by Savage, Shay
Odin whined from the doorway.
I pulled my Barrett rifle out of its duffle bag, assembled it, and opened up my balcony door. I knelt down on the ground and opened up the bipod to stabilize the weapon and then lay down behind it. With my feet sticking out through the balcony rails on one side, I took careful aim across the park through the scope. I placed the cross hairs right at the light next to the door and waited.
It was only a minute or two before the light started to blink, the door started to open, and the bleep bleep bleep warning signal screeched across the area.
“You are going to crack someday, aren’t you, Lieutenant?”
“Sure am.”
I fired.
The light exploded, but the noise continued. In a smooth arch, I moved my aim and fired at a box to the left of the door, which sent shrapnel around the sidewalk but still didn’t end the noise. There was another small electric box up near the corner of the garage door, and my third shot destroyed it and left the park in blessed electronic silence.
The people noise, however, increased significantly.
There was screaming from around the park, people rushing out of the Mexican restaurant at the end of the strip mall, and barking dogs from the dog run. There was a row of windows in the red brick building that housed the offending garage, and I blew them out one by one. The glass fell to the sidewalk and shattered further as spent cases began to cover my balcony.
The parents of children on the playground wrapped their arms around their offspring and ducked under slides and swings. Owners tried to leash their dogs and get out of the open.
I switched to a new magazine and then kept firing.
My ears were ringing, and I could hear Odin barking from the room behind me, but I shut out everything I could. The remaining windows in the building shattered as I fired repeatedly. It was just me, the trigger, and the recoil of the weapon against my shoulder.
I wanted more, though.
The crosshairs found one of the restaurant patrons, and I focused right above her eye.
“You don’t even know her.”
I shook my head, closed my eyes tightly, and tried to catch my breath.
“And you’re fucking talking to yourself!” I spat back. I looked down the scope again, but the woman had disappeared inside. Refocusing, the crosshairs found the woman with the terrier. She had scooped up the small dog and was running across the park with a couple other screamers. I was pretty sure I could take them both out in one shot.
“Why? What’s the fucking purpose?”
“Shut up!”
My hands started to shake, and sweat poured from my forehead into my eyes. I hadn’t put on a bandana to keep it away, and my accuracy was going to suffer. The shaking was totally fucking me up when it came to placing the crosshair over my target, and when I fired, I missed completely.
Sirens.
“Waited too fucking long.”
I let go for a moment, wiped sweat and whatever out of my eyes, shook my hands, and took a deep breath.
“You can do this shit. You’re good at this shit.”
As I glanced away from the scope and down the side of the building, I could see multiple people in flak jackets and helmets beginning to evacuate the park and surround my apartment building. I could have gone over and down the side of the building at that point, but figured it was probably too late, so I went back to firing.
Seven cars lost tires, but nothing was as satisfying as the parking garage door. I switched to my last magazine and shifted my aim to the right. The SWAT team hadn’t surrounded that area yet, and there were lots of bystanders around. If I killed one of them, they were probably going to locate their own sniper to take me out. I could hear a helicopter in the distance and figured that’s where he’d be. It was either that or open up fire on the SWAT guys, but the helmets made it more difficult.
I blew out the windows of the residential building on the right side of the park and then focused on someone standing half way down the stairs leading to North Columbia Drive. The crosshairs found where an ear was hidden underneath dark, silken hair.
Beautiful hair.
She turned, and the fading sun glittered off the necklace around her throat. It was a simple, silver chain with a large, round pendant of some sort. No wait, not a pendant – it was a…a…
“A quarter.”
My finger stopped moving. My breath stopped. Hell, my heart might have stopped beating at that point.
“No fucking way.”
Odin barked, yelped, and then went silent.
The noise from the screaming people below was overshadowed by the noise from behind me. Their words meant little, even though I knew they were likely screaming at me to let go of the weapon and stop trying to blow up the fucking neighborhood.
Whatever.
I couldn’t take my eyes from the shining quarter necklace and the familiar face above it.
“Lia.”
“Release the weapon now!”
It had to be a hallucination.
There was no way – no way she could possibly be here.
Absolutely impossible.
“Release your weapon now, or I will be forced to fire!”
Fatigue covered me. I couldn’t fight it anymore. My hands moved to the ground below the gun, and I pushed back away from it even as I kept my eye on the scope. I had already dropped my hand from the trigger, but nothing was making any sense to me in the slow motion events to follow.
I didn’t want to be there, and I didn’t want to be doing what I was doing. I never wanted any of it to come to this. Rinaldo wouldn’t like it – this wasn’t something he would approve of at all, and I couldn’t take it back now.
The figure in the crosshairs turned, held her hand up to shade her eyes, and looked up towards me. The same eyes, the same swishing motion of her hair as she turned, and the same curve of her bottom lip as her teeth sank into it.
Then she was gone.
My hands were wrenched behind me, and I was abruptly facedown on the balcony floor, my cheek scraping on the concrete. Immediately, I could hear the muffled, distant-memory sound of gunfire and explosions. I could taste the sand and feel it in my lungs.
