by Kara Hart
“What’s the plan?” I hear a voice. I look up to find Payton standing there, smiling. “Are you ready to run off with me or what?”
Payton
There’s a feeling one gets when things are about to go your way. It’s sort of like excitement, only it’s much better. It feels like… grace. Everything lines up before your eyes and it all just clicks into place. Well, that’s how I’m feeling now. When I see Dakota sitting on my steps, I know everything is going to work out.
“Danny can throw me into jail as much as he wants,” I tell her. “I’m still going to love you ‘til the day I die.”
“I know you will,” she says, picking herself up from the ground. She runs and kisses me, and I wrap my arms around her, feeling that good feeling once again. “He locked me and Angela in her room. He said he was going out for a while. We have to be quick. We have to get her.”
“You don’t have a key inside?” I ask her, trying to visualize everything. She pulls on my hand and we begin running toward the place.
“I don’t have a key, but there’s a way inside. It might require some climbing and maneuvering,” she says.
“I can do that,” I laugh.
We get to the place and everything looks just how she left it. “Up there,” she says, pointing. “All you have to do is climb up the fire escape and jump to the next level when you get to the top.”
I look at her, astounded. “You climbed down from all the way up there?”
She nods, smiling slightly. “Yes, but hurry! We don’t have all the time in the world.”
“Alright,” I mutter, rubbing my hands together. “See you in a second.”
I climb up the damn building with little effort. At the top, I jump and grab the ledge, pulling myself up. Upstairs, I hear the sound of Angela crying. I hear the sound of talking, so I quiet myself.
“I don’t know,” Danny’s voice echoes. “I fucking left them here. I don’t know how she could have gotten out.”
Another voice, unfamiliar in tone, says, “Well, let’s go find them. She probably went out the window.
Oh, fuck. I see the window jiggling and I back up to the corner. I look down and feel my stomach dip. It’s a long way down. If I fall, I’m surely dead.
The window opens and I put up my fists. It’s about the only weapon I have. I don’t want anyone to die tonight, but I’m not opposed to knocking his head in. Danny’s friend, whoever the guy is, peaks his head out the window and glances my direction. “What the—”
I kick forward and connect with his temple. Instantly, he’s knocked out. I pull the guy’s body out and lay him on the balcony. I hear the sound of Danny’s laughter coming from inside and I know the jig is up.
“Bravo!” he exclaims. “I should’ve known you’d be here.”
I jump through the window and I’m inside a darkened room. Danny’s on the bed with Angela and he’s combing her hair. It takes me a second to realize it, but he’s not using a brush. Instead, he’s using a switchblade.
“Pretty girl, isn’t she?” he asks, looking at her. “I can’t believe how much she’s grown over the years. It really makes a father warm inside to see his daughter turn into something so wonderful.”
“Give it up, Danny,” I say. “It’s over. She’s coming with me. She’s my child.”
He sets her on the bed and stands up, holding the knife out in front of him. “I raised her,” he says, “and you think you can just come back and take her from me? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Your actions have caught up to you,” I tell him. “It’s time to give up. She’s my flesh and blood. Had I known about her, I would have come a lot sooner.”
“Alright then,” he smiles. “Let’s duel for her. Whoever wins takes the child.”
“No more games,” I tell him. “I’m tired of your bullshit.”
He shrugs. “Suit yourself.” He makes a stabbing motion near my gut, near the area I got stabbed in Afghanistan. It’s instinctual that I jump back, but he takes it as a weakness.
“Fine,” I mutter. “We’ll play.” I punch forward, thinking I’m going to hit his jaw. Instead, he blocks me and slices my arm. I feel the cold burn of the blade as it slashes against my skin. “Bastard,” I whisper.
“This is fun!” he exclaims. “Really, it’s entertaining. Don’t you think Angela?”
Angela is huddled in the corner of the room, clutching at her stuffed bear. She doesn’t say a word, nor does she make a move. I give her a glance over and I want to tell her that everything is going to be okay. It’s all going to turn out right.
