Silenced

by Nicole Kurtz

  I took the creaky, decrepit elevator up to the fourth floor. Alone, no one entered the elevator, which was a relief. I despised elevator conversations. Sometimes, I'd get the new male renter looking to fulfill his fantasy of having sex in the damn contraption. Other times I'd get stuck with the lonely grandmother whose kids have moved to other territories and only sent her pictures and emails.

  I exited and walked down the hallway to my apartment.

  The trek seemed longer than usual due to my aching, throbbing body.

  At last I reached my door only to find Jane leaning against it.

  "Been waitin' a long time for you," she said. She wore her glossy black bomber and black, steel-toed combat boots she kept from the Marines. Her eyes were puffy and the inside of them was lined in red. "I see you've been busy."

  I laughed and immediately wished I hadn't. My face erupted into painful flashes where the temporarily formed scabs scrunched down and ripped open.

  Jane moved away from my door. "So, what happened?" she asked.

  We went inside and I dropped my coat onto the sofa. The cold, closed in air hurt to breathe and I hurried to switch on the heating unit’s weak system. Almost at once it started wheezing out puffs of cool streams instead of the warmth I sought.

  "Jarold Montano jumped me outside Padre's gym."

  "What?" Jane balked as she sat down on my big orange sofa. "He's out!"

  My living room consisted of a sofa, a rustic wooden rocker and a glass coffee table with metallic legs. Two floor-to-ceiling lamps occupied the left and right side of the corner walls. And mounted to the wall between the lamps was a new 27" telemonitor. It was a mere four inches wide and the plasma rippled in crisp waves.

  With the pay out and reward money for the Change case, I updated my place a little too. After all, some goons trashed it during the course of the investigation. Therefore, the upgrade included a new security system.

  I headed to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of Peck beer out of the refrigerator. It relieved stress, but I was solely a two bottle a week girl. No lush here.Only your friendly neighborhood inspector with a buzz.

  "Yeah, he's out," I called back to Jane. Even to me I sounded tired. Raspy, my words escaped in scraps against the air—nothing solid. Damn, it hurt to talk.

  I went back into the living room and carefully lowered my throbbing body into the rocker. It belonged to my grandmother and it was rare. Cradling my beer and holding my right hand high in the air, I closed my eyes to await the need of the pain.

  "I hate to add to your lovely night, but I've got problems," she said.

  I opened my eyes. Couldn’t she see I did too?

  Jane shoved her hands into her dreadlocks and gave them a good shake. She’d recently had them cut so that now they reached the small of her back. They were sprawled over her shoulders like a jet-black and blonde shawl.

  I twisted off the bottle's cap and took a long drink. The living room lay in partial shadowiness. Only a small circle of light from the left lamp arced across Jane, casting her into silhouette, the other part in the spotlight. I waited for her to tell me her professed problems.

  Nothing. She stared up at the ceiling.

  "Anything you want to talk about?" I asked, prompting because I didn’t want to be up all night waiting for Jane to get around to it.

  She smelled like cigarettes and food. Her sunglasses were perched back on her head. With a long, slow sigh, she said, "No."

  "Sure?" I asked, keeping my voice even although fatigued threatened to lure me to sleep and my bath called to me. “You did say you had something like problems to talk to me about”

  "Yeah."

  I wasn't convinced and she knew it. Only in her early twenties, Jane flat out rejected any attempts at love, but family, she kept them even closer to her vest. She seemed to prefer apathy and solitude although she did spend a lot of time with me.

  But that was work.

  And all work and no play made Jane a dull girl.

  Although friends, she wouldn't have come clear across town to sit in my apartment.

  "You might as well tell me," I said lightly with a grin that stung like the dickens.

  Her face crouched down in a mash of fuming attitude.

  "All right," she said as she flopped back to the sofa. "Aunt Belle called. The Memphis regs have escalated Mandy's disappearance to critical. They found her shirt, the last one she was seen wearing, balled up in a bag outside the mall she frequented. There are blood droplets on it."

