"No, I'm fine," I said, taking his hand and letting him help me up. He was strong, and he helped me up as lightly as if I'd been a small child. "Who are you?"
"Dane. Dane Bell."
Chapter 2
Dane
Despite the fact that it was late spring, I was wearing a hooded shirt as I walked the streets. Walking the streets seemed to be the best way I'd found to deal with the stress and uncertainty of freedom. At Leavenworth, I'd spent too much time cooped up, being told what to do, and exactly how to do it. Why was I in prison? There was a simple answer: fuck the why. Why existed for people better than me. I was a prisoner. I didn't deserve a why.
So now, freed from the confines of military prison, I walked, often for hours, starting each evening as the sun went down and sometimes lasting until midnight. As I walked, my mind would replay the frustrations of the day, driving my feet forward like an invisible mental lash. I could see in my mind the faces each time I handed my resume or application over to someone, the tightness that would come behind their eyes when they saw that I'd checked 'yes' on the box that asked if I'd ever been convicted of a felony, and the combination of fear and finality that would then come when they saw what I wrote on the line after that.
That's one of the challenges of being convicted by court-martial. If I'd been convicted of the same crime by the State of Georgia, I'd have gotten a parole officer, and the resources of said office. Now, I know it doesn't sound like much, but most parole officers know someone who knows someone who can get you a job. It may have been shoveling shit at some pig farm, but it’d be an actual job. The state system wants to at least make some sort of effort to rehabilitate its prisoners. It helps with keeping the streets safer—in theory, at least. And there's nothing wrong with shoveling shit. Someone has to do it, and I've done far worse in my years on this Earth. A lot worse.
The military justice system doesn't have that sort of backup. Once your sentence is finished and you're discharged—with, of course, the mandatory DISHONORABLE DISCHARGE stamped at the top to hang around your neck like a scarlet letter for the rest of your life—you're on your own. It was like one of the other prisoners, a former aviation captain who'd been busted for sneaking in trophies from Afghanistan and was doing a two-year stretch once told me while we played cards one afternoon:
"Uncle Sam, he's all about taking care of you when you're doing exactly what he wants you to do. Note, I didn't say do what the rules say to do, or do the right thing, but what Sam wants you do to. But as soon as you don't, Uncle Sam turns into Uncle Scrooge, and he doesn't give a fuck about you. Hell, look at the VA system. They fuck the guys who actually did good over so bad it's a fucking crime. How does that bode for us, the rejected stepchildren of Sam's brood? Bell, most of us? We've got no chance. No chance in hell once we get outside. That is, unless you want to be a mercenary. There's always someone out there with money and a need for those."
I knew all I wanted was a chance, and I didn't want to be a hired gun either. Open the door a crack, and I'd kick it in the rest of the way and show whoever gave me that chance what I could do. Hell, I was at the point where I'd take anything. Garbage man, toilet scrubber, dishwasher, greeter at Wal-Mart, anything. Still, nearly three months after being released, all I had was a growing list of rejections. I can't even say rejection letters. I didn't warrant one of those. Just rejections, usually by silence. Those were the more polite ones. There were a few who sent me on my way with choice words.
So I walked. It was cheap, and it helped the tension flow out until I could manage it enough to go back to the apartment and go to sleep, at least semi-fitfully, until five in the morning, when the dreams and nightmares would drive me out of bed, shivering and sweating despite the air conditioning that I kept cranked up to nearly frigid levels. Forty-five minutes of calisthenics and a shower before six thirty, and at seven o'clock I'd start the whole damn thing over, seven days a week. Well, except on Sundays. A lot of businesses didn't open early on Sundays, so I started my job hunting at ten in the morning instead.
I wore a hood whenever I wasn't job hunting because, despite the fact that the headlines had faded away and the chances were small, Atlanta was a military-friendly city in a military-friendly part of the country. Trainees coming to and leaving Fort Benning came in and out of Atlanta-Hartsfield airport nearly every day, escorted by their drill sergeants, some of whom were my age. These kids would get a day or two of leave if they could, and a lot of the other military members in the area would also come to Atlanta whenever they could.
