by Callie Hart
His tattoos are a warning. Mother Nature made the most dangerous of all her creatures colorful, patterned and hostile, a caution against attack, violence or consumption. Whether he meant to or not, Rooke has accomplished the same thing with his ink. Fucking with him is unsafe and ill advised. To interfere with him is to invite turmoil and anarchy to your doorstep. I’ve seen the way people look at him. They see the tattoos, as well as his formidable size, and they shrink back into themselves, looking quickly away before he can notice them noticing him.
I’ve seen past the ink, though. I’ve moved beyond the way he looks, the way he holds his body, and the way you feel nailed to the wall when he looks at you. He’s shown me a softness I would never have expected from him, and it’s turned a tide in my heart. I think only he would have been capable of such a thing. His mouth twists into a very small, quiet kind of smile.
“I’ve never had anyone here before. You’re the first.”
This surprises me. I would have thought his bedroom had a revolving door on it, given how confident he seems with women. I really don’t like thinking about that, though. Even more surprising. I was never jealous with Andrew. I never worried about him flirting with other women at work, or some pretty young thing taking a shine to him. I just accepted that he was with me and that was that. If he wanted to go off and cheat, then that simply meant our relationship was broken beyond repair and I was better off without him anyway.
With Rooke, the idea of his hands on another woman’s body makes me feel physically ill. Even thinking about him with girls in the past makes me seriously uncomfortable.
“Why?” I ask. “Why have you never brought anyone here?”
“Because. This is my space. I can think here. I can be real. Having someone else here compromises that.”
“Then why did you bring me here?”
His smile turns crooked. “Because you’re part of me, Sasha. It doesn’t matter where I go with you. I can always be real. And so can you.” He pauses. “Tell me about him. Tell me the parts you miss the most.”
He’s talking about Christopher. I told him back in the car that I’d answer his questions, tell him anything he wanted to know. That doesn’t make this any easier, though. It doesn’t make my chest any less tight as I shift on his bed. I gather his bed sheets around me, covering myself, and I hug my knees to my chest.
“He was small for his age,” I say quietly. “His arms and legs always kind of looked too long for his body. All the other kids in his class were in the middle of growth spurts, but he seemed content with being small. He loved to play. He loved animals. He wanted to be a vet.”
I look down at my hands. I haven’t used them to sign in so long. It feels wrong to even be considering doing so right now, but slowly I begin to make the shapes that come rushing back to me. Monkey. Elephant. Duck. Mouse. Tiger. Dinosaur. All of Christopher’s favorite animals. Rooke watches intensely, taking everything in. Signing takes precise movement and practice. It’s strange to watch Rooke use his huge hands, hands undoubtedly intimately acquainted with violence, to mimic my movements. There’s an unexpected grace to him that makes my heart burn painfully in my chest.
I’m struck with a strange and saddening realization: Christopher would have really loved Rooke. Just like the man sitting in front of me, my son had a way of knowing how things worked, especially people. He would have been able to see beyond Rooke’s gruff, frankly frightening exterior and see the man beneath.
Rooke would have made him happy.
TWENTY-FIVE
THE NURSE
ROOKE
JERICHO: Asked around. Might know something about the guy from the museum. Come by after nine.
Mother. Fucking. Asshole.
I’ve been staring at Jericho’s text all night while Sasha has been sleeping, and I’ve been trying to decide what to do. I meant what I said to her. I promised her I would kill the fucking guy who broke into the museum and put her through hell, and I intend on following through with that promise. I just didn’t know if telling her what I am planning was for the best, though. There’s no way she would let me go. No way in hell.
Laying in bed next to her is such a fucking gift. I listen to her breathe through the dark hours of the night, and I think. I think really fucking hard. There’s a smart way to handle this, and there’s a dumb way to handle it. I asked Jericho weeks ago to help me find the fucker from the museum, and now he thinks he might know where he is. Okay. So do I go over there, guns blazing, demanding Jericho hand over the information so I can find this evil son of a bitch and shoot him in the back of the head? Or do I wait? Ask Jake what to do? Go and see Arnold, maybe see if he can find me some backup?
I lie there and I stew. At dawn, Sasha rolls over onto her side so that she’s facing me, her dark hair a mass of loose curls arranged madly around her peaceful face, and I just stare at her. She is so unexpected. Never in a million fucking years would I have imagined her into existence. I haven’t spent a great deal of time picturing what the woman I would fall in love with would be like. Honestly, a part of me just assumed I never would allow myself to do something so fucking stupid as fall in love. Now that she’s here, naked in my bed, her hands curled into fists like she’s trying to fight off demons in her sleep, I’m undone. I’m not thinking rationally. I want to protect her so badly that I can’t seem to focus on anything or anyone else, and my blood feels like it’s constantly on a low simmer as it travels through my veins because I can’t seem to keep her from harm. Harm caused by other people, as well as harm caused by herself.
I stroke the wild strands of her hair out of her face and I study every line of her, committing them to memory: her high cheekbones; the slight, gentle upturn to her nose; the thick, dark lashes that rim her eyelids; the swollen pout of her lips. I try not to see the fading bruises, or her spilt lip. Seeing them only makes me fucking crazy. She’s so fragile. So breakable. I’m determined to make sure nothing ever happens to her again.
