by Naomi Niles
SAVED
By Naomi Niles
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 Naomi Niles
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Chapter One
Braxton
By now, I had been sitting in the back of the police station for nearly two hours. It was past midnight, and my eyes burned from the glare of the overhead lights. I had skipped dinner to work out in the gym, and now hunger squatted in my belly like a large toad.
“We’d have let you go hours ago,” said Officer Sanchez, “if you would just cooperate.”
This wasn’t true, and we both knew it. If I had admitted to participating in the beating, he’d have made sure I was locked up. There’d have been no hope of my getting out that night.
I glared at him with scornful eyes. “I done told you,” I said, “I don’t know nothing about it.”
Officer Sanchez ruffled his hair in exasperation. “We have multiple witnesses who say they saw a man matching your exact physical description viciously pummeling a man in his mid-twenties at the corner of First and Nevada at approximately nine-thirty pm.”
“What of it?” I tried to sound defiant, but I couldn’t quite hide the fear that crouched in my voice.
Sanchez glared at me coolly. “You’re only nineteen years old, Mr. Savery. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life being bailed out of jail by your mom? Do you remember the hurt in her voice the last time you called her from one of these cells and told her you needed help?”
I didn’t need him to remind me. I could still hear the catch in Mom’s voice when she told me she would pay my bond.
“Don’t bring my mom into this,” I said. “She’s been through enough.”
“Yes, and whose fault is that?”
I didn’t answer.
He left the room, and I leaned back in my chair, allowing myself to relax a little. My back was stiff from all the hours of sitting. I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection from the window: dark hair lank and uncombed, gray eyes red with exhaustion.
I didn’t dare tell Sanchez the real reason I had been standing on the corner of First and Nevada at half past nine with my hands around another man’s throat. I’d been driving past on my way to dinner when I saw three guys cornering another guy behind the dumpster outside the antiques store. The fourth man was shaking badly as he reached into his back pocket for his wallet. It was obvious they were trying to rob him.
I wasn’t just going to drive past and let that happen. I brought my car to a halt in front of the coffee bar and got out. By the time I reached the dumpster, two of the guys had slunk away into the shadows like a couple of cockroaches, but the third stood there frozen like he couldn’t quite get his legs to work.
That was when my fighter’s instincts kicked in, and I just started pounding the guy.
I’d been a professional MMA fighter for about two years now, ever since leaving my home in Texas at the age of seventeen. And I was good at it: I had been working out every day for the past nine years, since back when I was just a scrawny kid in middle school who couldn’t lift two books over his head to save his life.
All of that had changed now. Other men feared me. And to be honest, sometimes I scared myself. Earlier that night when I had the guy pinned against the wall, when I started hitting him over and over again, he begged me to let him go.
“Please, I won’t do it again. I won’t mug anybody else. I’m sorry.”
But I was so engrossed in my own version of vigilante justice that I barely heard him. If it hadn’t been for the sirens, I don’t know that I would have stopped.
Finally, when I knew the police were close, I threw him down. He stared at me warily for a moment, nursing a bloody mouth.
“Don’t ever let me catch you doing that again,” I said. “If you do, I’ll find out.”
He hesitated for exactly one second before standing up and hobbling away down the alley, muttering under his breath. I had just enough time to flee the scene before the police arrived. They picked me up half an hour later at No Name Bar (its actual name) and brought me into the station on the testimony of witnesses and my previous record.
After what felt like an hour of waiting, Officer Sanchez returned from the other room, massaging his hands tenderly as if he had arthritis. He looked distinctly irritated.
“By law, I’m required to inform you that we no longer have grounds to detain you.” He couldn’t quite bring himself to look me in the eyes. “You’re free to go, for the time being.”
“On what grounds?” I couldn’t help asking.
He hesitated for a moment before saying, “Lack of evidence.”
Slowly I stood up to leave, wondering if this was some kind of trick. I was halfway to the door before he stopped me again.
“Savery.”
I didn’t bother turning around. “Yeah?”
“You look after yourself. This happens again, we’re gonna nail you.”
“Never happened in the first place.” I walked out.
My car was still parked at No Name Bar. I walked for about half an hour through the fog of a late April night. The bar was still open, though at this time of night, the parking lot was mostly empty. I shivered as I unlocked the car and climbed in. It had been an unseasonably cold spring, and I hadn’t been wearing a jacket. Turning on the heat, I sat there for a minute with my hands raised to the air vents.
As soon as they were sufficiently thawed, I called Nick.
“Hey, where you at?” he asked. I could hear the dull roar of a crowd behind him. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you for hours.”
“Yeah, I saw your twenty texts. Was there some pressing emergency?”
“Nope, just wanted to see my friend.”
“I almost believe you.”
