by Brie Tart
Dylan emerged from the street-access entrance, his dimple nowhere in sight. Helen squinted into the tinted windows of the Honda, but didn’t find any Tommy shaped, fedora wearing silhouette inside.
“Where’s Tommy?” Helen asked. “Is he upstairs already, or did you drop him off somewhere?”
“Neither.” Dylan walked up to her, his eyes rimmed with red as he gnawed on his bottom lip. He gently held both her hands in his. “I’m sorry. He didn’t make it back.”
CHAPTER 5
“Didn’t make it back?” Helen snatched her hands out of Dylan’s as denial rose with the bile in her throat. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I did everything I could, I swear. They got onto him and wouldn’t let up.”
“So you left him?” Helen’s eyes already burned from not sleeping most of the night. The hot moisture clinging to her lashes made it worse. “What happened?”
“Someone connected to your mom’s killers showed up.” Dylan reached up and cupped both Helen’s cheeks, bringing her forehead down to touch his. His yellow curlicues blocked her periphery so she saw nothing else. “I tried to stop them. I tried.”
“You’re lyin’.” Helen jerked her head from side to side. His face had too much raw guilt for him not to believe every word he said. “You dropped him off somewhere. He told you to tell me this crock of shit so he could go on lookin’ without me. More trying to protect my grown ass!”
“I’m sorry, Hel.” Dylan’s voice cracked as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and squeezed her tight, his fingers digging hard. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no!” Helen buried her face in Dylan’s neck. His shirt collar soaked up the briny tears leaking down her cheeks. She punched his ribs like he was the hanging bag at her gym or someone she had to spar, as if it would change the news. “Don’t you say it. Don’t you dare!”
Dylan squeezed her tighter. He didn’t have to say the answer as it sank in. She knew.
* * *
Uncle Tommy was dead. One person knew who did it.
Helen wanted to go out on her bike and let off steam, but Dylan advised they lie low. She kept the attack by Ewan, the Witty Blade close to her chest as she did Dylan’s chores instead: dusting, sweeping, mopping. Fluffing pillows ended in her punching them until their stuffing leaked out. The urge to pick the lock on Tommy’s room and go through his stuff became unbearable, but Dylan told her to give herself more time. He was right. She could hardly think without edges of red tinting everything. So she didn’t touch the room, seething over it every time she passed.
Helen gave herself a day to process, to plan, to chomp at the bit until she shredded through it.
During the first few hours, the apartment stayed silent as a graveyard with Helen and Dylan wandering through it like ghosts. Lucy watched both her parents and asked what was wrong. Neither one gave her a straight answer. Dylan fell into his role as house father. Helen tried to block out her daughter’s new cries for “Mam stories” and “piggyback.” She couldn’t touch Lucy in her condition. She’d break her fragile little girl with all of the roiling emotions telling her to do that and worse to somebody. Her fingers got stiff from being clenched into fists, and her nails cut bleeding crescents into her palms that healed in minutes.
When Dylan and her went to bed on the pull out couch, she vented on him instead. Her boyfriend was sturdy, and he liked Helen ramming him again and again, tasting his blood as she bit into him, punishing the fact he came home alone. She collapsed on top of him at the end and curled up like a damned baby. He wasn’t the one she wanted to hurt, but he knew who it was.
The next day, Helen put on the same jeans from the morning before. She refused to risk losing her uncle’s last secret by emptying the pockets. Whenever she went to the bathroom, she turned that desk key over and over, then slipped it back in her pants before Dylan could see. That night, as Dylan put Lucy to bed, Helen waited on the couch in front of some crime procedural re-run. A half-drunk bottle of cheap bourbon sat on their end table. She swirled what was left of the ice in her empty glass.
Dylan closed the bedroom door behind him and sagged beside Helen on the sofa.
“Who did it?” Helen asked, her voice an icy deadpan.
“Just charging right into it, huh?” Dylan swiped his hair behind his ear, not that it would stay there long. “Leave it alone this time, Hel.”
