fic: Hostages, Chapter 7
Yay! Last chapter before the epilogue... Almost done! Gah, multi-chaptered fics are tiring... *sob* I think I'm going to go back to one-shots for a while after this... Anyway. Here's the latest!
Title: Hostages
Author: Ryn
Pairings: M/M
Rating: T because Mary has a big vocabulary... ;D
Spoilers: A mention of Trojan Horst in Chapter 4, but not really... a spoiler, per se...
Summary: Mary and Marshall hunt a sociopath while Mary faces the very real possibility of dying-- and struggles to keep it from her partner.
Prologue-Chapter 2: http://community.livejournal.com/mary_marshall/160492.html#cutid1
Chapter 3-Chapter 4: http://community.livejournal.com/mary_marshall/173615.html#cutid1
Chapter 5-Chapter6: community.livejournal.com/mary_marshall/180746.html#cutid1
Chapter 7
----
At precisely 10:45pm, right on schedule, the strategy went into effect, and everything clicked into motion.
----
Mary stayed low against the dilapidated brick wall of the building and watched silently the dark shapes of men in Kevlar begin to swarm around the glass warehouse across the street; to the untrained eye, the warehouse would just look like another one of the semi-lit buildings that had long been abandoned for practical use but were the secret haunts of teenagers and the homeless.
But the wide front doors of the building was a little too sturdy, a little too new, and a little too firmly shut; the windows were too carefully boarded up, not a trace of dust along the panels. Even the half-tipped dumpster sitting on the side of the building looked a little too deliberate.
Quietly, patrol cars were beginning to move in from up the street, and Mary could guess at which figure at the front of the building belonged to Marshall-the lanky, tall one, and who could mistaken that hair?
Mary looked to her watch-10:47:46. She waited, stomach in knots and barely breathing for the suffocating unease that resided in her veins. Why am I here? I don’t need to be here, they can handle it… so why do I feel like I needto be here…?
She counted with the second hand of here watch, knowing precisely the next move-five, four, three, two-
10:48:00.
“FBI, open up!” she heard clearly from across the street-Marshall’s voice, and she vaguely wondered what the bosses had to say to make him identify himself and his cohort as FBI instead of U.S. Marshals. Probably some random jurisdictional crap that someone made up, she thought a little wildly.
A few seconds before Marshall’s voice rang through the darkness again, “FBI, we have a warrant to search the premises-open up or we’re coming in!”
For a few more seconds, nothing happened; then, Marshall must have given a signal because three loud crashes sounded through the night air-one from each of the exits from the warehouse, Mary knew-and the squad cars, armored SUVs, and preemptory ambulances began screeching as they all drove in tight around the building.
Light spilled from the front door that had been knocked open, and she saw Marshall’s form haloed for a second in the doorway before he disappeared through it, then Chloe’s unmistakable stature followed.
Mary waited impatiently as officers and backup spilled from the vehicles and crouched a distance away from the entrance, waiting for the call for help from the inside.
Even over the loud screeches of sirens ringing through the air, she could hear the sounds of shouts begin to build from inside the warehouse, panicked orders and demands. The tension in the air became almost too much to bear because no one could quite clearly make out the exact words, but this became a small concern when, all of a sudden, a loud whoosh sound permeated the night air.
Seconds later, smoke began spilling from the doors of the warehouse, unable to escape from the boarded windows. Mary jumped up out of her crouch and threw herself amongst the crowd of law enforcement just as the first SWAT members began evacuating the warehouse, some carrying little dark bundles that were crying in fear-the leftover, broken pieces of childhood mockingly contained in the form of thirteen-year-olds, ten-year-olds, eight-year-olds.
Everything had sprung into chaos, officers running to help SWAT with their charges, paramedics in the fray, flames beginning to be visible, and always, always the intense heat that overtook the cool New York air.
No one noticed Mary throwing herself into the melee, struggling against the movement of bodies that generally were moving away from the fire. She pushed and shoved through the swarm of uniformed men and women to get closer to the smoke-poisoned door, at the same time frantically looking around for a sign of a tall, brown-haired head.
She finally thrust herself through a line of paramedics that where taking little bodies from the arms of men who were coughing raggedly from the heavy, dark smoke, faces stained and eyes watering. The flames were starting to lick at the boards at the window, effectively shutting off any hope of escape there; Mary cast another frantic look around through the crowd, searching, searching…
“Mary!” came a familiar voice, and she whipped around quickly at it.
“Stan, what’re you doing here?” Mary asked, surprise taking over the worry for a second. Her ex-boss trotted toward her from where he had been with a group of three other worried, administrator-looking men, all of whom were watching the burning building in horror for fear for the lives of the agents their respective agencies.
“Better question for you,” Stan replied quickly before continuing, “You can’t be here-you don’t have any jurisdiction as a civilian.”
Instead of arguing, Mary demanded, “Have you seen Marshall? Where’s Marshall?”
A look of worry that no doubt reflected the one on her face; he shook his head.
