by Lexie Ray
She had been so scared. And the outpouring of emotions that should have come during the moment when she had been face to face with Thomas, were coming now, uncontrollably.
Ash sat down on the bed beside her. She could feel the heat coming off of his body even though her eyes remained buried in her hands. He placed his hand on her back. His touch was gentle. She thought he might say something. She figured he would think her tears were a waste of time, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t do anything, but continued to sit with her, gently holding his hand to her back, as her sobs eventually faded into the sounds of the street outside.
Hunter curled herself into his shoulder, wrapping her arms around his neck. She nuzzled her face into the hollow between his shoulder and throat, breathing in the scent of his skin that lay taut across his collarbone. His skin felt soft and smooth, like hot silk, and smelled sweet with salty sweat and the faint residue of cigarette smoke.
He didn’t hesitate to hold her, the length of his arm gliding across her side.
Being in his arms, it was clear to Hunter how strong he was, not only physically, but emotionally. He was holding her up in more ways than one, and she still had no idea why. Hunter wasn’t ready to ask questions. She didn’t really need answers yet, only to feel him. She wanted nothing more in this moment than to savor his warm embrace. She wished this was all there was, just him.
The body on her floor made her stomach lurch with nausea every time she thought about it. She wanted to forget it was there. She needed to forget that she knew the dead man, Thomas. She needed to forget that he had looked through her with those cold eyes, that calloused expression, as though he’d forgotten who she was. As though he had chosen to forget that he was the one who had helped her escape the farmhouse in the first place.
Ash already knew her name, but he needed Hunter to tell him anyway so that she wouldn’t wonder how he knew. She would eventually tell him, he figured. He knew she wasn’t thinking clearly at the moment. There was no way she was thinking clearly, how could she? Even reaching out for him, as she had done, and holding him tightly, as she was doing now, might not be the product of clear thinking, but rather an impulse, a mere reaction in the aftershocks of terror. The scent of her hair was fragrant. It held a fruity aroma, maybe strawberries or peach. Ash couldn’t quite place it. The city had a way of sticking to people, clinging to their skin, mixing in with their natural scent, but she didn’t smell like New York. There was something fresher about her, breezier, like the countryside.
The hand that had been holding the small of her back slid up until it reached her shoulder. He squeezed. It felt like a reassuringly gesture to Hunter, though she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be reassured of.
“There are going to be more of them,” she whispered. Her voice sounded high and weak, exhausted. “They’re not going to stop until they have me.”
She looked at him, her gaze moving quickly over his face, studying his steel blue eyes which now seemed more piercing, his full mouth that seemed soft and masculine at the same time, the lines of his jaw, his cheekbone. Was he smoldering for her? She gazed deeply into his eyes and sensed that he might be.
“Why do you think they’re after you?” he asked, careful not to seem too familiar.
“Because I left. I lived on this farm in New Hampshire. No one ever leaves, except when they die,” she said, her voice trailing off, her eyes softening unfocused. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she whispered.
“We have to get rid of him before the sun rises,” said Ash, alluding to the body. “We need bleach and cleaning supplies for the blood.”
“Why are you doing this?” She asked. “Why are you helping me?”
“Because I can,” he said.
Judging by her unwavering stare, Ash knew that wasn’t a good enough answer. He combed her brown hair off of her cheek and tucked in behind her ear. “I don’t have a problem killing people, Hunter. It’s what I do.”
Suddenly her heart clipped in her throat. He knew her name. She hadn’t told him, had she? Hunter wracked her brain for a second, confirming she was correct. At no point had she ever told him what her name was.
Ash knew the second he had let it slip that it was going to be a problem. He could see it in her eyes already, her caution. Her guard had flown up.
“The super came around a few weeks ago, pounding on your door when I was at the trash shoot,” he began, covering his tracks. “Your name is Hunter, right? I thought that’s what he said when he was looking for you.”
“I never called the super,” she said, growing more concerned that this guy who seemed like a hero might really be something much more dangerous.
“He came around to everyone’s apartment with new fire alarms. Some code must have changed with the city. Maybe it was carbon monoxide detectors, I can’t remember. I didn’t let him in.”
That seemed to satisfy her. Ash felt her tense muscles relax and her breathing resume to normal. It might be safest, he thought as he gazed down at the dead body, to clean this mess up alone.
Ash rose to his feet. His expression seemed to turn dark or maybe that was only the shadow he had stepped into.
“You’ll be safe in my apartment,” he said. “You can shower and relax, go to sleep if you like. It’ll take me the rest of the night to deal with this.”
Hunter felt something fluffy brush against her bare leg and when she looked down, Luthor meowed faintly, staring up at her. She scooped him up in her arms, and flung her purse over her shoulder.
“Ok,” she said quietly. “Just let me grab some cans for him, and his litter.”
After collecting the apartment keys from her, Ash opened her apartment door and peered down the hallway, checking that the coast was clear in both directions. They couldn’t afford to have anyone see them. Pieces like that could really add up later down the road if and when the police became involved, not that they would. This wasn’t exactly a part of town the police wanted to come to, or even the landlord for that matter.
