Airbag Scars

by Jim Heskett

  Frank nodded. “Yep?”

  “Can you explain that a little more?”

  “Sure I can. Say you move into a new apartment and your parents ask you if it’s a safe neighborhood, do you tell them about the house across the street that got broken into?”

  Micah had been in this exact same scenario in the town of Stillwater, right after he’d flunked out of Oklahoma State. His parents had scowled at the place he’d chosen to live. “Probably not.”

  “Right. Because all that telling them will accomplish is worrying them. Now, say a friend you used to drink with wants to go bowling with you, and you know he’s going to knock back a dozen cold ones at the alley, and you might feel tempted to join him when he does. Do you tell yourself that the only reason you want to go is so you can reconnect with an old friend?”

  The difference started to sink in. “Not if I’m being honest about my motives.”

  “Right,” Frank said as they navigated to the motel, oddly buried in a collection of houses. “You want to go because it’s a chance to play with fire. You want to steal some pleasure from watching him drink. If you’re honest with yourself, maybe you can go and not drink. Or maybe you realize it’s not worth it, you tell him you’re busy, and go to a meeting instead.”

  “I think I understand.”

  Frank parked the car. “What’s all this about?”

  “I met this girl,” Micah said. “She likes me, but I’m not sure if I’m into her. I’ve got so much going on right now with the car accident and trying to find out what happened that night. I can’t focus.”

  Frank put a hand on his car door and opened it. “Yep, I’ve been there. I can tell you this: leading someone on is definitely not rigorous honesty.” He cocked his head at the hotel. “We can talk about it later. Let’s go.”

  “What’s the plan?” Micah said as he joined Frank outside the car.

  “We go up and I knock. When he comes to the door, I’m going to grab his arm, then you slap the cuffs on him.” Frank took out the handcuffs and passed them to Micah. They felt reassuringly heavy in his hands. “Sound good?”

  “Sounds good.”

  As they crossed the parking lot and shuffled up the stairs, Micah began to feel a strange sense of foreboding. Frank had described apprehending Roland in such simple terms, and Micah had witnessed Frank do that very thing; he’d seen Frank wrestle guys twice his size and half his age to the ground and force them to submit.

  But something felt wrong about this plan. And as they stepped out on the concrete landing in front the second floor, that sense grew until Micah thought it might swallow him.

  Frank stopped outside room 214 and raised his hand to knock.

  “Frank, don’t,” Micah said, but it was too late. Frank was already rapping his knuckles on the door.

  A second later, the door swung open, and a pair of hands grabbed Frank and jerked him into the room. Micah leaped into action, rounding the doorframe. Inside, he saw two men, both of them with knives. One man was standing to Frank’s right, and the other was holding Frank by the arm, and he was raising the knife to thrust it down.

  Micah lunged at the man about to stab Frank, then toppled into him. Frank pushed the other man away and stood with his back to Micah, each of them facing off against a different attacker. For a second, no one moved. It wasn’t close to a fair fight.

  Both of the men charged at once.

  Micah dropped to one knee and whipped the handcuffs at the guy’s balls before he could jab with his knife. Then Micah cupped his hands like a volleyball player about to set up a ball for a spike and swung them up at the attacker’s knife hand. The blade went flying high into the air, bumped against the ceiling, and jabbed into the carpet. While the attacker had his eye on the flying knife, Micah sprung up from his kneeling position with an uppercut, knocking the guy back into the bed.

  Micah heard a struggle behind him, but he had to deal with this guy first.

  The man tried to bounce back from the bed, and Micah spun on his heels, adding some velocity to his attack. He smacked the guy across the jaw, which sent him hard into the nightstand, hitting the side of his head on the solid wood. He slumped to the floor with his eyes closed, and Micah figured he was either out cold, or he would be too groggy to do anything for at least a few seconds.

  Micah turned in time to see Frank trying to wrestle the knife away from his attacker.

