Flying, page 2
part #5 of Girl With Broken Wings Series
“Hey buddy!” I call, holding out my arms.
The suspicious bastard pauses for a second like he’s forgotten me, and then finally clamors over. I pluck him up and deposit him into my lap. Maya read somewhere that most bunnies hate being picked up, but Sir Hopsalot has always been different. There’s a reason I saved him from being Maya’s dinner all those years ago.
His fur is soft as silk, and I feel just a tiny fraction better as I give him a good scratch behind his long, floppy ears.
“Thanks for taking care of him,” I say to Francesca, my eyes once again getting caught on all her delicious curves.
“Oh, he’s so bad,” she says. “He chews everything, but then he looks at me with his big eyes.” She turns, and her own eyes are still puffy and red. It’s such a relief to see someone else broken up about Dr. Lee. Tarren and Maya are the ice and stone twins, but dammit, he was family. If you can’t cry over losing family, then what’s left to fight for?
“You causing chaos?” I ask Sir Hopsalot, touching the white star on his forehead. “Hmmmm, nope, he looks totally innocent to me.”
Francesca puts a hand on her hip, and I get a small smile from her. Bingo, Yahtzee, and Connect Four!
“I can take his stuff up to the Goodwill if that would be easier for you,” I say, shifting my gaze to the pile of folded clothes on the bed. My voice is steady. I even try to sound casual about it. And then those hands, those perfect, amazing hands are touching my shoulder. I look up into Francesca’s round face. All the knowing and understanding in her gorgeous brown eyes makes her looks like one of the goddesses from my mom’s Greek mythology books.
“I’m not okay either,” she says.
Damn, for one second I almost, almost cry, but then I slam that door closed. Not in front of Francesca. Never in front of her. She most definitely doesn’t feel the same way I feel about her, but maybe I still have a little of her respect. That needs to be enough.
Her hand squeezes my shoulder, and we have a moment. I live in this moment, trying to make it count for all the hours I’ll spend on the road in the next forever until I get dead. I savor it for all the nights waiting behind buildings or on rooftops, ready to pull the trigger. For all the limp bodies rolled into tarp, all the graves I’ll dig for the shitheads who want to kill beautiful people like Francesca. She’s the one I always save when I take one more angel out of the world.
Thank God, Maya and I convinced Overlord Tarren to finally give us some time off. He’s not taking any down time for himself, of course. He’s on his way to do mad scientist shit with Lo in Las Vegas, but at least Maya and I get a pass for a few days.
We need it, though I’ve got some homework of my own, and his name is Pierce. I haven’t told Tarren or Maya yet, but if I’m the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet, Pierce just might be my ticket into Warren’s inner circle. War. Perfect bad guy name, right? That particular angel is crazy as balls and has an army of zealot angels to prove it. If we don’t stop him soon, it could be game over for humans. So yeah, this Pierce thing kind of needs to pan out.
Francesca lets go of my shoulder, because good things never last. At least she pulls my brain away from angel Armageddon and back into the present. But wait, the present kind of sucks right now, too. The pile of clothes on the bed is small. Sad small. But that was Dr. Lee. He never wasted time, effort, or money on things he didn’t absolutely need. The joy of his life was taking solitary walks out in the woods.
“So, you going to sell the house?” I ask. The question sounds off-handed, not at all like my soul is attached to it. Dr. Lee somehow managed to bring a sizable amount of money with him when he went hiding. I’m not sure exactly how he did it, though I know my dad helped him set up a new identity all those years ago. I guess it’s not all that surprising that Dr. Lee would use that new identity to do boring grown-up stuff like open bank accounts and draw up a will. He gave us a copy of it last year. I didn’t read it, but Maya told me that he left his house and half his cash reserves to Francesca. She could go anywhere now. Fly right out of my life like I’ve begged her to do in the past.
So what if it would destroy me? She’d be safe, and that’s what matters.
She pauses at one of his drawers. “I don’t deserve it. The house. The money. I’m no one.”
