by Kit Frazier
My breath choked in my throat and I nodded.”
As he lay there, the life drifting from his body, his gaze stayed locked on Faith. He looked different—somehow younger—the way he’d looked in that old archive photo I’d found.
I had seen death before.
Some people say you get used to it. I don’t think I ever will.
Logan pressed his fingers to Puck’s neck, checking for a pulse. With a pained expression, Logan laid him over on his stomach, and in a flash, he went to one knee, tending to the wounded marshal.
I lurched to my feet, wobbling unsteadily on my heels, the red shoes now garish and out of place in this scene of bloodied bodies.
The doors to the courthouse flew open, and a dozen uniforms burst out. And there was Cantu.
His eyes met mine and he stopped, his gaze raking my body. I realized he was looking for bullet wounds.
I shook my head. “Go!” I shouted.
He nodded. Switching gears, he shouted something into his cell phone and moved down to Logan and the marshal. Cantu yanked off his jacket and bundled it under the marshal’s head.
Sirens blared above the bedlam, and suddenly the steps were crawling with cops and paramedics.
Two of the medics stopped, giving Puck the once-over. Their eyes met over Puck’s body, sending some sort of unspoken message to each other nothing we can do here and together they moved on to the wounded officer.
I wondered if this was what war looked like.
The paramedics flanked Logan, taking over on the wounded marshal, and Logan stood and looked down at Puck.
There was something in his dark eyes—grief and something else.
And then he looked at Faith, who was still standing there, staring at her brother’s lifeless body. Her stepbrother and the suits had ducked for cover and were now chatting warp speed on cell phones.
And then Logan turned to the two bloody bodies of the men he had just killed.
His face was still, his eyes hard. In that flicker of a moment, I wondered just how many men Logan had killed.
I decided then and there I would never ask him.
Unsteadily, I tottered down the steps and stopped abruptly. Pain, sharp and bright, shot from my ankle to my knee. Looking down at my shoes, I realized I’d broken a heel and twisted my ankle. I limped over to Logan and Cantu as the paramedics worked on the downed officer. We looked at each other, the three of us. No one said a word.
And then I looked more closely at Logan, and my heart stopped. “Logan,” I whispered. Visions of the day my father died whirled in my head.
Cantu frowned at me, and then followed my gaze.
The world swooped beneath me as Cantu grabbed Logan’s sleeve and ripped. The white shirt beneath Logan’s jacket was soaked in blood
“He’s been hit!” I said aloud to no one. “Logan’s been shot!”
Even as I managed the words, a female deputy had me by the elbow, leading me out of the chaos. “Where’s Mia? We need another ambulance!” I yelled. “Logan’s been shot!”
Chapter Eleven
“It’s only a flesh wound,” Logan said, referring to the bandage around his upper right arm.
“Oh. Well. That makes me feel so much better,” I said, still buzzing with fear and something that felt like a lingering, high-voltage shock. “Logan, you were shot.”
“At least it was my right arm,” he said, shrugging his left shoulder. “Still got my shooting arm.”
I wanted to smack him.
He was sitting in an exam room at St. David’s Hospital, his shirt stained with blood, his arm in a sling. He was waiting to be discharged, acting like it was just another day at the office. For him, it probably was.
I wondered if this was how Mama felt when Daddy was on the job. I also wondered if this was how she felt about me now.
My mother had obviously seen the news and jammed my voice mail with 13,000 frantic phone calls, wondering where I was, who got shot, and how it was going to affect my love life.
When I finally got to a place and a state of mind where I could call her, she agreed to limit the phone calls for the rest of the day if I would come home for dinner. I’d get dessert if I brought Logan. Judging by the way things were going, I could kiss that banana pudding goodbye.
*
I’d been treated for some scratches, a big gash on my knee that would eventually be a beastly scar, and a nasty twisted ankle, and told that I’d probably have some hellacious bruises in the morning. In the middle of the mayhem, I hadn’t realized I’d been hurt.
