Touched by Death Chapter 14
Shock reverberated through Jared’s nerves at the confession. Samantha Morgan merely sneered, white teeth bared in a show of dominance. Jensen stirred across the room and Jared’s head whipped toward his vulnerable boyfriend. He shuffled slowly at first, and when his captor made no qualms, he advanced swiftly on his partner as his face scrunched at the sudden reality of the waking world, completely innocent of the turn of events.
Jared bent low to the ground and cupped Jensen’s ashen cheek, thumb rubbing soft circles on the cool skin. Bleary green eyes blinked sluggishly up at him, confusion swarming their mosey depths and scrunching wrinkles of concentration between his eyebrows. As he strained to move his sore body Jared placed a supportive arm around his middle and levered him into a sitting position, he winced. Muscles tight beneath Jared’s palm, he gave a reassuring squeeze of his fingers. ‘I am here, you’re not in this alone.’ Jensen’s burdened gaze lightened slightly. “Samantha?”
“Hello dear, I’m so sorry you’ve been dragged into all of this, you were never supposed to find out.” A melodic tone spilled past her lips, something eerily naïve and slightly disturbing in her voice. Realization dawned across Jensen’s face and his lungs shriveled in his chest. His head snapped back and forth in denial, muscles vibrating with tension and Jared gripped him tighter. “I understand it’s quite the shock.”
“That’s an understatement… Why…?” The worlds felt foreign on Jensen’s tongue. A sour taste coating his mouth. He’d always imagined bringing this murderer to justice, sitting across from the scumbag and picking their brain to bits. He had never pictured such a nurturing face to belong to savage killer. The image of her sweet smile, hair swept back in a blonde ponytail, neatly pressed beige cardigan wrapped across her shoulders insured those young woman to let her waltz right in their homes with Some excuse perched on her glossy smile. My car broke down. I’m terribly lost. If I could just borrow your phone. They would open the door wide, ask her if she wanted anything to drink and turn a defenseless back to the middle aged woman sitting politely in their living room.
“It took her thirteen minutes to die,” Her voice trembled, eyes misty with memory. “My baby girl, it took thirteen minutes. For thirteen minutes I had to sit there as she screamed herself hoarse, as her insides fell out into her tiny hands, she didn’t understand what was happening. How is a four year old supposed to understand death? How was she supposed to understand that the pain would finally end? For thirteen minutes she was dying and there was nothing I could do. She was so small, but she had so much blood. God, it was everywhere, soaking her clothes, in her hair, tricking from her mouth. I’m her mother! I’m supposed to protect her! And I sat there, pinned to my seat, as my baby bled out four feet away!”
Her face was soaked in tears, snot dripping from her left nostril, and blotches forming on her temples and under her eyes. She clutched at her chest, trying to hold her heart together. “She’s dead.”
“So you killed those girls? You took them away from their families, that pain you feel, you pushed it on to every mother and father of the girls you slaughtered. And for what? It didn’t bring your daughter back.” Jensen straightened up, torso pulling taunt despite the creak in his bones. A menacing twitch formed around his lips.
“I kept seeing her in their faces. The first girl, I saw her in my daughter’s favorite park. She was reading a book on a bench in the sunlight and I could just see her, my little girl. I got this longing in my chest and I just needed to talk to her. So, I walked up to her and introduced myself but her name was Abigail. All of a sudden my little girl was gone again, she wasn’t in that girl, and it hurt so goddamn much. So I had to kill her. I thought that was the end, but I just kept seeing her everywhere. At the library, in the grocery store, even in coffee shops, but as soon as I went to her she was gone. I just wanted the pain to stop.” A blank look overtook her broken features and somehow it was even more chilling. She tightened her grip on the gun in her hand. “Jeff helped me keep from getting caught… Wiped up a few finger prints, lost a few files, but he never really understood. He just couldn’t bear to lose me too. Even now, he killed those girls to try and bring me home but he had to dope them up with morphine first. He’s too weak.”
Jared felt the muscles in Jensen’s shoulders retract, could her his teeth grind as the muscle in his jaw jumped. Rage dispensed from every pore in his skin, years of self-loathing finally locking in on its rightful proprietor. “You’re the weak one. You massacre innocent young woman and then use your dead daughter as an excuse! You’re infecting the memory of that little girl with blood and fear and you disgust me. You’ve turned a beautiful image of a little girl into a filthy excuse for homicide. That’s why you can never find her, why she always leaves before you get to the piece of her in those woman, because she knows what you are. A psychopath!”
Samantha reeled back in rage, pointing the barrel of her gun at Jensen’s chest. She advanced with jumbled steps, snarling like a feral animal, fully prepared to add another victim to her list, but a muscular arm grabbed her round the waist and tugged her back forcefully. Jared hadn’t even noticed Jeff enter the room but he was oddly grateful he had. Jeff grabbed Samantha’s gun arm and shook his head emphatically, “Not him. Please not him.”
A look of disgust washed over his wife as he pleaded for the young detective’s life. She nodded slowly and loosened her gun arm to her side, letting the piece of metal rest along her thigh. Tension fled from Jeff’s torso and he gave a relieved sigh turning toward the duo on the concrete floor. Before anyone could blink an eye Samantha brought up her gun and fired a shot. There was a loud ringing and for a couple seconds after a humming reverberation of the concrete walls. Then silence. Jeff remained standing for a moment before his body caught up to reality and he crumbled to the ground with a thud. Blood pooled around his head, brain tissue floating across it’s surface. Bile crept up Jensen’s throat and he averted his gaze, water forming on his lower lids. Jared couldn’t look away. Jeff seemed to be staring into him with his dead gaze; blank eyes already filming with death. Samantha didn’t spare him a glance. Instead, she twisted her gun to the pair curled together across the room.