That’s not true for about a million different reasons, utmost that she is most definitely someone to me. The one. Also, because when she came to live with Dr. Lee about five years ago, I scoured the internet for every trace of her. I’ve never brought up the things I’ve found. She was always a perfect housekeeper to Dr. Lee, and it’s not like I can hold secrets against her, not when we’ve put her in danger just by being us.
“Damn right you deserve this,” I tell her. “This place was your home as much as his. It would’ve fallen down without you.”
I win a smile from her.
“So, you gonna stay?” I really hope my voice doesn’t sound as desperate as I feel. She needs to leave. Of course she does. Please, please stay.
“I like it here,” she says softly, “and I only have one more year of school until I get my degree.”
It doesn’t make sense. Farewell, Colorado is a zit on an armpit. Her secrets aren’t so bad. So why in the hell does she want to stay here? But I don’t ask. I just let it be.
“What’s this?” Francesca pulls something from the top drawer in Dr. Lee’s dresser. She opens her palm, and when I see what it is, a weird wave of sadness and joy and giddiness all slam into me at the same time. I stand up, catching Sir Hopsalot in my elbow and putting him over my shoulder.
“That, my dear, is a legit Indian arrowhead,” I tell her. “Excuse me, Native American arrowhead. It’s worth millions.”
Francesca frowns at the sloppy triangular-shaped stone in her palm. “An arrowhead?” She tries out the word for the first time. “A kind of rock?”
I guess they don’t exactly have arrowheads in Italy.
“There are some places in our country where if you do enough digging and looking you can actually find arrowheads that the Indi…Native Americans made. Just in the ground,” I explain.
Francesca’s eyes widen as she looks down at the stone again. “And this is one of them?”
“Nope.” I step in closer to her. “When I was like nine or ten, I read a book about a kid who found arrowheads in his yard. I didn’t have any money to buy Dr. Lee something for Christmas, so I came up with this idea to find an arrowhead for him. Course, there was like ten feet of snow on the ground, so my search didn’t exactly go well.”
I remember how Tammy mocked the shit out of me for even trying. I found a little spade in the garage, chucked some snow around, and cleared out a patch of lawn. The soil was frozen, and I punched at it for a good hour before giving up.
“So instead, I found a flat-ish rock and kind of, you know, modified it. I figured that since Dr. Lee had lived in Denver his whole life, he probably had no idea what an arrowhead looked like. I thought it was the most brilliant idea ever,” I tell Francesca. “I spent days, really days, sawing it with other rocks, trying to get it to look like a real arrowhead.”
We both look down at the crude, mangled rock in Francesca’s hand. “Tarren was skeptical of course, but I knew he was just jealous that he hadn’t thought of such a great plan. Tammy egged me on, eagerly anticipating my ruination.”
Francesca’s smile widens as she gets into the story, and it feels like we’re walking through the old memory together. “So, Christmas comes. Dr. Lee was at our house anyway, because Mom was gone. I let Tarren and Tammy give their presents first. And then I gave him mine, wrapped up in some newspaper. It was the comics section, I remember, because Mom would bring those home for us from the motels. He opened it up and just stared at it. Then I launched into this epic story about how I searched the entire forest, how I dug a mile into the earth, and how it took days to carefully excavate. I even told him it was worth a million dollars. And you know what Dr. Lee did?”
Francesca is grinning, the little dimple digging into her left cheek. “What? What did he do?”
“He believed me. He nodded the whole way through my story and said that he was extremely impressed with my hard work and focus and that he’d never even think of selling it, because it was too valuable as a keepsake. Francesca, you should have seen the look on Tammy’s face! She tried to tattle on me, but Dr. Lee wouldn’t hear of it. Tarren didn’t say a thing.”
The memory feels warm around me. I can still see the twinkle in Dr. Lee’s eye.
“He really believed you?” Francesca says.
“Hell no. Look at that damn thing.” I gesture toward the rock. “No one in their right mind would think that was a real arrowhead. Tarren understood right away that Dr. Lee was faking, but the crazy thing is, I never ever caught on. Not for years. I always, always thought that Dr. Lee believed me, that it was the greatest gift anyone had ever given him. And then when I was, like sixteen, I was up here and I saw the arrowhead sitting on his dresser.”
