“Alex, all of this cloak-and-dagger shit with Jerry…tell me it’s some type of game.”
“I wish I could.”
Brad narrowed his eyes. “You promised you’d tell us everything if we were quiet. Spill it, Troutt.”
I looked at Brad, then over to Gretchen. Despite every natural instinct to suppress the information, I knew I couldn’t keep up the lie.
“Only if you promise not to tell a soul.”
They both crossed their hearts, and then I shared the whole story.
10
Fitting his fur-lined aviator hat tightly on his head, Gavin O’Hara turned the flaps down to cover his ears.
“Old man Gavin doesn’t want his ears to get chilly?” Two of Gavin’s United States Postal Service colleagues walked over from their lockers, led by the man with the loudest, most obnoxious mouth in Boston, a thirty-something former college football player who thought he was the cover boy for Bad Ass Magazine…if there were such a thing.
“I’ve been doing this too long to act like I have anything to prove, Tyler.”
“That’s not what yo mama said.” The ogre thumped his muscle buddy on the chest.
Gavin openly rolled his eyes, wondering how much longer he could endure exposure to such a moron. He was certain being around Tyler was chipping away at his brain cells faster than his advanced age ever could. He could practically feel brain cells being destroyed at an alarming rate, even exponentially faster than when he’d smoked more than a few spliffs back during his wilder days.
“Mama jokes. I thought you used the last of the three you memorized yesterday.”
“You’re the joke, Gavin. Just a dumb old Brit.”
Checking his teeth to ensure there were no remnants of blueberries stuck in his teeth, Gavin refused to give Shrek and his equally clueless sidekick his full attention. He could make them out from the edge of his small mirror hanging on the door of his locker. The pair both wore short sleeves, showing veins snaking across their biceps. Every time they moved, Gavin noticed the flex of a pec or biceps. Not really a violent man, Gavin had thoughts of swinging his foot around to crack Tyler right between the legs. Frankly, though, he wasn’t sure the biggest dick in the service center even had a dick. Gavin guessed that Tyler routinely ingested steroids like a kid cramming candy down his throat on Halloween. He looked more like a manster—half man, half monster. Old images of the Hulk came to mind, although the hue of Tyler’s skin was more like Lebron.
Baritone giggles grew louder over Gavin’s shoulder. He shut his locker door and turned to face the egomaniacal bodybuilders.
“Go ahead, make fun of my age all you want—everyone gets older. You can pump iron until your muscles keep you from walking or grabbing your wanker. Oh wait, there’s nothing for you to grab.” A smirk escaped Gavin’s lips.
“Wait. Did you just say I ain’t got no cock? Because that arm of yours isn’t half the size of my—”
“You’re blind and delusional, Tyler. The steroids have been rotting your brain while inversely increasing the size of your ego.”
“Man, you think you’re so f—”
“Zip your mouth,” Gavin hissed when he saw a female colleague approaching.
She walked past them, her buttery skin, red locks, and sparkling eyes nearly taking Gavin’s breath away. She must be new. She paused, offered a polite smile, then moved on. Wait, did she just wink? Gavin held up a hand, but words failed to escape his lips.
“Gavin’s got a hard-on, Gavin’s got a hard-on,” the pair sang like a couple of middle school kids.
Gavin waited until she curled into the hallway, then he turned back around and just shook his head. “Two more years. That’s all I need before I have my full pension, and then I can finally rid myself of your ignorant comments.”
“My British bitch here is going snobby on me again. What’s that all about?” Tyler swaggered toward Gavin as his jaw jutted out another couple of inches.
“Let me speak a language you might understand, muscle mouth. Shut. The. Fuck. Up.” Gavin grabbed his satchel and heavy coat off the bench and turned to walk out.
“Where you think you’re going, my old British bitch?”
Gavin kept walking and simply raised his middle finger. He padded around the row of lockers, then stopped and flipped around on his heels. “By the way, I’m not British. I’m a proud citizen of Ireland.”
