by Jessie Cooke
Paige almost winced, like he’d hit her, and then she said, “They’ll be okay. They’ve been through worse.” Garrett wondered what could possibly be worse than losing your child. He couldn’t imagine it.
“Sounds a little selfish to me,” he said. She jerked her head up to look at his face, like she was going to be angry. But Garrett was smiling so her features softened and she smiled back.
“I guess I had that coming. It just seems different when there’s a kid involved.”
“You are someone’s kid, though.”
She sighed. “So are you…although it is hard to imagine you as a child.”
He chuckled. “I was born four-foot-tall and two hundred pounds.”
She giggled. “Your poor mother.” They ate again in silence for a while. Garrett really wanted to hear her story. Something about her interested him and even if it hadn’t, he felt strongly that she’d been put in his path that night so that he could save her. He knew people might think he was odd if they knew…but he was kind of hoping that God had sent her to distract him from the task of suicide, or even better as retribution for at least some of the horrible things he’d done. When Paige was finished eating, she pushed her plate aside and said, “You don’t seem suicidal.”
He cocked an eyebrow and said, “We never really established that I was.”
“Oh, give me a break. Nobody hangs out at the dam at three a.m. for kicks. You were going to jump until you saw me and then your Knight in Shining Armor complex kicked in.”
He chanced a small smile and said, “A little bit ago I was a kidnapper.”
“Well, technically, you are. But you’re justifying that because you think you’re saving my life.”
He shrugged. “I guess you can call it whatever you want. I just couldn’t let you go through with that.”
“You’re a hypocrite, though. You were going to do the same thing.”
“Maybe. But I doubt you deserve to die.”
She pulled her brows together. “Why on earth would you think that? You don’t know me. You have no idea what I’m guilty of.”
“True. Tell me your story and I’ll tell you if I think you deserve it or not.”
She rolled her eyes. “First off, that wasn’t the original deal, and second, why on earth should your opinion matter to me?”
He smiled again. “I reckon it shouldn’t. But I guess either way, you still owe me a story.”
He watched as a shiver ripped through her body, and a lump formed in his throat when he looked at her face and saw the pain in her eyes. Maybe he shouldn’t have pushed her. He was just trying so hard to stall for time until he could think of some way to convince her that she didn’t want to die after all. He knew he was probably giving himself too much credit. He hadn’t even been able to convince himself that he wanted to go on living. How on earth did I expect to convince this woman I don’t even know? He kept watching her as she looked around them at all the other people in the place like she’d just noticed them. It was a popular hangout for the locals. In Las Vegas, there weren’t many places that hadn’t been invaded by the tourists, but this was one of them. The breakfast crowd was packing itself in now and the tables on all sides of them were full and getting loud. When she looked back at Garrett, he got the feeling that she was forcing herself not to cry as she said:
“I can’t talk about it here. Can we go somewhere else?”
“Sure. Wherever you want to go. My place isn’t far from here…”
She shook her head hard. “No…” Then she said, “If I promise not to jump, can we go back to the dam?”
Garrett chuckled. “Sure, but you have to pinky promise.” It was something Jessie made him do sometimes. He felt a surge of blood to his constantly aching heart when he thought about Jessie. But he was happy when he looked at Paige’s face. The idea of the big man making a “pinky promise” had made her smile and it was genuinely a beautiful sight.
5
“Have you lived in Vegas your entire life?” Garrett and Paige had driven back to the dam and parked in the same lot where his Harley still sat, now surrounded by a handful of cars. For some reason, he was relieved to see it. He told himself not to get used to this living stuff; it was only temporary.
“Yeah,” she said. “Well, in Henderson, really. I grew up there and moved to Vegas when I started working.”
“What do you do?”
“I manage a dental office.”
He smiled. “That explains the perfect teeth.”
She giggled. “Not really. My dad was a dentist before he retired. He was relentless about brushing and flossing. He used to say, My girls are a reflection of the kind of dentist I am.” She emulated a man’s voice when she said it and it was cute, but she looked sad and became suddenly quiet again right afterwards. He didn’t push her. They were walking along one of the hiking trails around the dam. It was part of the old railroad system, the only section remaining that wasn’t either under water or just too disturbed by humans to be appealing any longer. It was one of Garrett’s favorite places, at least when he was home.
They walked until they came to a tunnel and Garrett stopped. “Do you want to go through?”
The tunnels were all 300 feet long and about 25 feet around. Some people didn’t like the idea of being inside of them. Garrett remembered being sixteen and taking a girl there after a date one night. He thought it would be romantic. Instead, she’d had a panic attack and he had to carry her out with her crying and claiming she couldn’t breathe the whole way. It was not his best date ever, to say the least.
“Sure,” Paige said. They started walking again and after a bit she said, “Have you been a Flame long?”
“Most of my adult life, I guess. I was in and out.” He didn’t go into the fact that he was a SEAL for most of the past decade. “I grew up in Connecticut. My dad was an enforcer in a club out there. When he died, I thought I’d try something different. I’m a nomad, so I have a home base here, but I spend most of my time on the road. My Pops, my mom’s dad, lives here in Vegas.”