  Micah dropped down and snatched the knife jutting from the carpet. When he looked up, the man was above Frank, both hands on the hilt of the knife, trying to thrust it down into Frank’s head. Frank was under him on one knee, bracing against the man’s forearms to keep the knife away, but the blade inched closer to Frank’s head with every second. The attacker had the leverage, and Frank’s brute strength wouldn’t keep it away for much longer.

  Without thinking, Micah leaned forward and pushed his own knife into the man’s side. He felt the tension as it scraped against the man’s ribcage, but otherwise, it went in as easily as sliding a finger into a slice of pie.

  Memories of violence flashed in Micah’s head. The person he used to be, before witness protection and sobriety. The person he swore he’d never again become. All of those convictions erased with an action as simple as sticking a sharp object into flesh.

  But he had to do it. He had to save Frank’s life.

  Micah pushed it all the way in and gave it a little twist to open the wound, and the stabbed man screamed and dropped his own knife as his hands rushed to the torrent of blood spouting from his side. He staggered back into the curtains, bumped into the window, then slid as his eyes closed. His chest heaved up and down, so he was still alive, for the moment. He removed his bloody hands from the wound to examine them, which made the gush of blood rush faster from his side. He would be dead within seconds.

  Micah helped Frank to his feet, and Micah was about to ask him if he was okay, but Frank’s eyes went wide and he grabbed Micah by the shoulder to shove him to the side. Micah went toppling into the wardrobe, and he felt the air rush out of his lungs as his back smacked against the hard surface.

  Frank drew an M&P .45 from an ankle holster, and Micah spun his head to see the man he’d knocked into the nightstand coming straight at him with a Beretta raised. A line of blood streaming down the man’s temple.

  Frank pulled the trigger and the sound was deafening. Micah had easily grown accustomed to the muted sound of shooting with ear protection, and this jarred him for a moment. The bullet hit the man square in the chest and he spun, then landed on top of the bed.

  “You good?” Frank said, panting. “Did you get cut anywhere on you?”

  Micah heaved in a breath, then stared at the bleeding body on the bed. He hadn’t even known Frank had brought a gun with him.

  Micah didn’t remember being stabbed, but he ran his hands up and down his chest and sides to be sure. “Yeah, I’m… are you okay?”

  Frank returned the gun to its holster, then he let out a barrage of wet coughs. “I’m fine, kid. It’s not me I’m worried about. You need to get out of here.”

  “Wait, what?”

  Frank stepped to Micah and gripped him by the shoulders. “I can handle this. You’re not even supposed to be here, so it’s better for you to vanish. Just go. Take the car and don’t worry about me.”

  Too much swirled through Micah’s brain for him to process everything. Violence. Anger. Adrenaline. He nodded, not sure what he’d agreed to.

  As he accepted the car keys and left the room, he took one last look at the streaks of blood on the carpet, the blood drained out of the man he’d stabbed to death in some cheap motel room.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Micah went to an AA meeting to try to calm his nerves and reconnect with humanity, but it didn’t help. He couldn’t tell these people anything true about himself. Not his past. Certainly not his present, because he’d stabbed a man to death an hour before. He’d done it to protect someone he cared about, but that rush of violence felt
the same as when he was in the employ of Luis Velasquez, the murderous Sinaloa cartel captain better known as El Lobo.

  Halfway through the meeting, as the person speaking was telling a hopeful and heartbreaking story of redemption through sobriety, Micah noticed a smear of red on the leg of his jeans. Blood.

  He stood up and left the meeting. A man standing near the coffee machine in the back of the room opened his mouth and took a step in Micah’s direction, but Micah brushed past him. He didn’t feel like offering an excuse about why he was leaving. That would only be more lies.

  He needed a solitary release, the kind he wouldn’t have to betray himself and his motives to get. Shooting range. That was the only place he could find any comfort these days. He went back to Frank’s office, switched cars, and retrieved his jacket. Frank would still be at that hotel, giving the cops a version of what had happened that didn’t include non-licensed Micah being at the scene.

