‘Regardless,’ said Doors, ‘I think we must clarify our arrangement. As you requested. As is your right.’ He grimaced as though the word tasted bad. ‘I swear that I will “conduct myself as a dead man” as far as you are concerned. And I shall see that those of my household do likewise. But I must know if you plan to tread on my business activities. I need to know that you will not sally forth from your Fortress of Solitude to thwart me.’
The reference surprised me at first, but it made sense Doors would have been a Superman fan.
I shrugged. ‘If you don’t deal drugs, someone else will. I’m not going to applaud you, but I’m not naive enough to try to fight that. That’s a job for the police, anyway. You lay off me and those close to me and I’ll turn a blind eye. You can tell your friends at Langley the same applies to them.’
His lips drew back in a cold smile. ‘So, you are not the spotless crusader. You have simply gone native.’
With that, he reached into his coat. I tensed my grip on the Browning until he drew out a small bag, opened it and spread some dust from it on the blood pooled in my entryway. He dropped a towel on it, planted a foot on the towel and reached down to his fallen employee. He brushed some hair back from the man’s forehead, almost affectionately.
‘Karl was young and foolish. He had yet to learn that there is more dishonor in a lie than a defeat.’ His voice became clinical again, as though he felt the need to show he was all business, even as he stooped over a dead friend. ‘I’d have thought he would have surprised you. You are a bad man to underestimate.’
‘He is.’ Sarah spoke for the first time since Doors had entered. I spared her a glance. Her green eyes were hard, her expression set.
Doors’ tight smile widened, but there was no mirth in it. He turned to me and said, ‘You make interesting choices. I would say I wish you joy of them, but I will not be so dishonest.’ He lifted the lifeless Karl, stood on the towel. ‘I leave you, now. Not to your Fortress of Solitude, perhaps. No, I leave you to your dances with wolves.’ He smiled at his own wit, then closed his eyes in concentration. Along with the corpse, the towel and the blood beneath it, he shimmered and vanished.
Now I knew why the police didn’t have inconvenient questions about Sarah’s apartment.
I let out a breath and engaged the Browning’s safety. Sarah slumped back against the wall and shook. I walked to her, took the Colt from her hand and held her. She stiffened for a moment, then melted against me, letting out shaky, ragged breaths.
‘It’s OK,’ I murmured in her ear. ‘Everything will be OK now.’
I hoped that was true.
Nique came out of the bedroom. Stood silently, watching me.
‘Now what?’ Sarah asked, her voice muffled against my chest.
‘Well, Doors and his thugs won’t run me off,’ I said. ‘I’m hoping you won’t either.’
She shook her head against me. Then looked up into my eyes. ‘I want to keep you around. You saved my life, you know.’
‘After I put it in danger.’
‘You had no way of knowing that,’ she said. ‘I’d given up on the knight in shining armor. Maybe too soon.’
‘The old armor is a bit dinged and scratched,’ I said. ‘I want to be with you, as long as you’ll have me, but don’t fall for an illusion. The apartment that Doors sneered at is me. The noble duelist he cut a deal with shows up on rare occasions when cowardice and my natural charm have failed me.’
She shrugged prettily. ‘I like everything I’ve seen so far. And I think you sell yourself short.’
I kissed her. ‘If you’ll have me, I’ll be had.’
I turned to Nique. ‘How about you? You feel OK about all this?’
‘We don’t throw our own under the bus. You could have skipped, but you stayed and saw this through. You did something to patch up Pete and Tiffany, and you took as much risk on yourself as you could. You’re a good friend. I won’t dime you out. Besides,’ she smirked, ‘I have you almost trained. I’m not breaking in a new partner just because you’re some inhuman freak.’
‘You sweet talker, you.’
‘But if any more guys with knives show up to hassle me, I will absolutely kick your ass.’
Chapter 38
BOB SAT AT MY KITCHEN TABLE sipping a large Scotch while I peeled and chopped potatoes at the counter.
‘Thanks for having me over,’ he said. ‘Sarah says you can cook, but that’s not a very high bar.’
‘Hey,’ she said, entering the room with a bag of groceries. ‘Just because I don’t know how to cook doesn’t mean I don’t recognize talent when I see it.’
