Broken (15 page)

“You don’t look like you would. But buddy, I’m telling you what, when I got the tar beat out of me, I told myself I needed
to be a lot more careful.”

“Yet you have no problem sitting here with me?”

“I said I need to be more careful. But it looks like I can trust you. I just wish you’d tell me a little more of why you need
to find her.”

“That’s my business.”

“And this is my business.”

“Then why didn’t you leave me behind?”

Kyle thinks for a minute, looking around the restaurant again and then back at Lex. “Because. Because if she’s in a lot of
trouble, I might need some help.”

I never told anybody. Because I blamed myself. Typical ignorance when it comes to being violated and attacked and shamed,
but that’s what happened.

He wasn’t some random stranger. Ben was someone I’d taunted and harassed and toyed around with who was older and wiser. A
guy in college who I knew. A bad boy. And he showed his true colors when he finally said yes. And when he finally called my
bluff.

I had been with boys before, but nothing like that. And it was the first time I really, truly began to understand the depths
of evil. How a normal, nice, rebellious but cool junior in college could turn into the face of the devil.

After it was all done and his friends left, he almost convinced me that it was something I wanted. He never did blindly beat
me. But everything that happened happened against my will. They knew it, but once they were in that room there was no going
back. There was no stopping the outcome. And Ben still told me afterward that he loved me. And I actually believed him and
felt like I could forgive his act because he truly loved me for who I was.

I was fifteen at the time and so stupid.

So many years later I still wonder if I’m that same silly, stupid girl.

D
amn that’s a lot of blood.”

“Find me another towel.”

“I got every single one in our room.”

“Then go to another one.”

“Easy, killer.”

James looks at his brother and then takes the towel off his arm and glances at the wound. He’s sitting on the toilet bare-chested
with the white tile underneath him spotted with droplets. Nearby sits a pile of red-stained linens. The faucet is running,
and he keeps twisting the towel dry and rinsing it in warm water and then putting it on the wound. His lip has finally stopped
bleeding, but the gash in it almost feels as bad as the bullet wound.

Connor, meanwhile, is not doing much of anything to help him.

“Should I ask the front desk?”

“Yeah let’s just try to be more obvious. I’m sure someone called the cops after hearing those gunshots.”

“There’s nobody here. It’s the middle of the day.”

James puts pressure on his left arm and winces. “I need to get something for this. And we need to get out of here.”

“You want me to call a hospital?”

“Sometimes I just don’t get how stupid you are,” James says.

“You’re bleeding more than I did.”

“It grazed my arm. It’s fine. I just need to stop it and clean it up.”

“You know how to do it?”

“Yeah, Ma taught me when I was eight.”

“Just asking.”

“You’re just stupid.”

Connor leaves for a few minutes, and James ties the towel around his arm and uses his teeth to secure it. He stands and glances
at himself in the mirror.

“You’re stupid, boy, you know that?”

When Connor comes back, he takes off the bloody towel and reapplies the clean one to his arm.

“This isn’t going to last long. I need something to clean it out with.”

“That chick sure doesn’t have second thoughts about shooting someone, does she?”

“Obviously not.”

James stands and tries to get his stuff together.

“Didn’t you say there was no way she’d use a gun again on someone?”

“Yeah, maybe I said that,” James says.

“You were wrong.”

James curses.

“I’m just saying you’re wrong.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have saved your sorry ass. Maybe I should have left you to die in some rich guy’s house.”

“Maybe you should’ve. Seems like that would’ve been a better plan than this one.”

He curses again and gets everything that belongs from the room they’ve been sharing and urges Connor to do the same.

“What are we going to do?”

“We’re following her.”

“You know she has our car.”

“Yeah, I got that much.”

“How are we going to follow her? Hitchhike?”

“You are stupid.”

“I’m just saying. Not much we can do, is there?”

“If you didn’t waste the only money we had, we’d be fine.”

“That was my money.”

“You owe me,” James says.

