“Hey, what are you doing?” Darius snaps, swerving as he stares at me through the rear-view. “What the fuck are you doing? Do you want me to pull this thing over and come back there?”
“Yes,” I say, wondering if this can go in that direction instead: wondering if the age-old maternal instinct, the primordial protectiveness, will allow that to happen instead.
Darius shakes his head. “I would, too, if it weren’t for your little boy toy behind me. Listen, just sit down or the first thing I’ll do once Roman is dead is claw that baby out of your cunt with my bare hands.”
Dim, faraway now, I am a small frightened woman. Dim, faraway now, I am a lost, shivering lamb. Dim, faraway now, I am the woman who wept in shock after the incident in the hospital. But at the forefront of my consciousness somebody else has taken the stage. I remember reading about mothers who, when their children were trapped under cars, miraculously gained the strength to lift tons of steel and rubber and plastic. I feel the same strength in me. The jostling of the suspension-less van no longer bothers me; I have turned to steel.
“You shouldn’t have said that,” I whisper, hands shaking. Not in fear, no, no, in rage, in rightful fury. “You really shouldn’t have said that.”
“Oh, and why’s that?”
He still thinks this is a joke, just a big joke: the pregnant woman kneeling in the back with her tiny fists clenched and her face flushed talking about how this international arms dealer shouldn’t have said something. But what he doesn’t realize is that it doesn’t matter what you’ve done in the past. It doesn’t matter that this man has dealt with North Korea and that all I’ve really dealt with are patients and hallways and fluorescent lights. He is still a person and my nails are still sharp.
I throw myself at him, screeching like a wolf, thinking of nothing but gouging out the eyes of the man who is going to kill my son.
“Die!” I scream, as my nail finds his eye. My fingernail cuts through his contact lens, right through to his eyeball. I dig in as hard as I can, sinking my finger into the flesh. “Die! Die! Die!”
He lets out a roar as blood and sludge oozes from his eye, swerving even more dangerously on the road.
“Psycho bitch!” he snarls, jabbing me in the face. “Psycho cunt!”
My nose pulses blood down my face. I taste it in my mouth, lingering on my upper lip. But I don’t release his eye. My son’s life depends on it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Roman
As I chase the van down the dirt track, I pray. I’ve never been much of a praying man. I believe in yin-and-yang, and I believe in equal forces, and I believe that one thing has to result in another. But I’ve never prayed. Now I do. But I don’t pray to God. Or to heaven. Or to anything like that. I pray to the whole damn universe to make it so Darius doesn’t touch Lily. I try and focus on the job—on following close to the van without bashing into it, just in case I harm her—but I keep thinking of all the things Darius could be doing with one hand whilst holding the steering wheel with the other. It only takes one hand to hold a gun, a jar of acid, a cudgel . . . I remember one lead telling me that the Acid Man sometimes uses a water pistol to burn people’s faces off. Lily could be in the back of the van, faceless, screaming, and I can do shit but follow behind ’em and wait for them to stop. Fuck.
I don’t expect my prayers to be answered, not really. Because by my own beliefs, I’m screwed. I left the mother of my child to fend for herself in a city she does not know, I gave the mother of my child a new name and no hope; that is the yin. This situation is the yang, the answering call to those stupid fuckin’ actions. No, I don’t reckon my prayers are going to be answered.
But then Darius begins to swerve even more dramatically. He’s been swerving like crazy even since I began chasing him, down from the city and up here to the mountain road, but now he’s swerving straight off the road and back again, big S-shaped swerves that make me wonder what the hell’s going on in the van.
I follow on for a few more minutes, the van going wild, when a cabin comes into view. It’s a small box cabin with one door, its paneled wood faded in the sun. For seemingly no reason, the van makes directly for the cabin at full speed. Not as though it means to park there, but as though it means to crash straight into it. It drives with mad purpose and then—wood splinters fly into the air, half the cabin is crunched into shrapnel nothingness as the vans plows through it. I spot a machine gun fly far back to the rear of the cabin, out of view and out of reach, at the impact, and then the van makes a noise like a cat being strangled as the engine dies.
I bring my car to a stop and jump out, mind going into frenzy mode with images of Lily: on her back, covered in blood; on her front, her bump squashed against her body, bent at an awkward angle and moaning out for me to save her; Darius with his thumbs buried within her neck, choking her to death. But as I get closer to the wreckage, I hear nothing but the chugging of the engine as it dies. I sprint to the back of the van, grab the handle, and pull. It’s locked, but I’m too desperate to see my woman to give a shit about locks, so I just pull harder. Harder. I pull so hard I feel every shred of muscle in my arms strain to breaking point. I must be exerting hundreds of pounds of pressure on that door. The handle bends, the metal compressing, and then finally something clicks and the door flies open.
Lily is in there, on her back, both hands laid over Bump. Her shirt has been torn up around her belly in the crash. Her hair is blonde, and her face is not Lily’s face. It is rounder from the pregnancy, but that is not what marks the difference. It is her bright blonde hair, and the makeup which smears with sweat over her skin, mixed with blood from her nose. And her bare belly . . . blood. “Lily,” I whisper, emotion freezing me for a second. “Lily, you’re bleeding.”