Tyler nodded, then a smile cracked his face. “Whatever, British Bitch. I’m from South Jersey, and that’s a place that deserves respect. We don’t walk around plucking four-leaf clovers off the side of a hill.”
“Right. You guys just pluck your eyebrows so you can keep that clean-shaven look for your manly contests.”
“Damn straight we do.”
Realizing he was wasting his time, and brain cells, engaging them in any semblance of a conversation, Gavin swatted a hand and walked out of the locker room. Stopping in the break room to pick up a thermos of hot Barry’s tea—one of the few traditions he still followed since living across the pond many years prior—Gavin spotted the redhead searching for something on the coffee bar.
“If you’re looking for those little creamers, you don’t want to go there. The Postal Service is still using ones they bought back in the 1980s, I think.”
She brought a hand to her mouth and giggled while looking into his eyes. “Thanks for the tip. No creamer at work. Ever. I’ll throw in a bit more sugar, I guess.”
“Sorry if I didn’t introduce myself earlier.” He could feel his ticker thumping a little faster. Hell, he knew she wouldn’t give him the time of day. She must be twenty years his junior.
“Mary’s my name.” She shook his hand and offered him a warm smile. “Just transferred here from the West Coast to help my sister care for our mother.”
He gathered her hand in his and had to stop himself from bringing it to his lips. “Gavin. Nice to meet you.”
Her fingers were as soft as rose petals, and again he lost himself in her radiant eyes. Pure emeralds. She blinked and snickered, and he realized he’d held on to her hand a bit too long. He quickly opened his satchel, pretending to search for something, although he never lost eye contact with Mary.
“Hope everything is okay with your mother.”
“Oh, she just likes to bark a lot. Doesn’t get around very well, so she insists on everyone coming over for Sunday dinner after Mass. I don’t have much of a social life being new to the city and all, so family is not a bad substitute, at least in small doses.”
They both shared a laugh.
“And you? Do you have a big family here?” she asked while stirring her coffee.
“Nope. Well, no one stateside. Have a big family across the pond in the northern part of Ireland, and I visit once in a blue moon.”
“Do you live near Dublin? That’s really the only thing I know about Ireland.”
Her lack of geographical and political understanding didn’t surprise him in the least. People in the States rarely understood how Europe worked, especially the long dispute over the six counties that made up Northern Ireland. Normally, American ignorance got under his skin. But Mary seemed different…or perhaps her gentle, kind nature and stunning beauty helped him realize that any bitterness tugging at his soul all these years had served as shackles.
Standing before such grace and perfection, he realized that he’d shut off the rest of the world as he plodded through life, as if it were nothing more than a series of rudimentary tasks. His job as postal carrier for the last twenty-eight years was a requisite example of the complete bore his life had become since he arrived in the States. He left everything behind in his beloved Northern Ireland, including the girl who got away. Anna’s elegance and alluring charm were only outmatched by her tremendous compassion and ability to heal his mental and emotional wounds from the violence and vitriol during The Troubles, or what many Westerners called the Northern Ireland conflict.
He’d paid a great price for the political stand he took w
hen he was much younger as revenge for a little brother being shot in the chest by one of the British troops brought in to squelch a peaceful riot. Gavin’s response had been immediate and brutal. Working with a few of his closest friends—none of who had been able to keep their jobs because of the crumbling Northern Ireland economy—Gavin kidnapped a British soldier. Bringing him to an abandoned storage facility outside of Belfast, he and his friends took turns beating the man until he was unrecognizable. They drank whiskey and punched the soldier for almost twenty-four straight hours. As his buddies slumbered off to sleep, Gavin rose to his feet and decided he would take the final step in avenging his brother’s life. As images of his brother’s bloodied body flooded his mind, he’d felt a surge of adrenaline through his bloodstream as he wrapped his hands around the man’s neck and began to apply pressure.
Suddenly, puffy eyes shot open and tears poured down the soldier’s cheeks.
