Jake
I turn my bike off and park it, getting off and stepping up to my front door. Opening it up I go in and walk up the stairs, feeling the entire weight of my body and mind pulling me down, trying to suck me into the earth. I need to rest. To sleep and think and try to figure out what I’m going to—
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Emily’s voice, from the couch. I look over and she’s sitting on it, her face streaked with tears, her eyes red and puffy and shining.
“Why the fuck did you do that? Kicking Merryn out? How fucking heartless can you be?”
“Emily—” I start, but she cuts me off.
“Oh no, you don’t get to say anything,” she yells. “She didn’t mean anything by what she did! What, do you think she was in cahoots with Will Silver or something?”
“No, I—”
“Shut up! I don’t understand you, Jake! She … she was everything to you! And you just threw her out, like she was a piece of garbage! What about the last eight months, huh? Did that mean nothing to you? She was the only one — the only one — who could deal with you! Who could handle you and your neverending bullshit!”
She takes a moment, breathing hard.
“Do you know where she went?” she asks. I don’t respond. “Trista took her. Trista. Your fucking enemy. She volunteered to take Merryn in. How does that make you feel, huh? Even one of the fucking Bullets has more of a heart than you do.”
She’s with Trista. The woman I kidnapped. The woman I was ready to kill yesterday. I remember taking my gun out on her. Why did I want to kill her, again? I can’t seem to remember.
Emily wipes at her eyes. She’s unable to stem the constant flow of tears.
“Did you even think about anyone other than yourself? Huh? Did you?”
She waits, staring at me, daggers from her eyes. I feel so tired. So empty and tired.
“She betrayed me,” I start to say in a weak voice, but Emily cuts me off with a harsh laugh.
“Ha! She betrayed you? What are you, the fucking king of Santa Espera? What, she went behind your back and was trying to usurp your throne?” She wipes at her eyes again. “You’re a real piece of work, Jake. You don’t deserve Merryn. Everything she did was for you, or the gang, or for the betterment of the city. She did nothing for herself.” She shakes her head, then pushes up from the couch, grabbing her crutches. “Ugh. I’m going for a walk.”
I step back as she makes her way around the couch to the top of the stairs. She’s looking down at the floor, not at me.
“I have to calm down. You fucking …”
Down the stairs, one at a time. I don’t say anything. I know it would only make things worse if I did. She gets to the bottom and leaves, closing the door behind her.
Ugh … fuck. I need a drink.
I go to the kitchen and grab a beer from the fridge, twist the cap off and take a long swallow.
I didn’t expect that. I should have. Everybody’s been acting like what I did was the worst thing in the world. They’re not wrong, when I think about it. I guess I wasn’t really thinking through what I was doing. What it meant in the long run. Ugh … What can I do? I could go to Trista’s, try to get her back. I know where she lives. I could ride over there right now. Try to explain myself. Tell her I made a mistake, and that I want her back.
What makes you think she even would come back, though?
I stop in the middle of taking another sip. I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe she doesn’t want to come back. Emily’s right. Everything that Merryn has done has been for the benefit of everyone except herself. Working so hard on her practice. Helping get the bar back in order. Hell, even carrying our baby. I’ve only been thinking about how things have been affecting me. And then, in response to her trying out her own solution to the Will Silver problem, I went ahead and kicked her out of her own home?
Jesus Christ … why would she want to come back?
There’s a knock at the door. I look over at it, then go to answer it. Maybe Emily forgot her keys or something, I think as I descend the stairs. But if she forgot her keys, she wouldn’t have been able to lock the door in the first place.
I reach the door, open it up … and see Craig Silver standing right in front of me.
Time stops for a long moment. He looks at me. I look at him. This must be a joke. Did I pass out and I’m dreaming?
But one second turns into two, and I realize I’m not dreaming.
Craig Silver.
The beer bottle falls from my hand as I reach around to the gun in my holster. Craig sees the movement, acts as quickly as I do, his hand reaching inside of his jacket. The bottle hits the ground and tips over as we both pull our guns out, bringing them up, pointing them at each other’s heads. And then we freeze again, our fingers on each of our triggers.
