by Jeff Shelby
He was almost my height, short black hair combed neatly to the side. Large, dark eyes were set against skin turned brown from the sun.
Bella’s demeanor changed immediately. Anxiousness stiffened her shoulders and something flickered in her eyes. Something like irritation. Or fear.
He looked at me. “I don’t know you.”
“No,” I said. “You don’t.”
He glanced at Bella. “New boyfriend?”
She shifted her weight from foot to foot, not answering. She looked at me. “You can go. It’s fine.”
I didn’t move.
“Did you not hear her?” the guy asked, smiling at me.
I looked at Bella. “Maybe I should stay for that other beer.”
She hesitated, then shook her head. “No, it’s okay. Really.”
“If you two need to finish saying goodnight, I can go wait at the curb.” His tone was patronizing.
I didn’t like him. I didn’t like his arrogance or his attitude or the way he was showing up late at night. The way he looked at Bella wasn’t friendly, but I wasn’t exactly sure what it was.
“David,” she said, shaking her head. “Just…” She sighed and looked at me. “It’s fine. I’m fine. Just go.”
There was no mistaking that she wasn’t happy to see him, whoever he was. But she was telling me to go after I’d offered to stay, so I didn’t feel like it was my place to stick around.
“Okay,” I said.
I stepped outside, next to a smiling David, who seemed to have it all figured out.
I picked up my bike from the driveway.
“A bike?” David asked. “Really?”
“Shut up,” Bella said.
I threw a leg over the bike and sat there for a moment.
“Just put your feet on the pedals and go.” He spoke as though he were talking to Jackson. “It’s not hard.”
“David!”
I stared at him, taking in his face and absorbing everything else about him.
He didn’t care for that and stepped toward me, away from the door. “You need something?”
Bella stepped outside, panic lacing her face. There was clearly something about the guy that was scaring her and I was torn as to what to do.
She brushed past him and planted herself in front of me.
“Just go,” she said. “I’ll explain tomorrow. I promise. I’ll be fine. Okay?”
Nothing felt right about the situation. Not a single thing. And as much as I didn’t want to be involved in anything that exposed me, that left me vulnerable, I wasn’t comfortable leaving her with someone who did not seem like a good guy in any way.
But she was telling me to go.
“Okay,” I said. “Find me tomorrow.”
“I will,” she said. “Promise.”
I pedaled away into the dark.
FIFTEEN
Bella didn’t find me.
I barely slept, pissed at myself for not listening to my gut and staying. Nothing felt right about leaving her and yet I’d done it anyway. Yes, she’d told me to leave, told me to go, that she’d be fine, but nothing that was going on indicated she was telling me the truth. I tossed and turned all night, thinking about her and Liz and all of the other decisions I'd made that ended up being the wrong ones.
I got to the beach early and worked off my anger and frustration by setting up the umbrellas and chairs before anyone else was even on the sand. I emptied the shed and then ran for thirty minutes, all the way down to the base and back, sweat coating every inch of my body. I didn’t look at the water or the dunes or the people slowly spilling out of their rental condos and hotels. Instead, I looked down, watching my feet as they pounded the wet, packed sand.
As the day wore on, I kept scanning the beach, looking for Bella or Jackson. Every small kid looked like Jackson until I realized that he or she wasn’t. At one point, I spotted a woman in a blue bikini, her hair pulled into a make-shift ponytail, a little boy trailing behind her. I sat up straighter, certain it was Bella.
It wasn’t.
My irritation got the better of me and I pounded my fist into the sand, tiny grains flying into my face, sticking to my sweat-moistened skin. Where the hell was she? And why did I care?
I collected the chairs and umbrellas at four on the button, locked up the hut and pointed my bike towards her house.
No one answered the door.
I peered in the front window. Nothing looked out of place. I could see a couple of Legos on the living room floor, a magazine tossed onto the coffee table, a plastic Marlins cup next to it.
But she wasn’t there.
I hopped on the bike and headed out to the highway, pedaling next to the heavy evening traffic, the breeze blowing back into my face. The highway was littered with long strip malls and each one looked exactly like the other, neon signs advertising T-shirts, food and fun. I had a vague idea of which restaurant she worked at and I scanned the malls as I biked, keeping an eye on the traffic behind me.
I’d gone about three miles when I found it. King of the Sea, a pink-stuccoed building that had seen better days. A flag pole stood next to the entrance, a large plastic swordfish impaled on the top and seashell-shaped plastic lights draped the interior of the windows. I coasted into the parking lot, breathing heavy and drenched in sweat. I leaned the bike up against a newspaper stand and walked up the wooden switchback ramp that led to the entrance.
The air conditioning hit me like a hammer, bathing me in cool air and stinging my eyes. A girl in her twenties glanced up from the magazine spread before her on the podium. “How many?”
“I’m looking for Bella,” I said.
She gave me a quick once over before returning to the magazine. “She’s back there.”
“Back where?”
She held out an arm and pointed toward the dining area without looking up. “Back there.”
