“You aren't going to do anything I ask?”
Glenn only stared at him.
“Lift your left hand,” Jan ordered.
Glenn did not move.
“Lift your hand!” Jan screamed. “Now!”
The man had the audacity to stand there without flinching. Jan lowered the gun, lined up its sight on Glenn's left hand, and pulled the trigger.
Boom!
The slug took off the end of his index finger. The pounding on the door intensified.
Glenn's face drained white and then immediately flushed red. He gaped at his finger and began to roar in pain. He fumbled with his shirt in an attempt to stop the flow of blood but succeeded only in drenching it.
“Next time it will be your knee and you will use a crutch the rest of your life,” Jan said. “Do you understand? Take your shirt off.”
“What?”
“I said take your shirt off, you oaf. Take it off and wrap it around your hand. The flow of blood will distract me.”
This time Glenn followed the suggestion quickly. He eased his flabby torso out of the shirt and crudely wrapped it around both hands. Sweat glistened on his white flesh.
“Tell them to shut up,” Jan ordered, waving the gun toward the door.
“Shut up!” Glenn screamed at the door.
The pounding stopped.
“Good. Now I want you to listen and listen very carefully. You may be a wealthy man with the power to squash weak women, but today this power will not extend to my world. Not to me or to Ivena or to Helen. Helen has chosen to accept my love and now you will let her have her choice. You will not bully her. Do you understand?”
“I didn't bully her into coming back,” Glenn said. “We all make our own choices.”
“And you'll stop manipulating hers,” Jan shouted.
“Manipulating? How? By providing a little motivation? That's nothing less than what you did when you took her away. You show her a carrot. I show her a stick. In the end she makes the choice.”
“You think I keep her caged in my house? She's free to come and go as she wants and I don't see her running to you every day. She would stay with me except for your drugs. And if you think this pointless game with Ivena will somehow persuade her to come crawling back against her own will, then you're wrong. Even if she did, what would you have? Someone you pressured against their will?”
“We all apply pressure. Even your God applies pressure. It's either the carrot or the stick. Heaven or hell.”
Jan blinked at the man's logic. It was an odd place to argue these matters, Jan holding the gun and Glenn bleeding into his shirt. “But love can't be bought with heaven or hell. It's given freely. Did she ever
love
you? No. She loves me.”
Glenn's lips twisted to a grin. “She loves you but she comes begging to me, is that it? You're as stupid as she is. Call it what you like, when she's here she's loving me!”
“With your threats and your violence you'll gain nothing.”
“I will gain Helen!” Glenn growled.
“No, you have already
lost
Helen.”
“She'll come crawling back, don't kid yourself. We both know it. You'll lose her.
And
the old bag of bones.”
“Silence! This is all nonsense! Helen will
not
come back to you! Never!”
“And that choice is hers,” Glenn said. “You said so yourself.” He shuddered. “I need a doctor.”
“Yes, and so did I when I last left this building,” Jan said. “Do you think the police will just stand by and let you threaten whoever you like? You have no sense of yourself.”
“The police? You walk into my property and assault me and you think you can run to the police? You are naive, Preacher. You don't even know the truth about your precious wife.”
For the first time Jan saw the true mistake in coming here. The police. “She loves me, it's all the truth I need,” Jan said. There was something about the man's tone, though. “What truth?”
“I knew your precious lover when she was a child, you know,” Glenn said, still smiling.
What was he talking about? He knew
Helen?
“Only I wasn't Glenn back then. I was Peter. She tell you about Peter?”
Peter! The boy who'd trailed Helen home from school and supplied her mother with drugs! The revelation whirled about in Jan's mind. Glenn wasn't confessing; he was twisting the knife. Jan suddenly felt sick, standing here in this man's tower, playing his game. He was beyond this. And what had he gained by coming here? An image of the garden swept through Jan's mind and he suddenly wanted out.
Oh Helen! Dear Helen, if you only knew.
But she didn't know and he would not tell her.
“You're a sick man,” Jan said.