“Fuck that.” She stood up, facing him.
“Hel—”
“You want me to ‘leave it alone’?” Her voice dropped as she enunciated each syllable. She stepped toward him, leaning her gaze into his.
“That’s wh—”
“Mom. Now Tommy.” Stopping, her mouth twitched. It made a quick, sad, smile that only appeared when her face couldn’t process the thoughts behind it. “Fuck you, leave it alone. That’s my whole family they wiped out.”
Dylan threw his hands out to his sides. “And what are me and Lucy, chopped liver? Yesterday’s news?” His tone grew louder, not enough to wake Lucy, but it stole any authority in the room. “Some plaything to take out when you’re not with your real family?”
Helen’s hard front cracked with her voice. “Whoever ‘they’ are needs to pay!”
Dylan turned away and rubbed his forehead, then looked back at Helen. “I’m…” He stepped forward, trying to put his arms around her.
She swatted them away, eyes stinging. “No.”
He tried again, and she gave in.
“I’m sorry.” Dylan massaged her back as he held her tight. “You’re mad, you’re grieving still. I get that. I’m still not letting you take it overboard.” He loosened his grip and looked up to face her. “This isn’t some job where you can catch the bad guys and hand them to the police. You try to bring it to the authorities or take them down yourself, they will end you, just like they did Tommy.”
“How do you know that?” The words came out interrupted by snorts as she wiped her eyes and tried to clear her quickly congesting nose.
“That’s not the point. I love you. You and Lucy are the only family I have. I won’t let you ruin that because you’re trigger happy and can’t let go.”
“What if that was me?” She pushed him off, just enough to create a step or two of space between them. “You’d stand back and let these shadow people get away with it?”
Dylan opened his mouth, but flinched and snapped it shut.
His silence was more frustrating than any explanation or excuse. Why hide this from her? As long as Helen knew her boyfriend, he’d been an open book. He flaunted his pop culture obsession and moaned when they couldn’t afford a collectible he wanted. Every day he proudly raised his little daughter and did all the traditional “mom jobs.” The biggest part of her falling for him was his shameless genuineness that didn’t need to keep secrets. Had she been wrong about him all along? Was he just scared to tell her? Did he not trust her to handle the info if she knew?
She had to get a grip.
She needed control.
She breathed.
“Just tell me who they are, then.” Helen closed the distance between them and nudged his hand with hers. “I deserve that much.”
“You deserve a lot more than that, babe.” Dylan rubbed the inside of Helen’s wrist with his thumb. “But these people go for your weak spots. They’ll go after Lucy. I can’t risk that, even for you. Stay out of it, please.”
On that point they could agree. But Helen couldn’t go back to knowing nothing. “What if I’m already in it?”
“You’re not. I’d know,” Dylan said, squeezing down. “And whatever you think you know, forget it fast, for all our sakes.”
Helen kept her trap shut. That ruled out any help from her boyfriend, so telling him about the attack in the alley wouldn’t make a difference. Maybe it was safer that she looked for answers alone. She already had a good idea where to start: names from the almost kidnapper, a drawer full of secret files, and a bedroom of Tommy’s things she could search for more clues
. Or maybe Dylan was right, and she should let her uncle go unavenged. Even considering that made her chest tight. That wasn’t an option. She’d get to the bottom of it, somehow, and continue Tommy’s mission to bring down those bastards.
“Try not to think about it.” Dylan smoothed back her hair from her neck and leaned up, grazing the thin skin with his teeth. “Let me help.”
Shivers ran through Helen’s spine and fled further south. Dylan always knew the best way to distract her. Having her purpose figured out settled some of the roiling energy in her gut. She could give herself the night to enjoy her boyfriend without breaking down again or being too brutal. Then come morning, she would break into Tommy’s room and start digging.
* * *
Helen drifted off going over what she already knew about her mission like it was any other job. This whole thing involved something weird and European. A guy named Ailpien wanted her so he could see the “results” of his “experiments” on her mom. Dylan had an unknown connection to it. She drilled the facts again and again until she fell asleep to them.