“Please…no – please don’t kill me! I have a wife! Her name’s Marie, and my daughters, Evelyn and Jennie…”
A muffled click, and when I turn towards the sound, someone grabs my head and pushes it down again.
“Kill me! I don’t even have a fucking family! Just kill me!”
I didn’t move, didn’t resist. I barely felt their hands on me.
“Kill me,” I whispered. “Kill me, please…just kill me.”
More voices joined the conglomerate around me. There was a new set of hands holding one of my shoulders down. Radios crackled, and the sound of a helicopter overhead made me try to lift my head to see what kind. Police? Traffic? Military? Was there a sniper inside, as I suspected, ready to end me?
The gunfire in my head continued, occasionally causing me to flinch. Whenever I did that, the two people holding my body to the ground leaned harder against me, though I wasn’t resisting. My head dropped back to the ground, and I could see out over the edge of the balcony towards the park, which was now devoid of people. There was no one there at all now – not a woman, a man, or even a dog.
“Odin?”
I tried to get my head up enough to look into the apartment, but I was shoved back down.
“Odin!”
I heard nothing in response.
My chest started to seize up, and I couldn’t breathe. He had been barking, something he almost never did, but was now silent. Where was he? What did they do to him? Did he go after them in order to protect me?
“No…no…”
Odin…God, no…Odin…
I squeezed my eyes shut. Someone was holding the back of my neck, and I could taste sand in my mouth. I could feel the wire wrapped around my wrists as it cut into my skin, and I could hear desert winds blowing around me.
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“Not real.”
Forcing air into my lungs, I traded not breathing for hyperventilating. I glanced over my shoulder and saw four men around me, holding me to the ground as cuffs were placed around my wrists. Another man near the sliding glass door held a shotgun at my head.
“Where’s my…where’s my dog? Odin!”
No one replied. No one said a word.
The dizziness in my head threatened to end my consciousness as they hauled me to my feet. I stumbled as I stared towards the stairs where the figure with the quarter-themed necklace had been, but there was no one there now except a man with a rifle and a SWAT uniform.
“He’s got dog tags.”
The chain around my neck is tightened, cutting off most of my airflow. When he shakes it, I feel the skin from the base of my throat scraped clean as my tags jingle in his grasp.
“You think this means something to me? To us? You are nothing! They are nothing! You have been here how many months? Do you even know? There is no rescue for you - they care nothing for you! One of your own men told us where you were!”
The private had betrayed me.
“Doesn’t mean anything.”
“Lieutenant?”
My head turned towards the sound – a reflexive action. I didn’t know the man standing in front of me with the round face, blue uniform, and flak jacket. I’d never seen him before.
“Where’s Odin?” I asked.
“I’m going to read you your rights,” the man said.
The familiar words flowed from his mouth, and I was reminded of a thousand movies and television shows where similar words were spoken.
“Do you understand these rights?”
“There was a girl down there,” I told him. “Did you see her? She had a quarter around her neck.”
“He’s gone, sir.”
“Let’s just get him in.”
I was pushed through the opening and back into the apartment, through the bedroom, and into the living room. My breath caught in my chest as I saw the pile of white fur near the couch, but before I could react to the sight, Odin’s muzzled head came up and his tail began to thump against the floor. An officer had a leash around his neck and kept him from coming closer to me.
I gasped out a breath and nearly fell in relief as I was escorted across the room, through the open door, and into the hallway. The elevators were blocked open down at the end of the hall, and there was an officer arguing with a woman near the stairway.
Not a woman – the woman.
Lia stood with her hands on her hips and her hair pulled up into one of those ridiculous, lumpy buns at the top of her head. Strands fell all around her neck and moved with her as she turned to look towards me.
Her mouth opened, and she tried to take a step forward. The officer blocked her path, so we just continued to look at each other.
I remembered everything I thought about while driving back to the cabin after dropping her off at the bus stop. This was exactly why I didn’t want to bring her into my life, but here she was anyway – watching me get dragged to jail. She was damn lucky I didn’t shoot her.
My stomach tightened at the thought.
The officers on either side of my body urged me forward towards the elevators. It was the closest to her I would get.
“Evan?” My name was a plea on her tongue.
I could only stare at her in return.
“What…what happened?” she asked, as if I would have an answer that made any sense.
I didn’t. I probably never would.
I turned away from her as they started to shove me into the elevator. There certainly wasn’t going to be any kind of understandable reason for anything I did. I couldn’t even understand it myself, so how would anyone else? They’d be better off talking to the dog.
“Lia!” I turned back to Lia and caught her eyes with mine. “Take Odin – please. Please take him with you – make sure he’s okay. Please? Will you? Please?”
“I will,” she said quietly.
“Let her?” I begged the guy holding my left arm. “Let her take my dog, okay?”
He said nothing.
