“I don’t think you did, but I’ll take that chance, too.”
“Do you really want me dead?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But you being alive doesn’t seem to work.”
His voice was loud and uncontrolled with fear. “Why don’t you kill Carson? Why does he get to live? And not me?”
My finger tightened on the trigger. “I think about Carson Peters every day.”
“You lied to me,” Jordan Stone said again with great bitterness. “Just like everyone else. Just like the whole shitty world. You tricked me.”
“I guess I did.”
“Why won’t you just let me go? I tried to turn my life around.”
“Why should that matter? After what you did? Why should you ever get that chance?”
“Don’t you believe in mercy? Redemption? Don’t you?”
“Not when it comes to you, I don’t.”
He started crying and got down on his knees. Face upturned, less than a foot from the end of the barrel. “I’m begging you, Ashlee. Please. I liked you. I thought I was falling in love with you.”
The thought disgusted me more than anything he’d said. “Shut up. You don’t know me. You never knew me. I was a fantasy to get you here. Everything about me was a fantasy. You don’t know anything about me.”
“Please.”
It was too much talking. The more I heard his voice, the harder it was. I wished I had shot him the second we got out of the car, before he ever opened his mouth. “Shut up,” I said again. “Stand up and take it like a man, at least.”
“No!” There was unexpected vehemence in his voice. “You can kill me but you don’t get to tell me to be a man about it. The guards told me that in prison, too. Just be a man. Like that somehow makes it better.” He was weeping, and mucus ran from his nose down to his lips. He curled into a ball and put his arms over his eyes, the side of his face pressed into the dirt.
I aimed the barrel just above the top of his ear. The small caliber didn’t matter. The first shot would kill him. The .22 was popular with hit men and assassination squads all over the world. Quiet, lethal. It would be a quick, instantaneous death. The opposite of my parents’. But the point wasn’t some precise balancing of the scales, some karmic repositioning of the universe. The point was that Jordan Stone would be gone from the world.
That was all I wanted.
Right?
Hit men. Assassins.
I realized I was still holding the gun, the front sight lined up perfectly with the tip of his ear. No chance I’d miss. .22 ammo was cheap. I’d fired over five thousand times from this gun, aiming at targets at a much greater distance than Jordan Stone was right now. The sight formed a perfect triangular point just above his ear. Nothing would go wrong. He would be dead, just like I wanted.
Hit men. Assassins.
Murder.
That was them, though. Them. Not me.
I looked at the curled, convulsing body on the ground. Even without the gun I would have felt completely safe. By the time I’d finished high school I’d had over fifty amateur fights, sparred over two thousand rounds in the gym. The gun in my hand barely mattered. I would have felt fine taking on Jordan Stone without it.
He deserved to die. Which left only one question. Who did I want to be?
I made a decision. Pushed all the doubt away.
I pulled the trigger.
There was no recoil. Just a brittle snap that echoed into the night.
Jordan Stone screamed and his body stiffened.
The echo spread through the air and faded.
I spoke. “Get up.”
An eye peeked up fearfully from under an arm. “You shot me.”
“Get up,” I said again, more impatiently. There was an almost undiscernible mark about a foot away from his head, where my bullet had pocketed into the dry earth. “You’re fine.”
His voice was quiet and frightened. “What are you going to do to me?”
“If I had meant to shoot you, I would have.”
He slowly got up and looked at me, arms crossed in front of his chest, hands almost on his shoulders. He looked very small. “You’re not going to kill me?”
I ignored his question. “You’re going to head in any direction you want except west. Stay out of California and never come back. That’s the deal.”
“But my parole officer. They’ll put out an arrest warrant for me if I don’t check in.”
“That’s your problem.”
“My friends, my family—everyone I know is in Hercules.”
“You took my family from me,” I said. “Forever. You think I feel guilty?”
