Unbreakable (13 page)

Cory

I dreamt of soft red hair against my cheek and expensive perfume in my nose. I dreamt of arms around my neck, thighs parting for me, a voice whispering
Yes! Yes! Yes!
like a heartbeat, and then ecstasy beyond anything I could have imagined. And then pain. A heavy, hot pain that tried to drown me. The voice turned frantic…

Stay with me...

Yes
, I tried to say.
I’ll stay with you…forever…

But I couldn’t talk, couldn’t breathe, and then another voice, loud and chafing, like metal scraping against glass…

“He’s in here?”

I opened my eyes. The sunlight streaming in the window was searing. Not the bank. A hospital. But Alex was there, sleeping, holding my hand. I smiled.

“Cory?”

Alex jolted awake, disoriented at first too. The owner of the chafing voice cleared her throat.

Georgia stood in the doorway wearing a man’s blue button-down shirt—one of mine—with the sleeves torn off at the shoulder, and black leggings. Bracelets jangled on her tattooed arms as she put her hands on her hips. She glared at Alex.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Alex. Alex Gardener.” She slipped her hand from mine, leaving it cold and empty. “You must be Georgia.”

“I must be. And how do you know Cory?”

“She was a hostage with me,” I whispered and winced. My throat felt like I’d been gargling rocks and glass.

“I fell asleep,” Alex said, rising hastily. “I didn’t expect to…I’d better go.”

I wanted to tell her to stay. I wanted to tell her a lot of things but my voice was so weak and she was already halfway to the door.

Alex turned. “Goodbye, Cory. I’ll…um, check in on you later. Nice to meet you, Georgia.”

“It’s not even visiting hours
now
,” Georgia said when Alex was gone. “How’d she get in?”

Why do you care?
I wanted to demand. I tried to pry through the fog of pain medication to remember the last time I’d even spoken to Georgia. Weeks ago. A text that said to expect a hearing notice about her moving to Sitka with Callie.
My girl…

“Where’s Callie?” I croaked.

“With Janice.” Georgia flounced into the seat Alex had vacated. She smelled like patchouli and the mint tea she liked to drink. “Did you think I’d leave her alone?”

I didn’t take the bait. “Why didn’t you bring her?”

“I didn’t know what you’d be like. I didn’t want to scare her.”

“Oh, good. Yeah, no, that’s…good. Maybe later this week.”

“We’ll see.” There was a silence and then Georgia said, “So the doctor said your lung collapsed. And that you have two shattered ribs.”

“She’d know.”

The humor was lost on Georgia.

She scowled, the hard lines returning to her face, which looked younger even than her twenty-six years. “Seriously, Cory, you got
shot
? Saving
her
?” She jerked a thumb as if Alex were over her shoulder. “The nurses are saying you’re a hero. That the whole robbery ended when you jumped out like fucking Rambo and started shooting up the bad guys.”

“I didn’t shoot anyone…”

“I had to fight through the press to get here. They asked me all about you—”

“Don’t talk to the press, Georgia,” I said, suddenly feeling even more tired. “You’ll just make it worse.”

“Worse?” She snorted a laugh. “How can it get worse? Cory, you have no health insurance. Your
heroics
are going to sink you.”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“Oh, because it’s just that simple? You think your lying bastard of a boss is going to help you out? Randall doesn’t even pay you when you
work.
And you’re going to be out of work. For
months.
”

“Not that long,” I said, not knowing if it were true. I couldn’t be out of work for months. I couldn’t be out of work, period. I closed my eyes against the terrible weight that pressed down, like an unseen hand, to take up just where it had left off before the robbery.

“It doesn’t matter,” Georgia was saying. “You’ve had surgery. An ambulance ride. Hell, just lying here is going to cost thousands of dollars a day. You’ll need to win the lottery to pay it off. Or declare bankruptcy—”

“
No,
” I said and then coughed painfully at the jagged pain in my throat. Another faint pain, deep in the right side of my chest, was slowly waking to join it. “I said I’d figure it out, Georgia, and I meant it. I always do.”