It was dead quiet in the hallway except for the grating buzz of a florescent light overhead. Ash led Hunter, who was carrying the fat cat in her arms, down the hall. He hooked left at the trash shoot, heading to his apartment. When they reached his front door, he keyed in, held the door open for her, and once inside, flipped on a light.
“Don’t wait up,” he said in a deep whisper. “Don’t answer the door, don’t answer your phone, don’t go anywhere or do anything. You can take a shower, and go to bed or wait up, but other than that, don’t do anything.”
He crossed into the apartment, grabbed his tee off the armchair, and threw it over his head. Then he was gone.
Hunter listened to the sounds of Ash locking her in from the other side of the door, after which she heard nothing but silence. Deafening silence.
She released Luthor from her arms, dropping him to the floor where he landed with a meow. Next she set the litter box down, tucking it discretely under the half-bar in the kitchen, then rummaged through the cupboards for a saucer. When she found a ceramic plate she placed it on the counter, popped open a wet can of cat food for Luthor, and shook it out onto the plate. She didn’t bother setting it on the ground for him. Luthor was already on the counter, already licking his dinner, or was it breakfast? At this hour, who could be sure which it was? After a few moments, Luthor plopped over onto his side. It was as though he’d lived here his entire life.
Hunter spotted a pack of cigarettes on a table near the window and decided to help herself. After lighting up, she took a seat in the armchair and discovered almost immediately that she could see her apartment’s fire escape. She gazed out, observing that there on the landing were her three plants, dead. She had accidently killed them, yet allowed them to continue to rot in their black plastic pots. Nearby sat an ashtray full of bent cigarette butts. It had been a good five years of freedom, she thought, remembering the afternoon smokes she had taken before heading off to work.
Then Hunter reali
zed that the position of the chair she was sitting in, the way it was angled towards the far edge of her fire escape as if to peer over, wasn’t coincidental. Her neighbor had been watching her.
Hunter didn’t know what she should make of it.
She crossed over to his bed, a naked mattress, sunken in on a wrought iron frame, and sat down. She could barely comprehend that just next door, in the place she’s called home for years, a man was disposing of a body, getting rid of Thomas. The very thought of it was so overwhelming that it made her tired. She had been exhausted for days anyway, riding the highs and lows of various prescription pills. She hadn’t slept properly night after night. And with the insanity of tonight, she was ready to drop. She might as well.
Hunter reached under her tee, grabbing the thin chain of her necklace, and pulled it up and over her head. Beside the bed was a milk crate with a hardcover book resting on top of it. A makeshift nightstand, she thought. Hunter set her necklace down there with the tap.
Its centerpiece was a rusted bullet, a reminder of where she had come from.
Chapter Three
The moon was unusually low in the sky, hanging equidistant between two buildings. The symmetry was perfection, Twitch thought. He could see it clearly despite the bright city lights. It was directly overhead. He was arching his head back, staring straight up at it, as he stood soundlessly between two dumpsters.
The moon had come as a surprise. He hadn’t looked up expecting to see it. He hadn’t expected to see anything really. All Twitch had wanted was a prayer of fresh air. The dumpsters were foul, overflowing with rotting food so pungent the smell stung his nostrils with each breath.
If he had a cigarette he would have lit it to mask the noxious odor. He wondered how much longer he was going to have to wait in this alley, hiding from everyone and everything out there on the street. The sun would rise soon. He could tell from the way the moon seemed to turn translucent, no longer white and gray. It was an optical illusion. The moon wasn’t turning shades. The sky behind it was. There was maybe another forty minutes of nightfall before it would officially be morning. Twitch didn’t want to still be here by sunrise. Ash better hurry up.
Twitch flipped his cell phone open, but there was nothing waiting for him there, no text messages, no missed calls. He slipped it back into his pocket. His neck was sweaty. He attempted to wipe it dry with his shirtsleeve, but that only matted the hair at the base of his head and caused the back of his shirt to cling uncomfortably to his body. This weather was beyond gross.
At the far end of the alley, opposite to the street, a car slowly rolled by. Its headlights illuminated the alley with a gradual sweep. Twitch watched shadows arch and shift in tandem, as though they were chasing the beams away. He was careful not to move or be seen, but he couldn’t help leaning forward to see if he could get a sense of who was there. No one drove that slowly unless they were looking for something, or someone. Last he knew, Ash didn’t own a car, which meant their night was about to get a lot more complicated.
Twitch had hoped the car would roll past with eyes on the next alley, but it didn’t. Instead the vehicle pulled in reverse to realign itself perpendicular, then made a sharp turn. The tires turned so slowly they seemed to crunch and crush everything beneath them. The vehicle was headed his way.
Twitch held his breath, praying that the car would stop, that it wouldn’t keep coming and discover he was hiding, waiting, watching between the two dumpsters. He had no idea who was behind the wheel, but the fact that they were here now, meant that whatever Ash needed from Twitch, so did they.
The car stopped. Twitch recognized the vehicle as a rundown, busted up sedan, not that he’d ever seen it before in this neighborhood. It had New Hampshire plates, a little rare for Brooklyn though not impossible. It was probably an eight hour drive south for anyone coming to the big city from New England. But who would want to at this hour? And what would bring them to a back alley in one of the worst neighborhoods in the Borough?
