Checking In
STYLO FANTÔME
Published by BattleAxe Productions
Copyright © 2018
Stylo Fantôme
Cover Design:
BattleAxe Productions
Copyright © 2018
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
CHECKING IN
The Bad Ones
My Time in the Affair
The Mercenaries: Law
Muscle Memory
Twin Estates
While I Was Away
The Kane Series
MORE FROM THE AUTHOR
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CHECKING IN
Ever wondered what your favorite book characters were up to? What happened after “The End”? Did they ever take that trip? Get married? Have a baby? Go to jail?
Sometimes, it's just nice to check in with those oldies but goodies. See how they're doing, make sure they're on track. Or off track. Or still breaking hearts, making love, and living life.
Inside this book, you'll touch base with several characters from books going all the way back to 2014. This is where something important needs to be said: spoiler warning. The chapter headings are the titles of the books the characters are from, just to give you a little heads up.
Some chapters were written on the spot, as the idea developed. Some chapters were thought of long before they were ever written in this book. Some were actually already written, just waiting to be given a chance with readers.
One chapter is from a book that's never been published, and is in fact in the middle of being written.
Dark or romantic, light or heavy, there's a little something for everyone in here.
Meaning, of course, there's a Sanders at the end.
Enjoy checking in with these characters.
The Bad Ones
The problem with being gifted in the way she was, Dulcie had long since decided, was having the ability of foresight. Despite what people would think if they knew her history, Dulcie rarely ever acted impulsively. She thought everything through, very carefully. Before she spoke, before she acted, before she decided, everything.
Constantine, however, was a different beast entirely. He had no problems shifting with the wind, going where his fancies took him. And unfortunately, that often meant she was dragged along with him.
What else can big game do? After it's been shot through the heart and tied to the top of a car?
That's just how it is when you're in love.
“This is a bad idea,” Dulcie hissed for what had to be the hundredth time. It was dark out, but she could tell he'd turned back to look at her. Could see a flash of silver fang in his evil grin.
“Aren't all of our ideas?” he asked back, then she felt his hand on hers, squeezing tightly.
“Our? This idea was all yours, buddy,” she reminded him. They started moving again, sneaking around behind the big building.
“You say that,” he sighed, letting go of her hand as they came up to some fencing. “But you know it's not true. Whatever you think, I think. Whatever I think, you think. I'm just usually the least afraid to speak those thoughts out loud and put them into action.”
She wanted to argue with him, but knew she couldn't. So she squatted down and glared at him as he searched for an opening. Finally, where fence met building, he found a hole. Not very big, but enough to crawl through. He held the links back for her to get through unscathed, then he crawled behind her, practically sliding on his belly.
“There's people here,” she warned him, pressing her back to the brick wall next to her.
“That's the idea,” he chuckled. He playfully tugged on a lock of her hair, then moved past her and around to the front of the property.
It was so easy for him. Just like everything else in his life. School, friends, grades, sports, girls. He'd breezed through them all. So of course he'd taken well to deception and murder and running away. Dulcie had been good at the last three, but not much else.
And life was still easy for Con, he was still breezing through it. Enough cash to allow them to do anything they wanted, and secret identities which allowed them to go wherever they wanted. Why shouldn't everything be easy?
And they would've stayed easy if we'd never come back here.
“It's fine, Dulcie,” he said, sticking his head back around the corner. “I promise. Everything will be okay.”
Then he held out his hand, and that was it. She didn't have a choice, nor did she want one. She wrapped her fingers around his and stepped out into the light with him.
The old train station really hadn't changed a lot over the past couple years. The front windows were still burnt out, black ash staining the doors. She was sure a glance inside would show her scorched floor, as well. But the upstairs and the outside of the building were largely untouched. Structurally, it was still sound.
So of course it had reverted back to being a popular camp site for homeless people. Tents were set up along the tracks, and several barrel fires were crackling away up on the platform. It was warm out, but people were still huddled around them, holding their hands over the flames while giving Con and Dulcie suspicious glances.
“Who the fuck are you?” a guy with a huge beard growled at them. Con gave him his best smile, which could really be quite scary.
“Haven't you heard? We're ghosts,” he replied. The homeless man snorted.
“Fucking burn outs. Get the fuck outta here with that shit.”
They didn't look homeless. Dulcie was in her skinny jeans and Chuck's, one of Con's sweaters hanging almost to her knees. Constantine was looking as glorious as ever, tall and strong and broad, classic in his looks and his presence. One glance at the strength in his arms, at the glint in his eyes, and nobody would mess with them.
Nobody sane, at least.
Hand in hand, they wandered down the platform. Dulcie peeked inside and saw several groups of women and children inside the station. She frowned. It wasn't a place for those kind of people. Not because it was exposed to the elements or had no facilities, but because it was sacred. It was her church, her temple. They were squatting in her house of worship.