When she went into dreamland, her mind returned to the moment when she shoved the ladder rung into her would-be kidnapper, Ewan, the Witty Blade. Every gush from the steel tearing past his designer coat and collared shirt. The way his face contorted into dumbfounded fear as he tried to pull it out. Sizzles of his flesh that spread from the wound, vapors rising from his body as it ate at him. Helen could almost smell the burning while she slept…
“Wake up!” Dylan. Someone shook Helen back and forth.
Helen opened her eyes. Everything was bleary and dark around her. No rays of intruding sunshine peeked through the blinds, even though outside seemed brighter than usual, glowing almost. It was too early, only a few hours after she nodded off. The same smoky smell from her dream floated on the air.
“Get up!” Dylan pushed Helen over the side of the mattress. “I’ll get Lucy. Meet me at the door. It’ll reach here any minute.”
“The hell are you talkin’ about?” Helen sat up from the floor, holding her head where she’d bumped it.
“There’s a fire downstairs!” Dylan fled to the other side of the room and Lucy’s plastic bed.
Shit. She was bare-assed without even a bra. She threw on the nearest tank top in reach and shimmied into the same pair of jeans she’d worn that morning. The floorboards were warm under her bare feet when they usually felt chilly first thing after she got up. That wasn’t a good sign. Dylan had Lucy. She’d have to get Tommy. She charged out the door and ran across the hall for his room.
The knob was locked. She jiggled it and banged on the door. “Tommy, get your ass up!”
“He’s not there.” Dylan grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the living room. A fine layer of hot fumes clouded the air. He had Lucy under his arm. The girl’s head sagged against her father’s shoulder, her eyes still closed.
“Where is he—” Helen cut herself off as she remembered, and her stomach sank. No time for that. “We have to get the computer or files or something.”
“All the agency’s records are backed up in cloud storage.” Dylan held up their cell phones in the same arm he used to hold Lucy. “Get the wallets from the kitchen. That’s all we’ve got time for.”
Helen bolted for the bar counter. She snatched her keys, and both their wallets like Dylan said, then met him at the front door. The knob was already warm like the floor. How long had she slept through the fire? How long did they have before it engulfed the place? How had a fire started downstairs to begin with? Too many questions when they needed to run.
She wrenched the door open to the stairwell leading to the street. Smoke had already filled the enclosed space, enough to make her eyes sting.
Helen slammed the door shut. “No good. It’s already there.”
“We have to use the window in the other bedroom.” Dylan looked to the hallway, his eyes widening at Tommy’s locked door.
Helen shoved past Dylan. Their bedroom didn’t have the window that led to the fire escape, only Tommy’s did. She went to the door and aimed a hard front kick just above the knob. The wood around the lock caved and cracked, but the door didn’t burst open yet. It took another kick to send it flying.
Tommy’s room lay untouched with his boxes of paperbacks stacked in the corner beside his DVD collection. His laptop sat on the end table beside his mattress, still plugged in. The sheets on the sagging bed were tucked under it, with one corner sticking out. His flat pillow had a dent in the middle where his head should be.
Helen zeroed in on the laptop. They had time to grab it real quick, right? It wouldn’t be too much trouble to carry out.
The sofa behind them erupted into flames. Cracks came from the floorboards like they were about to cave in. The air got thick enough to make sweat bead along Helen’s neck and arms.
“Go! Go!” Dylan pushed Helen toward the window as a gray cloud streamed into the room after them.
Helen fixated on the laptop. Everything on it would be fried. All the pre-Dylan case data, any info Tommy saved about her mom’s kidnappers, the pictures of their life before Cleveland.
Lucy coughed behind her.
Helen pried her attention to the window and twisted the lock on it. The metal frame nearly burned her fingers as she shoved it open. She waved Dylan and Lucy through first. The smoke trailing into the room scratched the inside of her nose and throat. She coughed, holding her rattling chest. Breathing that stuff in too long would be as bad as the fire itself.