From the ambulance, I texted Rob Ryder, assistant editor at the City Desk, the facts as I knew them and a description of what happened live on the scene. Ryder would clean it up and post it to the web. There’s a real adrenaline rush that comes with news on demand, but it loses something, too. Today, I felt like it’d lost a lot.
Even with my own minor flesh wounds, none of what happened seemed real. I kept thinking I’d wake up and it would all be a nightmare. It was like tumbling back in time to that day my father died the day he was shot in the back by a man who’d simply looked at me and grinned, then slipped into the shadowy night. And now, it’d happened again.
The techs let Mia go at the scene, and she zapped the pictures up on the web.
I wound up alone in triage, waiting for a shot of antibiotics and feeling numb.
*
Logan had been shot. Puck was dead. One of the marshals who’d been escorting him into the courthouse was in critical condition. The adrenaline that pumped through my system ebbed, and I felt cold and tired.
And I was going to be sick. Again.
I kept seeing the look on Puck’s face that silent shock, that look of surprise, and then blood, the heartbroken look in Faith’s eyes.
And the blood. So much blood.
I shook my head, trying to dislodge the image from my frontal lobe. But I just kept staring at the dressing on Logan’s arm.
I swallowed at the lump in my throat. “I know this is probably no big deal for you, but I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“I know,” he said quietly.
We both stared at the floor, not knowing what to say. “Did they ID the shooters?” I asked.
Logan nodded. “A couple of wannabe gangbangers, probably on contract, wanting to impress El Patron in the restructure.”
I nodded, looking out the small window into the hall. The feds had taken the hospital full force, circling the wagons in the waiting room, ears glued to cell phones, faces set in grim resolve.
“So what happens now?” I said, and Logan shook his head. “Too early to tell.”
“And Puck?”
A darkness I hadn’t seen before passed over his face, and I had to stifle the urge to take a step back. Logan was quiet.
I took a deep breath. “Logan, there wasn’t anything you could do,” I began, and he shook his head. This was a wound that no kind words or kisses would ever soothe.
It was a guilt that I could never fathom. It was something encoded in his DNA, like his tall frame, dark eyes, and dark hair.
He moved toward the window, staring out at something I couldn’t see.
“Where’s the sister,” he said, and I blinked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since the courthouse. ‘
“Logan!” A woman in a suit with short, dark hair and no makeup stuck her head in the door. “Logan, there’s a fire.”
She stood staring at him, face grim. “And Logan, Selena Obregon and her marshal escort are missing.”
A cold chill rushed from my stomach to my throat.
Logan grabbed his jacket. His gaze locked on mine. “You going to be okay?”
I blinked. “Yes, I ‘
He nodded. “I need a favor.”
“Yeah, okay ” I stuttered, not quite believing he was leaving.
Stifling the blood running from his bandage, he said, “Find Faith.”
“Are you leaving again?”
�
��Most likely,” he said.
“Seems to be a pattern,” I said. “No one knows where you’re going or when you’ll be back?”
“Part of the job.”
“Seems like a system that could be subject to abuse.”
He smiled at me then, and stepped close to me in a move that sucked all the oxygen out of the room.
And then he kissed me.
Warm and soft, and then hard and urgent.
He pulled back, his dark eyes searching mine. “I’ll be back, kid,” he said, and then he was gone.
I stood there feeling thoroughly kissed and in a state of shock. Puck was dead. Logan had been shot. Selena was in the wind. I stared at the sterile, empty room and wondered what in the hell had just happened.
Selena had escaped. I couldn’t calm the fear of finding her in my closet, beautiful, blond, and brandishing a knife. I had to move or go crazy, so I started walking.
I found Faith huddled in the far corner of the waiting room, staring out of a window that looked out over a big black dumpster in the parking lot. The dumpster was overflowing with something green and oozing ick, and I got the sinking feeling that might be the way this thing was heading.
