89
Thursday, April 1, 2021, 8AM Eastern Daylight Time
Joe woke up in the ICU. He looked across to see Maxfield King sitting in a chair next to his bed, staring at him. It took him a moment to figure out where he was and who was with him.
When he did, he tried to jump out of the bed. His arm and leg immediately objected strenuously.
“Whoa, pardner, whoa,” Max said. “You’re connected to a lot of tubes. You ain’t going anywhere.”
Joe sank back into bed. The mere effort to move had made his head swim. He concentrated hard simply to stave off the darkness at the edges of his visual field.
“That was some stunt you pulled,” Max said. “You’re a big hero now.” Joe did not answer.
“And that was some crazy story you told the Secret Service,” he said. “I can only attribute it to loss of blood.”
Joe stared at him. He felt around for a call button.
“You looking for this?” Max said. He held the call button in his hand. Joe sank back again.
“Now I thought about keeping you on the payroll,” Max said, getting up from his chair. “I thought, here’s a guy who’s America’s new hero. He saved the President. That’s got to look good for my organization.”
Max now stood over him, looking into his eyes.
“But then I thought, no, this guy has some bad ideas. He might try to tell those bad ideas to the wrong person. He might fill the President’s head with some crazy ideas about Max King. And if I allow him to do that, well, who loses? Me, sure. But even more, America.”
Joe stared back into Max’s eyes. He finally spoke.
“Even if you get rid of me, the Secret Service is going to find out what happened,” he said. “Kyle or Terry will tell the truth. Or one of the other mopes you sent to kill the Speaker and the VP.”
“The Speaker and the VP are fine,” Max said. “No one touched them.”
“So you called them off in time?” Joe said.
“I didn’t have to call off anything. You imagined this whole thing. I knew you weren’t all there when I hired you. I knew you were damaged. I thought I would give you a chance. And look at how you repaid me. You had a chance to get in on the ground floor of something great. But you had to betray me. Twice. Once to those terrorists, and once again last night.”
“‘Terrorists’ my ass. They’re about as dangerous as the Girl Scouts. And betray you?” Joe said. “I’m the one who got shot. I saw Kyle’s rifle pointing straight at me. You set me up. You were going to pin the whole goddamned thing on me. How the hell did you even make it in here? Why aren’t you in jail?”
Max laughed.
“When I said I wanted to go see my employee, he told me ‘Sure.’ The old man loves me.”
“The old man you tried to kill?”
“You’re imagining things. You’ve lost a lot of blood. I think you need some sleep.”
Joe saw Max pulling the plug on his monitor and swiftly plugging in something else in its place. He tried to resist, but Max was too fast and too strong. Too unwounded.
“You pick a side,” Max said as he shoved the pillow over Joe’s mouth and nose and leaned in hard, “and you stick with it.” Joe’s face grew red, then purple, and then faded to pale. Three minutes later, Max stood back up.
“You should have picked a side,” Max whispered, replacing the pillow and plugging the monitor back in. It immediately began beeping loudly.
Max walked to the door and yelled to the nurses’ station, “I think we need a doctor here.”
© 2020 Nolan O’Brian