Evan Arden 05 Irrevocable (33 page)

I feel like I’m missing something.  A critical element that changes the entire physical structure of the whole operation hasn’t surfaced in my mind.  Jonathan said someone else from inside had to have been working with Beni, and he was right—Cody.  But was there someone else?

Who’s left at this point?  Not very many, that’s for sure.

A text from Eddie tells me that he and Alina have arrived at his place and that he’s going to come back my way now that she’s safe.  Another from Jonathan says he’s close to my location.

I decide to just hang and wait for them at this point.  I’m going to need a little strategic help and surveillance from Jonathan and Eddie-boy if I have any hope of finding Taylor.  I move up next to the entrance of an alley and pull out a smoke.

As I glance down the alley, I recognize the worn coat on the figure with his arm over his head and some newspapers under him, lying near a dumpster.  I shake my head and smile slightly as I walk up to him.  I’m near the hotel where I got the retired vet a room before.  The spring rain isn’t nearly as bad as the winter cold, but I have a few minutes, and I might as well set him up again.

“Hey, Don!” I call out as I approach, but he doesn’t move.  An overturned bottle of cheap booze is near him, and I can smell the distinct odor of alcohol in the alley over the ripe smell from the dumpster.  “Wake up, dude.  Let’s get you something to eat.”

He doesn’t respond.

“Don?”

I crouch and shake his shoulder as the stench of urine hits me square in the face.  His head flops to one side, and his eyes stare blankly.   His skin is cold to the touch.

“Ah, fuck!”  I close my eyes as my throat seizes up on me.  I shake my head a moment to clear it, and then turn Don’s body over on his back.

There’s blood all over him from a gunshot wound to the chest.

“And Josh thought you were too smart for all of this.”

I startle at the sound of a female voice from the far side of the alley.  Becca steps out of the shadows with a Glock pointed in my face.

I turn quickly and start to grab for my gun.

“Don’t do it.”  Her warning stops me.  “You may be good, but this isn’t the Old West, and I’ve already drawn my weapon.”

“What the fuck, Becca?”

“Everything was all set with Beni taking the reins, and you had to fuck that up by not letting Rinaldo bleed out there on the street.  Then there was all that hospital nonsense.  I figured those new accounts meant you were being given the business, but I wasn’t expecting you to act so quickly.  And killing Paulie, too?  You are a psychopath.  It’s time to put you down.”

From behind Becca, Joshua Taylor appears.  He’s grinning like a cat with a defenseless bird in its mouth.

“Always use a girl as bait,” he says.  “Works every time.”

Motherfucker.

With the barrel of a gun pointed directly at me, I feel my body calm all over.  Combat instinct sets in, and the dead vet at my feet is forgotten.  There is nothing but me and the bullet inside the chamber of Becca’s gun.

My own piece is holstered at my side, but Becca and Joshua know that.  Trying to reach for it isn’t going to work.  I’m at a serious disadvantage, and I am going to have to come up with something clever and unexpected if I am to have any chance at all.

“Biting the hand that feeds you, Rebecca?”

She glares at me.

“I’ve been much better
fed
since teaming up with Josh.  I worked for years in that fucking club for shit even though I was the one pulling all the hours. That whole ‘step up’ Rinaldo promised me when I took over his books was a load of shit.  But I fixed that myself, didn’t I?”

“You didn’t learn anything when I took care of Justin, did you?”

I watch Joshua carefully as I say the words.  His eyes narrow, and his mouth opens just enough to show his teeth.  I still don’t have a plan, but I want him riled up.  He’s more likely to make a mistake if he’s not thinking clearly.  A mistake is my only chance.

Joshua folds his arms over his chest and glares at me.

“Payback is a bitch, Arden,” he says.  “Once you’re out of the picture, I’ll be handling all that money of yours.  While I’m at it, I’ll be shoving my cock in that little piece of ass you followed here.”

I let the words flow over me, refusing to envision the meaning behind them.  If I’m to have a chance at this game of willpower, I can’t let anything he says get to me.

“Justin screamed like a little girl, you know,” I tell him.  “Begged like a whore.  ‘Don’t hurt me!  Don’t hurt me, Mr. Arden!’”

I laugh and shake my head but never move my eyes from the gun in Becca’s hand.

“We’re done with this asshole,” Joshua says.  “Just fucking shoot him already.”

Apparently, he’s not interested in this game.  I tense, watching Becca’s shoulder, arm, and hand for movement.  I have nowhere to go except down to the ground, and being in a prone position isn’t going to help my chances.  It will just make me an easier target.