“And your mother?”
He didn’t want to talk about his mother. “She died,” he said, hoping she’d let it go at that. He had a stepmother who had raised him, kind of…but he didn’t want to talk about her either.
“Hmm, you don’t seem like a biker.”
He bit back a smile. “So, my size and leather kutte and demeanor are misleading somehow?”
She smiled. “Okay, so you look like a biker…or a mountain. What the freak did they feed you?” She laughed and when she sobered again she said, “The bikers that I have experience with have been cocky sonsabitches. Maybe I don’t know you well enough, but you don’t seem cocky and full of yourself.”
“You have experience with a lot of bikers?” He hadn’t meant the question to be offensive, but she took it that way.
“I’m not one of those slut club girls if that’s what you mean.”
He put his hands up, palms out. “That’s not what I meant, honest. You said I don’t seem like a biker—well, you don’t seem like the kind of girl that would spend a lot of time around them.”
“You’d be surprised,” was all she said.
When they exited the tunnel he said, “You know, this section of the tunnel was used in the movie The Gauntlet with Clint Eastwood.”
She laughed. “You’re funny.”
“Why’s that funny?”
“It’s like we’re on a date and you’re trying to keep the conversation moving. Does silence make you nervous?”
He thought about that. She’d be the one who was surprised if he answered that honestly. Before Jessie, being alone in silence was his favorite state. “Nah, but since we’re both avoiding what we’re supposed to be talking about…”
“You go first. Why is your life so bad that you don’t want to live it any longer?”
He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t think I could make you understand.”
She stopped walking and sat dow
n on a rock. “Look!” Garrett followed the finger she was pointing. There was a herd of bighorn sheep on a ridge above them. “They’re beautiful.”
He looked down at her face. She was beautiful. The sheep…not so much. “Um…yeah, I guess.”
“Try me,” she said.
“What?”
“You said I wouldn’t understand.” She reached over and patted the rock next to her. “Sit down and try me.”
He sat down, uncomfortably. The rock was low to the ground and his legs seemed five feet long. But somehow, he liked being close to her enough that he was willing to be uncomfortable to do it. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. I’m thirty-two years old and I ride around on a bike and…do things I’m not proud of for a living. I have a daughter who is better off with the man who is raising her. He gives her everything she needs, things that I could never give her…” He trailed off as a lump developed in his throat. Talking about Jessie did that to him every time. It was embarrassing. He felt the heat rise to his face as Paige said:
“You do know it’s not about ‘things,’ right? My parents gave me lots of ‘things,’ but that was never what I needed.”
“I don’t really mean material things…I mean, he gives her those too. But I could do that. It’s that emotional connection. I guess I’m just not built that way.”
“You stopped me from killing myself and now you’re sitting out in this beautiful place, talking to me about my feelings and yours…”
“A fluke,” he said with a grin. “I’m not usually the lifesaving type.”
“Don’t you worry about how you killing yourself will affect your daughter, emotionally?”
“She’s only four. I know she’ll have a good life. She’ll forget me soon enough.”
“Little girls don’t give up on their daddies that easily,” she said, sadly.
“So,” he said, clearing his throat. “That’s my story, what’s yours?”
She laughed and shook her head. “That was so not your whole story.”
“Okay, it was a start. Start yours.”
She sat quietly for so long that he thought she wasn’t going to say anything and then suddenly she said, “I killed my little sister.” That wasn’t at all what Garrett expected to hear.
Paige couldn’t believe that had come out of her mouth. This man was a stranger. She’d only admitted how guilty she felt to her own parents and Amanda’s best friend in the letters she left behind. Garrett was staring at her with his big, chocolate-brown eyes, waiting for her to go on. For a few seconds, she let herself imagine what those eyes would look like filled with lust and how it would feel to make love to a man as big as a mountain. The fantasy was a nice distraction, but that was all it was, a distraction.
She stood up and walked a few paces away. Garrett sat where he was, a patient man, waiting for her to go on. When she turned and looked at him she said, “I didn’t actually kill her…but she’s dead because of me. She killed herself, here.”
“Oh shit.”
“Yeah, I guess that sums it up. Amanda was raped and brutalized. It was because of me that she lived through it and because of me that she went to the police and he was arrested. My sister was very much about appearances, and worse than being raped and having nightmares every night for the rest of her life, she hated that everyone knew. My parents always liked Amanda best, my father especially. He just couldn’t look at her the same…after. Her hoity-toity friends didn’t know what to say when they saw her, so they just stopped seeing her. She was terrified of men, but that was okay because no man would come near her once he knew what happened. But the worst of it all was that I pushed her into facing that monster in court. That was what made her snap, finally, and this was the end result.”
“That’s horrible. I’m so sorry for your sister, and you. But, Paige…to end your life because of things you had no control over…”
“You don’t understand. It’s not just guilt. I have nightmares. I dream that it was me. They’re so real that I wake up in a panic and sick. I try not to sleep. I even started considering taking uppers at night to stay awake, and I’ve never done any drugs other than a little weed every now and then. But what finally pushed me over the edge was when her rapist walked free…with a smile on his face.”
