by Jillian Kidd
It really wasn’t fair that he occupied so much of my mind. The key was to evict him from renting that space as often as possible. It wasn’t easy breaking habits, but what was the use of dwelling on him anymore? Dad was right. I hadn’t really been happy these last few years. Confusion did that to a person. I guess I had trouble letting go because I’d invested so much hope in what I thought we’d had. But maybe, if all it really brought me was grief, the investment had gone sour, and it was time to put stock into other things.
I have never been like most women, whose entire lives are based on finding “the one.” When I met Damon, love sort of fell in my lap—or so I thought. But despite his entrance into my life, I have always enjoyed being self-sufficient. I have always had goals. Whether or not I’d ever met him, I’d still have those goals. It was easy to fall for him because we had a very large same goal, and that was to be Global bounty hunters. But our motivation to get there had always differed. I always sensed that his motive for bounty hunting was personal recognition, though he always denied it. Mine, however, was like my dad’s: I lived for taking the scum of the earth off the streets and putting them behind bars where they belonged. I wanted to help people escape fear and pain. I wanted justice.
Every time I brought myself to remember that fact, Damon’s face faded a little more, and my own emerged with clarity.
A 2013 Cadillac with wheels slowly rolled down the road. Its lights were off.
My heart skipped and I let it get closer. Then I zoomed my glasses in on the driver.
Jared Doyle.
There was no mistaking him.
His face had a rough, unshaved look to it, his eyes wild.
He slowed as he passed Mrs. Newton’s house, and I froze, becoming one with the tree. He didn’t see me. He was too busy staring at Leigh’s house a few homes down across the street. He lifted his phone and dialed, stopping close to her driveway. All the lights were off in her home. Then a lamp turned on. I imagined she’d answered the phone.
I slowly left the tree, swinging my legs down, landing silently on the ground. I pulled my larger laser gun out of its holster and started to creep to my car. When he turned his vehicle off and stepped out, I fell completely still. Crouching down behind my Honda, I peeked around the back. His steps were unsteady, but he wasn’t drunk. He was too jittery. Was he tripping on a drug? Was he dizzied by his own inner turmoil? Whatever it was, my plans had now changed.
I crept closer, slinking from one shadow to the next, my gun ready to fire.
A neighborhood dog barked.
He was going for the front door of the house. He rang the doorbell, and I picked up my pace.
His hand raised again. He knocked. Then pounded.
Leigh, don’t answer it! I thought, wishing for telepathic powers I didn’t have.
He didn’t give her a chance. He kicked at the door. I started to run in the street with my gun aimed at his shoulders. One house away.
He kicked in the door, the wood cracking and splintering. Leigh screamed.
“Stop!” I shouted.
Adrenaline coursed through my body and I bounded through the doorway. The struggle had already started. I followed the sound of shouting and breaking glass and hoped with every fiber of my being that little Sammy would stay in her room.
“Hold it!” I screamed.
Jared had Leigh by the hair with a knife at her throat. The room was in shambles, even from just a few brief moments of their struggle. By the light of her dim lamp, I was able to make out her wide, doe-like eyes. Her nightgown was ripped up one side, exposing her bleeding right hip. Jared blinked, squinting, as if to figure out who I was.
“Hurt her and I will shoot you,” I said.
“Who the hell are you?” he spat.
“Let her go, and we can talk,” I said.
“No! You tell me who you are right now, or she’s gone!”
I just needed to get him away from Leigh. Bait him somehow.
“I’m the one that’s going to introduce you to your maker if you don’t let the woman go.”
“You won’t kill me.”
I aimed for his head. “Bet I won’t?” I smiled. “If you use that knife on her, I’ll most definitely shoot you. If you don’t use the knife, we can talk.”
“First you tell me who you are. You have no right to be here.”
“Actually, I do have a right to be here.” I took off my ninja mask and let it drop to the floor. “I’m a bounty hunter, and I’m here to take you to jail, Jared. Your time to hide is over. You can come calmly, or you can come with a fight. I’m up for whatever you pick. Your choice.”
