John looked behind him to see who she was aiming at. His surprise turned to horror at seeing Jennifer running toward him. She must have heard his distraction, figured out what he was doing, and decided he would need help. She hadn’t been shot, but David had been less fortunate—he had caught a bullet in his shoulder and was lying on the floor.
John barreled against the swinging panel to make it engage quicker, but as he did so he felt unexpected resistance. The gloved fingers of the assassin had appeared in the narrowing gap on the other side and grasped the edge of the panel. John pushed hard, but it wasn’t hard enough. The assassin’s pull was stronger. He was competing against the strength of a trained killer and the spirit inside her. Without the central section being fully engaged, and the locks turned, the door was useless. The assassin would soon open the panel wide enough to allow her to step through, and that would mean a bullet in the head for Jennifer and David.
Jennifer shrieked from the cold as she thrust the palms of her hand through John, slamming them into the side of the panel. The momentum was enough to tip the balance of strength back in John’s favor, and the panel swung towards its closed position again. A terrible scream of pain came from the other side of the door, along with the sound of cracking bone within fingers that had not escaped in time. The panel bounced back a fraction from the impact and created a gap just wide enough for the assassin to withdraw her crushed fingers before Jennifer, John, and now David forced the panel in place with the desired click. Jennifer quickly turned the top knob clockwise. The panel was now locked. She turned the second knob to activate the multi-point deadlocks and typed in the six-figure code on the keypad on the wall. She had remembered it without hesitation. The door couldn’t now be opened without the code. The assassin was trapped.
Another round of bullets hit the door, and then they suddenly stopped. There was the sound of someone falling to the ground. John knew what was coming.
The head of a spirit had penetrated through the safe room door and John was now looking straight at the same stoical expression that he had seen earlier: the same thick, leathery skin and permanent scowl. This was the face of someone who had been no stranger to death when he’d been alive: a trained killer from a feudal empire. John hoped that meant he might follow a strict code of honor. He waited, his heart again pounding, for the spirit’s next move. The spirit looked over to the keypad. His expression momentarily gave way to a hint of admiration, as if he realized that, without the code, there was nothing he could do to free his host. Bowing his head, he disappeared back through the door.
“Was that a Samurai?” Jennifer asked, astonished, and still trying to catch her breath.
John nodded. “I think he conceded defeat. You know, that we beat his host fair and square.”
“That’s what I felt. He gave a sign of submission. Like he’s not going to go after us,” Jennifer said, a wave of relief clearly washing over her. She focused on her father’s arm. “Poor Dad. But it looks like just a flesh wound, and luckily it was right on the edge of his shoulder,” she confirmed. “Thank God!”
“There should be a first aid kit in the kitchen. You need to get it properly bandaged,” John advised. He watched as Jennifer quickly found it and started to carefully dress the wound. “We have to get him to a hospital as fast as possible,” John urged. “I think we’re all finally safe, Jen! For real! No more surprises, I promise!”
Jennifer nodded and started to cry as a torrent of emotions flooded out of her. “John, this must be your time! Your time to come back to the living! Not only do you have the answers you wanted but you saved our lives and banished an evil spirit. All along, you felt that you had to do something good, something to earn your way back to the living, John! Surely, you’ve done that now! You have to see if you can re-join your body!”
The excitement in her eyes re-ignited his deep longing for her and made him want to believe her. Could they really be as close to each other again as they had been that fateful night––able to sense each other’s heat and passion, and revel in them––in the way that only two mortal beings could?
It made what he had to say all the more difficult. “Jen, I still need to know why Donovan was involved.” Seeing her grimace, he continued gently. “If I don’t find out now, I may never find out and that will drive me crazy. I need to know why my father’s best friend would betray him. Take your father to the ER. I’ll catch up with you later.”
“If you think I’m going anywhere now without you, after waiting so long to see you, you’re crazy!”
John was relieved; he didn’t want to spend another moment without her, either. He’d just have to fill her in on his plan—fast. “Jen, Jim Donovan was shot in the basement garage and stuffed into the trunk of the assassin’s car. I bet his spirit is still there, stuck on the spot where he was murdered, unable to move, just like I was.”
Sensing the change in mood and beginning to recover from the shock of all the sudden activity, David asked Jennifer about what had been said between her and John and she ran through it quickly, bare bones only.
“Don’t worry about me in that case—the ER
