by R. J. Blain
It took an extra thirty minutes to finalize the paperwork, which Kennedy observed in silence. I made it all the way to the elevator before she cleared her throat.
“What?” I snapped.
“I’m parked in the secondary visitors’ lot.”
“Of all of the whatever-you-ares, how is it I got stuck with you?” I hit the button for the ground floor with a little more force than necessary, and instead of breathing to keep my anxiety from getting the better of me, I struggled with the anger I’d never anticipated.
In every nightmare where I met her again, it’d always been fear—the fear of rejection, the fear of her loathing, the fear of the unknown. I’d never imagined I had enough life left in me for anything like resentment or anger.
She’d been right enough to hate me, although I hadn’t told her or anyone the full truth. I didn’t want her to know it, either.
All it would do was confirm how much of a coward I was, and that pissed me off even more.
“To make a long story short, my boss said so.”
“How wonderful. Look. I want something clear. I want to go to a store, get clothes that aren’t bloodied, muddied, and ripped, take these fucking medications, and go home so I can sleep for a week. I’ll compromise on the going home part. If sleeping in a ditch gets rid of you faster, I’m okay with that. Ideally, you will stay here, I will go back to Indiana, and we never see each other ever again. I moved to Indiana so I wouldn’t have to run into people like you. Ask whatever questions you need to ask. Then do a take two and get the fuck out of my life.”
“Since when did you get so snappy?”
“Since you threw your engagement ring in a trashcan.” The elevator dinged and opened, and it took me a moment to locate the signs directing me to the taxi stand, ignoring the ones for the visitors’ parking lot. “You could have at least had the decency to throw it in my face, but that would have been asking you to get too close to me, wouldn’t it? Heaven forbid I ruin your reputation even more. Couldn’t have let anyone know you’d been dumb enough to agree to marry me at that point, right?”
“All right. I may have deserved that.”
I strolled through the hospital until I reached the waiting area nearest the doors, locating a clock mounted on the wall. “I’m giving you exactly ten minutes. Ask your questions. But in ten minutes, I’m leaving, and I won’t be leaving with you.”
When twenty seconds went by and Kennedy said nothing, I took the offensive and told her everything from the moment I’d seen her in my office to waking up in the abandoned farmhouse. I even told her about Luna, her warning, and my kitten. I left nothing out, including the suffocating, paralyzing anxiety and PTSD that sent me to several doctors too many times a month.
I gave her the ten minutes I had promised, shut my mouth the second they were up, and left without another word.
While I didn’t view myself as a control freak, I felt a lot better the instant I bought new clothes, got changed, and made plans to haul my ass from Mississippi to Indiana. The taxi driver waited for me to do the minimum shopping required to be able to take the first flight out of the hell hole I had once called home. To escape, I’d have to make the hike north through Horn Lake to Memphis International Airport, and the thought was enough to leave me shaking.
My primary goal was to make it home, detouring long enough to hunt Luna down and retrieve my kitten. Despite being a weapon of biological destruction, I looked forward to taking Kitten, Destroyer of Worlds home with me. An hour with her favorite feathers on a stick would do me even more good than a full assault on the wood pile—and hurt a lot less, too.
I should have known Kennedy wouldn’t give up so easily, her bright hair betraying her presence in the domestic departure terminal. Tightening my hold on my new bag, I considered the best option to get rid of her again. “I have nothing else to say to you.”
“Part of my job is to make certain you make it home safely, so here I am.”
“You followed the taxi.”
“Wasn’t exactly hard, nor was it difficult to figure out you’d be coming here, which made it easy enough to get ahead of you when you stopped at the pharmacy to fill your prescriptions.” Her tone implied Kennedy was smiling her smug smile, but I refused to look in her direction at all.
I didn’t want to risk even a glimpse into her eyes. I’d seen too much already. Instead of answering her, I headed for the ticket counter.
The slender envelope Kennedy shoved in my face startled me into dropping my bag. “I took the liberty of acquiring tickets. The flight leaves in an hour, so I thought you’d appreciate not missing it.”
I would not lose my cool or drop from a panic attack. Repeating my decision to myself, as though it might somehow prevent either from happening, didn’t help much. When I didn’t move, Kennedy shoved the envelope into my hand before bending over and grabbing the strap of my bag. “The flight leaves in an hour,” she repeated.
The ticket, in its flimsy paper envelope, rustled in my shaking hand. I swallowed and nodded, careful to keep my gaze averted. How could two words be so damned difficult? The last thing I wanted to do was thank her for anything, but I forced one out to at least pretend I could be civil.
Several deep breaths later, I recovered enough to take my bag from her, shrugging the strap over my shoulder.
“If the cops had done their job right, you would have been checked for evidence at the hospital and your clothing confiscated. That’s the suit in the bag?”
Not trusting myself to speak, I nodded.
“I’ll be confiscating it when we land, and I’ll make sure no one in security gets any bright ideas about sifting through it. Maybe the labs can get something useful out of it, although I doubt it.”
It didn’t matter to me either way, so I shrugged.
“This will go a lot smoother and faster if you cooperate.”