“Not—my blood,” she says. “But—Roman—lookout!”
I spin around, instincts kicking in, and come face to face with . . .
What. The. Fuck.
I came face to face with myself. Darius is a couple inches taller than me, and one of his eyes is nothing but a mass of goo and flesh and blood, but there’s no mistaking that he looks like me, exactly fucking like me. He even has the same tattoo, the same style and color of hair. Damn, even his nose is like mine. He’s standing a few feet away from me, a long, ridged machete in his hand, a machete which he wields easily and expertly. He doesn’t acknowledge the blood and gore with drips continuously down his face from his eye.
I reach into my back pocket and take out my gun, aim it at him.
“Who brings a gun to a knife fight?” Darius mutters, glee in his voice, as though I don’t have a Glock aimed right at his head. “That’s not very sporting.”
“I never knew you to be sporting,” I mutter. “I never fuckin’ knew you to be sporting once in your goddamn life. Drop the machete, Darius.”
“Aren’t you going to comment on my new appearance?” Darius waves his free hand at his face. “Aren’t I something to look at, Roman? Aren’t I a beauty? Do you remember the first time you tried to catch me? I thought it’d be a funny little twist if all this time you didn’t know you were chasing yourself. And you had no clue, did you?”
“I’m going to give you three seconds to drop that—”
“You usually give ten, don’t you, Roman? But you don’t want to talk to me for that long?” Darius giggles. “What a predictable man.”
I shoot him in the knee, one quick blast which blows his kneecap out the back of his leg and sends him tumbling to the ground. But he doesn’t scream, and even as his kneecap turns to crimson tatters, he somehow manages to climb to his feet, or at least almost to his feet. Using the machete as a crude walking stick, he kneels up, sneering up at me. It’s like staring into a one-eyed, nine-fingered version of myself.
“Yin-and-yang, Roman.” Darius smiles, almost warmly. “All this time, you’ve thought there were two forces in this world, haven’t you? Two balancing forces? Yes, I’ve done my research on you. You’ve thought that by doing a little g
ood with the cunt back there, you could get a little of your soul back—”
I blow out his other kneecap, causing him to slump to the floor, writhing in agony, but not moaning, not voicing his pain. This infuriates me. After all the pain he has caused, he just lies there, rolling around but not making a damned sound.
“Roman.”
Lily is standing beside me, looking up at me with a tired expression. I want to hold her, bring her close to me, kiss her and tell her that everything is going to be okay. I can smell her, through the sweat, the blood, smell the sweet scent of her which I will recognize until my dying day. But I can’t reunite with her, not yet. I have to finish this first. I have to kill this bastard.
I turn away from her, shoot out Darius’ hand. The bullet rips away two of his fingers. He drops the machete into the dirt. I walk to him, place my foot on his chest, and aim the gun at his head. He grins up at me, teeth coated in blood from where he’s bitten off the tip of his tongue. When he talks, his voice is slurred. “You can never correct all the things you’ve done,” he says. “You think killing me will kill the bad man inside of you, Roman? That’s not how it works, I’m afraid. You’ll always be a bad man. You’ll always be just as evil as me. So pull that trigger if you want, see if it makes any difference.”
“I will,” I say.
I’m about to do just that when Lily, at my side once more, says, “No, Roman.”
“No?” I almost laugh the word, it is so illogical. After all this time, why wouldn’t I just blow this fucker’s face off?
Lily lays her hand on my shoulder, her soft, small, caring hand. Her nurse’s hand. The touch I have missed like a phantom limb these past months. It’s unfair, for her to lay her hand on me like that. She knows how much I need her, must know how much I need her: knows that laying her hand on me will weaken me, now when I need to be my strongest.
“Let him stand trial,” she says.
“Don’t listen!” Darius sneers, giggling and coughing at the same time, a blood-soaked mess. “You know who you are, Roman! Be that man! You know who you are!”
“Let him stand trial,” Lily repeats. “Let the world become a better place because what you’ve done. If you really want set the balance right, that’s the way to do it.”
“Lily, this man has done countless evil things. I could fuckin’ list ’em for you but he’d bleed out before I had a chance to put a bullet between his eyes.”
“I know he’s done evil,” Lily says. “But nothing good will come of his death in the dirt, a nameless death, an unmarked death. Nobody will know but you and I. Then what’s the point? He might as well still be out there as far as the corrupt cops and his colleagues are concerned. They will carry on just as they have been. But if you let him stand trial, the trial will go deep, right to the roots, and you’ll make the world a much better place. Think of our mothers, Roman.”
“Don’t say that,” I mutter, but without really meaning to I am lowering the gun. I stop, aiming at his chest now instead. “Don’t do that, Lily.”
“But it’s the truth.” She squeezes my shoulder. That touch, that ached-for touch . . . “If you kill him now, it might make you feel better, for now, and listen, I know you’ll lose your contract, but . . .”
