by Laurel Dewey
Harlan stared into the air. “Rom—”
“What’s that?” Jane asked with irritation.
He turned to her. “The word starts with ‘R-O-M’ but it’s not Roma.”
Alex returned with the glass of water and quickly gave it to Harlan before retreating behind the counter. “You need to get outta here, Perry.”
“Give me a second,” she said, scanning the page on the computer. At the very bottom were two short paragraphs.
The gold symbolizes God while the maroon symbolizes imperial dignity. The club’s symbol is inspired by the myth of the creation of Rome. In that story, twin brothers, Romulus and Remus, are thrown into the River Tiber by their uncle. A she-wolf rescues the babies and suckles them, nurturing them as if they were her own.
As they grow into men, they take revenge on their uncle before Romulus kills his brother, Remus. Romulus goes on to become king of Rome—a city named in his honor.
Jane looked over at Harlan. She felt a surge of electricity bore through her before she even said the word. “Romulus?”
He quickly turned to Jane as if a light just went on in his brain. “That’s it! Yeah. That’s it!”
“Okay, you got what you needed,” Alex said, reaching out and slamming down the top of his computer. “Get outta here!”
Jane instructed Harlan to once again cover his head with the blanket. “Alex, even though you’re a son-of-a-bitch, you’ve been a lot of help.” She held out her hand to him.
He shook it warily, keeping one eye on Harlan the entire time. Leaning forward, he whispered in her ear. “Don’t die, Perry.”
“You’re just worried something’s going to happen to me and I won’t be able to make that phone call for your brother.”
“That’s what I meant,” he said, coolly eyeing Harlan across the room.
“For a second, I thought you were actually worried about me.”
Alex looked at her and for a moment, it was as if he wanted to rescue her. But then his need to protect himself took over and he nodded.
She walked with Harlan to the black curtain. “Give us five minutes and then you can turn the security cameras back on.”
Alex remained silent. But Jane detected a fear in his eyes that she couldn’t shake for nearly a half hour.
∆ ∆ ∆
Jane tore a blank page out of Harlan’s notebook and jotted down a note to remind her about following up with Alex’s brother. Harlan retreated to his hiding place on the backseat, under the blankets.
“So…how long you been off the bottle?” Harlan asked with shaded reluctance.
Fuck. Jane was not into dissecting her personal life with the few people she trusted, let alone someone she’d only known for twenty-four hours. “Going on sixteen months.”
He peeked out from the blanket. “You’re…pretty much…you know…over that problem?”
This was amusing. A guy accused of bashing in the head of a prostitute in a flop motel was uneasy about his rescuer’s former lifestyle. “Let’s just get it out in the open, okay? I was a drunk for a lot of years, since I was fourteen. As I got older, I couldn’t stop at just one. If I drink one beer, I’ll drink the bar. So, now I don’t drink anymore. Any more questions?”
He thought for a second. “You miss it?”
Jane wasn’t prepared for that question. “Yeah. Sometimes, I miss being able to disappear.” The minute she said it, she heard the irony. Somewhere around the debris field left by the Anubus explosion was her discarded driver’s license. She might not have had a drop to drink in more than a year but her addiction to running away was obviously still engaged.
“How come you want to disappear?”
Shit. If Jane sought out this line of questioning, she’d locate an A.A. meeting. She cleared her throat in an attempt to center herself. “Because it’s easier than the risk of getting too close. You get too close and—”
“You start to care,” Harlan said nonchalantly.
Jane silently agreed. “And then it ends.” She looked out the side window. “And the pain paralyzes you.”
He stared at her. “You really did get yourself hurt in this life, didn’t you?”
She looked in the rearview mirror at him. “I don’t know much else, Harlan.”
“What do you mean? Are you dying? Are you sick? Are you convicted of a felony?”
“No.”
“Then you’re gold, Jane. If I were you, I’d start livin’ and let yourself enjoy life. You never know when it’s really gonna hit the crapper. I’d pay somebody right now if they could make me feel happy again.”
