The Red Hunter

by Lisa Unger

  “I know you did,” said Mike, thinking I was talking to him.

  “I know you did,” said my dad. “I’m sorry, Zoey. I made so many mistakes—with you, with your mom, with my life. I fucked up. But the only thing that matters is that you got out of there. That’s all she would have cared about, your mom. We would both happily die if it meant that you lived and went on to live a happy life.”

  But I didn’t do that. Trauma was a wrecking ball that moved through my world. The pieces never fit back together quite right. I was a zombie, or had been, the walking dead.

  “I’m sorry,” my dad said again. “I love you. Forgive me.”

  Then he turned and walked into the dark. Didion was gone, too.

  “Dad,” I called. “Daddy, don’t leave me.”

  But he was gone, and I knew he wasn’t coming back. It was just me and Mike, who shook his head with pity.

  “I didn’t want it to be like this,” said Mike. “But you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  The gun glinted silver in his hand.

  When you seek revenge, dig two graves. One of them for yourself.

  forty-two

  Claudia watched, disbelieving, as great plumes of white showered her house, dousing the flames that shot up through the roof. Troy under one arm, Raven under the other, they watched from the bed of the pickup. Raven softly wept. Troy just looked stunned. And Claudia—well.

  You never understood the power of things. You saw a lot on television—raging forest fires, tsunamis, hurricanes. You knew that people got raped, beaten—killed, murdered, life wrested from them in all kinds of horrible ways. But there was a kind of safe distance—the sense that it was happening elsewhere to others. Until you had a violent man’s hands on you, until your body was violated. Until you felt the massive, frightening heat of fire, knew its roar, how it sucked the air from a place and replaced it with poison. How just its nearness could overcome you. How you couldn’t fight. That was the hardest thing to learn, that sometimes, some things—you just can’t fight them.

  “They got away,” said Raven. “With all that money.”

  “Shh,” said Claudia. “The important thing is that we’re all alive and okay. Nothing else matters.”

  “It doesn’t matter that the house burned down?” said Raven, reaching for sarcasm through her tears.

  “No,” said Claudia. “Not really.”

  She even believed it.

  Josh Beckham sat in the back of a squad car. They’d all been questioned. Claudia, Raven, and Troy each gave their version of what happened. Claudia told Officer Dilbert about Zoey Drake running off on her own to stop Rhett Beckham, that Josh knew where she’d gone. And he promised to find her, to help her.

  Josh Beckham had asked for a lawyer, said he had information about the case ten years ago, was ready to come clean. She felt bad for him—in a way. You can’t carry a secret like that around without it doing some damage, even though he was probably just a kid at the time—maybe too stupid to know what was happening until it was too late. He didn’t seem like a bad man, but really—what did she know? She was literally the worst judge of character imaginable.

  Claudia saw the headlights of an approaching car and recognized the sleek lines of Ayers’s Mercedes as it came to a stop and he burst out of the front door.

  “Daddy!” Raven shrieked, pulled away, and shimmied herself out of the truck, ran for her father. He grabbed her and held on tight, but he was looking at Claudia.

  “What happened?” he said. “What on earth happened here?”

  What had happened?

  One minute she was young and beautiful and happily married, trying to have a baby with her handsome, sweet husband. The next minute, she was sitting in the back of a pickup truck, watching the house she’d been trying to renovate go up in flames. How had she gotten here? How many accidents and mistakes and choices had she made? How many of them had been wrong or right, good or bad? Maybe that’s all life was, this impossibly complicated helix of choice and accident, things you could control and couldn’t. And when the day was done, the only measure of success was how happy you were, how much you loved and were loved.

  “Is he her father?” asked Troy. The kid seemed stunned. They’d wrapped him in a blanket, and she swore he looked just like he did when he was seven years old, curled up in his X-Men sleeping bag. Claudia remembered that it was the whole reason poor Troy was here, because he was trying to help his friend uncover the mystery of her identity. Poor kid.

  Claudia looked at the sweet boy who loved her daughter. It was so obvious. She touched the still soft skin of his cheek, felt with surprise the stubble on his jaw.