She leaned back in her chair and bit her thumbnail like she did when she felt guilty. “You should come with us to Sitka.”

“And do what? Work as a bouncer? For minimum wage and all the free beer I can handle?”

“You can still do construction. They
do
build houses there, you know.”

“It’s not enough money and you know it.” A silence fell and then I said, “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you want me to move? So that we can be together? Or so that you don’t feel so guilty about taking Callie away from me?”

“That’s not fair. You know how hard it is for me to take care of her on my own here.”

“It doesn’t have to be that hard.”

“And it’s just going to get worse,” she said as if she hadn’t heard. “You’ll be out of work. Your skeezy landlord has probably already thrown your stuff out onto the street. And now you’ll be up to your ass in hospital bills.” She cocked her head. “How are you going to continue the child support?”

“Dammit, Georgia, I said I’d figure it out.” The pain in my chest grew stronger. “You’re not moving to Sitka.”

She bit her nail again. “The hearing is in two days.”

“Don’t do this,” I said. “At least wait until I get out. You have to wait until I can be there. There’s probably some law that says I get to be there.”

Georgia threw up her hands and got to her feet. “Okay, okay, fine. I’ll tell my lawyer to move the hearing. But it’s still going to happen, Cory.”

“You do what you have to do, Georgia.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and I instantly felt guilty for my snappishness and disgusted with myself at the same time for letting her manipulate my feelings so easily, like a puppeteer.

“I thought you were dead, you know?” she cried. “I didn’t know what to say to Callie.”

“Nothing scary, I hope.” The pain in my chest ticked up another notch. “You tell her that I’m okay. Because it’s true. I
am
okay.”

Georgia nodded, her tears drying as fast as they’d come. “I’ll bring her by later this week.” She turned to go just as the nurse—Nicole—came in with a syringe of pale yellow liquid. “What’s that? Pain meds? Another three hundred dollars...” She stormed out.

Nicole wore an amused expression as she fit the syringe into the one of the tubes that fed my arm. “How are you feeling, Mr. Bishop? Any discomfort? I’d guess the pain is starting to wake up.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“On a scale of one to ten…?”

“Six.”
Six going on fifty.

“This should help.” Nicole finished administering the meds, and made a notation on the whiteboard in my room. “Was that your wife?”

“No,” I said. “It’s… complicated.”

Nicole laughed. “Like my Facebook status.”

She checked the machine that monitored my pulse and oxygen levels, then moved to my side and gently leaned me forward. “I need to check your wound.”

I felt her pull aside the hospital gown and examine the place below my shoulder blade. It ached like it’d been hit with a hammer.

“Beautiful tattoo back here. I’m not usually a fan, but that looks like a work of art.”

I wanted to tell her most people considered their tattoos art but I couldn’t speak. My teeth were clenched too tightly against the pain.

She eased me back down “The wound site looks clean. No sign of infection. Dr. Lownds will be in later today to check on you, and we’re going to try to get you to walk a bit later this afternoon.”

“So soon?” My chest ached more just to think about it, and I wondered when in the name of everything holy the pain medication would kick in.

“What?” Nicole pretended to be shocked. “Big strong guy like you? Be up in no time. Plus it prevents bedsores and embolisms. And despite how crappy you feel now, your prognosis has the docs thinking you’ll be out of here in two weeks.”

“Really?” Relief that it wasn’t months surged through me but two weeks was too long, too. I mustered a smile. “That’s sooner than I’d thought. Okay, good. And uh…I’ll probably need to talk to someone about arranging payments. I heard there’s someone appointed in hospitals to do that.”

“There is,” Nicole said, adjusting the IV bags on their hooks above me. “But I don’t want you to worry about that right now. You need to concentrate on getting better, okay?”

“Yeah.” I nodded dully. No sense in worrying about what I couldn’t change.

“You want some TV? What you did is all over the news. They’re calling you the United One Hero!”