  As he pulled into the gun range parking lot, he studied the Pink Door across the street, checking for bouncers. They didn’t seem to be out looking for him today, but he rounded the gun range anyway to park in the alley behind it. Safer that way.

  His phone buzzed. He pulled it out and found a text message from Hayden.

  What are you doing right now, at this second? :)

  Micah considered a few options, but he settled on the truth because one more lie might have broken him.

  At shooting range. Come meet me if you want.

  He wanted to spend time alone, but he’d been avoiding Hayden, and he had to stop doing that to her. Inside the gun range, he bought more boxes of ammo than he thought he could shoot, but squeezing that trigger was the only thing he wanted to do. Hard and quick to blow as many holes in that beige target as he could. He paused in front of the door to be sure the bouncers from the Pink Door weren’t out surveilling, then he donned his eye and ear protection and went inside.

  And he shot terrible. Most of them were misses, and he scored only one center hit despite using up so many targets. He even kept flicking the switch to bring the target closer and closer, but it wasn’t his eyesight that was the problem.

  After he’d been in the shooting bay for a half hour, Hayden entered the room. She was wearing makeup, something she hadn’t done the first time they’d met. Or not enough to notice, anyway.

  She smiled at him as he sent the target back one more time. Out of the corner of his eye, Micah watched the range safety officer grinning at the two of them. He’d watched their whole budding romance take place in this room.

  Micah missed the center section with each shot. Terrible.

  He gave up, pocketed his extra ammo, and waited for her to get in a few minutes target practice. She met him at the back of the bay, and tilted her head at the door so they could go somewhere they could talk. They walked to the washing station to scrub the lead dust from their hands, then she picked a spot on the curb out front to sit.

  Micah eyed the Pink Door, and while he didn’t see anyone outside, he didn’t want to take the chance of being spotted. He beckoned her to follow him to the alley behind the range. The battered and broken hood of his car groaned as he put his weight on it. She sat next to him.

  From this angle, they had a perfect view of the mountains to the west, dusted white with snow and sprinkled with tiny green trees poking above the white.

  He sighed. “I love the mountains, you know? How they change with the seasons. I didn’t care about them much when I first moved here, but now I can see it. Most people don’t have this as their view.”

  Hayden picked at a piece of broken plastic jutting from his bumper and shrugged. “I guess. I used to marvel at them, too, but I think I’m past that. But I’ve lived here longer than you.”

  Micah nodded and they sat in silence for a full minute.

  “I wasn’t sure about the shooting range when he suggested it,” Hayden said, “but this is great. First time I heard a shot in there, I jumped like someone had smacked me, but now I like those loud bangs. And wrapping my hands around that pistol is like trying to hold a firecracker. Talk about adrenaline, right?”

  “Who’s he?” Micah said. “Who suggested this?”

  “My neighbor. He told me I should go shooting instead of some hippie meditation class. I’m going to have to thank him.”

  Micah nodded and stared at the smear of blood on the leg of his jeans. He pulled his jacket closer as a chill descended in the air.

  “So,” she said, “you going to tell me why you haven’t returned my texts?”

  And here came the conversation Micah had been dreading, but he knew had to happen. “Look, Hayden, I like you.”

  “Ahh,” she said, leaning back over the hood as Micah’s words hung in the air. “Okay, get on with it. The ‘not you, it’s me’ talk.”

  “I’m really sorry. I think you’re great, but I’m not in a place where I’m capable of dating right now. To be honest, I just got sober, and there’s kinda this rule in AA that you’re not supposed to make any big changes or date for the first year of your sobriety.”

  Her face went cold. “So you’re following the rules.”

  No good response to her statement appeared. He didn’t know how to convince her not to take this personally. “Why would you even want to hang out with someone like me?”

