“I was getting to that,” I said, keeping my eyes on him. Where was Charlie?
“It’s too late,” he said, and pulled out a gun. My gun. Son of a bitch. He’d taken the silencer off.
He held my gun to my head, forcing it so hard against my temple I had to tilt my neck into an L like Charlie’s sister. It hurt. It really fucking hurt. And then I remembered a fact that Henry didn’t know. A fact that could hurt him. Frank had trust issues. He held a grudge. So when someone constantly pointed their gun at him, and had even once upon a time shot him, that someone’s first bullet was never going to be one.
“He’s gonna kill you,” I said. “He’s gonna come in here and shoot you in the face and then he’s gonna track down everyone you ever cared about and—” I screamed as he fired, the shot so loud I couldn’t hear myself start to laugh hysterically at the why-didn’t-he-die-look on his face. “He doesn’t give me live rounds. I’m just a kid!”
Proving that Frank not only got all the looks in the family, but the brains as well, Henry tossed the gun away.
This should have been cause for celebration.
It wasn’t.
He yanked the knife from my side. It hurt even more coming out, and as the staunched blood began to flow freely, I knew I wouldn’t last long enough for Frank to find me. I started crying again, wanting to go back to bed, back to Frank, back to Chicago where the knife was so much smaller. And I was really, really scared, and I didn’t want to be stabbed again, so I forgot the cardinal rule: That until I learned to trust my instincts and take care of myself, I had to have faith that Frank would protect me.
I pressed my toes against the cement floor as hard as I could, forcing my body away from Henry, away from the knife, and away from Frank, who just entered the room and started shooting. It was silenced.
I woke to the crisp sound of a page being turned. It wasn’t Frank. I knew what he sounded like when he read.
I opened my eyes, squinting against the brightness, a steady ringing…no…beeping filling my right ear. I couldn’t hear anything from the left one.
There was a strange looking young man sitting at the foot of my bed, a sketchbook in hand. He had wavy dark brown hair down to the collar of his yellow t-shirt, tucked messily behind one ear, his head slightly tilted. His eyebrows were knit together in concentration, sharply arched in a way that might’ve looked sinister on someone with a less goofy face. He had a mouth that was far too wide, overshadowing his other features. He was frowning. It looked wrong. Casey. Frank’s brother. Frank’s other brother.
I remembered the big reveal, and reaching for my gun. I remembered missing breakfast. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Why couldn’t I hear on that side?
Casey raised his eyes, looking right at me for a couple of seconds before turning back to the sketchbook on his lap without registering that I was looking at him too. Then he did a double take and leapt to his feet, knocking his drawing to the floor and screaming, “He’s awake!” while jumping up and down.
I attempted to tell him to please shut the fuck up or at least turn down the volume, but I couldn’t talk. Oh, God, I’d lost the ability to speak. What cruel injustice!
The bed shifted beside me, and there was an increase of pressure on my hand. Frank. “Vincent? V? Angel?”
Angel. I loved when he called me that. I squeezed his hand back as he moved into my line of sight. He looked awful. I was almost glad I couldn’t focus on his face. It looked like it had been weeks since he’d eaten or slept, or even showered. But his eyes were so beautiful; his usually stunning irises were the most vibrant green, made even brighter in contrast to the swollen redness from crying. As pretty as they were, I never wanted to see him like that again.
“That motherfucker,” I grumbled, suddenly filled with fury. “He shot me in the fucking head!” Then I thought of how Frank had looked nearly this bad when he’d almost lost Bella, and I started to cry, bawling like a baby at the thought of losing him even after I’d survived.
“Shh,” Frank said, holding my face, tears in his eyes as he tried to calm me down. “You’re okay.”
I closed my eyes. I was dizzy. My head hurt. Frank called my name, his voice panic stricken and far away. I opened my eyes again. There was a man in a white coat standing above me, shining a flashlight in my face and asking me questions. He seemed satisfied with whatever response I wasn’t sure I gave him, and he stepped back, speaking briefly to a woman with puffy blonde hair in the corner before efficiently walking out.