I walked toward the large windows that looked out over the Gulf and spotted Bella at a table, scribbling on a notepad, helping two older couples. She wore a bright pink T-shirt and denim shorts, her hair pulled up high in a ponytail behind her head. She gathered their menus, smiled at them, then glanced in my direction.
The smile faded and she immediately turned away. I wondered if she thought I’d disappear simply because she wasn’t looking at me.
I slid into a booth next to the window and waited.
She stood there awkwardly for a moment, her back to both me and her customers. The people sitting at the table looked at her, waiting for her to say or do something. Finally, she moved in my direction.
The cut under her right eye was about an inch and a half long, a near-perfect straight, red gash. A series of bruises blossomed between her eye and the bridge of her nose and her top lip was noticeably swollen.
My irritation with her was quickly replaced by rage at whoever had done that to her.
She slid into the booth on the other side of the table. “Hey.”
I kept my cool. “Hey.”
She laid the menus on the table and looked out the window, keeping the damaged eye out of my view.
“You didn’t come find me today,” I said.
“Yeah, I know,” she said, her eyes flitting in my direction, then away. “I’m sorry. I just got busy and we didn’t head down there.”
“Where’s Jackson?”
“Back in the kitchen,” she said. “He goes back there and helps out before it gets busy.”
I nodded. “Cool.”
She fidgeted in the booth, staring out the window, as if she’d never seen the water before.
“I already saw your eye,” I said.
She swallowed hard. “Oh, yeah. That. I, this morning, I…”
“Look, if you don’t wanna tell me, that’s fine,” I said. “But really. Don’t lie to me about it. Some asshole shows up at your house last night, you tell me to go, then you show up looking like you went a couple rounds this morning. I’m not stupid. So don’t tell me if it’s none of my business, bu
t don’t lie to me.”
Her lips twisted together and her hand fiddled with one of the hoop earrings in her ear, still refusing to look at me. “Not that simple.”
“What’s not that simple?”
She rolled the eye I could see. “Everything.”
“Seems pretty simple to me,” I said. “Your pal David punched you in the face.”
She turned fully toward me, not bothering to hide her face now. “You don’t wanna get involved, okay? I can handle it.”
“Handle what?”
She slid the menus off the table and stood. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“If you’d come down to the beach, I wouldn’t be here.”
She shook her head and made a face. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t. But you…don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
She hugged the menus to her chest and bit down on her bottom lip. She started to say something, then stopped. She shook her head again. “You were right the first time.”
“Right about what?”
She squinted at me, the ugly red line beneath her eye puckering. “It’s none of your business.”
She turned and disappeared into the kitchen.
SIXTEEN
I left the restaurant and Bella in a hurry, furious at myself for letting my guard down. It was the first time since I’d left San Diego that I’d allowed myself to even be friends with someone and I was being dismissed. I jumped on my bike and pedaled hard, swearing the entire way back to the house. I was livid, but not with her and not with the asshole who’d beaten her up. I was angry with myself. I was alone and I didn’t need to do anything to change that. Including getting involved with her.
I was breathing hard and my legs burned as I turned into the cul-de-sac.
Zip was sitting in my driveway.
And everything else fell away.
I stopped the bike at the edge of the driveway, trying to compose myself. He looked up and held up a lazy hand in greeting, a cigarette dangling from his lips.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
He squinted at me, his lips stretched into a thin smile as he sucked on the cigarette. “Hey, Noah.”
My chest heaved and I stepped off the bike. I walked it past him and rested it against the side of the house. I tried to catch my breath as I walked back to him.
“What are you doing here?” I asked again.
He ambled slowly to his feet, the green tank top and long cargo shorts hanging loosely on his skinny frame. He took a long drag on the cigarette, then pulled it from his lips.
“Just wanted to check out your new digs,” he said, exhaling a long plume of smoke.
“How’d you find me?”
He pinched the cigarette between his fingers and took another drag, then let the smoke curl out of his mouth. “Yeah, I heard you might not want people finding you.”
I let my breathing settle. “I meant how'd you find where I live?”
He grinned again, exposing a mouthful of dirty teeth. “I just did some askin’ around, you know? Sort of like Mission Beach around here. Somebody new moves in, locals know. You know?”
I nodded. I despised the fact that a guy like Zip could make me feel so anxious. It was all I could do to not look over my shoulder and wonder who might be coming for me.
“After I saw you the other night, I just thought…you know, we could hang out,” he said, sucking the life out of the cigarette, the butt glowing bright orange. “Being old pals from SoCal and all.”
“We weren’t pals, Zip.”
He nodded, chuckling. “Right on. That’s true. But you know. That was all just business.”
Carter and I had helped shake Liz’s brother, Alex, free from a scam Zip was running. It was all business and we were about as far apart from being friends as two people could be.
“But I heard you had to get out of SoCal quick,” he said, eyeing me.
And there it was. The first time it had been mentioned since I’d left San Diego in the middle of a driving storm. I killed Liz’s killer, buried him in the desert and the storm had washed his body up. There was nothing left for me in San Diego and I’d taken off. Part coward, part self-preservation. I’d done the best I could to hide, to stay out of sight, to wait for Carter to tell me it was okay to come back. If I wanted to go back.
