But I spent hours carving that little bird, and I really wanted her to have it.
I imagined leaving it somewhere wrapped up nice for her. It wouldn’t have a tag on it, but she’d know it was from me. How many stalkers can one girl have? And she’d put it on her dresser in her bedroom. Maybe she would think it was nice.
I get a little sleep—not the easiest thing to do, bound like a side of beef, but when I wake up, my head is clearer. I find I can stand, move around. I get to work on figuring out the layout, the sight lines.
It’s pitch-black, but that doesn’t matter to me. I’m used to the dark. I function way better than most guys in the dark. My guys and I all do. Spend enough time in a dark basement and you come to know where bodies are just from the way the air feels on your skin. And hearing, too. You learn to tell exactly where people are from rustling, almost as if you can see them with your ears.
As soon as I manage to get my arms under my feet and to the front of me, I'm in business. I raise them up enough to find the light fixture and dismantle it, pulling out the bulb and smashing it. I use a shard of glass to cut my bindings.
And wait, assessing my injuries. Nothing major broken, but it hurts when I breathe. Cracked ribs. Worst of all is my foot, which is on fire. I'm thinking some bones in there got crushed.
The door rattles, bringing me to full alert. I crouch in a corner and hide as the door swings open. They try to turn on the light. Nothing.
One of them turns on his phone, and the other approaches, weapon drawn.
I grab his weapon arm and yank him all the way in, exactly what he’s not expecting. I slam the door with my foot.
We’re shrouded in darkness. And I’m a motherfucking ghost. He’s lurching around like a fucking bull in a china shop.
He shoots, but I’m behind him. I grab his arm and ram my knee into his elbow, bending it the wrong way. In other words, breaking it. He cries out, because that’s a motherfucker of an injury. His piece clatters to the floor. I grab his hair and ram that same knee up into his face, and he’s over.
I grab his piece and go still.
A voice from outside the closet door. Just to the side. They’re not so sure about coming in now. “Shane?”
I’m flat on the floor. I shoot the voice. There’s a cry.
Shots come back, but they don’t hear me like I hear them. I shoot. The other’s on the move. I take one more shot.
A thump.
A cry. A groan. Silence.
I ease open the door. The two guys are done. I fish around in pockets for car keys. I need wheels for sure; the car I drove will have been towed by now. Maybe jacked.
I find the keys and get the fuck going, limping down the stairs.
The bar is quiet—not yet open. It’s maybe ten in the morning. I go behind the counter and grab a bottle of scotch. I spot a black raincoat on a hook, and I take that, too, and head out the back door into the drizzly fall morning. The keys belong to a Jeep with little red dice hanging from the rearview.
I get in and pull onto the street, blending with the light traffic. People going to work. Meeting friends for lunch. Whatever the fuck regular people do instead of bleeding all over a stolen vehicle.
It takes two miles before I spot a pay phone. I pull into the gas station parking lot. Who uses pay phones anymore except for criminals? And cops can’t tap them without a warrant. Kind of amazing they still keep them around, but it’s useful today. They took my money and phone.
I use the change in the tray to put in a call to Calder. He’s pissed I didn’t check in, but I tell him I got a little fucked up, and that calms him down. I open the scotch and take a drink, let the warmth of it spread over the pain. Some old-fashioned anesthetic.
“We need Nate to come in?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say, my head swimming from pain and whiskey. More from pain, though. “Might need a Band-Aid. Maybe with little rainbows on them.”
The last time I needed Nate was when I’d gotten shot, which is probably why Calder sounds worried. “Where are you? You need me to come get you?”
“I got wheels.” I take another drink and look out at the midmorning traffic. Brooke will be heading to class, maybe with a latte in her hand. Or maybe something pink. A fancy drink that costs a stupid amount at the coffee shop. A pink mustache over her pretty lips.
Meanwhile I’m talking about getting looked at by a vet.
Nate runs a clinic outside of town. Looks at horses and shit. He tried to go straight after we got out. Tried to live a regular life. Even got his degree. Owns a business. Sometimes I feel bad dragging him back into this, but there’s no one else I trust.
“How far out are you?” Calder asks.
“I don’t know.” I put the cap on the bottle and set it aside. Then I pull the little bundle from my pocket and unwrap it from the bandana.
I can tell right away that it’s broken from the way it unwraps, its fragile little wing snapped, hanging on by a bit of wood fiber.
Fuck.
“You don’t know where you are?”
“I know where I am,” I say. It isn’t really a lie. I’ll figure out where I am, as soon as I figure out where I’m going. “I might make a stop before I head in.”
“What kind of stop? You need to come in,” Calder says. “Knox made bacon, dude. That thick-cut stuff. There’s Texas toast. Not to mention the fact that you’re fucked up enough to need Nate.”
“Just a stop. And then I’m back.” After I hang up, I get up close and personal with the rearview mirror.
There’s a nasty bruise just starting to turn on my left cheekbone. My left eye is a little bit closed, and most of my bottom lip is fat. I lick my thumb and scrub the dried blood from the side of my mouth. It feels strange to give a shit, but I don’t want Brooke to be scared.
I button up the raincoat over my bloody clothes.
I locate enough change in the change tray to grab a coffee and bagel at another drive-through place. The coffee doesn’t do much for my pain, but Nate will give me something when I get back.
This feels more important.
More important than pain. More important than the guys.
Saint Mary’s, the private school Brooke attends, is a three-story stone building right across from a huge East Franklin park—the nice kind with trees and benches and flowers and a duck pond.
The school is really old, with tall windows and grand steps that lead up to a fancy entrance under a curly stone-carved thing that says the school was founded in 1903.
Two purple banners hang down from the roof on either side of the entrance. Today’s banners have pictures of hockey sticks. They tell the world that the girls who attend Saint Mary’s won the state field hockey championship this year. I thought hockey was played on ice, but apparently rich girls play it in a field.
No boys attend Saint Mary’s, so I guess Brooke’s parents and I can agree on at least one thing.
I circle the tree-lined blocks near the school until I spot the cherry-red Lincoln Navigator parked on the street. Cherry red. Custom color. I grab an open space two behind, then settle down to wait. School’s not out until three, but Brooke seems to have free periods in the middle of the day on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and she sometimes leaves for lunch. If it’s nice out, she grabs a snack at Panera and goes to study in the park, but it’s windy and it looks like rain, so I’m thinking she’ll go sit in the Panera. That girlfriend of hers sometimes goes with her, but not usually on Wednesdays.