by Wild, Nikki
“I’ll be fine,” I said, giving her an optimistic smile before I turned around and headed out the door. I only hoped I was right.
My friend Simon and I had gone to community college together—not the most glamorous of institutions, but it got me the education I needed to become a firefighter.
Simon, on the other hand, became a cop—at least, for a few years. After he was denied his detective’s shield, he decided that he’d fair better in the private sector. And he was right.
I saw him the moment I walked through the door—he was the guy in the oversized goat and fedora. It killed me every time the two of us had lunch together, he loved all that Dick Tracy shit—and so did his clients. They ate it up and even recommended all their friends. Cheating husbands, fraud, corporate espionage—you name it, Simon took care of it.
“Gunner!” he called, waving me over the second he spotted me. I just shook my head as I sat down in the booth, watching him take a bite of a BBQ-sauce-covered chicken wing.
“You still eat this crap?” I asked, waving down the waitress and ordering myself something off the appetizer menu. “You’re going to have a heart attack.”
“I could think of worse ways to go,” Simon said, shrugging as he took a drink of his beer. As unprofessional as I found Simon, it was almost endearing. “How’s shit with you? I almost didn’t think I’d ever hear from you again.”
I snorted. “You slept with my date!”
“She didn’t have your name on her.”
“Yes, she did,” I replied, laughing.
“Ok, fine. She was a little weird. Never tattoo someone’s name on your arm, especially not after the first date!”
“Do you have something for me, or not?”
Simon laughed, wiping his mouth on an already stained napkin, careful that none of it got on his “priceless” coat.
“I do! And this is very interesting. I mean, there are people who would pay a fortune for the work that I’ve done here for you today.”
“I’m still not paying you, Simon.”
“You hurt my feelings, Gun! This is a favor between friends! I would never ask for any kind of compensation—”
“I’m already picking up the bill, Simon. Out with it!” I said, sighing as my order of mozzarella stick was set down gently in front of me. I gave the waitress a smile in thanks before I began to eat.
“You know what you mentioned before? About how this freak talked about killing his mother?”
“Yeah, you found something?” my eyebrows raised as I leaned forward. I hadn’t expected results this fast from Simon.
“Yup. Unsolved homicide about a year ago—Sandra Williams. COD was asphyxiation. She had—and I quote—‘her panties forced down her throat, blocking her airway.’ Sounds a lot like what your sister talked about. This could be our link, my friend.”
I frowned. “What’d you find out about her?” I had really hoped that whoever was after my sister had just been trying to sound tough with the whole “I murdered my mother” line.
“She was in her early fifties, and had_._._._” He stopped a second, flipping through something on his phone. “_._._._two kids. Husband left when they were younger. She had a son named Connor and a daughter named Chelsea. She liked her ‘C’ names, apparently. Not to mention the brother had a few temporary restraining orders filed against him and a sealed jury record.”
“What for?” I asked, dreading the answer. I didn’t like the sound of this one bit. It was one thing if this guy was just a bit off, but from what Simon was saying, he was almost a dead match for Tanya’s stalker.
“Your favorite—arson.”
I sighed, pressing my head into my hands. This was just perfect. It was like the pieces of a puzzle all falling into place, all pointing to this guy, Connor.
“Tanya has a friend named Chelsea. She was talking with her right before she got that fucking text.”
“You think she might be involved in all of this?” Simon asked, taking another bite off of a drumstick.
“She just might. Or at least, she might know what the fuck is wrong with her brother. You have an address?”
“I have one for her, but not for the brother, and once I’m done with my lunch, we can—”
“Now, Simon. Not later.”
“How about letting me get a to-go box then, yikes! Impatient, much?” He picked up his plate and carried it over to the counter, grumbling all the way. I wanted to get out of here and get to this girl Chelsea’s house as soon as possible.
I left a couple of twenties on the table, more than enough to cover Simon’s enormous plate of wings and the tip while he shoveled every scrap of meat he could into a box. Something deep down told me that if we waited any longer, something bad was going to happen.
---THE FLAME---
Firemen in this town stood out like sore thumbs.
It wasn’t the uniform or the gear. It wasn’t the crappy cars they drove. It was in everything they did. Everything they were. The way they walked and talked; the ubiquity of their swagger. It was all over them like a putrid stench. They lived and breathed firefighter.
And here came one now, sauntering through the hotel doors fresh from handing the valet his keys, the ones that went to a Volvo straight out of the nineties. Dark hair, medium build. An older man, one of the rough sorts.
He was sinew and muscle. That was fine by me. Agility beat raw power every time. As long as you didn’t get hit, at least.
The hard part was ending up in the same elevator with him and not making it look intentional. Firefighters weren’t cops. They didn’t have the nose for the job. But they weren’t too far removed, either. Fruit from the same rotten tree. I couldn’t let him get suspicious. I couldn’t allow him to even get a whiff of what I had planned. I had to be something other—other than a criminal, other than an arsonist. Other than myself.