Nick was my training partner and had been my best friend for about a year now. We had gotten into a bar brawl my first night in Boulder when he insulted my mother. I had left him with a black eye, and we had both spent the night behind bars. By sunrise, we were inseparable.
“Anyway, you still haven’t answered my question. Did you take some girl home with you?”
“No, not tonight.” I told him about my run-in with the police and how they had been forced to let me go for lack of evidence. “I sometimes get the feeling Sanchez doesn’t like me.”
“You and him ought to be best friends. He sure sees enough of you.”
“Yeah. Where are you?”
“Over at the Bitter Bar on Walnut Street. They’re having a late screening of The Usual Suspects, but everybody was talking, so I just went out into the bar and bought myself a lager. You’re welcome to join me.”
“I might,” I said as I started the car. “But I’ve got to run home first. Damn cat is probably starving.” I hadn’t seen Winston since I left the house that morning.
Nick laughed. “You and that cat!”
“He’s a very nice cat,” I said defensively.
“He’s a predator, like all cats. If he were any bigger, he’d probably eat you. Anyway. See you in a bit.”
“See you.”
A few minutes later I pulled up in front of the Bitter Bar. It was surprisingly crowded for the time of night, probably owing to the screening. At the bar, I found Nick seated next to a twenty-something girl with peroxide-b
londe hair in a low-cut green spaghetti strap. Nick sat stirring his lager with a long spoon, looking slightly bored.
“… but that’s the beautiful thing about genealogy,” she was saying. “If you go far enough back, you can find all sorts of things.”
“Fascinating,” Nick muttered groggily. He perked up when he saw me. “Hey, you! ‘Bout time you finally showed up. How’s Winston?”
“Hungry.”
“And how are you?”
“Also hungry. What’ve they got on the menu tonight?”
Nick shrugged. “I already ate a couple hours ago. You might try the charcuterie platter; I hear it’s excellent.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I sat down on the empty stool next to him. “You gonna introduce us?” I motioned to the girl on his right.
Nick looked surprised, as though he had momentarily forgotten there was a woman sitting next to him. “Braxton, this is Lisa—”
“Lindsay.”
“Yeah. She had a great-grandmother who was—I want to say, burned at the stake during the Salem Witch Trials?”
“No, she helped lead the witch hunts,” said Lindsay, sounding annoyed. “Didn’t you say we were going to leave an hour ago?”
“Be my guest,” said Nick, motioning to the door. I could tell from the slur of his voice that he was slightly drunk.
Lindsay went on sipping her pale ale. “You boys are all the same: promising me a good time and then never delivering.”
“Did he promise you a good time?” I replied. “I’m sorry he lied to you.”
“It’s what I do,” said Nick with a melancholy shrug.
He went back to his drink, but I went on staring at Lindsay with a feeling of curiosity and hunger. I had never cared much if a girl was annoying, so long as she was pleasant to look at.
But just as I was working up the courage to lean over and talk to her, a fat bearded man wearing an old-fashioned silk top hat came sidling over from behind the pool table.
“You boys mackin’ on my girlfriend?” he asked in a gruff voice.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had heard anyone use the word “mackin.’” Nick and I stared skeptically from him to Lindsay. “This your girlfriend?” he asked.
It was admittedly hard to believe. I hadn’t known Lindsay for more than a few minutes, but I could already tell she wasn’t the boyfriend type.
But Lindsay made no effort to deny it. “Why, you wanna take me home?” she asked.
They eyed each other in silence for a moment. While they were distracted, Nick edged himself out of his chair and came and stood beside me.
I began calculating our odds of beating him in a fight. He was a big man, and it was obvious that he worked out, but together we could take him easily. I just wasn’t sure it was worth it; I had narrowly avoided the inside of a cell once that night and wasn’t keen to repeat the experience.
“You don’t want to go home with these losers,” said the top-hatted man. “This one here looks like he needs to be getting home to his mom.”
“You need to be getting back to 1860,” said Nick in a lazy drawl, “so if I was you, I would just leave the three of us alone and be on your way.” Turning to Lindsay, he added, “Babe, if you want to come home with a real man, my door is always open.”
A few minutes later, we skipped out of the Bitter Bar and into the cold parking lot. Lindsay clung tightly to Nick’s arm, laughing.
“That was pretty grand, I’ll admit.” She had the sort of nasally voice I associated with mid-century New York. She ought to have been wearing pearls and sipping a mint julep on a patio overlooking the Hudson. “Maybe you’re not so bad.”
“Looks like I accidentally showed you a good time after all.” Nick placed a discreet hand over his mouth. “Oops.”
“We’ll see how I feel about you in the morning,” said Lindsay, and they headed off in the direction of his car. Nick didn’t even bother saying goodbye.
I waited until they were gone, then climbed into my own car and headed home toward Winston.
Chapter Two
Jaimie
Rennie and I were just sitting down in a corner booth at the coffee shop, rain lashing against the windows, when I noticed that they had gotten my order wrong. For a moment I sat there, frozen in disappointment.