“I told you everything I know.” I took a closer look at the boarding pass to get the gate number and headed towards security, aware of my ex falling into step with me. “What else could you possibly want?”
“A chance to talk with you.”
“You had your chance. You had two years’ worth of chances. Whenever you wanted, you could have requested a visitation. You knew that because you were at the sentencing. You knew the only way I’d see anything out of that cell was if someone requested visitation. You decided to toss your ring and walk. Why should I talk to you now?”
“I was wrong.”
Maybe a year ago, maybe two years ago, maybe even three, I would have felt something other than disgust at those three words. Maybe any other day, I would have gotten something out of it other than chest-tightening pain. I shook my head. The truth always won out, no matter how much I hated it, and I both cursed and hated myself for admitting it. “You weren’t wrong. I did kill him.”
“Accidentally, something you neglected to tell anyone, even me,” Kennedy hissed.
“Especially you.”
The reason for it hurt, too, just like everything else. I blamed the angelic blood in me for my inability to remain silent—or my doctors, who’d been battling me for three years trying to get me to admit the full truth.
Kennedy sighed. “Why?”
“Because you would have started digging. You wouldn’t have let it go.” The Kennedy I had once known wouldn’t, either. She would have chased down every scrap of information until she’d discovered the full truth. The longer I thought about it, the more I realized she belonged in the field she’d changed to following my incarceration, no matter how much I resented her presence.
“Because you didn’t want anyone to point fingers at the girl you helped.”
I assumed Kennedy had seen the interview Luna had showed me, and I echoed her sigh. “I made my choice, you made yours. It’s over. Ask whatever questions you need so you can go back to doing whatever it is CDC and FBI liaisons do when they aren’t masquerading as IRS auditors.”
In the security line, Kennedy kept qui
et, and I followed her lead readily enough, limiting my talking to answering the guard’s questions. Kennedy took my bag, flashed her badge, and declared it as evidence, thus preventing it from being searched although it was run through the x-ray machine. Within twenty minutes, we were at the boarding gate with too much time to spare.
I picked a seat overlooking the airport, watching the planes taxi to and from their gates.
Since Kennedy couldn’t leave well enough alone, she sat beside me. “You’ve changed.”
“What were you expecting?”
“A little bit more willingness to talk to me.”
“You had your chance. Just let it go. Go back to your life and let me go back to mine.”
“I’ve seen your file, Reed. You never finished your degree. You’ve stalled out in your career. You’re stalled out everywhere. No friends, either, at least not the kind you meet up with after work. None of your co-workers even know where you live. You gave them a PO Box in the wrong town, and while there are several property deeds with your name on them, we’re not even sure exactly where you live. The one address we tried had a nice couple living there who couldn’t tell us where you lived after we made it clear we knew you weren’t actually living with them. They made rather valiant efforts to hide that, too. Last check, we hadn’t been able to figure out how to access your second property, as there are no roads that go there.”
“And thank you for listing all of my shortcomings. Is there anything you’d like to add to the list?”
“You did rescue a kitten, although she’s rather odiferous.”
I scowled. “Don’t say mean things about Kitten, Destroyer of Worlds.”
“Reed, she made an angel gag. Your co-workers are horrified something so damned cute can smell so damned bad. Your boss has threatened to invite your kitten to work if people kept goofing off. She should be registered as a weapon.”
I suspected Kennedy had learned the hard way my kitten produced toxic waste. “It serves Luna right for taking custody of my kitten. If you want answers, she’s the one to talk to. She knows more about what’s going on than I do.”
“Luna, as you name her, refuses to answer our questions. She won’t tell us anything except she visited you before you left the office building and took your kitten so she wouldn’t be hurt, implying she knew you were going to be in an accident and had taken action despite angels typically refusing to interfere with human affairs.”
I’d have to thank Luna later, if only for the satisfaction of hearing the frustration in Kennedy’s voice. It made me petty, but I didn’t care. If Kennedy insisted on poking her nose in my business, she could suffer, too.
I was in no hurry to welcome her in any sense of the word.
“I had no idea it was going to be anywhere near as bad as it was for you, Reed. I’m sorry. If I’d known…”
“I’m pretty sure the judge told you exactly what would happen. There was no secret made about solitary confinement. Everything was laid out by the court, rather accurately.” I had to give the court system that much credit; they left out few details of what I faced, although I’d gotten out three years early.
I tried not to think too hard of what sort of man I’d have become if I’d stayed the full five years in that cell. Maybe there was something to the medications making it easier.
I wasn’t shaking nearly as much as I expected, all things considered.
“You were guaranteed visitations.”
I shrugged.
“How many people visited you? It wasn’t listed in your file.”
Staying silent took too much effort and hurt too much. In a way, I preferred the panic attacks. With them, I knew what to expect even when it seemed like the world broke apart around me. “No one visited me, so there was nothing to list in my file,” I replied, my tone devoid of emotion.
The call for boarding spared me from continuing the discussion.
Chapter Seven
Had I taken the ten seconds to think it through, I never would have taken a nap on a plane with my ex sitting next to me, pinning me in the window seat in a clever way to prevent my escape.
