CHAPTER 9: BRETT
I lay on the floor of my apartment and thought hard, or as much as I could through the pain right now. The bullet had grazed my arm and I’d wrapped it with an old shirt, the blood dark and sticking the fabric to my skin.
There isn’t any question as to who that was.
It was them, clearly. Their threat, following through. I looked at my watch, which read six o’ clock. I should have called the ambulance an hour ago. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I did.
If I called them, and showed up with a gunshot wound, someone would want to know what happened. Would want to call the cops. If I call the cops, then the gang will have more than just debt to find me for.
I didn’t need that in my life.
“They already tried to kill me.”
That thought made me want to stay right here on the floor and never move a muscle again. I was fairly sure they’d meant to miss, as they would get nothing if they actually killed me. But what if they had missed simply by chance?
I was looking up at the ceiling of my apartment, pondering that very unsavory question, when the phone rang.
Dammit!
I tried to stand, used my injured arm and collapsed, swearing, with the pain. Don’t start bleeding, I told it. Just don’t. I didn’t much want to find out what happened if it didn’t stop. I also didn’t want to find out what happened if the guys came back.
I grabbed the phone off the seat and answered.
“Hello?”
“Brett!”
I stared in surprise. It was her!
“Hey!” I said. My voice was shaking. I breathed a long, slow sigh to try and calm down. “What’s up?”
“Brett! Just calling to say hi,” she said. “I just got back from work. It’s an early day for me. How’s your day?”
“Um… weird,” I said. What else could I say? I had a thought. “Um… if I can drive, do you think I could come over?”
“If you can drive?” she asked, voice tight. “Why? What’s going on, Brett?”
“Um… I’m not drunk,” I said carefully. “That’s not why I might not be… oh, never mind,” I said. “If I can, could I see you in an hour, maybe?” I might get caught in traffic, going the long way. Always assuming I could drive at all.
“Sure,” she said. “I’d like to see you. Only…Brett?”
“Yes?”
“You are sure you’re okay? I mean, could I rather come around to you?”
“No!” I said, suddenly frantic. If she came around and they were still there, what would I do? The last thing I needed was for them to know who she was. As it was, it scared the hell out of me that they knew my address. There was no way I would risk leading them to her home unless I really thought they might come back to get me. “I mean, no. It’s okay, K.”
She was frowning—I could hear it in her voice. “If you’re sure,” she said.
She sounded very confused. I couldn’t blame her. Gritting my teeth, keeping out of sight of the windows, just in case, I hauled myself slowly to my feet.
“I’ll come around just now,” I said. “See you soon.”
“Great,” she said. She didn’t sound mad at me, which was a good thing. All the same, I could tell she wasn’t exactly impressed. I didn’t blame her.
“I’m coming,” I said, but the call was already ended.
I winced and walked to the door and got my wallet and my jacket, then realized there was no way I could put the jacket over my arm. As it was, I was really scared to take the bandage off for fear of the bleeding starting again.
With the old shirt stuck to my bicep, the stench of blood acrid in my nose, I headed downstairs and got into my car.
“Dammit. Dammit!” I swore, hissing the word over and over as the pain lanced through my arm. I turned the steering-wheel and headed out into the post-rush-hour traffic.
Don’t go the direct way. You don’t want to go making it easy to find her.
I took the most roundabout route I could. Luckily, when we discussed the dinner plans she had messaged me her address, or I would have had no idea. I knew roughly where the apartment block was, so I could find it by an indirect route.
Half an hour later, thanks to the low traffic, almost passing out with the pain and the iron tang in my nostrils, I arrived at the block of apartments.
“Number sixteen.”
I pressed it and waited. The intercom buzzed. I spoke.
“Hello?”
Every second out of my car I felt as if someone would take a shot at me again. I was shivering, tense with nerves. I was just waiting to have to throw myself flat on the ground.
“Hello!”
I jumped.
“Hell, Kerry!” I said, “you scared me.”
She laughed. “Sorry, Brett. Come on over.” She pressed the button and the gate opened.
I grabbed it and slammed it shut behind me. Walked quickly across the small yard to the door. I was in.
The elevator ride up gave me time to calm down. By the time I arrived on the fifth floor I was more at peace. I stepped out and rang the bell.
I heard her footsteps, quick and light, coming to the door, and then the turning of the handle.
“Hello?”
“Kerry! Hi!”
“Brett!” She grinned and then her eye fell on my bicep. Her expression changed to dismay. “What on… get inside now!”
I was already inside with the door shut behind me by the time I realized I had obeyed that demand without question. I would have laughed except that the situation was so very serious.
“Brett,” She was saying. “Oh, for… Get into the bathroom. Is it still bleeding? What the hell?”
I laughed weakly. “It’s okay, Kerry. It’s not bleeding much anymore. At least, I hope so.”
