Chapter Fourteen

Gabriel

 

I take her to the doctor I use when a job goes badly, when I’ve fucked up my arm or I’ve taken a bullet wound. He’s a good man, an Asian fella who’s always giving me shit for being so reckless. His name’s Charles Won and he’s the best in the business, and he’s also unaffiliated with any mob organization that I know of. I give him two grand to check Colleen over.

 

“She’s okay,” he tells me, smiling slightly. He’s short and gray-haired, with a boyish light in his eyes which seems to get even brighter the times I come in with a serious injury. Part of me thinks he’s a bit crazy, since he takes so much pleasure in it. But crazy or not, he’d tell me if Colleen was in any trouble. “There’s nothing physical. The bang to the head—well, what can you do but be thankful to the human skull? She took it well, and she’s in no danger. Just try to rest, okay?” He turns to Colleen, who sits there silently, staring off into space.

 

She’s been like that ever since the showdown, when she blew a hole out the back of that bastard’s head. He deserved it, too, which I told her right away. But that don’t mean much to her right now. She just keeps on staring.

 

“Okay?” Charles turns back to me when she doesn’t respond.

 

“Yeah, thanks.” I take Colleen’s hand and help her down from the doctor’s table—which looks pretty damn weird out the back of an abandoned Turkish takeout place—and toward the door.

 

“I feel funny,” she whispers as I lead her across the snow-covered street to the car. It’s another stolen car, this one even less conspicuous than the last: a Honda CR-V. There are more of those than a man can count cruising around New York, so I reckon we’ll be safe enough. She stops just outside the door, staring down at the ground between her feet. “I don’t feel right, Gabriel.”

 

I keep waiting for myself to get impatient with her, pissed off. If I was on a job and some rookie started talking like this, I would’ve already lost my patience. But with her I find I want to comfort her, to make her understand that she’s going to be okay. She got through this; she’ll get through more.

 

I put my hands on her shoulders and squeeze softly. “Don’t think about it,” I say. “After a fight like that, hell, most civilians feel pretty fucking funny. Don’t worry about how you feel. You’re physically fine, so it’s all up here now.” I tap myself on the side of the head. “So just relax. Take a deep breath, eh? It’ll all be all right.”

 

“Can you …” She bites her lip, looks up at me with devastatingly vulnerable eyes. “Can you hold me?”

 

Instantly my internal alarms start to blare, but I force them back and open my arms. I hold her as a light snow once again begins to fall, and then I get her into the car and drive out to the interstate, stopping at a motel with a clear escape route out of New York.

 

I get us some food from the vending machine, but neither of us eats it. She sits on the bed with her knees drawn to her chest, wearing a clean hoodie and a pair of black jeans, and I sit in the corner chair wearing a clean hoodie and a pair of blue jeans (all bought at the supermarket on the way here, along with a whole bag full of clean clothes). She seems to be locked in her thoughts, and I reckon I am too, since hours pass without either of us saying anything.

 

Finally, after stewing it over, I mutter, “We ought to take off.”

 

“Run?” she asks, finally with some life in her. The sun has set but the lights are still off; from outside, headlights will sometimes spread across the window and throw shadows onto the drawn curtains. In the semidarkness, her face is full of disbelief. “You’d really do that?” she goes on. “After everything, you’d run away?”

 

“I didn’t say I wanted to do it,” I growl, not much liking the tone in her voice. I’m not a coward; she has to know that. But I’m not a fool, either. “But it’d be the smart thing to do. If I was on my own, I’d have to think on it. Go around my safehouses, collect my stashes, and then get the hell out of here. Every Family man has to have a plan, Colleen. Only a fucking idiot lets other men decide which way his life is headed. Yeah, we ought to run.”

 

“But … could you do it? Could you leave it all up in the air like this? Could you just give up?” She looks like she might cry again, but she manages to keep herself calm. She lets out a shaky breath. “After what they’ve done to you, what they’ve tried to do to me … They were going to sell me, Gabriel!”

 

“What are you saying?” I snap. I shouldn’t give a fuck what she’s saying. She’s not in the life; she’s in a Family, but not as a soldier. Yet I care a whole lot: care more’n I’ve ever cared about anybody else’s opinion, it feels like. The idea that she might be judging me fills me with a burning shame, a shame I don’t much like feeling. “What?” I repeat, when she just sits there, staring at me.

 

“I killed him,” she whispers. “I shot him right in the face.”

 

“You did,” I agree. “You were right to do it. He would’ve killed you, given the chance. And he wouldn’t’ve felt bad about it afterwards, either.”