“Evan!”

I hear Jonathan’s voice near the entrance to the alley, but I don’t turn to look at him.  I keep my eyes on Becca and wait for that critical second when she’s distracted by the voice.  She glares in Jonathan’s direction, and I make my move.

Crouching, I race for her, wrap my arms around her midsection, and take her to the ground.  The gun goes off twice, and bits of brick from the side of the building rain down on us.  Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Jonathan scuffling with Taylor.

Becca is a lot stronger than she looks.  I try to get the gun from her hand, but she’s holding onto it tightly as she brings her knee up into my stomach over and over again.  I keep my hold on her wrist as I punch her face, but she still doesn’t release the weapon.

She grabs my face with the hand not holding the gun and digs her finger into my eye as she screams and curses at me.  I turn my head to the right to get her finger away and feel cold metal on the side of my face.  My arm is bent at an awkward angle, and I can’t move her wrist.  There is no time to try another tactic.

Oh, fuck.

“LT!”

I never saw Eddie-boy enter the alley, but he is suddenly at my side.  I feel him shove my shoulder with all his strength.

The gun goes off.

I hear the sound of my head hitting the brick wall behind me right before I slump to the ground. I drop into a pool of Don’s blood, and the smear on my forearm looks oddly like the stripes of an American flag.  I feel compelled to turn my arm to get a better look at the pattern is strong, but I can’t move.

I’ve been shot.

The whole idea is puzzling.  All that time I spent in combat zones, and I was never shot.  All those people who have found themselves at the wrong end of my gun, and I’ve never been shot.  I can’t even count the number of times someone has held up a gun and pointed it in my direction, but never once has a bullet entered my body.

I’m not even sure where I’ve been hit.

I hear Eddie-boy yelling.

I hear Becca screaming.

I feel nothing.

I really think I might need some rest now.

Hums and beeps.

My ass hurts and so do my shoulders, but the throbbing in my head mutes most of the other pain.  The very idea of opening my eyes makes the pounding ten times worse.  The bed I’m on is uncomfortable as if the pillow is rolled up behind my neck in a lumpy ball.

There are voices, but they are muffled as if the speaker is trying to talk into a pillow.

My head continues to throb terribly, and I let myself slip back toward blackness.  Time is pretty irrelevant.  There’s just the dichotomy between bright pain and dark numbness.  I choose the dark.

Disorientation when I wake is a fairly normal feeling.  This still feels different.

There’s always whatever dream I’ve been having right at the very surface of my thoughts.  There is a moment when I’m not sure if I’m awake, and reality is cloudy.  For a while, the dream continues in my head even as my surroundings change.

I’m stiff and sore.  I had been dreaming about the hole, during the time when the special ops troops came in and pulled me out.  I couldn’t walk on my own because I had been curled up in the same position for so long, and my leg muscles had atrophied.

I crack one eye open.

I’m in a hospital room, hooked up to various monitors, and there’s an IV tube running into my hand.  My nose itches, and I realize there’s one of those oxygen tubes taped to it.  I open my eyes a little wider.  The room is fairly dark.  The only light comes from a dim table lamp near the door.

What the fuck am I doing here?

The monitor beside me starts blinking red, matching my heart rate as it starts to beat faster.  There’s no one in the room, and when I try to sit up, my aching muscles protest.

The light brightens suddenly, and I squint against the glare.  A woman in lime green scrubs enters and moves quickly to my side.  She leans over, and I feel her hand brush my arm.

“Mr. Arden?”  The sound is muffled, and I think there might be something covering my ear.  “I’m Kim, the night nurse.  Can you speak?”

I find her question ridiculous until I realize that I can’t utter a word.  My mouth is parched, and the corners of my lips are dry and cracked.  It hurts just to open my mouth.

“Let me get you some water,” she says.

A moment later, there’s a straw at my lips.  I suck just a bit of water into my mouth before I start coughing.  She places her hand on the back of my neck, and I manage to get some down.

“Try again,” she says.

“What…why…?”  I can only croak.

“Hang in there for a minute,” Kim says.  She reaches over and taps a button beside the bed.  “I’ll get the doctor for you.”

A small, dark-haired woman in a white doctor’s coat arrives within seconds.  She grabs a clipboard from the end of my bed and sits down on a rolling stool next to me.

“Mr. Arden, my name is Doctor Reiss.  I’ve been taking care of you while you have been here.  I’m going to have Kim take your vitals, and then we’ll see if you can answer a few questions for me, okay?”

