Far Too Young To Die: An Astraea Renata Novel

by Wayne, Douglas

  The skin on her chest steamed and blistered as the intense heat entered her body. Out of the blue, her chest rose sharply, and she wheezed hard, now finally able to get air. My heart slowed down just slightly, now I had her back under control. But, before I could celebrate, her chest fell one last time and never rose again.

  I released my flow and did CPR. At least, it was CPR as I had seen it done on TV. I really didn’t have a clue.

  “Breathe!” I shouted as I pressed in on her chest rapidly, stopping only to force a breath in between her frail lips. But she didn’t move.

  I kept trying for an eternity until Greg stopped Maybella and came into the back and forcibly pulled me away. Reality set in and my emotions finally took over, and I cried.

  - 5 -

  There was a loud bang at the front door that caused me to jump up and fall off of the couch, landing awkwardly on the living room floor. My face and chest was wet, like I’d sweat up a storm all night. I’d have to take another shower, but that would have to wait until I saw who was at the door.

  I pulled myself up using the couch and made my way to the door, trying my best to fix my hair as I walked. Another set of pounding greeted me as I stepped up to the door. “One moment,” I said as I peeked through the peephole.

  Two cops stood right outside my door, one male and one female. The male cop was the one doing the banging, leaving the woman back in the yard, looking back and forth between the bedroom windows and the garage. I didn’t know what was going on, but I had a nagging suspicion it had something to do with last night.

  Slowly, I opened the door and then the screen. Then I poked my head out and asked, “Is there a problem, officer?”

  “Are you Astraea Renata?” the male officer asked.

  I nodded. There wasn’t a good reason for me to lie.

  Not yet, anyway.

  “If you don’t mind. I’d like to ask you a few questions,” he said, and took a few steps back, as if asking me to step outside, which I did, against my better judgment.

  “Sure,” I said, then took a seat on a wicker chair on the porch.

  “Where were you at last night around three in the morning?” he asked as he pulled a small notebook out of his pocket.

  “I was here, officer. Came right home after work.”

  “And that is where?” he spared me a quick glance and waited for my answer.

  “Olson’s Pub. Owner and bartender.”

  He nodded and wrote it down.

  I got nervous though I kept my features in check. If they had something on me, which they shouldn’t, then I wanted them to bring the accusation instead of me admitting something on accident. He didn’t make me wait long to do just that.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but Tucker seems like it would be a little out of the way for your trip home.”

  “I was a little out of it, officer,” I said, as I concocted the story in my head. “Gregory Barnes, the other owner, gave me a ride home along with one of our customers who had a little too much himself.”

  “Does that friend own a blue Ford Taurus?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “He owns a Mazda. Not sure what type, but it’s definitely not blue.” It was yellow and ugly. The kind of car you wouldn’t be able to miss if it drove by on the street. He had two large magnets advertising the pub on the side because of that fact. I hated riding in the car, just because of all the mocking looks the car seemed to get. But the cops didn’t need to know that.

  Besides. I’d left my Toyota back at the pub which made my story sound believable if they bothered to check it out.

  “Ms. Renata, witnesses put a woman matching your description at the scene of an accident at Tucker and Jackson sometime around three in the morning.”

  “I told you, I wasn’t in the Ford.”

  “No,” the officer said, relaxing his arms ever so slightly. “You stepped out of the back of an unmarked ambulance that pulled up on the scene.”

  While it’s not technically against the law, this has always been one of my greatest fears. That one day, the cops would put two and two together and figure out someone had been sneaking around, healing random people and returning them to the streets none the wiser. There was always a chance we’d face legal issues for the things we do, but when you save people’s lives, they don’t typically want to sue.

  But last night, like every other night, we were careful. Even if he had a perfect description of me and the ambulance, everything the officer had was circumstantial. Unless he had a smoking gun, he didn’t have a leg to stand on.

  “I told you,” I said, standing up slowly. “The only places I was at last night were the bar and here.”

  The male officer glanced back to the woman who nodded and walked back to the squad car sitting just out front. She opened the passenger door, grabbed something off the seat, and made her way to the porch.

  Holding the smoking gun.

  “Care to explain why we found this on the scene, Ms. Renata?”

  “No idea,” I said, reaching for it. “Like I said, I wasn’t feeling too well at the end of the night.” I did a drinking motion with my right hand. “Too many boys willing to buy a cute girl like me a drink and I was too dumb to turn them down. Someone might have grabbed it off the bar while I was occupied.”

  “Perhaps,” he said as the female cop handed me the purse. “Or maybe it fell out of the unmarked ambulance when you rushed out to the accident scene.”

  “Look, you can go to the pub and verify my story. My car is parked around back, next to the dumpster.”

  The male officer smirked. “I don’t doubt it is. That still doesn’t explain what you were doing at the scene of an accident last night.”

  “Let’s say I did,” I said as I looked through my purse seeing if anything important was missing. “Is it against the law to show up on the scene of an accident.”