I didn’t want to be there with this sniveling, begging demon who had chased me through so many dreams. I felt sick. All the subterfuge of the last months hit me all at once. The revenge stories I had loved as a girl hadn’t prepared me. They made revenge sound thrilling, exhilarating. I didn’t feel anything of the kind. Without another word I got back in the car.
“You can’t just leave me out here!” he shouted after me. “It’s the middle of nowhere!”
But I did.
I left him and drove away, and that was the last anyone heard of Jordan Stone, as far as I knew. I never saw any mention of his name in the papers. He had vanished. There was one thing he’d said, though. His accusation about my lies. I didn’t like that he’d been right. I had lied. “So I decided I wouldn’t lie anymore, to anyone. I never saw Jordan Stone again.”
I lay in bed next to my brother. Seeing the light scrabbling at the curtains. It was fully dawn. My brother’s forehead was no longer feverish; now his sweat felt cold against me. I found more towels, ran warm water from the tap, mopped hot compresses across his face and chest. My clothing, my skin, soaked in his sweat. It didn’t feel unpleasant. It was him. My brother. It just made me love him more.
“Nik?”
“Yeah?”
“I think I’m feeling better.”
I hugged him. “Good.”
“Who were those men who came for you, Nik? What did they want?”
“They wanted bad things.”
“They’re after you?”
“Yeah. I guess they are.”
“So what happens now? We hide again? Run somewhere else?”
“No.” I watched the light pulse against the curtain. Knowing the day that stood in front of me. “We don’t hide from them.”
“If you don’t hide, then they catch you. That’s how it works.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “They can find me. They can catch me.”
He looked at me, frightened. “I don’t understand.”
I answered with my eyes still on the window. Thinking of another window, in the cabin, that cracked and useless exit that had come to represent a final, slender plank between life and death. Karen Li, trying to escape the unescapable, fist beating glass with the futility of a moth’s wing. They had come into my life. I hadn’t sought them out. They had found me, taken her, tried to take my brother. Tried to take everything that mattered.
That had happened once to me. People taking everything away.
I wouldn’t let it happen again.
I wanted Brandon to understand. “It’s not just that they’re after me.”
“What is it, then?”
“I’m after them.”
42
I went home, showered, slept for a couple of hours, and got to the bookstore by mid-morning after placing a brief call to Charles Miller. We agreed we’d meet for a coffee that afternoon. There was something I wanted to give him. I was trying to ignore the fact that I was utterly exhausted for what would likely be the most challenging day of my life. The week before, with Halloween around the corner, Jess had stacked a row of pumpkins, hung witches and devils from the walls, and created a special Horror section with titles by Stephen King, Mary Shelley, Robert Bloch, Anne Rice.
Halloween—October 31.
November 1 was a single day away.
; I knew what I had to do. Pulling it off was another question entirely.
I had arrived intending only to have a quick word with Jess, but it was busy enough that we didn’t have a chance to do more than nod hello. A beefy guy in camouflage shorts and a floppy safari hat had come in with a dolly stacked with boxes, over three hundred books he wanted to sell in one go. I found myself trying to explain Old English to an international student while a grad student pestered me for books we didn’t have.
The dolly guy checked his watch. “How much longer will this take?”
“Will I have to read other books in Oldest English?” He was a tall, black-haired Korean boy wearing bright green glasses and gold sneakers.
“What’s your course?”
He unfolded a syllabus. “Survey of English Literature, Beginning to 1500.”
“It’s a definite possibility,” I informed him, pulling a copy of Beowulf from the shelf.
He looked like he was going to cry. “Can you tutor me?”
“I’d come back, but I rented this dolly by the hour,” the beefy guy was saying. He wore a tank top that showed off an astonishing amount of chest and back hair.
I felt my forehead start to throb. “Be patient, please.” Too many voices, too many people asking for things, wanting things from me. Too much to do.
“My dissertation is on Gibbon,” the grad student was complaining. “What am I supposed to do without volume five of The Decline and Fall?”
“I don’t know what to tell you.” I was getting a sharp headache.