He snickered. “You’re just a female!”
“I happen to be an excellent marksman, or markswoman if you prefer, and you happen to be at point blank range.” I flipped the laser charge, and a high pitch sound filled the room, the firepower increasing. “You have five seconds. Five. Four. Three.”
He faltered, his eye twitching.
“Two,” I said.
Then, without warning, he released the fistful of hair he held Leigh by and threw her onto the ground. He lunged at me. I shifted my aim at the last minute and blasted him in the shoulder. It was enough to make him cry out and drop the knife.
While he was down, I slid on my brass knuckles and punched his face upward. He flew back and onto the coffee table. The force of the blow numbed my arm, and it tingled in bittersweet pain. Blood poured from his nose. I threw the brass knuckles at his crotch, and he winced from the hit. Then I stood over him, aiming the gun at his throat.
“Get up,” I said. “You’re coming with me.”
But he still didn’t get it. With a wild scream, he kicked at my hands, and my gun went flying. I backed up, and he scrambled to his feet, hurling his body after my weapon that had landed on the floor by the couch. Faster than he could grab it, I pulled out my bullet-firing pistol from the back of my pants and shot him in the back of the knee.
This time he went down and stayed down, grabbing at the profusely bleeding wound and wailing.
Leigh started to cry.
“Mommy?” Sammy said from the doorway.
I didn’t want to look at her. I knew the horrible memory of this broken room of violence would stay with her for the rest of her life. She didn’t deserve it. But at least she was safe now. Blood squirted from Jared’s nose. The cauterized wound in his shoulder smoked. His knee dripped crimson.
Shaking my head, I muttered, “You pathetic waste of life. You’re not even human.”
Then I jerked the mini tranquilizer dart from my boot and stuck it in Jared’s neck. He collapsed face down on the ruined carpet.
Taking a moment to catch my breath and let the anger in me die down, I turned. Leigh cradled her daughter in her arms. Both had tears running down their cheeks. I stood, my chest heaving, the gun in my hand shaking.
“It’s okay, honey,” Leigh said in a hoarse whisper, rocking Sammy back and forth. “It’s going to be okay.”
“I need to get my car and load him up to take him to the police station,” I said, steadying my trembling body. “He’s out.” I breathed in deeply and let it out. “He won’t move.”
“Don’t leave us in here with him!” Leigh whispered, sniffing back the fluids that had begun to run down her nose. “Please!”
“Oh, I won’t,” I said, crouching down to hug both girls. “I’m going to call Mrs. Newton. She’ll fetch my car. She told me if I caught him close enough to the neighborhood that I had to let her help take him in. Hard to say no to Mrs. Newton.”
Leigh coughed and laughed at the same time.
“You mean that ugly old schoolteacher lady?” Sammy said, rubbing at her leaking nose.
“Yeah,” I said, smiling. “That very one.”
7
Mrs. Newton and I left the police station, me with a relief that can best be described as the feeling of having taken out a bag of rank garbage. The street lamps in the nearly empty parking lot shone brightly as we walked
away from the sturdy white building that now housed Jared Doyle. He’d gotten blood on the seat of my Honda, but I’d deal with that later. It was too late in the evening to think about cleaning. The night air was warm, still. When I looked up to the sky through the glare of city lights, it was an array of pinprick light patterns against a velvety dark violet backdrop.
We got in my car, and I started to drive her home, when she asked, “You hungry?”
“A little,” I said, turning to her for a moment as I pulled away from the police station. “Why?”
“You look famished.” She furrowed her brow as if talking about a grave matter. “We’d better get some food in you.”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Newton. I need to get you home so you can get some sleep. I’d hate to keep you out any longer—”
“I know of a good deli that’s open 24 hours, if you’re willing to try something a little different. It’s kind of a hole in the wall called ‘Anna’s.’”
