Chapter Twenty-Six
Madison
The moment the gun went off, I was transported back to the day that Max had gotten shot. I felt my body tremble and once again I thought I was going to faint. A memory came flooding to the forefront of my mind as I remembered the last time so clearly. I had almost fainted then too. I forced myself to open my eyes, but breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that Max was still in front of me. It wasn’t Max that had been shot. It was Blake. I turned to see the chief standing at the front door, gun in hand, and staring at Blake’s body in shock.
“Max, Madison, are you okay?” the chief said when he finally snapped out of it.
Max turned to me and pulled me into his arms. He must’ve seen that I was trembling.
“What happened?” I said. “Blake . . . he . . . .”
“Blake was going to shoot us. That was his plan all along,” Max said to the chief. “Blake . . . our friend,” Max said in disbelief.
The chief nodded. “I know. I’m in shock too.”
“But, how did you know he was going to be here? I thought we were only seeing you tomorrow? What’s going on?”
“Blake had been acting strange all day. I had a meeting with him this morning to fill him in on the court case tomorrow. He kept asking me questions about where the two of you were. He knew you were in the safe house, of course. I mean, he was part of our team. He was the one guy we thought we could trust.”
“He’s the one that kept telling us we can’t trust people, and how there was a rat on our team. He kept telling us it was Peter.”
“Yeah,” the chief said. “And as much as I hate to admit it, I believed him. I’ve been wary of poor Peter ever since. I’ve been watching him like a hawk, and of course, I haven’t been watching Blake at all. He asked me where you were staying, and I told him. I just told him.” The chief shook his head in disbelief. “I’m the one that has been telling you to be careful, and then I went and did something like this.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Max and I would’ve done the same thing. He was our friend. Well, we thought he was our friend. I would never have suspected him of doing something like this. Never. But, how did you know he was coming here?”
“I didn’t. But with the court case tomorrow, I knew that if anything was going to happen, it would be today. The moment I told him where you were, I saw a strange look cross his face. He wasn’t acting the way he usually did. He must’ve known that he was running out of time to find you. I don’t think he ever wanted to do this himself. If he did, he would’ve had tons of time to kill you himself. He wanted someone else to do it, so he didn’t get the blame, but with the witness protection and the safe house, he was obviously finding it very difficult. Something told me to just follow him today. When I saw that he was heading straight in the direction of the house, I followed him.”
“How did he get in though? I mean, there are guards out there.”
“Yeah, guards that have met him before. He probably just told them that I had sent him. You know what he’s like too; he can sweet talk his way out of anything.”
“How could he do this to us?” Max said again. He was still standing close to me, holding me to him. The chief didn’t say anything about it, but I don’t think he even noticed. We were all still in shock. “Wouldn’t the chief had told the guards about him?”
“I don’t know, Max. I don’t know.”
I could barely look at Blake, who was lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood. I could see him from the corner of my eye, but I couldn’t look directly at him. It made me sick to know that if the chief hadn’t been there, we would’ve been dead. He was after Max, but he would’ve taken me out too. I had no doubt about it.
“So, what happens now?” I said to the chief.
“I need you both to pack your bags and come with me to the station. I think it’s best that you come with me. We have lots to discuss, and there’s no point in staying here any longer. We can either all sleep at the station tonight, or else you can come back to my place again. It’s a long drive, and you might as well come back now. I’ll wait here while you pack. I need to call this in and anyway.”
“And what about . . .” I trailed off. I looked at Blake, and my stomach lurched. “What about him?” I said.
“Don’t worry, Madison. We will sort that out. You just get your bags and don’t think about it anymore. The two of you have been through enough already. We’ll sort this out.”
I nodded. I walked around the house, gathering my belongings and shoving them into my bag as if I were on auto pilot. I tried not to look at the bed, where Max and I had spent a wonderful morning together, and I ignored the game of Scrabble that was sitting half-finished on the table. Everything was going to change, and we both knew it. Max and I didn’t say a word to one another. We just got our bags and headed out. As I passed the chief, I quickly hugged him.
“What was that for?” he asked. We had never been the hugging sort.
“For saving our lives. Thank you for always looking out for us.”
