Aston's Story (Vanish #2) (4 page)

7.

This garage sits at the edge of town, near where the last
murder took place, but deeper through the forest that engulfs Westwood Valley.
Shitty country roads lead to it, snaking through the forest with stretches of
gravel that’s turned to mud in the rain. It let up, though, and there’s an
eerie silence that makes me feel the sheer size of this abandoned structure.
It’s metal, and huge. I’m not sure what it was used for, but from the looks of
it, nobody alive was around when it was used. I came here a few times as a
teen, it was a conveniently undisturbed spot to spark up and drink, when I
wanted to be alone and stop the world. I didn’t think anyone else knew about
this place. Rusted, jagged metal encloses the dark space, but holes in the roof
permit the moonlight to permeate the interior. It falls in broad circles at our
feet, mine and the seven men from Devil’s Right Hands. Six of them stand in an
uneven line a pace or two behind the seventh. Evin, their leader, with a face
only a mother could love, stares me in the eye and all I can do is stare right
back. We’re on the same side, I think, but his presence keeps an air of
adversarial strength. It’s a survival trait, to be certain. He’s a beast. His
grimace features a series of lines that trace deep fissures in his cheeks,
chin, and forehead. The soft moonlight does little to hide them, but the
shadows cast down from his eyebrows cover his eyes and some of his cheeks in
black. He chose this locale, I can’t help picturing him living in a place like
this. Like a bulky troll taxing the complacent townsfolk for passing through
his ignored domain.

“Aston,” he speaks, his voice a mixture between a blender
churning ice and an airy whisper. “You called us here, don’t make us regret the
journey.”

I take a deep breath and push it out quickly through my
nostrils as they flare. “The tradelines have broken down.”

His head lowers as if to question, then it goes back with a
smile. “Tradelines, eh?”

“My buyer,” I explain. “Al. He’s the bouncer at the strip
club, the Pussycat Lounge.”

Evin is nodding along. “Right, what about him?”

“He hasn’t paid.”

Evin raises a pointed finger in my direction. “You?” Then
his finger turns around slowly to face upward into his hideous chin. “How’s
that my problem?”

I grit my teeth. Play it cool, Aston. I feel the metal of
the gun tucked into the back of my pants press against my warm skin. I’d like
to use it and speak his language and prove I’m not bullshitting here, but the
odds aren’t good. Plus, I need all the bridges I have right now. I start
burning them and I’m alone on an island, no Auna in sight. My heart made a
promise my mind’s going to have to stay sharp to fulfill. “It’s bad for
business. He takes the package on credit and runs around shooting potential
buyers and running off with their cash.”

Evin’s head rears, his posture tightens. He turns to the
side, as if to speak telepathically with the brutes standing behind him in the
darkness. They shuffle about. I can read the language, there’s nothing hidden
here. They didn’t know about the bastard Al is. “I don’t know anything about
that,” Evin replies. “But if what you say is true, that’s still an issue for
your bottom line. If you’re going to be the man in town, if you’re going to
make Westwood Valley your business, you need to learn to control it when it
turns against you.”

A lesson. Perfect, it’s just what I needed. I haven’t even
reached the real reason I’m here, which is to use the Devil’s Right Hands for
intel in finding my beloved, lost Auna. Maybe this was a waste. Neanderthals
were only ever good as a catalyst of the next stage. “Alright, fine. But if
that two timing fuck Al tries selling that brick back to you--”

He bursts into laughter and the rest of his troop follow
suit. I stand, awaiting their finish. They probably assume I’m humiliated. Only
for sharing partnership with the likes of fools. This will all come back to
them in the worst way. “Sure, Aston,” he replies, wiping the remnants of spit
from the corners of his mouth.

He’s walking away back towards the others, who start turning
towards the open side of the structure, where just beyond their parked bikes
await them. “There’s another matter,” I say, raising my voice. I can’t leave
before I’ve probed them. I need to know what they might have on this stranger
wreaking havoc. I didn’t want to reveal it, for fear of their full involvement,
coming with the assurance of a Westwood Valley occupation by the Devil’s Right
Hands. If this drifter means something, they’ll stay, I’ll lose my standing in
the marketplace, they’ll edge me out. But they’re not listening to me. I’ll
have to risk it. “A man, a stranger from out of town. He might be involved in a
disappearance.”

Evin pauses, the men in front of him go quiet. Without
looking back, he asks, “What’s that got to do with anything?” Fuck. He’s
playing it off, which means it’s something to them. Who is this pest that’s
descended upon me? I might as well tell them now, in hopes he’ll spill anything
that might help me in my pursuit, to get the drop on him. I can still display
power here.

“I’ll put money on his head.”

“Who’s the guy?” Evin says, turning slightly, unfazed by the
offer. He’s eager.

“Big fucker, blonde, looks like one of you, to be honest.”

Evin faces me entirely. He know the drifter, there’s no
question about that. The questions all now surround the mystery of my meddling
vagrant. Rage. That ridiculous name that keeps slipping from my mind, it’s too
difficult to believe.

