“I don’t think so.”
A pucker of hurt crossed her face.
David set his hand on her shoulder. “That is, I don’t think I’ve helped you.”
Moira looked down at his hand, lifted her own to grasp it, and met his eyes. “Not any shortcoming of yours, I promise.”
“Stay.”
She did smile this time. “No, David.”
She hugged him and held on a long moment, and he hugged her back, cupping her head and drawing it to his chest, feeling in the tightness of her arms around him her desperation not to be alone. A need she was running from.
“Give them a chance to forgive you,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“Will we know where you are?”
“Maybe in a few years.” Tears dampened his shirt.
“Please don’t go. You’re needed.” And needing.
“Oh, I’m really not. Not anymore.” She gave David a last hard squeeze and then let go to look up at him. “But will they have you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You could disown all of us at this point, and no one would blame you. If my choices and Colm’s are going to cost Zac and Simon a family member, I should know that.”
Ach, Moira. “To add to your atonement list?”
She took a step back.
“If they want to stay in contact,” he said, “I’ll be here.”
“Thank you.” Her head bowed.
She threw her carry-on over her shoulder and jogged off toward the street. She hit the sidewalk and made a right angle and kept going. She might go anywhere. Become anyone. She might wander the world alone for a decade before she could stop hearing Colm’s voice over her shoulder. He closed his eyes and prayed protection and comfort for her, that she would find the forgiveness she needed most.
His shoulders sagged. A nearby car door opened and shut, an engine started, and David trudged back to his Jeep.
He got behind the wheel and sat for a moment. Driving five miles home seemed a daunting task. He sighed and slid the key into the ignition.
“Don’t.”
David jolted, alert now, too late. Had he left the vehicle unlocked? He had. In the rearview mirror a man met his eyes from the back seat. Dark brown eyes, hair as black as David’s, buzzed short. A nose that might have been broken once. He draped his right arm over the passenger seat, in his hand a Colt revolver.
Engraved, even the barrel. Ivory grip showing around the crook of his thumb. That gun belonged in a museum. And this kid looked barely into his twenties.
“Any movement at all, I’ll shoot you in the head, and you can explain your survival to the cops. Doubt the others would get to you before some mortal did.”
TWENTY-SIX
The tension in the vehicle was charged like the air before a thunderstorm. David set his hands on the wheel and kept eye contact in the mirror.
“Who are you?”
“A friend to Sean and Holly—or did you learn their names before you killed them?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I saw you go into that park, and I saw you come out.”
With a body and without a body.
“Why the saber? Did you decide thirty hours was too long?”
David’s pulse rushed in his ears. Dread tingled down his arms, into his fingers. He cleared his throat, and the man’s fingers tightened on the gun.
“Tell me who you are. Please, from the beginning.”
“This isn’t what I came for. I came to speak to Zachary Wilson, to ask—but I was right. My people didn’t die natural deaths. You killed them, and you should pay for it.” He didn’t raise his voice, could have been recounting the plot of a movie that had put him to sleep.
David risked turning his head to see the man face-to-face. The gun hand jerked, raised to guard between them. David forced his gaze up from the dark barrel mouth. This gun, unlike the last he’d faced, was loaded. And this man would use it with both experience and inclination.
“We’ve not harmed you,” David said. “We’ve believed we were the only ones.”
The gun did not lower.
“How did they die, your people?”
The man stared without expression for a long moment. “Age.”
“Age?”
“Shriveled skin, gray hair, old age. In a day. Dead the day after that.”
The words hung in the crisp quiet. David shuddered. “How?”
“You tell me.”
“I am telling you. I don’t know.”
Maybe they’d been found in their beds, or maybe they suffered while this man could do nothing but look on. No wonder he wanted David’s blood, but they might have a common enemy somehow. Or the serum did have an expiration date.
“All right,” David said. “The others are here, inside, which you must know if you’ve been watching us. Come and let’s sort this out.”
“A private room, three against one. Not a chance.”
