Theodore shoved Harry inside and shut the door. He then threw the security lock in place so no one could get into the room, even with a key card.

"I'm sorry," Harry said hoarsely. "I didn't know he would be there. I'm so stupid."

"No," I said, calmly at first, keeping my widened eyes glued to Theodore. "You are not stupid. Theodore is a fucking crazy man who can't seem to understand that we have done nothing to hurt him." I was growling through my teeth by the time I finished the sentence and then my voice escalated to a clenched-teeth scream, "Nothing!"

"That's where you're wrong, Ms. McGill." He shoved Harry to the couch and trained the gun on me. "You and your idiot boyfriend have completely fucked up my future, my life. You set fire to my house and now you're trying to send me to prison."

"You will go to prison," I seethed. "If you can't see that much, you're the one who's a fucking idiot."

 "Well," he said in a maniacal voice, "If I'm going to prison either way, I might as well get the satisfaction of killing the two of you before I go." He turned towards me and motioned with the gun for me to sit next to Harry. He towered over us with an absolutely crazed look in his eye. "Now, is there anything you want to say or do before you're dead? I'm a reasonable man. Perhaps I'll let you write a good-bye note to your family," he said to me. "Or tell Harry how much you loved fucking him under my roof!" His words ended in a muted scream. "Or let him know how sorry you are that you won't be able to have his retard babies."

I kept my eyes on him, no matter how much I wanted to squeeze them closed and not listen and not pay attention and pray to God that he would magically transport us away from here.

"Or Harry," he said in a sickeningly sweet voice. "Do you want to tell your precious Juliette," he said my name with disdain, "how much she means to you and how you're so happy she rescued you from evil Theodore?"

Then he threw his head back and cackled out a truly villainous laugh - not taking his eyes or his aim completely off of us, of course. Then he looked directly back at us, smiling like the Joker and he kept laughing harder and harder and I thought for sure this was his breaking point, the moment he had given his mind over to complete psychosis. I was frantically trying to figure out if we could disarm him without getting shot, at least not fatally. I'd be willing to take another bullet, as fucking painful as it was, to kill this maniac. As my thoughts flowed in rapid succession, I was surprised at how clearly I was thinking despite having a gun pointed at my face.

Finally, he calmed himself down and said, "Do you want to know what's so funny?"

Neither Harry nor I answered.

He pressed the barrel of the gun to Harry's forehead and said, "I asked you a question. Do you want to know what's so funny?" He articulated each word slowly and separately from the next.

"What?" Harry choked, trying not to let his emotions go.

"You two are good," he said. "You're so good that you almost got away with it. You almost got away from me and you almost put me in prison. Almost." He pulled the gun away from Harry's head and trained it back on me. "But not quite. And now, Harry guess what you get to do?"

"What?" He managed barely a whisper.

"You get to watch when I blow your girlfriend's head off."

I choked back a sob and Harry whimpered, "No, please. Just let her go, please. Kill me instead."

"Oh, I'm going to kill you, too," Theodore practically whined with evil delight. "But Jules is going to get it first."

This was it. The end for both of us. It ultimately it didn't matter which of us he killed first. At least it would be quick. I could only hope that Harry and I would somehow meet on the other side. Then I prayed that the police would find us before Anne or Clive had a chance to find our bodies. I hoped my family would remember me well and know how much I loved them.

So many things went through my mind in those very short moments; how, as Theodore said, Harry and I would never have a family together and Anne wouldn't get to see her grandchildren.

Every Christmas with my family galloped through my mind at the speed of light. Birthdays, graduation, my first love. It all paraded in and out of my brain until that horrible voice told Harry, "Watch!"

I heard the click of the safety as Theodore turned it off. It resonated through my mind with eerie clarity.

"I love you, Harry," I sobbed and waited for my death.

Another click made me jump, expecting to see nothing, blackness, darkness. Instead I heard Theodore grunt unexpectedly. My eyes flew open and I caught the look of shock on his face.

The gun jammed!

"Grab him," I screamed snatching Theodore's wrist while Harry pounced and knocked him down onto the floor in front of the couch. Theodore still held the gun with a death grip, screaming at us to get off him, but I held his wrist tighter and slammed it against the corner of the coffee table with such force that I'm pretty sure I heard it snap.

With a loud cry of pain, the gun fell and I picked it up while Harry straddled Theodore and threw a punch straight at his face. It was clear to me that his nose broke with another sickening crack and then a gush of blood. I frantically dug for my cell phone. Still clutching the gun, I pressed my finger onto the ID button and dialed those three life-saving numbers.

I watched as Harry struggled to stay on top of Theodore; even with his broken wrist and nose, he fought like an animal. I ran to the door to open it and then put the phone on speaker and threw it onto the coffee table. Theodore tried to throw Harry off by pushing his legs up and bucking at him, but I jumped onto his legs to try to hold him down. His superhuman strength must have been fueled by his rage. Suddenly Harry changed tactics and leaned over him, pressing his thumbs into his windpipe.

