“We need to get him taken care of,” the guy holding the fabric to Jude’s shoulder said.
“Call if you need us. We’ll finish up here.” The other guys waved us off. The shorter guy shut us in and hurried to the driver seat. Before I knew it, we were speeding off. How they found their way off the property, I’ll never know, because it was dark as pitch and none of them turned on a single set of lights.
Thankfully, Lester’s huge home was on the edge of town with some distance between him and his neighbors. The driver followed my instructions. It took all of five minutes to make it across town. When he pulled in my driveway, I stumbled out to enter the door code. Once the door was open, he pulled into the empty space, and I hurried to hit the door closure.
Thankful that I’d made arrangements to be alone before I left the house, I had them follow me to my room. I grabbed towels from the hall closet and laid them out on the bed.
“Fuck, babe. I’m glad you’re a piss-poor shot.” He grimaced and moaned a little as they set him on the towels. Knowing he was likely delirious didn’t stop my heart from lurching at his endearment.
“I’m actually a very good shot. You’re lucky I wasn’t aiming for your chest,” I murmured without thinking. His bark of laughter was weak and ended with a groan.
“What next? Where’s your first aid kit?” The bigger one questioned. Then glanced to the other. “Send our location to Coy. Ask if he can send Grem over here. He was a paramedic and will know more than we do.”
“No!” I didn’t want any more people there than necessary for what I’d have to do. I was scared, but I needed Jude alive. Because without him, Trace might not stand a chance.
“Look, lady, I don’t know what to do for him. This is usually his ballgame. We need help here,” the big guy said.
“Her name is Korrie,” Jude gasped out. He was sweating and looked unnaturally pale. Considering he normally had a light golden bronze hue to his skin, that was frightening.
“Look, I’m not going to say anything to anyone about what happened tonight. I’ll be right back.” I turned to Jude. “I know you don’t give a shit about me or him, but you owe him. And you’re about to owe us more than you realized,” I said before I rushed to the bathroom to pull off my bloody shirt and rinse my hands. I grabbed a dirty, but at least not bloody, sweater from my hamper.
I heard my name being called out as I rushed from the house, scrambled down the front porch stairs, and hurried three houses down. Composing myself, I knocked on the door.
Stacey opened the door with a smile. “Hey, you’re done early. Trace just ate a snack and was starting to watch a movie with Mark.”
“Yeah, um, didn’t have as much to do as I thought. Thank you so much for helping out. You’ve been a godsend, but I need to get Trace and head home,” I said with an overly bright smile.
“Sure thing. I’ll go get him.” She disappeared down the hall as I grabbed his jacket and backpack from the pegs by the door.
“Mom!” I looked up to see my son barreling down the hall. He threw himself into me and wrapped his arms around my waist.
“Hey, sweetheart. You ready to go home?” I held out his jacket to encourage him to slip his arms in. He grumbled that he wasn’t a baby but allowed me to help him. Then he put his arms through the backpack straps.
As he looked up at me with a smile, a lock of his dark hair fell over his matching chocolate eyes.
Eyes that were exact replicas of the ones I’d been looking into mere minutes ago.
“Angel”—Theory of a Deadman
“Bro, how do you know you can trust this chick?” Phoenix asked as soon as she’d left the house. No one but Voodoo knew anything about her, and even he thought my feelings ended a long damn time ago.
Trust me, I’d tried. The best I’d done was not think about her. That was easy. Moving on was what had been hard.
“I don’t know that I still can, but my guts tell me I need to because I don’t know what else to do,” I said through my teeth as I fought the agony that was pounding through my shoulder. What I didn’t say was that I knew I was fucked. Without a surgeon or someone like me, I was a dead man. Already, I was light-headed.
“Fuck,” muttered Ghost as he ran a hand over his face. He disappeared and Phoenix and I looked at each other.
Never had I wished for the ability to heal my own shit more than I did at that moment. To at least be able to know the extent of the damage. Anything. Then again, it didn’t take a genius to know that I had an arterial bleed. The blood was bright red and spurting when Phoenix took pressure off. Since it was in my shoulder, there was no way to tourniquet it.