Without asking further-because partners know, they always know-, Mary turned and took off toward the flaming building, ignoring Stan behind her shouting, “Mary! MARY! Inspector Shannon, do not go in there, that’s an order!”
Had it been a less serious situation, Mary may have turned and stuck her tongue out at Stan in the vision of maturity. As it was, she just made an ironic mental note that he called her ‘Inspector,’ intrigued in the back of her mind how much it pleased her to be addressed like that again.
Unthinkingly, Mary threw herself into the thick smoke of the door, trying her best to crouch and cover her mouth and nose with her hand.
“Marshall!” she called, squinting through the haze; the inside of the warehouse was two stories; the bottom had little room-like compartments sectioned off by thin, once-white curtains which were now flaming; the six-by-six spaces were undoubtedly the sorry excuse for a room that each child lived in. Along the walls stood large white vans like the one Shaw had in his garage, undoubtedly for some sort of transport. The second story was merely a walkway that extended around the perimeter of the room, granting anyone up there a clear view of all that was going on in any of the spaces on the first floor.
It was because she was looking upwards that she spotted the flurry of movement on the second story walkway, three figures standing alarmingly close to a boarded up window that was aflame.
Without another thought, Mary crouched lower and took off at a sprint toward the far wall where the figures stood, dodging particularly enthusiastic flames as best she could. Still, she was caught a few times when a flame licked her wrist greedily.
She was out of breath and sweating profusely when she reached the space beneath the walkway where Chloe, Marshall, and another man-three times Marshall’s size around at least-stood. Only the other man had his gun drawn; Marshall held a small blond girl in his arms and was weaponless, and Chloe had her hands held up, also weaponless and cornered.
“Marshall!” Mary called in relief and without thinking, looking upwards.
The next events happened quickly; one moment, Mary was bent over trying to watch her breath, the next, the belligerent-looking man with the gun on the walkway above saw her and swiveled his arm to rest the gun on her.
He was above, she was below; he was armed, and, though she had Marshall’s spare weapon in her hands, she had not found a Kevlar vest lying around the hotel room, so she was completely vulnerable. There were not the odds she liked to play, and the words oh, crap came to mind as she saw even from thirty feet away the barrel of a gun trained on her.
With no time to dodge, Mary just watched as the man made ready to pull the trigger.
The shot never hit her, however, because in the moment before the bullet was out of the barrel, Chloe launched herself bodily at the man, and they both tumbled from the momentum backwards over the railing, landing in a heap with a crash.
Stunned but thinking fast, Mary cast a glance toward Marshall to see him moving fast toward the nearest stairway down back onto the first floor. Satisfied, Mary ran toward where Chloe and the man lie unconsciously on a collapsed curtain; it had luckily not been burning, and Mary wasted no time in rolling the obese man-she recognized his face up close as one from a mug shot she had seen in the case file-off of the junior marshal.
“Chloe,” Mary urged, patting her face quickly. No response. “Chloe, come on, dammit, this place could collapse…” She kept shaking the younger marshal, but she did not respond.
Giving up, Mary bodily dragged Chloe up, pulling the woman’s arm around her shoulders to support her. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Marshall hurtling down the stairs and was satisfied that he would be fine following her out.
Turning, Mary coughed and sputtered as she half-dragged, half-supported Chloe through the maze of curtains toward the exit, unable to duck under the smoke because of the body that she was carrying with her. At one point, Chloe’s long hair flew sideways enough to catch on fire; Mary quickly dropped her and smothered out the flame before continuing.
The smoke at the exit was thickest, and Mary threw herself and Chloe through it blindly, the both of them landing in a tangle in the dirt. But they were blissfully, finally out, and Mary took big gulps of air greedily.
She felt a pair of arms help her to her feet and saw Stan, who was trying to pull her away from the intensely heated building; already, Chloe was being lifted by two paramedics who ran with her toward the ambulance.
Mary was letting herself be helped by Stan away from the fire when she chanced to look back over her shoulder-and did not see Marshall.
Still sputtering and leaning heavily on her ex-boss, she coughed, “Marshall’s-why isn’t he coming out- where- Stan, what the Hell-”
“Mary, he’ll get himself out,” Stan told her worriedly, motioning for another set of paramedics to look at her. “He’s tough, but you’re going to have to-”
“He was right behind me!” Mary protested in a gasp of air. She went into another fit of coughs.
Stan patted her back as she coughed and said, “Take care of yourself right now, Mary. Marshall can-”
Without waiting for him to answer, however, Mary pulled away from him and, for the second time in the last hour ignoring Stan, took off again to brave the flames.
This time, it was harder because she was already out of breath and dizzy from smoke inhalation, but her vision adjusted quickly to peering through billowing clouds of black. She crouch-ran back the way she came, underneath curtains that were all but burned to a crisp; the flame had now taken to gnawing at the wooden beams in the ceiling and the support beams at regular intervals around the room. Mary prayed that they held up.
She ducked and rolled under a curtain and nearly crashed into Marshall on the other side.
