by Alison Ryan
Atlas chuckled.
“Sure. Go take your chances out there. I’m not going to hold you hostage. But just remember, every time you leave and come back, you can be followed. People know you’re with my brother. And you don’t exactly blend into a crowd.”
Mallory was nearly six feet tall and blonde, with almond shaped eyes the only hint of a Japanese grandmother. She’d done pageants in her younger days, finishing as runner-up in the Miss Teen California contest. She was a striking beauty, even by Las Vegas standards. We’d met in Tahiti, me scuba diving with friends, she being photographed in bikinis for some magazine.
She was much fonder of the spotlight than I, and it was at her urging that we’d become something like socialites. I could do without nightclub appearances, casino openings, and movie premieres, but being attached to a Titan afforded such privilege, and she took full advantage.
Had I ever taken the time to examine our relationship the same way I studied my stock portfolio, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised by the conversation I overheard once Atlas moved off into another part of the house or ranch or hospital or wherever we were staying.
Speaking to her friend Nyomi, a New York-based model of Senegalese descent, she vented about Atlas and me.
“His brother is such a dick! Yeah, he’s hot, whatever. Odin is better-looking. Atlas is just like one giant muscle… No, he tries to control everything I do. Supposedly I’m in some kind of ‘danger’ but whatever. I had dinner with Curt, you know, that producer guy… Yeah, last night. He’s okay I guess. But Odin? I don’t even know if he’s going to wake up. I know it sounds bad, but come on, we never got married or anything. What if he never wakes up? What do I get? Living will, my ass. His daddy controls all the money, I’m sure… But you get it, I have to cover my bases, right? These are my prime years; billionaires don’t grow on trees. Or if they do, they’re old and crusty. Ewww. I mean, of course I hope he gets up and on his feet again, but if not, then I have to be ready to move on, to keep my options open, that’s all.”
I listened intently, wanting to kick myself in the ass for falling into her trap. I wondered if she saw anything but dollar signs and flash bulbs when she looked at me. I struggled to speak, to move, anything, but it was for naught. Rage wasn’t going to be what made my body work again.
Suddenly, I heard movement in the room, and Piper’s voice.
“You’re a stone-hearted bitch, Mallory.”
“Hang on, Ny. What did you say to me?” Mallory replied.
“I guess I should apologize for eavesdropping, but it’s not like you were trying to hide anything. I’ve been right outside the door. I heard everything. Odin is laying right here, could wake up tomorrow, but you’re already out with other men, and planning to dump him? Or dump his wallet, I guess? You make me sick.”
I wanted to high five Atlas at that moment. I hadn’t had the opportunity to get to know Piper very well, but I could tell she was fierce; the only type of woman my brother wouldn’t get bored with easily.
“I love Odin. I don’t know what you think you heard, but you’re way out of line,” Mallory protested.
“No wonder you’re so comfortable in Las Vegas. I bet there are more gold-diggers per capita here than just about anywhere in the world. You fit right in,” Piper mocked Mallory.
“You’re one to talk. You went and got yourself knocked up. That’s a classic move. What, did you put a hole in one of Atlas’s condoms?” I could picture Mallory folding her arms across her chest and getting that haughty sneer on her face to put a ribbon on her insult.
After that, the crashes, shrieks, and screams began.
My brother’s voice resonated above the chaos, and the word “bitch” flew around the room as I imagined he separated Mallory and Piper.
“Get out. Now.” Atlas was snarling.
“She started it. I think the pregnancy hormones have her all fucked up. Jealous whore!” Mallory spat the words at my brother and Piper.
“I didn’t ask your opinion about anything. I gave you an order. Leave and don’t come back. If Odin wants to see you when he wakes up, I’m sure he’ll know how to find you. I’m not going to hold Piper back much longer. This is your opportunity to walk out of here before you get your pretty face messed up. By a pregnant woman. Go.” Atlas’s tone left no room for argument. A door slammed and Mallory was gone.