I hear beer guzzle out of the neck as it spills from the bottle and then stops.
“Jake,” Craig says, his voice level, “I’m not here looking for trouble.”
“What are you doing here?” I ask him. “No, better question: tell me why I shouldn’t kill you right now.”
“Like I said, I’m not looking for trouble. I’m looking for Merryn.”
A pang goes off in my heart, but I keep my face from showing it.
“She’s not here right now, can I take a message?”
“Look,” Craig says, and I watch his finger leave the trigger, watch him stash the gun back into his jacket and lift both hands up, the palms showing, like he’s under arrest. “Look. No trouble, okay? I just want to talk to Merryn.”
This is a trap. I keep my gun up and don’t say anything. Craig decides to speak instead.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” he says. “About everything that’s been happening, with my dad and the business and … and I’ve decided I don’t want to help him anymore. I want to help Merryn. You guys. I want to help you to stop him.”
This is definitely a trap. But as I wait, keeping my gun on Craig, staying in the relative safety past the threshold to my apartment … nothing happens. Craig stays where he is, his hands held up. There’s nobody else around. The only vehicle I can see parked close by is Craig’s car.
“Give me your gun,” I tell him. “Slowly.”
Craig nods, then slowly moves his hand back to the inside of his jacket, taking the gun out. He’s holding it pinched between his fingers now, not like he’s going to use it to attack. He hands it to me and I take it, tuck it into my pants. Craig puts his hands back up, in a surrendering position.
He’s weaponless now. The rush from a few moments ago is quickly dwindling away. I start to lower my weapon, seeing if Craig is going to make to attack me. He doesn’t.
Finally I click the safety back on on my gun.
“Okay,” I say to him. I tuck my gun away. “Come on in.”
I step to the side, giving him space to pass. I’m not about to turn my back to him just yet. Craig lowers his hands, then reaches down and picks up my spilled beer bottle. He straightens up and hands it to me.
“Thanks,” I mutter before I can stop myself. He nods and walks past me, up the stairs. I close the door and follow him.
He reaches the top, steps forward. I reach the landing behind him.
“So Merryn lives here with you now?” he asks, looking around as I walk past. “I tried her at her old place but somebody else was living there. Then I remembered you and her seemed to be, like, an item, so I thought I’d check.”
“Yeah, she lives here,” I say. He doesn’t feel like a threat. Besides, I have his gun. If he decides to try anything, I have that on him.
“Mind if I sit down?” He indicates the dining table and I nod. I’m heading to the kitchen.
“Do you want a beer?” I ask him. He looks at me.
“Sure,” he says.
I nod, then go into the kitchen and take two new beers from the fridge, leaving the spilled one on the counter. I twist off both caps and toss them in the garbage, then come back out, handing the beer to Craig. He take the bottle and looks at it.
“I’ll have to trust you didn’t poison this,” he says, taking a swig. I take a swig myself, realizing that he’s right, that I could have poisoned it. But he drank it anyway. I sit down in another chair at the table.
“So,” I say. “You want to help us get your dad?”
Craig nods. “Yeah. Lately things have just been … getting more and more fucked up. And then this afternoon …”
The warehouse. Will got away. “What happened this afternoon?”
He glances at me, then takes another sip of his beer.
“Well, you were at that warehouse with him. I was at PharmaChem. My dad didn’t actually know I was there, but I ran into Merryn in the elevator. She said she was going to meet my dad. I had no idea it was going to lead to that. But anyway, dad came back to PharmaChem. He called my cell phone — because he didn’t know I was there — and told me to come over right away, didn’t tell me why. I waited around a bit and then went up to his office. He wanted me to get the bullet out of his arm and to stitch him up. Said he couldn’t go to the hospital after what happened this morning.”
“What happened this morning?”
