by Carol Caiton
Then she tucked her purse under her arm and strode toward the checkpoint, anger in every hurried step.
CHAPTER 9
His car was going to give him trouble. Kyle knew it as though he was accustomed to having premonitions. He knew it even before he started on the drive out to Clermont. That's where Michael lived. It wasn't too far away, maybe half an hour from Orlando, unless the junker he'd been driving finally gave out and died halfway there.
Nevertheless, he lowered all the windows and set off. It was Saturday morning and although it was humid, the air blowing in was cool. He drove up and down the small hills, following the directions he'd printed out once he'd finally gotten an address. And his car didn't give out.
Clermont was more rural than Orlando. He enjoyed the ride. And when he turned onto Michael's street and drove up yet another hill, it seemed as though he was an hour outside the city rather than half that.
There weren't many houses at the top of the hill. He counted eight, each of them sitting on an acre or more of land. He turned into Michael's driveway, pulling up beside a sleek, dark blue Lotus, and shut off the engine. It was quiet up here. Not even the sound of a passing car at the bottom of the hill could be heard. An easy place to unwind and relax after work, he decided.
Draping both wrists over top of the steering wheel, he sat for a minute to stare at the house. It was big. Not ostentatious-big, but it was spacious with a high-pitched roof and a lot of glass. For all the millions Michael supposedly had, he lived comfortably but didn't flaunt it. His house was comparable to the other houses on the street—upper-middle-class, contemporary in design, and spacious-looking. It was one hell of a giant step up from the boarded-up Victorians they'd occupied as squatters.
The Lotus that was parked beside him . . . well now, that baby told a different story. Michael was serious about his wheels. And Kyle would bet the air conditioner worked, no problem.
The driver's door of his own car creaked when he opened it and climbed out. Taking a long look at the pathetic differences between the Lotus and his third- or fourth-hand car, he snorted. Then he realized he was comparing the condition of his own vehicle with another one for the second time in the space of a week. It seemed like a long time since he'd cared about something that mundane. But it felt good, like maybe he was starting to crawl out of the pit he'd dug for himself and care about something, anything, again.
Walking up the path toward Michael's front door, he noted the landscaping. Before coming to Florida, he'd figured a palm tree was a palm tree, period. Who knew there were so many varieties? He couldn't begin to name them and wasn't interested in learning either. But he liked looking at them and the ones on Michael's property stood together in well-planned groups of varying heights, surrounded by shrubs and colorful flowerbeds. Nice. Tropical. He wondered if the flowers were his wife's idea.
Ringing the doorbell, he leaned one hand up on the jamb and waited. A few seconds later the door opened and Michael stood before him, barefoot, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt . . . and an expression that held no hint of welcome. After the words they'd exchanged the last time they'd seen one another though, Kyle figured he was lucky Michael had opened the door at all.
He'd come here prepared to offer an apology. But now that he stood looking into Michael's eyes, so familiar, so deeply entrenched in his mind, in his past and his emotions, an apology seemed no more substantial than a breath of air. It wasn't enough. Nothing would ever be enough. There was too much between them, even after seventeen years, and he wished with everything he was that he could wipe out all the horror and ugliness in both their lives.
It had been so much easier when he'd used Michael as a scapegoat to shoulder some of the blame for Joey. For his mother too. But all of that seemed long ago now, so long ago, he hardly remembered their faces. Instead, the one person, the only person left who had mattered to him in this whole fucked up world, stood before him right now. Alive and aloof and probably ready to slam the door in his face any second now, Michael stared back at him and waited.
But words failed him. Emotion cluttered up his chest. Feelings jerked at his insides that he couldn't separate and identify and didn't know how to express.
Michael said nothing.
Finally, Kyle released the doorjamb. He took a step back and felt something break inside him as another chunk of his heart bled off.
"Teach me how to get rid of the guilt," he rasped, his throat constricted and aching with the sudden surge of emotions after such a long winter.
