By Her Touch

by Adriana Anders

  “Andrew,” the woman said, looking totally unafraid. “It’s the fireworks.”

  He blinked a couple of times before taking it all in: the wash of blue, the spray of color piercing the night sky.

  Fireworks. Fucking fireworks on the Fourth of July. Jesus, was it possible to overdose on adrenaline?

  Like those ravers from the nineties, whose repeated use of ecstasy had depleted their serotonin levels, Clay’s mind insisted he’d had too many rushes to be terrified, and yet, here he was, shivering, again, in the aftermath. And then he wondered if it wasn’t the opposite; maybe repressing the fear for so long, pushing it into places it shouldn’t have to hide, had given him an overabundant supply of the stuff. For all those times he’d stared down some trigger-happy speed freak, the cold barrel of a gun burning a hole in his temple…

  The doctor stood, watching him, her quiet stillness notable in a world that trembled so desperately.

  “You okay?” she asked, putting out a hand to…touch him, maybe? He stepped out of her reach.

  “I’ll take you home,” he said firmly.

  After a few long beats, she glanced around. “Where’s your car?”

  “I’m on foot.”

  “You live around here?” she asked.

  Rather than answer, he said, “I’ll drive you home and jog back.”

  “No. No, you can’t do that. I couldn’t ask you to, not with your—”

  “I’m fine. And you can’t drive after what just happened,” he said. “Come on.”

  After a brief hesitation, she nodded, and he walked her around to the passenger door, which was unlocked, and went to get in the driver’s side. She was one of those women whose car was full of random shit, so it took her about three minutes to clear off her seat, but he kinda liked that. It meant she didn’t have passengers often. He figured between that and the lack of a ring, she probably wasn’t married.

  She handed him the keys. “Okay,” he said before starting the engine. “Where to?”

  With the turn of the key came low, modulated radio voices and a squealing fan belt.

  “You need to get that looked at,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Fan belt.”

  “Oh. Right. I don’t… I mean, I never…”

  “I could take a look, if you want.”

  “You?” She looked at him as he pulled out, her shocked expression almost comical. Or it would have been if it hadn’t hurt just a bit.

  “Sure.” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “It’d be a pleasure.”

  “Oh.”

  He stopped at the sign and turned to catch her watching him.

  After a few seconds of silence, he asked, “Which way?”

  “Oh.” She blinked. “Sorry, left here.”

  He turned and drove on in silence as she guided him down a few more streets.

  “Look, I can’t ask you to walk home from my place. It’s out of the way and—”

  “I’m at the motel in town. ’S it far from that?”

  “About a mile,” she said.

  “That’s fine. I was jogging anyway so it’s actually perfect.”

  “I feel bad, Mr. Blane. You…” She hesitated, and he glanced over at her. “You appear to have a limp.”

  “It’s nothing,” he said, his voice as hard and final as he could make it.

  After a turn onto Jason Lane, she spoke again. “The motel. What… I mean…you’re living there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “For how long?”

  “Long as it takes you to finish with me.”

  Her mouth opened, and she looked like she’d say something but must have changed her mind; the next few seconds passed in silence.

  “It’s right here,” she said, and he pulled into a driveway on a pleasant dead-end country street. Her house—what he could see of it—was dark.

  “You got no lights on.”

  She turned and looked at the house before answering with a shrug. “I don’t like to waste.”

  “It’s not safe.”

  “In Blackwood?” she asked, brows raised.

  “Yeah, Doc,” Clay said, letting the sarcasm seep through and feeling just a bit bad for it. “D’you already forget what just happened in good old Blackwood?”

  “Oh. That wasn’t… I think I stepped into a domestic violence situation and…” She sighed, fidgeting with the hem of her dress, and went on. “You’re right. I guess I…I just don’t have much to steal.”

  “Steal? You think it’s about stuff? Those little shits tonight, maybe. Maybe they’d go for a purse or the keys to your clinic or something. Maybe meds, you know? But a woman like you, Doc? You’d do well to protect yourself. Not just your stuff. You.”

  He got out of the car, walked around to open her door, and purposefully locked the doors behind her before following her up the dark porch stairs and handing her the keys.

  “Thank you, Mr. Blane. Would you…?” She swung her hand toward the door to her house and looked back. “Would you like to come in, maybe for a coffee or…?”

  Clay hesitated, standing there on the dark front porch of this near-stranger’s house. He wouldn’t mind, actually, going inside and having a cup of something warm. A glance at her face showed nothing but the vague shape of her skull, hollows where her eyes were, a cap of hair gleaming only slightly more than the rest. The night air was hot and loud with celebratory explosions and an underlying buzz he couldn’t seem to identify.

  “Gotta get back,” he lied, because really there wasn’t a damn thing to get back to besides an empty room, a full bottle, and the never-ending story running loops through his brain.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, lifting her hand and letting it settle on his arm, steady and sure in a way it shouldn’t be after that attack.

  “You sure you’ll be okay?” Clay asked, his eyes glued to that hand.

  “Yes. Yes, thanks to you.” She went to open her door, pulling that hand away so nonchalantly she couldn’t possibly have any idea how deeply he’d felt it. That touch—like a goddamned anchor on his body.