Maybe she was married and her husband was a surgeon? There was no way I’d be that lucky. Especially unless he had shit in the house to operate. Jesus, I was grasping at straws, because I didn’t see a good way out of this.
Fucked. That’s what I was.
Ghost reappeared when we heard the front door fly open. I was pretty sure he’d gone to lurk behind Korrie to make sure we were safe and she wouldn’t run off to do anything stupid.
Looking back, I realized we’d been cocky. I should’ve had him check the Damon residence for other inhabitants earlier before we went in. All of this could’ve been prevented if we’d done that instead of working on the assumption Lester would be alone. That was sloppy of us.
When I met Ghost’s gaze, he looked shaken. He was one of the sharpest and mentally focused guys I knew. Definitely didn’t rattle easy. Well, unless we were flying. If he was upset, there was a good damn reason.
“What the fuck happened?” I demanded in a voice that was much weaker than I’d have liked.
Before he could answer, movement in the doorway caught my attention. What I saw had me blinking my eyes, trying to clear them. I had to be delusional—lost too much blood. Except it didn’t change what I was seeing.
“No,” I whispered.
Worry in her eyes, Korrie guided the young boy over to us. His gaze darted to Korrie for guidance as he grabbed her hand. She swallowed hard and stepped up next to us.
Please tell me this isn’t her child. Please. Fuck no.
“Trace,” she said as she rested a hand on the top of his shaggy head. She wet her lips. “Remember what you did before you got sick? When I cut my finger?”
“No!” I shouted, jolting to a sitting position. Big mistake, because Phoenix lost pressure, blood sprayed across the pristine comforter, and everyone shouted at once.
“Lay down!” Ghost said.
“Goddamn it!” Phoenix growled.
“Jude!” Korrie gasped.
Phoenix shoved me back to the bed. The boy simply stared at me. Most kids would be freaking out at what he’d seen. Except he simply cocked his head to study me with dark probing eyes before he took a step my direction. “No!” I gasped again. “No way. Don’t you let him, Korrie,” I implored.
Without her confirming what I was thinking, I knew. Knew this was my son I was looking at as sure as I knew my own fucking name. With that knowledge, I knew what he’d done to his mother’s finger.
Knew what it must’ve taken out of him.
Knew what this would do to him.
Knew I couldn’t let him.
The boy’s dark brown eyes narrowed, then appeared sad. “You’re gonna die,” he said matter-of-factly.
No, no, no, no, no, no. Please God, no.
A sob slipped from my tingling lips. I’d never wanted to pass that on to a child.
Before I could stop him, he tried to move my shirt. Ghost jumped up and pulled out his knife. The boy jumped back with frightened wide eyes. Ghost sliced through the fabric of my shirt to where Phoenix held the now blood-soaked compress to my shoulder.
“Sorry,” Ghost mumbled to the kid as he stepped away.
The boy moved forward again. His small hand reached out as I cried, “No. Please don’t let him! God, please don’t let him.”
No one fucking listened.
Too weak to fight by
that time, I could only stare as tears coursed down my face and rapid, shallow breaths consumed me. Black dots spattered my vision.
His finger touched my skin, and searing heat shot through me, quickly replaced by a rippling tingle. Everything blurred as I lost focus and the ability to speak. Warmth followed like waves washing through me.
I wasn’t sure what happened after that, because I was out of it. Hallucinations became my friend as my mother held my hand, with my grandfather and a man I’d only ever seen in pictures stoically watching over us. Despite knowing it was impossible for them to be there, I felt my mother’s soft skin in my hand, smelled her favorite perfume.
“Mom. What are you doing here? Grandfather, how?”
“Shh, don’t question. Just listen. Everything is as it should be now. I’ve been watching over him, but it’s time for me to hand that care on to you. Your grandfather and your uncle have been waiting for me. I need to pass on. I love you, and I love your sister—so very much.” My mother paused, and my grandfather spoke up.