“Faith?” I said, feeling awkward, searching for words. “Are you all right?”
It’s a stupid question—of course she wasn’t okay.
She didn’t look at me. She stared out the window, unseeing, her eyes dry and wide, her lips pale. Of course she wasn’t all right. Her brother was shot to death right in front of her. I felt like I’d just stepped in the ooze.
She had more bald patches on her head, two of them were raw. There was a spray of elliptical blood spatter along the front of white placard of her dress.
I was pretty sure it wasn’t hers.
I sat down beside her and looked out the window, not sure what to say.
“You want to talk?” I said, and she drew back, eyes going even wider.
She was about ten years younger than me, but she seemed so small, like a little girl.
I blew out a breath. “I’m not going to say I know how you feel because I don’t,” I said carefully. “But I will tell you that I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, right.” She looked up at me. “You ever lose somebody?”
“Yes,” I said quietly. “My father. A long time ago.”
Her eyes went cold. “Yeah, but he didn’t get shot in front of you.”
“Actually,” I said. “He did get shot in front of me. He was a policeman.”
Faith sat, listening, so I swallowed the big lump that always clogs my throat when I think of my dad—and his death—and for Faith’s sake, I went on.
“I was a little girl, and he was home for the evening. My mother sent him out for milk. It was way after my bedtime, but I begged and pleaded and was a general pain in the ass until he agreed to take me with him. I stayed in the car while he ran into the store.”
Faith was staring at me. “What happened?”
“He took me.”
She waited.
I gathered my breath and said, “He walked in on a robbery. Daddy took the guy down and cuffed him. ‘He was a hero.’
Faith eyed me carefully—she knew it wasn’t the end of the story. “But?”
I sighed,
“There was a second guy hiding in the beer cooler.”
It was fifteen years ago, but I still felt the pain, sharp and bright.
Faith scooted closer to me. “How did you know?” she said. “About the other guy?”
“Because he shot my dad in the back of the head while Daddy was securing the building.”
“You saw it?” she asked, and I nodded.
She stared out the window, quiet for a long time. She swallowed hard. “You still miss him?”
“Every day.”
Faith thought about that and was quiet.
She shook her patchy head and whispered, “I don’t know what to do.”
I took in some air. “You don’t have to do anything right now,” I said. “You just breathe in and breathe out. The rest comes when it comes.”
Her voice caught, and for a moment I thought she might cry. “I feel like shit.”
“I know,” I said. “Is there someone you can talk to? Anyone I can call for you?”
She shook her head. “My brother is all I had in the whole world.”
She was sitting right in front of me and I watched as life as she knew it was fell in ruins around her.
And there was nothing I could do about it.
I reached over and took her hand, and then it came to me. Not a solution, but the first step on what was going to be a long and treacherous road for her.
“Faith, have you eaten anything today?” She stared at me.
“That’s what I thought.” I fished my cell out of my purse and hit the speed dial.
I couldn’t solve her problems, but I could get her dinner.
“Mama?” I said into the phone. “Can you set another place for dinner?”
Chapter Twelve
Christian Morgenstern once said that home isn’t where you live, but where they understand you. I’d never been foolhardy enough to believe my mother understood me, but she was eccentric enough that she rarely went judgmental on anyone but me.
I wanted to get word to my wear-pearls-to-breakfast mother about Faith, about what happened, the girl’s unusual appearance before Mama gaped or gasped or otherwise made things worse than they already were.
I was running on pure adrenaline I’d hit that point where I was so tired and keyed up that I wouldn’t have been able to sleep if I’d mainlined a truckload of Ambien.
Faith barely spoke as I took her to my house, changed clothes, and loaded Marlowe into the Jeep to go to my mother’s.
Faith refused to change clothes, and it had been a trial to get her wedged back into the Jeep.
Her face was still expressionless, and she still hadn’t cried. Her only comments on the entire trip were that no, she didn’t want to talk, and that she didn’t like dogs—that last comment was a response to Marlowe snuffling the patchy hair at the base of her neck.