“Yeah.”  The air from my lungs hurts my throat.

“Can you tell me the last thing you remember?”

It takes a few tries before I can form coherent words.  After a few more sips of water, I can speak.

“I just woke up.  What am I doing here?”

“What do you remember from before you woke up?”

I get another drink to wet my throat and try to remember.

“They had me in a hole.”  I close my eyes.  It hurts to have them open.  I know my answer isn’t right—it’s not what she’s looking to hear, but it’s the only thing that comes to mind.

“A hole?”  Dr. Reiss reaches over and adjusts a tube at my arm.  “Can you tell me more about that?”

“Sand…um…”  I try to focus.  I know I’m not saying the right words, but everything in my head is jumbled up.  The hole—that’s not real.  It was just something in my head.  I finally find the right word.  “It was a dream.”

“You were dreaming about a hole?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you think back to what you remember before you were dreaming?”

Memories come and go, and not all in an order that makes sense.  I remember standing in the rain, watching the priest pray over Rinaldo’s casket.  Another hole comes to mind, and I watch a woman’s body as I shove it into the pit with the toe of my boot.  I remember waking up in a submarine, and I’m unable to get warm.  I remember Alina and the scent of lavender on her skin.

Alina.  She went to give her key back to her landlord.  I was in my apartment…

“I was playing with the dog.  Um…teaching her to fetch.”

“What was the date?”

“April…um…”  I try to think as my memory focuses a little better.  Rinaldo died on the fourth, and the funeral was on the seventh.  Four days later Alina was collecting the last of her things.  “April eleventh?  Twelfth?”

“Mr. Arden,” Dr. Reiss says as she places her clipboard on the bedside table and leans closer to me, “I’m going to tell you some things that are going to be distressful.  I need you to try to stay calm for me.  Do you think you can do that?”

“Yeah.”  I lick my lips.  My mouth and throat are still dry.  Talking and breathing seems to make it worse.  I glance up at the water on the table, and the doctor holds a straw up to my lips again before she continues.

“Today’s date is May twenty-eighth.  Mr. Arden, you’ve been in a coma for nearly seven weeks.”

I hear the words, but they don’t quite register.  They don’t even make any sense.  No one sleeps for seven weeks.  I can barely sleep for seven hours.

“How did I get here?”

“Mr. Arden,” she says softly as she leans back on the stool and holds the clipboard to her chest, “you were picked up in an alley.  You had a very serious gunshot wound.”

She reaches over and touches the side of my face, right below my jaw.

“The bullet entered your head here.”  She lifts her hand and places it on the left side of my head, just above my temple.  “It exited here.  Odds against surviving such a wound are astronomical, Mr. Arden.  Quite frankly, I’m surprised to see you conscious, let alone talking to me coherently.”

Dr. Reiss goes on to explain that I have had multiple surgeries and even had to be resuscitated at one point.  The bullet entered with high velocity and miraculously exited without exploding.   I had been conscious and talking the entire time I was riding in the ambulance and even joked with the paramedics.

I don’t remember any of it.

“It’s fairly common when you’ve suffered such a massive head trauma,” she tells me.  “The events just prior to that time never make it to long-term memory.”

I can only stare at her.  I hear what she’s saying, but I can’t quite make sense of it.

Maybe I’m still dreaming.

It doesn’t feel like a dream though.  It all seems quite real.

“Where’s Alina?”

“Would that be Miss Marino?”

I nod.

“She’s been here very often, actually.  She’s made quite a name for herself.”  The doctor chuckles softly.  “It’s against hospital policy to allow non-family members into this unit, but when your only listed emergency contact turned out to be deceased, we had to make some accommodations.  The administrator wasn’t at all happy when your brother showed up, and we discovered you really did have a next of kin.”

“My brother was here?”

“Twice now,” Dr. Reiss says.  “I believe he lives out of state.”

“He does.”  I don’t know what to think.  How did Bastian even know I was here?  Who would have contacted him?

Jonathan.  Who else?

“You obviously have a lot of people who care about you,” Dr. Reiss says.  “They had to have some adoption records unsealed just to verify the relationship, especially after Mr. Ferris also claimed to be your brother.”

It hurts to smile, but I can just see Jonathan trying to pose as my kin.  I’m actually surprised he didn’t have an app for it.

He probably does now.

“Can I see Alina?” I ask.

“It’s two in the morning, Mr. Arden,” she tells me.  “However, I think this might just warrant a late-night call.”