Something hits the side of the structure, the metal vibrates
against itself with an echoing clang that puts all the bikers on high alert,
pistols raised to our side. I reach back and wrap my fingers around the butt of
mine. My heart beats against my ribcage like it's attempting escape. Through
the darkness, I see him. It’s the massive frame, the golden hair, the chiseled
face that’s contorted into an expression not of fear but action that tells me
Rage is here. I watch him turn tail to the collective symphony of gunshots that
ring out from this forest and into the trees before us. They rip through the
air and scream past leaves and branches on their hunt for flesh. Christ, my
heart’s beating so loud. Flashes illuminate the trees, he’s firing back. I
don’t move, I’m surrounded by this action as it unfolds about me, but the other
men take cover. I feel my hands outstretch to the sides. One of the bikers
stares on with confusion. Then he drops. Blood leaks from his thigh, then his
chest. A third bullet buries itself between his nostrils, defacing him. He
falls forward, but not face first. It’s to the side slightly, perfectly for me
to see his eyes switch from live to dead just above the red hole that’s
replaced his nose. I stare for a moment, I think I’m going to kneel for a
closer look. It’s so, goddamn, real. I want almost to touch--

My heart’s slowing down. My breath quickens. Rationality
floods back. I have to get out of here. I run back towards my car and jump
behind the wheel, twisting the key and throwing it into reverse, spinning tires
in mud before it whips around and heads back onto the trail out from this
chaos. I hear Evin’s cry faintly over the engine before it revs again and the
sight of the building disappears from the rearview.

Breath in, breath out. In through the nose, push out through
the lips.

My fists wring the leather wheel. They pull to twist, the
car glides through forest turns.

Death surrounds me now. The world is revealed to me. It’s a
harsh and cruel game, the losers pay with their lives. I survive.

That’s right.

I’m cut from the cloth that endures.

I catch a glimpse of the grin in the mirror that’s stretched
out across my face. I kick my now ruined suede shoe against the gas pedal and
feel the car lurch forward while I howl into the night. I am a wolf. Auna, I’m
coming for you. We’ll rule the wild together.

8.

Home’s a risk now, it sits empty until I have sight of my
enemies. Al. Rage. Two men who play to kill. I’ve seen it now from the both of
them. They’re wild in the game. It’s enough to run on fear, but against a
calculative mind, they’ll find a wall. For now, I find myself in the enclosed
back porch of Nathan’s condominium, a bachelor pad I might’ve admired in
another life, one where I had less ambition. It stretches half the length of
the building, his side. The glass is missing from a handful of the windows that
form the two walls facing the backyard and the sideyard. The third side is the
brick wall separating his space from that of the old woman who lives next door.
She doesn’t have a porch, which makes this a conveniently private space to
speak with Nathan about my current predicaments. I lean back in a lawn chair
against the brick while he sits nearer the back door in his wicker chair that
creaks every shift he makes. I grind my teeth when I hear it, but he’s
sheltering me, so I won’t say anything about how sort of sad his place makes
me.

The condo is a little nearer to downtown Westwood Valley, in
a nice cul-de-sac named Evergreen or Westwinde or Babbling Brook, something
that elicits a bullshit sense of calm wrapped in a complacent blanket, I can’t
remember. There was an old woman at the end of his block posting fliers for
some new church in town, giving the street a quaint, surreal feeling in
comparison to where I spent last night. In the depths of the human psyche where
violence speaks to the soul in hushed whispers.

I drop the plastic legs of the chair down to reach forward
into the cooler situated between us. I pull out another of the cheap beers he
picked up and pop the top off before leaning back again. The first swig spills
across the shirt he leant me. If it were mine, I’d be pissed, but this sweat
stained red T-shirt seems worth about as much as a roll of toilet paper. I’ve
told him before your whole world can change along with your wardrobe. I’ve even
offered to take him shopping. He’s got some pride hangups I don’t entirely
understand, but I recognize we’re different men. There’s value in the way he
sees things, I wouldn’t have befriended him when we were younger and kept him
around still if I didn’t believe that. It just might be some time before I have
the patience to appreciate the world from his eyes; like visiting a cultural
museum.

I remember the smell of the gunpowder from last night. It
wafts through my nostrils and suddenly, I’m feeling more awake. Perhaps, if I
settle into the visceral qualities still buzzing through my body, my skin, my
bones, I’ll find I enjoy it. I can’t decide if I should fear that, or revel in
it. It is, after all, who I am.

He grunts after a lengthy swig that halves the amount of
beer in his bottle. “So you hightailed it out of there?”

“I left the fighting to the soldiers.”

“Right,” he says. He grins with another drink.

“So you don’t know if they got him?”

I think back to seeing Rage as he fled, the gunshots that
fired, the man that fell, and what expert could make those shots running. “They
didn’t get him.”

Nathan raises an eyebrow. “Can’t really know until the
area’s searched, though.”

“I know he’s still out there, Nathan. If he found Auna’s
apartment, he could just as easily find the Moore mansion.”

“I’m not trying to kick you out,” he says, his voice a pitch
higher. He turns his head, staring at the cigarette can of butts, then speaks
more softly, “I don’t mind the company, anyway.”