“Move apart.” They hesitated for a moment and Samantha jerked the gun at them, “Move!”
The pair scuttled away from each other hesitantly, fingers remaining interlaced. The familiar contact kept the anxiety at bay. As much as anxiety could be swallowed down while literally staring down a mass murderer with a weapon. “My husband made you a promise Jensen, and I intend to keep it.”
The gun swerved toward Jared and Jensen leapt from the cement. His fingers went slack in Jared’s grip as he pulled away and in that moment Jared felt as though he had lost him. Fingers gripping air Jared sucked in a breath and screamed out gibberish. Too many words piled up in his mouth and there was nothing romantic about this moment. It was not a glamorous shot of a hero risking his life for the damsel. It was selfish and desperate and utterly human. It was ugly as Jensen barreled into the petite woman, using his weight advantage and grasping her arm to twist it painfully.
BANG
Jared could hear the reverberation of the bullet off a wall close behind him, then the scrape of falling concrete as it bit a hole through the material. His only view was of Jensen’s muscular back as he pried at their attacker, muscles rolling under his dirty dress shirt.
BANG
All three of them jerked at the loud noise. There was a moment of stillness, where nobody dared to breathe, where there was an air of finality, in some form or fashion, that this was all final over. Then Jensen and Samantha fell in a heap to the floor. Jared scrambled over on his knees, Morgan’s blood sticking to one of his palms and staining the fabric of his pant leg. He paid no heed to it as he slid to a halt beside the fallen pair. Samantha lay on the ground gargling, a crimson stain spreading out from the middle of her chest. She gave one spastic jerk before stilling completely, eyes blankly staring at the ceiling. Jared could find no sympathy. He turned and grabbed Jensen’s face between his large hands and placed a sloppily wet kiss on his mouth. He rested his lips there for a moment, needing intimate contact after this ordeal. Jensen sighed into his mouth and pulled away slowly.
“I caught Poe, Jay.” The look of relief on Jensen’s face made Jared’s heart soar, until he began to sag slightly. Jared blinkingly examined him in confusion, his heart crawling into his throat. Jensen’s hands were sealed over his abdomen, pressing weakly against a torrent of blood. The sticky liquid coated his fingers within seconds and dribbled into the folds on his pants. Jensen had shot through Samantha from her back and right into his own stomach. He began to tip backward and Jared caught him in his arms, cradling him and pulling him up into his lap. “It’s finally over.”
“That’s right you caught her. You were so amazing baby, now we just need to get out of here okay? Just hold on for me.” Jared frantically reached out with his right arm and dragged Samantha’s languid body towards him, searching her jacket pockets desperately. His nails scratched across cotton until he found purchase of a slick plastic case. Snatching out the desired object he pressed emergency call, “This is Detective Padalecki with the NYPD and I have an Officer down! I repeat Officer down! Send an ambulance immediately.”
Jared dropped the phone from his hand, trusting they would trace the call. Then grabbed at Jensen’s face clumsily, his head lolling boneless in his grip. Crimson spread across the fabric of his shirt rapidly and dripped onto the ground beneath them, soaking into Jared’s pants and seeping into his shoes but all he could feel was Jensen’s rapidly cooling body heavy in his hands. “Stay with me Jen! C’mon baby, I love you. I love how you wrap around me in your sleep and stick your cold feet under the backs of my thighs. I know I grumble about it in the middle of the night but really I’m smiling because it reassures me you’re there. That this isn’t a dream and you’re real and I can reach out anytime to pull you against my chest. And in the dead of night you’ll cling to me, face burring in my neck, flexing you’re cold toes and it’s the best feeling in the world. I can’t go a night without you and your cold feet. I can’t reach out in the middle of the night and not find you there.”
Jared stroked a blood stained palm across Jensen’s jaw, red thumbprints marking the wane skin. Flecks of dried blood clung to reddish brown bristles, washing away in tear tracks. Jensen’s face turned into the touch, lips brushing his palm tenderly. Raspy cracked skin scraping desperate palms. “I’m not asleep.”
“What?” Confusion clouded Jared’s already tear blurred vision as Jensen turned his head limply to stare up at him. His pupils were blown with shock, eyes blood shot with pain the whites of his eyes spidery with red veins, but the green irises were reverent with clarity. His lips bumped together in an obvious attempt at speech. His jaw worked loosely and pitiful spouts of air ghosted his lips before his vocal chords tightened, “I’m awake when I cling to you. I’m awake with you.”
He coughed pitifully, blood flecking his chapped lips, entire body wracked with a laborious shutter. He wheezed in, lungs whimpering in defeat. His vision clouded and the lines of pain ringing his eyes smoothed out. “The ambulance will be here soon, you’ll feel better soon.”
“It’s okay, it doesn’t hurt.” His voice was paper thin and weak, barely carrying over the small distance from his lips to Jared’s ear. Tears rolled across Jared’s cheeks in fat drops, dripping down onto Jensen’s cheek and cutting a path through the dried blood on around Jensen’s mouth. “Thank you.”
“You can thank me later, after I get us out of here. This is not some bullshit sappy goodbye! You hate those.” Jared half joked, sob caught in his throat. Jensen gave him a weak smile.
“Maybe just this once.” Jensen replied tenderly, heavy hand dragging up Jared’s arm to the meeting between his shoulder and neck. He gave a tight squeeze and opened his eyes wide to stare at the beautiful man hovering above him, “Thank you for believing in me, when I couldn’t. I love you Jay.”
His head fell to the side, eyes fluttering closed. His hand fell limply against his still chest. Jared gave an inhuman cry of pain, chest seizing and throat constricting. He curled possessively around Jensen’s body and sobbed silently.
He could hear sirens in the distance.