Pink Neon Dreams (35 page)

When Johnson’s lips twisted into a horrible grimace, she
realized he’d seen the recorder, too.
 
“You’ve been recording me! You bastard, it’s no fun and no fair.”

He raised the Glock, aimed and fired.
 
Daniel’s face never changed, even when the
bullet struck his left shoulder high and crimson exploded in a huge splatter
out of the tattered remnants of his shirt.
 
Daniel held his feet but from where she stood, closer to him than to Nia
and Johnson, Cecily watched fine pain lines form like cobwebs around his mouth.

She didn’t think about what she would do next or plan what to
say, just did it.

Chapter Nineteen

Everything shifted in seconds from tense to intense.
 
The bullet slammed into his shoulder with the
force of a sledgehammer.
 
As it tore
through tissue, pain erupted with fierce fire and radiated outward, but Daniel
managed to remain standing. He wasn’t sure how.
 
Although he’d been shot before and should know what to expect, it hurt
enough to momentarily cripple his senses.
 
He stood in place, stunned, aware he should react but unable to
focus.
 
A nasty burst of laughter from
Johnson filtered through his momentary stupor.
 
If he didn’t move, the bastard might shoot him again and impact greater
damage.
 
A flesh wound might be a literal
pain, but it wouldn’t kill him.
A hit somewhere vital might.

“Gotcha!”
Johnson brayed like a jackass. “Now give me the recorder, man.”

“
iChíngate
,” Daniel said, then repeated in English. “Fuck
you.”

He thrust the device deep into his front jeans pocket and
reached for his weapon in a back holster.
 
As Daniel pulled out the pistol, two things happened.
 
Johnson fired again and something vicious
ripped hard into his left side, low.
 
It
burned deep into his flesh and hurt like a mother fucker. Almost before he
could take in the fact he’d been shot a second time, Daniel stared in shock as Cecily
burst into the room and approached Johnson.

“All right, asshole,” she said in a wild voice. “You wanted me,
you got me.
 
Now just what the hell are
you gonna do with me?”

“I’m going to kill you, bitch eyes,” Johnson said. “And watch
you die.”

“Uh-uh,” she said. “Change of plan, mother fucker.
 
You don’t mess with my people.”

She brought up a knife and he must be out of his fucking mind,
because he’d swear it was the old Comanche knife, the one his great-grandmother
handed down through the generations.
 
But
it couldn’t be so he must be delirious or dreaming.
 
Maybe Cecily wasn’t even really here,
although she appeared very real as she wielded the knife with a warrior’s
intent.
 
Like a trained assassin, she
thrust the knife under Johnson’s ribs and diagonally up into his chest.
 
Johnson cried out, a wordless and terrible
noise of surprise and pain before he lifted his weapon up one more time and
pointed it in Cecily’s face.

“No,
querida,
no,”
Daniel said, but his voice came out so quiet he almost couldn’t hear it and he
didn’t think she did.
 
A roaring sound
filled his ears, but he still heard the gunshot echo with incredible
volume.
 
He tried to reach for her as a
blood red haze filtered his vision.
 
Through it, he watched Cecily put a hand to her head and fall to the
floor in a crumpled heap.
 
Someone
screamed, maybe Nia, maybe him and then darkness enveloped him, thick and
unforgiving and total.

****

Darkness yielded to night and he grew aware of thousands of
stars lighting up the sky.
 
Daniel gazed
upward with wonder.
 
He knew this place,
remembered it well although he hadn’t set foot here in decades.
 
The Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands,
acres and acres of open country, plains and prairie, lakes and water, all
beneath a Texas sky bigger than God almighty to a little kid from Fort
Worth.
 
He inhaled a fresh outdoors scent
and another familiar aroma.
 
Whatever
reason he’d come here, he wasn’t alone.
 
The aromatic, powerful smell of unfiltered Lucky Strikes brought back
memories and a sense of security.
 
Daniel
turned around toward the aroma and saw his dad.

Manuel Padilla smiled and patted the earth beside him. “
Mi hijo
, come sit awhile.”

Daniel sat down, cross-legged and touched his father’s
arm.
 
Beneath his fingers, it was solid
and real.
 
A deep abiding peace
surrounded him and he let it wash over him as the tension, the anxiety, and
cares of life ebbed away.
 
“Papa, it’s
good to see you.”

His father nodded and smoked.
 
He offered Daniel a cigarette, but he shook his head. He’d never smoked,
but his dad wouldn’t know, he guessed.
 
They sat in comfortable camaraderie for a long time.
 
Daniel felt all his burdens
lift,
he noticed something on the horizon.
 
He squinted and tried to make it out.
 
Something very familiar about it niggled in
his mind. He thought it mattered very much, but he couldn’t remember why.
 
He struggled until the image became clear—Cecily’s
shop on the Branson Strip, the name lighting up the night sky, brilliant and as
pink as the name—Pink Neon.

Cecily.
 
Memory poured into his
soul and flooded his senses.
 
Her very
essence flowed into his body and he recalled everything, the way her nose
turned up at the end, her sassy mouth, her tender hands, and the way she made
love with him.
 
Thinking of her made him
very happy, but it brought back the things which bound him.
 
Daniel stared at the shop and thought it must
be a mirage, here.

“It’s real,” his father said.
“Or real for
you, anyway.”

“What does it mean? Why am I here?”

Manuel placed his hand over his son’s. “You’re here because
your body was very hurt.
 
You came to a
place you once knew and loved.
 
You came
to me so I could guide you.”

