Never Go Home

by L. T. Ryan

  Marcia’s hands went out and she shook her head side to side. I think she might have said, “No, no, no,” but I can’t be sure.

  Something smashed against the back of my head. I fell forward, catching the side of my face against Marcia’s table, inches from the dead bodyguard’s blood. Might have slid into it. Maybe not. Hard to tell, because that was about the time that I blacked out.

  Chapter 3

  Bright red.

  That was what I saw, even though my eyes were closed. I heard voices around me. They were muffled and deep. My face felt hot. My body felt detached. It was almost like I’d spent a day buried up to my neck in sand at the beach.

  I forced my eyes open. A bright light hovered above me. I brought my hand to my face. Metal joints creaked. The light swung away. It cast its insidious glare toward the corner of the room. The retinal burn faded, bright to dark to faint then gone. I looked around the room. There was a woman standing next to the bed. I recognized her.

  “Jesus, are you OK, Jack?” Sasha asked.

  I nodded. My neck felt stiff. “Yeah, I’m all right.”

  “What the hell happened in there?”

  Glimpses of the attempt on Marcia’s life played in my mind.

  “I’m not quite sure.” Slipping my hand between my head and the pillow, I massaged the base of my skull and glanced around. It wasn’t a normal hospital room. “Where am I?”

  “Where do you think?”

  “I wouldn’t ask if I had a clue.”

  “You’re in the basement of my facility. One of our guys, you know, the ones you sent away, he heard gunshots. By the time he got to the cafe, you were face down in a pool of someone else’s blood. We found multiple others on the floor.”

  “Not all of them were my fault.”

  “The people in the cafe told us that you took two of them out, but one of them had taken out the dead guy on the table.”

  “And the guard who stood in the middle of the restaurant.”

  “And another guard at the table is paralyzed from the waist down.”

  “And some innocent guy got battered by the front door.”

  She nodded.

  “And Marcia Stanton?” I asked.

  “She’s fine. We got her out along with the member of her security detail that took you out. In all, she left behind one dead guard and the blood of two others. I hope, at least. Both men that were shot are in critical condition at this time.”

  I checked my facts against hers in my head. She sounded like she had a pretty good idea of what happened. Guess she figured I could fill in some holes.

  I shook my head. “So she made it through unscathed.”

  Sasha nodded.

  “And it was one of her guys that took me out?”

  She nodded.

  I reached for a glass of water perched on the nightstand next to the bed. It had red lipstick on the rim. I spun it around and took a sip. “And what about the two I neutralized?”

  She said, “What about them?”

  I said, “You didn’t let them go, did you?”

  She said, “We’ve got them in custody. Thank you for confirming that you’re responsible for them.”

  I nodded. “They came out of nowhere. I took the guy out first, Dimples second.”

  “Dimples?”

  “She had dimples. They stood out.”

  Sasha said nothing.

  “You didn’t notify anyone, did you?”

  “Who would I notify?”

  “You know who.”

  “No, I didn’t tell Erin.” She looked away. Bringing up Erin around the woman always produced this result.

  When I had agreed to remain in London and help Sasha, she had asked me to leave Erin with the impression that I had left the country. I didn’t. Even though things had long since quieted between Erin and me, she was the mother of my child. A child I hadn’t known about until recently. My time away from the job was spent with Mia, and in turn, Erin.

  “It’s best that you didn’t,” I said. “I don’t want to worry Mia.”

  “And Erin.”

  “You sound jealous.”

  “Maybe I am.” She could have burned me with her stare.

  I smiled. She looked away.

  “You feel well enough to get dressed?” she said.

  “Bit of a headache, but I’ll manage,” I said.

  “OK. There’s a shower in the bathroom. Get yourself cleaned up, changed, and then come up to my office.”

  I watched Sasha walk away. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail. It swung to the side. Every step revealed a bit of her neck. She exited into the hallway and pulled the door shut.

