Fables & Felonies

by Nellie K Neves

  “Get her up,” Javier instructed his brother. “We end this now.”

  Juan Balcazar yanked me to my knees once more, disappointment twisting his features. Playtime had been cut short. He peeled me from the gravel. Rock pieces stuck to my face then fell away as gravity righted the balance. With my hands finally free again, I slapped him hard across the face and drew back to punch him when I felt the gun against the back of my head.

  Javier’s voice remained cool as he spoke. “Detective Granger, you have a choice. Kill her or be killed.”

  There was a pause, a heavy lengthy pause before I heard the reticent steps that I knew belonged to Ranger. The gun shifted as it switched owners. I thought of my dad’s words, of the way he’d tried to make me promise I wouldn’t be killed, and yet here I was with Ranger’s gun against my head and a bullet in the chamber. I thought of Ryder, and how he might never get the answers he needed, how all my death would leave him with was more questions. I thought of Amos and how badly I had failed him. How, because of me, he would likely rot in prison. Was there a fable for that? He’d told me so many over our time together. Was there some story that could rationalize what I’d left him with?

  “Ranger.” The gun quivered against my skull. “Have you ever heard the fable of the wolf and the crane?” He didn’t say anything. Javier’s slide shifted back on his weapon, ready to end Ranger’s life.

  “Shoot her, or I shoot you,” Javier instructed, as if it were easy.

  “The wolf eats so much that he gets a bone stuck in his throat,” I continued, “and he can’t eat anymore, so he seeks out the crane to help him.”

  “Shut up!” Balcazar barked at me.

  “The wolf promises the crane a great reward if he can get the bone out with his long beak,” I continued, “and so the crane does.”

  The gun wavers once more. I’m strengthened by the fact that he can’t shoot me, not really, that’s not who he is.

  “The wolf starts to walk away, and the crane says, ‘Hey, where’s my reward?’”

  “SHOOT HER!” Javier screamed.

  “Do you know what the wolf says, Ranger?” I took a quick breath and spun on my knee so I could face him. The gun leveled right between my eyes, cold muzzle against my skin. “He says, ‘You’re lucky I didn’t snap your head off while I had the chance, that’s your reward.’”

  Time froze there, Javier’s gun eight inches from Ranger’s head, Ranger’s gun leveled between my eyes, and my gun sitting in the gravel, ten inches away from my grasp.

  “Three,” Javier counted, “two…”

  I took my moment and delivered the morale as Amos had once told me. “Expect no reward for serving the wicked.”

  “One.”

  The gun shifted. I heard the shot. I lunged for my own gun and blindly fired twice toward Balcazar. I clawed my fingers into the ground to get my footing again. Time froze as Ranger watched me with a blank stare. Blood trickled over his nose. A gaping hole told me he’d sacrificed himself for me.

  A hand clenched my ankle, and I fired backward two more times. Gunfire mixed with my haggard gait. Another shot, and then another, deafening, too close to my head, and yet I was alive. My arms looped over my head as if I could protect myself. Fire blazed a trail over my calf muscle. The pain and momentum knocked me off balance. Metal echoed as my palm slapped against a rusted car. I shoved off to sprint to safety again.

  Gravel crunched beneath me once more. I propelled myself toward the maze of cargo crates. My back screamed for attention as my top flapped wildly in the wind. Pain blazed through my leg, but I forced myself to run, keep running, because to stop running meant death.

  My leg gave out just before I got to the last cargo crate. Tufts of grass grew larger as I fell forward onto my hands. My gun flew from my grasp, tumbling and rolling away from me. Digging my fingers into the dirt, I clawed myself forward until I could rest against the metal container in the darkness.

  The outline of my revolver blended with the darkness, but I wrapped my fingers around it and released the clip. Two bullets in the clip, one in the chamber. Three shots left.

  Plenty, right?

  I wished the doubtful voice inside my head would keep her sarcasm to herself.