I don’t tell Francesca that Dr. Lee was checking the stitch job Tammy had done on my gunshot wound and giving me an injection of antibiotics at the time. “…and then I recognized just how shitty it was. I looked at Dr. Lee, and it just clicked. I told him, ‘You knew the damned arrowhead was a fake the whole time!’”
I hold out my hand, and Francesca gives me the rock, warm from her skin. I toss it and catch it. “And Dr. Lee said, ‘Of course I knew you were lying out your rear end, Gabriel Fox. Did you think I was blind?’” I do my ridiculously good Dr. Lee impression, and it hurts my heart, but I keep going, still swept up in the mood. “So I ask him why he played along, and he said, ‘I saw you in the garage working on that thing for three days. That’s the longest time you’ve ever spent on anything that wasn’t a video game.’”
My voice starts to tremble. “And he said…he said, ‘I meant it. I wouldn’t sell it even if it was worth a million dollars.’” The rock almost feels alive in my hand, like the memory of its creation is trapped inside it. “It was weird. He wasn’t a sentimental person, you know? He’d almost never say mushy stuff like that.”
Francesca’s smile is different now. It’s the kind one. “He was sentimental…” she stumbles on the word in an adorable way, “but he liked to hide it.”
“Yeah, well, I actually looked it up, and arrowheads are only worth a few hundred bucks at the most. So, not exactly a million dollars.” I shrug. A wave of sadness hits me. He’s really fucking gone. Didn’t even ask my permission to croak. He knew I’d never give it to him.
“Here,” I drop the fake arrowhead into Francesca’s palm.
“Oh no, I can’t,” she says at once.
“But Francesca, this is a real, authentic, Native American arrowhead.” I carefully close her fingers around the worthless rock, hoping this comes off gallant as hell. “I scoured the entire state of Colorado looking for it. I hired a team of the very best archeologists in the world to help me search. We dug at thousands of sites. Used tons of big, beepy equipment. And finally, I pulled this from the ground, just for you.”
She giggles, and I hope Dr. Lee can hear this. I hope he knows that I’ll take care of Francesca and keep her safe if it’s the last thing I do on this blue marble.
“Is it worth a million dollars? Maybe I just sell it,” she says, batting her eyes. I lean in close enough to smell her perfume
“I don’t think you should sell,” I say. Her eyes are shining, and her smile is wide enough to show her gums. My lucky hat must be giving off some seriously good mojo. “I think…”
…and then the universe pisses on this already pissed day. My phone vibrates in my pocket. And as much as I want to forget that phones even exist, in my world a missed call might mean someone dies or a lot of someones die.
“I’ve…got to take this.” I pull my hand away from Francesca’s closed fist.
Her smile is already wilting, the laughter fading from her eyes. Moment officially ruined.
“Keep it though,” I say as I let my sidekick down on the floor. I know you were rooting for me, buddy.
I head out of the bedroom, fishing for my phone. It’s probably Bear with a new assignment, though I already told him that we were on a no-kill vacay for the next four days. I’d hate to let a set of wings rampage just so we can get some R&R, but Bear’s got four squads up and running. I know they’re spread thin, but he can probably scramble at least one to cover the latest crisis. Maybe even set that new guy, Jaguar, on it.
I pull the phone out of my pocket, and the number sends all sorts of ugly pins and needles right into my gut. Franklin, my friendly neighborhood gun dealer, never calls me.
“Yeah?” I say as soon as I put Dr. Lee’s bedroom to my back. I walk down the hallway toward the front door.
“Hi th.th.there, friend,” Franklin responds on the other end of the line, his gruff, scratchy voice like sandpaper on my ear. Right away, I wonder if the Feds have the pinch on him. He’s been fencing weapons to me for six years now. Practically a lifetime for a criminal enterprise.
“What’s up?” I swing open the front door and step outside. The day is muggy, gray, and miserable. Good. Let everyone hate this day as much as I do.
“I got something th…th…th…that you might be interested in,” Franklin says. Usually I’m okay with letting his stutter take its course, but if he’s been flipped, that stutter is wasting precious time. I grit my teeth to stop from filling in his sentences. I’ve got him on a burner and as long as I don’t say anything incriminating, I should be good as gold.