  “Of course, he is,” she said. “Look at them.”

  Ayers and Raven walked over toward the truck, their steps wobbling as Raven clung to Ayers and he held her with a strong arm. She could hear Raven talking—tunnel, bag of money, these men came, locked us in. We were trapped. She was rambling, not making sense. Ayers looked confused, worried. Claudia shifted herself out of the truck, came to stand before Ayers.

  “Let me tell him,” said Claudia. Raven looked between them and nodded. She went to Troy, and the two of them walked off.

  “Don’t go far,” Claudia called. “Stay away from the fire. And the woods.”

  Raven nodded, for once without snark or comment.

  “What in God’s name happened?” whispered Ayers. “Claudia.”

  He put a gentle hand to the bandage on her nose, to her jaw.

  She sat, and he sat beside her. And she told him everything.

  forty-three

  Still lying on the ground, I stared at the gun he had pointed at me. I had to admit, it was disappointing.

  “You’re going to shoot me?” I said. “What a cop-out.”

  I literally didn’t have the strength to lift myself up. I always figured it would end like this, with me on the ground, bested by some thug with a gun. Maybe Beckham or Didion, maybe some thug on the street. I didn’t expect it to be a man I trusted and loved. But that’s the statistic, right? A leading cause of death in young women is homicide. Most of which were perpetrated by men they knew.

  “You’re a good fighter, Zoey,” he said. He was breathless and, I could tell, hurt. I’d gotten some good strikes in. “I taught you well—a little too well. And you have youth on your side.”

  He chuckled, as if we were just on the dojo floor discussing a sparring session.

  “So how do you want this to go?” he said.

  “How do you want it to go?” Another voice.

  He came out of the darkness, resting heavily on his cane. He had a portable oxygen concentrator in a sling around his chest, the nasal cannula in his nostrils. It emitted a strange rhythmic squeak like a hamster slowly turning a wheel. In his free hand, he held his revolver.

  Paul.

  He did not look well, pale and sweating. Seeing him gave me the strength I needed to get up. I limped over to him, wrapped him up, and he held on tight. He felt so thin.

  “Zoey,” he said. He kissed my head.

  “Christ on the cross,” said Mike. “How did you get here, man?”

  “In all these years,” said Paul. “I never once suspected you. You know that?”

  “So when did you figure it out?”

  “I heard you on the phone,” said Paul. “You thought I was sleeping. I heard you talking, and it all clicked in. Stupid. I was blinded by friendship. I never dreamed you’d hurt them.”

  “How’d you get here?” Mike asked. “From the hospital.”

  “Car service,” he said. “I came to get my girl.”

  Mike bowed his head. When he looked up, I expected to see regret. “Where is the rest of the money?” he asked instead, his face blank.

  “You got your pay,” said Paul. “That was always the deal. A hundred grand for an hour’s work. Why did you want more?”

  “We always want more.” He laughed a little.

  “Not all of us,” Paul said. “I told you that
money was for Zoey and Heather.”

  “The woman you loved and her daughter.”

  “That’s right.”

  Mike nodded in my direction. There was a coldness to him I’d never seen. I’d seen him angry, worried, sad. But I’d never seen what I saw in him tonight. You need it to win, to really win. You have to be willing to kill—or die.

  “Does she know?”

  “Don’t do this, Mike,” said Paul.

  “Does Zoey know you had an affair with her mother? Does she know that it was you Heather was going to run off with that night? But that, in the end, guilt got the best of her and she went home.”

  “I loved your mother,” Paul said. “It’s true. But I loved your father, too, and so did she. We made mistakes, but we did what we thought was right in the end.”

  I knew, didn’t I? On some deep level, I knew that they loved each other, that there was a lightness and an ease to her when Paul was around that wasn’t there any other time. He made her feel safe; he looked at her with a smile in his eyes. My dad—I don’t think he was much of a husband. I couldn’t be angry with Paul and my mother for loving each other, for any of it. I couldn’t be mad at my father for the mistakes he made.

