Liquid Smoke (Noah Braddock)

by Jeff Shelby

  He leaned back in the chair and said nothing.

  “Gave me just enough to keep me going,” I said, shaking my head at how stupid I’d been. “Just pointing me in the right direction.”

  Simington cleared his throat and fixed his eyes on me. “Some things need to get done.”

  His voice had dropped an octave, like someone had poured sawdust down his throat. His eyes had hollowed out. And I finally saw the man whom everyone had talked about. The thug, the killer, the man who belonged on death row.

  “You used me,” I said.

  “You let me use you.”

  “Fuck you.”

  He laughed. “Whatever it takes. That son of a bitch was gonna die before I did. I just seized an opportunity.”

  I thought of Darcy and Liz. They had died because Simington had been looking for revenge. Revenge that I had carried out for him.

  “You’ll find another girlfriend, Noah,” he said. “That’s what you’re really upset about. It’ll pass.”

  It was like his words were on tape and they’d gotten stuck in the player, coming out slow and garbled. I ran them through my head again to make sure I’d heard him correctly.

  “How do you know about her?” I asked, an invisible spear digging into my spine.

  “What?” he said. Something flashed across his face. He realized he’d made a mistake.

  I was rewinding the tape in my head. The last time I’d been there, Kenney had said something that hadn’t made sense to me. Something about Simington having old friends visit him. Visitors.

  “Keene came to see you,” I said, as much for me to hear as for Simington.

  “Noah, look—”

  “What did he tell you about her?” I asked, the spear digging in further.

  He hesitated for a moment, probably trying to decide whether he should keep up the act. I could almost see the mental shrug, him deciding it wasn’t worth the effort. His face hardened. “He told me you were dating a cop.”

  “Did he threaten her?”

  “Does it matter?”

  The anger was building, but I tried to remain calm. “Did Keene threaten her?”

  He watched me, then nodded.

  “And you didn’t tell me? When I was here last time, you didn’t tell me?”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “Keene came here to scare me. Fuckin’ moron.” He waved his hand around the room. “Thinking I’d be scared of him after living here. He was pissing his pants if he was crazy enough to walk in here and be seen with me.”

  I sat there, staring at him, my legs starting to shake.

  “That son of a bitch told me if you didn’t back off, he was gonna take her out,” he said, his eyes empty. “He thought that would do something for me, make me rethink talking to you. I think he feared me just enough to not go directly after you. But he thought threatening your girlfriend might shake things up.”

  The shivers moved from my legs up my spine.

  “Well, it did, but not the way he thought,” he said, chuckling.

  “You didn’t tell me,” I whispered.

  “Hell, no, I didn’t tell you,” he said. “I wanted Keene to go after her. I needed something to kick you in the ass. I could see you didn’t have it in you. I thought that might be it.” His smile contained a million little daggers. “And I was right.”

  I jumped out of the chair at him, but he was ready. In one smooth motion, his arm swept around my neck and he brought my head down onto his knee like he was slamming a door shut. Colors exploded behind my eyes, and pain rocketed through my head and neck.

  I fell to the floor. Voices and heavy footsteps echoed around me. I rolled over onto my back. Simington was bent over the table, a guard on either side of him, his hands already in cuffs. One of the guards was talking into the mic wired into his shirt.

  Blood leaked into my right eye. The impact had opened a gash above my eyebrow, and I could feel the air sucking into the gap in my skin.

  Another guard helped me up. “Are you alright, sir?” “I’m fine,” I said, dizzy and disoriented. “You’re going to need to go to the infirmary,” he said. Simington was smiling at me as the two guards raised him off the table.

  “I’m fine,” I repeated.

  “We’ll see what they say at the infirmary, sir,” the guard said, slipping his hand behind my arm and steadying me.

  “Sorry, son,” Simington said. “Sorry that it had to end like this.”

  The blood stung my eye but I didn’t lift a hand to wipe it away. Carolina had warned me.

  Don’t let him hurt you now.

  I’d failed there, too. He’d hurt me in several unimaginable ways, ways that were going to leave lifetime scars.

  Simington chuckled again as the guards escorted him out of the room, my last vision of him blurred and bloody.

  SEVENTY-THREE

  The nurse in the prison infirmary wanted to stitch the cut, but I refused, not wanting to spend any more time there than I had to. She closed it with a butterfly bandage and urged me to reconsider getting the stitches.

  I left without saying a word.

  My flight back to San Diego was delayed. I sat in the airport fingering the bandage and trying not to watch the news coverage on the overhead television monitors, most of it focusing on Simington’s impending execution, now hours away. The crowd outside the prison had multiplied since I’d left.

  Two hours behind schedule, the airline personnel finally boarded us. I slid into my window seat.

  It was dark now outside, the tiny runway lights blinking as we taxied. The plane paused as we positioned for takeoff.

  San Francisco had not been kind to me. It wasn’t the city’s fault, but I would always associate it with the ugliest time in my life.

  My breathing sped up. I tried to slow it, but I couldn’t.

  The plane accelerated, pressing me back into my seat.

  My fingers went to the bandage, feeling the gauze and tape and what Simington had done to me. And to Darcy and to Liz.

  We lifted off the ground and I felt it all—all of the things that I’d gone through the last few weeks—catch me like a sucker punch from an invisible fist. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to push it away.

  The plane angled upward and turned.

  I opened my eyes and looked out the window, the tears obscuring everything I was saying goodbye to.