At five forty I climb out of bed, careful not to wake her. It’s still dark outside, the world shrouded in shadows. When I look out the window, I find everything masked in a thick layer of white, so much snow for as far as the eye can see, buildings, cars, mailboxes all buried and hidden. That will make life harder for me, but not impossible. Quickly collecting some clothes from my walk-in, I gather everything I need together and I bundle it under my arm, then I stoop down beside Sasha and I reach underneath the bed. My go-bag is right where it always is. Right next to it is a smaller black leather bag. One I don’t normally take out very often. I grab both of them by the straps and I make my way out of the bedroom, holding my breath, hoping Sasha doesn’t wake up. She doesn’t even stir. Downstairs on the ground floor, I put on my jeans, thermal shirt, down jacket, a rain jacket, and my thick waterproof Sorels, and I check inside my bags. My tools are inside my go-bag, every one of them where they’re meant to be. I take the small leather pouch containing my throwing knives and I slip it into my back pocket. From the other bag, I remove the Browning Buck Mark that I’ve had ever since I got out of juvi. The gun is small. Nothing special. There are plenty of far more impressive, flashier, more theatrical pieces out there that I could have bought, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. Gang bangers go for big guns. They go for bling—a weapon that, in their eyes at least, reflects their status. Gun dealers talk when they sell a piece like that. They keep tabs on people, and they show an interest. I wanted something average and unremarkable that would get the job done. Something that wouldn’t have people following me in order to see what I was up to twenty-four seven.
The clip is full. The safety is on. For now. Outside on the street, Jake’s car is missing. He took it with him when he went to play his gig last night, and he hasn’t brought it back. Could be he got snowed in somewhere. Could be he hooked up with a groupie and got his dick wet. Either way, I can’t borrow his ride.
I turn my keys over in my pocket as I hurry down the street. Cold. So fucking cold. I don�
��t seem to feel it, though. I’m numb from the pores of my skin down to the very basement of my soul. By the time I find a cab and make it across to Jericho’s place, the sun is a brightly burning disk of silver in the sky, hovering just above the buildings on the horizon.
The garage isn’t open. I hammer my gloved fist against the shutter, and Raul eventually appears, his mouth set into a grim, downturned expression.
“You’re late. We thought maybe you changed your mind.”
I don’t say anything. I slip silently past him, gritting my teeth together. Inside, Jericho is standing over the auto repair pit with a pair of bolt cutters in his hand. The front of his shirt is drenched in blood. His eyes are filled with murder when he lifts his head and looks at me.
“Have you been dealing with my problems for me, Jericho?”
He grips a toothpick between his front teeth, grimacing at me. “No, no, Cuervo. This is one of my problems. I’ll happily deal with yours, too, though. I’m on a roll.”
I don’t look down into the pit. It would be ill-advised. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a dead body—not since I left juvi—and looking a dead man square on the eye right now would only make me question what I have to do next. I don’t care who’s down there. Jericho’s business is Jericho’s business. I need to concentrate on handling my own. “You know where he is?” I ask.
Jericho tosses the bolt cutters over in his hand and spits his toothpick down onto the mess he’s made in the pit. “I do. Margot Fredricks. You know who this is?”
“I’ve heard of her. She’s a nurse or something.” When you’re in this line of work, sometimes you get hurt. Often, you get hurt, and you can’t just walk into the hospital. Get patched up like a civilian off the street. People ask questions about gunshots. They want to know how you ended up with five stab wounds to your torso. They call the cops when it looks like you’ve broken eight bones in your hand because you’ve beaten someone half to death. So people like Margot exist. People with medical training, who’ll take money under the table in exchange for treatment.
“My friend here was holding out on some information that I wanted quite badly,” he says, gesturing to the pit. “He was being stubborn, and I was getting a little carried away. He needed stitching back together while I continued my conversation with him, so Raul took him over to see Margot last night. She had another patient, it seems. A man with a head injury. Some ginger guy with a bad temper.”
“He tried to start with me,” Raul adds. “He was fucking crazy. When I saw the tattoo on the back of his hand, I knew he was your guy.”
Why the fuck didn’t I think of that? I should have. I knew he was hurt. It makes sense that this motherfucker would look for help. “What’s Margot’s address?” I growl.
Raul looks to Jericho, who nods. Reaching into his pocket, Raul then produces a slip of paper and hands it to me. “I don’t know if you’ll get much sense out of him. He was rambling all kinds of madness before he got rough with me. After I hit him in the head a couple of times, he stopped rambling altogether.”
I grunt, slipping the paper into the back pocket of my jeans. “Thanks. Did Margot tell you who he was? Did she know his name?”
Raul nods just once. “Casper. She said his name was Casper.”
******
Margot Fredricks is a short, slim woman in her late forties. She looks stunned when she opens the door to me, like she was expecting someone but it wasn’t me. She glances up and down the hallway littered with used hypodermics and discarded baggies, nervous. Twitchy. “Can I help you?” she asks. She has the haunted, bone-weary look of someone who has to ask this question to dangerous strangers at least five times a day.
