Getting to You

By ML Uberti

Zac Xavier is called from a meeting to find his wife, a teacher, is in a lockdown situation at her school. Rushing across town, he remembers when they first met.

In fear for her life, Emma is determined to protect her students at all costs. But while danger lurks closer, she flashes back to meeting her beloved husband.

Zac won’t stop until Emma’s safe, and Emma will do what she has to in order to protect her students. Will their love affair meet a tragic end or will they get their happily ever after?

Publisher’s Warning: Getting To You involves an "Active Shooter" school shooting with casualties and may be a trigger for some readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Changeling Press
• Release date: May 29, 2021

Book preview

Chapter One

I don’t think you realize the fiscal implications of severing our ties with Agens, I spoke to the board, seated at the head of the table, one leg crossed over the other knee, smoothing my tie. They don’t rake in cash like other investments, but their contribution is sizeable. Not to mention they employ over one hundred people.

Those workers could easily be picked up by another manufacturer in the area, Marty Burcar, one of the younger board members, spoke up.

Which ones? Because the two you’re undoubtedly thinking of are flailing. Minegraph just let go twenty people last month, I countered, arching a brow. Which means we can hire new people easily and for base pay.

He swallowed and fumbled with the papers in front of him -- clearly unaware of this information. But I do my fucking homework -- which is why I was CEO and Burcar was just a trust fund kid who slid into daddy’s seat on our board when his father retired.

My phone buzzed across the tabletop and just as I reached forward to grab it, grateful for the interruption, the intercom crackled to life from the device in the center of the desk.

Mr. Xavier, Marie, one of my assistants, said from the office. Mr. Xavier, you need to answer your cell. Immediately.

Excuse me, I murmured to the group and flipped my iPhone over to view the screen, noting I had two missed calls from Franklin, one of the security guys assigned to my wife.

It lit up as I prepared to call him back, sure he would tell me that Emma was going off campus for lunch, or that she had to stay late at the school to meet with a parent, or something equally mundane.

The phone rang barely once before I heard Franklin’s labored, rushed greeting. Mr. Xavier, he hurriedly stated, out of breath. And my stomach sank.

Franklin. I sat up, on alert.

There’s been -- sir, there’s an active shooter at Elmhurst Elementary, Franklin stated quickly.

I went completely still, my mind blanking completely for just a split second. Elmhurst, Elmhurst. Fuck! Emma’s school.

There’s what? I asked, on my feet and heading for the door.

I barely even got there before it was flung open and the head of my security detail, Wilcox, and his second-in-command Bridger, were right there.

An active shooter. Entered the school from an open cafeteria door. The building’s on lockdown. It’s only been about two minutes but -- he paused, and I heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire in the background.

Get in there and take that motherfucker out, Franklin, I ordered through gritted teeth, bypassing the curious stares and people jumping to their feet as I walked as swiftly as I could along the corridor and to the elevator.

Sir, they aren’t letting me in. The building is completely shuttered. All doors are locked, Franklin went on.

Break a fucking window, I demanded, stabbing the button for the garage as Bridger and Wilcox slid into the lift on either side of me just before the door closed.

Shatter-proof. I’m unable to see into Mrs. Xavier’s classroom --

I had impeccable control. Learned it from my father, who was clinically OCD and a strict authoritarian. My mother had rules upon rules upon rules throughout my whole childhood. I had one bin of toys, which I was able to take out, play with for sixty minutes, then put away. Otherwise, I was told to read, do schoolwork, play an instrument, or practice sports. That’s it. Eighteen years of it until I left for college, and even then and throughout graduate school for my MBA, my parents never shied away from voicing their desires and preferences for my life. Or the lives of my two brothers.

It led me to have a reputation as a ruthless boss and meticulous negotiator. I had built an empire on the backs of struggling companies by retooling them, reimagining their production, and expanding their scope -- and my cash flow. Billions in the bank, two houses in Europe, an apartment in New York and the home I lived in with my wife on the South Side of Chicago.

Our house was twenty minutes from my office on a good day, thirty on a bad, and if it was snowing, I was looking at an hour. Her school, nestled close to our neighborhood, but in a more run-down area with neglected children aplenty, would be forty minutes away, even with Wilcox’s NASCAR-trained driving skills.

I had no idea how I would get through the next forty minutes of my life. The control I had my whole life was slipping.

Try to find a way in, keep in contact with law enforcement -- are they on the scene? I asked as Bridger held the door open and I slipped into the back of my extended cab SUV.

Just now, Franklin replied. Mr. Xavier -- then I heard more gunfire.

Hang up. Get in that fucking building and save my fucking wife, I ground out, ending the call and letting the phone fall helplessly to my lap.

* * *

The first time I met Emma, I was sitting at the end of the bar, a hole in the wall in the new neighborhood where I had just bought a five-bedroom Tudor in a burgeoning area of Chicago. Oprah, the Obamas, other Hyde Park celebrities were snatching up properties left and right -- and I had found a gem that needed restoration but after I flipped it, I could make a mint on it.

And at thirty-seven, that was my life’s goal: making money. I had a lot of it, wanted a fuck ton more, and did everything I could, 24/7, to make it happen. So the four-level Bridgeport Village luxury house with ten foot ceilings was mine to crash in while it was renovated, then I could find somewhere else with the profit and do it all over again.

This would be my sixteenth house in the last decade that I’d make money on. It was just a matter of how much and when.

But while that happened, I needed some place to get a whiskey at the end of the day. I didn’t keep alcohol in the house -- another hold over rule from my childhood I couldn’t seem to break. When there was liquor around, my dad drank too much and took out his aggression on me and my brothers’ faces. Then my mom would dump it out, dad would sober up, and things would return to their normal level of dysfunction before disintegrating again.

Master’s Saloon was where I ended up today. It was a three-block walk, not that my driver Wilcox would ever let me fucking walk it, but close was what I wanted. Drunk was what I actually wanted, but I had a five a.m. call with London so that was out. Two whiskeys and home to fall asleep watching the Bulls stomp the Knicks. The hipster bartender with the skinny jeans and cardigan made his way over and took my order, and I read through emails as I sat on a stool and thought about ordering dinner.

Hi, Silas, a bright voice sounded beside me, and for some unknown fucking reason, since I usually don’t give a shit about strangers, especially those in a bar with Grey Goose as top shelf, my eyes shifted over.