  "How'd they know it was hers?" I asked. "Must be hundreds of girls wearing denim shirts these days…unless they matched the blood."

  "Aunt Belle didn't believe either…at first. But Mandy had her initials embroidered on the sleeve and yeah, they pulled her DNA from the blood and sweat found on the shirt," Jane said, her voice breaking. “It’s hers. No doubt.”

  I sipped the beer, feeling the knot in my stomach twist tighter as I listened. I didn't like where this was going, but the forces-that-be gave me a hard nudge.

  "We need to get down there. Let's leave tomorrow at seven," I said, hating the early time, but feeling the pressure to be in Memphis soon. Droplets of blood were definitely not good.

  "Fine," she snapped, her head down. Her dreads acted as a curtain between us.

  "What else is eating you?" I asked, a little disappointed that my suggestion to get up early didn't make her feel better. After all, I was sacrificing my sleep. I bet she wanted to leave tonight, but tonight I needed to recoup. Fix my arm and get myself ready for the trip down. Leaving D.C. might not be such a bad idea since Jarold was out.

  "I'm pissed," she finished abruptly. "I tried to call you, but got worried when I didn't get you. So I came over. And you were out dancing with Jarold Montano."

  She stood up and put on her sunglasses.

  It was about nine o'clock at night.

  "You look like crap, but you're alive."

  "Thanks," I said.

  I watched her leave, knowing inside that she hadn't told me everything.

  After Jane left, I lay down on the sofa and tried to get a handle on the day's hairy sequence of events. For months, I was doing nothing more than boring work that involved wayward husbands and or boyfriends (sometimes girlfriends and wives). Nothing exciting, simply capturing images and reporting them like a first year newspaper reporter.

  Then BAM! Everything erupted and demanded my immediate attention.

  I got up from the sofa to get another beer and some more pain patches. If the nanos didn’t kick in hard enough, I was going to have to inject the acetaminophen. Normally, I didn't take so many of the things, but this week was already shaping up to be quite the bottle opener. I located my private stash of needles and neat, cute clear liquid-filled bottles and loaded up one of the needles before having a second cold beer.

  As I stood at the sink, waiting for the new patches to kick in, I filled it with soap warm water and removed the bandages from my right hand. They were bloodied anyway. Without thinking about it, I shoved my hand into the water with the hopes that soaking it would somehow make it better.

  Searing pain shot through me. Gritting my teeth, I kept my hand in the water, watching it shake uncontrollably from the raw agony and feel my knees weaken against the flooding anguish.

  My kitchen wasn't big enough for a dining table and I wouldn't know what to do with one if it was. I did have a small, round breakfast table with two mismatched chairs. I removed my hand and with a towel, dried it off carefully. I sat down and closed my eyes as I felt the tiny nanos slither across my fingers.

  My new sink was gray and clean.

  Gray like Trey's eyes.

  Trey. Perfect hatchling and T.A. agent.

  Missing.

  Christmas night in the desert was both warm and scary. The Southwest Territories loomed in a warm spell because of an extremely kind breeze from the Pacific Ocean. The usual dry heat had been peeled back to a comfortable 75 degrees…almost beach weather.

  Paper
snowmen danced in the breeze and appeared to fly from Trey’s backyard deck. Lanterns and luminaries illuminated the twilight, with help from the full moon above. The smell of popcorn and candy canes scented the atmosphere. Trey’s cottage lay tucked in a thicket of trees in the middle of some wooded acreage sprouting from the usual arid land. All around darkness provided a tapestry of beauty...crickets sang, copper and reddish turned leaves rustled, and music filtered out, soft and soothing, from hidden outdoor speakers. Out here, I could see the stars twinkle and wink down from the heavens. No light pollution in the wide, open spaces of the Southwest high desert. You could look up into the midnight-blue and see all the way to other worlds unknown and undiscovered…almost. The low roar of wautos and aerocycles could be heard like the buzzing of bugs far off in the distance.

  Trey wore rugged jeans and a soft, cable knit gray sweater that made his already smoky colored eyes more gray like the fog that rose from the hills in the morning. His full lips tasted like candy canes and his hands felt like rose petals.

