“What are you doing in my house?”
He moved toward the side of the bed with the phone. It was then I saw a lady sleeping on the other side.
I held up my hands. “No need for that. We’ll just leave.”
I moved toward the door, hoping Vick would follow. Neither of us needed to be arrested.
I was standing in the doorway when I looked back. Vick wasn’t there. Instead, she was standing in front of the man, and she was holding a gun aimed at him.
“What are you doing?” I said, making my way back toward her. “No. This is not how this is going down.”
I broke into houses to survive, but carrying a gun around and pulling it on people was not okay with me.
“He’s going to call the cops, Sebastian,” she said in a hushed tone. “Fuck, now he knows your name. I’m sorry. Shit, I’m so sorry.”
Her eyes were wild. She was freaking out.
“Vick, just give me the gun. We’ll get the hell out of here, and no one will know anything. Let’s just go,” I said calmly as I reached out for the gun.
Her hand was shaking, which meant her trigger finger was shaking, too.
And then everything moved in slow motion. The husband stood there with his hands up, fear in his eyes, while the wife started to stir. And then she sat straight up in bed and screamed.
The gunshots rang out, deafening me as I watched the man fall to the floor. Blood oozed from his neck, and he choked as he tried to breathe. I moved quickly toward Vick, but it was too late. The wife was running toward the door, and Vick was shooting over and over again.
Everything went silent except for the sounds of the husband taking his last breath and the wife beginning to choke and gasp for life. And then, the screams of a baby in the room next door.
Vick dropped the gun and took off running as if I wasn’t even in the room with her. Her loud footsteps on the wooden stairs echoed through the house. I stood there in shock, sure that I was dreaming, but then the woman started moaning.
I should have run, but I didn’t. Instead, I dropped to my knees next to the woman dying on the floor, and I grabbed her hand.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered to her. “I’m so sorry.”
Her wide eyes were trained on me as her body started to shake. Blood splattered from her mouth and landed on her lips. She was trying to say something, but I couldn’t understand. Leaning down closer to her, I turned my head so she could speak in my ear.
“Please,” she struggled to say.
And then I felt her shaking fingers on mine as she placed something hard and cold in my palm. She closed my hand around the object and pleaded with her eyes. I didn’t know what she was asking me for, but I couldn’t help her.
I should have called the police or 911, but I wasn’t thinking straight, and I was scared. I’d never seen anyone die before, and my stomach was twisting with fear. All I did was lean over her and watch as a tiny tear fell from her eye as she took her last breath.
I opened my hand and looked down at the locket in my palm.
What was she trying to tell me?
And then a sound to my left made me jump, and I looked up to see a young girl standing in the doorway looking back at me. She was no more than ten. Her tiny feet peeked out from under her nightgown as her fear-filled eyes took in the scene around her.
The woman obviously wanted me to have the locket. I didn’t know what else to do, so I popped the chain from around her neck.
I stood holding her locket in my hand. My eyes clashed with the little girl’s once more, and then I took off, running past her and down the stairs. Once I lifted myself over the fence, I puked all over the ground before running off into the darkness.
As badly as I wanted to turn myself in, it meant turning Vick in, too, and I wasn’t willing to do that. She was the only family I had—my baby sister. What she had done was wrong, but I couldn’t let her go to jail.
I couldn’t.
That night, I changed. I lay in bed and blocked out all the memories of the night, completely cutting off my emotions so I didn’t feel the guilt or the hurt tearing me apart.
Popping open the locket the woman had given me, I saw two pictures inside. One of the little girl and another of the baby I’d heard screaming. I’d witnessed two people die—parents. I’d left two children without a mother or a father. I’d sentenced them to a life like mine. I’d never get over that for the rest of my life … never.
PART THREE
INTO THE BLACK
One Year Later
TWENTY
I SPENT MY NINETEETH BIRTHDAY ON THE STREETS of New York … alone. And I knew once the colder months came, I would be in hell, but I had no idea how bad it was without some kind of wall to block the winter winds.
My shoulders stiffened against the frigid breeze. I had been living on the streets for a while, but no matter how many nights I nearly froze, I never adjusted to the cold weather.
Most of the shelters were at full capacity and were turning people away with threadbare blankets. I had accepted one and wrapped it around my shoulders before going on my way.
The holidays were around the corner, which had a lot to do with the shelters being full. No one wanted to spend the holidays alone, and everyone wanted a full stomach and a celebration. The shelters always provided turkey and gravy.
I wasn’t fast enough, thinking I could wait a day or two before they filled, but that wasn’t the case. It was my fault I would spend the holidays alone and hungry.
The one shelter I knew was open and wasn’t at full occupancy had banned me. I had stayed there for a while and had evidently worn out my welcome.
Apparently, they didn’t like it when the homeless slept with their volunteers, and since I’d basically fucked every single female volunteer in the place worth sticking my dick in, the place was uncomfortable. When they started skipping you in the chow line and leaving you on a cot with no pillow or thin blanket, you knew it was time to go.
