“Well, in the meantime, you’re attracting attention,” Lisa warned from behind us. I’d forgotten—again—that she was even there.
Indeed, two Lowen Security men were ducking under the tape and coming our way. This time, we recognized each other.
We moved through the crowd, and they followed. We sped up—they sped up. We swerved—they swerved. So Thomas and I started shoving our way through people, going the only way we could—back to the bridge. Lisa was already halfway across it when a police car angle parked to block the exit.
We were caught.
And then someone shouted there she is… don’t let her get away…
I did the only thing I could think of. With Thomas’s hand in mine, I yanked him off to the side of the mouth of the bridge. Where the ground gave way to a sharp, downward slope to the river, I dove.
I heard Thomas grunt in pain when we both came tumbling to a stop, but there was no time to ask if he was okay. Leaving our shopping bags on the shore, we crouched alongside the moon-lit river toward the underbelly of the bridge. Scurrying onto the concrete footing where it met the water, we climbed the steep slope until we were nestled up against the edge.
Thomas was breathing heavy. “You okay?” he asked.
I knew I had a few scratches on my knee and my injured arm was throbbing madly, but nothing was broken. I was more worried about him.
“I’m fine,” I said, catching my breath. “Where are you hurt?”
“My stitches have torn open. I think. Can’t see it, but it feels a bit… uh… oozy.”
In the faint light I could make out his hand pressed to his stomach. “Dammit. I’m sorry Thomas. Sorry I dragged you here. I knew the risk but—”
“Hey. It’s all right. We’re fine. I’m fine. Besides, now we know that Oliver got away. So that means we can assume that he’s with Luke and they’re hanging out together, happy as clams, two peas in a pod, bromancing. You know, buddylicious—”
“Yeah. I get it.” He was distracting me from his injury, so I knew it was bad. “We can rest here for a second, then we are going to have to crawl back up to the road and make a run for it. Can you do that?”
A cough that wasn’t from either of us made us jump. Thomas gripped my hand so tight I winced.
“Hello?” he said into the dark.
“Why don't you just head across the river from up here?" said a male voice up over our heads.
“Uh, who’s there?” Thomas asked.
Someone who sounded educated, groomed, and quite articulate replied. “Christopher George Smith. But my pal’s call me Ed.”
“Are you by yourself, Ed?”
A heavy sigh. “Always.”
A lighter flame lit Ed’s eyes. He was perched up in the long expanse of steel stretching out underneath the bridge. From what I could see, Ed came here a lot. Blankets, jars, boxes of cookies, pop cans and an old radio were arranged around him.
Ed touched the flame to what might have been a cigarette, but probably wasn’t. “You can get to the other side easy. You just crawl along the beams. They’re wide as my momma’s ass. You just can’t stand up or you’ll hit your head.”
The bridge shook as a car drove across. “What do you think?” I asked Thomas, his grip on my hand making it numb.
“Seems like a really bad idea.”
“Good first date memories, though.”
“We can reflect on it someday and laugh.”
“Tell our grandchildren,” I said without thinking.
Time came to a crashing, head through the windshield, ass over tea kettle, stop.
“What did you say?” Thomas said, barely a whisper.
“I—uh, nothing. Nada.” I was glad I couldn’t see his eyes all that well. “Thomas, really, it was just a slip of the tongue. Please… don’t read into it. Okay?”
He exhaled heavily and let go of my hand.
Ed coughed out a plume of smoke. “I hate to interrupt what seems like a heartfelt moment and all, but the cops are out in full force tonight. I see some flashlights coming this way.”
“Thank you, Ed,” I said, reaching for Thomas, who had grown quiet. I got a hold of his coat sleeve, urging him ahead, and Ed fired up his lighter to guide us toward him. The closer we got, the more obvious Ed’s face, and the sores covering it, became. I pretended it didn’t bother me. I pretended that I didn’t care, but I had to ask.
“Why are you here, Ed?”