‘Glad to have you,’ I said. ‘I owe you for your hospitality, and for that info you got me. That’s probably what kept Doors’ buddies in Washington off my back and made this possible. The drug trade made a lot of intelligence people rich, and lots of them are actually good at finding and eliminating people. They’d have helped Doors get rid of me to protect their source. Threatening to release that info if anything did happen to me would make them think twice. That’s the kind of thing that would have ruined careers and reputations and put spooks in jail.’
‘You don’t owe me a thing,’ he replied. ‘And you swing a pretty good sword for a guy with as many injuries as you had.’
‘I’m sure the reports of my prowess were exaggerated.’
‘My eye don’t exaggerate.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘Watched you guys through the scope of my aught-six,’ said Bob. ‘Couldn’t leave you hanging after you came for me in that hotel. Wasn’t gonna give them a shot at both of us by turning up next to you, but I figured I’d best be on hand.’
‘Where were you?’ asked Sarah.
‘In the clock tower of that old mill, just below the face.’ Bob paused for a drink. ‘Once I heard where you guys were meeting, I did some recon. Set up a hide in the best spot I could find. If things started to look hopeless, or if those goons got rough after you beat him, I’d have reached out and touched a few.’
Sarah shook her head. ‘I’m still not used to hearing how calmly you two talk about killing people.’
‘It’s probably a sign of a damaged psyche, but every so often, decent, well adjusted, solid citizens need a few head cases like us,’ said Bob.
‘I’m just wondering how a white guy as big as you managed to sneak into a building in this town with a gun as long as that,’ I said.
Bob smiled and sang a few bars of the Green Berets’ hymn: ‘Silver wings. Upon their chests.’
I shook my head. ‘You call us Marines crazy, but you brag about your willingness to jump out of perfectly good airplanes.’
‘No such thing as a perfectly good airplane,’ he replied.
The doorbell rang and Sarah buzzed Nique in. ‘Thank God it’s you.’ She greeted the other woman with a hug. ‘The testosterone was getting thick in here.’
‘Welcome to my world,’ Nique replied with a weary smile.
Pete arrived shortly afterwards, and the five of us sat at the kitchen table in my apartment. Sarah, Bob, Pete, Nique and I. I had marinated and pan-seared some pork tenderloin and finished it in the oven. The whole place was warm and filled with the happy aroma of roasted meat infused with garlic, thyme and rosemary. I love using the oven in winter.
‘So that asshole gets to walk?’ Pete demanded around a mouthful of mashed potatoes. A week had passed, and he was still a bit pale and easily winded, but he was on the mend.
I shrugged. ‘Pretty much. There really wasn’t another way to stop the violence.’
And because none of my friends had died. If Pete or Sarah or Tiffany had died, I don’t think I could have settled with Doors.
Pete shook his head.
‘It doesn’t seem right,’ Nique offered. ‘I mean, their drug operation is still up and running. He really didn’t lose anything. After what they did to Tiffany and you guys. Where’s the justice?’
‘In this life, my dear,’ I paused f
or a sip from my beer, ‘there is no justice. There is only accommodation. He’s been beaten, and publicly—for a narrow definition of the public—agreed to drop his feud. He knows that I know enough to sic the police on him, and he knows that if anything happens to me, it will all come out. And heroin isn’t going away. If we put Doors out of business, then some other thug will run it, and they’ll be every bit as brutal.’
‘So what, exactly, did he give up?’ asked Pete. ‘I’m only asking because I got my throat cut for it.’
‘You got better. Anyway, what we got out of the deal is a bit of security. You don’t have to worry about your safety just because you know me.’
‘Knowing you is kinda punishment enough.’
‘It has its moments,’ Sarah said, flashing me her twisted smile and a meaningful look over the top of her glasses.
‘Easy for you to say,’ Pete mumbled.
After that, things went back to normal, for a given value of normal. Bob came out of deep hiding into mere hiding. We had some long, boozy arguments about politics and cooking and Scotch. Nique stayed the most reliable partner I could ask for, and rather than inspire jealousy in Sarah, the two formed an alliance designed to keep me in my place. I didn’t mind. It was a nice place.
Pete recovered, and may have viewed me with some trepidation for a while. It was a week before he went back to gay jokes or offered to step in and show Sarah what a real man was like.
For her part, Sarah decided to place her trust in a man who lived by aliases, made his life a pleasant fiction, and had cut and run more often than a pair of cheap nylons. I feared she might be shaming me into being a better man.