Once upon a time, the one thing that annoyed Kennedy the most about me was my innate ability to sleep through anything other than my alarm clock. She’d been convinced a bomb could go off without waking me.
Turns out she was right, mostly. Instead of a bomb, bad weather flipped the plane over its knee and spanked it, but I dozed right through the landing. Landing was a generous word, one that wasn’t entirely appropriate for the situation. Most people used crashed.
When I thought of crashes, fiery doom and destruction came to mind rather than panicked, screaming passengers beelining for the exits. While I yawned and stretched, others flailed. The ringtone Kennedy had used to wake me still went off in her hand, and I suspected she glared at me. Come hell or high water, I would not look my ex in the eyes.
“Well, this is fun,” she announced, crossing her arms over her chest and sulking in her seat. “We crashed. You slept right through the plane crash. How the fuck does someone sleep through that? Did you not feel that turbulence? The turbulence that knocked the plane right out of the sky? That turbulence.”
I’d fallen prey to panic attacks often enough to recognize the precursor babbling. “Deep breaths, slow, and count them,” I suggested while I angled in my seat to work the kinks out of my knee. Rotating my ankles came next, and I grimaced at the tingling in my toes, promising I’d hate the instant I got up and tried to walk.
Kennedy sucked in air between her teeth.
“It helps if you use your nose. All panting will do is making you hyperventilate faster. In and out, through your nose, and count—and don’t rush it.” I showed her by breathing in deep five times. It gave me a chance to smell the air, which was clear of smoke. No smoke meant no fire, which suited me just fine. A glance out the window revealed dark skies and sheets of rain hammering the ground and streaming off over the glass. Were airplane windows made of glass? I tapped it with a knuckle but couldn’t tell from the sound.
As far as I could tell, the pilot had ditched the plane in a field.
“How the hell can you be so calm about this?” she hissed at me through clenched teeth.
Which answer did she want? Probably not the one where I confessed I had enjoyed my nap, rather pleased over how much better I felt. Careful to avoid eye contact, I observed the noisy, frightened people flutter their way to the exits with the coordination of a blind three-legged dog. Not even Kitten, Destroyer of Worlds cleared a room so fast, although I needed to do a few extra experiments on the unsuspecting to be certain of that.
Kennedy gave my shoulder a shake. “You better not still be asleep, Reed!”
I’d probably regret laughing at her later. “There’s no smoke.”
“What?”
“There’s no smoke. No smoke means no fire, and even if there was a fire, it’s pissing worse than a cow on a flat rock out there.” Lightning illuminated the sky, and I craned my neck for a better look at the clouds, whistling at the churning clouds. “I guess the plane exploding would ruin my evening.” I pondered that for a few minutes while waiting for the rest of the passengers to escape. Kennedy remained seated, and while she breathed through her nose, she also rubbed her forehead, probably questioning all of the decisions she’d ever made in her life.
I waited until most of the other passengers cleared out. “Now would be a good time to do the leave the plane thing. That is customary following the plane crashing.”
“How the hell can you be so damned calm about this?”
“Are you injured?”
“Well, no.”
“Then you’re not dying. Just get out of the damned plane, Kennedy.” I fished my bag out from beneath the seat, shouldered the strap, and got to my feet. In case she hadn’t put two and two together to get four, I pointed at the nearest exit. “That way.”
The stewardess at the exit glared at me and my bag, and Kennedy hesitated at the thr
eshold. “Necessary medications are in there.”
While it wasn’t quite a lie, I still raised my brows at her deliberate twisting of the truth.
“Oh.” The woman went to help my ex scramble down the inflatable slide, but Kennedy had already taken the leap on her own, and I followed after her, soaked within a breath of leaving the cabin. Thunder rumbled, and the driving wind and rain flattened the wheat field. At the bottom, I regretted the lack of stairs, my leg informing me it had had quite enough of my bullshit.
Lightning split the sky and the crack of thunder deafened me. Shaking my head and rubbing my ears, I followed after Kennedy, who kept her distance from the huddled passengers gaping at the downed plane. I looked it over nose to tail and couldn’t spot any damage. “What happened to the plane?”
“Don’t know. Hit turbulence, engines cut out. Got lucky; nothing but fields and farmland here, so the pilot brought it down and coasted to a rather bumpy halt. Which you slept through. How could you sleep through that? I had to play a damned alarm on my phone to wake you up.”
“Is this one of those things I should just apologize for because no matter what I say, I’m screwed?”
“Yes.”
I threw my hands up in the air. “Fine. I’m sorry I slept through the crash.”
“Please tell me you didn’t fall asleep while driving, thus crashing your car.”
“I’m pretty sure I didn’t fall asleep while driving. I pull over if I’m having an attack, thank you very much.”
“And how do you know to pull over?”
“It’s pretty obvious. If the shaking hands isn’t enough of a clue, the constriction in the chest, difficulty breathing, or the tunneling of vision tend to get the point across. So I pull over and wait it out, assuming I don’t pass out. And even if I do pass out, it’s a lot easier to manage after.”
“And you refuse to take medication.”
“Short of having two entire years of my life erased, medication isn’t going to do jack shit,” I snapped. “Happy?”