by Peter Giglio
Sure enough, she was moving toward him. He stepped outside and into his car, which was parked out front. He linked the tablet to the car’s GPS and eased the car from the curb.
When he saw her shambling down the sidewalk, he thought about stopping and taking her back home. But he didn’t want to compromise her free will. Besides, she wasn’t breaking any rules or laws, and he didn’t want to destroy the trust he’d built with her. Knowing her destination, he sped past her and continued to Cooper’s address.
It didn’t take long to reach the complex of condos, which was less than a mile from 913. He spied an open space across the street, made an illegal U-turn, then parked and cut the engine and lights. He reclined the seat and waited.
He would just watch, he promised himself. If she was in danger, he’d intervene, of course, but otherwise he’d only act as an insurance plan. A benevolent observer.
A guardian angel.
* * *
Monika was stopped a few yards shy of her destination by what she saw: Eric stumbling out of the bar with another girl. She hid in the shadows and watched them. They were laughing and talking, the girl’s arm around his midsection.
At first she didn’t feel anything, plunging a shade of numb that was rare even for her. Then she was overpowered by something foreign, a mixture of rage and sadness.
She slid against a brick wall and watched the coupled humans disappear through the doorway of Eric’s building.
Sadness was the stronger of the two emotions she felt. But rage was growing. She clenched her fists as her butt met the pavement. If it were possible, she would have cried. Her hands shook and she could see time shifting through the haze.
* * *
The pastor watched Eric enter the building with Julie Stewart. “What the hell?” he whispered, filled with so many conflicting thoughts and feelings that he couldn’t pin down any of them.
What is Cooper up to? he thought, sure that it had something to do with him. It just had to. Were they plotting against him? How? Why? Stewart already had the pound of flesh she needed to launch her career. What did she need with him? More importantly, what did he need with her?
He spotted Monika on the sidewalk, her back against a nearby wall of brick.
She had clearly seen Eric with the girl. How would this impact her? Would it undo everything?
Gritting his teeth, he kept watching Monika. He couldn’t blow his cover, not yet.
Fear roiled deep and dark.
And he still didn’t believe in coincidence.
* * *
His hot breath was on her throat the second they entered the apartment. She kicked the door closed, held in his tightening embrace. He lifted her, his hands on her ass, and she wrapped her legs around him, her skirt hiked around her thighs. Pressing her back against the wall, he pulled aside her panties. Ripped them off. She was wet, breathing heavily. Then he unzipped his fly and entered her.
It had been years since she’d given herself this freely to a moment of passion. No, she thought. She’d never done it like this. He carried her across the room as she ground herself into him, a spasm of ecstasy bringing a giddy laugh to her lips.
He laid her on the couch and rose above her, undoing his belt, then kicking off his slacks.
Then he plunged deep into her again. Pumping harder and harder. And she held on tight.
It was one hell of a ride.
But it was over quickly, and she soon felt herself growing sick beneath his weight. He rolled onto his side, which allowed her to slide from the couch. She stood, pressing down her skirt with rapid strokes, and his bloodshot eyes fluttered.
“Sorry,” he garbled.
She was sorry, too. What had seemed so right a moment before now felt wrong. But this was what she’d wanted. One last carefree romp before her new life started. And this is how these things always ended, these seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time things. No sense dwelling on it. She yanked her purse from the floor.
He pushed himself up on an elbow, looking sick beyond words, hair messed like a savage. She suspected she didn’t appear much better for wear.
“You leaving already?” he slurred.
“Probably best. We both had too much to drink.”
“Wha…what about the movie?”
“Maybe some other time.” She stepped into her red pumps as she considered her yellow panties on the floor; thought about picking them up for a moment but decided against it. They were ruined anyway, and the last thing she needed was a reminder of this night. She wobbled in search of balance, bracing herself against the door.
“Sorry,” he said again.
“No need,” she said. “Thanks for everything.”
“Should I walk you—”
“No.”
He tried to get up but fell back into the couch with a consumptive wheeze. His eyes closed and he curled into the fetal position.
Men, she thought, easily reduced to children. She rushed through the door toward the elevator, unsure if she’d make it all the way without puking. On the ride down to the first floor, she decided to call a cab. She didn’t need a DUI getting in the way of her travel plans, and things like that had a way of destroying people in her profession. Media insiders were no strangers to the scrutiny they routinely wielded. She had to keep her nose clean.
Clean? she thought. She felt anything but. She stepped into the unseasonably cool summer night. A glance at her watch told her it was almost three, and the line of cabs that had been clustered at the curb when she’d left the bar was gone. She dug through her purse for her phone and felt a sudden presence at her back. Certain it was her mind playing tricks, she continued the search through her purse.
Then it happened. She felt a hard yank on her hair. Painful. She turned to face a female second-lifer and lost balance. “What the hell are you…?” she started. The heel of her shoe turned sideways and she fell hard against the pavement, pain spiking through the elbow that had caught the brunt of the fall.
The second-lifer was on her quickly, straddling her. This was unnatural. They weren’t supposed to behave like this. What was happening?