She wanted them gone.
“I don't like this,” she whispered. Con nodded and squeezed her.
“Me, neither. Isn't it fun?”
The opposite end of the platform was clearly the party crowd. A bottle of liquor wrapped in a brown paper bag was being passed around. A guy was smoking something dubious, and in the corner next to a doorway, a girl was passed out, some rubber tubing still tied around her arm.
Dulcie blinked rapidly in surprise, and for a moment, just a moment, the girl looked like someone else. Like a young man, laying there with drugs in his veins and a shovel through his head. She turned away, closing her eyes.
“I know you.”
When she looked back, the girl was awake. She hadn't moved, but her large, glassy eyes were wandering all over Dulcie's face.
“You don't,” she assured the girl.
“But I do. I've ... I've seen you,” she breathed. Dulcie glanced at Con – he was trying to get a swig from the liquor bottle. She let him go and headed over to the druggy girl.
“Where have you seen me?�
�� she asked, lowering herself to her knees and inching closer.
“I think ... here,” the girl whispered, then she broke into a coughing fit. When she got control of herself, she licked her lips and took a deep breath. “Here. You're a ghost. You died here.”
“I did,” Dulcie agreed. “A long time ago. Someone stabbed me and I bled to death.”
“I knew it. I've seen you here. You haunt us. We shouldn't be here. You died here. You haunt us,” the girl sighed.
“I do,” Dulcie whispered back, but she wasn't sure the heroin addict had heard her. She was passed out again.
“Having a reunion?”
She looked over her shoulder to find Con standing there, the bottle in his hand. She glanced back at her new friend.
“Hard to be a reunion when we've never met before.”
“You've met her.”
“What?”
“She went to school with us,” he explained. Her eyes got wide and she stood up so she could be next to him.
“She did?” she stared at the girl, searching her own memory.
“Yeah. She was in my grade. She took choir, art, you probably had a class with her,” he said. Dulcie couldn't sing for shit, but she had taken every art class ever available at Fuller High. So if this girl had taken one, as well, they would've met.
“It's Cassy,” he further explained. “Her brother was that kid who won the state science fair.”
“What happened to her?” Dulcie breathed, finally remembering the girl.
“She stayed here.”
Con said it as if it provided all the answers, which of course, it did. Fuller wasn't a place where people grew up and lived. It was a place where dreams and souls eventually died. A person's best chance was to graduate and get a scholarship to a college, much like Con had done. Or have connected parents, like Frannie.
Or murder some people and fake a death, like Dulcie.
“We should get out of here,” Con's voice was low and in her ear, his breath hot against her skin. She leaned back into him, just for a moment, then stepped away.
“There's nothing here anymore,” she sighed, moving to the edge of the platform and jumping down. He followed behind her and they walked a couple feet, then came to a stop.
It was completely gone. No cardboard. No uneven ground. Just a patch of weeds, blending in with all the other weeds along the sides of the track.
Yet she knew this spot. Con knew this spot. His arms wrapped around her from behind and once again, she was leaning into him. She glanced even further up the tracks, to the barrier that separated them from a road. The ground was clean of debris and marks, the moonlight was shining down on them, but in her mind's eye, it was all covered in blood.
What a beautiful night that was.
“Let's get out of here,” Con's voice was low, but his breathing was hard, and she nodded her head.
“Let's go have some fun.”
SNEAKING AROUND IN the dark behind the old train station had been easy. Predictable. Boring.
Sneaking around in the dark outside Jared Foster's parents' house, now that was entertainment.
“Maybe they have an alarm,” Dulcie whispered. Con jumped up and grabbed onto a windowsill, then did a pull up so he could look through the glass. Her mouth went dry.
She would never get tired of his body.
“Possibly,” he whispered back. “Considering their son's house got broken into and trashed, maybe it made them paranoid.”
She smiled at the memory of destroying Jared and Frannie's house. It was one of her better ones.
Since there didn't seem to be any sensors and they couldn't find any sign of a keypad, they took a risk and Con broke out a glass panel next to the front door. Nothing went off, so he stuck his arm through and slipped the bolt. A second later and they were in the house.
While she stood in the doorway, he strode boldly through the house, as if he'd been there a dozen times before. From a different room, a tiny white dog came pitter-pattering up to Dulcie. They stared at each other for a moment, then the pup let out a half hearted growl. Then a distinct woof. Frowning, Dulcie bent down and scooped it up.
“You have to be quite,” she breathed into its fur. “There's things in here with bigger claws than you.”
She found Con in the kitchen. He was in front of the open fridge, drinking a Capri Sun. He raised his eyebrows at the dog.
“New friend?” he asked, tossing his garbage onto the counter.