“Was that a real doctor?”
“Yes, baby, he’s a real doctor.”
Could I be in the hospital? I turned toward Frank and whispered, “Are we going to jail?”
He smiled. “No, Vincent. We didn’t break any laws.”
I tried to cock my head, but realized I was in a neck brace. It must’ve been his ESL talking. Or my damaged hearing. There was no way in hell Frank would’ve decided it would be a good time to start obeying the law when I was in a hospital bed, doing my best impression of Charlie’s sister.
“Mags is dating a lawyer, how about that? He said he’d sue the police force for discrimination if they tried to charge me.”
I glanced back to the woman in the corner. Maggie. Under the bright lights her golden hair shone like a halo, and she had the concerned mom expression down cold. I’d always thought Frank’s habit of adopting substitute family members was something he might’ve needed to talk to a professional about, but just seeing Maggie left me convinced. It didn’t matter that I was eighteen. I missed having a mother. I wanted her to adopt me.
She smiled at me, her eyes sparkling with tears. Casey looked just like her, except for the hair. But her eyebrows were a little too dark for her color. Then I looked toward the window at a man in his late forties wearing a sharp three piece suit, with slightly graying dark hair and a serious face. Lawyer.
“Discrimination?”
“He called them homophobic. I didn’t know there was such a thing.”
“Oh,” I said. Everything felt muffled and distant, like I was underwater. “Not because you’re French.”
Frank smiled and kissed my forehead, the way he did when I was being a little dim. I felt dim. It was like I was missing something, a crucial scene that took place right after the commercial break while I was still making a sandwich in the next room.
“How long was I out?” I asked.
He smoothed back my hair, his eyes worried. “You were in a coma for two days, Vincent.”
Well, that explained it. Usually it took characters at least an episode to recover from a coma. “He shot me in the head?”
“No, baby. You cracked your skull when you fell backward.”
Fell backward? When did that happen? I remembered falling into my breakfast.
“I am so sorry, Vincent.”
“Shut up,” I said. “You’re not allowed to apologize for him.”
“That’s what I told him,” Maggie said from the corner. Her voice sounded like Georgia peach pie. With ice cream.
“Mmm, pie.”
Frank got his helpless look, staring at me like I’d lost my mind.
“Nevermind,” I said. “Can I get up?”
“No!” came three authoritative voices from different places in the room.
I pouted and looked toward the one person who hadn’t denied me. Casey. He smiled widely, lighting up the whole building just like Frank described. “Hey, honey,” he said, coming to sit beside Frank and taking my hand from him. “You’re a little fucked up right now, so you should probably stay in bed.”
“Okay,” I said. At least he was polite about it. “Were you drawing me?”
“Frank asked me to.”
I smiled. My face felt like a puzzle put together the wrong way, but maybe I was still pretty after all. “Can I see?”
“Yeah!” he said, sounding more like a kid who wants his glued macaroni and glitter mess on the refrigerator than the established artist I knew him to be, and he reached
over me with no regard for any of my injuries, grabbing his sketchbook from the floor. Luckily he managed not to cause me any pain, though that could’ve been from the morphine.
“I guess I don’t look so bad, huh?” I said, admiring the first of what seemed to be dozens of drawings. It looked just like I was sleeping. Peacefully.
“Oh,” he said with a slight wince, his smile fading for just a second though it never fully left his face. “Actually I was using a bit of um, artistic license. You look like shit.”
I nearly frowned, but found it impossible with him radiating exuberance at my side. “Don’t worry sweetie, you’ll be all healed in a couple of weeks. Then you’ll be pretty again I’ll do you and Frank together. Bonnie and Claude!”
Frank grumbled. Casey leaned over and roughed up his hair. “Cheer up, buttercup,” he said, and just like that Frank snapped out of his mood, smiling a little and allowing whatever tickled his little brother’s fancy.
