by Mike McCrary
They have a past together. Noah and Kate. A good one. He can feel it. She’s something different now. Whatever she is, whatever they’ve done to her, whoever did it, she’s not the Kate that Noah knew.
But, to be fair, he’s not the Noah she knew either.
Were they merely friends?
Doubtful.
They were married. He can feel it.
A sharp pain rockets from his wound as he tries to sit up. He closes his eyes as he lies back down. A vision from inside a car screams through his brain once again.
Spinning. Flipping.
The sounds of metal crunching. The helplessness. There’s a scrap of steel stuck in the driver’s stomach. Much like Lady Brubaker’s knife. The sights, the smells, the fear from the wreck flood his mind.
There’s a gnawing. A teeth-tearing feeling of something missing.
Something forgotten.
It grates along the inside of his skull. He’s missing something. Something is slipping away from his grasp. There is something out there he can’t completely access. Knows that it carries an immeasurable emotional weight. His heart speeds up. Anger bubbles. Anger at himself for not being able to remember. It’s on the tip of his tongue. Out there on the edge of his memory. Distant, but standing alone waiting for him.
The frustration is crushing.
What does she want?
He wants to claw at his own flesh. Scream until his throat bleeds. There’s something else beyond just Kate and Noah. And it feels like everything.
“Oh my God.”
His heart drops.
Blood tears roll.
“The girls.”
Chapter 26
Kate and Noah have children.
Two girls.
Twins, perhaps.
There’s an absence of clarity—as with everything in his mind—but there’s this feeling. One that has real teeth. Sharp and tearing, fading into a free fall of loss.
The girls.
Twins.
Feels so true. So real. So correct. So much so, the hurt is strangely like home. Like it should be a part of him. These are Mr. Nice Guy’s children. Noah’s, not Murphy’s, but Murphy feels it all tear through him. The loss. The space torn open inside. They share the weight of this emptiness.
He searches out their faces.
He can’t find them.
How is that possible?
He knows they are in his thoughts. Somewhere. Buried beneath all the damage. Murphy’s heart rate escalates. An unmeasurable panic sets in. The kind that can only come from not remembering your children’s faces.
Murphy’s thoughts step aside.
Yielding, letting Noah look for his children.
Staying out of the way as Mr. Nice Guy desperately searches for Noah and Kate’s girls among the smoldering wreckage of memory and thought they share.
For the first time, there’s an understanding of sorts reached between them. An agreement between Murphy and the part of him known as Mr. Nice Guy. Boundaries being set between Murphy and the man he now knows as Noah.
Mental exhaustion is setting in.
Losing blood isn’t helping.
He’s got to get out of here. Needs to stay alive. If for no other reason to find Lady Brubaker. Live long enough to find out how much Kate is in there. Find out what she knows. What she knows about the girls. What she remembers. What’s behind those wild eyes.
He holds his wound.
The pain is unbearable.
Not enough to stop Murphy from doing what needs to be done.
Fumbling for the phone, he slip-taps his bloody finger on the glass screen. It does nothing. The glass can’t register his touch through the blood. He wipes his finger clean as best he can on the sheets, then tries again. The phone calls one of the few numbers it knows. The few it has been assigned. The rings seem to drone on forever.
The ringing stops.
A long pause, then finally, a breath.
“Tell me something good,” Thompson says.
Murphy wants to scream. Wants to beat some answers out of them. Wants to cut Thompson up into thick chunks for all the lies he’s told him. All the lies they’ve told him.
More than anything, he wants to drop the bomb. Wishes he could see their faces when he tells them what he’s uncovered.
That he’s discovered Thompson and Dr. Peyton are completely full of shit. Explain that he’s sure Lady Brubaker holds his wife’s personality inside her sexy, crazy-ass head. Hard for him to believe considering how they so calmly, coldly explained that Murphy was the one. The alpha, they said. The only mind used to blend with all of them.
How is that, motherfuckers?
Murphy takes a beat.
Considers. Goes with…
“Slight issue.” Murphy coughs.
“What?”
Murphy struggles to find some stability inside his swirling mind. Holds on to what he’s learned. Back pocket that information. Multiple reasons—leverage and so on—but right now he wants to make sure they send someone to help him.
If he tells Thompson what he knows, they very well might leave him to die in this Baghdad hotel room. Let that particular piece of information die off in a foreign land and go with whatever they have next up as Plan B.
Or send someone to his room to finish the job.
Just to make sure that info goes away with a bullet in the brain.
“She got away.” Murphy resets, pressing down on his seeping wound. “She stabbed the shit out of me before she bounced. If that helps.”
Pause on the other end of the line.
The room seems to tilt.
Pushing himself up on his elbows, he strains to get himself back up onto his feet. He knows he needs to get a towel and get some pressure on this wound or he’ll pass out from the blood loss. It’ll take some time to bleed out completely, but if he taps out unconscious, then all bets on his survival are off.
“Where are you?” Thompson asks.
“The hotel. In my room. In bed, thinking of you.” Presses his wound. “Touching myself.”
Couldn’t resist. Too easy.
