Vigilante

5. Patty Parker

Five

The trial seemed to be extra-long that day. While she had her phone recording the entire thing, she had not paid attention to the entire thing. It was different now, with the knowledge that she had. She didn't think she could be objective about this piece.

She kept on staring at Trevor Nichols. He was now in his mid-twenties, a few years older than her. His time locked up had not helped him age well. His face was gaunt, his skin pale, and his eyes were sunken deep.

She was there that day. She didn't even remember seeing Nichols enter the building, unless he had used some other entrance. But they had played the security tape of him going into the building, and it had showed him entering through the main doors with a bomb strapped to him.

She was a witness to the event, but she had never been called. She suspected it was because of her reporter background, but now the more she thought about it, the more her suspicions deepened.

Nichols must have felt her watching him from her seat, because he turned over his shoulder to look at her. A slow smile crept up his face. There was absolutely nothing pleasant in it.

He whispered one, single word to her. "Duck."

She frowned, only to nearly jump out of her skin as the door of the court room was shoved open. Bullets reigned down as screams filled the room, while people tried to flee, to no avail.

Someone wearing a vest that said Police ran in during the midst of the shooting. Before she could even react, Teddy was right in front of her. "Baby, we've got to get you out of here. I didn't know. I swear, I didn't know."

"Teddy, what are you talking about?" she demanded.

He gripped her shoulder. "We've got to get you out of here. Whittier told me to."

"Whittier," she said, "what the hell do you know about Whittier?"

He locked eyes with her. Despite the chaos, she focused in on the brilliant green of them, filled with undeniable regret. "I'm supposed to protect you."

"Protect me?" she said.

Ringing filled her ears, and something splattered her face. Brilliant, red blood. Teddy's blood. He collapsed in her arms, choking on his own blood as it seeped from him. She began to shake, and in the midst of the chaos, there was another face that stood over her.

"Kaye," she whispered.

Teddy's partner placed her hand on her shoulder, and pulled her up, ushering from the room. She didn't know how they got out of there in between the middle of the pushing, the screaming, and the shooting.

Kaye led her out to where the ambulance was waiting. Overhead, there were helicopters flying, and the place was surrounded by cops. Patty found herself sitting on the back of an ambulance, with a blanket wrapped around her.

She kept on repeating the image of Teddy in her arms, blood oozing from him. Her own clothes had been soaked through from it. Patty wanted to scream, to cry, to do something other than sit there wrapped in a blanket in clothes covered in her boyfriend's blood.

A shadow fell across her. "Hey, kid," a deep voice said.

She looked up to see Danny Pompeo standing before her. "Danny."

He held out his hand for her, which she took. She stood up from her seat, trying hard not to wobble. All she had had that morning was coffee, and her stomach rumbled. It was hard to imagine that she could still think about food after everything that had happened.