It only disgusted Gavin even more. “Heartless and gutless. You can’t even die like a real man,” he muttered just inches from the man’s face.
“My kids….they are all alone,” he sputtered.
Gavin narrowed his eyes, his grip not as tight. “What are you saying, you piece of garbage?”
“I lost my wife a year ago to tuberculosis. We’d been sweethearts since grade school. Tommy and Colleen are all I have left to remind me of the most spectacular and bravest woman I ever met.”
It felt as if an arrow had punctured his chest. Gavin’s arms dropped to his side and his breathing became labored. He stood there and stared at the soldier, who suddenly seemed human for the first time, and not because of the blood and skin, but rather because of what he meant to two little kids, and what they meant to him and the legacy of his wife.
The hatred and dogged desire for retribution for his brother’s death, and the death of many other Irish people, suddenly evaporated. Ever since he met Anna, he’d dreamed of starting his own family, a house full of kids running around, playing, and even bickering a bit. This man could be him in just a few years, he realized.
He untied the soldier and escorted him outside as a late-night fog clung to the nearby rooftops. Dogs barked in the distance, and the scent of smoldering fire hung in the air.
“Get along. Go home to your family,” Gavin said.
“Thank you for sparing my life. I’m going to leave the military, you know. My wife and I always dreamed of opening a little bookstore in our hometown. I think I’m going to try to follow through on that with the hope that her spirit will live on. For Tommy. For Colleen. For me.”
The two men hugged, and then Gavin watched the battered solider walk away.
With his spirit cleansed, Gavin went to Anna’s house to share the breakthrough he’d experienced—his new outlook on life, and how he desperately wanted to share it with her.
But all he found was a note. It was the ultimate Dear John letter. Anna had found someone else, a man who didn’t let bitterness dictate his every movement, she’d written. She apologized and hoped that one day Gavin would learn to enjoy life…if he didn’t get himself killed before then.
That was when he knew he needed a fresh start. One month later, he was on a one-way plane trip to Boston.
A gentle hand touched his arm. “Gavin, are you in shock or something?”
“Uh…sorry. Just zoned out.”
“Oh.” Mary turned her eyes back to the bar area and placed her coffee stirrer in the trash.
She sounded offended, and he could feel himself slowly retreating into the abyss of loneliness again, his sights drifting to the dirty floor.
All these years had clocked by, the same routine day in and day out. His so-called fresh start had quickly morphed into playing it safe in every aspect of his life. He might as well have just turned into a mindless, heartless machine. Then again, most of his conversations took place with inanimate objects—outside of the abhorrent run-ins with Tyler Cannon, former bruising linebacker from Boston College, and his minions.
They say you’re never too old to change your ways, and if he ever had incentive to break out of his multi-decade funk and experience life to its fullest, Mary served as his best opportunity.
On the verge of backpedaling out of the breakroom to start his seven-thousandth shift delivering mail to the people of Boston, something inside him forced his eyes to shift upward and take in everything that was Mary. He smelled a waft of strawberry as she moved about, finding a lid for her coffee, grabbing a few napkins, and…
A small purse fell to the floor. He reached down for it, as did she at the same time, and they banged heads.
“Dear Jesus, I can’t believe I just did that. Such a klutz. I apologize,” Gavin said.
Her face scrunched into a cute prune. “Can I have my purse back?”
He looked down at his hand, which held her small, tan clutch. “Sure, here you go.”
She rubbed her head and took hold of her purse. “You’re a funny one, Gavin.” A slight grin formed at the edges of her lips as she held her gaze.
“You think that’s funny, you should have seen me being chased by a neighborhood dog. My second day on the job. It was one of those walking routes, and this Rottweiler barreled through a small opening in a fence and came after me. Honestly, I nearly peed my pants.” Gavin smiled, then started chuckling, which soon developed into full-blown laughter. Mary joined him, both of them holding their stomachs as they cracked up at the visual.
Finally, she wiped a finger under each eye and, with a giggle still in her voice, asked, “Do you have scars from where he tore apart your flesh?”
