The Bequest

by Hope Anika

  It’s over.

  For the most part, the realization relieved him. Because even here, in this dark, depressing, fucked up place some fool thought was a Haven, it was better than where he’d been. And so far, no more dangerous. At least he got three squares and a bed that didn’t house a family of rats. No one screaming at him, chasing him, hitting him. At least, not yet.

  He wondered how long they would keep him. He didn’t think they’d send him back to Letitia’s; the social worker who’d come for him had been pissed when she’d seen the place. Most of his stuff was there, but he didn’t care. Hand-me-downs and broken shit. No loss. He had what he needed.

  Where would they send him? Back to Juvie? To a foster home? Nowhere good—but compared to Letitia’s, anywhere else was an improvement. Wasn’t like he had a choice. He was part of the system now, for sure. An orphan. Like that little redhead in the movie—Annie. But he knew there would be no singing and dancing. No rich Daddy, no big house. No shaggy dog.

  Just survival.

  But Rafe was good at surviving. He’d been doing it for as long as he could remember, ever since his ma had started tossing him around like a bad penny. He couldn’t remember the first people he’d stayed with—just the sound of dogs barking and the smell of sauerkraut—but the others he could list, one by one. Some of them he could even draw.

  Most of them had been okay. They’d fed him, took him to school, put clothes on his back and shoes on his feet. Not like Letitia.

  He’d never understood what he’d done to deserve her. He knew his ma hated him–she’d never made no bones about it—but he didn’t get why she’d picked Letitia. What had he done wrong? Been born?

  My little trump. Chump, maybe. Trump—whatever the hell that meant. He’d never understood.

  Course he’d never understood anything. Why she didn’t want him. Why she didn’t like him. Why other people were raising him. Why she only showed up once in a blue moon and gave him dumbass shit he didn’t want. Even the money she slipped him made no sense. At first, he’d spent it like a knucklehead. But then he’d realized he was on his own for real, and he’d started saving it. It was in his shoe, tucked under the sole, where he’d dug out a small hidey-hole for it. Forty-seven dollars.

  Rafe knew it wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. Especially now that she was dead.

  When the social worker told him, he hadn’t known what to do. She’d hovered over him, flitting around like a bird and shoved a Kleenex into his hand. But he hadn’t felt what he knew he was supposed to. He didn’t feel sad. He felt…relief. Because his ma had always made him feel wrong somehow, like he was broken. He wasn’t smart enough or tall enough or tough enough. He wasn’t beautiful, like her. Her disappointment always hurt. And she’d let him know, over and over and over again, how much he displeased her.

  You’re nothing like me, little Trump. Too bad for you. And so very disappointing for me.

  He didn’t give a shit that she was dead. It was no loss. She didn’t do what mothers were supposed to. Not ever. He watched the kids at school with their parents—he knew what it should be like. And it had never been that. She’d owned him, nothing more. Like he was a dog—worse, because at least dogs got pet. He’d only ever felt the back of her hand.

  No. Rafe was glad she was dead. Because that meant he was free.

  Sometimes he wondered about his father, who he’d never met and hadn’t dared mention to his ma, but then he’d just put it away and turn the key. Didn’t matter. Wasn’t like his pop was around, like he’d coming swooping to the rescue like some masked X-Men character and save him—even if the reflection he saw when he looked in the mirror everyday made him wonder about the man who’d helped create him.

  Rafe had never met anyone else who had two different colored eyes, like he did. One bright hazel, flecked with gold and green and odd bits of blue, and one black as night. Mosaicism, his teacher had called it, smiling at him like it was a good thing. But it just made him feel like a freak. He knew he must have gotten the black one from his ma, but the hazel one…that had to be from his pop.

  “Big whoop,” he told himself. A gazillion people probably had hazel eyes. Needle in a haystack.

  Meaningless. Turn the key. He was on his own. He’d always been on his own. Nothing new there.

  The social worker—he couldn’t remember her name—said his ma died in an accident. He wondered what kind. A car accident? A plane crash? What?