“What are you doing?!” Mary demanded upon seeing him struggle against the weight of both an unconscious child and man who had minutes before been aiming a gun at them. She gawked at him incredulously for a moment.
He answered her with a debilitating cough, then, “Couldn’t leave him here to die.” As if it were obvious.
Leave it to Marshall to risk frying his ass for a man who collected children like toys and tried to kill us all. Leaving the disbelief for another time, Mary took the child from Marshall’s arms quickly-an angelic-faced little girl with curls that were, at the moment, covered in soot. She looked otherwise to be sleeping peacefully.
“Come on,” Mary barked to her partner, and they began to make their slow progress back toward the outside and fresh air.
It was a long, torturous route obscured by smoke and made hard to navigate by the maze of curtains that had once divided one large room meant for storing an shipping glass into a hundred little compartments for storing children until they were needed.
It could have been years or it could have been seconds before they turned the corner around one such compartment and was in view of the door. Looking back to make sure that Marshall was a few steps behind her, she held the small-statured little girl- God, she can’t be more than eight- closer to her and ducked her head down for the final sprint.
There was a horribly painful bending sound a moment before a large section of the ceiling beams came crashing down in front of them-they threw themselves sideways on the group to avoid the flying embers-, impacting the ground right in front of the door and obstructing it with huge, flaming wooden beams. Just my luck, Mary thought savagely.
“You alright?” Marshall asked her breathlessly, working to get back up and drag his burden with him; the unconscious man lolled uselessly against his shoulder.
“Aren’t there two other exits?!” Mary shot back over the roar of the flames that were beginning to close up on them. Marshall seemed to realize something and looked at her in horror.
“Those were blocked, too; you shouldn’t have come,” he told her before coughing again so hard that he had to put down the man he was trying to save so he could catch his breath. Mary reached out and rubbed his back gently.
“Is there no other way out?” she asked him once he could straighten up again. He shook his head.
“Our only choice is to go through,” Marshall said heavily, nodding toward the now-barred doorway. He heaved the unconscious man back up and took a step toward the flaming beam when Mary reached out and tugged him back.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said, and without any other explanation, then took off running back away from their blocked exit back toward where they came. Marshall followed her without question.
It took a shorter time to reach the back wall from which Chloe and the man had tumbled earlier than it had to get to the door, and to Mary’s utter relief, nothing had fallen on the row of white vans that sat in a straight line facing the wall.
She hurriedly rushed to the first van in the row and threw open the door, ignoring the pain in her finger pads when they came in contact with the searing hot door handle; it would have been like worrying about a leaking faucet when there was a hurricane coming.
She could have cried in relief in seeing the keys stuck obligingly in the ignition.
Instead, she gently lay the unconscious girl into the passenger’s seat and buckled her in, then turned to help Marshall get into the back with the large man; they heaved him heavily, and he landed with a thump in the trunk area.
Before Marshall could get in behind him, however, there was a loud popping explosion as the heat of the fire caused something behind them to explode; Mary found herself thrust heavily to the ground as Marshall threw himself against her reflexively, completely knocking the wind out of her.
There was the bangs and clanks as whatever had exploded landed in pieces around the room, and then she found herself pressed tightly against the hot metal of the van next to theirs, face inches from Marshall’s; her eyes widened slightly as she registered just how close their faces were, and it would have been a scene out of a B-rated, sappy romance film if they had not been in a building about to collapse with two people they had to protect.
And if Marshall didn’t suddenly wince in pain, stumble backwards, and fall in a heap when his leg buckled.
“Marshall!”
She kneeled quickly next to him lying on his side with his face scrunched in pain, looking him over to see what was wrong; one of his hands was now soaked in blood, pressed to the back of his thigh where a shard of glass three inches long-thrown from the explosion-was protruding from his flesh. It also stuck out a little from the front of his thigh, where it had gone straight through. “Oh, God, Marshall…”
He took a breath and ended up coughing, but he managed to choke out, “Well, that sucks, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know, you tell me,” Mary retorted a little hysterically; she knew better than to try to get the glass out and increasing the risk of him bleeding out, so she quickly took off her jacket and tied a sleeve around his thigh tightly above his wound, but still there was so much, so much blood.
“Come on,” she grunted, hauling Marshall up and practically throwing him into the back of the truck; he looked too dazed from blood loss for a retort and just looked at her with glazed-over eyes as she shut the doors to the trunk, throwing him into darkness.
I’m so sorry, Marshall… I should’ve been here with you from the beginning…
Mary rubbed the back of her hand against her forehead to wipe off the sweat as she got into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition; it came it life with a dull roar, and all Mary could do was give an involuntary sigh of relief.
She threw the van in reverse and backed it up about thirty feet; then, setting it to drive, she stomped on the accelerator, and the van crashed through the warehouse wall.
They came out the other side in a shower of bricks and burning mortar, right into the side of a patrol car; behind them, half the building collapsed in a concoction of smoke and flames.