7
Odin
Can you really fall in love with someone you’ve never seen? Or, actually, never even communicated with?
I mean, I get the other way around. In my younger years I definitely fell in what I thought was “love” many, many times with girls and then women I’d seen, but never met or interacted with.
Every afternoon after school during my teen years I “fell in love” over and over again watching MTV.
But this whole thing with Clara challenged me. I knew her name. Recognized her scent. Was soothed by her voice. I even knew, in some strange way, her touch.
In my condition, the type of coma I was in, I had feeling, although it was unreliable. Something short-circuited in my brain when the bullet hit my skull, and although some messages were travelling normally through my cerebral cortex, medulla oblongata, and all the rest, there were synapses that just weren’t firing.
And might never fire again.
It’s a funny thing, having people talk around and about you as if you’re a piece of furniture. I pieced together that I’d been shot, that my brain had swelled, and that I was no longer in the hospital. I was in a home, it seemed like. I could hear cars outside, though not many. A dog barked from time to time in what I assumed was one of the neighbor’s yards.
I did my best to hold it together, but my mind threatened to fracture. I was experiencing a sort of solitary confinement.
I recalled a term I heard once at a zoo; “enrichment.” It was what the keepers called it when they gave, for instance, a grizzly bear a great block of ice with fish inside. Or a soccer ball to a mountain lion. The animals were given unusual stimuli on an irregular schedule to keep them from succumbing to the ennui of the same cage, the same food, the same… everything.
The “enrichment” I received from and thanks to Clara was all that kept me sane.
My first memory upon becoming aware of my coma and resulting paralysis was a conversation between my big brother and a woman whose voice was unfamiliar to me. Over time, I became aware that her name was Clara.
“So, he seems comfortable, and you have everything you requisitioned, right?” Atlas asked, ever the military man.
“It appears so, yes. I can monitor Odin’s vitals here and remotely from my room. And he can stay fed and medicated. Yes, it’s all in order.”
“Okay doc, thanks. Keep me posted if… when his condition changes.”
“It will be important for you to spend time with him, Atlas,” Clara pointed out.
“I’ll definitely pop in from time to time, but I have to stay on top of security.”
“I can’t stress enough how vital it is that you spend time with Odin. I mean really spend time with him. You, his girlfriend, any other family or friends you can think of. A pet, if he had any. Anything familiar, anything to give him hope and reason to fight, reason to want to come out of this, are vitally important. Your voice could be something for him to cling to.”
“Are you serious? What am I supposed to say? Is there some sort of mantra you want me to chant?” Atlas sounded on the verge of laughter.
Piper had entered the room at some point during the exchange, or maybe been there all along, and she joined in. “You just have to talk to him. I’m sure it doesn’t matter what you talk about. Just tell him stories. Tell him what’s going on in the world. Sometimes just having somebody there, somebody who cares, makes all the difference in the world. You should know, you were that for me, Atlas.”
“She’s right, you know,” Clara added. “You two grew up together. You’re his older brother. If there’s anybody he ought to know he can count on
and that he’ll feel safe with, it’s you.”
Atlas spent the first few days of my convalescence chatting with me, or to me, to be more precise, since any conversation with me was driving down a one-way street, about his recent experiences with Piper. About their escape from Dubai and getting to Alaska. About the attack on their Alaskan home. I knew from the way he spoke about her that Piper was his great love. That he’d found his forever. As happy as I was for him, I felt a little sad for myself, since I knew Mallory wasn’t that for me. Before I ever had my suspicions about her confirmed by that awful phone call, I knew we were a temporary item. Marrying her simply meant handing over half my money in a year or five or whenever we inevitably split up.
Marrying Piper was the completion of my brother. She was his destiny.
Atlas shared memories from our childhood and told me stories from his time with the SEALs and some of his later work, some of it which I’m sure was classified, not that it mattered. It made him uncomfortable at first; my brother is anything but chatty. But with Clara and Piper encouraging him, he opened up. The low rumble of his voice was reassuring and constant, something familiar for me to cling to.