It made sense for a solider. Sure, Benning had a fine military town surrounding it, and for your average run of the mill distraction, that was fine, but Atlanta was the big city, with lots to do. So between that and the former military population of the city, there were enough people. The chances of my being recognized were just too damn high. I didn't need that sort of trouble. If I'd had another option, I would have lived someplace else, but my only lifeline was in Atlanta, so I stayed and looked for work. Still, I wore a hood until my hair grew out long enough that I didn't look ex-military. Unfortunately for me, my hair grows pretty slowly, and after three months, I still looked a lot like a soldier.
As for my walking, I liked walking through Piedmont Park for a couple of reasons. Primarily, because it's green. Between the nearly uniform brown of Iraq and the gray of Leavenworth, I hadn't seen enough green in the past five years, and Piedmont gave me a chance to catch up. The lakes, the wide open grassy areas—all of it was comfortably far from my past. Secondly, Piedmont was conveniently less than a half-mile from the apartment I was using. I could use it day or night—until eleven PM, at least—rain or shine. The one day I'd taken to relax, I could even use a fishing pole I'd found in the apartment and go fishing in the lake there. I'd caught two largemouth bass before noon and ate like a king.
The night that changed my life, though, I was walking through Piedmont Park because I was, quite frankly, despondent as all hell. I'd reached a milestone that day . . . rejection number two hundred. A perfect score. Two hundred applications, two hundred rejections. That's not even counting the people who didn't reply when I put in applications online. I'd lost count of those long ago. But two hundred times, I'd walked into an office, a store, or somewhere else with my head held high, trying to ask for a chance, and two hundred times, I'd been told no. About the only option left was to go to the Day Labor office, or maybe sit outside Home Depot with the homeless and illegal aliens who depended on under the table work to make it day to day.
At least I wasn't homeless yet, I thought as I walked. Christopher Lake may have been an asshole, like a lot of people I knew from the military, but he was still my friend. The best friend I had, in fact. More importantly in the immediate sense, Chris was willing to let me crash at his apartment until he got back into town in a week. He'd even left me some money to help me get by and a fully stocked set of cupboards in the apartment. It had saved me more than once. I owed him everything and would always be grateful for that. Still, he was coming back from Europe in a week, and I was living in a studio apartment. What I was going to do after he got back, I had no fucking idea.
Concerns about my potential future homelessness vanished when I saw the two men dragging the girl into the tree line. Piedmont Park is dotted all over the place with these little mini groups of trees, not enough during the day to really hide what you're doing, but a good place to sit down and have a picnic or get out of the sun if you wanted to. At night, however, they provided just enough cover for all sorts of nefarious activities. My time in Leavenworth had made me pretty laissez-faire about the whole thing, but when I saw that, I reacted. Memories started to flash through my brain about what had gotten me into the mess I was in, and my hands balled into fists. Not again, I said to myself.
Thankfully, the skills I'd learned in the military hadn't faded during my years in Leavenworth. If anything, they were sharper than ever, as some of the most skilled combatants I met had a problem following orders
once off the battlefield. We'd shared ideas and sometimes even trained in the dim lights and the scattered moments when the guards weren't watching us. I was able to sneak up on the first attacker while both of them were distracted by the girl, who I had to give credit for fighting hard, despite the obvious bad odds she faced. Her hands were hooked into claws, and she was trying to fend off the guy on top of her by threatening to claw out his eyes. He backhanded her, her head bouncing off the turf just as I got close.
Even the best fighter sometimes has luck on his side, and in my case, it was the fact that the angle I hit the first guy at sent him headfirst into the trunk of a tree. He dropped, and I started to turn to the other guy, but he was quick, quicker than I thought he'd be. His fist caught me in the mouth just as I was turning, jerking my head to the side. There was a momentary flash of white-hot pain, and I was pretty sure he'd cut me, probably on the ring he was wearing on his right hand. I rolled with the punch, however, and didn't take too much damage.