What happened next, Mary only remembered in bits and pieces; officers and paramedics wrenching open the doors, pulling her out. She remembered watching as two EMTs cupped their hands and took turns giving the unconscious girl CPR, remembered when they finally sat back on her heels and exchanged a few words before transferring her to a gurney and pulling a sheet over her face.
She remembered the man they had rescued-the man who had kidnapped and traded children like trading cards-coughing to life five seconds after a paramedic had him out of the van.
She remembered a group of EMTs carrying Marshall’s unconscious body from the back of the van, face a deathly pale. The moment they put him on the white sheets of the gurney, they were stained a deep, dark red. Stan said something to one of the medics who were loading Marshall into the ambulance, then helped Mary in after him; she held his hand and couldn’t for the life of her remember what she said to him during the ride to the hospital but did remember the slightly alarmed but pitying looks the paramedics gave her while bandaging and intubating Marshall. She remembered being offered a tissue but slapping them away.
Mary was ushered out of the ambulance alongside Marshall and followed alongside him as he was transferred into the hands of a group of stern-looking nurses in scrubs. She had to run to keep up as they rushed him down a long, white hallway and through a set of doors- doors that she was prevented from going through by an unsympathetic-looking nurse who threw some quick words at her and disappeared after her partner.
And that was all that Mary remembered before she completely shut down, and everything went dark around her.
----
Mary woke to Stan’s irritated voice on the phone.
“…bravery, and there’s no way that she should be punished for what no one in your department had the balls to do!” Mary watched Stan’s back as he angrily snapped shut his phone.
He muttered something along the lines of, “Damn ignoramus,” before he turned and noticed his inspector blinking blearily up at him.
“Mary!” he greeted, surprised. “You’re awake already.”
Mary nodded and opened her mouth to speak but found quite quickly that there was a large oxygen mask strapped to her face; she lifted her arm-bandaged and tingling oddly, probably burned, she thought-to remove the hindrance, but Stan was beside her in a second, pushing her hands away.
“Your lungs are damaged from all the smoke,” he told her kindly, “you need that thing for a while.” Seeing her about to protest, he interrupted, “Marshall’s fine.”
This seemed to placate her a great deal, and Stan continued, “He got a lot of stitches, a blood transfusion, but he got out of surgery this morning and is sleeping it off right next door.”
Mary nodded and gave him an appreciative smile.
“We’ve notified your mom and Brandi; they’re on their way here from New Jersey.”
A less appreciative smile.
“And,” Stan added, completely oblivious, “I have some news for you.” He cleared his throat grimly. “You know you weren’t supposed to be there last night.”
Mary’s licked her dry lips but said nothing, turning her head to look out the window where the New York sun was beginning to set along the horizon; have I been asleep for that long?
“Mary,” Stan chided gently, and Mary forced herself to look back at him to bear whatever she was being charged with. He said, “You interfered with an investigation, Mary. You aren’t officially a marshal, and that means you… posed a great liability, and the higher ups aren’t very happy about that.”
Mary just continued to look at him blankly.
“But you saved two marshals,” Stan said, a grin breaking out across his face. “One of them was the regional director’s daughter. You helped bring out a man to be charged with negligent murder and kidnapping and Hell knows what else. You brought a little girl out so her family could have some closure…”
“Stan,” Mary choked out dryly, though the oxygen mask muffled her voice and made her words gargled.
Stan’s grin just got wider, and he held up his hands to indicate that he would get to the point. “All charges against you will be waived if you take this back,” he said, and his smile was too big for his face when he reached into his jacket and pulled out a round marshal badge, which he laid in Mary’s unburned hand.
All Mary could do was run a thumb over the familiar metal-it was her badge, complete with the dent she had put in it once when she jammed it into a man’s teeth for hitting on her-and nod.
“Well, then, I’m going to have to start the paperwork,” Stan chucked merrily. He patted Mary’s shoulder affectionately and said, “Get some rest, Inspector,” before he let himself out with a bounce in his step.
Mary waited a mere ten seconds before she pulled the oxygen mask off her face and sat up; she was still for a while, waiting for the blood rushing to her head to settle. Then, fairly certain that she could breathe well enough, she swung her feet off the bed and headed for the door with the IV in tow.
As quietly as she could, Mary pushed open her door and stepped into the hallway, which was blissfully deserted. Grateful for the chance, she quickly padded to the door of the next room and let herself in.
Marshall, as Stan had let slip, was there on the bed.
Mary exhaled a breath she didn’t know she was holding when she saw that Marshall was actually, truly here and alive.
As if responding to a call, Marshall shifted slightly and opened his eyes halfway. He smiled blearily when he saw her.
Probably high on painkillers, Mary thought, amused at the prospect.
Mary walked slowly to his bedside and said hoarsely, “Go to sleep, doofus.” Then, she climbed in beside him, taking care to avoid his right leg.
Marshall gave a low grunt of assent, moving so she could lie down without being on his IV. Mary entwined her fingers with his firmly and rested her head against his chest.