  In fact, the rage I’d been carrying, that bloody passion for revenge, it had left me cored out. I was drained. All that sizzling energy of righteousness, the zeal for justice, it was armor, a veneer I wore to protect the sucking emptiness in me.

  “Put the gun down, Mike,” said Paul.

  “Where’s the rest of it?”

  “That was my cut,” Paul said. “Four hundred. You’ve got more than your share now. Just take it and go.”

  I heard it, but I wasn’t sure they did. It was high and far, like a mosquito you couldn’t shoo, sirens in the distance.

  “Where’s Seth?” asked Mike.

  “He’s indisposed,” said Paul.

  I watched Mike’s face, his shoulders, just like he’d trained me to do. The eyes narrow to a tight focus, the nostrils flare to pull in more oxygen. The world slowed down.

  First, he lifted his eyes. The sirens had grown louder and he knew time was up.

  “You called the police,” said Mike, looking at Paul. “You screwed us all.”

  “No,” said Paul with a tight shake of his head.

  Mike’s shoulders tensed and he drew in a breath, looked between us. His chest rose as he lifted his arm, muscles flexing. It was just one step for me to put myself in front of Paul and I did that, just as Mike squeezed the trigger and the world exploded in a red flood of pain.

  • • •

  I WAS AT THE EDGE of the wood again, Catcher at my side. The night was cold and the moon a silver face in the sky looking down at me. I looked at the house, sitting still and peaceful at the edge of the field. My heart thudded with disappointment. Seth stood me up. And I waited like a fool, for an hour. Now the light in the kitchen was on, and I was going to be in so much trouble. So much trouble.

  Catcher released a little growl, a little half bark, more like a huff and then I heard what he heard, footsteps behind me. My name in a whisper on the wind.

  Zoey. Zoey wait up!

  I turned and there was Seth, breathless, flushed moving through the trees. My heart did a little rhumba. He was bigger than the other boys, with dark, heavily lashed eyes and full lips.

  “My dad,” he said, panting. “He wouldn’t go to sleep. It’s like he knew I was waiting to sneak out. I’m sorry.”

  He dropped to his knees and rubbed Catcher behind the ears and was rewarded with a big slobbery lab kiss.

  “Hey, Catcher,” he said. “Hey, boy.”

  “I waited,” I said, not ready to let go of being mad at him.

  “I know,” he said, looking up. His smile was sweet. “I’m glad you waited.”

  He stood. Catcher whined a little, looking back at the house.

  “I have to go,” I said. I nodded toward the house. “They’re up. And I’m dead.”

  He laced his fingers through mine. “So if you’re already in trouble, what’s a few more minutes?”

  “They’re probably worried,” I said, moving away. He tugged me back and then his arms were around me.

  • • •

  “DON’T GO,” HE SAID. “DON’T leave me, Zoey. Stay with me, baby.”

  I’m not in the woods with Seth. I am not fourteen. I am looking into Paul’s face, which is wet with tears. He’s holding me on his lap, rocking me back and forth. His gun lays on the ground. My shirt is black with blood, but I don’t feel anything. Mike is lying beside me, eyes sightless, staring into nowhere. Beside him is the sack of money, useless to him now.

  • • •

  THEN I’M WITH SETH AGAIN, unlacing my fingers from his.

  “It’s too late,” I tell him. “I have to go.”

  “No,” he says. “It’s not. Come walk with me. Just for a little while.”

  I look back at the house. I’m dead anyway. Might as well have a little fun first.

  SIX MONTHS LATER

  forty-four

  It’s a brutal ninety-three-degree summer afternoon in Manhattan. The kung fu temple doesn’t have air-conditioning and the girls are drenched, red-faced, and breathing heavy. I stand in the corner, watching—encouraging, admonishing, cajoling. It’s good for them to suffer and to push through anyway. And there are no worried moms sitting in the sidelines for this class, so I push even harder.

  “You’re almost there,” I tell them. “Cool down in five.”

  Really it’s more like fifteen, but who’s counting? Hope is a good thing.