Of course, that’s when I feel the blade slip in my thigh. In and out, just like that. I fall to the floor and grab his legs, causing him to fall on his back. That’s when the real struggle begins.
He stabs upward, nearly hitting my chest. However, he misses and I grab his wrist, forcing the knife out of his hand. “That’s more like it,” he says through clenched teeth. “Fight like a man!”
“What do you know about being a man?” I ask him, punching into his gut. He makes a painful noise and rolls me over to my back. He punches once against my jaw, twice against my abdomen, and a third time, knocking my kidneys.
“You’re not a hero,” he says. “You’re just a deadbeat with no other options other than to fight. I’m the one who needs to raise this kid and you know it.”
“Fuck you,” I manage to mutter. He punches down again and I nearly black out. I see Angela in the corner of my eyes and it gives me a renewed strength. I flip him over and start going crazy on him. “Look away!” I tell Angela. She puts her stuffed animal in front of her face and hides.
Somehow, Danny manages to grab the knife. He swings it up and it connects against my hip. “You mother fucker!” I scream. I knock the blade out of his hand and punch him some more, until he’s bleeding from his nose and face. I grab the knife and lodge it in his gut.
I don’t want to do it. Every cell in my body is screaming don’t do it, man, but I’m already doing it. The blade slides into his gut and he looks at me like what have you done?
I jump off him and back up. I take Angela and back out of the building. I run through the front door, down the stairs, and onto the street. His blood is on my hands. Fuck, his blood is on my hands.
What have I done? I’ve killed him…
Dakota
“What happened, baby? You’re bleeding,” I say, running toward him and Angela. I grab her from his bleeding hands and hold her close to me. “You’re hurt!”
“I’m fine,” he says, limping. “He got me in the hip and the thigh. Son of a bitch…”
“We have to get you to a hospital,” I tell him. “You need stitches.”
“No,” he moans. “They’ll get me on assault charges if I go. I need to see someone more low-key. I know the place. Let’s hail a cab and get the hell out of here.”
“Okay,” I whisper, throwing my arms up at every yellow cab that drives by. Finally, one stops and we get in.
“No blood in the cab!” the driver yells at us. “Get out!”
“Here,” Payton hands him a few folded bills, at least three hundred in cash. “It should be more than enough for a car wash.”
The driver reluctantly agrees, driving us to the address Payton gives him. “Where are we going?” I ask him.
“To a friend’s place,” he sighs. “He’ll know what to do.”
Finally, we get there, coming to a quick stop. “Out! Get out of my cab!” the driver yells.
“Thank you,” I mutter. “You’ve just saved our life.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says back.
We walk up to the old building and Payton pounds on the door. “Dobbins!” he yells. “Open up! It’s me, Payton. I need help, man.”
The door opens and a portly shaped man sticks his head out. “Holy shit,” he says. “Come in! Fuck, man. Are you okay?”
“No,” Payton sighs. “He stuck me in the leg and hip. I’m going to need you to sew me up. You got any tools
in here?”
“Yeah, uh…” he runs to the bathroom and digs through a drawer. “I’ve got a heavy-duty first aid kit somewhere. Ah! There it is.”
He comes out of the bathroom with a kit in his hand. “Sit down,” he points to a couch and grabs some towels to put under me. His place is shabby and comfortable. In the hallway, there are pictures of his parents in the same house, so I figure it was handed down to him.
Payton
“I’m going to warn you,” he says, taking out a needle and thread from the kit, “this isn’t going to feel too good. In fact, it’s going to hurt like a bitch.”
He grabs a bottle of alcohol and sterilizes everything. He lightly cleans around the wound and I take a deep breath. “It’s fine. I’ve gotten stabbed before. Been through it all,” I mutter, turning my head. I just hate looking at it. That’s my one gripe with having to get sewn up.