And that was how the nurse found them in the morning.
----
:) Stay tuned for the epilogue! And comments make the world go round...
Title: Hostages
Author: Ryn
Pairings: M/M
Rating: T because Mary has a big vocabulary... ;D
Spoilers: A mention of Trojan Horst in Chapter 4, but not really... a spoiler, per se...
Summary: Mary and Marshall hunt a sociopath while Mary faces the very real possibility of dying-- and struggles to keep it from her partner.
Prologue-Chapter 2: http://community.livejournal.com/mary_marshall/160492.html#cutid1
Chapter 3-Chapter 4: http://community.livejournal.com/mary_marshall/173615.html#cutid1
Chapter 5-Chapter6: community.livejournal.com/mary_marshall/180746.html#cutid1
Chapter 7
----
At precisely 10:45pm, right on schedule, the strategy went into effect, and everything clicked into motion.
----
Mary stayed low against the dilapidated brick wall of the building and watched silently the dark shapes of men in Kevlar begin to swarm around the glass warehouse across the street; to the untrained eye, the warehouse would just look like another one of the semi-lit buildings that had long been abandoned for practical use but were the secret haunts of teenagers and the homeless.
But the wide front doors of the building was a little too sturdy, a little too new, and a little too firmly shut; the windows were too carefully boarded up, not a trace of dust along the panels. Even the half-tipped dumpster sitting on the side of the building looked a little too deliberate.
Quietly, patrol cars were beginning to move in from up the street, and Mary could guess at which figure at the front of the building belonged to Marshall-the lanky, tall one, and who could mistaken that hair?
Mary looked to her watch-10:47:46. She waited, stomach in knots and barely breathing for the suffocating unease that resided in her veins. Why am I here? I don’t need to be here, they can handle it… so why do I feel like I needto be here…?
She counted with the second hand of here watch, knowing precisely the next move-five, four, three, two-
10:48:00.
“FBI, open up!” she heard clearly from across the street-Marshall’s voice, and she vaguely wondered what the bosses had to say to make him identify himself and his cohort as FBI instead of U.S. Marshals. Probably some random jurisdictional crap that someone made up, she thought a little wildly.
A few seconds before Marshall’s voice rang through the darkness again, “FBI, we have a warrant to search the premises-open up or we’re coming in!”
For a few more seconds, nothing happened; then, Marshall must have given a signal because three loud crashes sounded through the night air-one from each of the exits from the warehouse, Mary knew-and the squad cars, armored SUVs, and preemptory ambulances began screeching as they all drove in tight around the building.
Light spilled from the front door that had been knocked open, and she saw Marshall’s form haloed for a second in the doorway before he disappeared through it, then Chloe’s unmistakable stature followed.
Mary waited impatiently as officers and backup spilled from the vehicles and crouched a distance away from the entrance, waiting for the call for help from the inside.
Even over the loud screeches of sirens ringing through the air, she could hear the sounds of shouts begin to build from inside the warehouse, panicked orders and demands. The tension in the air became almost too much to bear because no one could quite clearly make out the exact words, but this became a small concern when, all of a sudden, a loud whoosh sound permeated the night air.
Seconds later, smoke began spilling from the doors of the warehouse, unable to escape from the boarded windows. Mary jumped up out of her crouch and threw herself amongst the crowd of law enforcement just as the first SWAT members began evacuating the warehouse, some carrying little dark bundles that were crying in fear-the leftover, broken pieces of childhood mockingly contained in the form of thirteen-year-olds, ten-year-olds, eight-year-olds.
Everything had sprung into chaos, officers running to help SWAT with their charges, paramedics in the fray, flames beginning to be visible, and always, always the intense heat that overtook the cool New York air.
No one noticed Mary throwing herself into the melee, struggling against the movement of bodies that generally were moving away from the fire. She pushed and shoved through the swarm of uniformed men and women to get closer to the smoke-poisoned door, at the same time frantically looking around for a sign of a tall, brown-haired head.
She finally thrust herself through a line of paramedics that where taking little bodies from the arms of men who were coughing raggedly from the heavy, dark smoke, faces stained and eyes watering. The flames were starting to lick at the boards at the window, effectively shutting off any hope of escape there; Mary cast another frantic look around through the crowd, searching, searching…
“Mary!” came a familiar voice, and she whipped around quickly at it.
“Stan, what’re you doing here?” Mary asked, surprise taking over the worry for a second. Her ex-boss trotted toward her from where he had been with a group of three other worried, administrator-looking men, all of whom were watching the burning building in horror for fear for the lives of the agents their respective agencies.
“Better question for you,” Stan replied quickly before continuing, “You can’t be here-you don’t have any jurisdiction as a civilian.”
Instead of arguing, Mary demanded, “Have you seen Marshall? Where’s Marshall?”
A look of worry that no doubt reflected the one on her face; he shook his head.
Without asking further-because partners know, they always know-, Mary turned and took off toward the flaming building, ignoring Stan behind her shouting, “Mary! MARY! Inspector Shannon, do not go in there, that’s an order!”