I closed my eyes. “Oh no…”

“Oh yes! You don’t want to watch?”
“Absolutely not.”

Nicole put her hands on her hips. “Honey, fifty-three people are alive because of you. You got to own that.”

“I just want to rest.”

“Mmmhmmm.”

She started to leave when something caught her eye. She bent and retrieved the baseball cap off the floor, the one Alex had been wearing when she came in last night. “Your pretty red-haired friend…she left this here.”

“Alexandra Gardener,” I said softly.

Nicole handed me the cap. “Maybe I should track her down and tell her to come and pick it up?” She gave me a wink and a knowing smile, and then left me alone.

I turned the hat over in my hands. The pain in my chest was lessening. The medication had come to carry me someplace else, and I hoped Alex would be there, waiting for me.

Alex

I raced back to the house in Pacific Palisades, wondering how on earth anyone survived in the age before cell phones. I’d reached for mine to call Drew at least ten times on the drive, to apologize for staying out so long with his car.
Relax. He took the Range Rover. No big deal.
Only the guilt that nagged me wasn’t so easily defeated and didn’t have much to do with the car.
So you fell asleep visiting Cory. That’s not a crime either.

I wondered vaguely if my arguments in the courtroom ever sounded this obvious.

Once home, I raced to the landline in the kitchen and called Drew’s office at EllisIntel. “I’m so sorry,” I blurted, the second he picked up. “I fell asleep at the hospital.”

“I figured that might have happened,” Drew said. “I took the Rover.”

“Right. Yeah.” I chewed my lip. “I thought you’d be mad at me.”
Why aren’t you mad at me?

“Mad? Of course not. You’ve had a real rough couple of days,
to say the least
.” I could hear his smile over the line. “And the Porsche belongs to you as much as it does to me. What’s mine is yours. Or will be, once we’re married.” He cleared his throat. “How uh…how is Cory?”

“Better. They think he’s going to be fine.”

“Wonderful.”

“Yeah. It is.”

“Alex, I feel like a broken record asking you, but are
you
okay? Maybe you should see someone. A therapist—”

“
No
,” I said, snapping to. “I have to talk to the F.B.I. today. That’ll bring closure, right? Like you said? Therapy is fine for some people but it isn’t for me.”

“Alex, I love your mother to pieces, you know I do. But I can practically hear her voice coming out of your mouth.”

He was right. Marilyn Gardener had particular ideas about help.
Never show weakness
and
Act strong and you will be strong,
were a few of her favorite mantras.

“Jesus, Drew, the robbery happened less than thirty-six hours ago,” I said. “Give me a week before you start in with your diagnoses.”

“All right, all right.” Drew sighed. “What time is your appointment?”

“Ten a.m. I’m going to stop by the office first and see where Munro stands then leave straight from there.”

“Do you want me to come with you? To give the statement?”

My mouth dropped. “I assumed you would…” Then I wondered if Wolfman had given his statement, and if it included how a twenty thousand dollar diamond ring came into his possession.

But Drew said, “No, no, of course I’ll be there. For moral support. I’m sorry, I’m just buried and wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“Okay,” I said weakly. “Thank you.”

“Of course. See you there.”

“See you there.”

We hung up and I steeled myself. I would tell him. I should tell him before we walked into those offices to avoid an unpleasant scene.

But then a fierce desire to protect those private moments came over me. It was no one’s business what happened that night but Cory’s and mine. A stolen handful of minutes amid a terrible ordeal of pain and fear and death. It was private and it was going to stay that way, no matter what.

#

I showered and then dressed in another of my designer suits. I coiled my hair in a tight twist and applied liberal amounts of makeup to conceal how tired my eyes looked. After, I studied myself in the mirror. I had the sallow visage of someone recovering from an illness.

“But I
am
recovering,” I declared. “I don’t need therapy. I need to get back into it.”

I took a few breaths, yoga-style, and realized I
did
feel better. More like myself, dressed in my work uniform. My armor. I went to the kitchen and the last half of the sandwich Drew had bought me yesterday. Nothing tasted better than that day-old tuna salad, and I burst out laughing.