Craig pauses for a second. “Oh shit. You don’t know. The police captain, Captain Hartridge … my dad killed her. She got brought in by … actually, by Trista and Flynn. And a couple others. She was beat up pretty bad. They said it was a car accident. Anyway, I went there with my dad, as backup. And he killed her.” Craig shakes his head, looking down at the table now. “He just killed her. Right there on the hospital bed. He choked her to death.”
This all sounds so strange, like Craig is telling me about a dream he had.
“Why’d he do that?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. But he did it. Didn’t tell me about it beforehand. Didn’t talk about it after. But anyway, so I got the bullet out of him, stitched up his wound. That was okay. It’s not the first time my dad asked me to help patch him up. I thought that was going to be the end of it. But then he said that someone at the warehouse said something to him. It was this guy who used to work for him, Lance. He was at the hospital too. The other girl, I didn’t recognize her.”
Lance? I keep my face neutral as Craig takes another sip of beer. I remember him yelling some names at the warehouse, but I didn’t know he was there when Will killed the police captain.
“Anyway,” Craig goes on, “so dad said that this Lance guy yelled a couple of names. One of them was Lance’s little kid brother who my dad apparently killed but doesn’t remember. And the other one was Nathan Willow.”
That name … Trista and Lance said it when they were talking in the hospital.
“My dad thought Nathan Willow was dead. I thought he was dead. But it sounded like, according to this Lance guy, the kid is still alive.”
“Who’s Nathan Willow?”
Craig stops talking, looks uneasy. He takes another sip of beer.
“He’s a kid,” he says. “A little kid. About one year old. He, uh … he may be my son.”
My eyebrows fly up. “Your son?”
“Yeah. I was out drinking one night. This was almost two years ago now. It was before I met Merryn. And I was driving, and I saw this woman out walking. I wanted to talk to her, but she wouldn’t respond. And I … I was drunk, and I …”
“You raped her?”
Craig colors, setting his jaw. “Look, I don’t know, okay? I don’t remember. I might have. But it turned out her husband worked for one of my dad’s employees. I mean, it’s hard to find someone in this town who doesn’t work for my dad, you know? And it got around that she was pregnant and I think she told him it may have been me and … look, it’s too much to get into right now, okay? The bottom line is that the kid might be mine. And my dad knows it.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. So. My dad wanted this kid dead. A while ago. Like, months ago. And it turns out he might still be alive. So he told me to go check out their house, and if he is alive … then he wanted me to kill him.” Craig looks at me. “Think about that. My dad wanted me to go by myself and kill, not only a little kid, but a little kid who could be my kid.”
He shakes his head.
“I mean, I know things have been getting weird with dad lately, but … that’s fucked. To ask your son to kill his own kid.” He picks up his beer, but then puts it back down without taking a drink. “I don’t know what’s been going on with dad, if it’s been stress or what. He’s doing things … I don’t want to be a part of them. Like that shit in the hospital. Seriously, what the fuck was that? He just fucking killed the police captain! Just like that! Like he didn’t even think about it. We made a deal with her last week!”
Now he picks up the bottle and takes a drink. I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything. Craig puts down the bottle and goes on.
“So I told him no. That I didn’t feel right, doing that Willow kid. And you know what dad said? He said, fine, so hire some guys to do it instead. No argument. He didn’t even want to know what was stopping me. How I felt about it. He just wanted his plan to go ahead, without even thinking about how I felt.”
My heart twinges. This is sounding too familiar, but I keep my mouth shut.
“But you know what?” Craig looks at me. “I think he knows how I feel. I mean, how could he not? He just doesn’t want to talk about it.” He shakes his head. “Fucking dad … never wants to talk. Always says that talking’s for pussies who don’t know how to act. I knew it didn’t matter what I said. Even if I said no again, he would still make it happen. So I said sure, I’ll get some guys. And then I left. I felt … I don’t know how I felt. I felt like I needed someone to … talk to, you know? Someone who I knew was against my dad and everything he was doing. And Merryn’s been the only person who I’d ever actually told how I feel about stuff. So I decided I could help her. I went by her old place but someone else is living there now. And then I figured she may be here, with you. So here I am.”