“It is your job to teach him as I taught you. He needs you now. So will your sister, but for different reasons. Without you, he will become a science experiment to be exploited. A pawn for powerful but greedy men. That must never happen. What we have been given is a gift to be nurtured and cherished. Shared with those deserving. Protected.” My grandfather gave me a small smile and nodded.
My uncle held his hand out, and my mother looked up at him. With a serene smile, she stood and grasped his hand.
“Don’t go! Please!” I begged. It was the first time I’d seen my mother since my last visit home before she died. I wasn’t ready for her to leave. It didn’t occur to me to question the sanity of that thought process.
Bright light blinded me, and I shielded my eyes against it.
When I tried to move my other hand, I realized a small one was tightly clasped in mine, our fingers entwined. I rolled my head to the side and my eyes locked on the tired but steady gaze of my son.
My son. Jesus.
“You shouldn’t still be touching me,” I admonished.
“He wouldn’t let you go.” The voice that had haunted me over the years said from his side of the bed. I glanced up to find her sitting beside him holding his other hand. We made a chain, the three of us.
“I’m okay,” I told him, knowing it was the truth. It was as if that was what he was waiting for, because his eyes dropped shut, and he took a deep inhalation that released slowly before evening out in the slow, deep breaths of sleep.
Gently, I extricated my hand from his, breaking the chain. I ignored the pain in my chest that followed.
“How long?” I asked as I rose to my elbows.
“How long, what?” she asked as she brushed the dark hair off his brow. There were many possibilities that question could pertain to, but I’d start with the most important one.
“How long have I been out?”
“About three to four hours,” she murmured without looking away from the boy.
“Shit. Where are Ghost and Phoenix?” I asked as I carefully sat up. It was strange to be on the receiving end of a healing. It hadn’t happened to me since I was a boy and my grandfather helped me after I “fell down the stairs.”
My shoulder was stiff, and dried blood caked my skin.
“They said they were going to do a cleaning job. I’m assuming that meant Lester’s place” was her quiet reply. I took that moment to study the changes the years had made to her. There weren’t many.
She was as stunning as she ever was. Dark chestnut hair, longer than the last time I’d seen her, dark green eyes with softer sea foam and brown flecks. Plush lips that screamed at me to kiss her.
Except I couldn’t ever do that again. The little boy lying between us was proof that it wouldn’t be fair. Despite my initial sorrow at the knowledge of another child being saddled with my “gift,” if I was honest, I couldn’t find it in me to be truly remorseful.
However, the thought that I’d created this little boy with Korrie and she’d never said anything hurt. It also pissed me off.
“I never wanted to be a father,” I murmured as I stared down at the little boy next to me.
She huffed a snort. “Oh, I’m quite aware.”
“How the fuck could you be aware of how I felt if I didn’t fucking know about him?” My blood immediately boiled.
Startled, she jolted ramrod straight in the chair. Wide eyes blinked at me. “That’s a goddamn lie!” she finally hissed as she glared at me.
Stiffly, I stood up. “You think if I knew you were out there with my fucking kid, I wouldn’t have been there for you? For him?”
Disbelief warred with the anger simmering under my skin. How the hell could she think I’d be capable of that shit?
“I know you weren’t, Jude. Because I went through a terrifying pregnancy by myself, and for the last seven years I’ve raised my son by myself,” she snarled.
“He’s my son too!” I spat in an angry whisper.
“Then you should’ve acted like it!”
“Never in my life would I have thought you could be so spiteful. So because I was in the army, I couldn’t be there for you? Forgive me if I deployed for over a year after I saw you last! It’s not like I was away by choice. Then when I came back to Ankeny, you were gone. Your father had moved. Was I supposed to be clairvoyant and known that you were pregnant? Sorry, honey, but that isn’t my gift, as you well know.” By the time I finished my tirade, my chest was heaving and I was trembling in anger. Her mouth hung open in shock, and I experienced a moment’s remorse for being so harsh.