I had a lot to think about. I’d stood and fought to stay with a woman instead of running, and that was new. I’d revealed myself to a handful of people, and that usually meant running. I’d pushed my talents into a dark area where I never had before. And, for the first time in a long time, I knew who I was, where I came from, and which family I’d been born to. Maybe there were family members out there right now. Who knows—maybe there was a cousin, or a brother, or a great-great-great nephew who shared the same powers as me…
The cynical voice in the back of my head cleared its throat, demanding attention. Things were happy now, but what about tomorrow? Next year? Four people knew I could heal. Four at least. They were people I trusted, but what if one of them got sick? What if Nique’s fiancé crashed his truck, or Pete’s mom threw a clot? Would they ask me to help? Could I refuse? My secret was out, how many people could know before I’d have to move on?
And Sarah. I was thrilled to be with her now, but how would she deal with the onslaught of time? I had the power to shore up and renew her cells, keep her healthy and beautiful, but would she want that? Want to remain forever young as her friends and family grew old before her eyes? She might choose to age gracefully. How bad would it be when she started to show her age and I still looked the same, and the company kept on hiring freethinking twenty-year-old EMTs to work the trucks? Could she trust me? Hell, could I trust me?
And what if she did agree to my help? How long would she want to stay with me, and how much would that be for me, and how much would be the seductive addiction to the energy of youth?
I forced my misgivings back, focusing on the present. I wasn’t any more vulnerable than I had been, and none of these worries was anything that hadn’t been a concern for ages. And now, I felt truly connected. I was with a woman without hiding behind any secrets. That removed a weight I’d become so used to that I hadn’t noticed it in centuries.
Despite the uncertainty, life was good. I still worked too many hours for too little pay, subservient to supervisors like Marty, in a city where the drunks, gang members and junkies knew me by my first name. But things could have been a lot worse.
I could have wound up like Doors. Living a solitary life on a pedestal, ruling over people I though of as servants or cattle, rather than sharing the love and respect of friends and equals.
My life had to be better.
Sarah went to the fridge for another beer. She looked at me with a smile. I raised my empty glass and she got me another bottle too. She leaned over my shoulder to put the beer on the table, kissing me on the cheek. I smiled up at her, feeling a happy glow at the warmth of her smile, the mischievous gleam in her eyes.
This was better.
I slipped my arm around her waist, pulling her close. Grinning as I felt her soft curves settle against me. I kissed her cheek and her smiled widened.
Revealing some tiny, tiny lines.
This was better.
Wasn’t it?
PATRICK LECLERC MAKES GOOD USE of his history degree by working as a paramedic for an ever changing parade of ambulance companies in the Northern suburbs of Boston. When not writing he enjoys cooking, fencing and making witty, insightful remarks with career limiting candor.
In the lulls between runs on the ambulance—and sometimes the lulls between employment at various ambulance companies—he writes fiction.
You can find more of it at http://inkandbourbon.com/
Coming Soon!
Coming to Amazon from Firedance Books, Summer 2012…
EXPECT CIVILIAN CASUALTIES by Gary Bonn.
Jason has spent the last six years living wild on beaches. Now he’s seventeen and a feral girl walks into his life.
A girl with no name.
He calls her Anna. She’s fun, she’s kind—and she’s the most dangerous person in the world.
The most unusual love story, and a truly strange war story… Expect Civilian Casualties turns how we see the world upside down.
“Bonn’s writing is like biting into a lime—fresh, zesty and bitter-sweet. Seeing the world through Jason’s eyes is a revelation.”
Louise Cole, WRM
“A story about a boy on the edge of society who finds love and belonging in the midst of chaos and horror. A delight.”
Julie Erwin: of Altered States contributor
Also Available!
Available at Amazon from Firedance Books, Summer 2012…
THE WALKER’S DAUGHTER by Janet Allison Brown.
When her mother dies at the hands of a silver-haired figure in black, six-year-old spirit-walker Cora Bloux hides out in her own body. Twenty years later she’s still there, fiercely maintaining an outwardly stable, conventional life.
But when her own daughter is hit by a car, Cora is forced to spirit-walk again—and discovers that the spirit world has been waiting for her.
In the extraordinary, fast-paced world of spirit-walkers, body-swappers, rock bands and second chances, Cora must discover her true self and learn the ordinary lessons of courage, trust and love.
To see the world as it really is, sometimes you have to close your eyes and... walk.
‘This supernatural begins with a bang.’
Publisher’s Weekly
‘Intense and enlightening.’
ABNA (Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award) 2011 Expert Reviewer
Table of Contents
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