  We reclined in an oversized loveseat on his deck overlooking a tiny, man-made pond. I drank warm cocoa and thought that life couldn’t get any better than this.

  Because of the nature of our professions, our schedules rarely synced, and this sliver of time belonged solely to us. I relished it, reveled in it, and wore it about my shoulders like a favorite sweater, close and tight.

  His hand held mine, my gun rested in my ankle holster, as we studied the sky.

  This indeed was the life.

  I shifted to get more comfortable and my gun peeked out from beneath the coal belt of my charcoal trousers.

  “Do you have to carry your gun everywhere?” he asked, his voice velvety soft. “You’re not working now are you?”

  “My gun stays whether I’m working or not.”

  The breeze kissed my face that was suddenly damp with sweat despite the cool air. I could feel it coming, and I didn’t want to engage him in this kind of conversation. I’d had it with other lovers in the past and I thought Trey was above it. The over protectiveness that men seemed to whip out against women they deemed incapable of protecting themselves, lay unspoken between us.

  “Why? I’m here. You’re safe,” he said, his voice turning hard.

  “I don’t need you to protect me,” I said. I tried to keep the defensiveness out of my voice. Still his face wrinkled in annoyance.

  I sat up and removed my hand from his. The gun wasn’t new to him so why the argument? Did he want to fight with me on purpose? Why?

  If he was over the relationship, which I admit was strained by distance, by devotion we shared and by desire that erupted with fervor when we were together, then why not say that? I was a big girl, and I could take it.

  “I know how tough you are, but we’re here, relaxing,” he explained, eyes on something far in the distance (or right beside him). “And not even for a few minutes, you could remove the bloody thing!”

  It went on like this for the better part of an hour with the both of us escalating in both temperament and accusations.

  I could forgive many sins and mistakes, except two: infidelity and overprotectiveness. My job rested on my ability to keep sharp, and I’ve crossed many bad people and violators in my long past as a private inspector. My gun stayed closer to my heart than most lovers I’ve held in my bed.

  Crowding made me feel trapped. Relationships and I danced in an uneasy swing, not really touching or succeeding to the point that we were close enough to embrace.

  What was it about men that they couldn’t accept a woman doing things for herself?

  “If it bothers you so much that I don’t fit your rosy-colored vision of a traditional relationship, then we shouldn’t date any more,” I said angrily. As soon as I said the words, I wanted them back.

  “Done!” he said, his eyes round and full of hurt. He got up from the seat and disappeared into the house. The outer doors making a quiet hush as he cleared the threshold. His mug of cocoa long since cold rested on the deck’s railing…abandoned.

  I didn’t mean to hurt him. I liked him very much, but he wanted the image, the dream girl that depended on him to provide a house, to marvel at his abilities, and to be a good wife.

  That’s never been me.

  And it wasn’t me now. I thought of the image of Holly Homemaker packing a gun and a black belt in karate.

  Yeah, right.

  I snapped awake when I heard my door slide open. Or was I dreaming?

  I must have dozed off as I sat at the kitchen table. My whole body felt stiff, and the soaking didn’t make my hands feel any better. It felt like I was peeling the skin off my fingers. Nevertheless, I had put an antibiotic ointment on them and wrapped them back up in bandages before sitting down at the table to finish off the beer.

  Exhausted, I slept while sitting up. The bruises on my face and ones along the right side of my body pulsated in some brain choreographed performance.

  The lights were out and the place lay in darkness. The kitchen clock read the time as a little bit before midnight. I knew I hadn't shut them off before going into the kitchen and dozing on the table.

  So who did?

  I reached down and gently took the pug out of my ankle holster. I crept into the living room. Humbly and a little irked by the fact that someone had already picked my lock and beat my upgraded security system, I winced against the smarting twinges. Cursing to myself, I frowned, irritating my scabs.

  I slipped into the room, my pug held high and my body sluggish and stiff.

  Immediately I realized it didn’t feel right. With a hurried leap, I reached one of the two living room lamps and flicked it on to reveal an uninvited guest.