“This always happens,” I said, softly and sadly. “I specifically ordered a medium white chocolate mocha, and what did they give me? A white frapp.”
But Rennie had gotten so involved in the novel she was writing she barely heard me. She sat pecking away at her computer, nodding occasionally to make it look like she was listening.
I didn’t really care, though; I just felt like complaining.
“It wouldn’t be so bad,” I added, “if this didn’t happen every damned time we come in here.”
“Why don’t you go back up there and tell them?”
Rennie pushed her computer away for a moment as though willing herself to pay attention to me. She was wearing an oversized robin’s-egg blue cardigan and had done up her hair in a loose knot. I got the distinct impression that she had been too busy writing that morning to bother much with getting dressed.
“I tried that once before, remember? When they gave me a latke instead of a latte? I asked the guy for a refund, and he wouldn’t give it.”
Rennie bit off a hunk of her walnut bread, thinking. “Maybe you weren’t forceful enough.”
Rennie had a strong personality and was accustomed to getting her own way. She had often told me my own life would be better if I would learn to demand things and not back down.
“How forceful do you want me to be?” I replied. “I’m not like you. I can’t just yell at somebody until I get my way.”
“Jaimie, honey, it’s not about yelling. It’s about being bold and persistent. You’re too timid.”
There was probably some truth to this. I had once encouraged a boy I was crushing on to go out with another girl because he said he liked her.
“In all the years we’ve been friends,” said Rennie, “I’ve never once lost an argument. I bet if you went up there and demanded a new order, he’d give it to you.”
“No, he’d probably just laugh at me.”
“That’s because you’re doing it wrong. Watch.”
Closing the lid on her laptop, she rose from the booth carrying my cup in both hands. I watched her storm away toward the counter with a nervous feeling. We were about to be kicked out of the coffee shop, and somehow it would all be my fault.
Planting herself in front of the register, she slammed the frappuccino down with a firm hand. “You listen to me,” she said. “My friend ordered a white mocha, and once again you got her order completely wrong. If you don’t straighten up and get your act together, we’re going to take our business elsewhere. This is your final warning.”
The cashier took my cup and shuffled away toward the back. A second later, he returned carrying two large white mochas.
“Accept this as a token of our apologies,” he said in a bored voice.
Rennie returned to the booth looking triumphant.
“How did you do that?” I asked her, incredulous.
Rennie shrugged. “You just have to be forceful, hon. Don’t let anybody walk over you.”
She went back to writing her novel, and we sat there in silence sipping our drinks while the rain battered against the windows. I sometimes envied Rennie for being so strong and assertive. She had a mysterious and seemingly miraculous ability to get what she wanted. I could never forget the night she had walked into a bar, picked out a guy at random, and said, “Get ready to leave; you and I are going out tonight.”
And they had.
With a personality like that, it was only a matter of time before she landed a book deal. I had read some of her prose; it was stunning. The kind of writing that wins awards and is featured in prestigious trade journals. As an aspiring writer myself, I couldn’t help but covet her gifts.
“Jaimie, sweetie,�
� she had said more than once, “we’re both excellent writers, and there’s no reason you couldn’t be successful if you really put some effort into it.”
I wanted to believe this was true. But she had a grasp of genre conventions and structures that I couldn’t figure out no matter how many books on the writing process I read. And whereas I found the publishing process labyrinthine and panic-inducing, Ren had landed herself an agent with envious ease.
“One of these days, we’ll be on the cover of Time together,” said Ren. “You and me, together. The two girls who made it.” It was a comforting lie, but a lie nonetheless.
***
But while I waited for fame to come I had accepted as a job as a CPA for an MMA league, Fates & Furies (FAF). It was miserable work, and I shambled through most days hoping I didn’t fall asleep at my desk. Because I had never entertained the slightest interest in seeing grown men pummel each other, even the fights were dull.
The one saving grace was my boss, Randy Carruthers, a genial and good-humored man in his late fifties with a shock of white hair and a taste for expensive suits. He had married late and had enjoyed three years of perfect happiness with his wife, Joy, before she succumbed unexpectedly to cancer at the age of forty-five. Randy had spiraled into a depression from which he was only just now coming out, and had nearly lost his own life in a drunk driving accident last year on New Year’s Eve.
When I arrived at the office that morning, I found him with his boots on the desk, silently watching the rain fall through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
“You doing okay?” I asked him, handing him one of the mochas.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes wearily. “You know what they say about grieving: some days it’s better, and some days it’s worse.”
I nodded. I knew all about that.
“Anyway.” He planted his legs on the floor and folded his hands in a business-like manner. “I’ve been looking over the spreadsheet you sent me, and I was surprised at how well we’re doing financially. It’s not great, but it’s much better than I was expecting.”