  “No, but impersonating a public official is.”

  The female officer stepped up in front of the male and placed her hand on his chest and said something near silently to him. He shot her a disgusted look, but nodded and stepped away.

  “We aren’t here to arrest you,” she said, once he was back near the car. “We just want to know what happened there last night.”

  I held my hand to my face and let out a quiet snort. There’s no way they expected me to fall for their horrible attempt at the good cop, bad cop routine, was there? The male cop, while clearly irritated, wasn’t pissed off enough to throw around blank threats. She had her part of the show down, but without enough emotional backing from her partner, nothing she said held any weight.

  “Like I told you,” I said, forcing a straight face. It was an epic feat considering how close I was to busting out laughing. “I was at the bar, then here last night. Tucker is on the other side of town. There wasn’t any good reason for me to be anywhere close to there.”

  “What about the customer you told us about,” she said as she shot a glance back to her partner who shook his head and got back in the driver’s side of the police car. “Can you give me his name and address?”

  “No and no. My customers mean the world to me. If one of them gets drunk and needs a ride home, we call them a cab or offer them a ride ourselves. Unless that’s against the law, there’s nothing more for me to talk about,” I said, walking towards the door. “And if it is against the law, I won’t speak to you before speaking with my lawyer. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go back inside, clean up, and get a ride back to the bar to pick up my car.”

  “Ms. Renata,” she said, holding her hands in front of her, like she was trying to calm me down. “We’re just trying to make sense of the scene last night. Put yourself in our shoes. You get a call about a single car accident on the other side of the city, but when you get there EMT is looking around for signs of a missing body that wouldn’t have been able to escape the car without help. You search the car and examine the scene, trying to make sense of it all, but come up empty until two witnesses appro
ach you and tell you a story about a girl and guy who pulled up in an unmarked ambulance. Apparently they ripped the smashed door off the car to free the man who they put on a stretcher before driving off.”

  “Sounds like a funny story to me.”

  “I would’ve written them off as two drunks who wanted a moment of glory, but that’s when I found your purse. So either the missing driver is your purse thief, or there’s something you aren’t telling us.”

  Or both, I thought. “Maybe you should check with the owner of the car. He might be able to tell you what really happened.”

  “Normally, that’s what I’d do. But the car was reported stolen over a month ago. So it’s not a simple matter of knocking on the owner’s door and asking why he fled an accident scene.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, sincere. “But I don’t know anything about it. I appreciate you returning my purse though.”

  She sighed. “You’re welcome. If you hear anything about the accident at the pub, don’t hesitate to give me a call.”

  I examined the card a moment, then nodded. “I will.”

  With that, the female officer walked back to the car, and I went back in the house. While I hated lying to the cops, I couldn’t just turn Aiden in. Not without hearing his side of the story first anyway. Maybe there was a good reason he was driving around in a stolen car. Maybe that had something to do with why it had been sabotaged in the first place. In any case, the rabbit hole had grown a lot deeper than I had originally thought. There was more to Aiden Wright than I initially thought. But even knowing everything I knew now, I still wanted to talk to him again to learn more.

  I shot Bernie a text asking for a ride to the pub to pick up my car. He replied promptly, telling me he would be here in about thirty minutes, giving me enough time to take a quick shower and pretty up enough for a friendly chat. Which I did with five minutes to spare.

  To be fair, I spent most of the trip in the passenger seat of Bernie’s cab, using the mirror on the back of the visor to do some last minute work on my face. Call me a stickler for appearance, but I have a rule of thumb when it comes to meeting with a pretty boy, even those that may or may not be guilty of grand theft auto. That rule states I must at least look like a ten, even if I don’t feel like a ten. Getting information out of someone is so much easier when I can use my seductive charm on the person. There aren’t many people who can resist the charm of a beautiful woman.

  Bernie pulled up alongside my car and I hopped out, promising to pay my tab later tonight when we inevitably called to have a drunk customer taken home. He smiled, and in his own Bernie way, told me that seeing my pretty face was payment enough.

  Always the charmer, ole Bernie is.

  As he pulled out of the parking lot, I unlocked my car and did two passes around it, looking for anything suspicious. While I refused to get on my hands and knees to check under the car, I took a little extra time checking the tires and the other things I could see while bent over. Once I was satisfied my car wasn’t sabotaged, I got in and took off towards Atlanta, so Aiden and I could have our little chat.

  - 6 -

  Aiden’s house was one of those beautiful two story ranch house just outside of the city. It had white siding from side to side accentuated with black trim that made the frosted windows stand out. The top floor was directly above the lower level though there was a steeped portion of the roof that covered most the front porch.

  Speaking of the porch, it was up on steps and stretched from one wall to the other, only stopping when it butted up to the attached garage. On the side away from the garage was a wooden porch swing, attached to the house by four steel chains. It had a cushion that covered the entire seat which looked big enough to hold four people sitting side by side, and it had two large pillows, one on each side. Across the porch there were other lawn chairs to sit on, but none of them were nearly as impressive as the swing.