 

“I know,” she murmurs, picking at the bedsheets. “But … the way he just collapsed, Gabriel. The way he collapsed …” She breaks down and cries into her cupped hands.

 

I move across the room instinctively, wrap my arms around her and pull her face down into my chest, letting her cry against me. She cries for a long time, at least a quarter of an hour, recovering briefly only to once again break down into tears. I don’t get impatient, though, inside or out. It actually hurts me to hear her crying, to feel her trembling shoulders. There’s a goddamn pain in my chest each time she violently sobs. I stroke her hair and kiss her on the forehead.

 

“It’s okay,” I whisper. “It’s over. You’re safe.”

 

“I’m sorry,” she sniffles, leaning back and wiping her face. “I didn’t mean to … I’m okay. Would you really leave?”

 

We silently agree to lie down together, me lifting my arm so that she can slide into the embrace. I hold her close to me in the semidarkness as the shadow of a passing man lights up on the curtains, and then the headlights fade as the car pulls away.

 

“It’s the only play,” I tell her. “Maybe I thought I had a chance against them, but—”

 

“This isn’t about that,” she interjects. “Is it? You wanted revenge before, and now, after today, now you want to run away. This isn’t about you, Gabriel. This is about me. You want to protect me.”

 

I try to laugh it off at first. I’m not exactly in the habit of letting women tell me why I’m doing what I’m doing. I’m not in the habit of letting them probe inside of me, either, rooting around inside my chest and trying to find something there. But in the silence that follows, as we just lie here and hold each other, the truth of her words sink into me. It takes a long time, since everything tonight takes a long time; it’s one of those evenings, as though we did a huge workout today. Both of us are drained. I can’t laugh it off, even if it annoys me.

 

“Maybe I do,” I admit, sighing heavily. It isn’t easy to let a lady know something like that.

 

“But what exactly are you proposing?” she asks. “That we run away together and start a new life together? Is that what you want?”

 

I stand up, pace to the window, and stare at the closed curtains. “I’m not fucking proposing to you. I’m just telling you what the smart play is.”

 

“I know,” she says, following me. She wraps her arms around me, interlaces her fingers on my belly, and presses her body against my back. “You just want to keep me safe. I get that.”

 

“Do you?” I wheel on her, breaking the hold. “Because I don’t. Not too long ago I was thinking about toying with some little Irish princess, having a good old fucking time with her. And now you’ve got me thinking … I don’t know what you are, Colleen, but you’re sure as hell more than meets the eye.”

 

“How do you think I feel?” she shoots back. “Do you think I planned on feeling this way about you? Do you think I planned on … I should hate you, Gabriel. I should hate you and want to get home, but …”

 

“But what?”

 

“But I’m just so angry right now. I keep thinking about growing up with Alma and Father always telling me what to do, where to go, who to be. I know it might not seem like a big deal to you, Gabriel, but for all of my life I’ve been a doll to them: that’s it, just a pretty doll to dress up, and every now and then they pull my string so that I’ll say something acceptable. Father wanted to make me a killer! He didn’t ask my opinion, not once! He wanted to make me kill you! And now these men are doing the same: trying to make me into something I’m not. A victim, a sex slave, a corpse … I guess I can take my pick.” She laughs darkly. “I’m done being the pawn. I’m sick of it. It’s time I made some moves of my own.”

 

She stumbles back to the bed, breathing heavily, hands resting on her knees. When she looks up at me, it’s with determination, but also with surprise: surprise that this part of herself exists.

 

“All right then,” I say. “Then what the fuck should we do?”

 

“Fight them,” she whispers. “The men who tried to kill us. Your boss, his men. We should fight them …” She hesitates, clawing at the bedsheets. Then, suddenly, she curls her hands into tight fists. “Together.”

 

I go to her, take one knee, and place my hands on her thighs. I squeeze them hard, staring a challenge into her eyes. “Do you think you’ve got what it takes for that?” I ask. “Do you really think you’re that tough, eh?”

 

“It’s not about being tough,” she counters. “It’s about being willing. And right now I’m unwilling to be their doll anymore. So you run if you want. I’m going to fight.”

 

“You’re not my prisoner anymore, are you?” I ask.

 

She smiles, cute as hell. “You’re not my kidnapper anymore, are you?”

 

“Fair enough.” I let go of her knees. “We won’t run then. If you really wanna do this, we’ll find a way. But not right now; not tonight. Tonight, we eat. And not that vending machine shit. Tomorrow, we’ll see how this goes down.”

 

“So is this our second date?” she quips as I leave to get the takeout food. “Since I’m not your prisoner now?”

 

“Sure,” I say, smiling. “Why the hell not?”