He followed up the punch with a halfway decent kick that had a good amount of its power taken away by the fact that his pants were sagging damn near down around his knees. His pants bound up the extension of his hip so that all he did was turn me a bit more to the side. I went with it, kicking backward with a hard kick I'd been taught first from la savate, the French kicking martial art. It caught the guy square in his family jewels, dropping him before I followed up with a knee that put him to sleep. The first rule you learn in street combat is that there are no concepts of fairness or sportsmanship. The guy who goes into a street fight with codes such as chivalry or fair play will usually end up bleeding and possibly dying in the middle of the street, honorable or not. Besides, the guy had been trying to rape a girl and was wearing a metal ring, so it's not like he was deserving of a fair fight or mercy.
As I stood above his laid out body, I was breathing hard, not from the exertion, but from the rush. It had been a long time since I'd tasted combat again, and I had to admit the taste was sweeter than I wanted it to be. I'd lost myself in the haze of combat before, and I was surely damned if I did it again. And I didn't mean figuratively, either.
I turned to the girl, who was still lying on the ground. She'd taken a pretty hard shot from the guy when they were struggling on the ground, and I wasn't surprised she was still a bit dazed. It takes longer than a lot of people think to recover from a hit to the head. Reaching out to her, I tried to keep my voice calm.
I didn't tell her the bigger reason I wanted to get out of there was that I didn't want the cops involved, at least not with me around. If I could get the young woman up and out of the park, maybe she'd go to the cops on her own without dragging me into it. I didn't like my chances with the Atlanta police, regardless of whether I had the woman's statement to back me up. I just didn't trust them.
"No, I'm fine," she said, taking my hand. Her skin was smooth and flawless, and a long-repressed part of me flared at the electric tingle of her fingers in my hand. I think she felt it too, because when she spoke again, her eyes were wide and her voice had the faintest hint of a tremor, although perhaps I'd imagined it. "Who are you?"
"Dane. Dane Bell." The words were out of my mouth before I'd even thought about them, and inwardly, I started cursing myself for being a damn fool. The lights were dim. I still had my hood up. I doubted she had gotten a halfway decent look at my face. If I'd lied or just not answered, I could have disappeared into the night. But that touch . . . there was no way I'd have been able to resist that touch, even if it was just her hand in mine. It was like her fingertips cut through any defenses I had and left me totally defenseless.
"Abby Rawlings. Uh, pleased to meet you." Her voice was like honey and magnolias, the sort of Southern lilt that would’ve turned my knees weak even before I'd spent five years in the exclusive company of men. I'd been a sucker for it ever since the first time I heard it. I came from South Dakota, where there was plenty of accent, but nothing like a Southern girl, and especially not Abby. It was the educated type of Southern, not backwoods cracker barrel that mangled grammar to the point of incomprehension, but instead just added a velvet touch to the vowels and polished the ends of certain words. I took my hand back and stepped back, ready to run, when she reached out again for me. "Stop, please."
"I really should go," I said, looking around. I wasn't sure what scared me more: the fact that I'd just assaulted two men, or the fact that even in the deep shadows, this woman was affecting me in ways I wasn't sure I was ready for yet. I hadn't tested myself in that regard yet since being freed, and I wasn't sure if I could behave the way I needed to. "I . . . I really should."
"Please, Dane. Walk me out at least. My . . . my ankle's a bit twisted, and my feet are killing me," Abby said. The way she said ‘please’ was irresistible, a magnet that pulled me closer to her, unable to stop myself. "And . . . I’d feel safer too."
"You don't even know me," I replied, but my feet couldn't seem to listen to my brain. Instead of turning and taking off like a bat out of hell, I stayed where I was while she found her purse and picked it up. We walked slowly back out onto the path, looking for all the world like two people taking a pleasant evening stroll and not a potential rape victim and the man who'd just beat the hell out of her attackers. "I'm not a very good man."