  With footsteps approaching, and my leg out of commission, I began crawling around the backside of the container. There was no way to creep quietly. Every twig cracked. Every rock rattled. My only hope was that I had wounded my hunter worse than he’d wounded me.

  Instead of ducking down the next aisle, I pulled myself to my feet and half dragged, half hopped to the next container and down the backside so that I’d be kitty corner to the first and then some. Once on the other side, I allowed myself to peel back the blood-soaked pant leg of my compression pants.

  “Not through and through,” I told myself as I look at the laceration at the back of my leg. “Just grazed it.” That was a bit of an understatement as I looked at the bloodied and torn flesh. Taking hold of the base of my top, I tore off a long strip to wrap around the wound.

  “Zorra.” It was nothing more than a whisper on the wind, but I heard it. “Zorra.”

  Slick with blood, I had a hard time holding my gun. The substance turned sticky as I shifted my grip. I had to move again. I had to keep moving or he would find me.

  “Your detective is dead,” Balcazar called out to me.

  I dashed to the next container and smashed my body tight against the backside as Balcazar came around the other side. My heartbeat pounded in my ears. The vibrations thumped like a drum in an orchestra.

  “Mi hermano esta meurto,” Juan called into the night. “It’s just you and me, zorra.”

  How comforting.

  My camera was back with the corpses, and the mad man stood between me and my car.

  “My abuelo used to take me fox hunting when I was small. It always surprised me how much fight they had for how small they were.”

  The pain blinded me and dulled my thoughts. Whimpers leaked from between my lips as I struggled for silence. No matter how hard I tried, dirt kept clinging to my wounds. Had I shot him? Had any of my bullets found a home?

  “He always told me to shoot them in the chest, minimize the suffering. But every time I caught the back legs, then watched them hobble away, gnashing and snarling like they might hurt me.”

  Balcazar’s voice moved too close for comfort. I did my best to claw my way around the container. The blood trickled down the back of my leg. The fabric was saturated. How much blood had I lost? How much more could I lose?

  “I remember the last time he took me. I wasn’t a boy anymore, much older. I clipped a fox, just enough that she couldn’t run. I told Abuelo I would go put her out of her misery.”

  Balcazar’s voice bounced off the containers as he moved down the aisle. I heard his sluggish walk, the way his voice slurred in a few places.

  I’d hit him, but where, and how much time did he have left?

  Could I wait him out?

  “By the time I found her, she’d lost a lot of blood. She lay whimpering on the ground, curled up tight and helpless. I should have just shot her in the head, but I saw her fur, and how perfectly untouched it was.”

  My body weakened. When I turned my head at an angle I could see the steady drip from the cloth.

  “I still remember how her little body squirmed against my grip, until,” he made an awful cracking noise at the back of his throat, “pop, her neck snapped. It wasn’t even hard.”

  Even if he died first, I wasn’t going to be long after. Darkness closed around the edges of my vision, but not so much that I couldn’t see Balcazar as he turned the corner.

  “Hello, Little Fox,” he crooned as he saw me there, gun leveled in my weak hands, waiting for death to claim me.

  My finger squeezed the trigger, once, twice, three times and then nothing, just clicks. He kept coming. I had to have hit him, but still the shape of him lurched forward and fell on me, ripping at my clothes, clawing my throat. My screams tore th
rough the night. My hands found his flesh and clawed at his already bloody skin. I struggled to push him off me, but he pinned me against the ground.

  “Help!” I screamed. “Someone help me!” One last desperate cry was all I could manage before my strength vanished.

  Lights flooded the alley between the containers. Garbled orders blared through a megaphone, but it was all distant. I was a little fox, hidden in the tall grass with the hunter who wanted me for his own.

  Silver flashed, bright, even beautiful.

  The knife.

  I needed to react. I knew that, and yet I couldn’t.

  Fading.

  Fading like the rose Amos had set on my doorstep the morning he left me forever.

  This was it. I braced myself for the end.

  A gunshot slammed against the cargo containers.

  Then two more.