“Jericho gave me your address. He said you had someone here. Someone I’m looking for.”
“I don’t know any Jericho. And I live here alone. I’m afraid you must have the wrong apartment.”
I take a step forward, narrowing my eyes at her. “Look at me. Do I look like the kind of guy you should be lying to right now? I’m not in the mood to be fucked with. Invite me in.”
She looks flustered. There’s a hard edge in her eyes, though. She’s used to being threatened. She’s used to dealing with people like me. Only the left-hand side of her body is visible. She’s holding the door half closed, the edge of the wood jammed up against her chest. On the other side of the door, I hear the familiar sound of a gun being cocked. “I think you should leave now. I don’t like being bothered unexpectedly by strangers who don’t have an appointment.”
I’m not leaving. No fucking way am I leaving. I take another step forward, so that I’m only a foot away from her now. “And I don’t like hitting women,” I say quietly. “I think it’s a cardinal fucking sin to hit a woman, in fact. That doesn’t mean I won’t kick down this fucking door and force my way into your apartment, though. It doesn’t mean I won’t make a bully of myself to get what I came here for. Do you understand what I’m saying, Ms. Fredricks?”
“You think I don’t know how to defend myself?” A low tapping sound rings out into the hallway—the gun she’s holding in her hand behind the door, rapping against the wood.
She’s brave, I’ll give her that. Really brave. Still. I came here for a very important purpose. I’m not leaving until it’s taken care of. “Step away from the door,” I tell her.
“Are you deaf? You need to leave. Now.”
“Fucking move, or I’m going to move you myself.”
Margot’s a smart woman. She registers the tone in my voice, and she knows what’s about to happen: I am about to really lose my fucking temper. I am about to really lose my shit, and she is standing directly in the path of the storm. She makes a frustrated, angry sound as she moves back, allowing me inside. “Tell Jericho he’s not welcome here anymore. Tell him not to send anyone else here again. I’m done dealing with his—”
“I’m not a fucking errand boy. Tell him yourself.” I should be a little more mindful of the fact that this woman has a gun, but I’m too lit up with anger to really pay her any attention. She’s not going to shoot me. She operates an illegal hospital from her apartment. She needs the income and badly, or she wouldn’t be taking such a huge risk. She doesn’t want the cops here any more than I do. I tear through the apartment, moving from room to room. There’s medical equipment everywhere. A gurney in the hallway. A row of IV stands in the living room. Even a heart monitor balanced precariously on top of the television.
“No! Don’t go in there, that’s a sterile—”
I force open a door, charging inside. Inside, the space is immaculate, spotless, and smells heavily of disinfectant. I was expecting a bedroom, but this room could easily be an OR in a hospital. It’s fully stocked with yet another heart monitor, what looks like a respirator, metal stands, with blue sheets of paper covering surgical instruments. No people, though. No redheaded Casper.
“Are you happy now? What the fuck is wrong with you? I told you there was no one here!” Margot is a ball of fury as she barrels into the room behind me.
“Where is he?” I demand. “Where’s Casper?”
“I’m not telling you shit, asshole. You’ve no right to barge in here—”
I move swiftly. I’m not even thinking. I close my hand around Margot’s throat, and I take three giant steps, forcing her to move with me until her back is pressed firmly up against the wall. Her eyes are wide. She swallows, and I feel the movement of her throat beneath my hand. She’s stunned. Paralyzed, a rabbit trapped in headlights. I lean a little closer to her, so I’m all she can see, smell and hear. I need her to understand me. She needs to really believe the words that come out of my mouth next. “Do not test me. Do not open your fucking mouth again unless it’s to give me the information I am looking for. Do you understand?”
She nods.
“I am looking for a man named Casper. He was here. I know he was. Where. Is. He. Now?”
“He left,” she whispers. “After that other guy Jericho sent over nearly fucking
killed him last night. I don’t know where the hell he went, but he was furious.”
I loosen my hold on her neck. Looking down, I see something has me struggling to put a leash on my anger: a pair of beaten, tan leather shoes. The right shoelace is red. The left one is black. I growl under my breath. “What time did he leave?”
“About three.”
“Where did he go?”
“He didn’t say. He was ranting and raving about finding another doctor. I told him not to go, that he needed to rest, but he wouldn’t listen. He just kept on and on about this doctor.”
“Why would he need another doctor if he was receiving treatment here?”
“How should I know? He had a serious head injury. Nothing he said made sense. He was going nuts about finding another doctor from the moment he staggered through the damn door.”
I let her go. I can see she’s telling the truth. She really doesn’t know where he’s gone. At this point, if she did know, I’m pretty sure she’d tell me whatever she knew just to get me to leave.
“Fuck.” I scrub my hands through my hair, trying to remember how to breathe. He was here. He was just fucking here. I should never have waited. I should have left the house last night, the moment Jericho sent that message over. So fucking stupid.
I turn around and Margot’s arms are raised. She’s holding her gun in her hands, the gun I’ve been ignoring until now, and she looks pissed. The weapon is pointed right at my head, and her finger is hovering over the trigger. “I really am going to have to ask you to leave now,” she hisses.