  “Because I have fun with you,” she said.

  “And that’s enough for you?”

  “Maybe you think my bar is too low, but I need to have some fun after the shitty turn my life has taken lately.”

  “Don’t you think you… I mean, weren’t you just in a relationship a few weeks ago?”

  As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew it’d been a stupid thing to say. She sat up straight as her mouth dropped open. “What has that got to do with anything? My past is none of your business.”

  Micah wanted to respond, but he could see the irony in contradicting her.

  “Besides,” she said, “we just met. It’s kind of presumptuous of you to assume I want to jump into a relationship with you. Maybe all I want right now is a friend who I can have fun with.”

  Now he was confused, but he knew he needed to say something. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  She stood and hitched her purse over her shoulder. “Okay, so you’re going through some existential crisis right now. I get it. Whatever it is, though, how about we put a pin in all that? Maybe meet back here tomorrow at the same time, and we can talk about it?”

  He stood and jiggled his car keys, considering her offer.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  DONOVAN KILLED his engine and surveyed the parking lot at Good Samaritan hospital. Why his wife worked at a hospital twenty miles from her house baffled him, but a lot of things Caitlin did made no sense. He stared at the main entrance to the hospital, and he assumed that’s where she would exit, but she also might come out of some kind of employee-only side entrance.

  He checked the time on his phone and decided to take a look around the hospital, to cover all his bases. In front of the doors to the main entrance, a frail woman sat in a wheelchair, an IV bag on a stand next to her. She was staring off into the distance, then a security guard came up to her and wheeled her back inside.

  Donovan needed to be wary of security. Caitlin hadn’t called the cops on him, but no telling if she’d told hospital security to be on the lookout for a crazy bodybuilder stalking her. That’s the kind of thing she’d do.

  He pivoted through the parking lot to the north side of the main entrance, searching for back doors and smoking people with badges clipped to their clothes.

  He didn’t find anything, so he meandered back to the other side, and found nothing there, either. So he returned to the main lot with a clear view of the front entrance, sat on the hood of a parked car, and waited.

  Ten minutes later, a small trickle of hospital employees filtered out. Shift change. After fifteen or twenty men and women with jackets over their scrubs appeared and headed th
rough the lot, Caitlin made an appearance.

  Donovan’s heart ached to see her in those plain blue pants with her black fleece jacket hugging her curvy figure. He stood up, and the car he’d been sitting on sighed as his considerable weight lifted off it.

  Caitlin hadn’t seen him yet, so he weaved through a few cars to get closer to her. He didn’t want her to see him coming. For a second, she disappeared behind a van, and he panicked. Had she seen him after all? Had she ducked down to trick him?

  Then she reappeared, twenty feet to his left.

  “Caitlin,” he said, trying to sound calm and reasonable.

  She jumped at the sound of his voice, then she frowned when their eyes met. He narrowed the distance between them, and she took a step back, so he raised his hands to show his good intent.

  “I just want to talk.”

  She looked left and right, examining her surroundings. That she was looking for some kind of escape route gave him stabs of pain in his chest. How could she not see that he wouldn’t hurt her?

  “I don’t have anything to say to you,” she said. “I haven’t called your parole officer yet, because I didn’t want you to get in trouble. But you’re making it hard for me to protect you, Donny.”

  He stopped short, maybe five feet away. He glanced at the name badge clipped to the pocket of her pants. She was using her maiden name again.

  She dug a hand into her purse and came out with a set of car keys attached to a pepper spray container in a leather holster. Gripped it with shaking hands.

  “Pepper spray, really?” he said. “You’re blowing this all out of proportion.”

  She put a thumb on the activator and pushed it to the side to turn off the safety. “I want you to go and don’t come back. What are you still doing here in Colorado?”

  He took a step forward and she matched him with a step in the other direction. “I always loved the way you looked in your scrubs,” he said. “You’re such a nurturer. They remind me of that.”