  I swung my feet over the bed and stood. My head spun. Perhaps I had risen too fast. The edge of my vision darkened for a second or two. A hand on the bed steadied my body. The sensation passed. I breathed in through my nose, held it, and exhaled through my mouth.

  “OK,” I said. “That was fun.”

  I stepped into the bathroom. A folded towel, washcloth, and unopened bar of soap waited for me on the toilet seat. I reached past the thin shower curtain and turned the shower faucet. Ice-cold water dribbled from the shower head. It’d warm up, I supposed.

  I looked at my reflection in the mirror that hung over the sink. Blood caked my forehead. I parted my hair in a dozen spots but found no wound. I recalled the pool of blood on the table in the cafe. It had spread. Or I had moved. Same result either way.

  My fingertips skated along my scalp. They met in the back. There I felt a line of stitches. Twelve by my count. They hadn’t bandaged the wound, so I figured it wasn’t too bad.

  My headache dissipated. The blow had rendered me unconscious, but I didn’t feel too many aftereffects. That didn’t mean a concussion didn’t exist. I had a feeling that Sasha would insist I stay in the infirmary all night. It was that or the city hospital. At least the building offered safety.

  The mirror fogged up. I wiped it with my palm, leaving behind thin streaks of condensation. The gaps filled back in.

  I stepped into the shower. Red-tinted water pooled below my feet. My blood or someone else’s? Ignoring it, I washed my body three times just to make sure I’d removed it all. The minutes passed and the water turned clear.

  I cut the faucet off, dried myself and went back into the room. Sasha had left a change of clothes for me. She’d set my wallet and cell phone next to them. I put on the khaki pants and an off-white polo. They fit just right. Had she been creeping around my closet? I grabbed my cell and the wallet, inspected both, and stuffed them in opposite front pockets.

  My shoes must’ve taken a beating in the cafe, because she’d left a new pair for me. Brown, leather, steel toed and hard soled. Another perfect fit.

  I grabbed the glass of water she’d left behind. The condensation on the outside of the cup felt cold against the skin of my palm, which was still hot from the shower. I emptied the glass, sat it down, walked to the door, and stepped out of the room. My head started to spin again. I stopped, placed my hand on the wall, waited for it to pass.

  It didn’t take long, and it wasn’t as bad as the first spell.

  A nurse witnessed the event. “You OK?”

  I nodded. “I’m fine.”

  She said, “Positive?”

  I closed my eyes, dropped my head back, turned my palms up and walked on a line. “Would I be able to do this if I was lying?”

  “You better come back down here after you’re done with your meeting.”

  I got the distinct feeling that Sasha had to override the nurse to get me out of the room. I resumed walking like a normal person.

  She shook her head.

  I nodded and smiled as I passed her.

  She said, “I’m serious, Jack.”

  This was the second time she had treated me. Last time had been off-site. I felt bad that I couldn’t remember her name. I glanced toward the tag on her lapel, but she’d already turned back to her paperwork.

  “I know you are,”
I said. “That’s why I always refer to you as Nurse Serious. Best of the bunch.”

  “Get out of here,” she said, laughing.

  I stopped in front of the elevator. There were no buttons, only a card reader. I retrieved my wallet and found my access card inside. I waved it in front of the device on the wall. The steel doors parted and I stepped inside the mirrored lift.

  Sasha’s office was on the top. That correlated to the button labeled four on the elevator’s panel. I pressed it. The doors shut. The elevator dropped a foot, then darted upward. It took a second for my stomach to catch up. I braced myself for another dizzy spell, but it didn’t happen.

  The lift came to a stop. The door didn’t open. They wouldn’t on their own. Sasha worked on a restricted access floor. I still held my access card in my hand. I swiped it through the reader above the buttons. A light switched from red to green. The doors opened. A guard straightened up. He placed his hand on his sidearm and stared me down.

  I walked toward him. “At ease, mate.”