  The new girl is in the corner sipping on ice chips.

  You’re not really studying kung fu if you haven’t thrown up at least once, I told her in the bathroom.

  Great, she said.

  When she comes back of her own accord and joins the girls for the final striking drill, I smile. She’ll make it.

  Then we’re done, and the girls collapse, laughing. They take turns at the water fountain, senior students letting the less experienced drink first.

  “Don’t gulp,” I warn. “You’ll be sick.”

  I’m still limping badly, tire easily, should really be using a crutch. But here I try to walk without it. When the elevator pings, I look up to see the guardian from the group home where the girls live. Melba is a tall black woman, fit and elegant in white linen pants and tank top.

  “It’s an oven in here,” she says, bowing at the entrance and slipping off her flip-flops. She’s a student here, too.

  I flip on the ceiling fans that literally do nothing except move the hot air around. The tall windows are open wide, just letting in the sounds of the city. There is no breeze.

  “How’d they do today?” she asks

  “Marisol got a little overexerted,” I say. “But she’s okay. They all did great. They’re getting stronger.”

  She nods. “It’s a good thing,” she says. “What about you?”

  “I’m getting stronger, too.”

  She regards me with kind eyes, someone used to seeing beneath the surface. I am still getting used to talking to people, allowing myself to be seen. “You seem—well.”

  “I’m—um—getting there.”

  “That’s a lot,” she said. “Considering.”

  • • •

  WHEN THE GIRLS LEAVE, THE space is quiet except for the continuous music of the city streets—horns, and tires on asphalt, air brakes, and manholes clanking, construction and voices, the hiss of buses. I sit a moment in the center of the room, and draw in and release several deep breaths.

  Inhale: I dwell in the present moment. Exhale: It is a wonderful moment.

  I almost mean it.

  • • •

  IN THE BACK, PAUL IS doing the books. He is thin, drawn through the face, but stronger than he has been in years. A new cocktail of meds, stem cell therapy, and a new technology called an Aerobika Oscillating Positive Expiratory Pressure Therapy System has him stable and moving about more.
There’s no cure for what he has, but he has more time than we thought. And none of us can ask for more.

  “How are we doing?” I ask.

  I sit in the chair across from my desk, which used to be Mike’s. I haven’t changed much in this space, though I did take down his display of Tibetan masks. I still see the one he wore that night in my dreams. Another nightmare among many that visit me when I am unquiet.

  But I loved Mike, and that hasn’t changed much either. I hate what he did, what he would have done. But there was also a man who pulled me back from the edge and taught me everything I knew. He held me, bandaged me, massaged me, iced me, and taught me how to grab the harness of my power and never let anyone take it back, not even him. That was the real Mike, too. And I can keep that Mike, I decided. And I’ll let the other man—the dirty cop, the man who hired the Beckham brothers and Didion to take the money back from my father, the one who didn’t stop it when he could, who was responsible for all the horror in my life—whether he intended that or not—go.

  Paul put a bullet through his heart in the warehouse. Mike is gone. That Mike is not going to be a part of my life moving forward—not in anger, or hatred, or thoughts of revenge. I’ve finally learned the lesson he tried to teach me. I wish it hadn’t cost so much to understand.

  “You’re in the black, kid,” Paul says, looking away from the screen.

  He issues a cough, and I brace to race for the inhaler, but he gives a quick wave to indicate he’s okay. “Last two months, you’re turning a profit.”

  Mike left the school to me in his will, along with all its mountainous debt. When I recovered from my multiple injuries, including a bullet wound in the abdomen, I infused the place with the cash left in my account, hired some teachers and a marketing firm. We have an afterschool pick-up, some teen volunteers who get free instruction, a kiddie class on Saturday mornings, and the free Saturday afternoon for the girls from Melba’s group home.

  That money. It will do some good.

  We hear the elevator ping and I go outside to see Boz shuffling in, sweating like he’s run a mile.

  “Christ,” he said. “Is there any place worse on earth than this city in the summer? I don’t know how you do it. And—hello? Air-conditioning.”