“I avoided that.”
“How did you do that? Don’t tell me you turned into Flash and sped off, leaving the pooch in a cloud of dust.”
Gavin’s laughter started up again, tears pooling in his eyes. He could barely choke out a response. “I was hardly the superhero. I tossed everything up in the air—all the mail in my satchel and hands—and ran like a crazed lunatic down the street, shouting a different cuss word with every step. I couldn’t find a place to hide, so I…”
She touched his elbow then said, “Yes, Gavin, spit it out, man.”
“I…jumped into a pool.”
She released another series of cackles, her eyes sparkling with wetness. “You weren’t being chased by a hive of bees. What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t.”
“So what did the dog do, jump in after you?”
“Well, I waded in the deep end of the pool for a good five minutes. Finally, a lady came out of the house, and when I tried explaining what happened, she threatened to call the cops. So I climbed out and slowly creeped around the front to see if I could retrieve my mail.”
Mary took a napkin from the bar and dabbed her eyes. “Okay, don’t leave me hanging.”
“The damn dog was chewing on a piece of meat. One of the small packages I was carrying apparently had a boneless ham in it.”
Once again, their laughter filled the breakroom. Gavin reveled in the sound of it.
“Oh my, Gavin, what am I going to do with you?”
“Join me for a drink at this really quaint bar in Back Bay on Friday night.” The words escaped before he could stop them, and his breath caught in his throat.
For a split second Mary looked equally shocked, her posture abruptly stiff and stuck in the same position.
“Oh wow, I guess that’s a bit awkward.” Gavin would have done anything to take back his overt offer, but he sure as hell didn’t want to zone off and let her think he had lost his marbles again.
“Awkward, maybe, but I like a man who isn’t afraid to take a risk.” She gave him a wink that wasn’t hidden this time.
Amazed that she couldn’t hear the pounding in his chest, he tried to focus on what she’d just said. A risk. He’d stepped out of his comfort zone, just like he had with Anna. All these years later, when he thought life had slipped through his fingers like sand, another beauty had captured his heart. Maybe not love at first sight,
but he was certainly smitten by the spirited redhead.
Mary reached out and touched his elbow. “That would be nice, Gavin. Thank you.”
He resisted the temptation of leaping off his feet and pumping his fist in the air. Instead, he winked back with an earnest smile. “Outstanding. And I promise to leave my awkward self at home.”
“It’s okay. I think I like the real Gavin anyway.”
They agreed to meet the next evening at seven. She insisted on going home first, saying she needed “to make myself presentable.”
He couldn’t imagine how she could look any more perfect, but her insistence on tidying up for their initial date only made her more desirable.
Whistling as if he didn’t have a care in the world, Gavin floated down the hall to pick up his keys to his ride for the day.
He was humming to himself as he approached the vehicle clerk. “Hi, Sally. I’ll take the same as usual. Number thirty-two. Turns out that’s been my lucky number all along.”
Sally removed her glasses and they dangled from a chain. “Can’t give it to you today, Gavin. Tyler just picked up those keys, saying something about how he was given seniority this week because of some contest he won.”
Clenching his jaw, Gavin just shook his head, knowing Tyler had only done this to get under his skin.
“What a prick,” he said under his breath.
“Yeah, I got to agree with you on that one.”
He quickly glanced back through the window. “Hope I didn’t offend you.” He offered an uncomfortable chuckle.
“No problem. Sorry we broke your streak of days riding the same vehicle. Here’s number seventy-one. It’s four rows down from your regular ride.”
Gavin picked up the keys and blew out a breath, realizing now was as good a time as any to break free from old habits.
“Hey,” she said, getting his attention as he turned away. “I won’t let that prick fool me again. In fact, tomorrow I’ll give him fifteen…you know, the one with the crappy transmission and brakes that squeak so loud it feels like your head is being drilled.”
The Alex Troutt Thrillers: Books 1-3 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set) Page 66