“That’s already done,” I tell her.
“He’s in this for himself.” Darius giggles throatily. “He’s in this all for his bloody desire, missy.”
“Don’t fuckin’ talk to her.” I fire a shot to the side of him, kicking up dirt, causing him to flinch.
“Roman, please hear me,” Lily says. “Please—just think. Just see past your rage. More good can come of it like this. The world needs to know that this man was caught. The world needs to know that this man has seen justice.”
“Says the woman who gouged at my eye and crashed my van!” Darius mutters, his mouth full of blood now.
I see two futures: in one I am the same old Roman and Darius is dead and the world ain’t much different for it; in another Darius has stood trial and is in prison for the rest of his life, and the world is a better place. I walk around to the side of him, kneel down, and press the gun against the side of his head.
“Keep him alive, Lily,” I say, taking out my cellphone and dialing 911. “If he makes a single move, I’ll fuckin’ kill him.”
Lily goes to him professionally, and that’s when I see her: through the makeup and the hair dye and the blood and the pregnancy, I see her. Lily as she was that first night I met her, Nurse Sherlock, seeing through all lies and dealing with everything in a professional manner.
“We’re having a son, by the way,” she says, patching Darius up.
“A son . . .”
“911, what’s your emergency?”
Epilogue
Lily
As I stand at Carol’s grave, the August sun bathing the cemetery and flowers blooming all around, pinks and yellows and reds making it look like a botanical garden, a place of life, instead of a place of death, I think about the past few months. With my hand on my belly—a habit I still can’t kick, even though my belly is now much flatter than it once was—I think about Carol, and Darius, and Roman, and I think about Isaac, too. Isaac will be old enough to go to daycare soon, and so I’ll go back to work, back to the nursing world, back to the rush and the madness of it all. Vegas has welcomed me back, with its flashing lights and the constant ringing of the slot machines. I’ve met with the nursing staff at the hospital, and the police, and all the officials, and I’ve lied through my teeth. Claiming amnesia, I’ve made them all believe I was in a superlative fugue state for the duration of my kidnapping, that I don’t remember any of it. I play the part perfectly, as perfectly as a sociopathic Sherlock Holmes, in fact.
But I’m not here to ponder that. I’m here for Carol. I kneel down and lay the flowers on her grave. Tears slide down my cheeks as they always do when I come and visit her grave. I can’t shake the feeling that it was my fault. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to shake that feeling. But it’s good to come here and pay my respects, to let her know that I love her and I’m sorry. After I lay the flowers down, I sit down on the foldout chair I bring every visit, beside her grave, and place my hand on the gravestone. For the next half hour, I reminisce with her. We talk about the time she got so drunk on vodka shots I had to carry her home, about the time we stayed up all night at my place playing scrabble just because. I tell her that everyone at the hospital is missing her, except Sissy, who is as ferocious as ever. The tears stop after a while, the reminiscence becoming a good thing, warm, welcome, instead of bitter.
As I pack away the chair, I think about Darius. When the ambulance arrived, Roman fled the scene, and I claimed to have been kidnapped by Darius, not Roman. This could be easily disproved by anyone who had a mind to investigate it, but the people who’d have a mind to investigate it were too busy rushing around to cover their own asses when, later the same day, Roman busted Darius from the hospital and took him to a contact he trusted, who in turn presented him to the world stage. Darius has been sentenced to life in a maximum security prison, living in solitary confinement for twenty out of twenty-four hours, and his contacts in police and government have been rooted out. There won’t be any police clearing out hospital wings any time soon, nor shooting up suburban homes.
When I turn around, Roman is there, arms folded, leaning against the wall. My chest aches when I see him, as it does every time. He’s living in an apartment in the same building as me, but we’re yet to move in together. We make love, and go to the movies, and go on dates, but we’re yet to take that next step, though I want to. I think he wants to, as well, but he’s scared. Scared of himself, perhaps.
“Are you okay?” he asks when I reach him, as he does every time.
“I’m okay,” I say. “Do you think he’s okay?”
“The babysitter is with him, and so am I.” He reaches into his jacket pocket, showing me the screen he carries around which shows a view of my apartment. At the moment, he’s
sleeping and the babysitter is watching TV.
“I should never have let you install that thing.” But truly I’m glad he did.
“Really, though, you alright?”
“Yeah. I mean . . .” Roman wipes the tears from my cheek. I clasp his hand, kiss it, glad for the closeness. “Carol tried to save my life without even knowing it. I miss her, I miss her more than I can sometimes handle, but I’m okay. I have a lot to live for.”
“You do,” he says, nodding.
He puts the emphasis on you; I don’t think he does it in purpose.
“We do,” I say, stepping into his arms. I look up at him, loving the way his hands feel on me, safe and secure, loving that I am Lily now with my man’s arms around me, not Betty with Markus grabbing at me and OBYGN hens clucking at me. I love how safe I can finally feel. I kiss him on the cheek. “Your mom would’ve been so proud of you, Roman. So proud.”
He laughs, trying to dismiss it, but I push on anyway.
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