His lighter went out. “My family doesn’t approve of me getting high. They think I can just flip a switch in my head and turn off the addiction, but it doesn’t work like that. When I’m up here, I can’t see the disappointment on their faces.”
The air chilled another ten degrees. Flashlight beams narrowly missed us. “I’ll help you,” I said, not completely sure how, but really wanting to. “Someday.”
“Ha.” Ed laughed. “That’s a kind thing to say, darling, but I don’t want any help. This is the life I chose. When I decide it’s over, all I have to do is jump. Now… get going. No sense being caught for whatever it is you two did.”
With Ed’s back to us, above the rushing river, on a two-foot wide beam that felt like only an inch, we crawled.
“Are we nuts to trust a drug addict?” I said to Thomas’s backside.
He quietly kept moving ahead.
“This is turning out to be a very strange date,” I offered.
He said nothing.
Metal shaking overhead. Slime squished between my fingers. “Please tell me this isn’t pigeon poop…”
Thomas paused, seemed to sway, then carried on.
He worried me. Not because of the immediate danger of falling to his death into the river below, but his silence. It felt like a warm blanket had been pulled from my shoulders. Like I hadn’t eaten all day. Like something familiar and comforting that had always been there, suddenly wasn’t. I was hurting him more than his wounded stomach was, and I didn’t know how to fix that.
When at one point he stopped and hung his head, I barked orders at him to keep moving and received only a detached ‘uh huh’. I wondered if some of the slime—the bits that were warm anyway—was his blood.
With a rush of relief at the end, we carefully made our way down the steep concrete and onto the riverbed, both plunging our hands into the icy water to scrub them clean. There were footpaths snaking off left and right up the bank, so we picked one and headed up and into a stand of trees. Twice Thomas had to stop and catch his breath, but eventually we found ourselves in someone’s backyard.
Across a lush, landscaped patch of grass dusted with a fine layer of pure white snow, we could see into the windows of a beautiful home and the family gathered within. They were centered around a fireplace, maybe fifteen or so adults. All appeared to be completely captivated by a dancing child. Twirling and tapping his toes, was a small boy putting on a show for his audience. The scene was so warm. So cozy. So… everything I wanted.
Thomas wordlessly reached for my hand and for the longest time we just watched. Thomas familiar with that kind of life—missing it I assumed—and me in awe of it, dreaming of what it would be like.
A barking dog got us moving again.
We walked hand in hand and got back onto Main Street, but we were desperate to get off it. My hands were covered in scratches and small cuts, and Thomas was bent over, unable to hide his pain. We didn’t blend in anymore. It took all our resolve to put on neutral faces when we crossed the street toward a corner block of restaurants that were letting out the last of their customers. With great effort, we smiled and straightened up as we passed a police officer who—thankfully—paid us no mind. We were halfway to the end of the block when out of the corner of my eye, something stole my breath.
I couldn’t help but stop and stare. Pink flamingos decorated a rundown brick building, and a nightmare I’d had about it for years came back to me in a rush. A tremor shot up my spine and wrapped its bony hands around my throat. I choked, unable to peel my eyes away from the pla
ce that looked the same as it had the day I almost died—except for the plywood nailed across the entrance and windows.
“What is it?” Thomas asked. He was so pale.
“Nothing,” I said, forcing my feet to get moving, leading him away and miraculously keeping my head together. This was not the time to have a meltdown. I had to take care of him and get us away from all these people.
Through alleys and parking lots we stumbled until we were finally on the street that led back to the band house.
“What happened? Back there, at that place with the pink birds?” he asked.
“Flamingos,” I corrected.
“Yes. There. What happened?”
The streetlights blinked. Two cats hissed at each other. “I had my sixteenth birthday party there,” I said.
“Oh. Let me guess; you didn’t get a pony?”
I wish I could have laughed. “If only.”
“I need something to keep me walking,” Thomas said, pain catching his words. “So spill it.”
I had never talked about that night. Not to Oliver. Not to Anne. And certainly not to the therapists that Stephan hired. Dredging up the past didn’t seem helpful. I mean, what was done, was done. You can’t go back and change anything so analyzing the crap out of it certainly didn’t seem like it would do me any good.