He’d seen Moira leave. He’d let her. A good indication he wasn’t after immediate bloody retribution.
“Neutral ground, then,” David said. “The lobby. Even at this hour, someone will be behind a desk. A witness.”
The man sat a long moment, studying David. He motioned with the gun. “Get out.”
David obeyed and he followed, the revolver lowered to his side. He nodded David toward the hotel entrance and froze. David followed his gaze to …
Zac. Less than fifty feet away, trudging over the sidewalk to the right of the entrance, up and down in front of the same few rooms. No anxious energy or controlled agility in his motion, only a doggedness probably bred from insomnia.
Zac looked up. Tilted his head toward David, questions tugging his mouth, weary and washed-out under the hotel’s security floodlights.
David shook his head, but Zac approached anyway.
“Zachary Wilson,” the man said and raised the gun.
Zac stood still. Didn’t speak. Probably experiencing déjà vu worse than David’s.
The man turned to David while keeping the gun on Zac. “I’m going. Come after my people, and I’ll expose yours. Those are my terms.”
“You said you had something to ask of Zac. You found us because of him.”
He nodded.
The shift in the wind, the plunge to the earth. Zac’s misplaced foot had kicked so many dominoes.
“Ask it, then,” David said.
“Not now.” He stepped back, the gun still pointed at Zac.
He wouldn’t fire it out here. That Colt would echo off the buildings like a cannon. David matched him step for step, hands still raised, not allowing the man to widen the distance.
“Don’t come after me,” he said.
“You need to listen. We’re no threat to you.”
“I could shoot him. But you’ll chase me anyway.”
To get answers, to solve this puzzle, to prevent danger to all of them—aye, he would pursue him.
“Yeah,” the man said as if David had spoken. He pivoted, knees bending, and didn’t seem to aim before he pulled the trigger.
The boom of the shot hit David at the same time something punched him in the head. He was flat on his back, blacktop under him and black sky above, ears ringing, the stars pushing closer to his face then receding. He blinked. He tried to think. Fire licked a line along the right side of his skull. Zac was cursing.
Blue eyes and a frown blocked the stars. “Get up.”
“Go,” David said. He tried to get an elbow under him and flopped back to the asphalt. “Get him.”
Zac grabbed him under both arms and hauled him upright, and the world pitched and spun. David’s stomach turned. He swallowed hard as Zac threw one of his arms across his shoulders and tried to run toward the ground-level rooms he’d been pacing in front of. David’s feet tangled.
“Zac, you have to get him.”
Zac growled invectives as he fished his room key from his jeans pocket and waved it in
front of the door lock. The light changed from red to green, both too bright for David’s throbbing head. Or maybe that was the floodlight. Or maybe that was the bullet graze.
Zac pushed the door open and hauled David inside and dumped him onto the bed. He turned the dead bolt and rushed to the bathroom, came back with a white towel and shoved it at David.
“Here.”
David pressed the terry cloth to the gash in his head and squinted as the throb spread through his skull. He drew a breath that sounded weak and ragged. “We have to get him.”
“He’s probably lying in wait to put one in my gut.”
“We have to—”
“If he’s still out there, he’s setting an ambush in case I follow. Otherwise he’s long gone.”
They had to get him. David breathed again, but the room wasn’t righting itself. Concession: he wasn’t going after anyone. But Zac could. “Go—”
“David, seriously. Shut up.”
Three sharp knocks came at the door. Zac peered through the blinds, keeping his body to one side of the window, then flipped the latch and opened the door. Simon strode in, clad in sweatpants and T-shirt, and shut it.
“Did you hear—?” He scowled either at David or at the bloodstained towel.
“Ah, where to start.” Zac motioned to David. “Some guy with a Billy-the-Kid gun … David, he had a message? For me?”
David blinked the stars away. His head hurt; did that count as a message?
“He’s been shot?” Simon strode farther into the room.
“Grazed.” Zac moved into David’s vision and pulled the towel away from the wound. “Ouch. Not deep, though.”