I eyed her in my peripheral vision.
What kind of a person didn’t like dogs? Her brother, for starters, but I wasn’t sure what to say, so I heeded the angels of my better nature for a change and didn’t say anything.
Despite Faith’s hard-core appearance, Mama would know what to do. I was sure of it. I kept sneaking looks at the girl all the way down the winding, arbor-oaked path of Pedernales Trail. Faith stared straight out the windshield, not moving, not speaking, not crying.
Just sitting there in her blood-spattered dress.
Despite Faith’s declaration of dislike for all things canine, Marlowe kept sticking his nose between the front seats, nuzzling Faith behind the ear.
Trying to win converts is never an easy thing, but Marlowe was not a quitter.
I glanced down at my watch.
Ten more minutes to Mama’s house.
But it wasn’t the mile markers on the road that told me I was getting close to home, it was more like the prehensile umbilical cord with a quick-action spring.
Not to mention the pine-fresh scent of Lysol drifting over a two-mile area. My mother announces her presence with cleaning products like other people whip out business cards.
“This is it,” I said to Faith as we turned into the driveway. Faith seemed to barely register the rambling white Victorian where I grew up.
The house had wide, Windex-clean windows accented with fluffy green ferns. I pulled past the big wraparound porch, turned the key, and leapt out of the driver’s seat while the engine rattled to a halt. “Just come on in.”
Marlowe did his speed-of-lightning thing, bounding out of the Jeep ahead of me.
Marlowe squeezed between me and the doorjamb and galloped into the kitchen ahead of me, nails scrabbling along the hardwood, a giant streak of silver and white, warbling at the top of his lungs.
Despite everything, I su
pposed it was a good day to be a dog.
Mama already had Marlowe’s bowl brimming with his favorite doggy dinner. After enthusiastic greetings were exchanged between the two, he circled his bowl, dropped beside it, and began wolfing down chow, tail wagging like a metronome.
I slid in seconds behind the dog, trying to ward off the inevitable confrontation of the fright that was Faith. But Mama took one look at me and dropped the wet dishtowel she’d been using to wipe Marlowe spit. She sailed toward me, a woman on a mission.
“Good gawd, Cauley, what have you done to yourself?”
“Mama,” I said, catching my breath. “We’re all right.”
I must have looked a fright, too.
She proffered an elegant snort. “You don’t look all right,” she fussed, patting me down for open flesh wounds, broken bones, and hang nails. “Do you have any idea how worried we’ve been? You’re giving me gray hair!”
“Mama, we’re southern. We don’t get grayer, we get blonder.”
“Ahh!” she said, making the little puff of breath she always made, sounding exactly like someone stepped on her foot. “Let me look at you.”
She pulled one of my eyelids open and put her forehead to mine for a closer look. “Good gawd, your pupils are dilated! Clairee!” she shouted, right in my ear. “Get me the VapoRub!”
Throughout my life, my mother put VapoRub on a wide variety of infirmities, from the episodic to epileptic fits. While I had never been stricken with either malady, Mama insists it was the mentholated wonder salve that warded off trouble.
“You better save the VapoRub,” I said, thinking of Faith. “You’re about to need all of it you can get.”
“Don’t be smart with me,” Mama said, sweeping the damp dishtowel from the floor, and I said, “I wouldn’t dare.”
The screen door banged again, and in trudged Faith, all patchy haired and pink scalped, piercings and tattoos on every visible surface, and with blood spatter down the front of her dress. Mama dropped her dishtowel.
Abruptly, Mama jerked to a stop like someone punched her in the stomach.
Too late for a warning. Mama stood for just a moment, looking at Faith.
We held our collectives breaths
I stood, waiting for the other Ferragamo to drop.
Mama stood speechless but I could practically hear the gears churning in her pretty platinum head screaming “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!””