I start to say something, but I’m abruptly tired.  I can’t hold my eyes open.

“Rest, Mr. Arden.  I’m going to want to run some tests on you in the morning.”

I nod.  At least, I think I do.

*****

“Evan?”

I try to say something, but my lips won’t move.  It hurts to try, and my throat is still too dry to make a sound.

“Can you hear me?”  It’s Alina’s voice.  “I think he’s awake.”

“Mr. Arden?”  I recognize Dr. Reiss’s voice.

I will my eyes open and stare into Alina’s beautiful, tear-streaked face.

“Don’t cry,” I say as I try to lift my arm.  Alina wraps her hand around mine.

“Thank God!”  She squeezes my fingers tightly.

I want to grip back, but that part of my body isn’t responding well.  Alina strokes the side of my face, rubbing underneath the oxygen tube.  It’s itchy there around the tape, and her touch is just what I need.

“You always know the right thing.”  I’m mumbling, and I’m not sure if I’m making sense.  My thoughts are disjointed, and I’m not completely sure this isn’t all a dream.  It feels like one.

“I just about gave up hope, Evan.”  Alina bites down on her lower lip, but the tears flow anyway.  “I didn’t think you were ever going to wake up.”

“I’m awake.”  Seeing her so obviously distressed focuses my thoughts.  “You know me, I don’t sleep that much anyway.”

She smiles and shakes her head.

“You’ve made up for it,” she tells me.  “I think I prefer it when you wake me up every night.”

“You’re going to have some more sleep coming your way,” Dr. Reiss says.  “It will help you recover as much as anything does.  You have a long road ahead of you.  I have a lengthy list of tests for you.  We need to get some kind of idea how much damage you have suffered.”

“But he’s awake and speaking,” Alina says as she looks at Dr. Reiss.  “That’s definitely good.”

“Without a doubt.  I’m not too concerned that he doesn’t remember the night he was brought here, but there may be additional memory loss.  I’m going to count on you, Alina, to alert me to anything you consider abnormal.”

“In what way?”

“Specifically, anything you would consider unusual for Evan to do or say.  He suffered major trauma to the left frontal lobe of his brain and possibly some to the temporal lobe, too.  I’m pleased that he’s speaking.  There could have been damage to the speech center of the brain.  If either of you notices any problems with speech or comprehension, let me know, but I’m more curious about personality changes.  Mark Duncan should be able to help in that area as well.”

“Mark?”  I look back and forth between the two women.  Mark Duncan had been my military psychologist.

“He’s been here to see you,” Alina tells me.  “I met him, and he seems really nice.  He said you worked with him before.”

“Yeah, a while ago.”  Talking is wearing me out quickly.

Dr. Reiss starts talking about tests she wants to run and when I can try eating solid food.  I tune it all out and just stare at Alina’s hand wrapped around mine.  For seven weeks, she’s been coming here and sitting with me.  Seven weeks she’s been waiting.

I spend the day being poked, prodded, and questioned.  Alina stays in the room with me the whole time except when I am taken to have X-rays and an MRI done.  I’m exhausted by the time they’re all finished with me, and then I hear something about physical therapy starting the next day.

Fabulous.

The nurse leaves us alone after Alina points out the exception to the visiting hours rule.  I get settled back into the bed and drink some of the juice that’s been left for me.  No solid food yet, but Dr. Reiss said I could try some tomorrow.

“Evan, I need to ask you something,” Alina says as she looks toward the door and then leans close to me.  “I hate to even bring it up, but I know you have to have some somewhere.”

“Some what?”

“Money.”  Her cheeks tinge with red.  “I had enough to cover the apartment bills and everything up until a couple of weeks ago.  It’s been tight since then.  I was…well…”

I grip her hand and take in a breath.

“You had to work to keep current?”

“Not yet,” she says as she shakes her head.  “I was really close last week.”

The relief I feel to know she didn’t have to go that route floods through my body, leaving me feeling a little loose and gooey.  I give her the combination to the safe in my closet.

“There’s plenty in there,” I tell her.  “You shouldn’t have any trouble.”

“Thank you.”  She leans over and kisses my forehead.  “I hated to even say anything, but I didn’t think you wanted me to—”

“No,” I say, interrupting, “I don’t.”

“I didn’t.”  Her reassurance is comforting.  She reaches behind my head and starts massaging my neck.  “Maisy misses you.  She keeps running around the apartment with that little yellow ball in her mouth, looking for you.  She won’t give it to me though.  As soon as I touch it, she wants it back.”