by Reinke, Sara
Hell, I’m still a wreck.
Irene had been about as far along as Tessa when she’d left him. She’d lost the baby shortly thereafter, a miscarriage he hadn’t learned about until later. He’d been heartbroken, and remained so even now. Not much had given him hope back then, or a reason to live, but the promise of his child had. That had slipped through his fingers, as had any happiness he might have known with Irene. Seldom a day went by that he didn’t wish he could take it back somehow, that he could have made things right for all of them.
A wire coil inside the machine rotated slowly, dropping a foil bag of Cheetos, and Rene leaned over to retrieve it. He didn’t see anything in the machine that resembled the sticks and twigs healthy crap that Tessa seemed to favor, so he hoped that dehydrated cheese powder would constitute nutritious enough to satisfy her. And a snack might make for a sort of peace offering on his part, a way to smooth things over from earlier that morning.
He’d made her cry and even though she’d provoked him—par for the course—he still felt like shit about it. He’d been too hard on her—yet again par for the course—and he knew it, but sometimes…
Like whenever she opens her mouth.…he felt powerless to stop himself. She was a smart girl, high-strung but also wide-eyed and innocently oblivious to a lot of the world’s more unsavory aspects, thanks to the privileged, sheltered life she’d known in Kentucky. He’d known too many people—himself included—who had been beaten down by reality’s harshness, made jaded and cynical because of it, and he secretly found that naïveté sort of charming and endearing about Tessa. Nice, even. Not that he’d ever admit this aloud.
God, I’d never hear the end of it, he thought.
“Hey, you got a light?”
Rene looked up to find a young man in his early twenties standing between him and the restroom building. The kid had long, dirty-blond hair caught back beneath a red bandana tied over the cap of his skull. He wore an old AC/DC T-shirt, grease-spotted, ratty blue jeans and a pair of faded black Chuck Taylor sneakers.
Rene had been a police officer long enough to recognize the nervous, darting light in the kid’s eyes. Strung out on something, he thought, wishing all of a sudden that he hadn’t left his Sig Sauer in the glove compartment of the car. “Sorry, pal. I don’t smoke.”
The kid nodded, cutting his eyes to the snack machines. Rene decided to hedge his bets and get the fuck away from him. Just as he turned, presenting his back to the younger man, he heard the distinctive snict! of a gun hammer being drawn back.
Shit.
“I guess I’ll just take your wallet then, pal,” said the kid, with pointed, sarcastic emphasis. “And your car keys, too. Hand them over.”
Rene pivoted, stepping in a slow semicircle toward the kid and found himself facing the business end of what appeared to be a .45-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver.
Shit.
“Your wallet,” the kid said again, giving the gun a little demonstrative waggle in emphasis. “And your car keys, too. Come on.”
Rene could see beads of perspiration beading along his brow line below the edge of his bandana. He could smell the kid, a mix of sweat and adrenaline, and could sense the mounting, anxious rhythm of his heartbeat.
Christ, he’s wired. What’s he on?
“Take it easy,” Rene said, keeping his gaze steady on the kid as he reached slowly for his pocket. Unbeknownst to the young man, he opened his mind.
Tessa, where are you?
“You sure you want to do this?” he asked aloud, because he had no fucking intention of handing over his car keys if she was still sitting in the front seat. The gun would be a problem he’d then have to deal with somehow, but he figured he’d cross that bridge if and when he came to it.
The kid glanced beyond Rene’s shoulder at the sleek Audi sports car, then back to Rene, his brow arched slightly. “Oh, yeah. I’m sure.”
Tessa? Rene thought again.
I’m using the bathroom! she snapped back, sounding irritable. Jesus, I’ll be right out!
No, that’s okay. Rene slipped his hand into the hip pocket of his jeans and hooked the ring to his car keys with his fingertip. Just stay there for a few minutes. Take your time.
Don’t tell me what to do, she groused in his mind. I’m sick and tired of you doing that—bossing me around.
Goddamn it, I’m not bossing you around, he thought, bristling as he held up his hand, the key ring around his middle finger. The key dangled against his palm for the kid to see. I’m just asking you to stay put for a bit.