I lean forward and offer my bottle in cheers. We clink, then
drink. “I appreciate it, Nate. I do.” I stretch my free arm behind my back. I’m
a little stiff from crashing on his broken couch, but the lack of sleep isn’t
felt. I’m focused. “You haven’t heard anything?”

“It’s the next day, my day off, and it was out in the woods,
out east. If anybody heard it, they would’ve thought well enough to leave it
alone out that way.”

I nod. He makes sense. Television would lead you to believe
it’s impossible to get away with murder. It’s a comforting thought. “You’ve got
nothing on him? What about the other body? What happened with that?”

Nathan sighs, he bends one of his long, slender arms behind
his head, and the wicker chair crackles like it’s going to bust into tiny
wooden bits. But it quiets, and I listen to his sigh, blink his eyes slowly,
and rub his lips against his teeth in thought. I know this to mean perplexed.
That’s not good enough right now. “Not sure…” his voice drifts. “Could be your
drifter, this Rage fellow, but we’ve got nothing on him. If he was staying at
that motel where we found the body, there’s no record, and the usual manager
has conveniently skipped town.”

“Shit,” I mutter. I think Rage buyed him off. Maybe. I’m not
sure. What else could it be? This mess proves itself a puzzle. The misshapen
pieces won’t fit together in my mind, any way I configure them. In the center
of it all, Auna waits, trapped in someone’s hands, wishing for the way out. I
need to forge it. “Auna,” I say, just to hear her name.

Nathan lowers his head, but his eyes raise. “Hm?”

“I remember how she was, the last night I saw her.” I
breathe in, hoping to recreate the scent of her as I feel the air swarm my
nostrils. “I wish I could taste her right now, wish I could put my hands on her
warm, smooth skin.”

Nathan’s head turns to the other wall, staring through a
foggy window into the luscious, green grass in the small space between his
condo and the next unit over. He misses her same as me. He should want to spend
all what I would to retrieve her. In money, sweat, blood, and murder, I’ll pile
bodies to save her. “She was very sweet,” I hear him say, loud enough to
discern, but soft enough to be spoken alone. In the same volume, he continues,
“There was this little thing, she did,” his hand raises up beside his ear,
twirling in slow, little circles, “twist her hair up, and giggle.” His lips
slide up towards his ears, but his eyes fall into a distance they’ve found
through the cloudy glass. “She’d do it to make fun of me, say ‘Who, me?’ in
this, ridiculous, awful southern accent...every time I called her pretty.” He
takes a breath, holds it, then I watch him release it as the weight pulls his
shoulders down again. He mutters something, I can’t quite make it out. I lean
in. “...never come back, Nate.” I squint, wondering if he’s forgotten I’m here.

He chugs the beer.

He’s staring me in the eye. “What about Al? I thought you
were worried about that bouncer. Rage isn’t here for you, Aston.”

I brush off the previous moment to consider. “Then why’d he
show up at Auna’s place?”

“Al,” Nathan says. I shake my head. He rolls his. “He’s
always hitting on her. For a while, I thought it might be him not you…”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He wipes his big nose on his forearm. His gaze
settles on his beer dangling between his knees before him. “The strip club, if
he was trying to get to Al, he’d start there. Where the man works. Some of the
girls, might have connections.” He drinks again, finishing the last of his
beer, then bends for another, popping the top off, and tossing the cap
carelessly forward.

I watch the bottle cap bounce off the glass and fall onto
the wood, listening to its high pitched rattling as it settles.

“Rage,” I think aloud. “He’s got so much power and stealth…”

“Pretty, too?” Nathan chuckles to himself.

He’s right. I’ve been focusing too much on the drifter
simply because he was the unknown. I assumed it couldn’t have been under my
nose. “Evin perked up when I mentioned him.”

“So,” Nathan says, rolling his hand drunkenly in front of
himself, as though to unravel the thoughts before us, “he knew him, was
probably looking for Rage.”

“Rage is on the run.”

Nathan nods as he drinks.

“He wouldn’t kidnap. He’s trying to escape Devil’s Right
Hands.” I’ve been hiding from a man who himself is hiding. Rage is just trying
to fuck the motorcycle club that’s trying to hunt him. Cut their tradelines, so
he was after Al, not Auna. It makes sense. The puzzle’s forming. And I think I
see a path out of the maze for Auna.

I raise my eyes to my old friend. Nathan’s finishing the
next beer he just popped open a minute ago. The mere mention of her name
swirled a wretched storm of memories that sunk him into a depression he’ll see
through with another gallon of booze before sleeping roughly tonight. Why
should he waste away like this, when he could serve a better purpose? “What’re
you looking at?” he says, half joking, half self conscious for his drinking
habits.

“We have to get her back, Nathan,” I tell him.

He looks sick, but he speaks, “Yes, we do.”

“Al,” I say.

“Bastard,” he says.

I nod. “That’s right. I need your expertise now, Nathan.
Auna needs you.”

His head hangs forward. He rubs one thumb against the back
of the other while his head turns slightly. There are more painful memories
behind his eyes. “Alright,” he says. I can nearly hear him say ‘fuck it.’ “What
do you need?”