“You said you were going to be gone a while. I thought you meant just in the army. I didn’t know you deployed after you left. I wrote you a letter. I gave you every possible way to contact me. A week later, you emailed me. Told me you didn’t want to be saddled with a child. That it was probably unlikely you were even the father. To never contact you again. If anyone’s heart was broken, Jude, it was mine,” she lashed out as she banged her fist against her chest and an angry tear trailed down her cheek.
“Korrie, I never emailed you,” I said softly.
“You certainly did!” She dug out her phone and furiously typed into it before she thrust it at me. “Take it! I kept it in case you ever came back and tried to take him,” she rasped out when I looked at it warily.
Heart pounding, a second sense told me what I was going to see would change everything. Stretching across the bed, I took it from her, careful not to make contact with her fingers.
My brow furrowed as I read the email. Then I looked up at her in confusion, with more than a little nausea swirling in my guts. “I didn’t write this. This isn’t even my email.”
“What?” she gasped in a disbelieving whisper.
Before we could discuss it further, there was a soft knock on the doorframe. We both looked that way to find Ghost standing there.
“We need to go,” he said in a low voice.
I nodded. “Let me take a quick shower.”
Then I returned my gaze to Korrie. “You and Trace are coming with us. Pack a bag for each of you. Make sure you have all your important papers—birth certificates, social security cards, passports if you have them.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” The surprised question came from both her and Ghost at the same time.
“You heard me,” I said, trying to rein my temper in.
“Are you out of your goddamn mind? If I leave, I look guilty when Lester shows up dead,” she shouted, then realized Trace was lying right there. I could’ve told her he wasn’t hearing a word we said. He’d be knocked out for another good hour or so.
“No one will ever know he’s dead.”
“Uh, when he doesn’t contact anyone or show up for city council meetings, I think someone is bound to figure it out,” she said with an incredulous gaping stare.
“This is the only time I’m going to say this. Lester didn’t die tonight. He embezzled from the city,
conned several prominent members of Louisville society, and has skipped the country to live on the sandy beaches of Mexico and South America. Trust me when I tell you, he left a blazing trail. Now, I’m gonna use your shower.” I turned and went into her connected bathroom.
The hot water ran over me as I braced my hands on the tiled wall, leaving a rusty puddle on the floor of the shower. I didn’t want her to know how weak I was. Head hanging, I prayed there were no further snags, because I’d be useless. A transfusion should’ve been a part of my recuperation, but I didn’t want to linger here to see if Coy had a contact for that.
Once I was clean, I stepped out of the shower and dried off with a towel I found in her cabinet. Wrapping it around my waist, I returned to the bedroom.
Ghost dropped my bag on the bed in front of me. I dug out a clean Henley and looked up in time to catch Korrie staring at my abs and chest like she wanted to eat me alive.
Hiding my smirk, I tugged my shirt over my head. If my son wasn’t lying there, I’d have let the towel drop. Not that he’d know, but it would be weird.
“I’m not going to tell anyone,” she tried to reason as I pulled on a clean pair of jeans. I shoved my bloody clothes in a bag that Ghost took out of the room. Coy’s boys would make sure they never resurfaced.
“I’m not worried that you will, because you’re coming with us. Was I not clear when I said pack your shit?” With my arms crossed over my chest, I raised a questioning brow.
“Jude, you can’t be serious,” she continued in a baffled tone.
“Oh, but I can. Because Lester sent you an email terminating your employment.”
“What the hell? That’s impossible.” She scoffed.
“Check,” I said with a shrug.
Narrowing her gaze, she picked up her phone from the bed where I’d set it. She scrolled through giving me suspicious glances as she did. Then she stopped, appeared to be reading and then raised disbelieving green eyes to lock on mine.
“What the hell?” she whispered. “How did you do this? It’s timestamped from this morning.”
“Pack,” I reiterated without answering her question. She jumped up and ran around the bed to grab my arm. I stopped short at the jolt the contact caused. Even through the fabric of my shirt, her touch sizzled.
Angel: RBMC: Ankeny IA Page 6