"Teach me how to live with it and move on," he got out. Because Michael would have blamed himself for all the hell he'd gone through. Victims always did. And although Joey had been the one to pull the trigger and blow his brains out, Kyle had never been able to forget that he'd been the one to supply the gun. His mother was dead because a negligent doctor shot her up with penicillin, but Kyle hadn't been big enough, old enough, loud enough to help her. And even if thirteen-year-old Azram Washington was the one lying in a grave up in Pennsylvania, Kyle was just as much a victim. The self-hatred, the guilt . . . and that kid's goofy grin when he shot a basket the way Kyle taught him and scored for his team . . . . All of it was seared on his mind. He couldn't forget the bullet he'd put in the boy's chest. The shock. The blood. And the agony. He didn't know how to let any of it go. He didn't know how to make peace with it. And strange as it might be, even after seventeen years of grief and anger, there wasn't a soul in the world he trusted more than Michael to give him the answer to that.
A flicker of something flashed in Michael's eyes. Then it was gone.
Kyle waited. He forced himself to stand there, utterly exposed. It was the only apology he could offer that meant anything, baring himself and asking for help. He didn't draw back. He didn't look away. It was one of the hardest things he'd done in a while.
Finally though, Michael stepped back and held the door open, a silent invitation to come inside.
Kyle took a long, tortured breath and stepped into the foyer.
"Michael? Who's at the door?" his wife called out. She approached through the living room, all that gorgeous hair floating down around her waist where a small mound showed beneath the stretchy top she wore.
"Oh," she said when she spotted him. Then her eyes went to Michael.
"C'mere, baby," he said, opening an arm to her without looking away from Kyle.
She walked the rest of the way to the foyer and into his embrace.
"Rachel, this is Kyle Falkner. Kyle, my wife, Rachel."
Tucked up against Michael's side, she held out her hand and smiled. "Kyle, I'm happy to finally meet you. I want to thank you for watching out for me on Michael's behalf."
When he closed his hand around hers, she lifted her other one and put it over their clasped palms. It was a warm message of appreciation and welcome. Then she gave his fingers a small squeeze, removed both hands, and leaned back against Michael's side.
Just like that, he'd been accepted.
"My pleasure, Rachel," he said.
The constriction in his chest seemed to tighten and ease at the same time. It had been the right decision to come here. Even with all these emotions battering him from every direction.
Bringing his eyes back to Michael, he still saw no friendly smile, but the cool indifference was gone.
"Baby," Michael said, pressing a kiss to her hair, "Kyle and I are gonna go to my office and talk for a while."
She glanced up at him. "Would you like me to bring in some coffee?"
"Yeah, that'd be great."
Kyle watched her walk away, back through the living room then out of sight. He shifted his eyes back to Michael. "You never did say whether or not Jill is her twin."
Michael smirked and gave him an in-your-dreams look. "C'mon."
Turning on one bare foot, he led the way through the living room toward a pair of open double doors. Kyle liked the big abstract art on the wall above the sofa. He liked the huge flat-screen TV on the opposite wall too. But the r
oom was big and spacious and it was only partly furnished. The high vaulted ceiling gave him a sense of space and echo as they passed through and he mentally shrugged. Maybe Michael and Rachel liked a minimalist look.
The office faced the side yard and had a high, vaulted ceiling as well. Two desks made up the L-shaped work area, one of them bearing three open laptop computers. A fourth that wasn't open sat on the other desk, and two printers rested on a stand off to the side. The same wide expanse of glass Kyle had noticed at the front of the house stretched along the far wall and a tall, wide bookcase stood against another. It held several manuals and was flanked by a pair of filing cabinets. Last, facing one of the desks where they could be easily seen if Michael looked up, a dozen or so photographs of Rachel had been framed and hung. But it was the large monitor affixed to the wall beside them that held Kyle's attention. In three split screens he stared at a wide-angle view of the front porch, another overlooking what he guessed was the back yard, and the third showed his car parked beside Michael's Lotus in the driveway.
"You knew I was here before I rang the bell," he said.