I definitely liked this brother better than the last one. I couldn’t wait to see what else Casey could get him to agree to.
They kept me in the hospital for nearly two weeks. They being Maggie, who had taken her role of mother to the extreme and was now telling me what to do at all times, and Frank, who was suffering from severe exhaustion and had to be admitted himself.
The doctors gave him sleeping pills, which Casey made him take, promising to keep guard of me while Frank lay passed out by my side. Gideon, Maggie’s boyfriend, also stood watch. He had the same cross-the-street-to-avoid-him look that Frank could get when he was pissed off, only Gideon’s look was more from the fear of being sued for disturbing his journey than the fear of being killed. He argued with the doctors. He argued with the nurses. He even argued with Maggie, though she won just by putting her hands on her hips.
At first Gideon had made me a little nervous, the way he seemed to take note of everything; the color of my medication and skimpiness of my hospital gown a lawsuit waiting to happen. But then I saw the way he looked at Casey and his mom, his rough exterior melting away with pure adoration.
Frank seemed to have taken a real shining to him as well, though he had kept him from being charged with one count of trespassing and multiple counts of confusing the hell out of the local police, so that might’ve had something to do with it.
Apparently I’d been stolen away to a warehouse, tortured and stabbed because you couldn’t have the French and English come together without a little bloodshed. After he shot his brother he’d called an ambulance, the prospect of being thrown in a cell for the second time in his life not even registering to him. And they had taken him in, although it was only for questioning, since Frank plus warehouse of blood obviously equaled crime. But Charlie inexplicably took off with the body, and Frank wouldn’t speak to anyone until Casey showed up.
Casey had already been on his way after Frank got a bad feeling and abruptly ended their phone call, and the three of them had thankfully gotten to the county jail in time to keep him sane while I was in the ER. Maggie brought Gideon. Gideon brought hellfire.
He accused the police of jumping to conclusions that Frank was a criminal because he was one, homosexual, and two, refusing to communicate in English. Being as there was no knife or body found on the scene, the only thing they could reasonably charge him with was trespassing on private property, which he’d done to rescue little old me, his homosexual lover. Loop back to discrimination, and they’d released him just to make Gideon leave.
No one on the police force would even enter the hallway near my room for fear of a lawsuit, and the sergeant’s wife was a couple doors down, recovering from minor surgery.
Casey had met Gideon nearly three years ago when he stepped into the street to pick up a shiny new penny and nearly got hit by a car. Gideon saw what had happened, protectively helped him to the curb, and threatened the driver so badly he broke down in tears right then and there. Case comforted the poor man, sent him on his way, and told Gideon, “You’re scary, you have to meet my mother.” They’d been together ever since.
Maggie was also a ball buster, which explained why Frank had spoken very little about her. He’d never admit it, but I could tell that she intimidated him more than I ever had. She laughed too loudly, and she had no problem speaking her mind, mothering everyone in the room to the point that even the doctors responded to her with “yes, ma’am,” their heads lowered like five-year-olds who’d just been caught expending crayons on the wall.
I liked Casey a lot, but I loved Maggie. She made me wonder whether my mom had been that great after all. She called everybody honey with her sweet peach accent and kissed my wounds better like I was her little boy, and the second the doctors said I could eat solid food she brought a smorgasbord.
Maggie worshipped food, and had the womanly curves to prove it. The fact that I could eat anything she brought my way elevated me to the status of her pride and joy. Her son ate the way Frank did, and Gideon was so busy with work that he never took a lunch break, so she couldn’t wait to get me home to cook for me. She said I looked starved. Frank scowled at her for insinuating that he wasn’t taking good care of me, but not until she had her back turned.
Visiting hours weren’t enforced. I had company day and night. Gideon was absent the most, spending all hours of the day on his cell phone out in the parking lot where his yelling wouldn’t frighten those with weakened immune systems. Maggie stayed close by, occasionally stepping outside for a cigarette or to buy me pretty things from the gift shop, and Casey sometimes went wandering around with his head in the clouds, finding patients with no visitors and brightening their days. But Frank never left. It was the easiest anyone had ever quit smoking. He never had the temptation because he never went outdoors. He just stayed by my side, watching me sleep and holding me while I was awake.