Before I fought with her any longer, I stopped. Maybe she needed someone right now. She lived alone. She was divorced. She had no children. Sure, she was a tough, even mean, older woman, but even the people with the thickest skin need someone to talk to sometimes. Perhaps tonight was her night. And what would I be doing if I went home? Lying in bed, trying to sleep, and doing a lousy job due to the adrenaline still coursing through my veins. Oh, why not?
I smiled and glanced at her from the corner of my eye.
“Hole in the wall,” I said. “I like those kinds of places.”
“Well, you’ll love this then.” She pointed. “Turn here.”
* * *
The tomato soup was wonderful, a nice mixture of tomato chunks, paste, and basil. I sipped, chewed, and savored each spoonful. Mrs. Newton had been right about this place. Great stuff. I drank a sip of my green iced tea and felt my nerves relax. Leaned back into the blue cushion of the brown wooden booth, I smiled.
We’d eaten in silence up until that point, contently enjoying the décor. The deli owner must’ve favored Georgia O’Keefe. Imitations of the artist’s flower paintings decorated the wall in large murals.
Mrs. Newton poured enough sugar for three people into her coffee and added a little cream. I was about to thank her for buying our savory late-night snack and suggest we head back home, when she cleared her throat.
“Leigh’s lucky,” she said.
That was an odd statement, considering the young woman had just undergone a horrible beating from an ex-boyfriend that had sexually abused her daughter. I turned my head slightly to the side, staring into Mrs. Newton’s eyes.
“Why do you say that?”
“Sammy.”
“She is a very sweet little girl.”
What was she getting at? She had security cameras outside her house, for heaven’s sake, because her students had vandalized her house a time or two back in her teaching days. She’d bragged earlier in the evening about being the most dreaded and hated teacher in the high school.
“I lied when I told you I didn’t have any children,” she said. She took a drink of her coffee, the steam rising in warm rivulets around her face. “I gave birth to a daughter.”
I blinked, then shifted in my seat to let my chin rest in my palm. “What was her name?”
She looked over my shoulder to a massive painted flower. “Alyssa. She’s still alive, as far as I know. I had her when I was 15. There was a couple I knew that had tried for years to have a child, but couldn’t. I was young and had no business raising one. So I gave her to that couple, let them adopt her.”
I nodded. “Sounds like it was the right thing to do.”
“I’m not so sure, now.” She leaned back and crossed her arms over her black vest. “My ex-husband didn’t want children. He’d even gotten himself fixed.” She pointed to her lap. “That’s how serious he was about not wanting them. And I married him knowing that, but I was young, 20-something. It didn’t occur to me that I might one day want to have them.” She drank more coffee, then cracked a side grin. “You might think I would’ve had enough of the sorry little suckers in my classroom, year after year. I guess I’m a glutton for punishment, because I got to the point where having a baby was all I really wanted. It’s why Ray and I divorced. Well, one of the many reasons. He also couldn’t keep his fly zipped when it came to younger, beautiful women. I guess there are multiple bonuses to having your balls out of commission.”
“Hence why you’d like me to go after him,” I said with a laugh.
“Honey, in all honesty, he’s not worth your time.”
A waiter-bot hovered over to our table. It waited for a moment until it knew we were finished talking. The cylindrical disc with flashing yellow lights around the rim spoke in a small, echoing woman’s voice:
“May I get you anything else?”
“How about some more coffee,” Mrs. Newton said. “And bring Mina one of those cinnamon crumb cookies.”
“Oh, you don’t need to do that—”
“Honey, they’re wonderful. You need one. You’re too skinny as it is.”
I laughed and tried arguing with her. I was in pretty darn good shape, if I say so myself, but like most women, my weight had steadily crept up a tad over the last few years; I couldn’t get into my college jeans now even if I used lubricant all over my hips to squeeze in them. Good ol’ aging metabolism. But being a stocky, well-fed woman of 60, she thought I was full of it and demanded that I eat the damn cookie.
“All right,” I said, smiling at her determination. “If you insist. They do sound good.”
“More coffee and one cinnamon crumb cookie?” the waiter-bot asked after we had paused from our conversation for several seconds.
