by Anna Zaires, Pepper Winters, Skye Warren, Lynda Chance, Pam Godwin, Amber Lin
“I need to see you,” she said quietly. “I need to talk to you.”
“Where are you?”
“Would you meet me somewhere?”
She didn’t want to come here or have me pick her up. She wanted to meet somewhere – somewhere else, somewhere not alone.
Could she be any more suspicious?
“Where?”
“What about that place you took me on Michigan Avenue? The bar with the martinis and the waffles?”
“676,” I said. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I knew what she was doing – trying to get me to meet her in a public place because she had something to say she knew I wasn’t going to like hearing and she was afraid of my reaction. The fact that she had stooped to such a level didn’t give me any kind of calming feeling. I was as tense as I could be.
“What did she fucking do?”
I took the Audi, drove up to the valet in front of the Omni, gave the guy a fifty to just hold my car there for a minute, and headed into the lobby. When I turned the corner to head upstairs, I saw Bridgett right by the elevator, waiting for it to arrive and carry her upstairs.
Not going to happen.
I walked over swiftly, took her by the elbow, and began to lead her back to the front of the building. As I had hoped, she was taken off guard enough that she didn’t have time to scream or consider what was happening until I had her outside the building.
“Evan–” she started, but I shushed her.
“Not a fucking word,” I growled. “Don’t you say anything; don’t you do anything. Just get in the fucking car.”
I escorted her around to where the valet was holding open the door, seated her with a smile, and then quickly climbed into my side. I drove off before anyone had a chance to even consider what had just happened.
“Evan,” Bridgett whispered from the other side of the car.
I glanced sideways at her, my jaw tight.
“Tell me,” I snapped. “Tell me everything. Tell me how you know Greco, and tell me what your relationship with him is. Tell me what the fuck you think you are doing!”
The precious little grasp I had over my emotions was waning, and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do to stop it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she cried.
As I looked ahead into traffic, I could still see her press herself against the car door like she might jump out and make a run for it. It wouldn’t work, though. I wouldn’t let that happen.
“I came back; you were gone.” I turned around the block and started heading down Grand, over the bridge, and towards the boss’s office. “You want to start by explaining that?”
“I-I-I went outside,” she said. “I just wanted to get some air, but he was there. He said I had to go with him, and we went to an office building – he had a room there in the basement.”
“What office?”
“Just a small one,” she said quietly. “It was brick and didn’t have any windows at all.”
Could he really have been hiding out in the basement of the boss’s main office building? Had he been there, right under my feet the whole time I was looking for him? Was it even who I suspected?
“Who?” I demanded. “What’s his name?”
She didn’t answer.
“Who did you go with?” I snarled through clenched teeth. I already knew the answer. The little fucker had been trolling around my apartment, and he had sucked Bridgett into whatever his sick little game was to take my position in Moretti’s organization.
“Take my position in his life.”
“What?” Bridgett whispered.
“Tell me his name!”
“His name is Terry! I didn’t know him. He just found me!”
“And you told him what?”
“I didn’t want to tell him anything,” she said. “I stopped talking to him a long time ago.”
The cold feeling I always associate with what it must feel like to drown coated me from my head to my feet. My knuckles went white as my hands gripped the steering wheel, and I made a quick turn towards the boss’s office building.
“A long time ago?” I repeated.
“Yes,” she whispered back. “He used to…to ask me about you all the time.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked in a low voice.
“Nothing,” she replied.
I didn’t believe a word of it.
We were nearing Moretti’s primary office building, and the parking lot behind it was devoid of any cars this late at night. I pulled up to the side of the building near the door and then thought better of it.
“What are you doing?”
Ignoring Bridgett’s question, I maneuvered the car back behind the row of dumpsters on the far side of the lot instead. I got the car mostly out of sight before turning it off.
“You have to explain,” I informed her. “It doesn’t make any fucking sense, and you have to explain it!”
“Please, Evan, you’re scaring me!”
I looked over to my passenger and smiled.
“Maybe you ought to be scared,” I suggested. “Get out.”
“How did you know this was the place?” she asked.
“Just get out of the car.”
Moving swiftly around the Audi, I made it to the other side before she was completely out the door. I took her elbow again and led her across the lot and down the back stairs to the basement. There weren’t many rooms down there, and Bridgett showed me which one she had been staying in.
I’d been in it before once or twice, though it didn’t serve any specific purpose. There was a time I recalled some goods being stored there very briefly before they were moved over to the docks by the river for shipment, but that was it.
Now there was a twin sized bed in the room, a small table, and a suitcase with women’s clothes in it. The whole scene reminded me of Arizona, which made my already pissed-off self angrier.
There was no one there.
“Damnit.” I turned back to Bridgett.
“How do you know him?” I interrogated.
“Who?”
My hand reached back into my jeans and wrapped around the handle of my Beretta. I pulled my arm back around and pushed it against her shoulder as her face twisted into terror.
