“Am I involved with anyone?”
“Are you?”
“It’s complicated.” Her gaze wavered, and then fell on the digital screen of her cell phone again. This time she didn’t frown. She sighed instead. “Very complicated.”
“Carmen?”
She bit her lip, twirled the phone in her hand.
“Carmen?”
When she didn’t answer I reached forward. The hands I’d been told weren’t gentle enough for a woman touched the sleeve of her jacket. She flinched, as I thought she might, but didn’t move away from my touch. I eased the sleeve up to her elbow. If I were a more expressive man I would’ve cried on the spot. Fell to the floor and pounded the tile. The bruises on her arms were the color of overripe plums. Bruises. Plural.
“Timing is everything,” she said. I spotted moisture at the corners of her eyes.
“You’re obviously in an oppressive situation. Let’s make the timing right. Help each other.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she said, shaking her head. “Your eye? Your hand? What did you get into, Shell?”
I attempted to flex the fingers of my swollen right hand, couldn’t.
“Did you hurt someone?” she asked.
“Yes,” I admitted. “But this isn’t about me. It shouldn’t be, at least. Let’s focus on you.” I cleared angst that stung like ragged pieces of glass from my throat. “Tell me his name. The guy that did that to you.” Did that. Bruised her.
“He’s no less violent than you.”
I nodded. “But I’d never hurt you like that.”
“How do I know that?” she asked as though she really wanted to know.
“You don’t.”
“So persuasive.”
Déjà vu. It felt like the first moments with Taj all over again.
I cleared my throat, said, “There’s a park nearby here, Carmen. I go there every night to relax…feel the breeze, look at the sky, lose myself in my thoughts. I’d like to share it with you. Couples lay blankets on the hill and snuggle and look at the sun recede. There’s a gazebo with a swing. I’d like to push you on the swing and get lost in the sound of your laughter.”
“Sounds like a fantasy,” she said. “I’ve moved on from Harry Potter.”
“How about Twilight? The Hunger Games?”
Her smile added an inch to my height.
“Close your eyes and imagine it, Carmen.”
She did.
I heard bell chimes then. Someone entered the market. Carmen’s eyes snapped open like Venetian blinds; her body shrank to half its size immediately; she gripped the cell phone in her hand, held it against her chest. Under her breath she muttered, “Please. No trouble. Ignore this. Please. Just go.” I turned slowly, already knowing what I’d find.
He wore a long tan trench coat. Of average height, and an even more average build. Light brown hair cut close, graying a bit at the temples. Despite the gray I put him just past thirty. His blue eyes lighted on Carmen and he headed in her direction, his jaw tense.
I eased by her, picked up a peach. It was bruised. I didn’t sit it back in the bin.
Carmen didn’t move, a foot from my back.
“Where is he?” I heard in a voice refined at Harvard or somewhere similar.
The man in the tan trench coat.
“My paranoia,” Carmen said. “He drove on by when I came in here.”
“You texted and said he was watching you outside. You got me out here for…”
“I’m sorry,” I heard Carmen say.
“This is so typical, Nevada.”
Nevada. Inside I laughed at my naïveté. I shook my head. She’d lied to me.
“Can we just go?” she said so softly I could barely make out the words.
“I don’t mean to be hard on you,” he said.
“Yes you do.”
“Let’s not have one of our scenes, Nevada.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” she said.
“This is just…I’m really sorry for earlier…I love you. Okay?”
“Okay.”
I heard the brush of material, tan trench coat and navy jacket coming together.
Them hugging.
It didn’t sound as though she’d resisted or hesitated.
After they broke the embrace, I heard him whisper, “That guy’s not wearing shoes.”
And Nevada’s labored reply, “Let’s go, Daniel.”
I STARED AT THE sky, its color making it a riverbed overrun with salmon. The punishing rain of earlier in the day had subsided. The sun had actually made an appearance and was now receding. A couple lay on a brown blanket covered in white and gray cat fur, snuggling together, talking in whispers, laughing at one another’s oft-repeated stories. My hand pushed the empty swing in the gazebo. The swing itself was light, and the humming of the chain that held it in place soothed me in a way I can’t adequately explain. The rain had subsided, as I’ve said, but the smell of it was still heavy in the air. At my back, I heard the sound of heels on the wood steps of the gazebo.
Then I smelled coconut.
Felt a shadow cover me.
“Why are you here?” I asked without turning.
“I owe you an apology.”
I turned to her then, my eyes narrowed. “Is that so…Nevada?”
She shivered, hugged herself, nodded. “Yes. I lied about my name. You’d been following me all day. I didn’t know what to do. You can’t possibly blame me for that. Can you?”
“Lovely apology,” I said, and turned back to the empty swing, gave it a push.
“I’m sorry, Shell.”
“Thanks. You can go now,” I said.
“There are four parks within a five mile radius of the Farmer’s Market. Despite the odds, I happened by all three of the others before I found my way to this one.”
“Stay away from Atlantic City,” I said.
Nevada bit her lip. “I want you, Shell,” she whispered in a jazz singer’s rasp. “I might as well be truthful about it. And that’s not a good thing, wanting someone like I want you. This is reckless.”