“Really? That’s funny because you owe everybody.”

James brushes his hand through his hair and looks in the bathroom and then picks up his bag.

“Where are you going?” Connor asks.

“I need to find a Walgreens or some kind of pharmacy.”

“And how are you going to get money?”

“You’re going to get it for me.”

“How’s that?”

“You got a gun. Be creative.”

“Be creative? That’s helpful.”

James stops and walks back toward Connor. “I could still whip your tail with one arm.”

“What?”

“Why’d you come back to her room?”

“It was time.”

“I tell you when it’s time, and it wasn’t time.”

“Yeah it was. Your plan was going nowhere.”

“Yeah it was.”

“Yeah. South.”

“Find us some money fast. But don’t be stupid.”

“Stupid is letting that whore shoot you,” Connor says.

“Look who’s talking.”

“I didn’t know she had a gun. You should’ve known this time.”

“Yeah, there’s lots of things I should’ve known.”

“How are we going to find her?”

“I’m going to ask where the nearest pharmacy is and then you’re going to meet me there with some money,” James says.

“And what if I don’t?”

“Then don’t meet me. Period. You find your own way of getting back home.”

“I’m not the one Danny is looking for. Danny thinks I’m dead.”

James just nods and walks out and heads toward the elevator.

Then, just as he’s about to get in, he realizes his arm is bloody and he can’t ask anybody anything.

He goes back into the room.

“You have to ask for me.”

“What are you going to do?”

James holds out his hand. “Give me the gun. I have to do everything myself, don’t I?”

“I keep waiting for you to do something, but it never happens.”

“Well, it’s happening now. I told you we’re on to plan B. And she knows you’re alive now.”

Connor shrugs. “I don’t think she cared whether I was alive or dead. That girl doesn’t have a soul. It don’t matter to her
one way or the other.”

“Yeah, but her family matters, and I saw it firsthand. She called her father. We just gotta find her again and deliver her
back home.”

“What do we do once we get there?”

“First things first,” James says, shoving the gun in his pants and taking off again.

•   •   •

Laila drives for three straight hours before needing to pull over and get gas. She takes an exit and then pulls to the side
of the road somewhere a couple hours outside of New Orleans. She gets outside, walks onto the grass, kneels down, and throws
up.

She leans over the ground with both hands flat and she feels tears in her eyes from vomiting and she wipes them away.

Laila looks at the sky. She’s left the gray behind, and now it’s clear blue.

“You like this?”

She can see straight up without clouds blocking her view.

Straight up into heaven.

“Is this Your idea of punishment? Your idea of judgment?”

She swallows and then spits out the bitter taste in her mouth. She stands up.

“I’ll do it for You. Why wait? Why not just get it over and done with? It’s going to happen soon, right? So why not? Why not
just do what I should’ve done a long time ago. I’ll save You the problem, okay?”

She ignores one passing car in an otherwise empty exit. In the distance there is a gas station. She opens the side door and
looks in the bag where she put the revolver. The revolver that she got from Kyle. The same one she just used on James.

This will be quick and painless. Does it matter that she will die on the side of a one-lane exit somewhere in Louisiana? Death
doesn’t need to come dressed up. Death simply comes, and Laila thinks of this and knows this. She thinks of Rexy in New York,
and she knows this. Death can come in all shapes and packages and with all the bells and whistles, but still in the end when
death comes, it comes. And it’s over. And she knows all it will take is swallowing that revolver so the barrel scrapes the
back of her throat and then pushing the trigger and getting this mess done and over with.

As she looks through the bag, she doesn’t think of all the things they say you think of. Her father and her brother and her
sister and the mother she lost and the few friends she made and him. She doesn’t think of any of them.

But something does come to mind, and when it does, it gives her reassurance that this is the right thing to do.

It’s right, and it’s time.

Ghosts or not, it’s time.

Demons or not, it’s time.

She finds the gun and takes it out and puts it in her mouth and presses the trigger.