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  My cell phone rang as soon as I turned it on, stepping off the Jetway in San Diego. I recognized Carter’s number and answered.

  “Hey.”

  “Where are you?” he asked, his voice urgent. “Just got back. Walking to my car.” “From where?” “San Francisco.” “They found him.”

  I moved over to the wall, out of the flow of foot traffic. “How do you know?”

  “It was on the news an hour ago,” he said. “Hikers coming back from camping in the desert. They found him. Tried to call you, but I guess you were on the plane.”

  I took a deep breath. “Okay.”

  “I’m gonna lay low for a few days, see what shakes out,” he said. “We should be fine, but I don’t wanna take any chances.” “That’s fine.”

  “I’ll call you,” he said and hung up.

  I dropped the phone into my pocket. I didn’t know what I expected to feel, but Carter’s call hadn’t surprised me. I wasn’t entirely sure the police could tie Keene to us, but I knew where they’d coming looking first. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling.

  I drove home in the rain, thinking about that, wondering what I should do.

  The ideas were ticking through my head when I walked into my living room and found John Wellton sitting on the couch, in the dark.

  “Where you been?” he asked.

  I thought about asking him how he’d gotten in, but I didn’t see the point. “San Francisco.”

  “What happened to your eye?” “Nothing.”

  I stood there in the dark, looking at him.

  “We found Keene,” he said.
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  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Dead. Outside of El Centro.” “Shame.”

  He stood and walked over to the glass slider, the rain slithering down the door. “One of El Centro’s guys was there. Named Asanti.” My stomach lurched. “Oh.” “Says you guys know each other.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Klimes and Zanella are working the scene with him,” he said. “They interviewed a woman named Lucia Vasquez.”

  A huge flash of lightening exploded over the ocean and lit the whole room for a moment.

  My throat went dry, and my fingers felt cold and heavy.

  “Asanti says you know her, too.”

  I kept my mouth shut.

  “She says you came to her home a few nights ago. That a friend of yours—a big guy—took her and her boys to a motel. So she’d be safe.” He paused. “She says you told her Keene was coming to her home.”

  My heart pounded like it wanted out of my chest, like I was keeping it captive.

  He turned to me. “I’ll give you two hours.”

  “What?”

  “They sent me to find you, Noah,” he said, his voice thick. “I’ll give you two hours before I start looking. Gives you a head start to get out of here.”

  “Look, Wellton—”

  He raised a hand. “Don’t, alright? Just don’t. I understand why you did it. I asked you to call me, but you didn’t. The less you say the better.” He took a deep breath and exhaled. “I’ll see what I can do, but for now, you need to get out of here and disappear. Unless you want to go down. Klimes is already champing at the bit to talk to you.”

  I felt like vomiting. It was all slipping away from me, and there was no way for me to hold on to it.

  But, then, what was really left for me to hold onto?

  Wellton walked past me to the front door and opened it. “I can only put them off for so long. Don’t be a fool. Get out of here. And I don’t mean hole up with your pal. I mean get fucking lost.” He stepped out into the rain.

  I sat down on the couch and watched the clock over the television tick away. I could stay and deny it all. There was no guarantee they’d have enough to tie me to Keene’s death. But what Lucia Vasquez knew was pretty damning. Klimes and Zanella had motive, and they knew I’d been there.

  I didn’t want to go to jail. Didn’t want to be like Simington. Like my father. But maybe it was too late for that. It seemed that the more I had tried to distance myself from him, the more I had become like him.

  You’re not him, Liz had said.

  Maybe I wasn’t when she said it, but I sure seemed to fit the bill now.

  The hands on the clock lay across each other and pointed at the twelve. Midnight.

  Simington would be strapped in now. The syringe would be readied. Maybe two more minutes in his life.

  How many were left in mine?

  The Last Day of February

  I wondered how it had come to this.

  No. That wasn’t right.

  I knew exactly how it had come to this.

  Lightning shattered the sky and raked the black surface of the ocean. The rain spilling out from above hit my face and body like a shower as I stood on my patio, soaking me and the duffel bag slung over my shoulder. The water stung the cut above my eye and grew the bloody stain on my shirt.

  I knew that I wouldn’t ever stand on this patio again, stare at this view again, live in this home again.

  Thunder rolled off the Pacific like it was coming through a megaphone, rattling the windows and doors of all the homes on the boardwalk. The rain picked up velocity, splashing violently into the puddles on the ground.

  I wiped the water from my eyes and took another look, making sure that all of it—my home, the view, this world I had created for myself—would never leave my memory.

  I knew that it wouldn’t, just as I knew that the last month would never leave me either.

  Things like that don’t leave you. They inhabit you. Forever.

  I turned to the glass door and squinted through the reflected bands of rain. My gun lay on the kitchen table. Two surfboards stood in the corner. Most everything I owned was still inside. I didn’t know what would happen to those things. And I didn’t care.

  The lightning cracked again behind me. A starter’s pistol, telling me it was time to go.

  I stepped off the patio and headed for the car, leaving the remains of my life behind.

  Published in Electronic Format by

  TYRUS BOOKS

  an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

  4700 East Galbraith Road

  Cincinnati, Ohio 45236

  www.tyrusbooks.com

  Copyright © 2011 by Jeff Shelby

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or

  mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without

  permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction.

  Any similarities to people or places, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-3267-2

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-3267-2

  This work has been published in print format under the following ISBNs:

  1-93556-239-8 (Hardcover)

  1-93556-254-1 (Paperback)