“I think it’s only fair that you should split the dolly rental with me.”
I felt a small piece of something within me snap. “Take your damn dolly and stick it—” I headed for the door as he sputtered. I had to push my tiredness aside and start readying myself for the coming night. I’d catch up with Jess later.
I was halfway out the door when I was bumped by someone coming in.
Zoe.
The day changed again.
It took me a moment to recognize her under the blackened eye, the bruised arm, the tear-stained mascara that looked like it hadn’t been washed off from the night before. The last time I had seen her, when we had sat comfortably on the beanbags, seemed a world away. Now she was shaking, her voice raw.
I helped her sit. “What happened?” One of those pointless questions. Like wondering why an earthquake hit. Reasons didn’t always matter. Sometimes just damage.
Short phrases came in between sobs. “I was out at a club and some guys were there, dancing with us, nothing bad. Luis came in with his friends and got jealous. There was a fight, he got arrested. This morning when he got home he blamed me for starting it.”
Jess was next to us. “I’ll get her to the hospital.”
“I’m going to talk to Luis,” I said to Zoe. “I need your address.”
She grabbed my arm. “No! You don’t understand what he’ll do to you.”
I barely heard her. There was something singing in my ears that drowned out the words people were saying to me. The singing noise seemed to be pushing me along so I didn’t have to think at all about what I was doing. I didn’t even feel tired anymore. All the doubt that had filled my mind recently now seemed wonderfully distant. Even Care4 didn’t seem to matter as much.
“I need your address,” I said again.
Zoe glanced from me to Jess, then back to me. Still not saying anything. Unsure.
“Last time he hurt you,” I said. “This time, he hurt you worse. Next time—and there will be one, because there always is—there’s no telling what he’ll do to you. Or whether you’ll be able to get away. So please, Zoe, give me your address.”
Her eyes were large and frightened. She looked down and was quiet for a few moments.
She looked up and, hesitantly, she told me the address.
I started toward the door without another word.
“Nikki, not when you’re angry,” Jess said. “You always say the planning is what matters.”
“You’re right. I should wait,” I acknowledged.
Jess relaxed a little. “Good.”
I walked out of the bookstore anyway.
The singing noise pushing me mindlessly along. Not just that, though. There was pragmatism mixed with my anger. I didn’t know what would happen to me in the coming night. No matter what, while I could act, I wanted to do this last thing. I wanted Zoe to be safe.
Zoe lived in Pittsburg, northeast of Berkeley by about twenty-five miles. A rough city, too far from removed to have soaked up the tech money that spread like a vast stain from the epicenter of Silicon Valley and San Francisco. The money. Endless amounts of the money. Soaking through what had once been flat green farmland and orchards and russet hills. Now infinite acres of luxury townhomes were set into those hills, development after identical development, postered by garish billboards advertising the newest in materials and finest in amenities. The money. Everywhere. In San Francisco, five coffee shops on every block and each one cuter and more perfect than the last, the whole city choking on construction cranes that wound around it like wisteria. People like Gregg Gunn, creating the money faster than the Treasury presses in D.C.
For whatever good that did.
I pulled up to a one-story house with an attached garage. In the driveway there was a black Escalade with shiny custom rims, windows tinted far past the point of legal. The small front yard covered equally by children’s toys and beer cans. I got off the motorcycle. Knowing that I was breaking all my rules. Not caring. The singing noise in my ears still pushing me along. I didn’t bother with my gloves. Left my purse on the seat and the keys in the ignition. I wouldn’t be long.
I’d been thinking so much. Trying to fit together pieces that refused to fit.
Now I didn’t need to think. I didn’t need anything to fit.
I only needed Luis.
The garage door was open but it might as well have been closed. It was too bright outside to make out anything within. Like looking at a black curtain and wondering what lay on the stage beyond.
I walked right into the darkness.
