Aston's Story (Vanish #2) (5 page)

9.

The back hallway of the Pussycat Lounge reeks of the same
amalgam of cheap perfume it did the last time I was back here, waiting for Auna
to put her clothes on. The girls march past, dismissive and intent on their
paths, bodies adorned with glitter and shimmer, expressions complete with tired
smiles. They seem almost on edge. Auna was always happy, even when she was
here. Even when no one was watching.

“It’s too busy back here,” Al says. He’s wearing an
absolutely ridiculous leather jacket that he keeps adjusting like he’s got bugs
crawling around underneath it.

“Where do you want to talk, Al?” I ask, impatiently. He
won’t fuck around with me anymore.

His mouth opens, but so does the door to the showroom. In
stumbles one of the girls, a cute, skinny redhead, and behind her--the fuck?
It’s that chubby grinning bastard, what’s his name? Melvin? They’re laughing
together until they see the two of us. I look to Al. He looks back. Normally, I
would envision the tough guy bravado to surface and show the John out with a
fist and a foot, but he’s all too aware of the business at hand. He nods his
head towards the rear door. I nod back.

He pushes it open and offers me the way. I step through and
pivot, watching the fat fuck rush with the skinny girl into the changing room
behind Al as he stands before the door, shutting behind him. He waits until we
hear the click of the lock. “We had an incident a couple nights ago. A little
action at the club. The girls are still getting over it. They don’t like seeing
dudes in the back.”

Explains the shitty attitudes. “What about tubby?”

Al waves a hand in the air. “Milton knows Georgia. You’ve
been back there with a girl, remember?”

I widen my legs, parting my suit jacket with my hands to
place them against my waist. I swung by the estate to change. Nathan offered
his clothes, but fashion is as much a method of intimidation as strength. He
wouldn’t understand. “Auna.” Everytime I say her name, I feel something surge
within me. Whether it’s love, or anger, or sadness, I can’t determine. Maybe
it’s whatever I need in the moment. Now, I feel power in her name.

“That’s right,” he says, like her name rang a bell. “Hasn’t
been by--”

“You know,” I interrupt.

His brow furrows, but his lips turn north. He stuffs his
fingers into his pockets. He hides nothing. He’s going to play it off like
anything about her is news to him. I’ll cut the bullshit. “Excuse me?”

“Shut up, Al.”

His head throws back in laughter. “What?”

I step closer. “You took her.”

As his laughter ramps up for a second wave, he queries,
“Strippers ditch all the time. She probably got sick of it, ran away. Why would
I do that?”

I grind my molars against one another. “You’re fucking with
me.”

His laughter stops. He knows. A sigh escapes his lips, then
he says, “Say I did,” he rubs his chin, “what would she be worth to you?”

He’s stepping right into his role. Predictable fuck.

Time to play the part.

I lean on memory for inspiration.

I see her hair, dangling over her shoulders.

I see her finger entangle itself.

I see Nathan’s mouth dribble with beer. I feel a bit of
saliva dribble from my own lips.

I shrink away from Al, my eyes well, and my gaze falls to my
two thousand dollar dress shoes. “She’s worth the world,” I mutter.

“What’s the world worth? Dollar figure.” He steps into the
distance I’ve given him. I look up into his best menacing expression. It
inspires little fear. Yet, I cower.

“Whatever you want.”

“Fifty grand.” Hasty.

I sigh, to make him believe it’s a hardship. Then I nod,
reluctantly.

I’ve spent as much in a day on clothes. Though, it would be
hard to materialize now.

He’ll fall victim to his own greed and arrogance. In the corner
he’ll find himself, the rat will lash out against his agitator. Nathan will
serve well to instigate. I’ll watch him fall, then collect the pieces to
escape.

We agree to a meeting place and time, but the words fall in
the backdrop of my beating heart. I’m invigorated. I see the guns flashing in
the night, the fresh blood pumping from bullet wounds, and Auna’s exquisite,
perfect form floating naked above it all.

The risk scratches at the back of my thoughts, but I dismiss
it. I need to clear the playing field, and in the settling dust, I’ll find her.
He won’t bring her, as promised. I don’t need him to. It would be dangerous.
But that leaves the searching to me. Without her captor, she’ll be stored
unattended. I won’t have much time.