Murphy’s not sure he would have said that. Likes it, but would never have gone that way. Noah giggles between the crying.
Another pause.
“Did she tell you anything?” Thompson asks. “Give you any information that—"
“Before she stabbed me?” Murphy’s suspicions validated. “No. Surprisingly tight lipped.”
They want to know what I know.
They want assurances before they bring me in.
They will kill him if they think he knows more than he needs to, or if they think his emotions have been compromised. They’ll think he can be manipulated. His mind is delicate, to say the least.
A state they put him in.
These things they know all too well. They want to know everything that is floating around his busted brain. Not to mention, Dr. Peyton wants to unpack all that her little science project has to offer her. Murphy is her lost ark. A platinum drive of data she wants to plug into more than anything on the planet.
“Hello?” Murphy looks to the phone.
Dead air.
The call dropped.
He goes numb as a cold truth hits him—they will leave him here to die.
Or they just sent someone in. Someone or someones are on the way to make sure he dies. His teeth grind hard as he turns on the balls of his feet, almost falling to the floor. The pain is immediate. A burning bite.
His knife isn’t far away. On the floor, by the chair. His hands slap the wall then the dresser as he holds on for dear life. Bloody handprints now decorate the once lab-white room.
Just got to get across the room, man.
If people are coming for him, he’ll need that blade in the worst kind of way. As far as pressure on the wound, his fingers will have to work for now. Picking up the knife, he slips it back behind his back.
He braces himself. Finds some form of center, then works his way back acr
oss the room following the broken streak of crimson smears along the wall. A guide for his journey to the bathroom.
As he passes the bed, he tosses his suit jacket, removes his tie. With shaking, blood-soaked fingers, he unbuttons his shirt pulling it free from the sweat of his body. The wound is small, only an inch or two. Not in the worst spot—not that there’s a good one.
He thinks of the scrap of metal in the stomach from the car wreck.
His eyes close tight.
Picks away at the memory.
Something occurs to him for the first time. The multiple times he’s seen that vision—that scene of the car wreck—this is the first time he’s truly seeing it. He can place the face of the man at the bar. The part of him called Noah. Only now does he realize the truth of what has been playing in his mind.
Noah was driving the car.
The scene plays. The car rolls. The seatbelts give. Kate thrown free from the car. His wife is launched out from the window. The heart-stopping panic. The pain.
Metal plunges into his stomach.
Bones break and splinter inside of him. The taste of blood. It is all so vivid now.
A bright light fires off inside his mind. Like a blinding spotlight from the dark.
His eyes open wide.
His breathing pulls in and out. Heavy and deep. He’s uncovered something inside his broken brain. Something has unlocked. Something it was hiding away from him. Perhaps protecting him from. Just now, while he was thinking of the wreck, his thoughts got too close and his mind had a shutdown. That bright light shut him down. Defensive measures, of sorts. As if it’s all too much for him to see right now.
His vision fades, drifting into a blur, then comes back into clear focus.
He looks to the mirror.
The first time he’s truly seen himself through the prism of his altered brain.
His eyes—Noah’s eyes—zero in on the tats.
He knows each of them has a story. Mystified, not knowing what those stories are. Except one. There’s one he knows all too damn well.
“Eat shit,” he tells the devil tat.
Unnecessary feelings need to be neutralized. Push down thoughts about the girls. Kate. Lady Brubaker.
Noah needs to compartmentalize.
Murphy needs to go to work.
He jams a small towel between his teeth, then grabs the bottle of whiskey.
This will suck.
Without a moment of pause, he pours the whiskey down his stomach. Lets it roll over his open wound. His teeth dig into the towel. Pit bull hard. Blood tears stream from the corners of his eyes. Murphy and Noah together, sharing in the pain.
A searing burn spreads inside and out of his body. He grabs another towel. His entire body shakes, twitching as he dabs at the wound cleaning it the best he can. Sweat beads along his forehead. Spit drips from the corners of his lips. He sucks in a deep breath. Bites down on the towel once more.
Pours again.
The burn hits even harder this time. He fights the urge to yell. Only tiny grunts and massive profanity seep through the towel. He blots the wound once more. Looking in the mirror, he sees it’s slowed the bleeding, somewhat at least. Far from perfect, but it’ll buy him some time. Whiskey might damage some exposed tissue—he knows he needs real medical attention—but this will get him out of the hotel.
Maybe.
The door flies open.
Murphy spins, barely able to stay upright, jamming his right palm on the counter for stability. He pulls the knife with his free hand, pointing it the best he can at the coming threat.
“Please. Join the fun,” he tells the shadows.
The heart-eating woman smiles as she leans in the doorway.
“Wow. Didn’t see this coming, but I’m so happy you decided to run with your feelings. I felt the electricity too. The bed’s a mess—so much blood—but we can work around it.” Murphy cough-laughs. Doesn’t recall always being this quick with a joke. Is Noah a wiseass? “It’s been a strange evening.”
She nods, then snaps her wrist as if flinging a tiny frisbee.
An injector sticks in his chest.
Another one lands below his jawline.