He presses the needle delicately against the skin and pushes it through. I hear Dakota wince with pain. I look at her and exhale sharply. “I gutted him,” I tell her. “I didn’t mean to. He was stabbing me left and right. I reacted and accidentally got him in the stomach.”
I look away, feeling ashamed. I protected myself as best as I knew how, but I messed up. They’re going to lock me away. They’re going to find his body and bring me to justice. They’ll say I’m some insane veteran who’s come home from the war, hell-bent on killing more people.
Dakota looks at me and swallows hard. “Are you sure?” she asks. I nod and she looks down at the floor.
“You did what you had to do,” Dobbins says, threading the needle through. I’m about halfway sewn up at this point. “No one will blame you for that. It was self-defense. What else are you going to do when a guy has stabbed you twice and taken your daughter hostage?”
When we’re both silent, Dobbins stops and looks up. “You kill the son of a bitch. Plain and simple.”
When he’s finishes, I lean back against the couch and throw my palms over my face. “Fuck,” I whisper. “What have I done?”
I feel Dakota’s arms comfort me and Angela comes from across the room to hug me. Suddenly, I feel an inner warmth I haven’t experienced in a real long time. It’s the feeling of family. It’s my daughter looking at me, needing me to stay strong. It’s Dakota pushing me to be a better man. What happened back there wasn’t the best outcome, but I did my best to protect the people I love.
Dakota kisses me, kneeling down next to me. “Everything’s going to be okay. From here on out, we have each other.”
* * *
A day passes and we’re still in the same house with Dobbins. “I don’t mind,” he tells me. “I could use the company.” As for me, I’m really starting to get cabin fever. I need to get the hell out of here.
Dakota keeps reassuring me on things, but I’m stuck in the heavy reality of the situation. My prints are all over that knife and I’m worried he’s going to get me. The friend I knocked out, the one who was with Danny, I keep picturing him waking up to find his dead friend lying in a pool of his own blood. They’re going to get me. They’re definitely going to get me.
“Danny evaded all of his taxes. He made shady deals,” she tells me, very late, one night. “I kept all his forms. They’re at home in a drawer.” It doesn’t do me much good, but it’s something to go off of.
“Are you sure about this?” I ask her. “How do you know the deals are shady?”
“Because,” she whispers, “he told me. He said, ‘I’m telling you all of this because I trust you.’ He made me handle all of his paperwork.” Handle means putting it away in a drawer and dealing with it later. It was, of course, never dealt with. Angela is asleep on the couch in the center of the room. We’re huddled around the kitchen table, talking amongst the darkness.
“I’m getting that information,” I tell her. “I don’t know what it’ll do, but it’s something, right?” She shrugs. We’re both hopeless. The man is dead. What else do I want from this? I should get the fuck out of New York. I should be in hiding, somewhere far off the map, but I’m not. I’m here, waiting for my death sentence.
I get out of the house and head in the direction of his body. It takes a subway ride and a heavy run, but I’m there within the next hour. When I get to the door, it’s still unlocked. It’s not even closed. The door just sits there, mildly open. I get this eerie feeling, like something is about to happen. A cold shiver runs down my neck but I brush it away.
I walk up the stairs, trying my best to tread lightly. When I’m inside, I dig through the drawer she told me about. All of the information is there. When I hold it up to a light, I can see what she means by shady. He’s made millions, yet he hasn’t paid an ounce in taxes. There’s a Rolodex with the word “TRUSTWORTHY” written on the side. I grab everything and put it into a bag, including his laptop.
I’m almost out of the building when my eye stops on the room it all happened in. I stop for a second and feel my heart start to pound. I walk up slowly to the door and push it open. It creaks and stops when it hits the wall. Inside, there’s nothing. There’s not even a pool of blood. Everything is cleaned up, like nothing ever happened.
“What the fuck,” I mutter. “What’s going on?”