“That’s correct,” Mrs. Newton said.
“Yes, ma’am. Be back in a moment.”
The deli was surprisingly full, considering the hour and the fact that it was very early on a Monday morning. The crowd was eclectic. At one table sat a group of college kids studying for an exam. At another was an old man with bushy white eyebrows. He read something on a hand-held electric device. The door bell chimed, and strolling inside to order were a middle-aged man and woman who had enjoyed a late night of drinking, forgotten their age, and were holding hands, their fingers intertwined.
“Does Alyssa know you’re her real mother?” I asked Mrs. Doyle.
She sighed. “Honey, I just gave birth to her. Her real mother is the one that raised her. And I’m okay with that. That’s the way it should be. I didn’t want to complicate things with my presence. Her parents told her she was adopted, but she’s never tried to find me. I’ve often rehearsed what I’d say if she showed up on my doorstep. But if it really happened, I think I’d be too stunned for words.”
“I can imagine.”
“You know, half the women that give birth to babies don’t raise them. They just serve their sons and daughters as examples of what not to be.”
I couldn’t help but think of my own mother. But I wouldn’t talk about her tonight. Tonight was about Mrs. Doyle.
“But the same goes for men,” she said. “Plenty of people in general are too selfish to know real value when it’s staring them in the face, even when it’s an extension of their own blood. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to send my students’ parents to boot camp and whip them into shape. Too many times, I’d ask a student why she flunked my test, and she’d say she hadn’t studied because she had to work because her dad left and her mom was using all the money on herself and there were brothers and sisters to feed. It’s a disaster. You know, kids need to be kids. There’s plenty of time for adulthood when you get there.”
The group of college students erupted into laughter and cheering. They had replaced their calculators and notebooks with playing cards. One of the students, an extroverted and good-looking young man in glasses, playfully punched the shoulder of his taller classmate to his right. The taller man shoved him back and began shuffling the cards.
The bot returned, and two thin me
tallic hands extended from its sides, one pouring Mrs. Newton more coffee, the other handing me my cookie on a little pink plate. I took a bite, and closed my eyes in joy.
Mrs. Newton cackled, her raspy voice adding to the joviality of the room. “Good, huh?”
“Very,” I said with my mouth full.
We visited long enough for her to finish that cup of coffee. She picked up the tab, despite my protests. On the way back to her home, we listened to the Beatles and sang a few songs together. It was hard to believe that I had made a catch that very evening. Usually after a night dealing with Fish, I went home and brooded and thought about who I was going to catch next. But this was nice.
When we got back to her house, she showed me a few pictures of her late parents on her entryway hallway walls. She had one sister and one brother, both of whom she pointed out in a variety of framed snapshots. There were a handful of nieces and nephews as well. She told a few stories about growing up, and I shared a couple about Colt and me. She seemed pleased that we were so close and encouraged us to stay that way.
I hadn’t brought up men or romantic relationships, but out of the blue she told me not to be in a hurry to get married. She said life wasn’t meant to be complicated, but that true happiness could be found in the smallest things: good coffee, cinnamon crumble cookies, and friends.
When I gave her a little hug and said goodnight, I had a peaceful feeling that she was right.
* * *
I sat in my car at the edge of town on a hill and watched the sunrise.
My eyes were heavy with sleep, but the coming light gave me a burst of energy, as the sun often does when it disperses the darkness and, seemingly, all the sorrow and horrors that might have come with it.
It was a new day.
I had 24 catches.
That was 24 Fish properly brought to justice, leaving one more for me to nab before I could be granted the coveted title of Global. Their faces would stay with me, as would some of the injuries I’d endured while on the hunt. I have a scar on my left side, right under my ribs, from a deep knife cut. I’d had my shoulder broken via a fall from a moving train. My right thigh had been bitten by a tiger (long story). But the wounds had healed, as had others that hadn’t even left scars. Humans really are a resilient lot. Many people fear pain, but to me, it’s all part of life.