Deception. Lies. I knew all about those. So did William Blake. So did my mother.
How could she have deceived me so completely? How could she have pretended to be dead, only to rise again in the body of that stripper—that whore?
My hands were shaking as I slipped into the elevator just ahead of the fireman. It was the only elevator currently on that floor, and I sure as shit knew he wasn’t about to take the stairs all the way up to that whore’s room. I played it cool as the doors began to close, idly tapping a few buttons on my cell phone.
“Wait!” the fireman cried. “Wait! Hold the doors!”
I looked up, wide-eyed, and hit the button. The doors stopped closing and bounced back open, and the firefighter stopped running and sighed.
“Jeez. Thanks, kid.”
“Welcome,” I told him as he entered the car with me.
I hit the button for Tanya’s floor. I’d enquired at the front desk about their honeymoon suites, so I knew where it was. Maybe I didn’t have the exact room number, but I didn’t need it. Not with the fireman here.
The bitch’s stepbrother was one of them. No doubt he’d sent this man to guard her. It was a stupid move with someone like me watching. Then again, everyone I knew had always underestimated me.
“Where to?” I asked casually.
The fireman glanced at the buttons. Furtively, I eyed him. The clothes wouldn’t be a perfect fit, but they’d do.
“You got it,” he said after a moment. He let out a little laugh. “Some coincidence, huh?”
I didn’t tell him there was no such thing—that everything, absolutely everything, happened for a reason. Death, life, rebirth: it was all controlled by fate. Destiny. For some men, that meant a long life with plenty of money and love and women. For the rest of us, it meant getting justice whenever we could.
Fate played dirty, but I was used to its tricks. I knew how to game the system. And by sending this firefighter to me in my hour of need, fate had sacrificed one of its precious pawns.
I smiled at him, all teeth. “Some coincidence,” I agreed.
Chapter 16
Tanya
Tom Stoggins smiled at me. He was one of Gunner’s best friends in the department, apparently, and here to keep an eye on me until my stepbrother could get back. I guessed Gunner had gone easy on the details—it wasn’t like him to broadcast a torrid affair with his stepsister to all his friends.
I wondered how much he knew about the other thing, though. About my stalker and all the threats he’d made.
Poems about roses and flying worms. Shit, dude, could you vague that up for me?
“Hey, when a brother asks for help, might as well be the tones soundin’,” he said, and I stepped aside to let him in. “Nice digs you got here. Guess if you gotta hole up somewhere on account of a crazy stalker, this would be the place.”
“The room service is what sold it,” I said, locking the door behind him. “But the view’s not bad, either.”
“Whoa!” Tom trotted to the window and stare wide-eyed over the city. “You sure you can’t rent out your stalker? Nice hotel room, gets me away from the wife and kids_._._._I’ve had worse gigs.”
“You want a mimosa?” I asked him. “I was thinking of having room service come up again_._._._”
“Oh, none for me, doll. Thanks,” Tom said, flashing me a winning smile. “I’m good.”
I put the paper menu away and slipped my hands into the pockets of my shorts. I’d heard Gunner talk a little about Tom, though I’d never met him. From all the stories he told, I figured the guy would’ve been older. But he was about Gunner’s age, or maybe closer to my own. And he talked like one of those guys from the FDNY—that stereotypical accent, the hardness of his words. Dude was weird. Like some kind of paradox.
Maybe that was why Gunner liked him so much. My stepbrother sure did love complicated shit.
“Hey, there was this guy out there,” Tom said, squinting at the sidewalk below. “Came up to me on my way in. He was real weird. Like the kid in high school used to write poetry about all the girls who wouldn’t suck his cock and then stash it under his bed.” He turned and looked at me, hands on his waist just above his belt. “You think that could’ve been him?”
A chill slithered down my spine. I hadn’t seen the guy’s face—at least, not that I knew of—but Tom’s description fit when I imagined he was like: some hypersensitive, entitled, Elliot Rodgers type. From both life as a woman and working as a stripper, I knew one simple truth: lonely men were usually the most dangerous.
“Maybe,” I answered. “This guy_._._._my stalker_._._._he’s really into poetry. Some guy called Blake.”
“William Blake?” Tom said with a laugh. “Oh, shit. Yeah. That guy’s one of my favorites. Learned about him back in college—they don’t teach real art like that in high school.”
He cleared his throat, then very dramatically recited,
“I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.”
Tom chuckled once he was done. “How about you, Tanya? You ever been pissed at somebody?”
I frowned. There was something stirring in my guts—a sense of unease, of suspicion and distrust. Was William Blake really that popular? Maybe he was, but for a firefighter? Really?
And he just_._._._knew all that off-hand?