“What are you going to do with him?” I demanded as I was shoved towards the elevator. “Let her take him! Please!”
“It’s all good, Lieutenant,” the round-faced officer said as he came up in front of me. “The dog’s fine, and after a little processing, we’ll make sure he ends up in the young lady’s care. All right?”
I nodded.
My eyes met Lia’s again, and I saw a single tear escape her lashes and roll down her cheek. The need to wipe away the tear was overwhelming, but I couldn’t move.
“Sorry,” I whispered.
Her teeth dug into her bottom lip, and more tears flowed as she whispered my name again.
“I’ll take care of Odin,” she told me. “I’ll…I’ll figure it out. You just need…you need…”
Her voice trailed off, and I had to give her a half smile for the effort. I didn’t need anything other than what Moretti had said he would do – I needed to be put down.
They were supposed to take me out. Why did I stop firing? If I hadn’t stopped, they would have ended me. Glancing back at Lia again gave me the answer – I couldn’t continue knowing she was in the area.
There was nothing else to be done, and no way were my usual tactics going to be able to keep me from thinking about her constantly now. I had seen her again, no longer just a memory, and I could feel myself drawn to her presence. Even as the police officers blocked us from actually coming into physical contact with one another, it felt as though we were touching.
I didn’t need to touch her – I could feel her from across the hall.
I had felt her all along; from the time she boarded the bus to see her mother until the moment our eyes met in the hallway. I might have found some ways to push her to the back of my mind, but I knew she was always there. It was like she was inside of me, and there was no way she was going away, no matter where I ended up.
I would be the death of her, quite possibly in a very literal sense.
There was no way I could let that happen. I couldn’t allow her to become a part of my fucked up life without her ending up just like Bridgett – either with my bullet or someone else’s. I wasn’t going to allow that, because…because…
Because Rinaldo Moretti was wrong about me.
I knew exactly what he had meant – I felt it.
Looking at her one final time, I soaked in everything about her that I could. My mind captured her long, dark hair, eyes glistening with tears, the shining quarter hanging around her neck, and committed it all to permanent memory. I knew this would be the end of it, and that was what was best for her. I knew it with all my warm, beating heart. The only thing left was to find a new way to get her out of my head.
Prison seemed as good a distraction as anything.
So I let them haul me out.
Cuffs around my wrists.
And remained otherwise occupied.
Epilogue
Lia
This was fucking crazy.
What had I walked into?
The hallway was bright, clean, and expensively decorated. It wasn’t quite posh but certainly counted as upscale. The scene filling the corridor didn’t fit in the slightest.
Several SWAT team members lined the walls, some of them with guns drawn and pointed at the man their comrades brought out of the apartment at the far end. They tensed as he emerged, and their fingers twitched against the triggers but not enough to fire.
My gaze was drawn to their target.
The face I looked at was the same one that had obsessed me for months, but the clear blue eyes were red and swollen, and the tight, military haircut outgrown and unkempt. The desert-style fatigues I had never seen before, but at least the look fit what I was expecting. The rest of the scene and the look on Evan Arden’s face were completely bizarre.
For months I had been searching for this man based on nothin
g more than a name and military affiliation, but all records of him seemed to completely disappear after he returned from the Middle East. My search had led me to the terrifying video of him on his knees while the man next to him was executed and pictures of him being brought back to the United States after he was found in an undisclosed location during a raid on a suspected Al Qaida base.
Though faded, the bruises in the photos were still quite visible. His arm had been in a sling due to a dislocated shoulder, but he had been reported to be otherwise unharmed.
But his eyes…
They had been haunted and haunting. The somewhat hesitant but bright and alive glimmer I had witnessed in Arizona was nowhere to be found. I hadn’t been able to reconcile the pictures of the man brought back from war with the cool and confident one who locked eyes with me in his tiny bed and told me to touch him. Now that I had found him, I was watching him with the exact same look in his eyes, being taken away in handcuffs by a half dozen men.
He had been shooting at people.
Still, it wasn’t the look of a callous murderer, but more like a lost puppy – desperate, hungry, and terrified – biting at the ominous hand reaching underneath the couch to pull him out. There were tears streaming down his face, though he seemed oblivious to their presence.
All of the fantasies that had cavorted around in my head while I searched for him fell apart. There wasn’t going to be a passionate kiss as he held me against his chest – his hands were secured behind his back to protect those around him. I wouldn’t be throwing myself into his arms and feeling that sense of security and want I had felt with him in Arizona. I wasn’t sure if I would even be able to get his attention.
What happened to him?
Evan’s eyes moved to mine, and for a moment he closed them for a little longer than it takes to blink. Once he opened them again, the vision of an already broken man seemed to collapse into an even darker hole. Instinctively, I stepped forward. I needed to reach him, touch him, and be sure all of this was real and not some sick nightmare my desperate mind had contrived. I wasn’t afforded the opportunity; the police officer who had been arguing with me a moment ago blocked my path. He spoke bluntly, but I wasn’t listening to his words.