by David Wright
John shook his head, thumbs on his temples, wishing he could have been there to spare Abigail the torment. Larry was right — John probably wouldn’t have made such a mistake, though there was no way to be certain. It was one thing feeding yourself, another to be responsible for feeding another. Perhaps feeling the constant pressure to provide people for Abigail to feed on made it easier to make mistakes.
“How is she doing now?” John asked.
“I think I found someone who can help,” Larry said, explaining that he’d just hired an au pair to watch Abigail, a nice young woman he felt would be great to have around, especially since Abigail had no other females in her life.
Larry joked, “It’s not like I know shit about preteen girls, what they’re into, or anything about periods or shit like that. Hell, I know Abigail stopped aging, but what if she goes through puberty? I am so not prepared for periods and training bras!”
John didn’t like the idea of someone else, someone he hadn’t vetted, being around Abigail. “How did you find the au pair? How do you know you can trust her?”
“Relax,” Larry said. “She used to work for our neighbors across the street. They’re moving and she needed a job. It’s just a few hours a night, and half the time, I’ll probably be home, anyway. But she’ll be there for Abi. I’m basically hiring a friend for her.”
John remembered what happened with Lydia. “What if they accidentally touch?”
“Abi and I had a long talk. She’s wearing long sleeves, pants, and even gloves. I told Katya that Abi is a bit OCD and not to touch her.”
“She bought that?”
“Yeah,” Larry nodded. “There’s tons of people out there with weird disorders and shit. Hell, hit cable and you’ll see a TV show devoted to one disorder or another, all times of the day. They got one now with people who eat plastic, cat fur and other funky shit on TV now. Weird shit. People don’t even blink twice when you’re wearing gloves. Hell, you could wear a painter’s mask, and half the people wouldn’t even notice. Dude in Guns & Roses wore a bucket of chicken on his head.”
John thought Larry was making light of the subject, but had to trust that he was making the right choice. John hadn’t thought much about the lack of a woman, or other girls, in Abigail’s life, but it did make sense that she would need a maternal figure, or a big sister at least.
“Do you think I should stop by and see her?” John asked reluctantly.
“I know she’d love that,” Larry said. “But maybe if she bonds with Katya, she’ll feel better.”
John was torn. On one hand, he desperately wanted to see Abigail. He missed her more than anyone other than Hope. But at the same time, she had to grow strong and independent of him. Truth was, the agency could decide to kill him any day, and then he’d be gone forever. It would hurt Abigail far less if he was already mostly a memory.
John said, “I don’t know what’s gonna happen with the Agency once I’m done. I mean, they say I’ll be free, but you and I both know we can’t fully trust them. And if they decide to get rid of me, it would hurt Abigail a hell of a lot less if I was already just a memory.”
“You think they’d do that?”
“I don’t know what to think,” John said. Seeing Mathews shoot an innocent woman, a mother, no less, shredded whatever safety he was feeling in his future. “But you guys are set. Right? You’ve still got money and places that they won’t find you?”
“Yeah, yeah, we’re good. Don’t worry about it. Besides, maybe she wouldn’t bond as well with Katya if you came back right now. Maybe this is the best thing for Abi.”
After several silent seconds, John said, “I think so. But you have to let me know if she’s not improving.”
“Will do. And as for the other thing — Shadow. I’ll find him.”
“Thank you.”
“What do you want me to do afterwards? Do I let you know where he is, or set up a meeting?”
“Depends where he’s at,” John shrugged. “If he’s surrounded by Others or Harbingers, it’s probably better that you set something up. If I walk in there, it’s gonna get ugly. Set up a meeting on neutral ground if you can. If he’s isolated somewhere else, don’t make contact. Let me know and I’ll come right away.”
John handed Larry a cell with his number preprogrammed. “Call me, anytime. Day or night.”
“Day?” Larry said, eyebrows furrowed.
