Under the Bones

by Kory M. Shrum

  There was still so much to tell her. About Lucy. About their plans for Lou once Lucy was gone. Things that he and Lucy had discussed about her future.

  But she didn’t wait for him. She’d already disappeared through the shadow of his large armoire, leaving him alone in his apartment with his pile of paperwork.

  “Next time then,” he said to the darkness.

  If they had a next time.

  11

  Konstantine woke to full darkness, heart hammering. He sat up, looking around the unfamiliar apartment. Then he saw the purple sofa, two feminine throw pillows tucked into each corner. Lights from the river dancing across the brick walls. No. That was the pool. Steam rose into the chilled night. Lights shimmered beneath its surface, casting a glow against the No Lifeguard on Duty sign fixed to the surrounding gate.

  A luxurious studio with a heated pool. Wasn’t she living the life?

  But the apartment itself sat dark.

  He rolled out of the bed. Or he tried. Every muscle in his body groaned. His stitched up bullet wounds, yes. But also the muscles that had been tenderized by Italian leather boots.

  He placed his feet on the cold wooden floor and hissed.

  He ran a hand over his chest, as if to reassure himself that it was intact. Then with much effort, he pulled himself to standing. Bones creaked. Tendons popped. He was that man from the children’s story, who’d fallen asleep beneath a tree and woke a hundred years later. Or at least he felt as if he’d aged a hundred years in one night.

  He turned on a lamp, pulling the metal cord hanging from the bulb beneath the shade. He stood there, listening to the night bustle around him. One of the windows was open, and a light breeze blew through, rattling the horizontal slats.

  The air licked the feverish sweat from his skin. The moonlit sheets fluttered. Outside, a train whistled and huge iron wheels screeched against their rails. Horns blared even at this hour.

  It was as loud as his Florentine apartment. Even the river seemed the same, the water’s surface shimmering with collected moonbeams.

  His .357 sat on the glass coffee table.

  He lifted it from the glass top, inspected it, and found it to be loaded.

  Beside it, another present. A brown bag held a burger and fries, the paper so soaked with grease that it sagged from the weight of the burger. Cheap American food. Back home, under no circumstances would he ever eat such garbage. But he was far from home and his stomach grumbled the moment he peeled back the plastic wrapping and the scent of cooked meat struck him.

  Yet he ate it with relish, sucking the salt off his fingers the way a marooned man sucks water from the stream. He would’ve eaten two more burgers and another five fistfuls of fries had they been in the bag.

  His hunger sated for now, only his curiosity remained. He opened the closet closest to the couch but found it empty. Three bare walls no wider than the door itself, and a carefully swept square of wooden floor serving as its bottom. He scraped at the notches in the wall with his bloody nails, noting the places where shelves had once been.

  No light above, only smooth plaster.

  He closed the door, releasing its brassy handle.

  He found the two safes behind the paintings and could guess at their contents. All manner of destruction no doubt. Perhaps cash. He didn’t think passports or documentation would be in there. After all, hadn’t he searched for such items himself and come up short?

  She was a ghost in the modern world, no license. No credit history.

  Not counting the brief blip in the news which had surfaced when her father’s story surged to the surface again in June, there’d been no mention of her. The news hadn’t even had a recent picture. They’d relied on one over a decade old.

  Reporters no doubt wanted to interview the daughter of a man who’d been exonerated of treason fourteen years after his death. Her interview would have been prime time. Her account of surviving the murder, only to have her father slandered after—living with that cruelty all those years. The American public loved emotional drama. They would have sopped hers up like a biscuit through gravy on a dinner plate.

  If Lou had been an emotional woman.

  And if her privacy had been threatened by the reemerging interest in an old story, he supposed he’d have himself to blame. Hadn’t he fed the evidence himself to the public? He’d provided the clips and conversations between Jack’s partner Brasso and Senator Ryanson. Proof of the money that had changed hands. Photos of their conversations. Counterbait that had perhaps deterred the press from looking too hard at a fallen hero’s daughter.

  For now.

  The manhunt for both Ryanson and Brasso went national. And of course, the press only amplified when neither could be found. That had been Lou’s doing—no doubt she disposed of the bodies in that untraceable way of hers. A secret she kept close to her Kevlar vest.

  He’d almost seen that dumping ground himself.

  He touched the notch under his chin, the place where she’d pressed her gun.

  I’m not your enemy, he’d said. I believe we are drawn together for a reason. You came to me when you were dreaming. Did you dream of killing me?

  He’d been trying to reason with her as her gun had remained perfectly steady against his chin. She’d only regarded him with those placid, unreadable eyes.

  But she hadn’t killed him. She’d done as he wished and taken him to his mother’s grave.

  When he closed his eyes, Konstantine could still hear his mother begging for his life as his father stared down at her in a shadowed Italian field.

  He’s your son, Fernando. Ti prego. Abbi pieta’, Fernando.

  Konstantine would never forget the POP of the gun. Her mouth opening in a surprised O. The sight of her pitching forward, nightgown billowing, into the dark hole. Her gown seemed to glow in the bottom of the dark cradle, but her body had disappeared, swallowed by grave dirt.