“I never did get to have a pet of my own,” she replied, pressing her cheek to the dog's head. It lifted its snout and licked her face.
“I'll get you one when we get home. We're not taking their dog. C'mon, let's head upstairs,” he said. When he brushed past her, he reached out and scratched the dog between its ears.
Jared's parents looked peaceful in their sleep. Dulcie had met them once, years ago. Nice people. She had nothing against them.
Jared's daughter was in an office which had been converted into something of a nursery. There was a crib against a wall and when Dulcie peeked into it, a tiny bundle of flesh and fists and big eyes blinked back up at her.
“How do people do this?” she whispered.
“Make babies?” Con asked, and she felt his hand against her ass. “We can go downstairs and I can demonstrate.”
“Shut up. Have babies, be parents, that's what I mean,” she snapped.
“Some people are wired for it,” he suggested. “I think Jared wants to love things. Wanted to love you, wanted to love Frannie. Neither of you loved him back. Kids, though, they pretty much have to love him back. They have his DNA, it's genetically required.”
“I didn't love my mom,” she argued. “You didn't love your dad.”
“Ah, but that's because we were wired for something else. Something greater. We were only wired to love each other.”
“You're so beautiful,” she sighed, turning away from the baby crib.
“Sometimes,” he agreed. “Now let's get this over with, I wanna get everything done before the sun comes up.”
Only Dulcie entered the last bedroom on that floor. It was clearly a spare room, done in neutral colors and plain furniture. Had it once upon a time been Jared's bedroom? His letterman jacket in the corner, text books across a desk, maybe band posters on the wall? Any sign of him was gone now.
Except for his body, that is. Jared Foster was sprawled out in the middle of a queen sized bed. The blankets had fallen to his waist, showing off his muscular torso, clad in only a white tank top.
Dulcie knelt by the bed and stared at her ex-boyfriend's face. The face of the man whose life she'd ruined. Or saved. She could never quite decide. He was now divorced and a single parent with sole custody of his two small children. He'd moved away to Charleston to escape the memories of Dulcie's supposed death and destruction.
He was sleeping heavily, his eyes moving behind his lids. She wondered what he was dreaming about. It didn't seem like his current situation was affecting his sleep. He looked healthy, his color was good. Maybe he was happy. Maybe she had saved him.
“Maybe I did one good thing,” she whispered, reaching out and brushing some hair off his forehead. He mumbled in his sleep and turned his head, but didn't wake up.
When she stood up, it was to find Con standing in the bedroom doorway, his arms folded across his chest. They stared at each other for a moment, then the little dog ran into the room and broke the tension. She picked it up and deposited it on the mattress with Jared, and it curled up against the sleeping man.
Then both Con and Dulcie left the house, shutting all the doors behind them. It wasn't until they were in the car that he finally spoke.
“You don't regret it.”
She knew what he meant. Without looking, she reached out and placed her hand over his on the gear shift.
“I could never.”
“They why did you want to see him again?” he asked, and from the corner of her eye, she saw him look at her.
“B
ecause, he's like ...” she tried to explain her feelings. “Our only true witness. To what we did. Even if he doesn't know it. Matt is dead, and so is your dad. My mom wasn't even aware. Frannie's so stupid, I could stab someone right in front of her and she wouldn't comprehend it. But Jared caught glimpses of it. He saw you coming from a mile away, and deep down, he knew something wasn't right with me. It's ... commendable, in a way. He impressed me. Hardly anyone does.”
“Huh,” he grunted. She playfully swatted him in the chest.
“Stop it.”
“You sure it's not those pretty blue eyes of his you're impressed with?”
“I didn't even know that was his eye color.”
“Seriously? Dulcie, you dated him,” Con reminded her. She shrugged.
“Just to pass the time until you came back.”
“Do you even know my eye color?”
“Blue,” she whispered, digging her fingernails into his skin. “So big and blue, it's like looking into the universe when I stare at you.”
He lifted their hands and kissed the back of her knuckles.
“Flattery gets you everywhere, my love. Now let's go home.”
Technically, there wasn't a house anymore. The fire they had set so long ago had burned Con's family home into a husked out shell, it had to be bulldozed for safety reasons. They stood next to the foundation, where the edge of the porch would've been, and stared at the remains.
“I used to think your house was magical,” she told him, her voice hoarse. They'd been awake for almost twenty-four hours, it was starting to get to her.
“Really? When?”
“When I was little,” she explained. “This big white and green house on the hill, I thought it was a palace. My mom used to work at that diner, and sometimes she'd take me with her. I'd sit outside and stare up here. So when your dad became the mayor, I thought it was kinda fitting.”
“I used to think of my house as a box,” he replied. “Just a place I existed. Somewhere I had to be for a little while, until I didn't have to be, anymore.”
“That's how I thought of my home,” she whispered. His arm wrapped around her waist.
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