He shouted again and she began to sob, and without thinking, my feet pivoted and I walked back toward the room. The Bouncer was standing outside the door, his face impassive. When he saw me coming, he straightened. I didn’t hesitate before plowing my fist right into his nose. Blood spurted and he doubled over. I pushed open the door to the room and saw the boss standing over the girl, who was hunched on the mattress, shielding her head. They both looked up when the door hit the wall.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” he yelled.
I picked up the metal chair and swung it at him, knocking him against the wall. I reached down and grabbed the girl by the elbow and yanked her up. She had a bloody lip.
“You should’ve went home,” I told her, shoving her toward the door.
The boss charged me and I hit him with the chair again. This time he fell onto the mattress with a loud shout.
“Go!” I yelled and was surprised when she listened.
“You messed with the wrong guy,” the boss growled, getting up from the floor.
“I know a guy who hangs bodies in the closet. You’re nothing,” I told him calmly. Then I slammed the chair into him again, knocking him out cold.
I dropped the chair and left the room. The hallway was splattered with blood, but was otherwise empty. I jogged to the front of the building where I heard the sound of a struggle and when I got there I saw The Bouncer trying to keep the girl from leaving through the boarded up window.
When he saw me, he shoved her away, causing her to hit the wall, where she slid down onto the floor. He came at me hard and fast and there was nowhere for me to go.
But up.
I grabbed a low hanging wooden beam and prayed it would hold my weight, and I pulled myself up, swinging my legs a bit for momentum. The Bouncer was charging so fast that when he tried to stop and turn back, he tripped and stumbled. I let my legs swing out toward him and kicked him dead center in the back. He sprawled out on the floor, and the beam I was holding broke and I fell onto the ground.
Rough hands grabbed me, yanking me to my feet, and I looked into the eyes of The Bouncer. The skin beneath them was already darkening from his broken nose.
I twisted in his grip, dropping back onto the floor, then springing up, bringing with me the beam I’d been hanging on. I swung it and it connected right across his abdomen. All the air whooshed out of him and he hit the ground.
The girl was watching us with wide frightened eyes, so I dropped the beam and hustled her out the window and onto the street. I walked fast, pulling her along with me until we were behind the convenience store in the dark.
“Why did you do that?” she cried. “He’s going to punish me now.”
“No, he won’t because you aren’t going back there. If you do, you’ll end up dead.” I looked her straight in the eye. “Do you want to die?”
She was silent a moment. “No.”
I knew she’d say that. No one ever wanted to die. Piper probably didn’t want to die either… I shook the thought and reached my hand into my pocket for the rest of my cash. “Here.”
She looked at the money with hungry eyes.
“Take it. Go home. And if you can’t go home, go somewhere that isn’t here.”
“Who are you?” she asked, still looking at the money.
“Let’s just say I know what it’s like to live on the streets.”
She took the money and turned away.
“Hey,” I said, gripping her elbow, spinning her back around. “I’m serious. Leave here. I won’t be here next time.”
She nodded and I released her.
“There’s a phone inside. Call someone to come get you.”
She went through the back door of the convenience store and I stood there for a long time, wondering what possessed me to behave that way. Antagonizing a well-known, highly feared drug dealer and his body guard, helping a girl who was living on the streets and too stupid to go home, then giving her all the cash in my pocket… something I never would’ve even thought about doing when these streets were my home.
But I didn’t live here anymore.
Those drug dealers didn’t scare me because they didn’t make my rules.
And the girl… I didn’t even know if she would listen to me. She hadn’t when I told her before. She might take that money, waste it, and then end up right back where I found her. But at least she had a chance now. It was more than anyone ever gave me.
If I wasn’t careful I might start thinking I was a decent guy. I stuck my cold hands deep into my pockets, one of them colliding with the bag of nightshade. My previous thought was blown out of the water. No, I wasn’t a decent guy. I was still the same as always.
* * *
Snowflakes rained from the sky, looking angry, and they blew with the wind and slashed into my windshield with the tenacity of a starving man at a buffet. I struggled to pay attention to the road because my mind wanted to go to other places. Like to everything that had happened back there on the streets.
Never once in my entire life had I stepped in like that to try and help someone else. Well, except for the night I died.
Look where that got me.
So why now? Why this girl? Why try and help someone I couldn’t care less about?
Because you can’t save the one you really want to.
The thought caused me to swerve a bit on the road and I righted the Roadster and then scrutinized the idea. Did I want to save Piper? Is that what this was about?
I shook my head. It couldn’t be. I knew I had to kill her. I knew she had to die. There was no escaping that.
I guess I could admit to myself that the more I was around her and got to know her, the more I realized the world would be worse off without her in it. Is that why I tried to save someone else today? To make up for what I was taking out of this world.