“I_._._._guess so,” I answered, taking a step away from him. I tried to make it seem casual, like I wasn’t eyeing the spot I’d laid my burner phone.
“You guess so?” Tom stared at me, his face scrunched. “No, no, Tanya. You’d remember anger. It’s that thing that strangles you in the night. Haunts your dreams. Taints your memories. That hangman’s noose that just won’t let go.”
When I didn’t answer, he sighed, kind of like I’d disappointed him. He paced in front of the window, shaking his head.
“It’s like a poisoned tree. You let it grow and fester inside you. Feed it with your hate. Any fruit it bears might be sweet, but ultimately, it’s poisoned, too. It can only cause hurt and pain.” He stopped moving and stared at the ground. “Took me a while to figure that last one out, but now that I know, I ain’t gonna forget. I had plans for my anger, but now I think I’ll have to change ‘em.”
I smiled at him as I turned away just enough to put my left hand out of his view. “I’ve known a lot of that, sure. I mean, my dad—well, Gunner’s dad—was a real bastard. Is,” I corrected myself. I was starting to slip—to stutter. “Is a real bastard. Far as I know.”
“Oh, yeah?” Tom seemed interested in me again, though his eyes were distant, glazed. “What’d he do to you?”
I inched toward the end table. “The usual. Screaming. Yelling. Telling me I was no good. That I’d never amount to anything. How I was useless. How nobody would ever love me. Blaming me for my stepbrother takin’ off on us_._._._”
Tom narrowed his eyes. “He beat you?”
“Gunner, more than me,” I divulged. “But yeah. Sometimes. Never where anyone could see, though. Then everyone would know what kind of drunk, piece of shit monster he was.”
I was so close to the table. Just inches away. But I couldn’t just reach out and grab the phone. I had to make it look like I was doing something else. Something innocuous. And since I was barefoot, the old tyin’-my-shoes trick wasn’t gonna cut it.
Instead I took a hairband out of my pocket like I was going to tie my wild locks back into a ponytail. Then I let it drop to the ground and bent to pick it up with a little “oops.”
Eye-level with the phone now. I’d just have to scoop it into my hand when I stood.
“I had a dad like that, too. Seems like these days, everybody does. Mom wasn’t much better, though. But she liked to hurt me in a different way.”
“I’m sorry,” I replied, reaching for the phone.
“Anything sexual?” Tom asked me after a pause. “He ever, y’know_._._._touch you, while you were sleepin’? Play with your tits? You ever wake up with his cum on your face?”
My stomach turned so violently I thought I would puke. “No. Jesus, no.” I swallowed my bile and grabbed the tie with my right hand and the phone with my left, standing back up. “It wasn’t like that.”
“You sure?” he pressed me. He gave me an appraising look. “C’mon. You’re tellin’ me Daddy never fucked you?”
Keep calm. Play it cool. It was easy enough to think it—lots harder to pull off. My hands were shaking. My stomach was a mess. Tom was playing with me—if this even was Tom. Maybe it had been Tom all along, my brother’s best goddamn friend, but I had no way of knowing. And he knew that, the bastard.
He was the cat. I was the mouse. He had all the power here—the size, the killer instincts, the claws. Best I could hope to do was outrun him. He seemed to sense my thoughts, stepping between me and the door. I felt a bead of sweat form on my nape, sticking to my hair.
“Never,” I told him, shooting him another quick, but shaky smile. “Jim was an asshole, sure. But he never_._._._”
Tom frowned. “Huh.” Then he cocked his head. “So where do you think you get it from, then? The whole sex thing. Y’know, with Gunner?”
He shocked me so bad that instead of gently lifting the phone cover, I snapped it open. That click might as well have been a gunshot. I saw his eyes dart to my hand.
Clumsily, I tried to cover it with a, “What_._._._?”
But Tom was on me with an open-hand slap, one that got me right in the cheekbone and made me see stars.
You ever been hit like that before? It spins your fuckin’ head. Boggles the mind. Takes you off guard. Off balance. My vision was blurry and at the same time, way too sharp. Colors were too bright. My neck hurt from the way my head twisted at the impact, a warm pain that bloomed all the way up into my skull.
“Fuck—”
I tried to pull away, tried to jam Gunner’s number into my phone, but Tom grabbed my arm and slammed my wrist into the table. A new arc of pa
in sizzled through my bones. I held tight to the phone, curling my fingers around it.
“No!”
He struck me again, but when my grasp didn’t break, he brought my hand to his mouth and bit. Hard. Right on my knuckles. I screamed when he broke the skin, dropped the phone, and came at him with my right hand, the one with the bandages on it. I was operating on animal instincts. I didn’t think about the consequences. When I slapped him, it only hurt me worse, and that moment of hesitation when the pain took me over gave Tom enough time to grab my hand and twist it, bringing it to my knees.