Think. Focus. The room remained fuzzy but stopped spinning. Another deep breath, and he could assess the damage. Ouch summed it up fairly well.
“He’s part of a group; he didn’t say how many.”
“A gang of gun-wielding outlaws?” Zac leaned one hip against the wall.
“He didn’t specify.”
“They never do.”
“Well, don’t explain anything,” Simon said. “Stand there yammering nonsense instead.”
David closed his eyes, and focusing came more easily. “He’s like us.”
“What?” Zac seemed to shout the word, but that was probably just David’s head aching.
“His group—they’re all like us. But two have died—recently, I guess. He came here to confirm Zac’s status as one of them, and I’m guessing do a bit of recon. He knows about Colm—that is, he knows we killed him—and if he thinks we’re threatening his people, he’ll expose us to the authorities.”
A shudder ran over the room.
“Did you happen to mention he’s wrong about us?” Simon said.
“He didn’t believe me.” David opened his eyes and gestured to his head. “Obviously.”
“Anyway, he might not be wrong.” Zac’s words were quiet.
“What …?” Simon shuffled to the closest bed and sank onto it. “Colm?”
“Well, among us, he’s the best suspect.”
“He considered us superior. If he came across others, he’d embrace them as equals.”
“Do we know that? Do we know anything about him really?”
“Something’s not right, though,” David said. “These others died of old age. How could Colm do that?”
Simon dropped back onto the mattress to stare at the ceiling. “Whether he did it or not, this guy’s out there thinking we’re responsible for the deaths of his friends.”
“I told Zac not to let him go.”
That brought Zac’s gaze from a bare corner of the room back to them. “I decided letting the hotel staff find you dazed on the ground was more of a risk.”
Simon peeked through the closed blinds. “Nobody out there. No cops, no gawkers.”
David’s hand was warming as the gash bled through the towel. Head wounds. Inconvenient. He tried to think what else needed saying as spots edged into his vision. Simon went into the bathroom and returned with a clean towel, which he pressed against the saturated one.
“Any shock?”
David blinked. “Ah.”
“Yeah.” He marched back to his room and this time emerged with a red plastic sewing kit. “Suture thread in here.”
Another blink.
“Comes from a hundred years of patching each other up. Be prepared for the other guy too, not just yourself.”
A new way of thought, and not a bad way.
“Usually it’s Zac, of course. Tempting the serum. Falling off things.”
“I don’t fall off things. As a rule.”
“He thought he could walk across this open barn joist one time—”
“One time, sixty years ago.”
Any other night, Simon might have continued the tale. Zac might have continued the swagger and the protest. But the comfort of an old story seemed to rub both of them like splintered wood over the palm of a hand. Perhaps Colm had been there that day. Zac crossed to the window and peered out the blinds. On rubber legs, David followed Simon to the bathroom.
David stripped off his shirt, though blood already soaked the crew collar, and knelt in the bathtub. Blood dripped steadily from his head. Simon sat on the tub’s edge, threaded a hooked needle, and drew from his kit a squeeze bottle with a fine tip. Wound irrigation. The final item was a razor.
“I’ll keep my hair, thank you,” David said.
“Only around the—”
“If you can’t do it invisibly, then don’t do it.”
“You’re so vain?”
David’s mouth twitched despite the shiver that took hold of him. “I don’t want questions from customers, and I have a store to run come Monday.”
“I leave it like this, you’ll keep bleeding.”
He huffed. Why couldn’t the serum kick in now? “Indolent little beasties.”
“We are a spoiled lot.”
The next few minutes made David’s eyes water as Simon cleaned and stitched. The topical anesthetic couldn’t touch the ache that filled his head. When the work was finished, his legs were like a newborn foal’s. Simon kept his hand under David’s arm as they moved back to Zac’s room, and David sat on the edge of the bed.
“I have Tylenol. Be right back.” Simon closed his med kit and took it with him.
Zac was rummaging through his carry-on. In moments he came out with a Snickers bar, Starburst and Jolly Ranchers in varying flavors, and a fun-sized packet of original M&M’s.