“Just go, Nevada.”
“I can’t, Shell. You should understand that. Just like you couldn’t not follow me today.”
I stopped pushing the swing, my sigh like air whooshing from a pierced tire. “Your man—”
“Isn’t here,” she said.
“I’m supposed to approve of that answer?”
“I don’t know, Shell.” She inched close, tried to touch my arm. I shifted away. That didn’t deter her in the least. “Daniel’s out somewhere, working as usual. Or so he says. And I don’t care one way or the other. I’m here with you. If that bothers you I can leave.”
“It bothers me,” I said.
“Try not to let it,” she said, “For the night.”
“Another bad answer, Nevada.”
“Please.”
“What if I want beyond the night?”
“Show me,” she whispered.
“You’re a movable piece? You can come off of Daniel’s board?”
“That’s possible.”
“This is wrong. Even I have parameters.” I’d taken Taj from another man and a man had taken her from me in turn. Over the years I’d learned that karma was as insistent as violence.
She nodded. “You’re right. It is wrong. I should go.”
She prepared to leave. I reached for her, secured her wrist, pulled her indecently close to me. Rolled her sleeve up again, touched her bruise with two gentle fingers. Bent and moved her arm to my lips. Kissed her feverish skin. Several soft and tender pecks. We watched each other for a beat. And sinned in our minds. Sin always began there.
“Why am I allowing this?” she asked helplessly as I tended to her bruise.
I was more concerned with the sin in my mind than her question.
Rather than trouble myself for an answer I leaned forward until our lips touched.
Her tongue tasted like mint.
She broke our ve
ry first kiss, sighed. Her gray eyes watched me intently. “I must be out of my mind.”
I said, “I don’t detect any diminished acuity.”
She smiled. “So full of surprises. I could listen to you talk all day. You’re so damn sexy. Dangerous and mysterious, too.”
“Ditto.”
“Me?” She pointed at herself, a coy schoolgirl’s smile on her lips.
“Yes, you,” I said.
She gazed toward the couple lying on the brown blanket. “Two dangerous and mysterious souls intersecting. That’s us.”
“Can it last beyond the night?” I wondered.
“Been with Daniel for two years,” she said.
“It’s been good?”
“I’d rather not answer that.”
“Fair enough.”
“I’m not reckless, Shell.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“Never?”
“Never,” she said. “What about you?”
I thought of Taj. The intensity of my feelings for her. Feelings that overwhelmed me from the very beginning. “Never,” I told Nevada, adding another blanket to our bed of lies.
She smiled. “I suppose you must have a special place in my heart now.”
“Daniel already has that,” I replied.
A shadow fell across her face. “We’ve talked about marriage, Daniel and I.”
“You’d be a lovely bride.”
“Lovely.” She snickered. “Just so lovely.”
“Nevada—”
“I’d have to be very careful with you, Shell. Being with Daniel requires no care. It’s tough at times, for certain, but… You’re obviously a hard man. Just being around you is probably risky. What do you do for a living?”
Jacoby Wilder. High school teammate, college roommate. I’d been the best man at his wedding. He’d been the most important of six that carried my mother’s casket. Later his own casket would come.
Veronica.
Ericka.
“You’re right,” I told Nevada.
“What?”
“Just being around me is risky.”
I hadn’t answered her question: What do you do for a living? Most would’ve sought further clarification, would’ve left me standing there if I didn’t provide it. Nevada simply nodded. Good thing. Explaining the intricacies of being a killer-for-hire has never suited me.
“I’m thinking you should be fed with a long-handled spoon,” Nevada whispered after a moment.
“Haven’t heard that one,” I said. “How’s that for a catchy slogan. I have to get some new business cards printed.”
“I’m not reckless, Shell.”
“So you’ve said. I’m inclined to think otherwise.”
She attempted to slap me, a harbinger of things to come, I suppose.
I took her offending hand, gripped it at the wrist, pulled her close to me again, mashed my lips against hers, and eased my tongue into her receptive mouth. “You can have me, any way you want, Shell,” she said, breathless, as I broke the kiss a beat later.
“I know.”
“You’re arrogant.”
I shook my head. “I recognize fate.”
“I’m doing this. But it can’t be good.”
“I disagree. It is good, Nevada.”
TWO
I WAS WRONG. IT wasn’t good.
A NAKED WOMAN SLEPT in my bed, her perfectly round breasts exposed above a thin white sheet that rose no farther than her waist, her nipples like ripe blackberries, her brown skin tinged with shades of red courtesy of a Cherokee leaf somewhere on her family oak. Her hair was spread out on the pillow, framing her lovely face. Her breathing was new-blacktop smooth in sleep. Altogether different than the deep-throated moans that had come from her when we’d made love earlier in the night. I thought of us lying together, just minutes before, my arm around her, her head resting on my chest, the fog of her breath warming my skin. She’d been a vigorous lover. The sex was more than spectacular. Despite that, the OneRepublic ringtone sounding from my cell phone had made me slide from her embrace and out of bed like a thief in the night.