“Get that shirt off it! We need to get it bandaged properly. And why the hell didn’t you call a doctor, Brett? What’s going on?”
She was opening her bathroom cabinet as she spoke. She produced a roll of wound tape, a bandage and a pair of scissors. I winced.
“I couldn’t, Kerry,” I said hesitantly. “I just couldn’t. Will you just believe me for now?”
She sighed. “Fine. But go through and sit down on a chair. I can’t reach your arm properly.”
I obediently went through to the front room and sat down on a low, white-upholstered seat. It was only when I was sitting down that I suddenly realized I was alone in Kerry’s apartment with her. I stared up at her.
She must have made the same realization at the same time. She looked down at me. I saw her throat move as she swallowed, hard.
“We need to cut that bandage away,” she said tightly. “If you’ll move…” She was busy with her hands on my shoulders, moving me. “There.”
I looked up at her. I was completely trusting.
“You know a lot about this,” I commented as she bent down to cut away the bandage. She was frowning while she worked, her hands moving over the blood-soaked cotton without wincing.
“I did first aid,” she said succinctly. “And after my own ankle went, I learned a bit about muscles and bandaging and stuff.”
“What happened?” I asked. “Ow.”
“Sorry,” she said absently as she cut the last of the bandage and then touched the bit that still clung, stuck and hard, to the wound.
“I mean,” I paused, hissing out a rush of breath as she tugged at the edge of the stiff cotton fabric, then stopped. “To your foot?”
“Long story,” she said briskly. “I’m going to soak that, or leave it alone. What d’ you think?”
“Maybe leave it?” I suggested.
“Good plan,” she commented. She reached for the bandage. “Whatever is under there should have seen a doctor,” she said, briskly unrolling a length of bandage and then winding it round my bicep. “I am not going to ask anything, but I am going to say that if it starts going weird, we are going straight to my doctor. No questions asked.”
“Yes milady,” I said humbly.
She scowled.
“Being funny won’t make friends and influence people round here,” she said hotly. But she was smiling. I laughed and leaned back and let her wind the bandage tight around my arm.
I gritted my teeth as she fastened it, then it was done.
When she stood back, her hands were iron-dark with my dried blood. I stared at them. She shrugged.
“I’ll just wash these off,” she said. I looked at her with utter amazement. Hell! I was queasier than she was.
I had to admit, though, as I leaned back on the wall with my eyes closed, that my arm felt better. She had wound the bandage tightly. It was almost a tourniquet, the knot of the bandaging pressing on the wound and keeping the pressure up. I was confident that it wasn’t going to start bleeding again anytime soon.
Whew.
“Right,” she said, coming back in. Those neat fingers were clean and dry, and she smelled of hand soap, floral and breezy.
“Right?” I asked. I stood. I still felt a little lightheaded, but it was much better than it had been. For the first time in a while, I started paying attention to my surroundings. I took in the neat, white-painted apartment with its sparse but stylish furnishings. Whatever she was doing, she seemed to be earning better than I was, which was unsurprising—at least in light of the fact that I didn’t actually have a formal job at all, and she did.
“Right. We’re having coffee,” she said firmly.
“Coffee,” I sighed. The very thought was heavenly. I closed my eyes a moment, just thinking of how nice it would be to have a warm, sugary cup of coffee right now.
“Yes,” she said with a quirked grin on that stunning face. “I suppose they have that, where you come from?”
I roared with laughter. It pulled the wound in my shoulder and I winced. “Yes,” I agreed, when I had finally stopped laughing. “I have had that before.”
“Right,” she said. “Now. You can come in here and sit down and while we drink coffee you are going to tell me as much as you possibly can about that wound. And anything else you think I should know. Good?”
I sighed. “Okay.”
“Fine.”
“And,” I said, taking a seat in her small kitchen as she put the kettle on and fished about in the topmost cupboards for some mugs, “if I tell you about that, maybe you can tell me about your ankle? Just the outline, if you want to. I don’t want to pry.”
“Fine,” she said. She sounded harsh, as if she didn’t really want to go there. But she agreed.
We waited for the kettle to boil. The silence was loud in the space between us. She shifted, leaning her weight on the back of the chair. She was watching the kettle. I was watching her, the almost-setting sunlight washing down her hair and making it flare and spark as she leaned forward. Her body was taut and lovely. Her face pensive. Neither of us spoke.
“Should I go first?” I asked.
“I asked first.”
I laughed. “True. Okay.” I sighed.
“Here.” She lifted the kettle as it boiled, switched it off and poured the water into two cups. Stirred. Then she set the mixture down before me. “Right,” she said, sitting down with her legs briskly crossed opposite me. “Tell me.”
I sighed. “Okay.”
I looked into her brown eyes, where she sat, hands interlocked under her chin, face resting on them, looking at me. She was interested, not judgmental. Kind, not condemnatory.