Things were almost normal, though before I’d been more or less his equal, and now he was treating me like I was made of delicate glass that could shatter at the least provocation. I might’ve minded being coddled, but a lot of the time I did feel fragile. I couldn’t sit up on my own, I got dizzy if I made too sudden a movement, and I was having a harder time controlling my emotions than usual, bursting into tears over nothing only to be furious a second later.
The doctors said it was normal after having multiple concussions and intracranial bleeding. So were the blinding headaches that forced me into isolation, moving to a darker room where silence surrounded me, the sound of me and Frank’s breathing the only thing I could hear. He wouldn’t let me out of his sight, even then. Especially then. The migraines scared him more than they scared me, but I couldn’t think about being afraid while they were happening. I couldn’t think of anything. It hurt too much.
I’d lost some peripheral vision on my left side from one of Henry’s many blows, and the hearing in my left ear was completely gone. My neck was dislocated. I’d be stuck in a soft collar for the next month.
Considering the focal point of his attack, I was afraid to look too closely at any reflective surfaces. The surgeons had shaved off most of my hair so they could stitch and staple my head, and my face had to be a war zone. Even though Casey was spending every waking hour sketching me, I knew he wouldn’t draw me true to form. I was grateful for it. That’s what had kept Frank from falling apart while I was out. He would’ve drawn me awake if he could get my eyes right without seeing them, but he hadn’t wanted to upset Frank by messing up the color, and doing them in shades of gray had made him cry.
It wasn’t until I was released from the hospital with a murky bill of health, and Frank took me back to the privacy of our hotel that I dared approach a mirror. He stood behind me, offering encouragement while carefully shearing off the rest of my hair, making it even.
Patchwork bruises covered my face, ranging in color from dull yellow and sickening green to still vibrant purple and blue. I had a pink gash over my eyebrow where the skin had split, the butterfly bandages removed to leave way for an imminent scar. My nose was stil
l bandaged, to be who knew how crooked once it healed.
They’d replaced my two missing teeth. I could feel the imposters in my mouth, not quite right the way so many things had been in the past couple of weeks. Only time would tell how long the headaches would last. They could be permanent.
The skin was stitched where my temple had been torn open, a long white scar waiting to be hidden by off-white hair. The one on the back of my head was worse. That’s where the staples had gone, where my skull had cracked like a soft-boiled egg when I fell backward. Not pushed, fell. Tied to a chair in a warehouse, and I fall backward and break my head before I’m rescued. I didn’t remember falling. I didn’t really remember the warehouse at all. But the story was familiar enough. It started with Vincent and ended with fucked up.
We hadn’t talked much about the specifics of what happened. Maggie and Casey knew what he did for a living, or at least the basics of it, but he kept them as far away from his professional life as possible. I could tell that the subject would be off limits until they’d boarded their plane back home. Frank would drive me there after we tied up all the loose ends. He needed to deal with Charlie. He needed to call his boss.
“All done,” he said, running his hand over the duck fluff on my head.
“Was Henry really your brother?” I asked, turning my whole body to be able to face him. The mirror wouldn’t be my friend for awhile yet. With my fair hair shorn so short I looked bald, and my face was still gaunt from being off solid food for a week. I looked like I had cancer, if you could get cancer by being hit by a truck. But at least I wasn’t brunet.
“My father’s son,” he said, disowning him with a sentence. “He looked just like him.”
“He killed Charlie’s sister?”
“So I imagine.”
I put my arms around his neck, resting my forehead against his chest. He delicately placed his hand on the back of my head. I wondered whether he’d done that on the floor of the warehouse, keeping my television-toasted brains from leaking out through my cracked skull.
Chance Assassin: A Story of Love, Luck, and Murder Page 31