But it was just a story now. Just a story.
I took a deep breath and let the words tumble. “I was really sick of Oliver one day, so I took off across the marble floor in one of the banquet rooms to get away from him and slipped and fell. Oliver took me to the emergency because by the way I was crying he thought that I’d broken my ankle. I knew it was fine, but I suddenly realized I had an opportunity to get him fired. You see, taking me off estate grounds was completely against the rules, and I knew firsthand what happened to guards who broke the rules. Especially ones who endangered my safety.”
“Oooh, how evil of you,” Thomas said, wincing as we stepped over a curb.
“Of course, after x-rays and lots of attention from nurses, I was diagnosed with a sprain and sent home with a tensor bandage and crutches. On the way back to the estate, we drove past that restaurant. I’d never actually been into Banff or seen the shops or the people or…anything, and the pink-painted brick building with the dancing flamingos was so intriguing. ‘I wish to go there someday’ I’d said mostly to myself. But Oliver heard me. He went to Henry and begged him to allow me to have my sixteenth birthday there. Amazingly, instead of firing Oliver, Henry agreed.”
We were at a park where two swings hovered over a little patch of snow-covered sand and a teeter totter waited for sunshine and kids. Thomas sat on a bench pulling his coat tight around him, and I sat next to him.
“You gonna make it?” I asked.
He smiled at me in the moonlight. A stunning smile. “I’m fine. I just want to hear the rest of this story, and my ears work better sitting down.”
I made circles in the snow with my shoes. “The amount of planning and security that went into getting me off the estate was so tremendous you’d think I was the queen of England. Oliver regretted suggesting it, and I was still mad he hadn’t been fired. He was so nervous when the day came. He had to change his shirt three times before we left, and there were so many weapons tucked in around his three-piece suit he set off alarms. By the time we got to the restaurant, we’d probably sweated off ten pounds. I thought once we got inside, I could relax and have fun, be a part of the real world for a few hours. But it was then I realized my elaborate birthday party was an elaborate business meeting that involved cake. The restaurant had been closed to the public and the guest list was the who’s who of town, none invited by me.
“When a massive chocolate and vanilla cake was carried to the table, I didn’t want to be there. Flamingos shmallingos. This was worse than sitting in my room alone with smuggled-in pizza. And just as lonely. Stephan was halfway through a bottle of scotch. Henry was on his phone. Sindra was texting. I remember Oliver reaching over and giving me a pat on the leg and thinking that of all the people here, he was the only one paying attention to me. The candles on the cake were lit and melting, and through the wavering heat of the flames I couldn’t ignore the smile on his face as he waited eagerly for me to make a wish. I suddenly felt bad for running from him, for being such a brat, and for wanting him to get fired. In his eyes I could see he genuinely cared for me, and that was the moment things changed between us.”
I took hold of Thomas’s hand, leading him away from the bench and back onto the sidewalk. The color had come back into his cheeks, and he stood a little straighter. I kept talking, unable to stop the story now.
“I made a wish—that Henry would put aside his phone and watch me blow out the candles. That’s all I wanted. Just to feel important to him if even for a second. But that wish never happened. I did, however, get his full attention when one of the waiters pulled the knife I was about to cut the cake with from my hand… and held it to my throat.”
“Oh my… Oh, Kaya. How awful,” Thomas said, eyeing the scarf that covered the scar on my neck.
“Before I even realized what was happening, a man outside dressed as a traffic cop blew apart the restaurant window and I was dragged away from the table. Everyone was screaming—except Oliver. He had a gun pointed at the waiter’s head—at both our heads actually—and had crouched down to completely ignore everything around him but me.
The traffic cop had a gun pointed at me too, and he yelled shoot at me and my buddy will slice her open. Shoot at him and I’ll put a bullet through each of your heads.
Just to prove he was serious, he shot the guard behind Henry.”
Thomas stumbled. “Whoa.”
“Seven died that night.”
“How did you, uh… not? Die that is.”