She heard Harlan scrounging around. “What are you doing?”
“You got anything good to read around here?” he asked.
“I might have a few old newspapers or a magazine floating around somewhere.” Jane cruised down a back road, making sure to keep at or just under the speed limit.
“Where to next?”
“Gotta get some food for us and other stuff. I’m keeping my eye out for a motel.”
Harlan continued rooting around on the back floor for something to read. “I was doin’ my countin’ thing at Alex’s place. There were three chairs in the front room and five in the back room. All of them were brown except for two that were black and had torn seat cushions. And he had one hundred and twenty one of them tattoo cards on his wall—”
“One twenty one?” Jane eyed Harlan in the rearview mirror. “You sure?”
Harlan regarded her as if she were a bit stupid. “Yeah. Why?”
She thought back to the Anubus the previous morning. Bus 121. “That number mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Why?”
The coincidences were getting too close together. Jane grabbed a pen and scratched “121” down on a scrap of paper. “I don’t know. It’s all gotta mean something.”
“I had them nightmares again last night.”
“I know. I tried to wake you up but you were pretty much gone.” She almost mentioned the strange electrical pulse she felt when she touched him but decided against it. “You remember any of it?”
Harlan didn’t answer right away. “I know you don’t want to hear it but it’s not me in the dreams or the nightmares. It’s him.”
“And you know this how?”
“Like I told you, the one with the young kid in the meadow shootin’? That’s not me. I look down at my hands, and they don’t look like what mine did when I was that age. Same thing with the nightmare. I’m turnin’ that doorknob and it’s not my hand.”
“It’s a nightmare. A dream. Why don’t you tell yourself before you go to sleep that if you find yourself in that place again, to turn the knob and see what’s on the other side of the door? It’s called lucid dreaming—”
“No. You don’t understand, Jane. I can’t do that. Every time I touch that doorknob, I feel like every evil thing that ever existed in this world is movin’ around me and tryin’ to suck me into their darkness.” He turned on his side to get comfortable. “It’s his world, not mine.”
They drove another five miles in silence until Harlan spoke up.
“You got kids?”
“No.”
“Me neither. Not like the wife and I didn’t try. But it’s probably good it worked out that way, seein’ how it’s all turned out for me. You have a lot of friends, Jane?”
“No.”
“Me neither. I don’t understand a lot of people. I’ve tried but I just don’t get ‘em. That’s why I liked my truck job. I was my own man out there and it was good. How come you don’t have a ton of pals?”
“I don’t think most people are worth investing time in. I’m not interested getting drawn into other people’s dramas. I get enough of that on the job. Most people are only interested in getting what they need and so they use others to achieve that end.”
“I see.” Harlan thought about
it. “You got a husband?”
She came to a stop sign and rolled to a complete halt. “What do you think?”
He smiled. “Okay. You got a boyfriend?”
Jane hesitated and continued down the road. “I guess I do.” It still seemed new. “Yeah. I do. His name’s Hank. I think we’re on our two-week anniversary. A regular streak, eh?”
“Did you call him when I jacked your car?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I take care of my own shit. Besides, if I’d called him, I never would have found you and then what would you be doing right now?” She stole another look in the rear view mirror.
Harlan pondered. “That’s nice and all but don’t you think he’s worried about you?”
“He’s not worried. He knows I’m on a trip.”
“Humph. You sure are.” Harlan turned onto his back. “You think he can feel what you’re feelin’?”
She eyed Harlan carefully. “What do you mean?”
“When people are real close, I read once how they can melt and become like one person. They can feel each other’s fears and pains…even their thoughts.”