Had it been a less serious situation, Mary may have turned and stuck her tongue out at Stan in the vision of maturity. As it was, she just made an ironic mental note that he called her ‘Inspector,’ intrigued in the back of her mind how much it pleased her to be addressed like that again.
Unthinkingly, Mary threw herself into the thick smoke of the door, trying her best to crouch and cover her mouth and nose with her hand.
“Marshall!” she called, squinting through the haze; the inside of the warehouse was two stories; the bottom had little room-like compartments sectioned off by thin, once-white curtains which were now flaming; the six-by-six spaces were undoubtedly the sorry excuse for a room that each child lived in. Along the walls stood large white vans like the one Shaw had in his garage, undoubtedly for some sort of transport. The second story was merely a walkway that extended around the perimeter of the room, granting anyone up there a clear view of all that was going on in any of the spaces on the first floor.
It was because she was looking upwards that she spotted the flurry of movement on the second story walkway, three figures standing alarmingly close to a boarded up window that was aflame.
Without another thought, Mary crouched lower and took off at a sprint toward the far wall where the figures stood, dodging particularly enthusiastic flames as best she could. Still, she was caught a few times when a flame licked her wrist greedily.
She was out of breath and sweating profusely when she reached the space beneath the walkway where Chloe, Marshall, and another man-three times Marshall’s size around at least-stood. Only the other man had his gun drawn; Marshall held a small blond girl in his arms and was weaponless, and Chloe had her hands held up, also weaponless and cornered.
“Marshall!” Mary called in relief and without thinking, looking upwards.
The next events happened quickly; one moment, Mary was bent over trying to watch her breath, the next, the belligerent-looking man with the gun on the walkway above saw her and swiveled his arm to rest the gun on her.
He was above, she was below; he was armed, and, though she had Marshall’s spare weapon in her hands, she had not found a Kevlar vest lying around the hotel room, so she was completely vulnerable. There were not the odds she liked to play, and the words oh, crap came to mind as she saw even from thirty feet away the barrel of a gun trained on her.
With no time to dodge, Mary just watched as the man made ready to pull the trigger.
The shot never hit her, however, because in the moment before the bullet was out of the barrel, Chloe launched herself bodily at the man, and they both tumbled from the momentum backwards over the railing, landing in a heap with a crash.
Stunned but thinking fast, Mary cast a glance toward Marshall to see him moving fast toward the nearest stairway down back onto the first floor. Satisfied, Mary ran toward where Chloe and the man lie unconsciously on a collapsed curtain; it had luckily not been burning, and Mary wasted no time in rolling the obese man-she recognized his face up close as one from a mug shot she had seen in the case file-off of the junior marshal.
“Chloe,” Mary urged, patting her face quickly. No response. “Chloe, come on, dammit, this place could collapse…” She kept shaking the younger marshal, but she did not respond.
Giving up, Mary bodily dragged Chloe up, pulling the woman’s arm around her shoulders to support her. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Marshall hurtling down the stairs and was satisfied that he would be fine following her out.
Turning, Mary coughed and sputtered as she half-dragged, half-supported Chloe through the maze of curtains toward the exit, unable to duck under the smoke because of the body that she was carrying with her. At one point, Chloe’s long hair flew sideways enough to catch on fire; Mary quickly dropped her and smothered out the flame before continuing.
The smoke at the exit was thickest, and Mary threw herself and Chloe through it blindly, the both of them landing in a tangle in the dirt. But they were blissfully, finally out, and Mary took big gulps of air greedily.
She felt a pair of arms help her to her feet and saw Stan, who was trying to pull her away from the intensely heated building; already, Chloe was being lifted by two paramedics who ran with her toward the ambulance.
Mary was letting herself be helped by Stan away from the fire when she chanced to look back over her shoulder-and did not see Marshall.
Still sputtering and leaning heavily on her ex-boss, she coughed, “Marshall’s-why isn’t he coming out- where- Stan, what the Hell-”
“Mary, he’ll get himself out,” Stan told her worriedly, motioning for another set of paramedics to look at her. “He’s tough, but you’re going to have to-”
“He was right behind me!” Mary protested in a gasp of air. She went into another fit of coughs.
Stan patted her back as she coughed and said, “Take care of yourself right now, Mary. Marshall can-”
Without waiting for him to answer, however, Mary pulled away from him and, for the second time in the last hour ignoring Stan, took off again to brave the flames.
This time, it was harder because she was already out of breath and dizzy from smoke inhalation, but her vision adjusted quickly to peering through billowing clouds of black. She crouch-ran back the way she came, underneath curtains that were all but burned to a crisp; the flame had now taken to gnawing at the wooden beams in the ceiling and the support beams at regular intervals around the room. Mary prayed that they held up.
She ducked and rolled under a curtain and nearly crashed into Marshall on the other side.
“What are you doing?!” Mary demanded upon seeing him struggle against the weight of both an unconscious child and man who had minutes before been aiming a gun at them. She gawked at him incredulously for a moment.