I skipped out in the middle of the night, and with no other place to go, there I was, in the middle of winter in New York City, looking for any abandoned place I could find that had enough walls to block the ice-cold air.
I was familiar with the area after living there for the past year, but it wasn’t the part of the city I had grown up in. After the night that changed my life—after watching two people die right before my eyes—I had run away and left Vick and everything on that side of the city.
I didn’t want to see Vick. Even looking at her would be enough to send me over the edge. Just being close to the street where the murder happened was too much, so I had to go for my sanity. Otherwise, I knew I’d turn myself in and spend the rest of my life behind bars.
Behind bars might be a warm place where I could get three hot meals and a cot, but something about being trapped behind the iron bars with someone telling me when to take a piss didn’t sit well with me.
A week after the murder, I had found the article in the newspaper about the deaths. I kept that article along with the locket the mother had given me in my pocket at all times. Weighing me down with regret, it reminded me of the blood on my hands, and that I had left two children parentless. I had essentially killed their parents and cursed those kids with a life like my own.
Many times, I would think about finding their graves so I could apologize. So I could stand next to where they rested and wish they could hear me and forgive me. Wish I could take that night back. Wish I could give those kids their lives back.
But I never did because no matter how hard I wished, I could never make it go away. I could never take it back.
So from that moment on, I followed my gut instincts. That night I had known something was wrong, but I had allowed Vick to convince me otherwise.
Never again.
I stopped to cup my hands around my mouth and blow hot air into them. The feeling in my fingers would sort of come back when I did that. At least they would tingle, letting me know they were still a part of
my body.
I eyed the buildings down the street, scoping out my prospects. The street was nice with newly opened businesses and fresh signs, leaving me to think that maybe I should find a better street. Something a little more run down—something with closed businesses with boarded windows.
Then I saw it.
A building that looked promising.
A few stragglers roamed the streets, trying to get home at four in the morning after drinking themselves stupid, but I knew they wouldn’t pay me any attention. And if they did, they wouldn’t remember it in the morning.
I jogged down the sidewalk, double checking before I crossed the street, and ducked into the alleyway. The building looked abandoned, so I was hoping to get lucky. I was praying things were looking up for me, and I would find an easy way to get in.
There was a door on the side of the building with a busted glass opening covered with plywood. I checked the knob a few times, jiggling it while trying to turn it, but found it locked.
The knob had been like touching a ball of ice, making my fingers and palm burn like fire. I blew into my hand again, soothing the burn with the tingle of my warm breath.
Looking around for another place of entry, I spotted a window toward the back of the building, but I couldn’t find anything to break the window with.
My elbow.
It was my only choice even though I knew it would hurt like hell. Pulling off the thin blanket I had draped over my shoulders, I wrapped my arm with the ragged fabric to keep from cutting my arm, and then I shoved my elbow through the window.
The shattered glass came down louder than I wanted, so I sat quietly for a few beats, prepared for someone to appear. When no one came to investigate the sound, I knocked out the rest of the broken glass and climbed in as smoothly as I could without cutting myself on the leftover jagged pieces in the window frame.
As I dropped to the floor from the window, I accidentally knocked over a box of pots and pans, and the sound echoed through the room I was in.
I cursed before I moved, tripping over things as I moved through the maze of boxes and broken chairs. Finally, I found myself in the front of the building, which looked like it might have been a bar once upon a time.
The outside looked run down and abandoned, but the inside wasn’t all that bad. There were tables and chairs and a long wooden bar. Bottles of liquor lined the mirrored wall behind the bar, and dusty lights hung over two pool tables on one side of the room with beer advertisements etched into the colored glass.
I moved to explore the place, hoping to get my hands on one of the bottles to warm myself from the inside out, but before I could get a few steps, something cold and hard was shoved into my back.
“You could move, but then you run the risk of being shot in the back by a stranger.”
I stood frozen with my heart lodged in my throat. “What’s my other option?”
“You can start by explaining how the hell you got in here.”
I slowly lifted my hands above my head, palms out. “I broke a window in the back and climbed through.”
He chuckled behind me, the sound gravelly and broken. “You did a piss-poor job of breaking in here. You made enough noise to wake the dead.”
“I thought the place was abandoned. I didn’t think anyone was here.”
“Sounds like you didn’t think at all, son.”
“I’m not your son,” I snapped. “Are you going to shoot me?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” His raspy voice sounded aged with liquor and cigarettes. “What are you doing here?”
“Breaking and entering.”
“Why?”
If I would go to jail anyway, I didn’t see any reason to lie. “It’s freezing out. I needed a warm place to crash, and this place looked about as good as any.”
“Do you have anything on you? Guns, knives, nunchucks?”
I snorted. “Nunchucks? What century do you think we live in, old man?”
“I know how you young kids are. Stupid. The whole lot of you. Now, do you have anything on you?”