“He walked free? What the fuck?”
“She wasn’t here any longer to testify. The DA didn’t think he could win the case without her. She hadn’t given a deposition with his lawyer present yet and his attorney got the judge to block the tape they had of her that first night…” Paige felt the tears stinging her eyes and she fought them back. It was bad enough that she was dumping all of this out on a stranger, but she’d be damned if she was going to cry.
“Fuck…I’m sorry, about my language, but that’s…fucked up.”
She smiled slightly. “I don’t mind the language. There’s no way to really describe it otherwise. It is fucked up. My family is broken, my mind is broken, and I just don’t want to be here any longer.” Garrett stood up and said:
“Your family won’t ever be the same, but it won’t always be broken.”
She nodded. “Yeah, it will. Amanda was always the good girl, the one that made my parents proud. This shattered them, and they blame me as much as she did. I shouldn’t have let her leave the bar with that guy. I shouldn’t have forced her to go to the police. I should have protected her. It was my job.” Paige lost her battle with the tears and before she knew it, Garrett’s huge arms were wrapped around her. She felt like she was in a cocoon and that while she was there, nothing could harm her. She wished that it really was a cocoon and when he released her, she’d come out new and beautiful like a butterfly.
Garrett held her until she pushed back from his chest and wiped her face with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say you’re sorry. You have every right to cry. You’ve been through hell.”
“I feel like I’m still there.” She looked over at the dam and said, “You can’t run from your thoughts. I can’t wake up every morning knowing that the monster still roams the earth and I’ll never see my beautiful sister again.”
Garrett suddenly knew why God or the fates or karma…whatever…had sent him to rescue her. “What if I can promise you the monster will be burning in hell by the end of the week?”
6
“Excuse me?”
Garrett hadn’t wanted to tell Paige who he really was and what he really did…but what was one more kill, especially if it rid the world of some vermin who needed to be exterminated? “Come with me to my apartment,” he said, “and I’ll explain it all to you.”
She looked at him like he had two heads. “Are you insane? I just told you that my sister was brutally raped because she took a stranger home from a bar…”
“Look, if I wanted to hurt you, I’ve had plenty of chances, right? Look around you. We’ve seen about four live people since we got here. You were unconscious for a while earlier and I didn’t hurt you then, either. What I need to tell you can’t be said out in the open. I know my apartment is clean and no one is listening.”
“It’s clean?”
“No bugs or anything.”
“Geez, what are you, a spy or something?”
“No, not exactly…” Garrett looked around and then back at Paige and said, “I’m a killer.”
The fact that she followed him after that was nothing short of a miracle. Maybe she really didn’t care if she lived or died. She got into her car and he led on his bike. His apartment was about thirty minutes away, so it gave him time to collect his thoughts and decide what he would and wouldn’t tell her. She looked nervous when they got there, so he went out of his way to fix her a cup of tea and make sure she was comfortable before taking out the box he wanted to show her. She sat perched on the edge of the sofa and Garrett handed it to her and then took a seat in the recliner a few feet from her. “What is this?”
“Just look inside, you’ll see.”
Paige
sat down her teacup and opened the box. The first thing she pulled out was a newspaper article. It was in a language she didn’t understand and there was a photo of a smiling man with dark skin. He was wearing a white headdress—if Paige remembered right it was called a keffiyeh. It had a gold band around it, which she also knew was a symbol of status. Next to that picture was one of horror. It was black and white, so the blood wasn’t visible, but the carnage was. It was a photo of children, dead children, lying in a pile of dirt in the middle of a road. Underneath that was a picture of what looked like a funeral procession. “Who is this?”
“He was part of the royal family in a Middle Eastern country. Which one isn’t important. What you need to know is that the article talks about how he ordered the deaths of the children of his enemies, people he felt had slighted him in some way. He killed their children and then expected them to kneel at his feet and thank him for sparing their lives. Those bodies were what his men brought back to prove to him the deed was done. They were only a fraction of the children that were killed. The parents did kneel at his feet and thank him, but as they did it, they knew I was up in the tower across the street. The gentleman in that picture was dead before the second parent’s knees hit the ground—single shot to the head.” Paige gasped and jerked her head up to look at him.
“You?” Garrett didn’t say anything, or change his expression. Paige set the paper aside and picked up the next one. That one reported the death of a man in Africa who was responsible for the slaughter of an entire village. There was one in Colombia, a drug lord; another in Egypt who had murdered a man running for office in an effort to overthrow the government. After a while she stopped looking through them and said, “You’re a sniper.” It wasn’t a question and Garrett didn’t answer it. She was silent for a while and then she said, “These were obviously arranged by the government and in the course of your service…” She was fingering one of the medals of honor he kept in the box as well as she talked. “So…you’re not a killer, you were doing your job. You’d only be considered a killer if you continued to do it after you got out of the service…” When he still didn’t answer her she said, “Garrett, I need you to be clear with me. Are you offering to kill my sister’s rapist?”