And now I was being outed by a small-time drug dealer who I never thought I’d see again.
“I don’t know what you heard,” I said.
The cigarette twitched between his lips and he held up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, man. None of my business. Just heard you had to get out of San Diego.”
Which meant he’d gone checking up on me after I’d seen him at the laundromat and probably stirred up people and things I didn’t need stirred up.
“Well, I’m here now,” I said. “Not sure what you heard. But, I’m here now.”
He chuckled and flicked the butt into the street. “Yes, you are. Crazy, huh?”
“So why’d you come by?”
He shrugged and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Ah, no reason. Just wanted to see what was up.”
The idea of snapping his neck and tossing him in the bay crossed my mind. No one would miss a piece of crap like Zip. Just some degenerate who ran into a little bad luck.
But I squashed the thought.
I was not my father.
“Well, I got some stuff to do,” I said.
He made a show of stepping to the side in order to let me walk up the drive. “Oh, right on, man. I’m sorry. I don’t wanna keep you. Just wanted to say hey, see if you wanna hang out some time.”
“Sure,” I said. “Let’s hang out some time.”
“Cool. Now that I know where you live, we can make it happen.”
I turned around and the same ugly smile spread across his face. My heart beat fast, but it wasn’t from the bike ride. A guy like Zip didn’t come by to hang out. He came by to find me, to see what he could dig up.
Or to pass on the information.
“Absolutely,” I said through my teeth. “Sounds good.”
He nodded, pleased with himself, backing up down the driveway into the street. “I’ll be in touch, brother.”
He turned and walked out of the cul-de-sac, the sun disappearing with him as he turned the corner and out of sight.
SEVENTEEN
I didn’t sleep.
I didn’t just toss and turn. I literally laid there the entire night and didn’t shut my eyes, trying to figure out what to do.
Zip had thrown me. I thought I had mentally prepared myself for any and all scenarios once I left San Diego, but it was clear that I’d been fooling myself. Zip was small time and I knew I could handle him, if needed. But the fact that his presence had so unnerved me told me a lot about my frame of mind.
I knew I couldn’t hide forever and I honestly wasn’t sure what I was hiding from. I didn’t want to go to jail and I didn’t think that I deserved to. Ridding the earth of Keene was anything but a crime. But I knew that there were at least two San Diego police detectives who thought differently.
I’d chosen to run. Not just from the fallout from my actions, but from the memories haunting me. Only problem was, they'd followed me. And now it looked like the rest of what I'd left behind was following me, too.
I was living my life afraid of everyone and everything, unsure of what each day was going to bring.
Right at that moment, it felt like it was going to bring me a heart attack and I didn’t like it.
At some point, I was going to have to face whatever consequences were coming my way for avenging Liz’s death. I guess I was just hoping that I could be the one who chose when and how I faced them.
I finally crawled out of bed with the sun, threw on some clothes and grabbed the bicycle.
The sun was still waking, low and soft on the horizon as I pedaled over the bridge and into Fort Walton proper. The streets were quiet and I pulled up in front of a small coffee shop wedged between an
art gallery and a used clothing store. I leaned the bike against the building and went inside.
The aroma of fresh coffee hit me like a crashing wave and I inhaled it, letting it filter into my senses. I bought a small cup at the counter and the kid took my money with one hand while tapping out a text message with the other.
There were only two other customers in the shop. An older gentleman engrossed in the New York Times in a seat next to the front window and a woman at one of the small tables, typing furiously on her laptop. They both ignored me, which was fine by me.
A small, wooden bar ran the length of the wall opposite the counter, two computers sitting idly. I’d found the coffee shop the first week in Fort Walton, needing some access to a computer. I wasn’t interested in putting my name on anything that might make me have to pay a bill at the house, so this was a good alternative. I could use the Internet if I needed and I could check or send email with a relative amount of anonymity. Was it overkill? Maybe. But I wasn’t willing to risk anything else.
I brought up AOL and typed in the user account I’d created and that only Carter knew about. We’d agreed that if we needed to communicate for any reason, this was how we’d do it. And it would only be if it was necessary. So far, it hadn’t been, but there was always a twinge of anticipation when I logged in each week.
The inbox was still empty and I let the breath escape my lungs.
I clicked the tab for a new email, entered in the address that Carter had created and typed “Zip” in the subject line. In the body of the email, I typed:
Zip is here. No clue why. Don’t know what he knows, but not sure how to handle. Any ideas?
I hit send and logged out of the account.
It was the first time I’d communicated with him since I’d been gone and I was surprised at how much it made me miss him. I couldn’t tell him anything about what was going on, hadn’t even signed my name. I was isolated in the truest sense of the word and I didn’t like it. At all. Liz was gone, but Carter was still here.
Just not in the same way he used to be.
I filled the coffee cup again before I left and pedaled back over the bridge, more leisurely this time, one hand on the handlebars, the other holding the coffee. The morning breeze was still cool and it would be the last few moments of the day that wouldn’t be filled with humidity and moisture. The sun was beginning its ascent into the sky, casting long shadows down the highway and the sand was still perfectly manicured when I got to the beach.