Or he does bring her. What then? If a gun is pressed to her
head until the money is shown?

I shake the thought. I know Al’s character.

Beneath the flickering yellow light in the parking lot, we
shake hands.

10.

The house is a ransacked and dilapidated pile of wood set
atop concrete that sets the stage for what comes next. From down the block and
through the night, I can see how the roof has dipped in the front, threatening
full collapse, but somehow suspended in this slumped position. Two houses exist
between our black SUV and the meet location, another pair of abandoned homes in
a neighborhood a half hour outside affluent Westwood Valley. I never considered
the possibility of spending so much time here on the edges of my stomping
grounds, but in a way, since I saw that body in the drug den, something about
these streets feel like they’ve been waiting for me. Or I’ve been waiting for
them. I can’t describe it accurately. It’s fate, and it’s all of what exists
outside the lie of fate, wrapped together in a blanket of dark night. I was
never a poet. But I know now the same juice that fuels them. I can feel a
buzzing that inspires these thoughts. I don’t need a page for my art, though.
It will take place in orchestrated bloodshed. My feet press against the
passenger side floor and my body shifts in the leather seating, which scrunches
and sounds off as I rise in my seat. Four men join me in this car, two behind,
and the driver, Nathan, all dressed entirely in black, complete with masks
resting at the tops of their heads, ready to be pulled over. Each of them holds
a gun, a silenced handgun for stealthy murder. They’re ready for a surgical
extraction. As long as they kill Al, I’ll be closer.

“A quick job,” I tell Nathan.

He turns his head from an intense stare at the building to
my eyes, wide beside him. “Aston,” he says, and stops himself. He looks down at
me, viewing my suit, and his face comes back up with an expression of
consternation. He’ll never understand me. “Listen,” he says. He fishes in his
black jacket’s chest pocket and retrieves a crinkled, folded page with his
gloved hand. He stares into it a moment before passing it to me. I take it
between my fingers and lower it slowly into my lap. “Just…”

I turn it in my hands and see Auna’s name written in cursive
on the other side of it. “Christ.”

“Give it to her if anything happens, alright?”

I immediately pass it back to him, shoving it against his
chest. “Goddamnit, Nathan. This is an in and out thing, not a fucking frontline
offensive. I’m not taking this.” He won’t take it. I stare at the white,
pressed against the black that covers his chest. Her name, in smudged pen,
shows almost illegibly. I look up into his serious eyes. “You probably
shouldn’t have written it, Nate.”

“I’m doing this for you,” he says. He looks back at his men.
Two chosen for their special combination of skill and amorality. As I
understand it, they were friends of his made through particularly hairy cases,
that called for ex-police, now private sector. He opted against going through
the department for this, as I might have suggested, calling it an anonymous tip
or something. He decided he wanted a close watch over it. I didn’t protest. He
took two hours to summon the men. They nod as he looks into their blank faces.
He looks back at me. “Do me one solid.”

I hold his stare as long as I can until I roll my eyes and
take the note into my suit jacket’s pocket.

He opens the door slowly so as not to make a noise.

“Alright,” is all he says, staring like a lion at the
building a short distance away, laying his first foot onto the street beneath
us. He gets his second down as the men behind me pop their doors and mimic his
careful movement. Then, suddenly, they launch into a crouched rush, three
shadows descending on the broken down house at the edge of town in a quiet
night, disappearing from my sight.

I sit in this SUV, waiting.

I squint, and I think I can still see them as they near the
house, but I’m not entirely sure. It could be my eyes deceiving. I lean forward
and peer through the moonlight to make out whatever motion I can. I sit in
silence for a stretch of minutes.

I notice my mouth opened some time ago, but I don’t close
it. My breathing is quickened, my heart is faster. I feel it again, that rush
that’s heralded a new persona. Goddamnit, I can’t see anything from back here.
I open the door and step quietly down to the street. I let the door fall back
on its own, not hard enough to make a sound, or close completely. I take a few
steps towards the house and pause. What am I doing? I gave Nathan back his gun.
I’m without protection. But I still feel the need to inch closer. My feet carry
me nearer the house.

I’m somewhere between the parked SUV and the front door,
halfway I estimate, staring back to the vehicle, then back to the house. The
night is chilling, but my blood racing through my veins warms me at the core. I
can feel the night in my lungs, pulling it in with deep breaths. It feels
renewing--

Clap.

