching some Bond films, and we were thinking how cool the gadgets were, and well, we tried to make ‘em.”
I sighed and shook my head. “Alright, so Scud, are you positive that this is the right one?”
“Umm…try it out?” he laughed nervously, which I took as a ‘no.’
Apprehensively, I twisted the top slowly, waiting for either the screen to go to static or the ticking noise. Thankfully, it seemed Scud had actually grabbed the correct pen this time, as a pleased smile appeared on his face and he turned the camera back around for Amy to see.
“Ah…here it goes. Anyway, Amy, as I was saying, the pen lets off high-pitched beeps as interference that’ll disable most security systems, cameras and everything. My father invented it for Lucy’s father.”
“Lucy never told me your dad worked for hers,” Amy said, with an annoyed tone, giving me a playful glare.
“Oh, yeah, it’s been the family business since I was a boy. Lucy’s grandfather, Jonathan saved my grandpa’s life, and then my dad worked for Robert, and I grew up alongside Lucy, so I naturally just started working with her. Anyway, that’s a story for another day. Moving on, next gadget,” he pulled out a Glock 23, the same model as the gun Amy and I currently used. He handed me the gun. “Press the button on the side there.”
Sure enough, there was a button on the side of the gun that did not come standard with most Glocks that I was familiar with. I pressed it, and a chamber at the bottom of the gun opened and a curved ramp opened.
Scud smiled like a proud father. “You put a smoke pellet in there and BAM! You make your escape. Nifty, ain’t it? Okay, now the watch.”
I put the pen and the gun down on the table next to Scud’s suitcase and took the watch that he handed me. Scud lifted a compartment in his suitcase and retrieved a sheet of glass; he placed it on the table. “So, aim the right side of the watch at the glass and pull out the time-setting thing.”
I did as instructed and was genuinely impressed when a red laser beam shot out of the watch and started to slice through the glass.
“Heat-emitting-laser-beam-equipped watch. If you pull the knob out further, the quartz shifts and amplifies the beam, enabling it to cut through most metals. Oh, and it tells the time too - it’s analog, but sets itself according to the atomic clock. Cool, huh?”
“Definitely,” Amy agreed.
Scud went on to show us various other gadgets, most pointless, like the glasses that fired tranquilizer darts from the side that also came equipped with heat and night vision. That one would have been useful, if either of us wore glasses…unfortunately, wearing glasses would be a dead giveaway in this case. The only other useful gadgets he showed us were a ring that, when the outer shell was turned, had the capability to shatter glass, a rebreather with fifteen minutes worth of oxygen, and nose plugs that doubled as makeshift gas masks.
Finally, seeing the oddest object in the suitcase, I couldn’t help but ask, “Scud, what the heck is that duck?”
“Oh, that…” he laughed, a bit embarrassed, “It’s a snorkel with a fake duck on top. When you’re underwater, it looks like a normal duck just going across water.”
“Scud, we’re not going underwater, what’s the point?”
“Well, Gene and I were watching Goldfinger and we thought it was cool, so…”
“No, don’t want to hear it. I’m going back up…Amy?”
“Yeah, I’m going too, thanks Scud.”
“Wait, so you guys don’t want to hear about the crocodile-shaped two-man submarine?”
Amy and I simply ignored him.
---------------------
Over the last few days, Amy and I had found nothing out of place or stolen. We had deduced that the point of the break-in had been to plant the two bugs that Scud and Janet had found. Nothing compelled us to look elsewhere for the bugs. We trusted those two…perhaps too much.
Back up on the ground floor with Janet, we were discussing the plan. We were to strike Chastity, and strike hard. Scud and Janet had discovered phone records between Claude LeFleur and Chastity, so we were under the assumption that she had been accepted back into the family. That would potentially cause a problem, but we would have to be ready for that possibility.
Thankfully Scud and Janet had been able to get a good supply of guns and ammunition as part of a limited armory. In addition to the Glocks and gadgets, Scud had also been able to get two Uzis from an anonymous source, according to Scud, and we had a decent number of grenades.
“So we do it tomorrow?” Amy asked.
I turned to Amy. “I don’t know if it’s smart for you to go too,” I admitted, concerned.
“No. If you’re going, I’m going. I won’t risk losing you,” she stated bluntly. It was times like this when she reminded me why I loved her. Scud and Janet just looked at each other, sharing the same pact without words.
“I don’t want you stretching yourself too far though,” I told Amy.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
---------------------
Chastity’s POV
So we do it tomorrow? Amy’s voice asked through the bug in the house. So that was their plan. It wouldn’t work. No chance they would catch me off guard. I had called my father and borrowed ten employees of the LeFleur family. Ten of the toughest guards we had to offer. In addition to the twenty Pink Thunder pawns I had, I doubted four people could legitimately take out thirty, especially if I pounded their ego by sending the goons in waves. It was brilliant.
“So,” I started, giving those thirty agents, as well as Heidi, the counter-plan. “Tomorrow we will trap them. First, we let ze warehouse do eets best to kill ze rodents. If zey happen to get through the warehouse alive, zen eet’s time to do our work.
“I know many of you do not eizair know me, or whether it’s familial or political, you do not care for me. But I do know zat you all hate Lucy Diamond even more zan you hate me. Don’t do this for me. Do zis for revenge.
“Tomorrow we strike. We will show them no mercy. We move in four waves, like ze four ‘orsemen of ze Apocalypse - Pestilence, War, Famine, and finally, my favorite, Death.”
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Lucy’s POV
The night before the strike, I lay in bed, with Amy’s warm body next to me. I was upset with Scud’s idea to attack and surprise Chastity so soon, but I understood why. We may not have had much time before she attacked us instead, and we needed to have the upper hand, rather than acting in retaliation.
I was just extremely worried about Amy. It was around one o’clock in the morning, and I couldn’t sleep. Amy, however, was asleep, but visibly having a nightmare. “NO! NO, LUCY!” Amy suddenly screamed, starting to hyperventilate a bit.
Fretting over her even more, I shook her, and quickly wakened her. “Amy, Amy, I’m here, you were having a bad dream.”
“Oh, God, Lucy, I’m just worried about tomorrow. I dreamed that you…I dreamed horrible things.”
“Amy, I won’t let anything happen to you, and you know I’ll protect myself at all costs.”
“Yeah, but I’m worried, that’s all.”
“We’ll be fine,” I said, leaving the last two words - I hope - off just as a thought. I readjusted myself, lay a protective arm around Amy and kissed her tenderly. “Let’s get some sleep.”
All the while, I was hoping this wouldn’t be the last sleep we ever had.
---------------------
Thought you were some perfect read-out
Some digital delay had obscured
And phased my view of the wicked hand you played
Ah, the sands and hands of time have run out, you better face it
This thing's run amok, this luck
I do know how to replace it with revenge
Oh, sweet revenge
---------------------
So, even with Scud’s James Bond obsession, some of those gadgets were original - the nose plug gas mask, the interference pen, and the smoke pellet gun shaft.
Okay, just for clarification, yes, the climactic and explosive conclusion to The Reynolds/Bradshaw Connection is just about to happen.
~Dan
Next Chapter - ( Chapter 15: The Four Horsemen )