“Oliver. He’d been teaching me self-defense and drilling into my head what to do in these situations. I kept my eyes on his, like he’d told me, and waited for his signal. His aim never faltered, even when he was warned to back off and the waiter dragged the knife through my skin. He knew they didn’t want me dead, or I would be.”
I took in a breath, recalling that moment all too vividly.
“Even though I felt my life draining out of me, I held onto Oliver’s gaze. When he gave me the signal, I picked up my feet, using all my weight to pull the waiter forward, then stood as fast as I could, slamming my head into the underside of his chin. His head snapped back, and Oliver shot him between the eyes.”
We were at the backyard of the house. I couldn’t believe I had talked about this nightmare and was still standing. “I remember lying on the floor as Oliver’s body covered mine, bullets ripping through the air around us. All those pink flamingos, hand painted so painstakingly, were splattered with blood, and Oliver’s hands were covered in it, too. He had them tight around my throat, trying not to choke me, but desperate to save me. Without him—”
Without him I’d be dead.
Thomas was speechless. We’d stopped at the gate to the yard, and his hand was resting on the latch. He regarded me with such sadness in his eyes.
“Oliver was shot twice before Stephan took out the traffic cop, but he wasn’t fast enough to save the chief of police, two politicians, an important judge, and two other guards. It’s amazing that I’m alive.”
“So, was this an attempted kidnapping?”
“Yes. One of many.”
Thomas untied the green scarf around my neck and traced his finger down my scar. His warm hands made every nerve stand on edge. “I’m glad you’re still alive,” he said. “Good thing Oliver is, uh, incredibly committed.”
Oliver.
So much had happened to create that bond between us. I felt a sting of tears at the thought of all he’d done for me above and beyond the call of duty. He’d offered up his life for mine so many times. I always felt like I owed him, and it took a lot to realize that owing him didn’t mean marrying him.
“I need to get him back too,” I said to Tho
mas.
Thomas nodded, his fingers grazing my neck, thumb running over my jaw. “Both. We’ll get them both back. I promise.”
He reached for the latch on the gate, then stopped. Turning to face me, he lingered a moment, extending our first date under the stars. Arms around me, hot breath on my forehead, Thomas placed a feather-light kiss on my temple.
“I wish you loved me half as much as you love that other guy,” he said.
Thomas took a bullet for me. Risked his life for mine just as Oliver had. Was my first true friend. Saved me from Ben and my breaking heart. I did love him. Most certainly. But was it partly because I felt like I owed him too?
“Thomas, I’m—” What was I? In love with him? Not in love with him? “I’m tired,” I said, because anything else to come out of my mouth would have been the harmful truth or a hurtful lie.
If the lady at the beauty counter had told me I had great bone structure one more time, I would have ripped her spine out through her throat. She dabbed. Plucked. Dabbed some more. Applied crap out of one jar, covered that crap with more crap from another jar, and then spackled over the whole mess of crap until the birthmark covering half my face ‘magically’ disappeared.
I hated her.
Not because she had perfect skin, expensive clothes, and hair that could be a weapon in a zombie apocalypse, but because she was intent on making me into something I wasn’t. Yes, the goal was to cover up my face to appear to look normal, but only for today. Only because I’d made my way into Banff and didn’t want anyone to take notice of the tall girl with the western clothes and purple face. If this were a normal day, I’d stroll through these miserably busy streets and cast my best intimidating glare at anyone who looked at me, then scowl at their discomfort as they embarrassingly shrank away.
My birthmark was my superpower.
Kaya was the only person I’d met who hadn’t initially been intimidated by me. Back at Mom and Dad’s with a shovel in my hand in the garden, I had given her my best ‘go to hell’ glare. Heck, I think I might have even bared my teeth. But she barely flinched. She just stood before me, unfazed, while I stared hard enough to turn Medusa to stone. She stayed put. Stared back at me. And for some reason, I felt like she was looking at me—not at some poor, adopted farm girl with a birthmark covering half her face that everyone felt sorry for.
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