“You’re my favorite team; you know that,” he said.
I looked at Max then and smiled sadly. Team Maverick.
The day that we had been looking forward to so much had completely changed. An air of sadness and shock hung over all of us. None of us could fully understand how someone that was so close to us could’ve turned on us. I thought back to my initial assessment of Blake. I’d never really liked him. He, in turn, had never really liked me either. Neither of us had ever said it directly to each other, but it had always been something unspoken between us. I always thought that it was because I was so close to Max. I figured he thought I had come in between their friendship. Or that maybe he just didn’t like me. Or that he didn’t like women being in the industry. A few thoughts had crossed my mind, but never the truth. I had never once thought that he could be the one that was against us. He’d been so convincing.
“I just remembered something,” Max said suddenly. We were in the car, and we were only moments away from the station. The two of us had been quiet the whole way, each of us just staring out of the window and lost in our own thoughts.
“You remembered something? What?” I said and turned to face him.
“I remember you and I having that conversation in the conference room and how upset you were about me wanting to tell the team.”
I shook my head. “Ah, Max. Don’t blame yourself about that. Honestly, it’s not your fault.”
He sighed. “I know. But I haven’t fully remembered that day until now. I remember telling the team and you walking out. And then, afterward, I remember sitting with Blake while he told me that I shouldn’t have told the whole team about it. He told me that I should’ve listened to you and promised me he’d be on the lookout for anyone that looked suspicious. He’d made me believe that he was on my side. I remember looking at him then and thinking that I was glad to have such a strong team.”
I sighed. I didn’t know that he had spoken to Blake after that meeting. I’d been too busy storming off in anger at that moment. I reached out for his hand and squeezed it.
“He had us all fooled, Max. It wasn’t just you.”
Max nodded and smiled gratefully at me.
“Hey, you jumped in front of me,” I said. “How many more times can you save me?”
“I would never let anyone do anything to you, Madi.”
I smiled. “And I will forever be grateful to the chief for coming in when he did. I don’t want to think about what would’ve happened had the chief not been there.”
“Same here.”
We got back to the police station and spent some time with the chief in his office, going over everything. We went through absolutely everything, pouring over notes and making sure that we had every little detail out. We were all shaken up and exhausted, but working seemed to be the only thing that we knew what to do. At least if we kept working, we didn’t have to talk about the fact that we’d given out so much information to someone that had never been on our team. This time it was just the three of us in the office. We decided not to include anyone else in the meeting that day. It made us all feel sick to know that a close member of our team, and someone that had called us his friend, had duped us so easily. How could we have been so foolish? I could see how distraught the chief was. He felt responsible for us, and I could see it was killing him.
“I think it’s best if you sleep at my house again tonight,” he said. “I was going to suggest we all sleep here, but I wouldn’t mind getting a good night’s rest. I don’t know if that’s even possible, but it will be much more likely at home than it will here. Are you both okay with that?” he asked wearily.
“Of course, we’re fine with that. Thank you so much,” I said to him. “You’ve done so much for us. We can’t thank you enough for everything. I don’t know what we would’ve done with you.” I wanted him to know that none of this had been his fault. Without him, we would’ve been in a much worse situation.
We left the station and headed straight back to his place where we all ordered pizza for the evening. Nobody could be bothered to cook. We ate our pizza while watching TV in silence. I barely took in a thing, and I also barely tasted a thing. I just watched and ate as if I were on automatic.
“Okay, I don’t know about you guys, but I think I’m going to call it a night,” the chief said. “We have a busy day ahead of us tomorrow.”
I looked at Max’s pizza box as well as the chief’s and noticed how little they had eaten. It wasn’t like us all to have no appetite. I closed my box and put it on the table. I said my goodbyes and made my way to the same bedroom I had slept in not so long ago. Back then, I had no idea that I would soon get to know Max so intimately. I had enjoyed my sleep the last time I had slept over, but I knew I wouldn’t enjoy it that night. I climbed into bed and wondered how Max was doing. The space next to me was empty, and I wished he was there to keep me warm. “Goodnight, Max,” I whispered as I closed my eyes. I pictured him doing the same, and the thought helped me to fall finally fall asleep.