  "Stop!" I shouted, my heartbeat mounting into a frenzied gallop. I tried to swallow the large, sudden lump in my throat. Droplets of sweat appeared on my skin. My tongue moved lazily as if swollen.

  No one broke in.

  The idiot still had his key.

  "Were you followed?" I asked cheerlessly over the pounding of my heart. "Were you?"

  He shook his head no. Along the left end of the sofa, he rested, his head reclined against the sofa’s burnt orange cushions, and his legs crossed at the ankles. His eyes closed as if for once he lay at peace.

  "Trey," I said, my hands sweaty, the gun swinging from my left hand. What could I say to him? "What are you -"

  He sat up. Dressed in all black, he still managed to steal the breath from my lungs. The v-neck sweater revealed his double helix tattoo that branded him a hatchling. The strong sent of musk and old sweat filled the apartment. A little tattered around his edges, Trey protruded the unmanaged sexuality of someone confident and accustomed to it.

  "Cybil, I would not have come here if I had some place else to go," he said, his voice soft and amazingly tranquil. "My underground escort won't be available until tomorrow. All I need is a night, one night to lay low. You can’t give me that?"

  His bright gray eyes studied me and lingered on my face, trailing over the bruise on my cheek and along the edge of my jawline, the scratches across my right cheek. They zipped down to my battered hand, and across to the other, equally injured left.

  The lines around his mouth deepened, and his eyes narrowed.

  "What happened to you?" he asked, voice tight with anger.

  "Not your problem," I said, trying to stop him from changing the subject. "Tell me what's going on. I haven’t seen you in months."

  The rocking chair was opposite the sofa, so that I could see him. Sitting next to him was out of the question. One touch from him would be too hard to resist.

  Right now I needed to focus on what he told me. The fact that a T.A. agent came to my office searching for him, only reinforced that they wanted him too. His whereabouts ranked as important or imperative to them.

  Normally, lying was a habit, and something I did well. I didn’t want the T.A. thinking I’d lied to them about Trey. They simply had too much power. Couple that with Jane’s pulling a gun on
one of their agents, and I was already in hot water with them.

  Trey had lost some weight, but not much. His ability to heal was serving him well.

  "I was fired by the T.A…It started about ten months ago. Been a crazy few months. First you dump me and --"

  "I didn't dump you," I interjected. The words were out of my mouth like horses at the Louisville Quadrant’s Derby of Roses. Fired up and anxious, I tried to breathe out slowly to keep my mouth closed. Talking wasn’t nearly as necessary as listening.

  "…and then I get fired," he said as if he didn't hear me.

  Butterflies fluttered in my stomach. I held my hands together to keep them from trembling or from reaching out to him. He seemed so doleful and scared. My arms wanted to hold him and to pull him close to me.

  Focus, Cybil, focus…why is he here?

  I took in one deep steadying breath and waited for him to continue.

  He briskly rubbed his face, but did not say anything else.

  "Would you like something to drink?" I asked him, feeling an overwhelming need to get out of the room. “Beer, water, and, well, that’s it.”

  “Water,” he said as he closed his eyes again.

  Fatigued? Probably. How could he rest when several groups were out to kill him?

  I fled into the kitchen, my hands shaking as I grabbed a bottled water from the refrigerator. As if prompted by my movements, the butterflies whipped around in unrest. I took more cavernous breaths, trying to calm my rapid heart rate.

  My libido had kicked in to overdrive. The sound of his voice had reactivated my lust. Already my stomach tightened and that special, moist warmth which came with being horny caused me to perspire. Hell, I was panting like a mutt in heat.

  With carefully placed steps, I walked back into the living room and handed the water to him. His fingers brushed mine causing my stomach to quiver all the more.

  He drank huge, thirsty gulps of the water. My eyes watched those long drinks glide down—gulp after gulp of ice-cold aqua—his throat, forcing the flawless skin to move up and down as lovers under covers do. When he sat it on the coffee table, it was three-quarters empty.