Dylan hopped through onto the old ladder running down the side of the building. He climbed it with the nimbleness of a monkey, even with Lucy taking up one arm.
Helen turned back to the laptop as sweat dribbled from her forehead, her eyes tearing up from the haze around her. It wouldn’t be long until Tommy’s room went up. Did she have time to dart over, unplug the computer, grab it, and squeeze her bulk out?
Her lungs spasmed. She coughed and pulled her shirt over her nose.
“Hel, come on!” Dylan shouted from the ground, the first edge of genuine panic in his voice.
“Mam!” Lucy cried after him.
Focus. Helen tore herself away from Tommy’s room, the laptop, the stash of secret files. They weren’t worth her life. She had names, she had a place, she had the keys to her bike, she had time. That was all she needed to retrace Tommy’s footsteps and pick up where he left off.
Helen maneuvered through the tiny window and climbed down the shaky ladder. She met Dylan on the ground, and the three of them ran out to the street.
The windows to the bottom floor blew out. A thick, black plume sent a spray of shattered glass behind them. Soon sirens blared from down the street. A firetruck and ambulance parked along the sidewalk, and police cruisers joined soon after. Flames engulfed Carver Investigations, then leaked from the upstairs apartment.
Helen took a turn holding Lucy as she watched, and clutched her daughter tight to her chest.
CHAPTER 6
An ambulance shipped the three of them off, making the whole family huff oxygen on the way. The doctors at the hospital discharged them the next day. Helen and Dylan took turns giving the police their stories at the station. Helen submitted her theory that it was arson and cited her missing uncle as evidence. When the officers probed her further, she couldn’t give them anything more solid than to ask Dylan about it, and that he was the last one who saw Tommy alive.
They took a taxi back to the burned out husk of their former home, then waited for a clothing outlet across the street to open, and bought themselves some footwear before heading elsewhere. Dylan drove with Lucy in the Honda while Helen followed them on her Harley to a cheap motel nearby with an available room. All of it came out of the emergency buffer in the business bank account. If they wanted to stay in that motel, both Helen and Dylan would have to call up every contact they had and ask for jobs. That wouldn’t leave Helen a lot of time for finding leads to Tommy’s killers.
Helen and Dylan put Lucy
in one of the full sized beds while they shared the other one. The exhausted little girl passed out almost immediately after Dylan tucked her into the blankets. Helen would be lying if she said she wasn’t relieved. Neither her or Dylan had discussed how to tell Lucy about Tommy yet. Helen still wasn’t sure, not with all the mysteries surrounding her uncle’s disappearance.
“How’d your interview with the cops go?” Helen asked first thing when Dylan joined her on the edge of their bed. “Did they ask you anything about Tommy?”
Dylan pressed his mouth into a line as he jerked his thumb toward the motel door.
Helen grabbed the nearest key card and followed him outside.
Dylan shoved the door shut behind them. “What part of ‘leave it alone’ don’t you get?”
“Somebody just tried to barbecue us alive!”
“That was a warning. The police won’t find Tommy’s body, they won’t find any concrete evidence, so they can’t do anything. We have to act like nothing happened, and lay low until it’s safe to move on.”
Helen grabbed Dylan’s shirt collar and forced him into the door. “How the fuck can you sit back and take this? Lucy was in there.”
“This is too big for us, Hel.” Genuine panic filled Dylan’s blue eyes as he shook his head. “The second they see me step out of line, they’ll take it out on you and Lucy. It doesn’t matter where we go, if we’re seperate or together. I just can’t, okay?”
“Who are they?” Helen lifted him off his feet.
“Even being vague puts you at risk.”
“You need to give me something.” Helen trailed off and let the “or else” go unspoken.
“I had a different life before you and Lucy. Tommy hired me because of that. Maybe I didn’t make the best choices, maybe it’s coming back to bite my ass,” Dylan said as he pleaded with her. “It’ll go away if we keep our heads down and do nothing. I promise.”