  He watched, blinking when she went inside and turned on the light. He then waited until she’d locked the door behind her—one of those old wooden doors with a goddamned glass panel you could see right the hell through, all the way down a hall to what appeared to be the kitchen, which made him even crazier. Finally, he returned to the street, fighting the urge to camp out in the woods across the way and keep an eye on the house, before taking off at a painful run, unexpected reluctance clogging his throat and the ghost of her touch holding him together.

  * * *

  Home. Finally. George dropped her purse and keys into the bowl by the front door and hesitated, a shiver running up her spine. No. No, she would not let those kids make her feel unsafe in her own home. She wouldn’t change a thing. To prove it, she went out back to put the chickens to bed and turn off the water. What she found there brought her up short: a gaping hole at the bottom of her garden gate.

  Throat tight and palms sweaty, she headed straight for the far corner of the yard, where the hens generally congregated, only to find feathers strewn about. But no chickens.

  She’d seen a fox a few days before in the woods across from the house. There were raccoons too, wily enough to bust through that gate. With a hot rush of fear—not for herself, but for her girls this time—she turned to the henhouse and stuck her head inside.

  Angry clucking greeted George, and she let out her breath on a wave of liquid relief, every joint aching with the suddenness of it. She counted five, six…seven hens. The only notable losses seemed to be a smattering of tail feathers and a good dose of avian pride. The ladies didn’t enjoy being stalked.

  Holy hell. Too much. It was all too much in one night.

  After briefly checking her charges, she shu
t the coop up, leaving them to cluck among themselves—seeing that hole had scared the hell out of her. The chickens held an important place in her life—in her heart, really—and she couldn’t imagine who else would ever fill it.

  The sky exploded above her, coloring the tomato and basil plants pink and, for a few seconds, giving her yard an artificial movie-set light. Rather than go immediately back inside, George collapsed heavily onto her wooden porch steps and tilted her head back, staring at the show and listening to the animals’ agitation. Were fireworks even safe right now, with the lack of rain this year?

  A wet nose pushed at her elbow, and she raised her arm to let Leonard climb onto her lap. The big black-and-white cat took up more room than he’d probably been allotted at birth, but George just couldn’t stand to put him on a diet. Why deprive him when he had, at most, another few years on this earth?

  Tonight was… It had been…

  She swallowed.

  She was supposed to feel fear right now, she thought, for herself. But she didn’t. Other than a throbbing on her face and pain where she’d landed on her hip, she felt an oddly thrumming excitement that was so wholly inappropriate, she wondered if she shouldn’t consider turning herself in to some kind of ethical committee or getting in touch with her mentor from when she’d been a resident. Or going to see a therapist. How on earth was it possible to come out of an attack like that—one that had left her battered and bruised—and feel nothing but regret that the man who’d saved you hadn’t agreed to come in for a cup of coffee?

  How pathetic am I? A complete mess, and—

  With a gasp, she touched her face. Was there blood? Did she look horrible? Was that why he’d refused her offer, looked at her hand on his arm like it was poison, and—

  What the hell is wrong with me? I’m out of my mind.

  Shifting Leonard off her lap, she stood, went inside, and tromped up the stairs to her bedroom, shutting lights off as she went. She went into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Crap. There were scrapes on her face, and grit was still embedded in her knees. She’d need to disinfect, but she didn’t want to. No, all she wanted to do was sink into sleep and forget about everything. Especially that last bit on her porch.

  How had things turned upside down so quickly?

  Instead, she settled for a stinging, lukewarm shower, a clean nightgown, and bed, where even the weight of Leonard purring on her belly was too much to handle.

  Between her sheets, though, sleep didn’t hold the blissful nothing she’d hoped for. No, instead of oblivion, she lay awake in bed, eyes wide open. But there was clearly something wrong with her. A normal person would rehash tonight’s attack, not dwell on the man who’d saved her. A normal person would be scared, not…titillated. Instead, she sailed along on a strange blend of excitement and guilt, along with something supremely tender that she hadn’t been able to tamp down since Andrew Blane had found his way to her office.

  * * *

  It was the polygraph test that did it, every fucking night. As if living through it once hadn’t been enough—

  No, twice.

  He’d had to take two life-changing poly tests—one when he’d applied for a job with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and once for the Sultans. The first had been nothing—child’s play—compared to the one in the club, Ape and Handles and a couple of other guys hovering around him. Ape with his signature ax in his hand.

  “We trust you, bro,” Handles had explained. “Just gotta keep our guys safe, man. Fucking cops are on us like flies on shit, and you never know who you can trust anymore. Never know.”

  Clay, in deep sleep, relived that conversation every night, saw the smile on Handles’s face. Handles, the national club president, who’d taken him under his wing, had been like a dad to him.

  Clay’d been nervous the first time he’d gone to the Sultans’ bar, the Hangover. He and Lil Dino, the confidential informant who’d vouched for him. Dino’d made a deal with the prosecutor and now had to tell the club guys he’d done time with Clay—a job made a hell of a lot easier by the ink Clay’d gone out and gotten done the week before.