The thing’s hand was on her face, and she slapped at it, trying to break free. Weakened by booze and the fall, she was losing the battle. She felt cold fingers on her lidded eyes. “No,” she screamed, but her voice was hoarse and weak; failed, she could tell, to carry.
The fingers pressed down on her retinas. Hard.
“Stop,” she heard a man wail. His voice was familiar but she couldn’t place it. She gasped, started to cry. Someone had seen the attack. She was saved. Then, killing hope in an instant, she felt an explosion of agony in her brain as the second-lifer’s fingers plunged deep into her eye sockets.
Then she felt nothing.
CHAPTER 13
Frantic, Steven stumbled up to two women as Monika’s bloody fingers came away from the empty eyes of the prone reporter. The second-lifer trembled; she seemed to be in shock. He felt it too: his body going numb, his breath growing ragged. He scanned the security cameras above O’Rourke’s Pub and the complex of condos where Eric Cooper lived.
“Monika,” he said. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “What? Why?”
He saw no response there. This girl doesn’t know why, either, he thought. Then he started to understand. Humanity had crept into her cold, detached life, and with it, love. She wasn’t to blame. It was as much his fault for not intervening sooner. He should have known when he’d seen Eric with the girl; should have known this would end badly. It was too much too soon for her. Poor sweet Monika.
A black sedan suddenly squealed to a halt at the curb. An undercover police cruiser, he was certain. The door swung open. He was fucked, ready to come face-to-face with a narrow-eyed detective. But that’s not what happened. Behind the wheel of the car, Frank Allen sneered. “Christ almighty,” he said. “What the—”
Then Frank’s eyes landed on the dead reporter’s ruin. He stepped out of the car, opened the back door, and commanded, “Come o
n. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Lingk helped Monika into the backseat. Then he scampered to the dead girl and took her shoulders. Frank took her legs. They placed the body next to Monika. Then Lingk rushed around the car and tried to open the passenger’s side door. It was locked. He knocked on the tinted glass, pulled the handle again as a click sounded. It didn’t come open.
“Hey, asshole,” Frank said. “Wanna wait for me to unlock the fuckin’ thing before you try to jerk it open?”
Another click, and this time the door swung open. Lingk slid into the car, and Frank floored the accelerator.
Monika was motionless in the backseat. So was Julie.
“She dead?” Frank asked.
“I…I think so,” Lingk said. “I was just—”
“I know what you were doing, Pastor. You didn’t think we’d keep an eye on the girl, too. We’ve been tracking her Blue Card. Saw her heading toward—”
Frank’s phone rattled on the dashboard. “Hold on,” he said. He put the phone to his face. “Please tell me you got into the cameras.” A brief pause, then he said, “Good. And we’re untraceable?” Another pause. “No, nothing happened. The girl was just wandering around. Who knows what motivates these fucking things. If we knew that, we wouldn’t need her.” Frank nodded, then: “You sure you killed the cameras?” He sighed, slowing his speed to the posted limit. “Hey, an ounce of precaution is worth a pound of cure. You know what would happen if anything fucked up this project?” He shook his head. “Exactly. We’d be fucked. Talk to you soon.” He hung up the phone and tossed it back on the dashboard.
The car pulled onto the highway, and there was a long moment of silence while they drove past the suburbs of Horizon City.
“Where are we going?” Lingk asked.
“To take care of our little problem. We can’t let the girl back there reanimate.”
“She’d be blind,” Lingk said. “And you know she wouldn’t be able to talk.”
Frank laughed. “Pastor, you kill me. You’re completely insane, aren’t you?”
“It’s not that—”
“We overheard your conversation with Monika. We know everything.”
“Everything?”
“Seriously, Lingk, you didn’t think we’d have mics all over her place?”
“My car,” Lingk said.
“Don’t worry about that. No one’s going to miss that girl until Monday, and when the cops place her at that bar with Cooper, your car will be long gone from the scene. How long were you parked there?”
“About thirty minutes, I think.”
“We took down the cameras the moment we figured out where Monika was headed. You should be fine.”
“I’m going to be a suspect.”
“Why’s that?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“Just what I need, another fucking surprise.”
“That dead girl back there is Julie Stewart from Globe Cable News.”
Streetlights became scarce, the city giving way to countryside. Frank nodded but was clearly shaken. “That’s…that’s not good.”
“No.”
“Lingk, you have to destroy that recording of Monika.”
He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. “I can’t do that. It’s too important. More important than you or I could ever be.”
“You have no choice. We can’t risk that information going public. If the cops know Monika can talk, who’s to say she won’t give us away.”
Lingk cast his eyes into the backseat. Monika looked forward, as if focusing on some object. “You wouldn’t do that, would you?” he asked her. But she didn’t move, just kept staring at that imaginary point in space.
“This isn’t up for debate,” Frank said. “You had the upper hand in my office today and look where that got us. You’ll be cool and let someone sane handle this clusterfuck. Where’s the recording?”