  Not that it mattered. He hadn’t known anything about her life—not where she went when she left him, not what she did, not who she was—so what did it matter if he didn’t know anything about her death?

  It didn’t. Because what little he had known, he hadn’t liked. His ma had been off. Even as a little kid, he’d known that. Crazy in a way that scared him. She was sick in the head; she had to be. Or maybe it was just easier to tell himself that. Maybe he was the problem. Maybe everything she’d ever said about him was true.

  He really didn’t know. Truth was, he’d loved her. And he’d hated her. That’s just how it was. Maybe someday he could forgive her for Letitia. For abandoning him. Hurting him.

  But not today.

  A brisk knock sounded on the door, and Tully stuck his head in and smiled at Rafe. Tall, stick thin, skin as black as coal, Tully walked like a ‘banger but talked like a teacher. Rafe liked him.

  “You’re up, little man,” he said to Rafe.

  Rafe’s heart leapt. He sat up in the bunk. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean get your stuff together. Word is, you’ve been sprung.”

  But Rafe didn’t move. “By who?”

  “Your guardian.”

  “Guardian?” Panic shot through him. “I don’t have a guardian.”

  “Apparently you do.” Tully glanced at the kid on the bottom bunk. “You alright over there, little chicken?”

  The kid just sniffled.

  “Is it Letitia?” Rafe asked, terror crawling up his throat.

  “I don’t know, bud. They don’t tell me that kind of stuff.” Tully shook his head. “Pack your bag, and I’ll be back in five.”

  Rafe wanted to refuse. If his ma had made Letitia his guardian… Fear threatened to paralyze him. He couldn’t go back there. He couldn’t.

  He would end up dead.

  “Five minutes,” Tully repeated and disappeared.

  Rafe shook himself. Looked out the window and wondered how far forty-seven dollars could get him. The train yard wasn’t far from Letitia’s. He could walk there in a day if he started early and stuck to the alleys. He could hop a train. People did that. As long as it was stopped…

  He had a small army knife and forty-seven dollars. It would have to be enough.

  Two dozen dirty bombs.

  According to Wikipedia, a dirty bomb was a speculative radiological weapon that combined radioactive material with conventional explosives. The purpose of the weapon was to contaminate the area around the explosion with radioactive material. In contrast, a nuclear explosion, such as a fission bomb, released nuclear energy and produced blast effects far in excess of what was achievable by the use of conventional explosives.

  So…no Nagasaki. Just a nice, slow, fatal simmer from the inside out.

  If one survived the initial explosion, of course. And the shrapnel. And the bomb blast.

  Fuck a duck.

  Unfortunately, no matter how hard Cheyenne pinched herself, she was forced back to the same realization again and again: I am awake.

  And this was real.

  A goddamn semi-nuclear arsenal.

  Sure, why not? Because the shitstorm bearing down on her wasn’t enough. Oh, no, it had to go and turn into a freaking typhoon.

  “What next?” she wondered. “Ebola?”

  And, okay, she’d expected something. Something devious and nasty and uniquely Georgia. But not this. Never this.

  “More fool you,” she muttered.

  She sat in the spunky red Subaru the car rental agent had dro
pped off at her motel room that morning, parked in the sea of cracked concrete that was Haven’s parking lot. The aging brick building with its sagging chain link fence, small, barred windows and crumbling exterior sat only a handful of feet in front of her, the mortar and clay tomb of her childhood.

  The sight of it had been like a bare fist to the belly, which she hadn’t expected. Stupid, considering she’d spent nearly half her life within its plastered, hollow walls. Some things didn’t fade, no matter how far you removed yourself from them, no matter how hard you willed yourself to forget. They simply were, like a virus that slumbered inside an oblivious host, harmless when asleep but fatal when awakened. None of the memories that stirred were pleasant, and if she liked to think she’d become someone different, they reminded her she was exactly the same.

  You’ll always be her.

  An idea she’d always refused to accept, and had, in fact, spent most of her life striving to disprove. But maybe it was the truth. Maybe it shouldn’t be argued, but embraced. Everything she’d been through, every horrible, fucked up thing she’d both experienced and done were intrinsically part of who she was now. And Cheyenne liked who she was now. The entirety of her being was a tightly woven tapestry…and if she plucked out the threads she didn’t like, it would just begin to unravel the whole.