“You think I'm sick?” Glenn licked his lips. “Then what will you think when I tell you that the reason Helen's mother got sick in the first place was because I poisoned her?” He grinned wide, showing his crooked teeth.
“You poisoned her?”
“That's right. I made Mommy sick and then I eased her pain with drugs.” Glenn began to giggle. He stood there with bloodied hands, thrilled with himself, giggling insanely.
Jan backed up, revolted. Evil possessed this man's soul to the very core. Glenn Lutz was no less than Karadzic, but in a new skin.
It was time to leave.
“Pick up the phone and tell your men to give me safe passage out,” Jan said.
Glenn just smiled with parted lips.
Jan waved the gun. “Do it!”
“What's the matter, Preacher? I'm not quite what you bargained for, am I?”
“You just leave us alone, do you understand? You hurt a single hair on Ivena's head and your world will crumble around you. I promise you that much. Now tell your men, before you bleed to death.”
Glenn hesitated, but he went for the phone after glancing at his blood-soaked shirt.
Jan left then, keeping his gun trained on Glenn. He stepped past the glaring assistant he'd sent flying and ran for the elevator. Behind him he could hear Glenn cursing at her. If he took the man's roaring as any indication, this wasn't over. Coming here might have been a terrible mistake. He had just blown a man's hand off.
Jan roared from the parking structure, his hands trembling on the steering wheel. Yes indeed, this hadn't been such a bright idea. Not at all.
GLENN SLUMPED in his chair and held his hands up as best he could to keep the blood flow in check. It was the first time anyone had marched into his own building and demanded anything, much less waved a gun at him and uttered vile threats. Jan Jovic had shifted the balance in the game.
Of course, the preacher had also just handed him the leverage he needed with Charlie. He had been assaulted. This meant open war.
“Where's that doctor?” Glenn demanded.
“On his way,” Beatrice returned, pulling loose strands of hair behind her ears. “So is Charlie.”
Glenn hardly heard her for the pain in his arms. He couldn't keep them from shaking.
Buck appeared in the door. “You called, sir?” His eyes shifted to the wrapped hand and widened. “Are you okay?”
“No, I'm not okay. I've been shot!”
“The preacher shot you?”
Glenn didn't answer and Buck just stared at him.
“I want the old bag dead,” Glenn said matter-of-factly.
He refused to look at Beatrice, who was no doubt glaring at him. It wasn't often he conducted business of this nature in front of her. She liked to pretend that it was beneath her, although they both knew differently.
Buck glanced at her. “Yes, sir.” He dipped his head without expression and left.
“You have a problem with that, Beatrice?”
She hesitated. “No. But you'll lose your advantage.”
“My leverage is with Dreamscape Pictures. I own him! And now he's just handed his life over to me. Our preacher's about to get more than he bargained for.”
Glenn's shoulder ached. His hands burned with pain and a shiver worked its way through his bones.
“Find the old man. Roald. It's time I introduced myself.”
IT WAS 5:00 P.M. when Jan swung the Cadillac into his driveway and turned off the ignition. The drive through the city had cleared his mind some, enough for him to know that he'd slipped back into his war skin back there and it hadn't paid any dividends.
He had shot Glenn Lutz. Goodness, he'd just shot a man through the hands! Jan shoved the door open and stepped out of the car.
A surge of anger rose through his chest. But now it was directed toward Helen, not Glenn. It had been flaring at the base of his spine from the moment Ivena had told him about Helen's infidelity. And now Helen waited for him past that door and Jan wasn't sure he could walk through it.
In living we die; In dying we live,
the sign above the door read.
You are killing me, Father
. How could anyone betray him as Helen had? He had loved her in every way he knew how, and still she'd betrayed him! Ivena's suggestion that her rejection of him was no different from his own rejection of Christ was well and fine, but it did not ease the whirlwind of emotions whipping through his mind.
Jan felt a tremor take to his bones. He stood on the sidewalk and balled his hands into tight fists. “Why?” he muttered through clenched teeth. There could be no pain worse than this ache of rejection, he thought. It was a living death.