Twitch looked up at the fire escape he had been told to watch. The light in the apartment was still on, but Ash was nowhere to be found.
Twitch was stuck. The car was nearing. There was no way out, not now. As he tucked himself deeper between the dumpsters, crouching with his back against the building wall, Twitch heard the faint echoing steps of rubber soles hit the pavement. Whoever had just gotten out of the car was walking up the alley straight towards him.
Holding his breath, Twitch begged himself not to move a muscle, not to shift his weight. If he could have stopped his heart from beating, he would have.
The footsteps grew louder. He knew the man was walking alongside the dumpster.
Not a moment later, a burly looking older man was staring down at Twitch. His heart skipped a beat, as he gasped soundlessly.
He knew the man.
And the man knew him. The man looked up at the fire escape, the apartment light, the absence of anyone within.
“You know who lives up there?” The man asked.
Twitch was too scared to respond.
* * *
Hunter stepped out of the shower, soaking wet, and realized she had forgotten to set out a towel for herself. The floor was slippery, so she stepped carefully over to the cabinets below the sink. There weren’t any towels inside, only toilet paper and shaving cream. She cracked the bathroom door open next. The apartment air seemed cool against her naked body compared to the hot bathroom with billowing steam.
Hunter listened for a moment, but there weren’t any indications that Ash had returned. Still, she wasn’t sure she needed to walk around his apartment nude.
She pulled her skirt up over her hips with a great deal of effort. It was as though the denim had shrunk against her damp body. Then she put on her tee. It absorbed the drips from her soaking wet hair, which made the shirt feel even more uncomfortable than it had when she had worn it earlier that day. There was no winning with this weather.
Hunter walked down the short hallway into Ash’s studio space. It took her a second, but she realized that his apartment floor plan was an exact replica of hers. It was eerie how apartment buildings did that. These were the meandering thoughts of someone who needed to get some real sleep, she thought. The sun would probably rise any minute now. It was time to make herself go to bed.
When she passed the window on her way to the bed, something down below caught her eye. Outside, in the alley she saw two hunching figures. She almost didn’t catch them. They were in between the dumpsters, and if they hadn’t moved, she would’ve missed them. But they were moving, slightly.
As she stared down, she realized what she was looking at. It was the shape of a man, tall, burly and overdressed in too many layers for this kind of sweltering heat. He was standing over a much smaller man, a kid, holding him roughly by his shoulder with one hand. The other hand, balled in a fist, swung back.
The man punched the younger one in the stomach. Hunter could hear the grunt from where she stood, the sound of the kid receiving the blow. Not a moment later, the man punched the kid again. The kid fell to the ground, out of Hunter’s line of vision, but she could still see the man standing over him, kicking him.
She wanted to call the cops. Someone needed to help that kid. There’s nothing he could’ve done to deserve that, getting the crap kicked out of him in an alley. But Ash told her not to call anyone, no matter what. Hunter was gripping her cell phone tightly in her hand. She hadn’t even realized that she got her purse, looking for her phone.
Watching two shadowy figures in the distance, trying to make sense of what she was seeing, sensing something dark was taking place but not understanding what, chilled her to her very core. She remained staring at the scene below, almost as though she was frozen, petrified with fear, just like how she used to feel at the farmhouse.
Suddenly Hunter remembered. The memory of a dark day from her childhood, a memory she had tried so hard to forget was resurfacing. How many pills and drugs had she taken during her last fe
w years of freedom to rid her mind of the horrific images she had seen at the farmhouse? How many drinks had she had, how many men had she taken home, clutching desperately to any hope of forgetting, no matter how thin, no matter how fleeting, if only for one night?
She wished she could make herself look away from the alley beating that continued down below, but Hunter couldn’t. It was a gateway to her darkest memories. They were flooding in, and there was nothing she could do about it.
When Hunter had been twelve years old, she was awoken one night to the sounds of faint sobbing. The muffled gasps and cries had filled her with dread. She had already been living in fear. The only life she had known was filled with rules and silence, pain and sadness. She had recognized those sobs. She had known who was crying. It had been Carolyn. The cries hadn’t been coming from Carolyn’s bed, which was four bunks down from her own. They had emanated through her window from across the field. They had been coming from the barn. Even at her young age, Hunter had known that nothing good ever happened in the barn. If Carolyn was in the barn at this hour, Hunter had known it was because the men were forcing her to do something that no child should ever be forced to do.
Hunter had known the worst thing to do would have been to get out of bed, sneak out of the farmhouse, and wait for Carolyn outside the barn. Whenever a girl had been taken like that, when it was finally over, that child needed help getting back to bed. Hunter had been in the habit of staying beside whoever returned, comforting that girl, keeping watch so the girl could sleep without fear of being taken again. Although everyone knew that once a girl was taken, she would be safe for the next few months. She wouldn’t be taken again for a period of time while her wounds healed. But even so, Hunter had felt it necessary to lie with those girls when they came back, to make sure they didn’t slip away into madness.