“I don’t give a shit what you saw.”
“You felt something. Regret, I think.”
“Yeah? You feel this?” Sam sent a shock wave of an image to my brain. My defenses were down and she took advantage. A full color replay of Randolph’s death filled my head. I jerked like a flame passed under my nose. The image vanished quick as it came.
Sam smiled, happy for her little ambush.
“It wasn’t just you, y’know.”
“What, you cried? That’s not exactly fucking news.”
“I told someone to F off.” She laughed. “It’s progress. We’re each gaining our other side. Restoring balance. I should have known no one can function on only one or the other.”
“Why don’t you shut the fuck up and look for the turn?”
I realized what Lucas and I had been all along. He’s my other half. I know people say that all the time in wedding vows and all that, “You complete me,” shit. But, before I knew two such different sides of me existed, he’d been my balance. The deeper I got with Calder and Rizzo the more I needed Lucas and his Captain America routine to make me feel good about myself. About the whole damn world.
In a way he functioned as my enabler too. He allowed me to think I wasn’t so bad. I knew Calder and Rizzo would get theirs someday and I threw Lucas and his case a bone every now and then.
My biggest regret is I never got to spend any of the money. Wouldn’t be prudent to suddenly show up in a new convertible or a Prada handbag and matching shoes on my DEA salary.
“Hey, speaking of which, did you take my money?”
“You mean my money?”
“Our money.”
“It’s safe.”
I saw her concentrating on the road so I reached down into her brain and had a look around. It only took a fraction of a second. We were each getting so accustomed to these brain games it took almost no longer than searching your own mind for a fact or a memory.
She hid the money in the trunk of a rental car parked in a 24-hour lot downtown. Her getaway car. Planning ahead, I see.
Sam shoved me out of her head like an angry bouncer. “We’re here,” she announced.
SISTER-IN-AGAINST-THE-LAW
Lucas’s sister Marjorie always liked me. She said I could “tame” Lucas, whatever that meant. He seemed pretty housebroken when I met him. She’d obviously never dated any Texas boys.
I think maybe I lived some of Marjorie’s deeper, darker fantasies about her own could-have-been life. She’d been knocked up and married by eighteen. Two boys, both hellions. Both out at Junior College now, one a Freshman, one a Junior. Her husband, Barry, sold home and business alarm systems and came armed with a personality about as exciting as a grass growing contest.
Marjorie had settled. Our first and best bonding moment came when Barry suggested I take her to the gun range and show her how to use the .38 he bought for her.
“Oh, why do I need to know how to use that thing? I’m going to lock it on up and throw away the key.”
“Marge, you need to know how to handle yourself. With the boys away you’ll be alone a lot more and what if something happens?”
“Isn’t that why we have this alarm system installed?”
That shut him up for a second, but I told her I’d be glad to take her to the range.
First time she felt the sissy gun buck in her hand you’d think I gave her the first pull on a crack pipe. All she wanted was more. Emptied her chamber and then asked to shoot my gun. She grinned with the world-is-right satisfaction of a kid who makes his Halloween candy last until Christmas morning.
The whole way home she made me tell any story at all from my years in the military and in the agency that involved firing a gun.
Last year, for their anniversary, Barry upgraded her to a .44 cal Smith and Wesson. Part of me wished she kept it nearby for when Sam knocked on her door, part of me didn’t. Gunned down by my future sister-in-law wasn’t an auspicious end to this saga. Of course, I’d seen her shoot. She’d hit ten bystanders before Sam or I ever took a bullet.
The clock in the car said three minutes after nine as we got out. Sam walked up the path, trusted I’d follow, which I did. She knocked with a fist while I stood at the bottom of the three step stoop.
Barry opened the door, coffee cup in his hand.
“Samantha, hi,” he said to her. “What brings you out this way?” He went for another sip of coffee and spotted me. “Oh, Saman…is this your sister?”
“Far as you know,” she said and drew her gun from behind her back. “Inside. And I’ll take one of those coffees.”
Barry is a man easily subdued. He goes where he’s told. I’m sure he thought my twin at the door was some sort of joke and he only had to wait for the punch line.
Sam pushed him into the kitchen. His coffee spilled on the floor and his pants.
“Who is it, Barry?” Marjorie said as she stepped into the kitchen, still in her bath robe. Must be nice not to have a job and sleep as late as you want.
“Sit the fuck down,” Sam said.
Marjorie shut down for a moment. She stood still, took in the scene—two of us, a gun, her husband with what looked like piss stains all down his front. She put her hands up like she’d seen in bank robbery footage and sat at the breakfast nook on top of the sunflower patterned seat cushions, beneath the sunflower adorned curtains. Already waiting for her was a steaming coffee mug with a ceramic sunflower on the side.
“I saw something on the news about the DEA office…” She was putting together a picture in her head. If she only knew how far from the truth it was.
“I’ll try to explain later,” I said.
“Good luck with that,” Sam said. “Where’s my coffee?”
Barry went to the coffee pot, reached into the cabinet above it and pulled out a matching sunflower coffee mug, and poured. When he filled one, he reached for another.
“Oh, no thank you Barry,” I said. “Just one.” All very polite and familial.
“Cream?” Sam asked.
“We have milk,” Barry said.
Sam huffed. “Fine.”
Barry went to the fridge.
“Samantha,” Marjorie said, her eyes darting between us. “What is going on?”
“She said she’d explain later. Don’t make me start shooting before I have to.”
Marjorie instinctively cinched closed the collar on her robe.
“Call Lucas,” Sam said to her.
“He won’t answer,” I said.
“He will if it’s her.”
“He won’t if he’s smart. And he’s smart.”