"Yeah."
Michael gestured toward a comfortable looking armchair in front of his desk, then walked around to sit behind it. He slid the closed laptop to the side and said, "A friend of mine put the system in after that incident downtown. Have a seat."
Kyle lowered himself into the armchair. He noticed as he did that a small footstool was tucked beneath it and guessed the chair had been put there for Rachel. He wondered how she felt about Michael working at RUSH.
"So how the hell did you end up being part owner of RUSH?" he asked.
Michael leaned back, watched him for a minute, then gave a wry smile. "RUSH was my idea."
Kyle couldn't have been more surprised. "No shit."
"No shit. The others fine-tuned it. But the initial idea was mine."
"So what do you do there? I take it you programmed everything."
"Yeah. But I don't work there anymore, not now that I'm married. I only drive over once a month for board meetings."
Board meetings. Michael. And he himself was a cop—an ex-cop. Who would have thought it would turn out this way when they were kids, stealing food to provide for their families?
Rachel knocked and came in, a pot of coffee, two mugs, sugar, and a small pitcher on a tray. She set it on the end of Michael's desk so they could both reach it, then left, closing the door behind her.
"She looks at you like you're the center of her universe."
"Yeah, she does," Michael agreed. "And I plan to keep her looking at me like that every day for the next fifty years." He nodded toward the tray. "Help yourself."
Kyle did. Then he sat back in the armchair and looked at Michael, just looked, taking in the reality, opening his soul to reclaim a chunk of the life that had been ripped away from him so long ago.
"It's good to see you Michael," he said quietly, somberly.
Michael didn't return the sentiment, but Kyle understood. He was on trial here. He'd lashed out, deliberately inflicting pain in an effort to alleviate his own.
"When I saw your face on TV," he started, "I knew what must have happened to you. I've seen it more times than I want to remember. But I guess I didn't believe it. Not down inside. It was too fucking hideous . . . too close." He paused. "Hell, I wouldn't—maybe I couldn't—accept it." He stared down at his coffee, thinking back over the years, then looked up again. "When you told me you were chained up in a goddamn cellar for two years." He shook his head. "I— Fuck, I wouldn't have said the things I said if— I wouldn't have . . . ."
Michael's gaze didn't waver.
But Kyle couldn't say anything more. He waited as they sat in silence.
Eventually, Michael acknowledged his words with a nod. Easing back in his chair, they hedged here and there, catching each other up on mundane recent events. Kyle finished one cup of coffee and poured another and finally, Michael asked, "What happened to Joey and your mom?"
Kyle sighed and for the first time in a long while he felt like he could breathe a little easier. He took a sip from his fresh cup, sat back, and said, "Those guns we stole from Old Man Pelvine. I went up to the third floor and got one 'cause my mother was delirious by then. I couldn't wait for you to come home." He smirked. "So I decided to rob the drugstore on my own. Get those antibiotics." Then he frowned at the memory. "Joey must have been spying when I pulled one of the guns out of the hole in the wall. I didn't even make it off the back porch when I heard the other one go off. It sounded like a frigging cannon and I tore back up the stairs— Jesus, I can still see his brains all over the damned room."
"I'm sorry, Kyle. I'm sorry it went down that way."
Kyle nodded. "Yeah." He took a swallow of coffee, sighed, and told Michael how his mother died.
"So that's how you ended up in the system?"
"Close enough. I lost everyone—my whole damned life—in just a couple of days."
Michael held his gaze, silent, contemplative. "Yeah," he said, "me too."
And that was the fucking truth. Kyle looked back at him and nodded gravely. "I know. We both did."
Another long silence ensued, then Kyle said, "I shot a kid. On the job. Did that come up when you ran a check on me?"
"Yeah."
"I knew him. He was only thirteen. I'd watched him grow up since he was seven."
Michael didn't answer.
Clearing his throat, he said what he had to say. "I don't know how to put it behind me, Michael. It's eating me alive every damn day. How do you pick yourself up? How do you get on with living?"