“And your wallet,” the kid said, jabbing again with the gun. “Give me your wallet, too.”
Don’t you curse at me, Tessa said. I’m tired of you doing that, too, goddamn it. Asking means you phrase something as a question. It means you say ‘would you mind to do this, please, Tessa?’ Not just ‘do this’ or ‘do that.’ That’s telling, Rene. You were telling me what to do. Again.
The kid’s eyes cut about uncertainly, wide-eyed with startled fright as a semi roared by on the interstate. “Hurry the fuck up, man. Give me your goddamn wallet.”
“Take it easy,” Rene said again, moving his free hand for his back pocket. “I’m getting it for you.”
He didn’t give a shit about the car or his wallet. What mattered was Tessa; getting the kid, his pistol and his hyped-up, itchy trigger finger the hell out of there before she came out of the ladies’ room, even though she was picking the absolute worst time to pull one of her Miss High-and-Fucking-Mighty routines on him, and if she had been standing in front of him, he might have been momentarily tempted to shoot her himself. He pulled out his wallet and held it up with the keys. “Take them. They’re yours.”
“Damn right,” the kid said, stepping forward and reaching for the wallet.
Right about that time, the door to the restroom swung open wide and Tessa marched out, her brows narrowed, her face twisted in a scowl. And furthermore, you asshole—
She skittered to an uncertain halt when she saw Rene, then shrank back, her eyes flying wide when the kid whirled to her in surprise, pointing the muzzle of the pistol directly at her face.
“Don’t move!” he screamed, and she dropped the bottle of Diet Coke she’d been carrying. She’d opened it in the bathroom, and it spilled in a sudden, frothy puddle around her feet.
“Rene!” she hiccuped, looking to him in bright, desperate fright.
“You don’t move, either!” the kid screamed, whipping the gun back to momentarily aim at Rene. “Both of you just stand the fuck still!”
“Take it easy, kid,” Rene said, keeping his voice calm and quiet, locking eyes with the boy. “We don’t want any trouble. There’s more than five thousand dollars in my wallet. It’s yours. Take it—the car, too.”
The kid cut a glance at Tessa, letting his eyes crawl along her body, his gaze lingering at her bosom. Rene didn’t need to read his mind to know what he was thinking. “Maybe I just found something else I want, too,” he said, the tip of his tongue darting out to swipe across his lips. He shoved the gun toward Tessa and she flinched, hunching her shoulders and crying out softly. “Move, bitch. You’re coming with me.”
Rene saw the world suddenly become cast in brilliant, nearly blinding glare as his pupils opened fully, filling his corneas. He felt the sudden rush of blood to his gums and his canine teeth extended, the bloodlust coming over him almost instantaneously. “No,” he said, reaching out, clapping his right hand against the kid’s arm. “She’s not.”
The kid swung the pistol back around. Rene clapped his left hand over the front of the muzzle, meaning to shove it aside, but when the younger man saw his face, his eyes and teeth, he uttered a breathless shriek: “What the fuck—!” and pulled the trigger.
The sound of the gunshot was like thunder trapped in the narrow confines between the snack machines and the bathrooms. Tessa’s scream overlapped the booming report, and pain ripped through Rene’s hand, spearing up his arm and slamming into him like a head-on c
ollision with a locomotive.
He doubled over, gasping on the smoke, blinking at the shocking agony. When he looked up, his eyes smarting with tears, he saw the kid dancing clumsily back, the gun dangling limply in his hand, his mouth agape.
“Oh!” he whimpered. “Oh…oh, shit…!”
“Why…why did you…have to go and do that?” Rene seethed from between clenched teeth as he staggered upright. He cradled his wounded hand against his belly and felt blood coursing down his arm, spattering heavily on the sidewalk between his feet. “You…you stupid son of a bitch…now I’m going to have to kill you.”
The kid had a half second to flounder backward, his eyes wide as he raised the pistol again, and then he shrieked as Rene leapt at him, knocking him off his feet and sending the gun flying from his fingers.