I sighed heavily. As hard as I thought the streets had been, everything seemed easier back then.
And now, everything always seemed to come back to Piper.
It was beginning to piss me off.
I slammed into the house and kicked off my shoes. Then I grabbed the baggie out of my coat pocket and slid it off, throwing it into a heap on top of my shoes. I walked into the kitchen where Hobbs was busy cooking up something and I sat down at the island, hunching my shoulders forward a bit.
“Bad day?” Hobbs asked, lifting an eyebrow.
“You don’t have to wear that uniform, you know,” I said, motioning toward his dove-gray coat and bowtie.
“I have a distinct feeling that my choice of wardrobe is not what put you in such a nasty mood.” He sniffed, turning toward whatever he was cooking.
I watched him add a few things onto a platter and then slide it in front of me. “Perhaps a cookie will help things?”
I didn’t think so, but I shoved one in my mouth anyway. Chocolate and sugar melted onto my tongue. “These are good,” I mumbled around another.
“Yes, well, chewing them might actually make them taste better,” he said with a frown.
“I need some milk,” I said.
“You need some manners,” he muttered, but he got me a glass of milk.
I took a gulp and looked down at the cookies on the plate, then down at the bag in my lap. “Hobbs,” I began. “I need you to make me some more cookies and this time add these to the batch.” I put the bag on the counter between us and snatched up another cookie.
This time I chewed. He was right. It tasted even better.
Hobbs picked up the bag and looked at it closely. Then he looked back at me. “Where did you get this?” he asked.
“The store,” I lied.
“One does not buy nightshade at the grocery store.”
I choked on my cookie. “Nightshade? What’s that?” I said, trying to play dumb.
“Please,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I’m a butler, not stupid.”
“I don’t think you’re stupid.” I didn’t, but I hoped he’d think I gave him some exotic berry.
“It is not in my job description to help you kill others,” he said, still holding onto the bag.
“Who said I was going to kill someone?” I asked, feeling slightly alarmed.
Hobbs actually looked a little alarmed by what he said too. “I apologize, sir. That was very… inappropriate to say.”
I shrugged. “So you’ll make the cookies?”
“We both know nightshade is poison, so whatever you plan to do with these cookies is clearly not something respectable.”
“I’m not a respectable guy, Hobbs,” I told him, putting down the cookie I held.
“Respect is earned, sir. Perhaps if you want it, you should earn it.”
“Maybe I don’t want it.”
“I think you do,” he said knowingly.
“Just make the cookies,” I demanded.
“I will not,” he said in his dignified yet offended tone. “Whatever you have planned with this poison, you will have to do without me.”
“I’ll fire you,” I growled, rising off my chair.
“Then that is your choice.” He sniffed.
Some of the steam went out of me and I dropped into my seat. “I don’t have a choice.”
“You always have a choice.” His voice held a note of finality.
“Not in my world.”
“In all worlds. Some choices are harder than others. Some choices seem impossible but aren’t always as difficult as they seem.”
His words sounded good. They made me wish he was right. But he didn’t get it. No one did.
“So what is your choice, sir,” Hobbs asked me. “Shall I pack my things?”
I looked between Hobbs and the bag of nightshade. “You do make damn good coffee,” I said finally.
Hobbs smiled. “Well, yes, I do.” When I didn’t say anything else, he picked up the bag and glanced at me. “I’ll just get rid of this.”
I watched as he threw the bag into the trash. Everything I went through to get that stuff and here I was allowing my butler to throw it all away.
I must be crazy.
“You made the right choice,” Hobbs said like it was over.
I left the kitchen and headed upstairs. What Hobbs didn’t understand was that I might’ve made the right choice today, but tomorrow would be a whole new set of choices.
“Cupcake -
A small cake baked in a cup-shaped container.
Piper
I couldn’t get the vision out of my head. No matter how hard I tried to distract myself, no matter how much Chinese I ate, I still kept coming back to the picture that only lasted seconds in my brain.
Frankie was going to die.
No,
I reminded myself,
the future can change. It doesn’t have to happen.
God, please let it change.
Sometimes having the gift of sight didn’t feel like a gift at all. Many people say they’d rather know when they were going to die… not me. I don’t want to know. Knowing was too hard. It was too stressful because then life would be reduced to the ticking of a clock. Of how many hours, seconds, minutes you had left. There’s no way you could fit in everything you wanted to do, and I think the knowledge of your impending death would be crippling and keep you from actually living anyway.
Frankie wasn’t just my best friend. She was my family, the person I counted on most, and the only person in this world I really trusted. Since the death of my parents it sometimes felt like it was Frankie and me against the world. I depended on her. If she died I’d be completely alone.