One morning, he joined me in a somber mood.
“Ever wonder how mom would be taking all of this? You in a coma, me on the run, her first grandchild on the way. It’s crazy, bro. I know you don’t remember her, and what I can recall at this point is more the smell of flowers, so many flowers at her funeral… but more than that, she always smelled like flowers. Just like fresh flowers. You’d know it before she even walked into a room.”
This part gave me chills. Or the closest one can have to chills when his brain is short-circuited to the point that he can’t really feel much of anything. Atlas could have been describing Clara, but instead he was putting into words his own fleeting memories of our mother, who passed away before Atlas was five, when I was barely two.
“She used to get so frustrated because whatever I was playing with, you’d take it. Or try to take it. I do remember that. Being so frustrated that I’d grab a toy, some little car or something, and climb into bed with it, way down under the covers where you’d never find me. And I’d play with it in the dark. It was the only way to get away from you, to have a private moment. Mom always said it was because you loved me so much, that you wanted to play with whatever I was playing with, to be just like me. Well, dammit Odin, you didn’t have to take… three bullets for me!”
I’d never seen Atlas cry. Not once in my life. I’d seen him skin his knees, bust his lip, fall out of a tree and break his arm, but crying just wasn’t in his DNA. But as he talked about our mother, I heard his voice quiver, and by the time he reached the word “take,” he was definitely choked up.
He got quiet after that, but I could tell he was till nearby. He’d clear his throat now and then, and in my mind’s eye, he was lost in thought.
Clara burst in, out of breath.
“Atlas, I think I might have great news!”
“What, what’s happening?” Atlas asked, clearly caught off-guard.
“I’ve been researching coma patients, clinical trials, experimental cures, that sort of thing. Quietly, like you told me to. But you have to understand, this is a very specialized field. I’m far from an expert.”
“You’ve done an excellent job of fooling us, Doc. We’re all very impressed by what you’ve done so far, how you’ve treated my brother.” Atlas offered.
“I appreciate that, I do. But to be honest, all I’m doing is keeping him in what archaeologists would call a state of ‘arrested decay’. I can keep him fed, make sure he doesn’t get bed sores, that sort of thing. But the human brain is very unpredictable. I can’t offer anything to expedite his healing. There are very tricky surgical procedures where electrodes are implanted into the thalamus, deep inside the brain. Stem cell treatments are also used. But I may have found something else. Or, I should say, my professional colleagues at UCLA Medical Center may have found something. They have a new procedure where they use ultrasound, bursts of low frequency ultrasound, to, for lack of a better term, ‘jump start’ the brains of coma patients. It’s in its early stages now, and it won’t be approved for months at least, maybe years, but if we could get Odin to L.A., who knows? I’m sure if the Titan Foundation made the right sort of donation, Odin could move to the top of the list when human trials begin.”
Clara was excited, I could hear it in her voice. The idea sounded interesting to me, as I’d often theorized that if the right sort of electrical impulses could be harnessed, that the benefit to the human body was potentially astonishing. Our brains are constantly sending out electrical messages to various parts of our bodies. Why not co-opt that delivery system for our own ends?
“Odin isn’t going anywhere,” Atlas stated. “Not until he wakes up and walks right out of this room. But what if we had the equipment UCLA is using brought here? Could you use it to help my brother?”
After a long pause, Clara began poking holes in Atlas’s thought balloon. “I can’t say. I’d need to read their research, and I mean more than just some articles in the newspaper or even a medical journal. The hard stuff. And I’d need their equipment, which I’m not even certain could be moved, and then there’s the small matter or obtaining it. I mean, it’s not like you just stroll up and ask to borrow a specially-modified, expensive piece of medical equipment.”
I heard my brother chuckle, and I knew why.
Raven Conway.