Rene heard Tessa crying out his name, her voice choked with tears, as he stumbled back against the snack machines. His face and the front of his shirt were now soaked with blood and not all of it his own. The kid lay sprawled against the grass, his throat ripped open, his eyes wide open and unblinking, his mouth wide and frozen in a scream.
“Rene!” Tessa cried, her hands fluttering against him. He blinked at her and was absurdly touched to see she was crying, her cheeks streaked with a steady torrent of tears. “Rene, oh…oh, God…he shot you!”
“Je suis bien,” he murmured. “I’m all right, pischouette.”
A glance down at his hand told the truth, however. The .45-caliber round had punched clear through, in his palm-side and out the other, leaving behind a shredded mess of bloody, exposed meat.
“Oh, my God!” Tessa gasped in horror. “Oh…oh, my God, Rene! Your hand…!”
It wasn’t as bad as his knee had been, or his gut, for that matter, back in Vietnam, but his hand sure hurt like all hell. He couldn’t catch his breath for the pain, and remained doubled at the waist, leaning heavily against the Coke machine.
“It’s all right,” he managed, because she was frightened and panicked, clutching at him, her eyes wide and frantic. “Tessa, listen to me. I’ve been shot before. This…this is no big deal. Ce n’est rien. I’m all right.”
He hooked the front of his shirt with his uninjured hand and gave a mighty yank, jerking buttons loose and splitting it open. He shrugged his way out of the sleeves, then gritted his teeth and wrapped it around his hand. “Help me move him,” he said with a nod toward the kid. “Grab a foot, pischouette. We need to hide him before somebody comes.”
They each grabbed one of the kid’s ankles and together, hauled him unceremoniously back to his car, a gray, beat up Toyota Corolla. “Check his pockets,” Rene told Tessa, out of breath with pain and exertion. “See if you can find his car keys.”
She did, and he popped the trunk. “We’ll put him in here,” he said.
“What about the blood?” Tessa looked uncertainly behind them, at the smeared, gory trail they’d left behind them in the grass and on the sidewalk.
Rene shook his head. “Nothing we can do about it,” he said. “But at least this will buy us some time. Come on. Help me with him.”
When they were finished, Rene limped back to the snack machines, retrieving his fallen key ring and wallet. “Check my trunk, would you, pischouette?” he asked, tossing her the key. “Get me a shirt out of my bag, sie tu plais. And I think I have a first-aid kit in there somewhere. Would you bring it here? Oh—and there’s an unopened fifth of Bloodhorse. I’ll need that, too.”
Tessa nodded, scurrying toward the Audi. Rene picked up the kid’s revolver, shoving it into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back. He limped into the men’s room and stood at the sink, unwrapping his hand and then dousing it under a steady stream of cold water.
Goddamn, that hurts. It wasn’t the worst he’d ever felt, but it was a far goddamn cry from the best. He closed his eyes, clenching his teeth and steeling himself against the pain. Grabbing a paper towel from a nearby dispenser, he set about cleaning the blood off himself, mopping at his face and chest. When he walked back outside, he found Tessa waiting for him with shirt, Bloodhorse and first-aid kit all cradled between her arms.
“What are you doing?” she asked, watching as he poured bourbon on his wound and sucked in a sharp, hissing breath.
“I don’t know where that bullet’s been,” he replied, managing a wink and a crooked smile. “And alcohol kills anything.”
Following his instructions, she helped him wrap his hand, pressing thick pads on either point of penetration and then binding them in place with gauze. “He was trying to rob us,” she whispered when they had finished. She looked up at him, her large, dark eyes swimming with new tears.
“Yes, pischouette.” He nodded, easing his way into the clean shirt she’d brought to him.
“He hurt you.” Now her bottom lip quivered and her tears spilled, leaving glistening trails against her pale skin. “He…he was going to hurt me…and my baby.”
Rene reached for her with his good hand, brushing the cuff of his knuckles against her cheek. “No one’s going to hurt you or that baby. Not while I’m here.” Her narrow frame began to shudder, and he drew her against his shoulder. “It’s all right,” he breathed, closing his eyes. “Hush, now, pischouette. It’s all right.”