I flinch.

I hold my breath and freeze, staring into the windows on the
side of the house. They light up with another clap.

CLAP CLAP CLAP. A series of flashes lights up the space
around the windows.

Then the noise explodes.

A cacophony of metallic bursts overlap and disrupt the
night, breaking into the street and awakening a fear inside me I buried over
the last few days.

No, not fear. Unless it’s fear of what I’ve become.

No, I embrace that.

Shut up, Aston.

Men are dying.

I watch.

I look on until the claps and the flashing lights finish, a
span of time that fills only seconds.

It’s only me, in the silence of the wake, and the night, and
the darkness.

I rush to the house, then slow my steps as I approach its
front door. It’s nearly fallen off its hinges, and it’s shoved open. I step
sideways to enter without touching it and onto a hand. I stumble back, catching
myself before I fall into the wall. I look around the darkness, but see no
movement. I pull my phone from my pocket, activate the screen, and lift it
before me. The carnage lights up in a blue hue. Bodies lay strewn across the
dirty floor, their blood intermingled in a series of puddles that make it
difficult to traverse without incriminating myself. I step carefully, watching
both my surroundings and the floor, ensuring there aren’t survivors lurking, or
dead men in my way.

I stop for a moment and just listen.

There’s no sounds in here. The crickets are even singing
outside again. It’s like someone sneezed. A startling burst of noise, and then
business as usual.

I look towards the back of the house. A body lies before it,
blocking the exit. Christ, there are so many. Al brought friends. The goddamn
motorcycle club. Their bulky bodies cover more ground than the two Nathan
brought, their smaller frames slumped against walls splattered with their blood
from shotgun blasts. One fell against the stairs to the second floor,
apparently just before a biker was blown away with a precise shot to the
forehead that fell him atop the other.

A kitchen holds three bodies, two more bikers and Nathan’s
other man. They all fell back from the center, Nathan’s other man into the sink,
the two bikers strewn over the oven and the dishwasher. I step between them to
the other side of the kitchen that exits into the living room, where I find
him.

Oh, Jesus. Nathan.

His skull cracked open with a series of shots, probably
shotgun shrapnel, just over his left eye. He pulled his cap off before it
happened, left gripped in his right hand. Some of his brains lay like lamb bits
on the couch he fell on, bent backwards with his arms thrown over his head. The
full size of his body covers nearly the whole couch, he was always so large--

I hurl over his feet, planting my hand against his knee for
support.

I stumble back when I notice I’m touching a dead man. A dead
man I knew, closely.

Fuck. This is such a mess.

But then my eyes find the target. Al, his short and hefty
body sits in a recliner beside a collapsed entertainment center, his bottom jaw
unhinged by an apparent shot that ripped through it. His eyes stare down at his
toes. I step up to him. Blood still leaks profusely from the wound. His eyes
shift from there dead stare to mine.

I shuffle back, then catch myself.

I look back.

His eyes haven’t moved. He’s dead. They’re all dead. Al. The
club. Nathan.

Evin’s missing. Where’s their leader?

Sirens sound faintly in the distance. I have to leave this
carnage behind me. Auna’s not here. As I suspected. I feel suddenly so far from
her, and from everything I set out to achieve. And yet…

All these men. They lie dead around me, finding their demise
at the hands of a clever player. I escape the rubble of their massacre. I feel
the heat rise from my gut, the racing of my heart, same as I felt when I sped
away from the warehouse.

But why do I feel cold?

I feel so cold.

Auna.

I kick the body away from the back door and step onto the
back step---I pause.

Evidence.

I step back into the house. I pull a lighter from my pocket
and flick it open. I place Nathan’s letter over the flame until it ignites,
then toss it onto the corner of a biker’s jean jacket and watch until it
lights. I turn again to the back door and rush out.

I put as much distance between myself and the house,
listening to the sirens approach. I turn over my shoulder as I run. Burn,
damnit. Burn.

I see the flames start to rise in the windows. Good. Burn it
all. Burn it down.

The sirens still haven’t reached. Perfect.

I smile, watching the house ignite a half mile in the
distance behind me. The hot flames begin to engulf the structure.

But I still feel so cold.