tried to pull the lie off, the fact that she
had allowed for Manson to get hurt couldn’t have made her feel less secure than she did now.
"What do you mean no, we must have heard at least a dozen shots fired, you had to have hit
him at least once." Malcolm argued from beside her, this was going to be harder than she thought if he
wanted to start arguing about the semantics of a fire fight which wasn’t even the real issue at the
moment.
"I shot him with the Remington, clean hits, I emptied thirty 9mm rounds into him. He took my
Bowie knife in the chest. Before that Manson unloaded a full clip of his oozy on this guy, he wouldn’t
go down, my worst nightmare." She looked over at Malcolm and could tell already that he didn’t
believe what she was saying. It didn’t matter, she’d been there, she’d seen it with her own eyes. She
didn’t want to hear Malcolm’s doubts about any of it right this second, she just wanted to get what she
needed to finish this. "I don’t think that there’s much choice here," she forced herself to look at her ex
eye to eye, "we don’t have enough information about this vampire or what’s going on. It’s time to go
to the monsters......."
"No absolutely not, what are you talking about anyway there’s no one left to even go to."
Malcolm pointed this out as if he were talking to some infirm of mind lunatic, "they will kill you."
"I have to get this figured out before tomorrow night Malcolm, I don’t have time to argue with
you." She could tell already that Malcolm knew that she would not relent on the matter, she wished
that would be enough to allow him to let her go without further delay.
"Jesus Jenny, just wait for the rest of us to back you up," he pleaded, she just wished that with
all the time that they’d been together he would have realized that when it came to something important
no amount of pleading could convince her to simply let it go.
"We’re running out of time Malcolm, if I don’t talk to somebody who knows what’s going on
then it will be on my conscience when someone else gets killed. With as many innocent people as I’ve
got piled on me already I’d just as soon avoid anymore." Malcolm stared at her for a minute as if trying
to decide if there was anything else he could try to use as a bargaining chip.
"I can’t believe you’d go back in there without backup after what happened." He tried to
remind her that where she was going she was hardly welcome, she never had been. Usually with
Jennifer, when she wasn’t wanted she had a bad tendency of showing up at the wrong time.
"I’ve got back up Malcolm, I’ve always got back up," but even saying it out load didn’t make it
seem convincing. Guns weren’t going to be enough, heck, real back up probably wouldn’t be enough
to save her if her visit went sour. It would be ridiculous of her not to assume that it would go badly,
things had even before she’d managed to get rid of management. She couldn’t imagine that they’d been
at all pleased with that outcome, she’d be lucky if they didn’t try to kill her on sight.
"You’re going to get yourself killed," he finally just blurted the truth of the matter out.
"It’s something I have to risk," she wasn’t sure where else to turn at this point, they’d used up
their resources, and this was the last resort.
"Haven’t we lost enough," she would have thought that he said it to try and push her buttons
and guilt her into staying, but one look at him and she knew that he was genuinely grieving the potential
loss of their team altogether.
"I’m sorry," she didn’t know what else to say, she knew only that she couldn’t stay the way he
wanted her to.
"No your not," the way he said it let her know that he was angry, but then he was always angry
with her it seemed.
Jennifer shook her head, there wasn’t anything left to say really, he couldn’t change her mind
and she couldn’t appease him in the matter. So instead she simply nodded
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