  He rolled his eyes at me. I never tired of it. They did.

  He reached across his body and pressed a button. The double doors in front of me clicked and hissed. I reached out, turned the handle on the right and pushed the door open.

  This section of the building was gray. No other way to put it. Gray floors, gray cubicles, gray doors on the offices. Even the windows were covered with gray blinds. Half the people looked gray. Not their hair, their skin. Perhaps someone that paid too much money for the work they did figured the dodgy look of the floor made the workers more productive.

  It depressed the hell out of me, and I’d only been inside a few seconds.

  I glanced into the cubicles as I passed. Most occupants ignored me. The ones that didn’t glared at me. They all did anything but work. I saw Facebook, Twitter, and a couple rounds of solitaire being played.

  So much for the productivity theory.

  A guard was positioned at the end of the cubicle-lined corridor. He stared me down. I looked anywhere but at him.

  “You’re supposed to have your ID clipped where I can see it,” he said.

  I ignored him.

  “You there,” he said. “You hear me?”

  I glanced at him, nodded and angled my body in advance of turning to the right at the last cubicle in the line.

  “I need to see your ID,” he said.

  I fished out my wallet and produced my identification card.

  “Thank you.”

  “I wouldn’t be in here if I didn’t have it, you know.”

  “I know,” he said.

  Asshole.

  I continued on until I reached Sasha’s office. The gray door was closed. I knocked three times.

  “Come in,” she said.

  I opened the door, and said, “Give a guy a badge and a gun and all of a sudden he’s…” My words tapered off. I hadn’t counted on another person being in the room.

  Chapter 4

  Sasha and another woman sat in chairs positioned in front of Sasha’s bare desk. The view behind her empty high-back leather chair was of the Thames. Dark clouds gathered in the distance. The other woman faced the window.

  “Jack,” Sasha said. “You met Marcia Stanton earlier.”

  Marcia turned toward me. She smiled. She could have been a toothpaste model.

  “Yes,” I said. “We had a cup of coffee together.”

  “Right,” Sasha said. “Forgive him,” she added. “He’s American.”

  The way she said it made me feel like I should apologize. Fortunately, that sensation passed quickly. I grabbed the empty chair and placed it three feet between and in front of the women. We formed a triangle.

  “What’s this about?” I asked.

  “I wanted to thank you,” Marcia said.

  “Just doing my job,” I said.

  “You’re too gracious,” she said.

  “Jack’s one of the best operators I’ve ever met,” Sasha said.

  “I believe it,” Marcia said. “I’ve never seen someone act so decisively.”

  “I froze,” I said. “And while I enjoy having my horn tooted by two attractive women as much as the next guy, I can also tell when I’m being buttered up for something. So cut the crap and tell me what’s going on.”

  The women looked at each other for a moment, then turned toward me.

  Sasha said, “Marcia feels that—”

  “Allow me,” Marcia interrupted. “Mr. Noble—”

  I held my hand up and looked at Sasha. “You told her my name?”

  “It’s OK, Jack. She checks out.”

  I shook my head. “Anyway, continue.”

  Marcia glanced toward Sasha, then back at me. She smiled. It wasn’t the winning grin she had displayed a few minutes ago. The woman felt nervous now.

  “I’m going to assume you know my story. Most of it, at least. What you don’t know, Sasha will fill you in on after I’ve left.” She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward. “I’ve pissed off a lot of people, Jack. Some of those people want me dead, as you are well aware. They are getting closer and closer to being successful. My concern grows larger day after day. I go to sleep wondering if I’ll wake up. I wake up wondering if I’ll live to go to sleep. I’m not sure how I even survived that scenario today.”

  “Neither am I,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “You go have coffee at the same place every day this week.”

  “I’m trying to reach out and become a part of this community so I can win the election.”

  “You hire amateurs for your security detail.”

  She straightened up and crossed her wrists at her waist. “They came highly recommended. I was told they were the best in the business.”

