by Jim Heskett
Magda fell to her knees, her face screwed up in agony. She pleaded and begged, but Lilah kept her demon eyes forward, her hand lifted with the finger pointed.
With her other hand, Lilah swept back her jacket and took a pistol from the back of her pants. Her shaking hand wobbled as she raised the gun.
Seth saw this and removed his own pistol from inside his coat. He bellowed, but Micah only saw his mouth moving, no words coming out.
The cop leaped into action, unclipping a revolver from his hip holster. He jabbed his other finger in the air toward Lilah, barking at her to lower the gun.
Two nearby groups of coffin racers fled, leaving that section of the street open. While classic rock still wailed from nearby tent speakers, the street now filled with shouts and screams.
Three guns out, fingers on triggers.
Micah wrapped his arms around Magda and dove into the street, landing on top of her, holding her down and covering her as she wailed and wept.
Two gunshots went off. Then a third.
The music from the tent ceased. The street fell silent. So quiet that Micah could hear the plinking of the spent shell casings bouncing off the pavement.
Micah looked up to find Lilah flat on her back with a bullet hole through her cheek. Blood leaked from it like a water bottle turned on its side, rushing and then slowing, rushing and then slowing.
Sound returned as the gunshot echoes faded.
Seth was on the ground, writhing in agony, his hands over his stomach. The police officer stood off to the side, his arms extended, smoke rising from the barrel of his pistol.
Micah pushed himself off Magda and she stayed curled in the fetal position on the ground. Her eyes shut tight, her lips moving soundlessly. Micah studied her mouth for a few seconds, until he could tell what she was whispering.
The Hail Mary.
Epilogue
Micah opened the front door of his condo in Lower Downtown Denver, the trendy neighborhood known as LoDo. Three weeks’ worth of mail and packages would be waiting for him down in the manager’s office, but that could wait until tomorrow.
Magda stood outside in the hall, still and quiet. Studying the frame around his front door.
He turned back into the hall and waved her inside. She was a little better today, not so withdrawn, not stooped and shrunken into herself, but she wasn’t the same as she used to be.
She wasn’t a person. She was a shell. However many months or years of therapy she would need to be whole again, Micah had no idea. He’d done his job and taken his sister away from Nederland, and now the cleanup part would have to begin.
Magda bowed her head and walked inside the apartment. She dragged a shoe across the plush carpet and gazed up at the vaulted ceilings. “Wow, Michael, this is nice.”
“Micah,” he said. “You have to start calling me Micah.”
She nodded, with an absent-minded blank stare making her eyes wet and unfocused. Since the EMTs had carried Lilah out of the street in a body bag, Magda had wavered in and out of a dream state.
“Micah,” she mused. “Still sounds weird.”
“Would you like some coffee?”
She shrugged and wandered to his couch, then picked up a catalog for REI that had been sitting on his coffee table for three months, and flipped through it. “How do you afford this condo?”
He filled the coffee pot with water, then studied his sister for a moment before answering. “I have a job, but the Witness Protection people bought it for me. They also got me a job here. That was part of the deal.”
“It’s hard to believe, you know, how you got here. Will you tell me about Witness Protection?”
Micah took a deep breath, readied himself to spill everything. “I’d flunked out of school. I was looking for work, and a friend of mine…” he paused, incapable of saying the friend’s name. Micah wouldn’t say his name, not after Micah’s actions had gotten him killed. “He got me work in Luis Velasquez’s organization.”
Her head tilted. “Wait, I know that name. Is that the guy they called El Lobo?”
Micah nodded. “At first, it was going on ride alongs, sparring with rival drug dealers. I had no idea who I was working for. Then it gradually got more serious, and I was doing things that I couldn’t believe. I was drunk all the time, so I didn’t pause to think about it. It wasn’t like reality, you know? Like a movie or some dream.
“But, then I got arrested, and they flipped me. Didn’t give me much choice. I was the government’s main witness against Velasquez and a lot of his top people.”
“How did it start? I mean… a Mexican cartel? Do you know how crazy it sounds?”
Micah shrugged. “I do. But I just kept coming back and doing what they told me to do. I earned my way in by not asking too many questions. It wasn’t like they gave me a Sinaloa cartel monogrammed sweatshirt, you know? No company Christmas parties. I rarely interacted with the important people.”
“And your testimony put them in jail, right?”
Micah nodded. “Yeah, a lot of them. There are still some of those people left, mostly back in Mexico.”
“So then the trial, then you become a whole different person?”
“More or less. I had to do some time, in a WitSec protective custody wing of a prison. But once all that was done, they told me I could move here, or Wyoming, or Idaho. I picked here because I knew you were nearby.”
She tugged on her lower lip, staring at the wall. Magda didn’t have any more questions, apparently.
“Can I ask you a question about what happened?” he said.
She flipped pages in the catalog, then tilted her head in response.