  So while she was in no hurry for a jog down memory lane…she was okay with it existing. No matter how unpleasant it might be. Besides, now was not the time to get sidetracked by her own slag. She had a ward to collect.

  And a former Navy SEAL to shake.

  Will Blackheart sat in a black Jeep two spaces back, hidden behind tinted windows and a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses—which she’d watch him don this morning as he’d climbed into the Jeep, which was parked in front of his motel room, which was—wait for it—two doors down from her own.

  Fucker.

  That the memory of their clash the night before roused her heartbeat and other—far more disturbing—parts of her anatomy was not something she particularly wanted to dwell upon. Nor was the fact that he was the first man in the known universe to affect her on a sexual level.

  “Big hairy deal,” Cheyenne told herself.

  But it was a big hairy deal. Because she’d always assumed she was immune to sexual need, that her past made it impossible, that she would go through life blessedly free of the sticky entanglements and emotional carnage that sex embodied. And she’d been A-Okay with that.

  Now there was him. Blackheart. A man who had touched her with a terrifying kind of gentleness—surely a lie—and who, in spite of the profound lack of trust between them, apparently wouldn’t mind fucking her. Frank, hungry, unapologetic lust.

  The honesty of which she could appreciate. Because if she was honest, she would have to admit the same—a first, and a definite sign that the apocalypse was on the way. And an awakening part of her celebrated, to feel whole…even if it scared the shit out of her. Even if it was absent love or friendship or even any knowledge beyond a handful of basic facts.

  Unbroken.

  When she’d always considered herself a piecemeal creation. A revelation, and even delivered at the hands of a man she didn’t trust any further than she could pick up and throw him, a gift. But she only took a deep breath and pushed it away, because she wouldn’t give in and knew better than to dwell. He was the wrong man at the wrong time—but he’d taught her the right lesson.

  Cheyenne was grateful, but she wasn’t a fool. He was dangerous. Looking for revenge, not caring what it took to find it, capable of anything in his hunt. He would use her. Use The Kid. Everyone and everything he had to in order to avenge his dead.

  The weapons were just a handy excuse, a cloak of legitimacy used to shroud his hunger for blood. She’d witnessed his damage first hand. Heard it in his words, felt it in his body, seen it in that pale gaze.

  Nothing was beyond him. She should know. Been there done that. And she wasn’t making a return trip. Not even for her newly risen libido.

  Bad enough she’d made the admission she had…I can’t have children. Not something she shared—ever. Something even Whitney didn’t know. Let alone how or why…and yet, she’d spilled those beans, too. Even if it had been in the broadest of terms, the insinuation that Georgia had been responsible was an acknowledgment she’d never before stated to anyone.

  That, however, was all he was going to get. Cheyenne refused to allow him to use that cataclysm as some kind of ridiculous evidence of her honor; as if her blood and horror and pain were currency with which trust could be purchased. As if their shared tragedies at Georgia’s hand forged a link between them.

  Tell me.

  “Not in this lifetime,” she muttered.

  Fact was, none of it mattered. What mattered was extracting both herself and The Kid from whatever fucked up disaster Georgia had orchestrated. Two dozen dirty bombs which were, apparently, simply floating around like lost balloons.

  The magnitude of the revelation continued to wash over her, and the list of questions she had was a mile long and growing. How had Georgia known about the bombs? She’d been CIA, not military. Or were the two organizations somehow intertwined? And who’d helped her steal them?

  Ballsy of her, Cheyenne thought. True to form.

  The one question there was no need to ask was why. For Georgia it would have come down to two things: cash and ego. The lure of both would have been irresistible, and the more blood, the better.

  Good luck staying alive.

  Such glee. Jesus. That sick, crazy, fucked up girl had turned into a sick, crazy, fucked up woman. One who’d set Cheyenne up. That taunt left no doubt. A manufactured construct involving her, The Kid, Blackheart…and how many others? One last hellish hurrah; Georgia’s final calling card. But she was dead, which would not have been part of the plan. Which only led to a whole new host of unanswered questions.