Jane’s mind drifted. She could count how many men she’d been with on one hand and have one finger free. While she shared an uncommon bond with one of them in her early twenties, it was a relationship bathed in drugs, booze and mutual incoherency. Being two souls who were independently drowning in their own tortured addictions, any chance of discovering a shared spiritual consciousness was not going to happen. But it was vastly different with Hank. Perhaps, Jane mused, that’s why it scared her so damn much. There was nothing surface to their connection. From the moment he met her, he dove into her head and somehow fished out her fears and then showed them to her in a forgiving light. He wasn’t afraid of her as so many others were. He had a knowing about her and she was beginning to allow herself to have the same for him. When Harlan asked her if she thought Hank could feel what was going on, she realized that on some level, he probably could. Without giving a second’s hesitation, Jane silently sent Hank a message that she was okay and not to worry. And then, not a second later, she felt a consuming sense of longing. She wanted to touch him and make sure he was still real. She was only temporarily “dead,” she told him with her mind’s eye and she would resurrect when it was safe.
“My wife and I never had that kind of bond,” Harlan continued. “I wish we had but she was a stranger to me most of our life together. She called me a stranger too when she found out what I did for her brother. I just can’t imagine what she’s thinkin’ now, with all that’s happened. One minute, I’m livin’ the dream in Limon, Colorado and the next, I’m livin’ in a nightmare.”
Jane came to a four-way stop. She could see a large thoroughfare two blocks ahead. It was a dicey move to navigate in public like this but they needed supplies. “Harlan, you gotta stay under the blankets. No matter what happens, do not sit up.”
She drove the two blocks and quickly found herself stuck in traffic that was funneling toward several banners and balloons hanging in the parking lot of a large strip mall. The muffled sound of someone talking on a megaphone could be heard coming from the parking lot, along with the strains of a rock band. This could work out fairly well, Jane figured, if she played it right. She headed into the crowded parking lot, swinging the Mustang away from the loud revelry and parked in a space between two large vans. A Kroger’s Market stood about one hundred feet away. Security cameras would be everywhere so she slid her ball cap on and tucked her brown hair up into the cap. A pair of sunglasses finished off the covert ensemble. “I mean it, Harlan. Don’t sit up—don’t even move. I’ll be back in fewer than ten minutes.”
Inside the large store, Jane nervously grabbed a small cart and swept up and down the aisles, grabbing bags of apples, bananas, mixed nuts, lunchmeat, French bread, a jar of mayonnaise, cheese and a few other food items. Along the way, she tossed two packages of a camping cutlery combo in the cart, a large bag of ice, and a medium sized cooler. In the refrigerated section, she remembered that Harlan mentioned favoring raw foods. She put two-dozen eggs in her cart and added a gallon of milk. It would all keep in a motel mini-fridge she factored. Swinging the cart quickly down the next aisle, Jane noticed shelves of hair dye. It could come in handy and she chose a box labeled “Cleopatra Black.” A few feet past that, was a wall of wigs meant more for a costume party than daily wear. Scanning the selections, Jane grabbed a short blond one called “The Diana.” Moving speedily around the store, she snatched up several packs of batteries, twelve bottles of water and more lunchmeat. The adage came to mind that shopping when you’re hungry is never a wise idea.
She started to head toward the checkout when she spied a display of prepaid cell phones. The “throwaway” phones were always used by perps who needed to communicate without being traced. Jane snatched up three of the cheapest models and three, one hundred minute pre-paid cards. She wound her cart around and took one more trip down the aisle. Her eye traveled to a long shelf of beer selections. It wasn’t the high-octane stuff since Colorado only allows supermarkets to sell 3.2 beer. But it was the perfect numbing amber Jane could easily score when she was underage and didn’t want to risk her father finding out that she’d been pilfering his whiskey. She checked the time. 11:00. It was closing in quickly on the ten-minute window she promised Harlan. Racing to the checkout line, Jane bided her time behind two customers who moved at the speed of chewing gum. The clock kept ticking and with each passing minute, her anxiety level went up another notch. She needed to get out of that store. Five long minutes later, she finally reached the cashier. With the phones, the total was almost three hundred dollars. Slapping the cash on the counter, she helped bag the groceries and powered her way back to the car.
