Chapter 16 - The Choice Mark Failed Once
The bullet shattered a liquor bottle behind Lucy.
Mark hit Pike before he could fire again.
They crashed into the freezer door.
Jack rolled beneath a prep table.
Lucy grabbed Pike’s injured shoulder.
He screamed.
Mark punched him once.
Twice.
Pike drove a knee into Mark’s stomach.
The gun skidded across the floor.
Jack saw it.
Pike saw Jack see it.
“Don’t!” Mark shouted.
Jack did not touch the gun.
Instead, he kicked a metal bowl across the floor.
It struck the weapon and sent it beneath a refrigerator.
Pike lunged toward Jack.
Lucy slammed the freezer door into his back.
He fell.
Ruiz and tactical officers rushed in from both entrances.
“Hands!”
Pike looked toward the loading dock.
Nowhere to go.
He laughed.
Then slowly raised his hands.
Ruiz cuffed him personally.
Mark dropped beside Jack and tore the tape away.
“You okay?”
Jack nodded and immediately started crying.
Mark pulled him close.
Lucy knelt beside them.
For several seconds, all three held on.
Not like a repaired family.
Like survivors of the same wreck.
Pike was led past them.
He looked at Lucy.
“You think this makes you clean?”
Lucy stood.
“No.”
Pike smiled.
“That first transfer was yours.”
“I know.”
“You’ll go down too.”
“Maybe.”
Mark looked at her.
Lucy did not look away.
“I’d rather answer for what I actually did than live inside what you invented.”
Pike’s smile disappeared.
Outside, federal agents arrested the county administrator who had helped him escape.
Victor remained in custody.
Diane requested an attorney and stopped speaking.
The conspiracy was over.
But the consequences were only starting.
Two weeks later, Lucy received a letter from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Mark sat across from her at the kitchen table of a short-term rental.
Jack was upstairs doing homework.
Lucy opened it.
Mark watched her face.
“What?”
She handed him the page.
The government would not charge her with theft related to the eighty-thousand-dollar payroll transfer if she testified fully and accepted civil penalties.
Mark exhaled.
“That’s good.”
Lucy nodded.
“It is.”
But she was not smiling.
“What else?”
She folded the letter.
“My lawyer says the court can restore the old divorce case.”
Mark went still.
Lucy looked at him.
“We have to decide whether to finish it.”
Mark’s throat tightened.
He had spent seven months believing Lucy had left.
Then four months married to someone else.
Now the law said Lucy was still his wife.
He looked at her.
“What do you want?”
Lucy’s eyes filled.
“I want you to answer first.”
— — —
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