  How had she died? Who killed her? Why? And where the hell were those weapons?

  Cheyenne was going to have to ask Blackheart, because there was no one else to ask. He was all she had—trust or not. Pheromone overload or not. Cracked and on the precipice of breakdown or not.

  He was it. Him and The Kid.

  Who would have to be questioned as well. But not by him. Cheyenne had been completely serious when she’d threatened to beat the ever-loving fuck out of him if he tried. She might not win, but he would bleed. On this, she wouldn’t bend.

  She was here to protect that boy, not betray him. And that’s what she would do.

  “So go do it,” she told herself.

  But she didn’t move. For someone who had no problem belting a stranger in an airport, she was feeling annoyingly anxious about meeting The Kid. It made no sense. But kids were harder than adults—they saw through the bullshit immediately and had no problem calling you on it. Whitney’s two girls—Sasha and Kendall—were the most direct, unflinching people Cheyenne knew. She loved them, but they unsettled the hell out of her.

  And the idea of being anyone’s guardian…who was she to think that’d been a good idea? It was crazy. Just like Whitney said. She wasn’t fit to raise a child. In point of fact, she was pretty damn cracked herself, still the same reactionary hothead she’d been as a kid.

  You’ll always be her.

  True story. And that was okay…for her. But maybe not so okay for him.

  “A fine time for cold feet,” she scoffed.

  Indeed. The bottom line, however, had not changed. If anything, the whole dirty bomb thing only served to underline that the system could not—would not—protect him. Not like she would.

  He’d get held—in Haven or Juvie—and then shipped off to foster care, where he would be vulnerable to anyone who came along. Be it a shitty foster family or some crazy-ass ex-Navy SEAL hungry for blood—or worse. Because God only knew who Georgia had been dealing with. And if Blackheart thought The Kid would have some answers, so might someone else.

  She was all that stood between Rafferty Humboldt and the
imminent threat his mother had brought to bear upon them all.

  The only one.

  Which made her cold feet—and all of the fears that had suddenly collided within her—moot. He had no one else. She was it. And abandoning him to whoever might be out there, waiting, was far worse that being a sub-par guardian.

  So she climbed from the Subaru and went to collect her ward.

  Rafferty Humboldt was short, skinny, and had two different colored eyes.

  Cheyenne watched as he was led into the small, white-tiled room where she was seated, her heart trying to beat its way out of her chest.

  He had his mother’s delicate beauty: chiseled bones, dark mocha skin and full mouth. His hair was the color of dark chocolate and baby fine, falling into his eyes as he stared at her in bewilderment. One of those eyes was black as coal—his mother’s—but the other was a glinting mixture of brown, green, gold and blue. The contrast was eerie and beautiful.

  The smiling man who’d introduced himself as Tully winked at her. “He’s all yours.”

  Outside, Haven looked the same. But inside it was modern and new, with shiny people and tiled floors and armed metal doors. Polyester filled furniture and copies of People on wooden tables. Fresh beige paint, pictures of happy, smiling families, flat screen computer monitors and healthy green plants. The only thing she recognized now was the smell.

  Hopelessness and fear, something even the strongest air freshener couldn’t kill.

  Tully closed the door as he left.

  “Who are you?” The Kid—Rafferty—demanded. His eyes went to her scar, which he studied with the ingenuousness of youth before meeting her gaze. “I don’t know you.”

  Cheyenne stared at him, unable to respond. In that moment, he was suddenly, shockingly real, not just The Kid. But a living, breathing, sentient being who would—from that point forward—look to her for everything he needed.

  “Balls,” she muttered and tried not to hyperventilate.

  “Huh?”

  “Guardian,” she rasped.

  “Guardian?” he repeated. He stood tensely before her, his small hands fisted, clad in a faded Batman t-shirt, threadbare jeans and shoes that looked at least two sizes too small. He looked suspicious and terrified and ready to bolt.