I stood on a pitted cement floor. An old red Mustang with no tires rested on stacks of cinder blocks to my left. Bared, the axles looked obscene. Across, on the far right, the adjoining door to the house was closed. Besides the sun streaming in from the open bay door, the only light came from a single bare lightbulb that hung off a thick orange cord from the ceiling above me. Hard rap music pounded from a subwoofer. I smelled sweat and motor oil and marijuana. There was a weight bench in front of me. A shirtless man in sneakers and mesh basketball shorts was doing bench presses. He was powerfully built, grunting with effort as he heaved up a bar loaded with discs of iron.
The man was Luis.
Without breaking my stride, I walked up and jammed my foot down against the bar he was pressing up. With the loud music he hadn’t even heard me walk in. There was a rattling sound and a fleshy thud as about two hundred pounds of iron-loaded bar fell onto his chest. He let out a gasp and rolled sideways off the narrow bench onto the cement floor. Weights spilled down and the bar clanged loudly.
“Hi, Luis,” I said. I took another step forward and kicked him in the mouth with the reinforced toe of my right boot. His lip split like it had been peeled apart, but the teeth held. I felt vague disappointment.
“Who the fuck are you?” he managed, raising his head.
“We’ve met. You’ll remember.” I brought up the heavy heel of my boot and drove it down into his left ear. Another thud as his head bounced off cement. Blood from his ear trickled down his cheek and joined blood from his lip.
“Shit!” He clutched the side of his head. “What do you want?” His words were fuzzy. Harder to talk with a split lip.
“Everything.”
Even through his pain, his face was bewildered. “What?”
“I want you to feel everything. Because everything you did to that girl in the last five years I’m going to do to you in the next
five minutes.”
He managed to get up on one knee. He looked up at me. “I’ll find both of you. You and that whore. I should have kicked her onto the street years ago. I’ll find you both.”
“Find me. Feels like everyone’s trying to find me. We’ll talk about you finding us. Right now, though, I found you.” The music was too loud. I jerked the subwoofer’s cord from the wall and the garage was quiet. Luis was poised to rise, eyes fixed on me, bulky pectoral muscles heaving as he breathed. He wiped blood from his face with the back of a hand.
“Go on,” I said. “Get up. I’ll let you.”
His body tensed but he remained frozen on one knee, suspecting a trick. There was no trick, though. I wanted him to stand up. So that we could continue. In my mind was a kind of grocery list of things that I intended to happen to Luis in the immediate future. He probably had his own list for me. We’d see who got to do what. “Get up,” I repeated.
We watched each other. Preparing. Then three things happened.
The interior adjoining door between house and garage opened.
Two men walked into the garage.
And Luis stood up.
“What the hell?” asked the guy on the left. He looked as surprised as I was. He had a broad frame with about twenty extra pounds spread around his gut. In his doughy face his eyes were small and malicious. He looked from me to Luis as if suspecting a joke. He was wearing a black muscle shirt and colorful board shorts and held a six-pack of Corona Extra bottles in his right hand.
I backed toward the bay door, my anger gone. Things had changed.
The guy on the right seemed to have read my mind. He was shorter than his friend, with a scruffy black beard and heavy boots. His hand shot out and hit a button on the wall as I backed up. The garage door began to close behind me. I backed up faster. I didn’t want to be in the garage anymore. Not with three of them. That’s what I got for going in angry.
I stopped backing up when Board Shorts let go of the beer and pulled a gun out of the back of his baggy shorts. A cheap black semiautomatic. He got the gun pointed at me about the same time as the beer smashed into the floor. “Don’t move!” he said. The hand holding the gun quivered with adrenaline. No way to tell about bullets or safeties. A gun was pointed at me from maybe fifteen feet away. That was all I knew. Not very far. Fifty feet and I’d run from a handgun every time. Twenty-five and I’d be tempted. Any closer drastically lowered the odds of escaping unscathed. Even a stoned, shaky shooter could hit something from fifteen feet away.
Save Me from Dangerous Men--A Novel Page 29