It’s not obvious what’s taken place here, but I have my theories. Either he’s not dead, or his friend has covered up all the evidence of death. I’m not satisfied with that last explanation. Why would his friend cover it up? Wouldn’t he get more out of this if he was dead? I’m an easy blame, the obvious culprit. Something flashes in my brain. I need to get the hell out of here now.
I run down the stairs, and I carefully lock the front door. When I’m out on the street, there’s no one in sight. A lone car drives by with tinted windows. Other than that, it’s eerily quiet.
I run to the subway and get on the car. I’ve got the strangest feeling I’m being followed. I keep the bag of things close to me when I’m sitting down on the plastic subway seats. I glance out of the corner of my eyes every now and then, just to make sure nobody is watching me. There’s a man with a newspaper in the section I’m sitting in. I can’t be too careful.
When the subway car stops, I run through the doors and head upstairs. Only a block left and I’m safe. Behind me is the man with the newspaper. He follows me at a steady pace, but never looks directly my way. I’m completely paranoid and overwhelmed with other delusional thoughts.
I get to the house and Dakota takes one look at me and says “What’s going on? What happened?”
“The body is gone,” I tell her. “I’m getting a bad feeling he’s not dead.”
“What do you mean the body is gone?” she asks me. “A body can’t just disappear.”
“It’s gone,” I shake my head, still confused by it all. “There’s no blood or anything. It’s like nothing ever happened.”
“He’s not dead,” she whispers. “We should get out of here. Did he see you?”
“I don’t think so,” I whisper, looking out the window. The streets are empty and silent. No one seems to be around, except a few nightly wanderers. “It’s hard to be sure. I’ve got everything.”
Dobbins comes into the room, suddenly, stretching and yawning. “Sorry, guys,” he says. “Just came out to get some water.”
“Dobbins, I need your help,” I say to him.
“Of course you do,” he yawns. “What happened? What’s going on?”
I tell him about the blood, about the documents in my bag, about the man on the subway. I tell him everything. “What should I do?” I ask him. “I think we’re going to go and get the hell out of here.”
“Turn everything into the cops,” he says. I look at him like he’s crazy.
“The cops? I thought you said never to trust the cops in this city. What’s changed?” I ask him.
“What else can you do?” he shrugs. “Look, I have a friend in Jersey I could call if you want.”
Dakota puts her head in her hands and sighs. “I just want this all to be o
ver.” Even through the most stressful of times, she’s drop dead gorgeous. She demands my attention. My eye catches her and I’m filled with a new kind of feeling.
“Call him,” I say. It’s going to be a long night.
Payton
Dobbins calls up his friend and explains the situation, saying we need his help as soon as possible. “Does he need to come down here?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I think we’re okay,” Dakota says. “We just have to wait it out, right? We’re safe here?”
“As far as I know,” I tell her. “He’s never seen Dobbins in his life. Unless I was followed, we’re okay.”
But I have no idea if I was followed or not. I’m forced to make a decision. Truth be told, after the one night spent in a jail cell, I don’t particularly trust the justice system, nor do I trust the people protecting and serving our citizens.
We sit and wait, playing cards and watching the news to pass the time. “If Danny’s body is found somewhere, we’ll see it first here,” Dobbins says. He’s done a lot for us so far and I’m grateful for him. Shit, he’s even supposed to work at the site today. If he doesn’t show, he could lose his job, which is practically everything to a guy like him.
When there’s nothing else to do, but sleep, I tuck Angela in bed with Dakota. Well, it’s not a bed technically, but the couch works about as well as a mattress. “Story,” she says to Dakota. “Momma, I want a story.”
“A story, huh?” she looks at me. “I usually read to her every night. All of her books are at home though.”
“Don’t worry,” I smile. “I’ll make something up.”
I lean over Angela and run my hand through her hair. Looking at her is like looking into my reflection. It’s the weirdest sensation and I never thought I would actually do this someday. I was always considered the crazy one out of the friend group, the one who was too tough to ever settle down.