“Yeah, they made this special suit for me with a helmet that blocks out the light. It looks stupid, but I can travel in daylight when I need to. I can’t feed or anything with gloves on, so it’s semi-useless, but it does give me more freedom.”
“Cool, is it like a super hero outfit? Like Batman or some cool shit?” Larry asked, giddy like a kid. It looked like he might start clapping.
“No,” John couldn’t help but smile. “Nothing that cool. It looks military, kinda like that Harbinger squad we took out at the hotel, actually.”
Larry wrinkled his nose. “That shit is lame. If I was designing your outfit, I’d make it bad ass, black with flames and shit. Maybe a big fucking Captain America star on the chest. People would know to back the fuck up when you hit a room. Of course, we’d have to come up with a cool name.”
“Like what?” John asked, playing along.
“I don’t know, something cool, though. No pussy shit like Flash or Ant-Man. It should probably at least have one obscenity in it. I dunno — if it were up to me, I’d call you Captain Fuck Yeah!”
“Captain Fuck Yeah?” John asked, laughing.
“Yeah, though it would probably limit your marketing potential with toys and shit. Imagine kids asking their parents for the new Captain Fuck Yeah action figure? Your movie would have to be R. A hard R, not that weak shit in theaters nowadays. We’re definitely looking at a far smaller potential for dollars.”
John laughed as he eyed his empty glass. He was thirsty for more — drink, laughs, and perhaps another ogle at Amanda.
* * * *
CHAPTER 6 — Hannah (Hope)
Hannah Quinn was running late, again. So, of course, traffic and weather were both horrible, conspiring against Hannah and her Honda Element packed corner to corner with flowers.
Every bloom had to be at His Father’s Holy Grace Church by five to noon, or Hannah would surely get screamed at by Cori Truman, the city’s biggest, flashiest and most grand standing wedding coordinator.
This wasn’t just a wedding — bread and butter for any florist who knew how to build and bill them — it was the biggest wedding gig Hanna’s Bucket Boutique had ever done. The bride belonged to Mr. And Mrs. William Graham, Las Orilla’s closest cousin to power brokers.
Judy Graham, mother of the bride, clicked with Hannah moments after first setting her Manolos inside Hannah’s small shop a year before. Hannah had a front fridge stuffed with blown open Leonidas roses; big and brown, in many shades of exploding copper, but about to die. Judy oohed and aahed as Hannah handed her the bundle, wrapped in brown paper with a drop of blood, fresh from a small cut on Hannah’s pinkie.
Judy spent $1,200 in candles and orchid plants to say thank you.
While there were a half dozen flower carts dotting the coast for 10 minutes in either direction, cheap chain grocery stores and at least six other quality shops within driving distance, with far more experience and staff, all who could have conceivably done the wedding as well as Hannah, and most of them probably better, Judy insisted that she do the job.
And so here she was, battling traffic and rain to recover lost time from her morning disaster. Hannah was either too stupid or too inexperienced to know about the effect that ripening fruit had on flowers. She had never filled her cooler to spilling before and had to ask Mr. Fanaroff from the Taco Beach next door if she could use his fridge. Of course, Mr. Fanaroff would do anything for Hannah, including allowing use of his cooler, filled with avocados and tomatoes and everything else that makes Mexican food delicious.
Thank the Good Lord above, Hannah had only loade
d the bridal party’s flowers into Fanaroff’s fridge, wanting to keep them separate after packing everything else into her cooler. By morning, the fruit in the fridge had turned her flowers translucent. Hanna had been smart, or at least scared enough to over-order, so she had plenty of flowers, though not enough time to arrange them all. She raced through the morning, and rushed to finish the same bouquets she’d spent half the previous day making in less than an hour.
It wasn’t Hannah’s fault, exactly, but she wasn’t being paid to deliver excuses. Her rather substantial check was in exchange for a promise that she would deliver flowers beautiful enough to make Becca Graham weep from memory when telling her granddaughter about the best day of her life four decades later.