He took the coffee from the cabinet and opened the can. “Why didn’t you ever tell Lilah about the documents I printed from her computer?”
Magda closed the magazine and sat back. She wandered to the curtains, looking through the window to the hazy outline of mountains to the west. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to get you in trouble.”
He nodded and dumped the ground coffee into the filter and started the machine, then said, “hang on a sec.”
Micah walked into his bedroom, then lifted the carpet where it met the wall in the corner. He removed the two floorboards closest to the wall, grabbed the shoebox from the open space underneath. Carried the shoebox back into the living room, and Magda turned from the window, her arms crossed in front of her stomach. Like she was holding it in. “I don’t know how to…” she said, drifting off at the end.
Micah waved her over to the couch and opened the shoebox. “I wasn’t supposed to keep any of this stuff, but I couldn’t get rid of it.”
He dug through the pile of flash drives, photographs, and letters until he found what he was looking for: a picture of Micah, Magda, their brother, and their parents, standing in front of the Alamo in San Antonio. Big grins on Micah and Magda’s teenage faces. He remembered that day. He’d gotten stoned in an alleyway between two random buildings a few minutes before this picture was taken.
She leaned over and her lips curled up, but it wasn’t exactly a smile. “I looked so different back then. That long hair.”
Micah held the picture out to her. “Take it.”
She accepted it, then held it gingerly in her lap. “Mom and Dad miss you.”
A stab of pain hit Micah’s chest. He usually tried not to think about them, since he couldn’t do anything about it. “I know. I’m sorry about that, but you can’t tell them about me. Do you understand? If they know, then maybe they tell some of their friends, and it gets out, and then it puts their lives in danger. I mean, I could have put you at risk by coming up to Nederland to find you. I was in a tight spot, and I did the selfish thing by involving you in my life again.”
Magda ran her thumb over the picture. “But I’m glad you did.”
He hadn’t expected this. “Are you?”
“Yes. I thought you were dead, and now I know you’re not. I get that I have to keep it a secret, but I’m happy you’re
okay.”
He scooted closer on the couch and wrapped an arm around her. She leaned in, resting her head on his shoulder. After a few seconds, he felt the wetness of her tears soaking through his shirt. Felt the warmth of her hair brushing against his neck.
“I love you, sis.”
“I love you too, brother.”
He wanted to ask her what she would do next, but he figured she probably didn’t know. She had a hard journey ahead of her.
For now, he hoped holding her tight was good enough.
A NOTE TO READERS
Ready to read the sequel? Click here to get it.
Want to know when the next book is coming out? Join my mailing list to get updates and free stuff!
Thank you for reading my book. In case you were wondering, yes, Frozen Dead Guy Days is a real thing that happens every year in Nederland (pronounced Nedd-urr-lund) Colorado, and it’s as weird and wonderful as described in this book.
If you started reading Micah Reed’s adventure with this book, go back and take a gander at Airbag Scars. Micah’s backstory will make a lot more sense. But don’t worry, more details about his past are coming in future books…
Please consider leaving reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. I know it’s a pain, but you have no idea how much it will help the success of this book and my ability to write future books. That, sharing it on social media, and telling other people to read it.
I have a website where you can learn more about me and my other projects. Check me out at www.jimheskett.com and sign up for my mailing list so you can stay informed on the latest news. You’ll even get some freebies for signing up. You like free stuff, right?
For Billy, the Guru. And for all the looners out there.
Books by Jim Heskett
For a full list of all Jim Heskett’s books, please visit www.RoyalArchBooks.com
If you like thrillers, you’ll want to take a gander at my Whistleblower Trilogy. The first book, Wounded Animals, follows the story of Tucker Candle, who meets a mysterious stranger who warns him not to take a business trip. Candle goes, however, and when he comes home, he discovers a dead man in his bathroom and his wife is missing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jim Heskett was born in the wilds of Oklahoma, raised by a pack of wolves with a station wagon and a membership card to the local public swimming pool. Just like the man in the John Denver song, he moved to Colorado in the summer of his 27th year, and never looked back. Aside from an extended break traveling the world, he hasn't let the Flatirons mountains out of his sight.
He fell in love with writing at the age of fourteen with a copy of Stephen King's The Shining. Poetry became his first outlet for teen angst, then later some terrible screenplays, and eventually short and long fiction. In between, he worked a few careers that never quite tickled his creative toes successfully, and hasn't ever forgotten about Stephen King. You can find him currently huddled over a laptop in an undisclosed location in Colorado, dreaming up ways to kill beloved characters.
He blogs at his own site and hosts the Indie Author Answers Podcast. You can also scour the internet to find the occasional guest post or podcast appearance. A curated list of media appearances can be found at www.jimheskett.com/media. He believes the huckleberry is the king of berries and refuses to be persuaded in any other direction.
If you’d like to ask a question or just to say hi, stop by the About page and fill out the contact form.