  That first day, he’d walked in with Dino, waited for his eyes to adjust, and slowly taken the place in, wondering if any of them would recognize him.

  They hadn’t. Not one of them, but that feeling of being a lone sheep in a den of wolves had never quite died down.

  After that, it had been a slow, slow game. Riding into Naglestown every few days, eventually getting a job there, then making his trips to see the guys a daily thing until he’d given them that game-changing intel.

  He remembered other things, in flashes. Like the day he’d made initial contact with his targets: Handles and Ape, the club’s national sergeant at arms, who, it was quickly apparent, was a psychopath.

  Handles and the others had been wary of Jeremy “Indian” Greer from the beginning, as they were of most newcomers, but Ape had hated him on sight—had beaten him and played with him to prove it. Funny how that fucker’s crazy instincts had been so dead-on.

  There’d been no warning the day of the polygraph—just a tap on the shoulder and a beckoning finger. Clay’d set down the glasses he was cleaning behind the bar, glanced around to catch every eye on him, and followed Handles into the bowels of the building.

  It was like a goddamned fort, that place, an impenetrable fortress in the middle of these big, open fields in Nowheresville, Maryland. You couldn’t get a jump on the Sultans. Not with their insane security and paranoid business dealings. Not to mention the firepower those guys had.

  Halfway down the inner hall, where the Sultans kept their private on-site quarters, he’d started to feel the cold sweat of anxiety. It wasn’t just a normal event, being summoned like that. No, it was fucking serious.

  “Ever taken a lie detector test, Indian?” Handles had asked.

  “No,” Clay had lied.

  “Me neither,” Handles’d replied, gold-toothed smile destroying his bearded, bald, Daddy Warbucks look.

  Fuck. Fuck, fuck. Nobody’d warned him about the test. Thank God he’d trained for this, but fuck, it had been years.

  This is good, he realized. Home stretch. McGovern had been threatening to pull him just the other day, and now, if the club was doing this, he had to be close to being a full-patch member. Close to getting in.

  Sucking in his belly to quell the nausea brewing there, he’d forced a grin. “Fuck, man. You guys are paranoid.”

  “Just keeping the family safe. You seen what happened to the Mongols?”

  “No.”

  “Got screwed for trusting one asshole too many.”

  “Hmm” was all Clay said, but internally he was on fire—equal parts fear and excitement—that feeling he’d gotten addicted to undercover.

  They headed down a long set of shallow steps, to what appeared to be a bunker in the basement, through a hall wide enough to drive a car, and then into a dank room where four guys stood around, waiting.

  For him.

  Beside an old-looking lie detector kit, a chair sat empty, waiting.

  Clay offered a quick, cool nod to the occupants and then sat, heart beating a million miles a minute.

  Slow. Breathe. Ignore them.

  He grinned and looked around.

  Jam and Boom-Boom didn’t worry him the way Ape did, standing behind Clay’s chair, casually swinging that ax in his hand. Clay’d heard stories about that fucking ax. He’d seen the goddamned stains it bore a time or two when the guys came back from some trip. Some mission. Those times, Ape had always been wilder than usual, extra sadistic. It’d been after one of those trips—just the week before, in fact—that he’d challenged Clay to a fight and gotten pissed when Clay started to beat his ass. Clay’d had no choice but to cave when the big fucker had grabbed a bottle from a brother’s hand, smashed it on the bar, and
come after him with the sharp end. Getting that slice, though, across the face…that, he realized now, may very well have been just the thing he’d needed to get in.

  Fucking club scars, he thought, ass glued to the seat that could become his throne of execution.

  Fuck it. He shrugged, cleared his throat, turned, and spat not five inches from the big asshole’s feet.

  You wanna kill me, fucker? that gesture said. Do it.

  Then, cool as ice, Clay breathed while the polygraph dude wrapped the cuff around his arm, twined the two long pneumograph tubes around his middle, fiddled with some settings on his laptop, and slid the sensors onto his fingers.

  Remember your training, he thought over and over. A mantra, something to hold on to. Feet down, ass squeezed, breathing deep as the stranger cleared his throat and began.

  “Are you known here as Indian?”

  Big breath, thinking of Carly, getting that pulse up, up, up for the control questions. “Yeah.”

  “Is today Monday?” Carly, bruised, those weeks before she died.

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you wearing a black T-shirt?” Carly, her face beaten in.

  “Yes.”

  Handles asked, “Did you clean behind the toilet this morning like I told you to?” and Clay decided to lie, letting the stress rise, using it, eating it up, making it his, and remembering that feeling for the big questions.

  “Yes,” he said, his voice reflecting the shit spewing in his stomach.

  “Do you love slinging booze upstairs?”

  He reached for another bad thought and didn’t have to look far for this one—Ape behind him was good enough. “Love it.”

  A chuckle from everyone but his nemesis.

  “Is your real name Jeremy Greer?”

  Happy thoughts—not easy for Clay, since there wasn’t much to be happy about, was there? Calm, blue water. A mountain lake. Carly alive. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Have you ever worked in law enforcement?” No longer control questions now. The real deal.

  Mountains, a breeze, a brook. “No.”