Michael took a swallow of his own coffee. He stared at the mug and after another silence he said, "It doesn't just go away. I still have rough times."
Kyle wrestled with that. He needed answers that went beyond it doesn't just go away. He needed a how-to manual. But he'd already left himself wide open. How the hell many times did he have to bare his soul?
On the heels of that thought, however, he acknowledged to himself that he was asking Michael to do that very thing, to talk about shit a man would rather forget, never mind talk about.
The silence grew awkward. He studied Michael's eyes. They were age-old with a knowledge of things no one should ever have to learn. But the same torment from the past that followed Kyle day after day, month after month, had dimmed to a faint darkness in Michael. It had faded and Kyle wanted that peace . . . that sense of calm.
"But it doesn't torture you anymore," he said. "Not day in and day out. It's not eating at your soul. That's what I need to know. What did you do to get there? What do you do with all the god-awful blame?"
Michael stared at him for a long time and said nothing. The silence stretched on, and Kyle knew he was deciding whether or not to talk about what had happened, whether or not to trust him with that part of his life and how much to say. Then, at last, he gave a measuring look and relented.
"I didn't blame myself. Not at first," he said. "I blamed it on everything else. I blamed it on the kite, then I blamed it on the kid who was stupid enough to let the thing get tangled up in that tree. I blamed it on the kid's father for being a wimp and not climbing up there to get it. And I blamed it on the cops for not patrolling the park. Then I blamed it on you for not talking me out of going after the damned thing . . . . Hell, I blamed it on the way the wind blew that day."
He circled the handle of his mug with his thumb and index finger. "I blamed the whole goddamn world because I didn't want to admit that I was cocky and stupid. It wasn't until later—afterward—that . . . . Fuck, man."
Another bad silence. This time for Michael. So Kyle waited. Because this was the point he was at. The point of afterward.
"I don't know how it is for anyone else, Kyle. I don't know what a bunch of shrinks would tell you to do. Some days it was like thick black tar pouring over me . . . like I was suffocating in it. Then I'd get to the point where I'd ask myself if I'd had any choice. Did I do the best I could at the time. And that
would start to ease things some."
He drew in a long breath, let it out, and said, "In the end, what worked for me was getting to the point where I realized I wasn't the same person I used to be before I got taken. I was different. Something basic inside me got . . . wounded. Broken maybe. What I went through changed who I was. Deep down. It just took me a while to understand that. Maybe because it was so horrific . . .I don't know." He scowled. "But when I accepted that—when I stopped trying to be the person I used to be and started trying to figure out who I was then—afterward—that's when things started to get better. Easier."
He got quiet for a while. He reached over for the coffeepot and topped off his cup. Then he blew on the liquid before taking a sip. When he looked up, he said, "It took a long time before I finally just blamed the maggot bastard who grabbed me. But that ended up being a turning point too. For me anyway. That piece of shit would have grabbed any young boy he thought he could get away with. Yeah, I was a cocky little sucker, but it wasn't my cockiness that got me kidnapped. I just happened to be a kid in the wrong place at the right time."
He grew thoughtful then, staring down at it his coffee.
Kyle placed his own empty mug on the tray beside the empty pot. Rachel had gotten it right, bringing in a full pot. He and Michael had been talking for quite a while. It hadn't been an easy discussion. Not for him and not for Michael. But Kyle had pushed for whatever answers Michael could, or would, give. And there was one thing in particular that resonated with him. That comment Michael made about accepting something basic inside him had changed.
When I stopped trying to be the person I used to be and started trying to figure out who I was then—afterward—that's when things started to get better.
Kyle mulled over those words and tried to apply them to his own experience. All this time, all these months, he'd been focused on getting his head back to where it used to be, regaining his objectivity so he could go back home, get back on the job . . . be a cop again.
But every time he thought about going back out on the streets, his mind rebelled. It was uncomfortable as hell to work outside in the hot Florida sun, but the thought of hard physical labor didn't grab and wrench at his insides when he got up to go to work every morning.