I heard the dispatcher from my cell phone. "911. What's your emergency?"

"Town Plaza suites!" I shouted. "A man tried to kill us and we took his gun! Theodore Blake is here! Send help!"

The dispatcher kept talking but I focused my attention as Harry spoke to Theodore in a calculated, murderous tone, one I'd never heard from him before and one I hoped I'd never hear again. "You," he growled and removed one hand from Theodore's windpipe to grab a fistful of hair and yank it so his neck bent forward at an awkward angle. "You stole my entire life." He punctuated his words by slamming Theodore's head back against the floor. "I did nothing to you and you robbed me of twenty years! Twenty years when I should have been going to school and playing with other kids, you kept me drugged." He slammed his head against the floor again. "And deprived me of everything a normal kid should have!"

Harry let out a heartbreaking sob and then continued, "So every single day that you rot in prison, I will be free, living the life you never allowed me to have and I will be too ridiculously happy to think about how much I hate you!"

"Then why don't you just kill me?" Theodore asked, his cocky tone of voice not waning with his consciousness.

"Because I want you to suffer," Harry seethed even more. I was sure he was practically spitting in Theodore's face. "I want you to know what it's like to have four walls to look at for the rest of your miserable, pathetic life and I want you to think about how I beat you at your own game! How I am living my very happy life with my career and my wife and my children while you rot in that cold, hard jail cell." He lowered his voice to a ferocious whisper and said, "I hope you think about me every single day and I hope I become your worst nightmare, just like you were mine for twenty fucking years!"

We heard the in-room phone click and then a bit of static before we heard an announcement. "Attention all guests. The hotel is on lockdown. Stay in your rooms and lock your doors. This is not a drill. The hotel is on lockdown. Please get to a secure location immediately."

Mere seconds later we heard sirens, dozens of them and I knew help was almost here. Theodore tried to move again and although I could tell he was going to pass out any second, I got off his legs enough to deliver a swift knee to his groin and he shouted in agony just before he lost consciousness. Not two seconds later, we heard the police yelling, "Stay in your rooms. Lock your doors and stay in your rooms!"

"We're here," I screamed. Cops flooded the room like water from a busted dam. Harry and I didn't move until they physically pulled us up off of Theodore. I still had the gun clenched in my fist. I handed it to the first officer I saw and I burst into tears. "He...he tried to kill me. He pulled the trigger and it..it jammed...." I couldn't say any more but the officer handed the gun to another cop and hugged me tightly.

"It's all right," he soothed. "It's over. We're not letting this son of a bitch go again."

"Thank you," I said pulling away and taking the opportunity to look at Harry. "Are you all right, Baby?" I asked and he nodded blankly, still staring at Theodore's barely conscious form. 

At that moment, Theodore began to moan in agony and one of the cops pulled out his radio, "Get a paramedic up here!" Theodore began to writhe a little as if he was trying to get up and one cop knelt next to him and said, "Don't bother moving, Blake. You're under arrest."

"Fuck you," he spat but the officer sat, unmoved, his hand on his gun. Another officer patted Theodore down to make sure he didn't have any other weapons.

When Theodore was finally loaded into an ambulance and taken away, two officers remained to take our statements. Not much later, Officer Michaels and Detective Gage arrived. After we finished talking to the Vancouver officers, I started crying yet again and hugged Michaels and Gage. "What if he gets out again?" I asked. "We didn't want to kill him but how can we be sure we're safe?"

One of the Vancouver cops by the name of Officer Timothy Bennett, the one who who hugged me at first, answered for them. "Mr. Blake is a wanted man. No one is letting him escape this time. He will be handcuffed and tethered until they've examined him in the ER, then he will be transferred to the hospital ward of the correctional facility. He will have two officers on him at all times until he's in a maximum security cell. He'll stay there until the trial and he won't even be able to take a shit without the police knowing about it." I chuckled at his candor and he immediately apologized. "Sorry about that," he said with a smirk. "But we've been watching this guy since he was arrested the first time and I'm sick to death of him taking advantage of his power over in Victoria. And for what he's put you two through."

"Thank you," I whispered and then I hugged him, too. He offered to stay with us until Anne and  Clive returned. According to him, Officer Courtland had been notified of what happened and also that we were okay. I couldn't imagine their panic but I was glad they knew we were alive and safe.

I pulled Harry down on the couch next to me as we waited. I wrapped both of my arms around him and kissed all over his face and his hair, saying, "We did it, Baby. We're safe now."

And for the first time in months, my gut told me I was right.

* * * * *

You are all A*M*A*Z*I*N*G!