Chapter Six
“She wasn’t a hooker,” Rene murmured from the passenger seat.
“What?” Tessa sat rigidly behind the wheel of the Audi, clutching it so tightly her knuckles had blanched. She hated to drive because she’d never had the opportunity to learn how to do it well. She’d made the long trip from Kentucky to follow Brandon, but she’d been motivated by desperate fear for his safety, and it had felt like she’d held her breath the entire time. Whenever a semi truck had gone barreling past her on the interstates, she’d nearly hyperventilated. Other cars and trucks had flown past her, some blaring on their horns because she’d grow nervous and wouldn’t drive fast enough.
When Rene had first told her she would need to get them to New Mexico, she’d nearly choked. “No, let’s just wait,” she’d said. “Let me call Lina and Brandon. They’re somewhere on the highway behind us. They can meet us here and Brandon can—”
“Brandon’s hands are broken,” Rene had reminded her. “He can’t drive, remember? And we can’t stay here. Someone could come along in the meantime, before them. Nous devons aller.” We have to go.
He’d told her to get into the trunk once more before leaving, this time to look for a bottle of prescription pills. When she’d been unable to find one in his bag, he’d run his fingers through his hair in frustration. “I must have given them all to Brandon,” he’d muttered.
“All what?” she’d asked.
“My pills,” he’d replied. “Pain pills, pischouette. I take them sometimes for my leg.”
Which hadn’t made any sense to her, because his leg had been amputated more than a year ago. How could it still hurt him?
“That’s what I get for trying to go clean cold turkey,” Rene had remarked more to himself than her, sounding rueful. He wouldn’t admit it, but he was in a tremendous amount of pain. His hand had stopped bleeding, and he held it cradled against his lap in the car as he sat, slumped in the seat, his eyes heavily lidded.
He was fighting unconsciousness, nodding his head as his mind would fade in and out. His pallor was ashen, his breathing shallow, and when he was awake, he seemed dazed and confused. Like right now.
“You told me earlier I could go back to my boozing and playing with myself and prank-calling hookers,” he said. “Or something like that. She wasn’t a hooker…the woman I called last night. Elle était mon épouse… she was my wife.”
Tessa blinked at him in surprise.
“You were right,” he said. “I don’t know anything about you or your life. And you don’t know about mine, either.” He smiled, his eyelids fluttering closed as he leaned his head back. “Maybe it’s time we learned, no? I married Irene in May of 1970. She left me that December, the day after Chri
stmas, in fact.”
“I’m sorry,” Tessa said. She glanced down at the speedometer and realized she was going 85 miles an hour. With a startled gasp, she jerked her foot back from the accelerator. The Audi had a powerful engine and a very easy gas pedal, Rene had warned her—as she kept inadvertently discovering.
“Not your fault,” he replied, still smiling. “It was mine. All mine.” He opened one eye and glanced at her. “Bet you find that hard to believe, est-ce vrai?”
He kept lapsing between French and English as he spoke, and Tessa kept racking her brain, trying to recall her French tutelage from years earlier at the great house. For example, he’d just said, is this true?
Her grandmother, Eleanor, had been fluent in French; their ancestors from many long generations ago had come from France during the Middle Ages. The night before, as she’d been studying the Tome—and the unfamiliar French-Latin combination part of it had been written in—Tessa had wondered if it had been transcribed in the dialect of these medieval predecessors.
Rene also kept cracking jokes, trying to make Tessa smile, like right now, as if he felt badly or responsible for her growing concern over him, and wanted to make her feel better.
“Ici,” he said, wincing as he leaned forward and popped open the glove compartment. Here. He took something out, a faded, creased photograph. “Take a look.”
She didn’t really want to take her eyes off the road, but there was no other traffic in either direction, nothing for miles, so she risked a glance. He held it out and curious, she took the photo from his hand. Forgetting herself for a moment in surprised wonder, she stared at the picture of a very young Rene, no older than she and Brandon, and the smiling, pretty blond beside him.