Lingk pulled the small disk from his jacket and handed it to Frank, who wasted no time sliding it into the stereo. The pastor’s voice came from the speakers: “First question…how do you feel?” Frank pressed the eject button, fractured the mini-disc in his hand, then cracked open the window and tossed out the detritus.
“That’s the only copy?” Frank asked.
Lingk nodded. Everything had happened so fast he hadn’t had time to make a duplicate. “How far are we going?”
“The East Texas bottoms.”
“Christ.”
“But we’re going to have to pick up something to weigh the girl down on the way there.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“No. Not this. But I did one tour in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. Let’s just say my innocence died young.”
* * *
The moment the girl’s body splashed into the water, Monika jerked back to awareness. She was standing at the bank of a river, the pastor holding her hand. And her boss was there, too. Where had he come from?
The last thing she remembered was horrifying: her fingers sinking into the girl’s eyes. She hadn’t meant to do it. She’d been angry, hurt, but she was sure murder had never crossed her mind. Now she was hollow. Not like she’d been in the early days of second life. There was a certain degree of pain beneath the numbness now. And guilt. This was a more human kind of hollow, she reflected.
She watched the girl disappear into the murk, then looked up and saw a broken bridge above sparkling water. She didn’t know where this was but suspected it was a long way from the city.
The pastor pulled her away from the river, to the car, helped her into the backseat. She wanted to thank him and also didn’t. She didn’t know what to think of him now. He was clearly not the man she’d thought he was. But what was he? He was trying to protect her, she was certain of that; but why? And why was her boss in on it, too? Too many questions…too many distractions…
Time began to bend as the engine roared and the car raced away.
She did the only thing she could. Summoned the red dot and focused on it.
CHAPTER 14
A loud knock at the door jolted Eric from sleep. He found himself naked on the couch, his throat parched, body sore, and his head pounding. What did I do last night? he asked himself. Then his cloudy mind synched with reality. He remembered the reporter, Julie Stewart; he’d brought her back here and…
He smiled at the memory. Although things hadn’t ended well, he still possessed the old Cooper charm.
Another knock sounded, this time louder, and with it came an unmistakable voice. “Come on, Eric, open up.”
His mother. He looked at his watch. Ten after ten. “Just a minute, Mom,” he called out, pulling on his pants. He yanked his wrinkled Oxford from the floor, put it on, then fumbled with the buttons as he ambled to the door. Three of them were fastened. Good enough. Then he saw himself in the hall mirror. No, he thought. Not good enough. He looked like shit.
He opened the door, and there she stood, all dressed up, her makeup and hair done, too. She looked like she was on her way to church. Which, Eric hated to admit, was kind of what Lazarus Estates had become for her, an altar of the past that she worshipped at without fail. Grammie had been dead for five years, Pop for six, so neither had much time left. And he couldn’t really blame his mother for trying to make the most of it.
She scowled and stepped into the living room; looked around the apartment until something caught her attention. The yellow panties on the floor.
Eric cringed as he was consumed by shame.
“What the hell happened here?” she asked.
“Yesterday was a rough day. I…well…things got a little out of hand last night.”
She glared at him. “When I talked to you, everything was fine. You were feeling well.”
“It’s a long story, Mom, so much has changed in such a short period of—”
“And you didn’t call me?” She looked hurt.
“I’m sorry, but if you’ll let me explain—”
“I’ve been wo
rried sick about you. Been trying to call you all morning but your phone is turned off. Thought something terrible had happened to you.” She cast her eyes back on the panties. “Not so sure it didn’t.”
“Tell you what. Why don’t we have dinner tonight and I can explain everything.”
“I have a better idea,” she snapped. Folding her arms over her chest, she scuttled to the couch and sat. Just thinking of what he’d done the night before on that couch, and seeing her sitting in his filth now, almost made him gag. “You jump in the shower and come with me,” she said, “to see Grammie and Pop.”
“Mom, I—”
“Look, Eric, you promised me. And I promised them yesterday that you’d come see them today. I gave them my word and everything.”
He resisted the urge to point out that her word meant nothing to his grandparents. He’d done it more times than he cared to count, and realized it was useless to talk sense about this situation with her. The best thing he could do, for him and for her, was to give in.
“Can you make coffee while I’m in the shower?” he asked.
She brightened. “Of course, dear.”
He forced a smiled. “Okay, then. I’ll only be a few minutes.”
“Now you’re talking sense,” she said.
* * *
Monika was disoriented.
Against reason, she experienced two places at once. One of those was her bedroom at the apartment. Lying in bed, she sensed herself wading through the half-waking fog of sleep. But that didn’t make sense. Sleep was not something she was capable of anymore.
Another bedroom, too; a girl’s room, she was certain, but not one she’d ever seen. Though not in control, she gazed through eyes that didn’t belong to her.
A mirror came into focus and she saw her host. A young girl, a teenager. She looked familiar, but Monika couldn’t pin identity to the face. Her eyes were steered downward, to a sheet of paper. The title of the piece, some kind of essay or report for school, stood out in a bold font: CHARITY’S DREAM. And the author’s name below that: Steve Lingk.