The job could make or break Hannah’s Bucket Boutique.
Her dashboard clock read 11:51 a.m., and 20 minutes away.
Hannah’s phone buzzed with a text — Jenny her assistant calling from the church, where she was waiting with the wedding coordinator Cori Truman who had strongly advised Mrs. Graham to use a different florist. Anyone, other than Hannah, would do, according to Cori.
“WHERE ARE YOU?”
Hannah reached down and texted back, “15 minutes out, I hope. Be there soon. Sorry!”
Hannah stared out the window through the ragged smears left behind by her fraying wipers, cursing herself for forgetting to change the blades, again, after having her oil changed at Bud’s the week before.
Aren’t they supposed to check stuff like that?
She thought they were, but perhaps it was one of those things you were supposed to specify, no matter how obvious you figured it was. Hannah imagined calling the garage, complaining, and being told, “Sorry, ma’am, we saw that your wipers were hanging by strips like noodles, but if you didn’t ask, we didn’t fix!”
Because of her rotted wipers, Hannah was forced to drive even slower than the already slower-than-molasses traffic, and focus on the blurring lights ahead as she navigated the street.
The next light went yellow, and the car ahead of her stopped short, even though they both had plenty of time to make it. She hit the brakes and shouted, “Come on!” as she slapped her open palms hard on the steering wheel.
Hannah tried telling herself to relax.
She had time. Weddings were planned with plenty of cushions in case someone was running late, like the cakes she always had to wait on. Hannah was well within her cushion. The worst that would happen was that an impatient photographer couldn’t start his battery of photos at the precise moment he wanted to. However, there was no doubt that Cori would overplay her tardiness to Mrs. Graham to poison Judy’s opinion of Hannah and her shop.
The light went green, and traffic started to crawl. Rain fell harder, as if refusing to aid Hannah, despite her pleas.
Relax. Just focus on the road, think of Greg and you’ll be there before you know it.
Greg was Hannah’s longtime boyfriend. Their trip to Arbor Falls, California for a long overdue vacation — a week at a cabin passed down to Greg from his parents — was the coming Tuesday, and Hannah couldn’t wait. Though she and Greg had been dating for two years, this was their first real romantic trip. Time had never allowed such an indulgence. Greg was an analyst, and Hannah had her shop. Between them, available minutes were few. Six months earlier, they carved a date in stone marking their calendar with a promised week off. They owed it to themselves, and each other. Now, with the trip two days away, Hannah started thinking of the many things she needed to do before then, and hoping her shop would be OK for a week without her.
Anxiety found its familiar home inside her, nesting deeper into her veins as she hit her millionth red light.
You were supposed to think about the trip to calm down, not worry more!
Hannah closed her eyes, listening to her thumping wipers as rain drummed on metal. She hoped the sound would soothe her, even if traffic couldn’t.
Everything will be OK.
The wedding will go off without a hitch.
Jenny will handle the shop just fine.
We’ll leave with everything we need.
Everything will be fine.
A horn blurted behind her. The light was green, and cars were already moving through the intersection. “Sorry,” she mouthed, waving to the driver behind her, though they couldn’t hear her words or read her lips.
Hannah stepped on the gas, crossed the light, and flew onto the on ramp, relieved to see the highway traffic buzzing at a reasonable clip. She sped into a two-lane change, hoping to recover lost time. She looked in her mirror, then over her shoulder, and crossed another pair of lanes, nudging the Element 10 miles over the limit, the fastest she’d let herself go, especially in the rain, and within what she believed would be an acceptable speed to still slip from a ticket with a smile if needed. She kept her eyes on the road, and the rearview, hoping she wouldn’t see flashing lights behind her.
Even at 10 miles over the limit in the rain, Hannah was still slower than half the cars on the highway. She smiled as the sign announcing her exit in another four miles.
Almost there.
She was flying along in the left lane, and needed to cross to the right, but a quick glance in her rearview told her to wait. Her cell phone rang, instead of buzzing. Hannah’s stomach churned at the screen: Cori Truman.