  As I stepped onto the porch and to the front door, the southern girl in me couldn’t help but want to sit and swing for a few minutes before knocking on the door. I was sure, however, that doing that would do nothing but get the cops called on me. After my little encounter at my house, I wasn’t in a hurry to talk to them again.

  I took in a deep breath, rang the doorbell, and took a few steps back. Call it a southern courtesy, but I prefer to give the homeowner a chance to invite me inside, or send me away by my own merits. Standing right on top of the storm door has always put me off. So much that I turn away nearly everyone who shows up and knocks on my door like that. The only exceptions being the local schoolchildren who come by selling chocolate bars for a school fundraiser. They get a free pass in my book. I’m just glad they only sell them a few times a year, otherwise I’d struggle to keep my good looks with the chocolate delivery service.

  I heard the deliberate footsteps of someone walking through the house, using my magic enhanced hearing I turned on the moment I stood back. Call it intrusive, but I prefer to know if I’m being snubbed without having to stand out front awkwardly for a few minutes while he hides behind the door.

  The steps get louder as he walked to the door, only coming to a stop when I notice the lace curtain move behind the crystal clear glass embedded in the door. The latch clicked, the door open, and Aiden stepped through the crack in the door, wearing nothing more than a pair of blue silk boxers and a white tee shirt. Suddenly, the cool morning air got considerably warmer and I caught myself looking him over.

  Last night I’d seen him wearing a lot more below the waist and a lot less above, but there was something about seeing him standing before me, not covered with blood this time, that definitely had my attention.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked softly with a look of confusion in his eyes.

  I introduced myself, opened my purse, pulled out his wallet, and handed it to him. “Found this in the back of the ambulance. Must’ve fallen out when you bolted out the back.”

  He opened it up and thumbed through the contents, making sure everything was still there. “Thanks,” he said with a smile. “I made a pot of coffee, would you like to come in and have a cup?”

  I returned his smile and emphatically said, “definitely!”

  Just like a gentleman, he held the door open for me and I stepped inside. Let me say that while the porch called to my southern girl instincts, the inside of the house screamed at them. The floors from front to back were all glossy hardwood, with a few mats spread out in key locations. Namely by the door, in front of the refrigerator I see in the kitchen, and near the back door. There was a large rug in the center of the living room, centered between a sofa, loveseat, and a La-Z-Boy recliner. All the furniture was upholstered with a light brown fabric and had small square brown pillows positioned across the cushions.

  Along the walls there were pictures of him with an older couple I assumed was his parents, from locations all over the world. There was one with them standing in front of the St. Louis Arch, another in front of the Eiffel Tower, and yet another in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Two things were already clear, he loved to travel and loved to show it off.

  He offered me a seat on the sofa and walked into the kitchen to grab the coffee. I sat down on the surprisingly soft couch and thumbed through a book he had on the dark stained coffee table positioned between the seating. It was a large picture book with photos from locations all over the world. As I flipped through the pages, I tried to imagine myself in each of the locations. Especially on the white sand of some beach in the Dominican Republic.

  “You travel much?” Aiden asked as he placed the coffee on the table in front of me.

  “Not really,” I said, closing the book. “I’ve been to Florida a few times and New York for a funeral, but that’s about the limit of my adventures.”

  “Some of us travel for excitement,” he said, taking a sip of his drink. “Others drive around saving people who should be dead.” He placed the cup on the table and leaned in. “I think I know why you did it. What I don’t
know is how. I saw the car again this morning. I should’ve died in there.”

  “You would have if we didn’t get you out when we did. Your spirit was barely holding on.”

  “How could you know that? You have some special equipment in your truck that can see it on a computer or something?” He rubbed his eyes as if doing it would help jump start a part of his brain that otherwise had failed to make sense of things.

  “Nothing that elaborate,” I said, chuckling. “We don’t even have a heart monitor in the back.”

  “Then how could you tell?”

  “You want the long version, or the short one?” I asked, giving him the option.

  “We’ve got time.”

  I nodded. “You remember learning about the Salem witch trials in the 1600s?”

  “Kinda.”

  “Well, the history books mention that because it was an important part of our culture. But even to this day, most civilized cultures deny that they can exist. Those outside of the entertainment industry anyway.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “I’m a witch.”

  “Like in the Wizard of Oz?”

  “Kinda,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “But if you are expecting me to turn green, you’ll be waiting a very long time.”

  He smiled, sat back, and shook his head. “How does it work?”

  “It’s hard to explain.” As long as I’ve been on this earth, never once had I tried to explain how my magic works to anyone. Even after all the healing I’ve done over the years, most of those people were so happy to still be alive that they didn’t care how it happened. To be fair, I’d never paid any of them a visit after the fact either. And the few I’d saved after leaving the pub, treated me more like a guardian angel than a miracle worker.

  “Just try,” he said, picking up his mug and leaning back in the recliner.