“Apologize”, Nevada’s own personal ringtone.
“Dashiell?” she said in my ear.
The trees had shed their leaves several times since that first meeting in the Farmer’s Market. Since I’d stalked Nevada Barnes for the better part of a day. Then stole her away from her abusive lover.
During the course of the years since that introduction, Nevada’s voice had completely changed for me. No longer did it tickle my ears. No longer was it ice-cold lemonade. It had turned into lukewarm, liquid Drano, instead. A harsh sentiment, I know, but right as rain.
“Dashiell?”
“Don’t call me that,” I said.
“What?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“You’re being immature, Dashiell.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Okay, okay, Shell.”
“Better.”
“Childish,” she said.
“What do you want, Nevada? Something wrong with the water heater again?”
I was little more than a landlord and my past lover little more than a tenant. The home in which she lived didn’t have a paper trail that would lead back to either of us. Still, it was clearly mine and I insisted she live in it, even after our breakup. I’d walked in dangerous circles and had enemies at every turn. Because of this, it wasn’t in Nevada’s best interest to live in the place that actually had her name on the lease.
“If you’re going to hold my living here over my head, I can always move back to my place, Dashiell?”
“Didn’t I say not to call me that?”
“Oh my goodness…” She sighed into the receiver. “I’m trying. Give me a break.”
“Nevada’s trying,” I said. “Somebody alert Congress.”
“You’re whispering,” she noted. “I take it you’re not alone.”
“That’s a condition I try to avoid. You know this.”
“That I do, Shell. That I do.”
Weary is the best way to describe her voice. As though her back was ready to give out from the immense weight of whatever she’d been carrying. She filled the next twenty seconds with silence. I closed my eyes, squeezed them and willed away a cluster headache. Nevada had a way of working herself into my marrow. I hated her for that. I loved her for it, as well. Our relationship was more complex and difficult to understand than I would ever be comfortable with. Discomfort made me a hard man to deal with.
“Are we going to be like this forever?” she said.
“Probably,” I said. “I’d imagine so.”
“Been through a lot with you, babe,” she said. Babe. As if we were still in a place where that was appropriate. I let it go, said, “And vice versa. What’s the point, Nevada?”
I’m certain she nodded. That’s how it was with us. I could feel her energy, could interpret her movements, even over the phone line. Fiber optics posed no problem. Nevada could do the same with me. Secrets didn’t stay secrets long where we were concerned.
“The courtesy of a return call would have been much appreciated,” she said.
I didn’t reply.
“That’s the least I’d expect from you.”
I didn’t reply to that, either.
“The past three days I’ve left you somewhere around four messages, Shell. Obviously something important has been on my mind.”
“Seven in two,” I said.
“What?”
“Seven messages, two days.”
She sighed. “Seven in two, then. I stand corrected.”
“Now you’ve got me. What did you need?”
The naked woman in my bed shifted but didn’t awaken. Still, I padded away from her, across the pile carpet, then outside on the hotel balcony. The night had cooled what had been a hot day. The jet black sky was salted with stars. I didn’t bother making a w
ish. In the distance were sights I could see and others I couldn’t but knew were out there somewhere. Parrot Jungle. The Metrozoo. Vizcaya, an Italian Renaissance-style villa.
“What’s all that noise?” Nevada asked. “Where are you?”
“Miami.”
She sighed. “No doubt with some nearly anonymous woman. Some things never change.”
“Thank God for small miracles.”
“You disgust me, Shell.”
“Glad to hear it. Now get to the point, Nevada. Refrigerator on the blink? You spilled wine on the carpet and need the stain cleaned? Quickly state your reason for the calls. In three seconds I’m hanging up.” Fever ticked through my blood like a worm. I started a countdown, “One, two…”
“May first is—”
“Coming up,” I said, cutting her off. “I’m aware. You and I just happen to be using the same calendar.”
“Were you planning on—”
“No.”
“You don’t know what I was going to ask,” she said.
“Whatever it was,” I said, “the answer is no.”
“Bitterness will kill you.”
“As will a million other things. Hypertension, cancer…love.”
I threw that last bit in as an afterthought. That fooled neither of us.
“I wish things could be different between us, Shell.”
“Nevada wishes,” I said. “Somebody get the President on the line.”
She said, “There’s a verse in the Bible that says to forgive seven times seventy.”
“You’re quoting the Bible now?” I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of that.
“I’m trying to evolve, to grow.”
“Quite a project,” I said. “Good luck with that.”
“You’re not being very nice.”
“That’s good to know.”
“I have another verse for you,” she said, undaunted. “First Corinthians, thirteenth chapter. They call it the love chapter.”
Love is patient. Love is kind. Keeps no record of wrongs.
I knew it well enough. But I’d still prove a poor proselytizer.
“Are you familiar with it?” Nevada asked.
“No.”
“Read it sometime. I’ve tried to measure up to its standard.”
“You’ve failed,” I said. “Miserably.”
“Yes. I failed. I’m not alone.”
Triage: A Thriller (Shell Series) Page 3
