Our Scars

Dissolve

23

Dissolve (Chapter Title by Tusks)

Rianne neither did know how to handle that info about Jay being missing, nor did she know how to deal with her feelings. Her stomach was one hot knot and her head spinning unpleasantly. She absolutely refused to panic and let herself think this through. No worst case scenarios allowed!

So she did what she knew best: Bottle it all up, push it down, take two or three really deep breaths and get to work. This meant indeed get to work and bury herself in it so that she'd have absolutely no time to think.

Originally she had planned to have the rest of the day off. It would have been the perfect evening to spend with Jay, because there was no time limit, no appointments the next morning, other than maybe go out of town for the day, like they had been talking about. All in all a pretty nice and pretty couple-worthy start into the weekend.

But now that that probably wasn't going to happen because he had to play hero cop or whatever he'd gotten himself into, she could just as well go to work, make herself useful. Gallows humor was the only weapon she had to not freak out.

At one point she found herself calling Jay's phone again and leave a voicemail, because she just couldn't believe this. She didn't want to believe that he'd gotten himself into a bad situation, didn't wanna think that he had completely ignored the conversation they had been having less than two days ago. Of course he didn't pick up. Surly he would be back this evening, so she could yell at him for scaring her like that.

Not that her colleagues were too surprised when Rianne showed up at the office, ready to roll and take on the caseload of the year. She was known to be a workaholic, an overachiever who sacrificed a lot of her down-time and private life in order to get things done.

Rianne was grateful to be needed and welcomed with open arms, no questions asked why she didn't take the time to relax after attending that conference. They were even extremely glad because as usual there was a ton of stuff to do. And this was just how she wanted it. Jay would be fine, there had to be a simple explanation for this, there just had to be!

***

Jay hadn't been able to take Angela's guilt, didn't want to let her die possibly with all these horrible thoughts about her husband, because they just weren't true. Marcus had not been the man the public had made him out to be!

So he just had to clear his conscience and tell her all about how it had really went down. He could understand that she was angry, pissed, disgusted with him, he could take her insulting and cursing him. It felt like he deserved to hear all that. Finally someone was saying out loud what the little voice inside his head had been whispering silently all along. The little voice that got him answering her texts, the little voice that go him to go to her house last night and into this mess he was in now.

Never had Jay thought she'd shoot him when he finally had freed them of their kidnappers and almost saved them. Even when he'd looked at Angela, her weak but hateful gaze and the gun pointed at him, he hadn't believed she would go through with it. He wasn't even trying to defend himself or flee or bring in Hailey who was just upstairs, fully armed. Jay had been convinced he would be able to just talk her down and they could walk out of there together, try to fix things, however that would look like.

He hadn't expected the loud bang, the blast that suddenly hit him.

The shock, the immediate pain, his body giving way, not reacting like it should, hitting the hard floor, the feeling of warm blood seeping out and over his chest. Maybe this was his punishment for everything he had done to an innocent man. Maybe yes, Angela was right: He deserved to die!