Commotion in the outer hall made her turn sharply, head ringing with Kulli’s words and the not-so-distant sound of men arguing.
And then Gerald rushed into the room, eyes wild, body primed to fight.
Wearing a gun.
“Gerald couldn’t stop thinking about killing you, Suzanne,” Kulli said, his voice soft and compassionate, but his eyes alight with an evil joy at delivering the shocking emotional blow to her. He completely ignored Gerald, but she realized with dawning disgust that Gerald was his real audience. “That’s why he left. He was being driven crazy by thoughts of killing you.”
Very carefully, Gerald moved his hands from his chest holster, and then moved like a flash of lightning as security guards poured into the room.
Seconds too late.
The blow rolled out in slow motion, Kulli’s clean-shaven jaw hooking left so fast it seemed like it was a separate body part from the rest of him, as if it would have ricocheted off a far wall if the layer of skin stretched over bone hadn’t been there. Gerald’s mouth stretched, more teeth showing than she thought a face should have as he grimaced in battle, a glint of gold from a back molar shining in the room’s overhead light.
A spray of Kulli’s blood, a long drop gone to spatter, hit her directly on the exposed skin above the V of her shirt, a drop sliding down between her breasts.
Mayhem.
Mayhem erupted.
Kulli centered himself quickly, bending his knees, arms whipped into fight mode, his suit jacket pulled tight around the elbows and shoulders, an impediment as seconds turned into minutes. Without any such obstacle, Gerald’s blows were rapid fire, like a machine gun array, rat-a-tat-tat, punch punch punch.
“STOP IT!” she screamed, her reaction to Kulli’s revelation truncated by the rush of fight hormones that coursed through her as she started to reach for Gerald, to pull him off, as his fist smashed into Kulli’s eye once, twice, and then they were down on the ground, a mass of enraged muscle and senseless breaths, grunts and groans and blows filling the air.
Guards poured into the room, six of them on top of Gerald and Kulli, the mass of body parts and movement and blood a bastardized version of the old kids’ game, Twister.
Only these guards had guns, zip-tie handcuffs, and authority.
Within seconds Gerald was on the ground, gun removed, face down, wrists cuffed, with Kulli screaming, “He started it! Check the video!”
And then Kulli kicked Gerald in the head, the thump of shoe against skull making a sickening sound like a melon dropped from a rooftop. Gerald twitched, then slumped against the carpet, out cold.
Red rage filled her vision.
Two guards dragged Kulli away from Gerald as she advanced, throwing off her jacket, ready to do damage.
She stopped.
She breathed.
She closed her eyes, the cacophony too much.
Enough damage had been done. Jail for her wouldn’t help Gerald, and could be career suicide. Barely able to manage her impulse control, she struggled, but found the place inside that said to stop.
The place Gerald couldn’t access ten seconds ago.
She couldn’t blame him. If what Kulli said was true...
Dropping to the floor, she checked Gerald. Pulse was fine. Breathing was regular. He had blood from cuts on his knuckles, but was otherwise okay.
Being a former medic had its pluses.
“I’m pressing charges!” Kulli screamed.
“You just kicked him unconscious!” she roared, searching her jacket for her cell phone, pressing Send to complete the 9-1-1 call she’d primed earlier.
“He started it!”
“And you finished it while his arms were tied behind his back? You fucking sick piece of cowardly shit,” she said, her voice dangerously low.
In the end, it didn’t matter.
The police hauled Gerald off to jail.
But damned if she didn’t get them to take Kulli, too.
Video works both ways.
Bailing her ex-fiancé out of jail after he assaulted their former commanding officer in front of a rare artifact that could change the world’s understanding of its origins wasn’t on her Google calendar for the day, but Suzanne did it anyhow.
“Thank you,” he muttered as she pulled him aside roughly and examined his injuries under a blinking fluorescent light.
“Ow!” Her fingers pressed against the butterfly bandage. Kulli’s kick had split his eyebrow. A red spot where the toe had connected with the temple wasn’t pretty and would go through the bruise color cycle over the next two weeks.
“If you think that hurts, just wait.”
“What does that mean?” he grumbled.
She walked away. Marched out into the cold urban landscape where she’d rather talk to a homeless guy than Gerald right now.
He followed her.
Slowly, but he did.
“What in the hell did you think you were doing back there, Gerald?” She whipped around, heedless of passersby.
“Rescuing you!”
“I don’t need to be rescued, damn it! I need to be loved. Trusted. Was Kulli telling the truth?”
He flinched, eyes stormy, changing color second by second as he reacted to her words.
“Yes.” He sighed. “I can explain.”
“You should have done that ten years ago.”
“I couldn’t.”
“You couldn’t trust me with the truth,” she said softly, her voice dropping, all her energy pouring out of her. “Nothing you could have told me would have been worse than what you did to me. Shutting me out was more painful than killing me, Gerald. It was its own death, only worse, because I had to live with the pain.”