I sighed, sleep catching up with me and making my knees knock. “No. I was just looking for a place to stay.”
And that was all.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a decent night’s sleep, and I could literally feel my body giving up on me. The only reason I had broken into the place was because it looked empty, but I knew no matter what I said, the man wasn’t going to believe a word. I would get shot in the back, and with how exhausted I was physically and mentally, I wasn’t in any shape to try to fight back.
He didn’t say anything for a few minutes, and then the pressure from whatever he was shoving into my spine lessened. He moved away from me and headed to the bar, but I remained absolutely still just in case he changed his mind.
“A shotgun?” I asked when he settled the cold steel down on top of the bar.
“Yep. You never know what kind of hooligans run the streets at four in the morning.” He chuckled, obviously enjoying calling me a hooligan.
The little bit of hair he had on top of his head was white and springy, and his beard matched. He was in an old pair of pajama bottoms with what looked like American flags all over them and a too small T-shit that said “Army Strong” across the front.
I’d obviously woken him up, which made perfect sense. Most people were warm in their beds at four in the morning.
He reached beneath the bar and pulled out two shot glasses.
“Drink?” he asked, holding up a bottle of something dark.
I frowned. “Really?”
Why in the hell would he offer me a drink?
I had broken into his establishment … literally. I still had some glass from the window stuck to my shoestrings.
Either he was old and crazy or he was trying to drug me.
He shrugged. “It would be rude if I had one and didn’t offer, right?”
He was confusing me.
Why wasn’t he calling the police and having me arrested?
Maybe he had another gun behind the bar pointed in my direction.
Obviously, my paranoia was getting the best of me, and I knew it was the lack of sleep that was doing it.
“What’s going on right now?” I asked, confused.
“We’re having a drink,” he said before sliding onto one of the busted leather barstools. “Now sit. Have a drink with an old man.”
“I don’t get it. Why aren’t you calling the cops right now?”
He shrugged. “Did you steal anything?”
I shook my head. “No, but I broke in.”
He rubbed his bloated stomach and then scratched at his beard. “Did you plan to leave in the morning?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
He yawned. “No need to go pulling the police out their beds, too then. Seeing as you were just going to sleep and leave.”
My eyes took in my surroundings. Something was totally off with him. What man in his right mind wouldn’t call the police when a stranger broke into his place?
“Is this some kind of joke?” I asked, feeling insecure and tired.
“Son, the sun will be up in a few hours. I’m too damn tired for jokes.”
I nodded as I moved across the room and slid onto a barstool beside him.
He pushed the shot glass in my direction while he poured himself another drink.
Cautiously, I lifted the tiny glass to my lips and tossed the liquid down the back of my throat.
Fire streaked across my tonsils, making my eyes water. I gasped and quickly hid the cough that threatened to explode from my lungs.
I’d had my fair share of liquor, but nothing that literally burned like fire. I could practically feel the blisters forming on the back of my throat.
The old man chuckled and slapped me on the back before he poured me another shot.
“Drink another. It gets better the more you drink.”
“Yeah, better because you’re dead.”
He laughed,
his strained vocal cords popping and cracking.
“What the hell is this stuff anyway?” I asked as I cautiously downed the second shot.
“It’s my own concoction. A little something I cooked up. It’s strong as hell. Just the way I like it.”
“It tastes like death,” I muttered as I tried to tame the burn of the second shot.
“It’ll put hair on your chest.”
“It’s terrible.”
“It’s a man’s liquor.”
I scoffed. “Yeah, well, it tastes like ass.”
His aged eyes assessed me, taking in my ripped clothes and dirty hands.
“How old are you?”
My age wasn’t important. He didn’t need to know anything about me, and I was too tired for a lengthy conversation about how I ended up where I was and what I was doing wrong with my life.
I didn’t want to hear it.
“Why?” I asked, my voice slurring from the burning liquor and lack of sleep.
“You broke into my bar. I think I have the right to ask some questions and get some honest answers.”
I rolled my eyes, too tired to fire back with sarcasm. “I’m nineteen.”
He nodded as if he’d already known the answer.
“Nineteen, huh? I figured you were around that age.” He scratched at his scraggly beard once again. “And you’re on your own?”
“Yep. I’ve been on my own since I was a kid.”
He chuckled and tossed back another shot. “You’re still a kid.”
“Yeah. Well, I feel like I’m older than you are.”
“Not old at all then, huh?” He winked and chuckled. “Boy, you were the last thing I expected tonight. Of all the places in this city, why the hell did you break into my bar?”
“Honestly?”
He nodded. “Yep.”
I looked around, taking in the rusted chairs and threadbare pool table top. “I thought this place was abandoned.”
His smoker’s laugh filled the room as he threw his head back and clutched his stomach.
“I guess it’s not the most elegant establishment around, but it’s got character.”
Little Black Box Set (The Black Trilogy) Page 57