"You just did the most noble thing I've ever seen someone do," Abby said simply. As I listened, I realized she was more than just a wilting flower Southern belle. This girl had some strength within her, although I suspected that she didn't know just how strong she was. There was a sort of uncertainty about it, like it was just starting to come out, or she was at least unfamiliar with speaking with men like me. "You've probably got your flaws. I know I do, but for that, I feel safe enough for you to . . . what happened to your face?"
I stopped, realizing that the light from the lamp up ahead was allowing her to see what I looked like for the first time. I reached up with my fingers and felt my face, stopping when my fingers made my right cheek sting. I'd forgotten that the guy wore a ring on his hand. "Oh. I forgot the second guy must have been wearing a ring or something. It caught my face just right. It doesn't feel like much. I'm sure it'll clean up easily enough."
"You're bleeding like a stuck pig," Abby objected, her face full of concern. "We need to get you patched up, take you to a hospital."
"I . . . I don't need a hospital. Really. I'm sure it looks a lot worse than it really is," I said. A hospital was the last place I wanted to go. A hospital would mean an explanation, and an explanation could mean involving the cops. "I'll just wash it off when I get back to the apartment. It's not that far. A little hydrogen peroxide, maybe a little bit of gauze, and I'll be fine. I promise."
"No way, mister," Abby said, sudden strength and confidence blooming in her voice. If I'd thought she had hidden strength before, I'd seriously underestimated her. "That needs to be washed out better than what you can do yourself in the mirror. You sure you won't go to the hospital?"
"I'm sure," I said. "I . . . I’ve got my reasons."
She tilted her head, giving me a questioning expression, but she nodded after a moment. "Fine. Then take me back to your place and let me clean you up. It's the least I can do."
Again, the logical side of me, the side that reminded me that I was a dishonorably discharged former soldier with a felony on my rap sheet, screamed at me to refuse her offer. But the same light that let Abby see my face, let me see her for the first time, and that logical side kept getting drowned out more and more by the voice that told me this was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen in my entire life. Long, dark blonde hair framed a face that looked like it was carved by the gods.
Abby was stunning, with dark blue eyes that looked like flawless sapphires sparkling in the street light that seemed to bore straight into my soul. I couldn't resist those eyes and that face even if I wanted to. "All right," I said. "Uh, the place I'm staying is only a little way away. Are you sure you don't want me to call you a cab or something?"
&
nbsp; Don't say yes, don't say yes, the voice in my head that was talking not with logic but with fiery emotion pleaded. When Abby shook her head and instead reached out and took my hand again, it let loose a cheer loud enough that I was sure she could hear it, even if it was invisible and inside my skull.
"Are you all right, really?" she asked as we walked. "You winced a bit there."
"Just an unpleasant thought," I said, deflecting my real thoughts. I felt like I was back in junior high school or something, and the cute girl I'd just asked to dance had actually said yes, and I was holding her hand for the very first time. "I guess the cut stings a bit more than I thought it would."
The rest of our walk seemed to nearly float by. I barely noticed when we reached the edge of Piedmont Park and turned north toward my apartment. "You know, you really handled yourself well," Abby said as we walked. "Where'd you learn all that?"
"I was in the Army for a while," I said, trying to think of some other way to answer it. "I guess it was just one of those things you learn after a while."
"Really? How long have you been out?" she asked, giving me a dazzling smile. My heart did a few lurches, along with another part of my body that was also saying it had been a long damn time since he'd had any female attention either. It was so dazzled, in fact, that I barely even noticed the alternative meaning of her question. "I mean, you're rocking two days of beard, so I guessed you’re not in service anymore."
"I'm not," I quickly said. "I was discharged three months ago."
I regained my composure with the answer, and knew I didn't want her to probe there anymore. In hoping she wouldn’t talk about my military history any longer, I changed the subject. "What about you? What do you do?"
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