“When I was really at the height of my time as an athlete, I was starting to lose touch. You know how it is? You think that, once you really make it, you won’t possibly be able to keep it there? That you’ve got as high as you can and anything higher feels unattainable?”
“Mm,” she nodded. She sipped her coffee. Her lips, on the edge, were dark red. I shivered and strove to think about my story, not anything else. Like her gorgeous body and the fact that we were alone in her home together.
“Okay,” I said. I cleared my throat. “Well, I guess I made enemies. And… the end of the story is that I’m in trouble.”
“With them?”
“They’re the ones that did this,” I said.
“I see.”
I sighed. “Kerry, I’m… I’m sorry. I have been such a fool. In so many ways. I ruined our relationship.” I rested my arms on the table and laced taut fingers through my hair.
She didn’t say anything. It was silent in the room between us. I wondered for a moment if I had taken too much of a risk by telling her. That now she would see me in a different way and walk out on me. I sighed. It was for the better.
“Kerry… I know I just told you something hectic. And if you want to not see me anymore, well… well I deserve that.”
She still didn’t say anything. She was looking at the kitchen wall above the sink, the play of sunlight on tiles making a flashing mirror of brightness. I looked at her face. Her expression was set, unreadable.
I sighed. Pushed back my chair and leaned on my left arm. “I guess I should go,” I said. “I shouldn’t have come here,” I said, standing. “It was wrong of me.”
“Oh, Brett!” she snapped. She sounded really mad at me. “Sit down. I’m thinking.”
I stared at her. I guess I must have looked like the ultimate surprised emoticon, but I wasn’t about to see the funny side. I sat down.
“Kerry…”
She shot me a look. “Wait,” she said.
I waited.
After another minute or two, she looked at me. Her brown eyes were gentle.
“So,” she said. The room had darkened now, and her voice was soft, matching the tenderness in her eyes. “Whoever this is—this enemy of yours—they know where you live?”
“Yeah,” I said softly.
“And whoever it is, for whatever reason, they want you dead?”
“Maybe so,” I said. What they really wanted, I reckoned, was to scare the heck out of me so I would pay up. I didn’t feel like I could tell her the truth, though—not the whole truth, anyway. If she knew I had done drugs, maybe she would never want to see me again. I was so ashamed of it myself. I didn’t want to tell her.
“You need the police to know.”
“No,” I said softly. “I just…Kerry, if they know I told the police, I don’t know what they’ll do to me.”
“Oh,” she said softly. “Good point.”
“Yes.”
We sat together for a while. After a moment, she laid her hand on the table. The warm sunlight pooled there, dying her skin a dark orange. She always had beautiful hands, fine-boned, the muscle on them clear from years of dancing. She slid her hand closer. I clasped her fingers.
Oh.
All the tension, all the sorrow, all the nervousness, drained away from me. I felt suddenly, indescribably, like I had come home. I held her hand and closed my eyes a moment, overwhelmed by the feeling. When I opened them again, she was looking at me, her expression caring.
“You can stay here,” she said firmly. “We can go home, get your things, bring them over. I won’t have you on your own with that wound in your shoulder.”
I sighed. “Kerry, I don’t want to endanger you.”
“Endanger me?” she frowned. Then she smiled. “Brett, I don’t think they’ll find you here. If I know anything about you, you would have made sure that you took the most confusing path to reach here. Is that true?”
“Yes,” I said. I grinned shyly. She laughed.
“Well, exactly. So, let’s assume you’re safe here. Maybe I can drive back to the apartment tonight and fetch your things, if you…”
“No!” I said quickly. She shot me an angry stare and I softened my tone immediately. “Sorry,” I said. “But I can’t risk you being seen there. I’ll go back.”
“And get shot? Like hell, Brett,” she said hotly. “You know what?”
“What?”
“All you need is a toothbrush. We can figure out the rest tomorrow.”
I laughed a little shakily. Then I let out a long sigh. How could I have been so lucky as to have someone in my life who didn’t even look surprised when I told them I was being shot at by faceless enemies?
“You’re right,” I nodded. “Kerry?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know how I could have been lucky enough to meet you.”
She stared at me. Then she smiled. There were tears in her eyes and she made no effort to hide them. I coughed, feeling my own throat tighten up with emotion.
“Brett, I am glad you met me. Maybe tomorrow I’ll regret saying this, but you are one of the few reasons why I look forward to waking up. Now. If you want to be helpful, you can come and cut onions. I hate onions.”
I stared at her. Then I laughed. My heart felt like it was catching on fire, the warmth and wonder flowing through me and lighting my whole world.
“Kerry, I feel the same,” I said. “And of course I’ll make myself useful. With anything you want.”
She must have caught my meaning, because her warm laugh flowed through the shadowed kitchen, filling it with light.