A sudden image of Helen standing, smiling innocently, came to him. In his mind's eye he snatched the image by the throat and strangled her. The image struggled briefly in terror and then fell limp in his hands. He grunted and dropped her.
Jan shut his eyes and shook his head. “Father, please! Please help me.” Ivena's words strung through his mind.
She is no different than you, Jan
. The rage and the sorrow and the horror all rolled into a searing ball of emotion. He dropped to one knee and stared up at the sky. “Forgive me, Father. Forgive me, I have sinned.”
Another thought filled his mind.
The police will come for you, Jan.
The tears came freely now, streaming down his cheeks. He lifted both fists above his head and opened his hands. “Oh, God, forgive me. If you have grafted this love of yours into my heart, then let it possess me.”
He didn't know how long he remained on his knees facing the house before standing and making sense of himself. He had just leaped off a cliff back at the Towers, he thought, and he had no business loitering around for the impact. But there was Helen âit was all about Helen. He could not continue without resolving this madness.
In living we die; In dying we live.
He was living and he was dying and he was not entirely sure which was which.
JAN'S GOING, even for these two hours, had dumped Helen back into a deep pool of depression. It was a strange brew of shame and sorrow and a desperate longing to be held in someone's strong arms. In Jan's strong arms. She'd distilled the emotions to one: loneliness. The kind that felt like a living death.
She imagined throwing herself at him when he returned, but her shame dismissed the image. Instead she paced away the minutes, making the trip to the front window to peek for his return a hundred times, while a terrible agony gripped her heart. It was a pain that overshadowed all the pleasure of a thousand nights in the Palace. Dear God, she was a pig!
The sound of the latch froze her to the carpet on the far side of the room. She was gripped by the sudden impulse to hide.
God, help me!
“Helen.”
Oh, the sound of his voice!
Forgive me, please forgive me!
A lump rose to her throat and she swallowed it quickly.
“Yes?”
He closed the door and walked across through the shadows toward her. She shivered once. He emerged from the darkness, his eyes soft and lost. But there was no anger in them.
Helen sat on the couch.
You see, Helen? He loves you deeply! Look at his eyes, swimming in love.
How could anyone dare to love her with such intensity, knowing what he now surely knew? Surely Ivena had told him everything. Helen felt the tears rising but was powerless to stop them. She dropped her head into her arms and began to weep.
He stepped forward, dropped to his knees and gently placed both arms around her shoulders. His hands were trembling. “It's okay, Helen. Please, don't cry.” His voice was strained. She dissolved now, gushing with sorrow that had welled up in her chest.
“I'm so sorry!” She wept, shaking her head. “I'm so sorry.”
“I know you are.” So he did know. “Please, Helen. Please stop crying. I can't bear it!” And then he was crying with her. Not just sniffling, but crying hard and shaking.
She draped one arm over his shoulder and they buried their faces in each other's necks and wept. Neither spoke for a long time. For Helen the relief of his love came like water to a bone-dry soul, parched by his absence. By her own folly.
Forgive me! You've given me this man, this love, and I've rejected it! Oh, God, forgive me!
She squeezed Jan tighter.
I'll never let him go! Forgive me, I beg you!
Jan lifted her face with gentle hands and wiped at her tears with his thumbs. “I love you, Helen. You know that, don't you? I would never reject you. Never. I could not; you are my life. I would die without you.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Yes. But no more. No more tears. We are together, that's all that matters.”
“I don't know why I go back, Jan. I . . .”
He pulled her into his shoulder and shook with another sob. “No, no! It's okay.” He held her tight, like a vise. It was the first time she fully understood his painâthat he was screaming inside, fighting to hold his sorrow from crushing her.
The realization was numbing, shocking her into a dumb stare as he fought for control.
Oh, God, what have I done? What have I done?
And she knew then that her own tearsâher loneliness and her heartacheâit was all for herself. Not for Jan.
She
missed him.
She
felt lonely.
She
wanted to be forgiven.