“I’m listening,” I say, counting the seconds in my head.
“I’ve got a rare opportunity,” Franklin says, his voice going sly on the other end. “S…s…s…some Simtex fell into m..m…m…my lap. U.S. Army grade.”
Holy panda balls! Where did this fat, lazy shit get explosives? “So the Army just decided to have a little garage sale, eh?” I say.
Franklin giggles that weird, girly giggle of his that you’d never expect out of a 250-pound grizzled biker. “Something like that. You interested?”
I actually pause before answering. Explosives. Damn. That’s big time destruction. Practically terrorism. Our bullets have always been enough. So much cleaner. “Nah,” I say. “I’m sticking with what I’ve got.”
Franklin grunts on the other end, clearly disappointed. I imagine him stroking the beautiful white cat he dotes on.
“How’s Princess?”
“Good,” he says. “I’ve g..g…g…g…got to g…g…g…get her trimmed for summer.”
“Yep, good idea,” I say like this is totally normal and everyone just goes around trimming their cats.
“I just…” Franklin stops.
“What?”
“You and me, we’re f…f…f…friends.”
“Sure we are.” The sweat gathers in my armpits, soaking through my shirt. I’ve been on too long. If anyone was tracking the call, they’d have me, but I’m not getting a desperation vibe from Franklin. “You’re my favorite anarchist in the whole world,” I tell him.
“I d…d…don’t want to give this sh…sh…shit to just anyone, you know? Only s…s…someone that can be tr..tr..tr..trusted. You’re good people, Lee.”
Franklin knows exactly nothing about me, not even my real name. Sure, we’ve bonded over our mutual appreciation for Beretta PX4 semis, but that’s not exactly a rock solid foundation for everlasting love.
“Thanks man,” I tell him back, “but explosives just aren’t my gig. I’ll keep you in mind if circumstances change.”
I think it’s okay to say that even if the Feds are listening in. Come to think of it, Franklin and I really need to develop some sort of code system if he’s ever caught or under investigation.
“Alright,” he huffs. “G…g….go with God.”
“Fair weather and good business, friend,” I respond, and that high giggle is the last thing I hear as he hangs up the phone. I hold my burner in my hand wondering if I need to change it out. I’m also pondering those explosives. We don’t need them. Definitely don’t need them, except they would’ve been handy three months ago when we came up on five angels in a secluded shack in the swamps outside of Miami. Some C4 would have saved us from that messy shootout, which brought the cops en masse like mosquitos at a nudist colony. One of the wings started using her ability to strike everything with lightning before Maya put a bullet in her. One of those strikes barely missed me. I’d tasted metal in the back of my mouth for a week. Damn, Maya’d been worried sick about that close call, and Tarren was epic pissed that two of the wings got away in the madness. No one but me seemed to be glad that we all got away too, which was quite a feat in its own right.
“Gabe, you want any lemonade?” Francesca is in the doorway of the cabin, like a magical lemonade goddess.
Let’s run away together, I think, suddenly weary of everything. I’d find some place where the angels wouldn’t even think to look for us. And wherever that place is, I’d build you a porch swing, so we could watch the stars together at night.
I give Francesca a smile, while visions of our never-future float through my head. “Yeah, lemonade. That’d be great. You’re a dream come true.”
Chapter 3 – Tarren
The drive to Lo’s home is so familiar by now that I fight to stay focused, attuned. Even here on the road, I must be careful. I remember, even as a young boy, that my mother would tell us, “We are always on the mission.”
Tammy used to laugh at these warnings. “Geez, paranoid much?” she’d say with her well-practiced eye roll. Mom usually wouldn’t take the bait. Usually. But I knew, even though we were just nine the first time Mom said it, that she was right. Danger is everywhere. A single speeding ticket, a single missed camera when taking down an angel, one bloody thumbprint left in the wrong place, and it could all come crumbling down.
So I check the speedometer and let up on the gas. I glance in the rearview mirror and take note of the police officer three cars back.
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