He answered her with a debilitating cough, then, “Couldn’t leave him here to die.” As if it were obvious.
Leave it to Marshall to risk frying his ass for a man who collected children like toys and tried to kill us all. Leaving the disbelief for another time, Mary took the child from Marshall’s arms quickly-an angelic-faced little girl with curls that were, at the moment, covered in soot. She looked otherwise to be sleeping peacefully.
“Come on,” Mary barked to her partner, and they began to make their slow progress back toward the outside and fresh air.
It was a long, torturous route obscured by smoke and made hard to navigate by the maze of curtains that had once divided one large room meant for storing an shipping glass into a hundred little compartments for storing children until they were needed.
It could have been years or it could have been seconds before they turned the corner around one such compartment and was in view of the door. Looking back to make sure that Marshall was a few steps behind her, she held the small-statured little girl- God, she can’t be more than eight- closer to her and ducked her head down for the final sprint.
There was a horribly painful bending sound a moment before a large section of the ceiling beams came crashing down in front of them-they threw themselves sideways on the group to avoid the flying embers-, impacting the ground right in front of the door and obstructing it with huge, flaming wooden beams. Just my luck, Mary thought savagely.
“You alright?” Marshall asked her breathlessly, working to get back up and drag his burden with him; the unconscious man lolled uselessly against his shoulder.
“Aren’t there two other exits?!” Mary shot back over the roar of the flames that were beginning to close up on them. Marshall seemed to realize something and looked at her in horror.
“Those were blocked, too; you shouldn’t have come,” he told her before coughing again so hard that he had to put down the man he was trying to save so he could catch his breath. Mary reached out and rubbed his back gently.
“Is there no other way out?” she asked him once he could straighten up again. He shook his head.
“Our only choice is to go through,” Marshall said heavily, nodding toward the now-barred doorway. He heaved the unconscious man back up and took a step toward the flaming beam when Mary reached out and tugged him back.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said, and without any other explanation, then took off running back away from their blocked exit back toward where they came. Marshall followed her without question.
It took a shorter time to reach the back wall from which Chloe and the man had tumbled earlier than it had to get to the door, and to Mary’s utter relief, nothing had fallen on the row of white vans that sat in a straight line facing the wall.
She hurriedly rushed to the first van in the row and threw open the door, ignoring the pain in her finger pads when they came in contact with the searing hot door handle; it would have been like worrying about a leaking faucet when there was a hurricane coming.
She could have cried in relief in seeing the keys stuck obligingly in the ignition.
Instead, she gently lay the unconscious girl into the passenger’s seat and buckled her in, then turned to help Marshall get into the back with the large man; they heaved him heavily, and he landed with a thump in the trunk area.
Before Marshall could get in behind him, however, there was a loud popping explosion as the heat of the fire caused something behind them to explode; Mary found herself thrust heavily to the ground as Marshall threw himself against her reflexively, completely knocking the wind out of her.
There was the bangs and clanks as whatever had exploded landed in pieces around the room, and then she found herself pressed tightly against the hot metal of the van next to theirs, face inches from Marshall’s; her eyes widened slightly as she registered just how close their faces were, and it would have been a scene out of a B-rated, sappy romance film if they had not been in a building about to collapse with two people they had to protect.
And if Marshall didn’t suddenly wince in pain, stumble backwards, and fall in a heap when his leg buckled.
“Marshall!”
She kneeled quickly next to him lying on his side with his face scrunched in pain, looking him over to see what was wrong; one of his hands was now soaked in blood, pressed to the back of his thigh where a shard of glass three inches long-thrown from the explosion-was protruding from his flesh. It also stuck out a little from the front of his thigh, where it had gone straight through. “Oh, God, Marshall…”
He took a breath and ended up coughing, but he managed to choke out, “Well, that sucks, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know, you tell me,” Mary retorted a little hysterically; she knew better than to try to get the glass out and increasing the risk of him bleeding out, so she quickly took off her jacket and tied a sleeve around his thigh tightly above his wound, but still there was so much, so much blood.
“Come on,” she grunted, hauling Marshall up and practically throwing him into the back of the truck; he looked too dazed from blood loss for a retort and just looked at her with glazed-over eyes as she shut the doors to the trunk, throwing him into darkness.
I’m so sorry, Marshall… I should’ve been here with you from the beginning…
Mary rubbed the back of her hand against her forehead to wipe off the sweat as she got into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition; it came it life with a dull roar, and all Mary could do was give an involuntary sigh of relief.
She threw the van in reverse and backed it up about thirty feet; then, setting it to drive, she stomped on the accelerator, and the van crashed through the warehouse wall.
They came out the other side in a shower of bricks and burning mortar, right into the side of a patrol car; behind them, half the building collapsed in a concoction of smoke and flames.