“Do not,” I said, “play any fucking games with me. Tell me how you know Terry Kramer before I put a hole in your head.”
“I didn’t know what he wanted!” she said. “He kept following me and telling me he needed to talk to me. He said I couldn’t tell you about it, or we’d both end up dead. He said if I just told him what you told me, then…then…”
“Then what?” I snarled. “Did he pay you?”
“No!”
“Did you fuck him?” The very idea that Terry, the motherfucking piss-ant wannabe, had his cock in her made me livid.
She didn’t answer, which was answer enough. I leaned forward and slammed my hand against the wall right next to her head.
“Tell me why you did it!” I screamed. “What did you tell him, and why did you do it?”
“He said…he said he’d kill you if I didn’t cooperate!” she finally cried.
“You…you thought he was a threat to me?” What had been a cold snarl escalated into a scream. “That little fuck was somehow a danger to me? Me?”
“He…he….he said–” Her words were too choked to be understandable. “I-I-I thought–”
“I don’t give a fuck what he said!” I screamed back in her face. “There is nothing – nothing – he could have said that would ever, ever make you…make you…”
I couldn’t even say the words.
Like some kind of primordial ooze making its way out of the ocean, Terry chose that moment to walk into the dimly lit room. There was no consideration to my actions. No thought behind them – just movement and quick, practiced muscle memory.
My arm rose.
My gun aimed at his face.
I pulled the trigger.
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Bridgett stifled her scream as Terry’s face exploded in blood and his body hit the floor.
“You see how big a fucking threat he is?” I growled as I turned back to her.
My head was spinning. The pit of my stomach felt heavy, and the back of my throat tasted sour. I felt like I was trapped in some never-ending fog, and I couldn’t see in which direction I should go. There was no end or beginning in sight and no answers in any direction.
“You never really said anything to me.” Bridgett’s voice was barely audible. “I didn’t think…I didn’t think what I said to him was a big deal, and he always seemed happy enough with what I had to leave you alone…leave us alone.”
The drowning feeling came over me again, and my eyes burned as I pointed the business end of the Beretta towards Bridgett.
“You fucking betrayed me,” I said.
“No, no!” she cried as she shook her head violently. “Evan – no! I didn’t; I swear! I never meant it like that!”
“But that’s what it was,” I said. “You were right there in my bed listening to shit I said when I was asleep. Then you took what you thought he’d find interesting, and you told him about it.”
“I didn’t think any of it was important,” she whispered through her tears. “I thought if he kept hearing all this stuff that didn’t matter, he’d leave me alone – leave us alone!”
“Us?” I laughed, but there was nothing friendly or amusing about the sound. I tilted my arm up and tapped the side of my head with the barrel of the weapon. “You were delusional from the beginning, weren’t you? Was this your way of getting closer, huh? Be a part of the business, but on the wrong side?”
“No…Evan, I swear!”
“Yeah, your promises aren’t holding any weight at the moment.” My head throbbed along with my heart, and nausea crept up from my stomach to the back of my throat. “What kind of stuff did I say?”
“Nothing important,” she said quietly, her eyes refusing to meet with mine.
“Sure.” I flavored the word with enough sarcasm to drown a horse. “That’s why he kept coming back for more. That’s why you’re shacked up with him now.”
I could tell by the way her eyes widened that she knew exactly what I meant. I nodded, knowing that my deductive skills were still in full effect – just like they always were. My chest tightened, and the nasty taste in the back of my mouth worsened. My temples throbbed, and for a moment I couldn’t see anything around me.
“Evan, please…” Her voice trailed off.
My feet stumbled slightly; I regained my balance, and faced her fully.
“Please what?” I yelled. My arm rose up, and the Beretta in my hand found its barrel pointed in her direction again. “What exactly do you want? More information?”
“No! I don’t want anything, please – just let me go!”
“Let me go! Please, just let me go!”
“Not until you tell us what we want to know!”
“There weren’t any more units! Ours was the only one!”
“We found two others near you, so I know you lie.”
A blow to my head rattles in my skull.
“I wasn’t privy to…to any…information…”
“You’re an officer!”
I grunt as a sack full of hard, lumpy objects makes contact with my stomach again. It moves around to my kidneys with another blow, and then the lower half of my chest, knocking the wind from me and causing me to vomit onto the sand…
“Let you go,” I said, my voice dropping to a near whisper. “Yeah, that’s what I’m going to do.”
The noise in the small room was deafening.
I dropped to my knees, and the cold cement floor sent a shockwave through my body as she slumped to the floor against the wall. I looked to her face and the neat hole in the center of her forehead, willing the impossible.
“Fuck…no…”
My mouth and throat felt as though they were filled with sand, and I coughed to try to rid myself of it. I could feel it – taste it – but when I touched my fingers to my tongue, there was nothing there. I couldn’t swallow, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe, either.
“What the fuck did you do?”