  Grief swallowed him whole in that moment and when he came to his senses again, seemingly months later, he hadn’t known where they’d been. A field, yes. But there were a thousand fields near Florence. His mother could’ve been in any one of them.

  He would’ve never found her without Lou’s help. He owed her everything. Would give her anything.

  You lie to yourself, he thought, chiding himself inwardly.

  I want to give her everything. I also want to take everything from her.

  His fingers caught on a something. His memories broke through the surface of his mind.

  Konstantine ran his hand over the kitchen island again, his fingers tracing its cool surface until he found it. Beneath the counter was a small metal latch that could be undone with the flick of his finger. He looked nervously at the closed closet door behind him, wondering how much time he had to investigate with impudence before the lioness returned.

  He flicked the latch and the side of the island popped away from its frame. Not the side of a counter, but a secret door.

  He opened it wider and discovered stairs descending into the dark.

  Heart hammering, he took them one at a time, his bare feet gripping the wooden steps cautiously. The hem of his jeans scrapped over their surface.

  Cold air licked up his bare chest. Something brushed his face. He mistook it for a cobweb, but quickly realized it was much too thick. Pawing the space above his head he found the string. He pulled it and light spilled across the room.

  Konstantine’s breath stuck in his throat.

  Cristo!

  Shelves lined three of the four walls. The one accommodating the stairs was the only bare space. Every other inch was given over to her arsenal. For there was no other word for it. Guns, large and small were crammed into every available inch. But not only firearms. Switch blades—a whole shoe box full of them—and throwing knives. Then a machete the size of Konstantine’s arm, shoulder to wrist. Grenades. Tear gas. A flame thrower with four exchangeable tanks fit into a backpack. Full body armor that would have fit her form like a glove.

&nbs
p; She could lay siege to a fortress. To a kingdom.

  He loved her.

  His desire for her rose so suddenly that its crushing throb pulsed between his legs.

  He ran his finger over a throwing blade, so sharp it pricked his fingertip at the slightest touch. He sucked the blood from it until the finger went numb.

  He wanted to fuck her down here. Right against this wall, her back shoved into the concrete cinder blocks. Or maybe on the floor, her astride him, his back ground into the dusty floor until her knees were rubbed raw.

  He turned off the light and dragged himself up the stairs.

  He half expected to find her standing at the top. Perhaps she’d slit his throat and kick him down the stairs, retrieving his desiccated corpse in a week or two, whenever the rot began to bother her.

  But the apartment was quiet. Nothing moved.

  He stood there, watching the moonlight on the river until the heat drained from his head and the only throbbing that remained was in his pricked finger.

  There was nothing else to search. He noted the lack of personalization. No photos of family, apart from the one he’d found in her pillow. There wasn’t a television or a bookcase—though he did see a small stack of paperbacks under the end table, wedged between the sofa, bed, and wall.

  Apart from the central area including kitchen, living room, and bedroom, there were two doors. One on the right side of the hallway had shelves above for towels and a four-drawer dresser below.

  A second door sat at the end of the short hallway.

  It was a large bathroom.

  A small-tiled mosaic in blues and golds stretched beneath a sink, clawfoot tub and shower stall. The tub itself looked most inviting. And Konstantine’s jaunt up and down those hidden steps had left him light-headed.

  A bath would help the ache in his muscles.

  He bent over the porcelain rim and turned the silver faucets. Warm, but not too hot, he filled the tub. He tore the worn gauze from his body and tossed it into the trash bin in the corner, right of the sink. He noted the only piece of furniture in the room. A white cabinet sat against the far wall beneath a window only large enough for a cat to squeeze through. He opened the cabinet and found a tin box the size of a laundry basket.

  It looked like a medic’s kit. Something a soldier would use on the battlefield, a moving surgical unit. He suspected he was looking at the reason he was alive.

  He’d clean himself up again after the bath, suspecting that now he was awake, Lou would no longer play nursemaid.

  With the water close to the brim, he closed the faucets. Removing his bloodied jeans and black briefs, he eased himself into the tub, careful to hold the edge should a muscle choose this moment to give beneath him.

  The heat bit deep, working its way into his muscles with its ruthless fingers.

  He grabbed a washcloth from the shelf above the tub and soaked it in the water. He used the bar of soap, with an emblem of a bird punched into its soft skin, to lather the rag. It smelled like her. The scent was enough to send his mind careening toward desire.

  A door creaked open. Konstantine didn’t think it was the front door. He leaned forward in the tub in time to see the closet door shutting. A holster full of weapons, and two knives clattered to the wooden floor, where the hallway and central living area met.

  Then she was standing naked before him, wet from head to toe. Her nipples were hard and goosebumps stood out along her arms and legs. Her dark hair stuck to her cheeks. Droplets dripping onto the mosaic tile at her feet.

  He began to harden.

  He leaned over the tub’s edge to hide it. He would think of anything, anything to soften it. His own mother’s soft brunette hair. Padre Leo coughing blood into a white napkin.

  As long as he didn’t look directly at her nipples, and the gooseflesh on her thighs, he thought he’d be all right.