The drive to the offices of Lawson & Dooney sobered me slightly. I wasn’t expecting great news about the Munro case, but I’d fix it. I’d put back together whatever had been broken and my reputation would remain intact. My whole life would go back to the way it was. It was already on the right track, I could feel it.

Shocked stares from my coworkers greeted me. They converged to embrace me and tell how horrified they’d been to learn what had happened, and how glad they were I was safe.

“I’d have a party ready for you if you’d told me you coming in,” Abed said. “It’s strange not getting twenty texts a day from you. Sorry, did I say per day? I meant per
hour
.”

“The F.B.I. still has my phone,” I said. “I’ll get it back today and the deluge will continue.”

Abed grinned and after a small hesitation, gave me an awkward hug. “Bad Cop’s not happy,” he whispered in my ear. “Be warned.”

Jon Lawson came out of his office just as Michael Dooney emerged from his. Mr. Lawson beamed to see me, while Mr. Dooney’s narrow face looked pinched, his eyes hard.

“Alex.” Lawson approached, arms outstretched. “You gave us quite the scare.” He gave me a fatherly hug and then held me at arm’s length. “Are you okay? Nothing broken?” he teased.

“I’m fine,” I replied. “I’m ready to get back on board with Munro. I heard yesterday that the judge questioned the jury for influence.”

“Ms. Gardener, would you step in here please?” Mr. Dooney didn’t wait for an answer, but retreated into his office.

The entire staff suddenly had something better to do and got back to work. Abed gave me a sympathetic parting glance as I followed Mr. Lawson into Dooney’s office. I felt as if I were back in high school and being sent to the principal’s office.
Only this is much worse than getting caught ditching class or stealing a smoke under the bleachers.

Michael Dooney’s office resembled a museum: tasteful pieces of art peppered the glass-and-steel motif, and the room always seemed ten degrees colder than any other part of the building. Mr. Dooney waited until we were both inside and shut the door behind us. He sat at his glass desk—I couldn’t imagine working on a glass desk—his back to the Los Angeles skyline, and indicated for me to sit in one of the two black leather armless chairs across from him. Mr. Lawson leaned against the other.

There was nothing on Mr. Dooney’s desk but a leather desk set, also in black, and a sleek MacBook Pro, open and facing him. He sat in his chair—a higher-backed version of the one I sat in—and steepled his narrow fingers together as he regarded me with cold blue eyes. Older than Jon Lawson by ten years, he reminded me of Ebenezer Scrooge…
before
the ghostly visitations.

“Ms. Gardener, you were given Munro vs. Hutchinson because you assured us that you could handle it. No, scratch that. You
guaranteed
us a win.”

I nodded and said only, “That’s correct, Mr. Dooney.”

After working at Lawson & Dooney for three years, I knew when it was time to speak and when to keep my mouth shut when it came to the senior partner. But inside, my heart clanged in my chest.
He can’t possibly be blaming me for being held up at a bank robbery…?

“The word from the courthouse was that your closing statement was quote—
like nails in a coffin for the defense—
unquote.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Mr. Dooney,” I said, and suddenly wondered if things weren’t as terrible as I thought. With Dooney it was impossible to tell whether you were going to get a raise or be fired—his demeanor was the same delivering either news.

“I was
glad
to hear it too,” Mr. Dooney said, sarcasm tingeing his words, “until yesterday, and then I wasn’t quite so very
glad
.”

I shifted in my chair.

“Just tell her what happened,” Jon Lawson said, irritated. “She’s been through a terrible ordeal—”

Dooney held up a bony hand, his eyes boring into mine. “When it was first discovered that you were a hostage in that bank robbery, the defense attorney requested Judge Fitzpatrick to question the jury for influence. He did, and found none. Nothing sufficient anyway. Some jurors expressed concern over your well-being, naturally, but all felt they could continue deliberations and come to a just verdict regardless.”

