CHAPTER 3
Brittney
The next morning
I’ve barely slept, but I manage to drag myself from the bed.
The shock of yesterday is still fresh in my mind, but if there’s one thing my dad taught me it’s commitment to your responsibilities. Mine this morning is the NGO I volunteer at in the city. We help refugees successfully transition to American life. I just started, but I already feel like I’m making a difference.
It’s so heartwarming to hear the stories from my colleagues. Some of the full-time staff have received postcards, letters, and visits up to thirty years later from the people they welcomed into the land of the free.
Sure, the work I’m doing will look great on my resume, but I’m not doing it for that. I really want to make the world a better place and gain some valuable experience at the same time.
I walk to the subway station that will take me to the office and I immediately see the subway is full of police, and from what I can tell there are also a lot of plainclothes law enforcement patrolling the area as well. The only problem is they’re not so undercover. I can spot them a mile away, so I’m guessing everyone else can too. Then again it’s a good thing. If anyone’s trying anything today they’ll think twice.
And speaking of thinking twice all I can think about is that man who saved my life. I’m zoning out on the ride into work.
What if he hadn’t been there?
What if he hadn’t acted so heroically, as he did?
What if…?
What if a lot of things. I just wish there was someway I could meet him and thank him, but I guess the odds of that happening are slim to none.
I hear the name of my stop and it takes a second to register. I scramble to exit and the doors almost close on me. I really need to get out this daze I’m in.
I make my way onto the street and start walking towards my building.
A few minutes later I round the block and see a swarm of news people standing outside the place I volunteer.
Oh great, I think to myself. I really hope that attack yesterday wasn’t somehow affiliated with someone who’s going through our program.
I’m about fifty feet from the entrance of the skyscraper where our tiny office is located. I’m wishing our building had a back entrance or I had time to go down and come up through the parking garage, when suddenly one of the news crew sees me and beelines it straight toward me.
“Brittney! What can you tell us about the attack yesterday?”
“Do you know the parties involved?” a second reporter asks, as she runs to join the first.
“Do you think you were targeted because of your position here?”
“What are your thoughts on illegal immigrants?”
“Has the Syrian crisis that is attempting to destabilize Europe, spread to American soil?”
“Have you assisted any ISIS members to enter the country?”
I try and squirm through the all the reporters, the bright lights, and the cameramen. And to think, twenty seconds ago I was just thinking how I needed a coffee to snap out the funk I was in.
I get to the door and one of the senior staff members guides me in…at least I’m guessing he’s one of ours by the way he was waiting on me inside.
“Brittney, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I say as we walk swiftly towards our ground floor office still wondering who this man is.
“Sorry about everything. I’m Jonathan Davies. My family founded the NGO.”
“Oh. Mr. Davies,” I say. “Nice to meet you.” I’d seen the pictures of the Davies family on the wall, but Jonathan must have been no older than five at the time those photographs were taken.
“My pleasure. Sorry it’s under such unfortunate circumstances.”
“Unfortunate circumstances?” I say. Am I getting fired?
“You haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
“I’m guessing you haven’t seen the news or read the papers this morning?”
“No. I haven’t had a chance yet,” I say. I wish he would just spit it out already. I’m not about to tell him I was daydreaming about some guy all the way into work this morning. And unfortunately that’s the only way I can refer to the mystery man as at the moment…some guy, because I haven’t even seen his face. He is of course my hero, but I’ll save those thoughts for my fantasies when I’m lying alone in bed at night.
“Someone who knows you recognized your face.”
“Okay?” I say.
“From yesterday. The footage is all over the news. Once the press got your name, they’ve been running with it. Your Facebook photos are everywhere. CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox News…you name it, they’re all over this story. It’s like the surveillance footage video is playing on repeat. There will probably be news crews outside your apartment, if there aren’t already. You have to prepare yourself for what’s about to happen.”
“What’s about to happen?”
“Pardon my French, but there’s a saying for what you can expect.”
“Which is?”
“A media shitstorm.”
I nod my head, part surprised someone in his position would use those kinds of words, but part appreciative that he’s telling it to me straight.
He opens the door to our office, allowing me to walk in first. “And that’s not all,” he says.
“Okaaay?”
“There’s someone here to talk to you. They’re waiting in my office. I just wanted to let you know what you’re walking into before —”
“Time’s up, Davies. I told you to bring her straight to me.” His eyes move from Jonathan to me. “Are you Brittney Upton?”
“Yes, sir,” I say. The man’s in civilian clothes, but he’s got a badge around his neck. He looks eerily familiar, but I can’t quite place him.
“Please. Right this way,” he says, ushering me into my boss’ office. “Have a seat.”
This wasn’t exactly the way I expected to find myself in the boss’ office. I was hoping to make it in here for a pat on the back for a job well done at some point in the future, not to be interrogated…or at least that seems to be Mr. Big Shot’s plan.
“My name is Detective Freeman. I need to ask you a few questions about yesterday.”
“Okay,” I say. “Is everything okay?” I feel my legs shaking against the plush leather chair beneath me. I didn’t know such an extravagant chair, which was built specifically for comfort, could be so uncomfortable.
“Brittney, were you at the Veterans Day Parade yesterday at approximately 10:50 a.m.?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what were you doing at the parade yesterday?”
Suddenly the door comes flying open.
“I said no—”
The detective is cut off mid-sentence. The man standing in the doorway is much, much bigger. He’s much, much wider and a whole lot thicker than the detective.
I feel like I’m watching one of those old Clint Eastwood Westerns with my dad. The ones where Clint steps inside the saloon, and the swinging doors come flying open. Ol’ Clint would be backlit to the point he wasn’t visible…just a silhouette of the stranger who just rode into town. You could hear the shiny spurs on those old leather worn out boots clickety-clackin’ as he took his first step inside. Each and every patron in the bar wouldn’t say a word as they turned their head and pretended to sip their drinks and just generally mind their own business. Nobody wanted a piece of Clint Eastwood. He was the biggest, baddest man not from this town. And messing with him meant he was gonna put a guar-an-teed whoppin’ on ya.
But this was no Spaghetti Western. And we weren’t in southern Italy and Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood were nowhere to be found.
But there was an entirely different kind of knight errant standing in front of me right now. A modern version. The kind of man who needs to be bigger, and tougher, than the baddest man the city has to offer. A man who seems dark, but only because that’s what it takes to do some of the things he has to do to keep people like me safe.
It’s been a few years…more than a few actually, but I recognize him instantly.
It’s the guy I had my first crush on in high school. But I shouldn’t really call it a crush. It was more like an obsession. I wrote his last name after my first name on my school notebooks. I sketched his picture in the back of the same notebooks in-between classes.
And he wasn’t a guy. He was a man. At a time most girls were crushing on the latest and greatest boy band singers, I only had my eyes on him and him alone.
Sean Verlander. My dad’s best friend.