He stops talking, takes another drink of beer. I’m watching him, wondering if this is all some sort of elaborate scheme.
“Well,” I say slowly, “Merryn’s not here.”
He swallows the beer in his mouth. “When’s she getting back?”
My heart. But I ignore the pain.
“She’s not. Merryn’s out of the picture.”
He looks concerned — actually concerned.
“What happened?”
And I open my mouth, but then stop myself. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I say. “But she’ll be gone for a while.”
His gaze drops as he looks perturbed … almost lost. Then he looks up at me again.
“Well … you’re still trying to stop my dad, right? Can I give you a hand?”
My my, the tables have turned.
“Sorry,” I give him a little smirk. “But I’m not really in the stopping Will Silver business. I’m in the killing Will Silver business.”
Craig looks shocked, as I knew he would.
“What?”
“You heard me,” I tell him. “Things are serious now. Serious times call for serious measures.”
“Does it have to be like this?”
Another smirk. “I’m afraid so. You see, like a cockroach, if we don’t kill your dad then he’s just going to keep coming back. It’s all or nothing.”
He seems to be thinking. I’m waiting for him to say he won’t do it, that coming here was a mistake. He looks in my eyes again.
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll do it.”
I blink at him just as the sound of the front door opening reaches my ears. We both turn to look. Hollow, metallic sounds move their way up. Soon enough Emily’s head emerges at the top of the stairs and she looks to see me and Craig, sitting at the dining table, sharing beers.
A moment passes where Craig and Emily both look at each other. And then she points an accusing finger.
“I know you,” she says. “You’re that asshole who tried to torch Jake’s garage!”
“And you’re the girl with the camera,” he replies.
Her upper lip goes stiff. “No camera anymore, thanks to your dad.” To me, “Jake, what is he doing here?”
“It’s okay, Emily. Craig and I are talking. He … said he wants to help.”
Craig stands up, walks over to Emily. My muscles stiffen, and I stand up too, not making any noise. He extends a hand when he reaches her.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Jake is right. I want to help.”
Emily looks at the hand, looks over his shoulder at me. I’m hesitant for a second, and then I nod. She reaches out her hand and shakes his.
“Okay,” I say when they let go. “So Craig, you’re in?” Craig turns to me and nods. “How about I get your number, then give you a call when things are more ironed out?”
Craig says that’s fine, and he gives me his number, which I put in my phone. After that I walk him down the stairs to the front door, give him back his gun, and lock the door after he leaves. Then I come back up.
Emily’s still in the living room. She hasn’t sat down yet. There’s an awkward silence between us, that neither of us seems to want to break.
“How’re you feeling?” I finally ask. Emily shrugs.
“I’m still mad,” she says. “But I guess what happened happened. You’re your own person. If you want to break up with Merryn, then that’s your business.”
“I don’t want to break up with her,” I say. “I was just—”
But Emily cuts me off. “I don’t want to talk about it, okay Jake?” She nods at the stairs where Craig just left. “What was that about?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. He just came by, out of the blue.”
“Are you going to trust him?”
I think for a second. “I don’t know,” I admit. “Do you think I should trust him?”
Emily thinks. “He seemed genuine,” she says. “But then again, he did screw us over, big time.” She breathes a sigh. “Either way, I don’t want to be involved.”
“What?” I ask. “What do you mean?”
“Jake,” she levels her gaze at me. “I got shot in the chest this morning. I almost died, Jake. And I know you’ve been warning me about that kind of thing happened every time I bring up gang stuff, but … I had no idea it was really real until it actually happened to me, you know? And,” she lets out a laugh, “the dumb thing is that I didn’t even do anything! I just showed up and then, bam, I was shot!” She shakes her head. “No … I think you were right. I don’t want to be a part of this. But,” she gives me a half-smile, “you should be happy. If that Craig guy is who he claims to be, then you should be happy. I mean, this is what you wanted, right?”
I blink, mumble an agreement. Emily goes to her room, and as she does I think, Is this what I wanted? I hear her door close behind her. Emily’s gone. Merryn is gone. I’m alone once again.