  “Then you were duped. Those two guys out in front of the cafe, they were goons, Marcia. They harassed old ladies, for Christ’s sake. You got a guy that gets up and goes to the bathroom. Another leaves the table and bullies a man who was already shaken by the thugs out front. That leaves you with two bodyguards, and that’s after two-thirds of the staff behind the counter disappears. Frankly, Marcia, I’m not sure how either of us is alive right now.”

  The woman said nothing. An awkward silence ensued. Sasha tried to break it.

  “What Jack is trying to say is—”

  “There’s no trying. I said what needed to be said. And I’m going to add to it. You’re stupid for following through with this whole election. You’re going to end up dead. Maybe not this week, or the next. Hell, you might make it to and through the election. You might even make it through a term or two. But the longer you’re in, unless you go the way of most other politicians, you’re going to keep pissing off the wrong people and one day it’s going to come back to bite you on the ass.”

  Marcia narrowed her eyes. Her hands rose into the air and became animated. “I know the dangers. I saw what happened to the Prime Minister.”

  I glanced at Sasha. “She doesn’t know?”

  Sasha shook her head.

  A few months prior there had been an incident that brought Sasha, Prime Minister Alex Parkin, and me together. In order to save the man’s life, I had to shoot him in the shoulder. It worked out in the end. I didn’t go to prison. We caught the bad guy, the bad girl, and Parkin became a hero.

  “He’s lucky he’s not dead,” I said. “Anyway, did you really bring me in here to talk about Alex Parkin?”

  “I’ll get right to it, Jack. I know my security has been bad.”

  “I exaggerated,” I said.

  “No, you didn’t. I need the best.” She glanced at Sasha, then back at me. “That’s why I want to hire you.”

  “What?” I looked at Sasha. She shrugged.

  “Money is not an object,” Marcia said. “You can name your price. I can provide every resource you need. If you want to bring in your own men, I can accommodate that.”

  I leaned back in my chair and crossed my left leg over my right knee. Marcia’s sta
re never left mine. She looked serious, and perhaps scared. The attempt today had left her shaken. Understandable, I thought. She sat motionless. It was up to me to respond. She was not going to break the silence.

  “Listen, I’m not sure what Sasha told you, or what your people might have said about me, but I’m not in the body guarding business. It works against my natural instincts.”

  “I saw you in the cafe. You knew the two people behind the counter didn’t belong there.”

  “No,” I said. “I knew the girl didn’t, but then I figured the skinny kid was the plant. You know what happened to him? He ended up wetting himself on the floor. I was just as wrong as the men you hired.”

  Marcia said nothing. She leveled me with her dark eyes. Half of me said to take the job. The other half said to run away.

  “Sasha, tell her I’m not the right guy for this.”

  Sasha put her hands in the air. “I don’t want to lose you, Jack, not for any amount of time. But if you agree, I have no qualms about you going. I don’t want to see anything happen to Marcia.”

  “Thanks, Sasha.” I shook my head.

  “Four weeks, a million dollars U.S.”

  “What?” I said.

  “One point five,” Marcia said.

  I rose and walked past the women. The storm clouds to the north had thickened in the short time I’d been in the office.

  “Two million dollars, Mr. Noble.”

  “You could buy a full team of pros for a quarter of that.” I turned to face her. “I’ll give you the number of a guy. He’ll have four men here by midnight. They’re specialists. They can keep you safer than I can.”

  “I don’t want them,” Marcia said. “I want you.”

  “This is crazy. I’m not a bodyguard.”

  “I’m not leaving this office until you say yes.”

  “Hope you brought a change of clothes then.” My cell buzzed against my thigh. I held my finger out as I reached for it. “Hold on.” I glanced at the screen. “I’ve got to take this.”

  Sasha glanced over at me. “Erin?”

  “No, someone from the States.” I walked past them, turned when I got to the door. “Let it go, Sasha.”