  Her eyes. He would only look at her eyes.

  But her eyes were on his crotch.

  This is it, his mind said, ever hopeful. She will climb into the tub, slide those beautiful milk white thighs on either side of my body and pull me inside her.

  The erection throbbed painfully.

  “Do you know how many dead bodies have been in that tub?” she asked.

  Then her gaze flicked away, the perfect mask of disinterest.

  He burst into laughter so hard his stomach ached. “Signora. That one look could have destroyed me.”

  “I’ll try harder next time.” She shut herself into the shower, and turned on the faucet.

  With her body hidden away by the frosted glass, reason returned. His mind turned to more practical concerns. He glanced at the weapons, wet, lying outside the closet door again. “Did you just emerge from your closet, naked?”

  No answer.

  “Is that something you do often?”

  Still no reply. Instead he was forced to watch her through the frosted glass as he half-heartedly soaped his arms and legs.

  You do this to yourself. He could get out of the tub, and go into the other room. He could…wait.

  “Would you happen to have a man’s clothes?” he asked her. He would put on his filthy rags again if he had to, but it didn’t hurt to ask.

  If she said yes, I have a whole drawer of man’s clothes that would cure him of his erection. He was certain jealousy and blind rage would likely replace it.

  The water turned off. He braced himself for her reappearance, another confrontation with her nipples and the slender tuck of dark hair between her legs.

  But only a hand emerged between the glass to seize the towel from its hook. When she did emerge, her body was blessedly concealed beneath the gray cotton. Only the suggestive curves of her hips and the bare outline of breast poked through.

  “You used all the hot water.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  But she didn’t seem to hear him. She’d stepped out of the bathroom and reentered the closet, it’s handle clicking closed behind her.

  She appeared a moment later clutching a fistful of clothing in her hand. She dropped it on the floor just inside the bathroom doorway. “I don’t know men’s sizes.”

  “Thank you,” he called. But she’d already closed the bathroom door, separating them the only way she could in her small studio.

  A drawer opened and closed. The sounds of her dressing herself.

  He stood from the bath, toweling the water from his body using a towel of the same soft gray cotton.

  He pulled on the clothes. The shirt fit well, snug across his shoulders and stomach. It was the color of crushed violets. The black jeans were loose with a wad of black wool stuffed in the pocket, which Konstantine recognized as socks. The underwear, black briefs. He paused then, uncomfortable with the idea of wearing another man’s underwear.

  While he was certain she’d stolen these clothes from some drawer in some bedroom, and the clothes did smell like detergent…well, he supposed beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  The pants were a hint too long and too wide. He rolled up the bottoms once, and cinched the waist with the leather belt she’d provided. Good enough.

  By the time he’d dressed himself, he’d found she’d done the same.

  She stood in the living room in tight jeans that looked poured onto her thick legs, hanging low on the curve of her hips. Her shirt was white, a black tank top or sports bra showing underneath. Her wet hair had been brushed back away from her face.

  “You need to leave,” she said.

  “If it’s about the hot water—”

  One glance silenced him.

  “I want you to help me,” he said, hoping that if he made his intentions clear, the thrill of the chase and kill would be enough to pique her interest.

  “Of course you did,” she said, rolling her eyes up to meet his. “You want your gang back.”

  He didn’t like the word, but nodded. “I do.”

  She ejected a clip, checked it, reinserted it into the gun. “You have people you trust.”

&nb
sp; “Yes.”

  “Then you need to ask for their help.”

  “We could speak to them together.”

  Her glare could have boiled the flesh from his bones. “You’re confusing me with someone else. I pulled you out of a bad situation. I let you heal up here so you wouldn’t be arrested or assassinated in a hospital. That’s it. We aren’t friends. We aren’t business partners. And we don’t talk to people. Together.”

  He looked away. He grabbed at the threads unravelling before him. He thought sleeping in her bed, staying in her home had changed something. But now this sudden pushback.

  The watch on her wrist buzzed, its black face lighting green. She rotated the face toward her and his gaze slid down the curve of her neck, tracing its collarbones.

  The visual feast was lost when she grabbed a leather jacket off the sofa arm and slipped her arms through.

  “I’ll drop you off wherever you want when I get back. There’s food in the fridge.”

  Drop him. Like a body in the Arno river.

  She stepped into the closet and was gone.

  12

  She lingered in the closet, heart hammering. Her face and chest were unbearably warm. What the fuck was wrong with her? Konstantine swore in Italian and then her bed groaned as a heavy body collapsed onto it. No doubt he thought he was alone.

  She should’ve put a bullet between his eyes instead of picking him off the church floor. Why had she done it? She didn’t save crime lords. She rid the world of them. But he’s different. He salvaged your father’s name.

  It was true that Konstantine had supplied the evidence to clear her father’s name. In exchange, Lou had carried him to his mother’s unmarked grave. Waited for him to uncover her remains as the moonlight beat down on their backs and the insects sang their nightly chorus.

  She wondered what he’d done with her bones—as that was all that was left of her after so many years in the bare earth.

  He’d given her what was left of her father. And she’d given him what remained of his mother.