CHAPTER 1
It's the hypothetical question every parent considers at some point:
Would you give your life for your kid?
Would you dive in front of a speeding eighteen-wheeler to shove your daughter out of the way? Would you let your son take your heart when his number didn't come up soon enough on the transplant list? Would you place your head under the guillotine as part of some Faustian bargain wherein your child didn't have to?
Oh, I know what you're thinking, if you're a parent: yes, yes, yes, and yes. Even if it was just to spare yourself the agony of burying your own kid, you'd make that sacrifice every time. Or at least that's what you tell yourself you would do. What kind of selfish coward wouldn't?
But hold on a second. Don't answer yet. Because you still don't know everything. What if, just to increase the degree of difficulty, it was a baby who hadn't been born? A child who had not yet been named, whose gender you did not know, whose personality was a total question mark, whose eyes you had never gazed into, whose life had not taken shape in any meaningful way?
Would that change things? Make the decision tougher? Just a little?
Because, let's be clear, we're not talking about video game death, where you have nine more lives and all you have to do is press the reset button to cue up the next one.
We're talking about death everlasting. What Chandler called "the big sleep." What Rabelais called "a great perhaps." That thing where you lay down your mushy, mortal self, along with all your friendships and family ties, all your unmet ambitions, and all those bucket list items you still haven't kicked.
You trade it in for a baby you will never get the chance to meet, and then move on to ... well, that's the real sticky wicket, isn't it? For whatever we may believe and for however strongly we may believe it, none of us really knows for sure. Maybe heaven. Maybe hell. Maybe nothing.
That's the dilemma. And in case you're still thinking it's too easy, let me give this triple lindy its final twist:
What if the question wasn't hypothetical?
My name is Carter Ross. I am a thirty-three-year-old newspaper reporter whose baby is almost fully baked inside my fiancée's womb. Up until now, I have led a charmed existence of upper-middle-class ease and American suburban comfort, a life where I have been able to avoid difficult choices such as this and blithely assume my continued survival.
But in forty-three hours, that's going to come to an end. Because in forty-three hours, I am going to find myself outside a room with two dangerous people in it. They're both armed. Neither is a stranger to killing. The moment I confront them, they're going to shoot at me. They will be firing from a few feet away, a distance from which they can't miss. I might be able to stop one of them from pulling the trigger. I will not be able to stop both. My protection will be nothing more than two thin layers of cotton.
And the only way to save my baby-who will be denied his first breath if I don't do something-is to walk in and take the bullet.
CHAPTER 2
There are certain young men nature wires for action. They are swift, lean, fearless, thoughtless. Good sense and impulse control have been sacrificed in favor of speed and acceleration.
The two young men huddled on opposite sides of a Newark, New Jersey, street corner, in the dark of a Newark, New Jersey, night, were two such specimens. They wore ski masks, the preferred headdress of criminals the world over. Their guns were drawn. They were about to make what could have been called a textbook approach, except textbooks were not written about this sort of undertaking.
The signal to attack was a quick, sharp whistle.
The first assailant angled in from behind the driver's side door, moving in a low crouch. The second came from the other side of the street, toward the passenger side door, in a run that was more upright.
The object of their assault, a top-of-the-line 2015 Jaguar XJ, was the lone car stopped at a red light that silently conducted traffic at the intersection of Mulberry and East Kinney streets.
The car's driver was a pudgy banking executive named Kevin Tiemeyer, weary from a late night out with colleagues. He had diverted his attention from the road in front of him to his iPhone, where he jabbed out a quick text to his wife: "Just left. Home soon. Love you."
He hit send. His wife would later tell the police she received it at 1:02 A.M.
The Jaguar's engine idled in a soft, low purr appropriate for a machine named after a great cat. The car was five months old and Tiemeyer loved it-loved the way it handled like an extension of its driver's will, loved the buttery softness of the leather seats, loved showing it off at the club.
His wife had fretted that they shouldn't be buying any new car, much less one with a $79,220 sticker price. The twins entered college next year. If he really wanted to replace his aging BMW with a Jaguar, fine, but couldn't he at least pick a less extravagant model? Or maybe a nice, low-mileage preowned one?
Tiemeyer told her not to worry so much, countering with an acronym the kids taught him: YOLO. You Only Live Once.
As Tiemeyer lifted his head from his iPhone, his peripheral vision registered the movement of the second man, the one coming in from the passenger's side. His reaction was instinctive and involuntary, an immediate racing of the heart and a dilating of the pupils. Those suddenly wide eyes took in the man's gun and ski mask, which was navy blue.
Then came three insistent raps on the driver's side window. Tiemeyer's head whipped around. Another gun. Another ski mask, this one black.
"Out of the car. Out of the car. Out of the car."
Black Mask delivered the order in rapid staccato. He had not bothered to pull open the door. He knew-from his rather extensive recent experience in this line of work-that the Jaguar, like nearly every luxury car manufactured for sale in the United States during the last ten years, automatically locked its doors the moment the vehicle exceeded five miles an hour.
It was a safety feature that, in this case, would do little to keep Kevin Tiemeyer safe.
"Let's go, let's go," Blue Mask urged.
Tiemeyer shifted the car into park. He took one last wistful gander at the beautiful crafting of the Jaguar's interior, shoved open the door, and swung his feet over to the pavement.
"Just relax," Tiemeyer said. "You can have the car."
"Damn right we can," Black Mask said, backing off slightly to give his victim room to disembark. "Now move it."
Tiemeyer stood.
"Put your hands where I can see them," Black Mask ordered.
Tiemeyer stood and raised his hands in the air. The sleeves of his suit jacket slipped down a few inches in the direction of his elbows, exposing the Rolex that adorned his left wrist.
"We'll take that watch, too," Blue Mask said, coming around from the other side of the Jag.
Tiemeyer stiffened.
"Wait, that's not ... that's not part of the deal," he said.
"Hell it ain't."
"No, no. You take the car, that's it. That's-"
"This ain't a negotiation," Blue Mask said, tilting the gun sideways and taking a few more steps forward. "Give me the watch, fool."
"No, you don't understand. This ... this was my grandfather's watch."
"Yeah? Well, it's mine now."
Black Mask had backed up further, jerking his glance between the two men, then up and down the street. It was still empty, but there was no guarantee it would stay that way. The Newark Police Department was overworked, but that didn't mean it was nonexistent. He started talking to his partner, "Come on, man. I told you last time, you can't keep doing this. Let's just-"
"Give me the watch," Blue Mask shouted, his eyes wide, his nostrils flaring. The barrel of his revolver was now a foot away from Tiemeyer's face, aimed at his forehead.
"Leave it," Black Mask said.
Attempting to exploit the rift, Tiemeyer started with, "Look, sir, can't we just-"
Blue Mask fired twice. Tiemeyer dropped, his expensive suit and his body crumpling simultaneously.
Blue Mask knelt by the man's inert form, unfastened the Rolex and pocketed it.
"Come on, let's go," he said.
From the small oval mouth hole of his black ski mask, the other man unleashed a stream of urgent profanity. He finished with, "Are you crazy?"
As both men scrambled into the Jaguar, Black Mask added, "You can't keep dropping bodies like this, man."
Blue Mask offered no explanation beyond, "He was disrespecting me."
It was said later that the only sin Kevin Tiemeyer committed was stopping for a red light in Newark.
That was not entirely true.
But given that the sentiment was uttered a few short steps away from his closed casket, it hardly seemed like the time or place to quibble.
Copyright © 2015 by Brad Parks