She hears the snap go off. Not the loud booming sound she heard in the hotel room but the snap.

Laila is still there, almost gagging on the pistol, her eyes still looking up at the sky.

She mumbles a curse and then presses the trigger again. The same light crack goes off. Again. And again.

She takes the handgun out of her mouth and stares at it.

She looks in her hand and for a moment doesn’t believe what she’s seeing.

Laila turns it over, then swings her hand to feel its weight.

Laila presses the trigger again.

The snap goes off.

It’s a toy gun. Made of metal and plastic. In the shape and color of her gun, but different.

“What is this?”

She pushes the trigger a dozen times, and it does the same thing. There are no bullets because this isn’t real. It’s a gun
that a kid would play with.

Laila tears back through the bag she placed the original gun in and can’t find it. She takes out everything, then looks through
her car. The more she looks the more frustrated she gets.

She tries to think how those guys could have done this, but she knows they didn’t.

Laila shot James and then walked out of the hotel and took the car and started driving south.

She didn’t stop once.

And now the gun she used to stop James—not to just stop James but to hurt and wound him—is a toy gun that won’t go off.

“No. No. No way.”

She says this because it can’t be. The gun. This exit. This failed attempt. This life.

She tries again, putting the gun to her temple and firing.

But the crack sounds hollow and light and mocking.

She hurls the gun out into a field and slams the door shut and heads to the gas station.

•   •   •

“How come I never heard of you?”

The big man puts the handgun back in the briefcase and snaps it up. He stares at Ron Winfield, a skinny guy in a denim shirt
who owns the garage they’re in front of and the dump of a house right next to it. “I’m not supposed to be heard of.”

“What kind of name is Amos?” Winfield asks.

“The name my mother and father gave me.”

“You like some kinda prophet or something?”

“I can see your future.”

“Really? And what’s it look like?”

“Grim.”

Winfield laughs at him, but Amos doesn’t laugh back.

This rat hole of a house and neighborhood is fifteen minutes south of Chicago. Amos already has everything packed, and this
is his last trip before heading north.

“Hand me that,” Amos orders.

“You know how to use that?”

“If the question is whether I know how to hit what I’m aiming at, the answer is yes.”

Amos holds the Brügger and Thomet MP9 submachine gun in one hand. He extends the shoulder stock, then sees in another open
briefcase a red-dot sight, a tactical light, and a silencer along with several spare magazines.

“How many extra magazines do you have?”

“Starting a war?”

“Danny told me you could help out.”

“I’m helping.”

“You’re talking.”

“Eight—I think. Let me see.” Winfield looks in the duffle bag. “Yeah, that’s eight.”

Amos puts the handgun in its case.

“So you got a Kimber 1911 .45 brand spankin’ new. A Walther PPK with seven-shot magazine. An MP9. A Smith and Wesson 500 Mag.”

“And the Para Warthog too,” Amos says.

Winfield curses. “What are you planning?”

“To take them off your hands. You want to count the cash?”

“No, I trust you. Why do you need all this firepower?”

“Why do you ask so many questions?”

“Just making conversation.”

Amos looks up from the trunk and stares at the man for a moment.

“What?”

“Do you realize that after the fourth or fifth time a man doesn’t answer your questions, he’s not going to? Ever?”

“You told me your name.”

“Danny told you my name, and I just filled in the blank when you asked a stupid question about it.”

“You always this ornery?”

Amos smiles. “I’m not the least bit ornery. I take my job very seriously, and when I’m looking over materials I just purchased,
I don’t want to waste my time with frivolous conversation.”

“Frivolous, huh?”

“How would you categorize it?”

“Just friendly talk,” Winfield says.

“Save the commentary for someone else.”

Amos shuts the trunk and wipes his forehead.

“Want something to drink?” he asks the big man.

“Only if it’s to go,” Amos says.

“Long trip ahead?”

“Do you see what’s in the trunk?”

“I saw.”

“It’ll be a long trip for somebody.”