  Vibration clanged through my bones. I sank into shock. Weight fell heavy over me, as if the entire stack of crushed cars had tumbled over, but as it was removed, I saw one face. The first man I’d ever trusted, the one I knew I could always rely on.

  “Daddy?”

  There were tears in his eyes. His gun fell against the dirt as he pulled me into his arms. “Shhh. Hang on, baby. Paramedics are coming.”

  I had to tell him, he had to know. “Ranger tried to save me.”

  “Shhh,” he whispered again. “Don’t talk right now. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

  He was shouting, screaming for help, waving his arm over his head so that the light from his headlights blinked on and off with the movement of his arm. Who was coming? Voices moved beyond the darkness. Where was Balcazar? He’d shot him, I don’t know how I knew it, but I knew my father had shot my attacker.

  My body shook once more. Cold. So cold.

  “Daddy?” I was a child again. Light enough to care to be carried to bed after I fell asleep watching a movie. His face flooded mine, and I noticed the flecks of gray in his hair. Had I put them there? Had Jackie? Good thing Elle was the good one, or we might have killed him off early.

  “Daddy, I love you.”

  “Medic! I need the medic!” It was a voice I’d never heard.

  No.

  I’d heard it once.

  It was just buried deep beneath my rubble.

  The night Jackie was taken. I’d heard him scream like this. He’d screamed her name over and over through the open window.

  Wounded.

  Desperate.

  The kind of scream that said he would sell his very soul to save his daughter’s life.

  I heard the blades from a chopper overhead. The light blinded me, and yet I couldn’t look away. Something was waiting at the center of that light. He must have called in every favor he’d ever earned throughout his career, because just before the darkness swallowed me whole, I read the letters “DEA.”

  Chapter 21

  I hate hospitals. I’m not fond of doctors. I have nothing against nurses, except the bossy ones. But I was far too awake this round. Perhaps I prefer hospitals only when I’m unconscious, but unfortunately for me, after the blood loss was righted, and the wound was stitched shut, I was no longer unconscious, and yet still stuck. The muscle hadn’t been badly damaged. One nurse I had rubbed the wrong way on my first day affectionately referred to me as “the bleeder.” The name stuck. Ironically, my expanded hospital stay wasn’t even all related to the case. I was flagged for malnutrition and anorexia. They even made me talk to a shrink.

  Really?

  I love eating.

  Thank you, Eden’s Haven.

  I did come to love hospital pudding, especially the tapioca with the little gooey balls. Maybe I hit my head in the struggle. Or maybe it was because it was all new to me. A whole new outlook that had me eager for what came next, and it didn’t have to be a case for once.

  In fact, I needed a break, I could see that. Most important, I needed Ryder. Every day I waited for the release from the doctor, but every day he told me I needed another day more for the wound to heal. It was a lie to make sure I was still putting on weight. I did my best to stack away the pudding, but try as I may, no one would give me a phone.

  My parents visited often. Elle brought me ice cream once a day. Compared with other hospital visits I’d endured, it wasn’t that bad, except for the twitchy parts of me that needed to get back to Ryder. The entire conversation about moving home had been dropped. Maybe my parents had decided they didn’t need the drama and danger that followed me around, or maybe it was because my cottage had burned to a pile of ash. Either way, they didn’t ever bring it up again. They did, however, have a thousand questions about Jackie, which I answered the best I could. Maybe that was why they were willing to send me home, all that information waited for me there. If I went home, maybe I could finally find Jackie and reunite the entire family.

  On day two, I was debriefed by the DEA. Dad had a friend in high places and called in the favor. In the end, I think the DEA ended up owing him for the raid he’d handed them. They’d captured ninety percent of Balcazar’s ring. The truck had been found and the contents had been dealt with. In hopes of leniency, the driver of the truck took them back to the warehouse where he was set to deliver the truck. Three warehouses full of workers, drugs and weapons. I was pretty sure Dad would be adding ATF to his short list of friends by the end of the month.