I coughed again, and the coughing turned into choking. Choking sobs that were completely uncontrollable filled the air as my Beretta dropped to the floor with a clang. I scrambled for it quickly, cradling it against my body.
“Why did you do it?” I screamed at the slumped figure in front of me. “Why did you listen to him? Why?”
There was no answer.
There would never be an answer.
Like so many other questions, I’d never know the real answer.
My fingers reached out and touched hers, as if somehow that would make any difference. It didn’t, and though they were still warm, I knew they would be cold soon enough.
“I told you it was going to end this way,” I whispered. “Why didn’t you listen to me?”
Too many whys.
I dropped back on my ass, wrapped my arms around my knees, and began to rock back and forth. I didn’t understand what was happening inside me, and I didn’t like it. My thoughts couldn’t seem to stay in one place, and instead, they bounced around from one memory to another.
The first time I saw her on the street corner.
The feel of her fingers across my chest in the shower.
The scent of her skin.
Holding her against me as we slept.
Would I ever sleep again?
There was just no way I was going to survive this.
Chapter Twelve
Lost Sanity
My feet felt oddly disconnected as I plodded up the stairs of the CTA 146 bus heading north. It was pretty much completely full, and I had to stand there holding the bar for a couple of stops before there was a seat available. At the next stop, a bunch more people got on again, and I could barely see anything except asses. A little girl nearly fell in front of me as she tripped over people’s feet, and her father leaned down to pick her up and hold her to his chest. After a couple more stops, they also found seats right at the back.
She was an African-American girl of about four years old, and her head was covered with a hat that looked like it had been cut from one of those fuzzy bathroom rugs in bright pink. There were two long pieces of fuzzy fabric that I figured were supposed to form a scarf, but instead of wrapping around her neck, they just hung down on her shoulders. At the end of them were felt pieces made to look like an animal’s face. It was obviously warm and looked both ridiculous and adorably cute all at the same time.
What the fuck did I do?
More people crowded on, and the driver yelled at everyone to step toward the back of the bus to make more room. A couple in Muslim garb slipped past some of the other people standing in the middle of the aisle and moved near the back door to my right. She wore a black dress, and her head was covered in bright blue fabric. He was in a button-down white shirt with a high collar, and his beard was dark and full.
I wasn’t so far gone as to believe that the pair were Al Qaida sympathizers or insurgents just because of the way they were dressed or what holy book they happened to read on which day and in which building. Usually my reaction was no more than a slight flinch if they got too close, and then I would be silently berating myself for a couple minutes about being stupid.
This time was a little different.
I reached up and rubbed my hand over my face to rid myself of the sweat forming on my forehead. My eyes looked back towards the other end of the bus, but the hairs on the back of my neck continued to stand up and tickle at the inside of my head. My bladder felt the need to empty itself, and when I closed my eyes it all came back.
Middle of the afternoon, just east of base but right along the border. Insurgents had been taking potshots at the base, and we’d already had one suicide bomber blown to bits near the motor pool.
Send in the snipers.
We’re tasked with taking ou
t the guys hiding in the hills, but the day’s been a wash. No people, no shooting.
“Where are you going, LT?”
“Thirty seconds, Private,” I respond. “Nature calls.”
He laughs nervously, and I move around the end of the pale beige building. I flip my rifle over to my back and release my dick from my fatigues. Something doesn’t feel right, but I shake off the feeling, and I sigh as a steady stream wets the sand in front of me.
Shots.
Screams.
The perimeter alarm begins to blare.
Trying to get my rifle back around my shoulder while simultaneously getting my dick into my pants. I stumble backwards, right myself, and then aim my weapon as I move around the building.
Bodies everywhere.
Ortega, Matthews, Davis, Ryans – all on the ground, none moving.
Pain in the back of my head, and the sand rushes up to connect with my face.
My eyes flew open, and I had to blink several times to get myself back into the present. The bus was even more crowded than before, and the Muslim couple had moved closer to me. My chest tightened as I tried to take a calming breath and failed.
“She’s dead.”
The guy across from me looked up and narrowed his eyes a little, but I ignored him.
The bus stopped again, and though I hoped the couple might get off at this stop, they didn’t. Instead, a guy in a camouflage-colored coat stepped on, and I felt myself tense. It wasn’t desert camo, at least, but for some reason it still set my heart beating faster. I looked away quickly and crossed my arms in front of myself. As I closed my eyes and gripped my biceps with my fingers, I could feel Bridgett’s phantom fingers run down the side of my face, cooling my heated skin when I was sick.
“Stop it.”
But it didn’t stop.
The rumbling of the seat below me felt like the aftershocks of bombs going off around me. The sound of the bus against the street as it took off again was transformed to tank movements on grimy sand. The bus lurched to a stop, and I felt myself bump into the woman next to me on the bench seat. Again, my muscles tensed, and the butt end of my weapon dug into my back. I considered pulling it out of my waistband.
Of course, everyone would have been able to see it then – not such a great move.