What happened next, Mary only remembered in bits and pieces; officers and paramedics wrenching open the doors, pulling her out. She remembered watching as two EMTs cupped their hands and took turns giving the unconscious girl CPR, remembered when they finally sat back on her heels and exchanged a few words before transferring her to a gurney and pulling a sheet over her face.
She remembered the man they had rescued-the man who had kidnapped and traded children like trading cards-coughing to life five seconds after a paramedic had him out of the van.
She remembered a group of EMTs carrying Marshall’s unconscious body from the back of the van, face a deathly pale. The moment they put him on the white sheets of the gurney, they were stained a deep, dark red. Stan said something to one of the medics who were loading Marshall into the ambulance, then helped Mary in after him; she held his hand and couldn’t for the life of her remember what she said to him during the ride to the hospital but did remember the slightly alarmed but pitying looks the paramedics gave her while bandaging and intubating Marshall. She remembered being offered a tissue but slapping them away.
Mary was ushered out of the ambulance alongside Marshall and followed alongside him as he was transferred into the hands of a group of stern-looking nurses in scrubs. She had to run to keep up as they rushed him down a long, white hallway and through a set of doors- doors that she was prevented from going through by an unsympathetic-looking nurse who threw some quick words at her and disappeared after her partner.
And that was all that Mary remembered before she completely shut down, and everything went dark around her.
----
Mary woke to Stan’s irritated voice on the phone.
“…bravery, and there’s no way that she should be punished for what no one in your department had the balls to do!” Mary watched Stan’s back as he angrily snapped shut his phone.
He muttered something along the lines of, “Damn ignoramus,” before he turned and noticed his inspector blinking blearily up at him.
“Mary!” he greeted, surprised. “You’re awake already.”
Mary nodded and opened her mouth to speak but found quite quickly that there was a large oxygen mask strapped to her face; she lifted her arm-bandaged and tingling oddly, probably burned, she thought-to remove the hindrance, but Stan was beside her in a second, pushing her hands away.
“Your lungs are damaged from all the smoke,” he told her kindly, “you need that thing for a while.” Seeing her about to protest, he interrupted, “Marshall’s fine.”
This seemed to placate her a great deal, and Stan continued, “He got a lot of stitches, a blood transfusion, but he got out of surgery this morning and is sleeping it off right next door.”
Mary nodded and gave him an appreciative smile.
“We’ve notified your mom and Brandi; they’re on their way here from New Jersey.”
A less appreciative smile.
“And,” Stan added, completely oblivious, “I have some news for you.” He cleared his throat grimly. “You know you weren’t supposed to be there last night.”
Mary’s licked her dry lips but said nothing, turning her head to look out the window where the New York sun was beginning to set along the horizon; have I been asleep for that long?
“Mary,” Stan chided gently, and Mary forced herself to look back at him to bear whatever she was being charged with. He said, “You interfered with an investigation, Mary. You aren’t officially a marshal, and that means you… posed a great liability, and the higher ups aren’t very happy about that.”
Mary just continued to look at him blankly.
“But you saved two marshals,” Stan said, a grin breaking out across his face. “One of them was the regional director’s daughter. You helped bring out a man to be charged with negligent murder and kidnapping and Hell knows what else. You brought a little girl out so her family could have some closure…”
“Stan,” Mary choked out dryly, though the oxygen mask muffled her voice and made her words gargled.
Stan’s grin just got wider, and he held up his hands to indicate that he would get to the point. “All charges against you will be waived if you take this back,” he said, and his smile was too big for his face when he reached into his jacket and pulled out a round marshal badge, which he laid in Mary’s unburned hand.
All Mary could do was run a thumb over the familiar metal-it was her badge, complete with the dent she had put in it once when she jammed it into a man’s teeth for hitting on her-and nod.
“Well, then, I’m going to have to start the paperwork,” Stan chucked merrily. He patted Mary’s shoulder affectionately and said, “Get some rest, Inspector,” before he let himself out with a bounce in his step.
Mary waited a mere ten seconds before she pulled the oxygen mask off her face and sat up; she was still for a while, waiting for the blood rushing to her head to settle. Then, fairly certain that she could breathe well enough, she swung her feet off the bed and headed for the door with the IV in tow.
As quietly as she could, Mary pushed open her door and stepped into the hallway, which was blissfully deserted. Grateful for the chance, she quickly padded to the door of the next room and let herself in.
Marshall, as Stan had let slip, was there on the bed.
Mary exhaled a breath she didn’t know she was holding when she saw that Marshall was actually, truly here and alive.
As if responding to a call, Marshall shifted slightly and opened his eyes halfway. He smiled blearily when he saw her.
Probably high on painkillers, Mary thought, amused at the prospect.
Mary walked slowly to his bedside and said hoarsely, “Go to sleep, doofus.” Then, she climbed in beside him, taking care to avoid his right leg.
Marshall gave a low grunt of assent, moving so she could lie down without being on his IV. Mary entwined her fingers with his firmly and rested her head against his chest.
And that was how the nurse found them in the morning.
----
:) Stay tuned for the epilogue! And comments make the world go round...