  The brothers had used the club as a front to launder the money and move the product. But it was only after my notes that the agency went to the law offices and exposed those who were involved there as well. Andrew, the disgusting swine who liked to hit on me back at my temp job, had been the first one to crack about everything, including what he knew about Honey B’s murder. The agents doled out the obligatory thank yous while simultaneously scolding me for being involved. They tacked on a strong assurance that my name had been kept out of any public documents for my own safety.

  Because of my dad’s position, I was able to find out answers before anything ever went to trial. Hallie had witnessed the murder of Shawn Lawdries, a teen who’d had been shot in the alley. Apparently Shawn had stolen some of the Balcazars’ meth shipment and had tried to sell it in order to make ends meet for his family. Hallie had been working that night, and when she went to take the trash out, she’d watched Javier put two bullets in the kid’s head. They must not have discovered that she knew until they watched the video surveillance. That was when they started to torture her, and the paranoia began.

  Yes, Amos had argued with her, but when the medical examiner had gone back to review his notes on the case, the time of death had been switched from what he’d written. Likely Ranger’s work, but I kept my mouth shut. He was dead, and unless I saw a good reason, I wasn’t going to drag his name through the mud. Dad told the cops what he knew. Ranger had tried to save me and was shot in the process. My story corroborated his.

  Day three I heard a knock on my doorway. I looked up, eager to see if the doctor was going to release me, or if Eleanor had stopped by early with my daily ice cream, but instead I found Amos, no cuffs, all cocky swagger.

  He let his leather jacket slip from his shoulder and drape across the chair near my bed. “’Ello, love,” he said, just as suave as the first day I’d met him. “Healing up nicely, then?”

  “Look at you,” I said, trying to sit more upright in my hospital bed, “all free and whatnot.”

  “Yeah.” He pulled at the gray t-shirt and set his motorcycle helmet on my bed. “It feels good. I never much liked orange, and jumpsuits are so last season.” I saw the serious glint behind his lightened bruises. “I hear I have you to thank for this freedom, Mama Frog. You tried to blow up and all that.”

  “The point is, I stopped before I exploded.”

  His eyebrows rose in question as he stared at me in the bed. “I beg to differ, love.”

  He had a point.

  “Are you off?” I asked. “The cops haven’t connected you to any of your other crimes?”

  His shrug was sligh
t, as if none of it mattered. “Alleged crimes, and they don’t have enough to charge me, and I’m not sticking around so they can.”

  I couldn’t help but feel that same sadness I’d felt the last time he’d ridden off on his motorcycle.

  “Where are you going?”

  The corners of his mouth crushed in as he pursed his lips forward, as if he were sucking out the flavor of my words.

  “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

  His only answer was to look down. “I wanted to thank you, though. You saved my life, Sparrow.”

  I shouldn’t have brushed over his gratitude, but that was exactly what I did. Raw emotion was never something we’d done well.

  “Was that hers?” I watched him spin the bracelet on his wrist once more. He’d lost it while he was incarcerated, and I had to admit he appeared more at ease with it back.

  “Yeah,” Amos agreed. “Got it for her at a little street cart. She liked the black bead. Wore it with a yellow dress like a bumble bee.”

  It was impossible to miss the anguish he tried to hide from his voice. It was all he had left of their time together.

  “Were you going to give it all up for her? Go straight? No more cons?”

  No hesitation, no evasion, just the truth.

  “Everything. I would have given up anything for her.” It was possibly the first time I didn’t question the validity of his words. Amos studied my face. “Once you taste love like that, there’s no recovery.” His hand clasped mine, both of us bruised, inside and out. “Don’t let go of him, Lindy. Hang on tight, even when he pulls away. I wish I had. She’d still be here.”

  The moment passed as quickly as it came. He pressed a kiss to my temple, right at my hairline, brushed his thumb over my cheek and whispered, “Until next time, Sparrow.”

  As I watched him walk out, then heard his bike fire up from the parking lot, I knew he was gone, likely forever.