I eased a sigh without showing that I had. My hands were clasped so tightly in my lap, my nails cut the skin. “Yes, I’d heard. I’m so relieved.”

“And then this happened.”

Dooney flipped his laptop around and started a video of a news report from KTLA. The female reporter stood in a darkened underground parking lot along with a dozen or so other reporters milling about.

“By some miracle, only two of the hostages were injured. One—a woman—sustained four broken fingers. The other—a man credited with almost single-handedly ending the standoff between the bank robbers and police—sustained a gunshot wound to the back but apparently is in stable condition. We have just confirmed that another hostage is inside and—”

There was a flurry of movement, blurred images, and the reporter shouted, “Here she comes now!”

I watched the jerky, handheld footage of Drew and me stepping out of the hospital elevator. The reporters converged and Drew shielded me, rushing us to his car, but not before the glare of a dozen cameras lit up the gory splatter of blood all over my clothes.

Dooney snapped the laptop shut. “They’re calling you the Jackie Kennedy of United One.”

“Sorry, kiddo.” Jon Lawson patted my shoulder. “You can imagine what happened next.”

“Defense requested a new line of jury questioning,” I said dully.

“Correct,” Dooney said. “Almost unanimous for influence. Mistrial.” He leveled a finger at me. “We were home free until your little hospital photo-op sunk the case.”

“Mr. Dooney, I…I didn’t know the press was there. How could I know? I had just been freed…” My words trailed, drowned in disbelief that I had to speak them at all.

“It’s not your fault, Alex.” Lawson glared at Dooney. “Is it?”

Dooney ignored his partner. “You know our philosophy, Ms. Gardener. We do not represent our clients solely within the courtroom. We
never
stop representing them. Not on our days off, not at home, not standing in line at the local deli, and certainly not while the jury is in deliberations for a trial that could have meant
millions
to our bottom line.”

I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders. “Mr. Dooney, I’ll fix it. I know it’s a lot of work—”

“
A lot of work
.” He sat back in his chair. Another man might have smiled, even if sardonically. Michael Dooney never smiled. “Aside from discovery, we have to start from scratch. And by
we
I mean this firm. Not you.”

I reeled. “Am I…am I being fired?”

“No,” Jon Lawson said. “
No.
A leave of absence, only. A
paid
leave of absence. To give you time to recover from your ordeal. We’ll get Upton to take over Munro.”

Dooney’s lip curled slightly and I knew then that he
did
want me fired, and that what prevented him wasn’t any kindness in his withered old heart or the mercy of Jon Lawson. It was the fact I would slap him with an unlawful termination suit before the day was over and he knew it. To say nothing of the bad press.

“Mr. Dooney, I understand you’re disappointed in me,” I said, striving to keep my voice even. “But I feel I must remind you of the countless other wins I have logged for this firm…”

“That, Ms. Gardener, is why I am being lenient with you.”

“Lenient?” I surged to me feet. “I was a hostage for three days. I had a
gun
pointed at my head. A madman threatened to
rape
me in front of six other people. My apologies if my head
wasn’t in the game
or I would have thought to bring a spare suit to the hospital.”

Dooney was unmoved. “Enjoy your time off, Ms. Gardener. Use it well. Come back with your head
in the game
or don’t come back at all.”

#

I sat in the parking lot behind the wheel of Drew’s Porsche, waiting for the rage at the injustice of it all to find me. Instead, I felt a sweep of relief, like a cool breeze on a hot day.

“What is wrong with me?”

My surety that I was on the right track to picking up my life where I’d left it slipped. My emotions simply refused to match the situation the way they were supposed to. The Alex of four days ago would have been humiliated at being taken off a case. I would have fought to get back on and, yes, I would have mourned the loss of such a huge payday.

Now, the only thing I could think of was how Mr. Munro’s lies and duplicity were now in Christopher Upton’s hands. Upton was a shark. Like I had been.

“Am,” I told the empty car. “I
am
a shark.”

Even so, I felt as if a huge shadow that had been hanging over my head had blown away.