“Let me worry about how to get everything you require to perform the procedure, just tell me exactly what you need. Unless it’s locked up in Fort Knox, I can get it. Hell, even if it’s inside Fort Knox I might be able to get it. Or have it gotten, I should say. Anyway, find out all you can and let me know precisely what you need. I’ll see to it that you have it.”
Heavy footsteps left my room accompanied by the fading voice of my brother as he made a phone call.
“Raven, Atlas here. How soon can you get to L.A.?”
8
Atlas
“I can say with confidence that the shooter was Tony Perrino. Once I got descriptions from my guy in Naked City, saw the traffic cam footage, and talked to my guy at the cab yard, it all added up to him. Just like we thought.”
Nathaniel sat opposite me at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of beef stew Piper had made for everyone. Our time together in Alaska made her one hell of a chef. I wondered how fat we’d all get eating her cooking all the time.
One of Nathaniel’s former colleagues with local police had fingered Tony Perrino as the shooter right off the bat, but as a retired FBI agent, he was considered beyond reproach by many on the force and not taken seriously as a suspect. What nobody in local law enforcement knew was that Tony Perrino’s nephew, Dom, was a SEAL and somebody I’d worked with in the past.
For QB.
QB always had degrees of separation between him and his hitters, but in this case he hadn’t been careful enough. I knew the connection. And I was very much alive. As was Odin. My father and brothers had reached out to me in various surreptitious ways, and it seemed like everyone had found a cocoon for the time being.
I nodded my head. “Do we know where he is now?”
“He caught a flight to Tucson the night of the shooting. From there he rented a car. After that, the trail is cold. I’d know if he was back in Vegas, though,” Nathaniel responded.
“And Mallory?” I asked.
“I’ve had her watched; she’s shacking up with a Hollywood scumbag-type producer, Curt Francisco. He has a place out in Summerlin. As far as we know, she hasn’t been compromised in any way. She’s made no attempt to contact me or any of us. I think you scared the shit out of her.”
“She ought to be more afraid of Piper,” I answered, and we both shared a laugh.
“How is she, anyway? I mean the baby and all.”
“She’s due in three weeks. Clara has been a godsend. Even with everything going on, to be able to talk to a doctor anytime she w
ants has put her at ease. The baby is kicking like crazy. I still can’t believe I’m going to be a father. I’m the oldest, but I was never supposed to be the first one to have a baby. Not with this life of mine.”
“Trust me, nobody is ever ready to have a baby. To be a father. There’s no class to take, no diploma that says you’re qualified. She’ll come when she’s ready, and you’ll adapt. And love the shit out of her.”
Nathaniel patted my arm and smiled. I couldn’t recall ever seeing him smile before; the prospect of a baby had him positively giddy.
“With an uncle like you, and a mother like Piper she’ll be in good hands no matter how much I fuck it up.”
Piper joined us, squeezing in and sitting on my lap. We kissed, longer than I felt comfortable in front of Nathaniel, but it was impossible to say no to her.
“This,” Nathaniel lifted a spoonful of stew into the air, “is delicious.”
“Thank you, I’m glad you like it.”
“Atlas was just telling me you two have picked a name?” he asked, although we’d had no such conversation.
Piper looked locked eyes with me and then turned to Nathaniel. “We haven’t settled on a first name yet, but her middle name will be Ronny. To honor a friend of ours who’s in heaven now.”
I gave Piper a squeeze and thought back to that cold afternoon in Alaska, watching our dog die.
A SEAL’s life revolves around the mission. My primary mission was getting Odin back on his feet. After that, QB was the target. God have mercy on anyone who got in the way.
9
Clara
After the better part of a fortnight, caring for Odin became my new routine and was as comfortable as that old cotton t-shirt from college, the one somebody left in my dorm one night and which became part of my regular rotation, despite being a little too big and having the name of a school I’d never heard of on the front. It was just so soft, felt so good on me, and brought back so many fond memories that I knew I’d keep it until it disintegrated after one too many washes.