Shit.
Hannah reached down and grabbed the phone, “Hello?”
“Where are you?” Cori screamed.
Hannah hoped Cori wasn’t in front of Mrs. Graham, putting on a show, though she more than probably was. “I’m on my way. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“You do realize you’re ruining this wedding, don’t you?” Cori said, dripping with venom.
Hannah swallowed to control her emotions. “I’m sorry, it’s not my fault.”
She wished she hadn’t said, “not my fault” before she even finished. The excuse marked her as an amateur, and poured unnecessary cement in Cori’s crappy attitude.
Hannah checked her rearview, saw the coast was clear, and merged as she explained to Cori, “I had a situation with the cooler. It was my fault. But it’s handled now. Everything is fine, I took care of it, and will be there in less than —”
Hannah’s world exploded.
Her Element spun, then slid out of control in a violent twirl toward the railing.
The flowers!
She could hear the arrangements sliding along with the truck.
The phone flew from her hand as she grabbed the steering wheel, clutching it tight while pumping her brakes and praying for control. She was moving too fast along a too-slick road. Hannah slammed into the railing. The Element crashed against it, then tumbled over the side with a horrible screeching of metal. Screams filled Hannah’s cabin as she roared down the incline into nothing but darkness.
**
Hannah woke in an oddly familiar room, though it held no specific memories, and she couldn’t recall actually being inside it before.
It was an art studio in an old house. A cool breeze blew in from a warm summer night outside, just past the perfectly square window looking out on a placid lake. Paintings on easels in various stages of completion surrounded her, all equally familiar. One of the easels was turned away from her, facing the window.
Hannah moved forward in a floating dream’s half-walk.
First, Hannah was drawn to the window, looking out at the moon hanging fat and full in the sky. “Goodnight, moon,” she said, recalling the children’s book she once read to her cousin for most of a summer.
Wait, I don’t have a cousin; do I?
Hannah turned from the window, her eyes drawn to a painting draped beneath a long piece of thick plastic. She reached out, peeled the plastic sheet from the painting, then let it fall to the ground. It took forever to hit the floor, as if the fall were as endless as the night outside.
There was no canvas behind the sheet, only a man.
Hannah stumbled back, startled by the sight of the naked man
with long dark hair and angel wings.
His eyes were closed as if he were sleeping, or dead.
Like the room, and the paintings, he seemed so familiar.
Or more than that.
Without thinking, Hannah reached her hand out to touch him, as if to see if he were real, or alive.
A name bled through her lips without her thinking it.
“John?” she whispered.
No response.
Her fingers touched his chest, which opened his eyes.
Hannah opened hers, and the dream was gone.
**
She woke disoriented in a brightly-lit but unfamiliar room.
She squinted through fuzzy eyes, trying to focus on the blur slowly taking shape, a man sitting beside her.
Her eyes finally adjusted, and settled on a stranger — a man with short blonde hair, and a big smile.
“How are you feeling, Hannah?” he asked.
She looked at him, confused.
“Who is Hannah?” she asked, her throat burning with drought. “And where is John?”
* * * *
CHAPTER 7 — John
It took Larry just six hours to find Shadow, a pleasant surprise that gave John hope he might be able to find Jacob and finally be done with Omega’s bidding.
According to Larry’s source, Shadow was holed up in Room 213 in the Channel Hotel, an expensive spread over by the Riverfront. John had driven by the hotel plenty of times, but never had reason to set foot inside.
Just before dawn, Mike Mathews sat with John in the back of an Agency van in the hotel’s parking garage, waiting for the agents to settle in place. Six plainclothes were waiting inside the hotel — one in the lobby, and the rest scattered across the hotel’s dozen floors. Outside the hotel, three more Agency vans were on standby in case things turned ugly. John thought the number of agents was overkill, especially since he hoped not a single one would be needed.