The band was playing even louder in the adjacent parking lot. Jane could hear a man on a megaphone telling everybody about how “Weller” would be arriving any minute. Jane ignored the rest of the announcement as she opened her trunk and hurriedly tossed the groceries into cooler. Once back inside the car, her mind slightly calmed down. “I’m back and we’re going to have a good lunch,” she stated. There was no response. Jane spun around in her seat. Harlan was gone. The Q magazine she’d purchased the day before was splayed on the backseat.
Jane’s mouth went dry as her heart pounded. She tore out of the car and ran into the parking row, searching for Harlan the same way a terrified mother hysterically looks for her missing child. Jane couldn’t call out for him, knowing that would attract unwanted attention. After rotating in circles for nearly a minute, she stood perfectly still and felt into the moment. When all else failed—when logic and proof strayed from the scene—Jane could always rely on her gut and let it lead her in the right direction. The clamor of the crowd rose, with chants of “Weller, Weller, Weller!” It was counterintuitive for Harlan to purposely walk into a mass of people when all the eyes of law enforcement were in hot pursuit of him. It was even more counterintuitive for Jane to run at breakneck speed toward that crowd in search of her erratic travel companion. The closer she got, the more discordant the sounds grew. When she reached the periphery, she ducked behind a tall hedge and counted four television cameras, each perched on a tall pedestal at opposite corners of the staging area. The overflowing crowd numbered at least three hundred, some holding homemade signs that read: Re-Elect Weller 4 Congress! and Weller is the Woman 4 the Job! Every damn person there had a camera. This was insane, Jane told herself.
And then she saw him. There he was, standing in the middle of the crowd in a complete daze. But the crowd was so into their effusive cheers, they didn’t seem to notice the big guy with the weed whacker hair cut, wearing the inside out sweatshirt and looking like he was in suspended animation.
She had to get to him and she needed to do it as gently as possible. Moving through the eager crowd, Jane got within twenty feet of Harlan before the guy on stage with the megaphone screamed louder and the band swel
led into an introductory riff.
“Okay, everyone!” he yelled above the din of drums and guitars. “I want you to put your hands together for the woman who makes sure your voice gets heard in Washington D.C.! Congresswoman Dora Weller!”
The crowd cheered, raising their signs and banners into the air. Jane glanced to the stage and watched the petite Congresswoman with blond hair and a conservative pink dress suit walk up to the microphone. It was the perfect distraction that would allow Jane to reach Harlan and lead him back to the car. But when she took a few steps further and got a bead on him, she stopped. He seemed to quickly come out of his daze and putting his hand to the back of his neck, he rubbed the irritated area he’d pointed out to Jane the day before. He then slid his hand to his ear, touching his lobe as if he had a remote earpiece attached. The crush of bodies grew in intensity as Weller waved to the crowd. Jane kept her eyes firmly on Harlan. Suddenly, he took his hand away from his ear, stared straight at the stage and then, inexplicably, turned his head all the way around to the right.
It was mere seconds before the single shot rang out.
CHAPTER 8
The crack of rifle fire blistered the late morning air. Screams erupted from the crowd as people ran in every direction to get away and take cover. Jane pushed her way into the crowd toward Harlan. He was standing there, staring at the stage, in a dissociative trance. Jane glanced quickly at the front area. It wasn’t clear whether the bullet hit Dora Weller but swarms of security surrounded her and the stage. Jane grabbed Harlan by his massive arm and dragged him toward the car. But at one point while he was still in the crowd he stopped and turned back to the stage.
“Hey!” Jane screamed in his direction.
Harlan responded with a nod and trailed her back to the Mustang. Jane’s agitation rose with each step. She’d occasionally turn around and angrily usher him forward. Once back at the car and safely hidden between the two large vans, Jane waited for Harlan to catch up. “What part of ‘stay in the fucking car’ do you not understand?” Jane seethed in a low voice. “What in the hell is wrong with you?! Are you trying to get caught?”