“That’s disappointing.” His tongue grows fat.
Warmth spreads throughout his body. Knees feel like soup.
Murphy slips into the void.
Chapter 27
Floating.
Untethered.
Comfortable and comforting.
As if Murphy has slid into a porcelain chamber filled with warm honey and bourbon. His mind skips and stops. Frames roll by like strips of memories from both of his lives loaded on reels of an ancient movie projector. He can even hear the clatter of the machine as the images flicker.
Noah was in the room when the girls were born on a Tuesday morning.
Murphy was in the room when they took his mother to prison on a Wednesday evening.
They said he was safe.
Kate and Noah had a small wedding in a barn converted for the ceremony.
Murphy executes a Russian informant in an alley.
He’s a remarkably skilled killer, they said.
Voices are calling out on either side of him. Outside the walls of his mind, hard words are being barked.
It’s all jumbled.
Difficult to decipher, but the shouting pulls him back to the here and now. Sounds like they are coming from another place. Almost another world.
One familiar voice knifes through the fog. It’s the heart-eating woman’s voice. She’s ordering people to move their asses. Ah, heart-eating woman. She’s the best.
Markus Murphy will make you hurt. Hurt is the answer to the question.
Noah wants to make everything okay. Humor hides the hurt.
We need your violence… measured and when appropriate, they said.
There’s a rush of night air blowing across him. Bumps rise like soldiers across his bare chest and arms. His eyes open for a split second. Long enough to see stars pass, along with the familiar lights from outside the hotel. He smells that wonderful scent of grilled meat. Angry that he missed dinner.
He’s being moved. Fast. Past the pool. Past the courtyard. He’s laid out on a stretcher of some sort. He tries to flip over to see where he’s heading. There’s a large SUV up ahead with doors wide open. Hands push him back into place. His sight slides into its familiar fuzz once again.
Thoughts drift.
Murphy shoots three people. He moves like a demon possessed. One after the other bodies drop to the beach house floor. The wind blows through the open windows.
Murphy’s mother screams at him.
They held her captive for days. They took his mother because of him.
He’d been searching for her.
He’d been relentless.
Brutal.
He’s pushed into the back of the SUV. Doors slam shut. A needle plunges into his arm. A hand grabs his face as they shove a tube up his nostrils. Breathing immediately becomes easier. The thick fog clears as the pain dulls. Pushed into the background like an annoying child. People are talking all around him, but nothing makes any sense. A garble of nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
Murphy remembers the sound the steel made when they slammed his cell shut.
He remembers a fed in a blue suit telling him he and his mother would die in prison.
Murphy remembers wanting to cut that fed wide open and warm his hands in the wound.
He forces his eyes open again.
Through the window is a rolling smear that resembles the Baghdad he saw earlier. The SUV is speeding away from the resort toward some unknown location. Unknown to Murphy, at least.
Murphy feels every bump from the back of the vehicle. Someone places their hands on his shoulders, bracing him, holding him in place. Perhaps attempting to restrain him. He thinks of wrapping his hands around their throat but can’t.
Another needle punctures his skin.
Kate and Noah were in a car wreck.
&
nbsp; Heading back home to their twin girls after work.
They were going to “play” after the sitter left.
Cold fingers inspect his stomach. Like an unsolicited medical exam from strangers. There’s pressure, pulling, tugging near the knife wound but there’s no pain.
Murphy killed a lot of people to get his mother back.
Did a lot of things he’s neither proud nor ashamed of.
He’d do a lot more to get her out of prison.
Even through the haze of medication, his teeth grind as his mind unspools. Jumping back and forth between the split. A single mind fighting a war between Murphy and Noah.
The SUV stops.
Hands take hold of him, pulling, lifting him up, taking him out into the night. The cool air feels amazing. He wants to open his eyes, but every signal his mind sends out seems to fail.
A whiff of fuel, the sound of whirling engines informs him he’s at the airport. On the runway. Guesses he’s near the plane that brought him here. Makes sense. They think of everything. Well, not everything. Didn’t count on this shitshow.
Noah wants to understand why.
Murphy wants to drink.
The cool leather of the plane’s seats seem familiar. Cabin smells of recycled air. He’s being leaned back as far as the seat will allow. His wound is being bandaged. He can feel the pull and tug in his skin as he shifts from side to side.
Guesses they used combat medic techniques on him. Murphy knows them well. No frills. Meatball fast and effective. The more drops of blood you can hang on to, the better. Fingers press on his neck, checking his pulse.
He’s feeling a little more alert now.
The heart-eating agent is talking to a man a few feet from him. Looks like a doctor. An asshole, but probably a doctor.
The pilot opens the door, joining the conversation. Everyone looks in his direction then turns back to one another. A screen in the corner of the plane’s main cabin shows the news. His now favorite news program plays. British guy in a suit surrounded by nodding heads. More about riots. Pockets of violence sparking in different cities. Cash Clash. Snobs versus Slobs.
A blur screams into the plane.
She is hostile and efficient.
The heart-eating agent drops to the floor. The doctor falls back, bouncing off the wall.