An idea dawned, one Daniel didn’t like. “Am I dead?”

“No,” his papa said. “You could have been, but she pulls you
back, the woman.
 
This is your past, but
that is your future.”

He pointed at the image of Pink Neon on the horizon and Daniel
sensed a tugging, a need somewhere in his midsection.
 
Power drew him with a sense of rightness,
something similar to the way the tide came to shore or some animals mated for
life.
 
In the rushing wind sweeping
across the open country, he heard what he’d missed before—the sound of Cecily’s
weeping.

“Go to her,” his father said. “
Vaya con Dios, mi hijo.
Your time will come someday, but this is
not the day.”

Daniel shut his eyes and everything around him shifted.
 
A sensation of hurtling through time and
space seized him and he yielded to its’ pull.
 
The stars vanished and although he experienced a profound sense of loss,
Daniel launched into the darkness from which he’d emerged.

One moment he soared weightless and with joy, the next he
crashed hard into the confines of a body.
 
Pain returned, dulled but undeniable.
 
Awareness came in slow stages and with every
detail,
he gained knowledge of his surroundings.
 
Daniel ticked them off on a mental list—a bed where he laid prone, an
uncomfortable tube in his nose, needles attached to his arm, intermittent beeps
in the background—and realized hospital.
 
Vague medicinal smells assaulted his senses and a sharp discomfort in
his groin made him aware of a catheter.
 
Someone spoke to him, urgent and very soft.
 
With stubborn will, he forced his eyes open
and saw her.
 
Cecily, alive and
apparently well, something which made him exhale hard.
 
Last he remembered, he heard a shot and then
she fell.
 
Something tight in his chest
eased with the knowledge she remained alive and unharmed.
 
Damn,
she’s pretty.

Her cornrows dangled as Cecily bent forward, face in both
hands, with a look of despair.
 
Although
Daniel lacked much strength, he summoned up enough to touch her hand. She
glanced up, startled, eyes wide, and gasped.
 
She took his hand and held it tight as she came to her feet. Cecily stroked
his face with her left hand, standing beside the bed, leaning over him.
 
A few soft snuffles escaped from her mouth,
the kind of sound someone who cried for a long time will make.
 
A stray tear leaked and rolled down her cheek
in slow motion.

“Sugar?” she said as she lifted his right hand to her
cheek.
 
The cool of her hand, her skin
soothed his own heat and he realized he must be running a fever. “Oh, sugar,
you scared me.”

Daniel struggled to find his voice, to dredge up enough energy
to speak. “Don’t cry,
querida,”
he
said. “I came back.”

Her red-rimmed eyes clouded and he realized she didn’t
understand.
 
Explaining required too much
effort so he didn’t try.
 
He’d tell her
later about his experience.

“Hush,” she said. “I don’t know how much talking you should be
doing.
 
You’ve only been out of ICU for a
few hours.”

He recognized he’d been hospitalized, but ICU put a more
serious spin on things.
 
Daniel wondered
how bad he’d been hit, worse than he’d thought.
 
“Why was I in ICU?” he croaked.

Some water would help his dry throat.
 
Hell, he could drink a full pitcher.

Cecily kissed his hand, the one she still held. Her face
crumpled up and he thought she would start bawling again. “You were shot,
twice,” she said. “Your shoulder wasn’t too bad, a flesh wound and the bullet
went through although it tore you up.
 
The
second one didn’t exit and they did surgery to remove it.
 
You almost bled out before the ambulance came
and even here at the hospital, they weren’t sure you’d make it.”

Jesus, he knew it must’ve been dire if he almost died and
visited his dad in some heavenly version of the grasslands, but Daniel hadn’t
expected a close call.
 
Although curious
how long he’d been in the hospital and where, he had priorities.
 
“
Yo soy
sediento,”
he said, forgetting she lacked much Spanish.
“Aqua, por favor.”

“You want some water, sugar?” Cecily asked. “I know that much
Spanish, learned it on
Sesame Street.”

She poured water into a foam cup, inserted a bendable straw,
and then held it to his lips.
 
Daniel
sucked the cool liquid into his mouth with pleasure.
 
“
Gracias,”
he whispered.
 

“
De nada,”
she said.
“Try to sleep, sugar.
 
You need lots of
rest.”

Fatigue drifted over him, heavy and pervasive.
 
Their short exchange wore him out and his
eyelids became heavy.
 
He wanted to
remain alert, to talk to Cecily and enjoy her tender little caresses, but he
couldn’t. “Are you staying,
querida?”
he
managed to ask. “I want to see you when I wake up.”

“Daniel,” she said with the first flicker of a smile he’d seen
on her face since he woke. “Ain’t
nothing
big enough
to drag me away.
 
Trust me, they tried.
 
I’ll be here, I promise.”

Before he could try to say anything else, she put one finger
across his lips then bent over and kissed his mouth, soft and light.
 
“I love you, sugar,” she whispered.

He surrendered to the weariness and let sleep wipe out
everything else.
 
When he woke again, he
came around easier and it took far less effort to open his eyes.
 
Sunshine streamed into the room from the
window. Until he saw it, he hadn’t realized it’d been night before.
 
Daniel drew a deep breath and realized the canula
wasn’t in his nose.
 
Although he hurt,
the pain no longer had as much edge, but he knew when he began to move, he’d be
very sore. Still thirsty, he thought he possessed more strength until he
struggled to sit up.
 
He waited until the
wave of weak dizziness passed to focus on whether or not Cecily remained in the
room.