“Here.” He thrust his brimming cupped hands toward David. “Blood sugar boost.”
David took the M&M’s and managed to pull the bag open.
“Far cry from homemade hot chocolate.” Zac tossed the rest onto the bed.
“Thank you.”
“Yep.”
“We need a plan of action,” David said as he munched from the bag. “I don’t see how we’ll track him, but we’ve got to try.”
Simon came back with two white tablets.
“David wants to track the gunfighter,” Zac said as David swallowed the pills dry.
“All the handicaps are ours,” Simon said. “He knows us; he can find us.”
“Maybe he will again.” Zac perched on the other bed and drew up his legs to sit cross-legged, hands on knees. “And be ready to hear us out next time.”
Or to start a war.
Simon frowned. “Should we wake Moira? Seems she should be part of this conversation.”
The adrenaline of the last few minutes ebbed as the earlier pieces of this night flooded in. Not only her shoes slapping the concrete as she ran. All of it. Jayde and that miscreant boyfriend. The sound of shovels on dirt, of steel brandished to end a life. He had never lived a longer night than this one. He was sure of that now. He lifted his head as Simon’s hand found the door handle.
“Moira is gone.”
Neither Zac nor Simon’s face showed surprise. Neither asked why she’d left. They sat in silence, absorbing, accepting.
“I tried t
o dissuade her,” David said.
“No one could have,” Simon said.
“We ought to bring her back. She ought not be alone, and …” And if the things she believed about each of them were true, then Simon at least should agree with David.
But he was shaking his head. “She would see it as a cage.”
“Not this time.” Not the Moira who had cried on his shirt, who had hugged him goodbye. They knew her better, but they might be too raw tonight to understand her.
Simon sighed. “You won’t find her until she wants you to. Believe me.”
Zac was quiet. After a minute he reached over and took an M&M from the half-empty bag.
TWENTY-SEVEN
What David hoped to accomplish today wasn’t something to be done over the phone. Then again, as long as it had been since Blaire Famosa laid eyes on him, maybe a phone call would have come across better. She might think he was here in person to make a no more difficult. A thought that hadn’t occurred to him until he was a mile away from Blaire’s Blooming Books.
He parallel parked a few cars down from her storefront. The place was blooming indeed today thanks to an announcement written on red poster board in the window, in a calligraphy hand that could have been a computer font.
FIRE SALE! MARKED PAPERBACKS $.50! MARKED HARDCOVERS $1.00!
He could hardly have chosen a worse day to show up unannounced. He grimaced as he fed the parking meter, half due to timing and half to the lingering throb along the side of his head. The night’s sleep had not convinced his body to heal itself—an absurd thought, as if the serum were aware, but its selective process did make him wonder. He held the door for a family with a stroller, exchanged smiles and nods, and stood in the vestibule.
The building’s units were deeper than they appeared from the street, and Blaire had made the sunlit front quarter a reading area furnished with rugs braided in colors of the earth, a burnt-orange leather sofa, brick-red chairs, and a fancy coffee machine. Tiana would like the bold color scheme—a new piece of knowledge David savored.
Warmth seeped from every corner of the store, but today David’s eyes strayed from enjoyment of the atmosphere to search for the owner. Ah, behind the counter. That could be a good sign for him.
He waited about ten minutes for a lull in customers coming and going. He made himself a coffee, adding a liberal dose of French vanilla creamer and ignoring the sugar. Only bad coffee needed sugar. He stirred it, took a corner seat, and sipped. Blaire knew mediocre coffee was a worse offering to one’s patrons than no coffee. He smiled while he watched her in her element, eyes shining, abundant black hair pulled into a high ponytail that bobbed with every move of her head. Her bright blue graphic tee read NEVER ENOUGH BOOKS. David’s lips turned up. Blaire could have been a practicing paralegal to this day, wearing skirts and jackets to work instead, but at thirty she’d chased a dream, and eleven years later here she was.
No Less Days Page 27
