Breath on the Wind (19 page)

Scrat was a good Prospect, but he had a tendency towards whining sometimes.  Almost every Prospect did, but it pissed Chiz off.  Chiz thought the kid needed some to see some action; he’d not long since turned twenty, but he still looked to be straight out of high school.  The kid looked like an ad for surfboards, rather than an outlaw. 

Chiz had decided to take Morse on as his next project.  The kid was still struggling with breathlessness after having lost part of his lung to a cartel bullet.  He’d been trying to work out in the gym, but had all the stamina of an exhausted snail.  Chiz thought that having someone to spot him, and kick his ass occasionally, would force the kid to push himself harder.  He’d been thinking of ways he could get Morse to use the weights to pack on some supporting muscle, and expand his lung capacity, without having to watch his feeble attempts at cardio.

Samuel had spoken to Brad and Cole that morning.  The two mechanics had been expecting the approach after Chiz had sounded them out, and were enthusiastic about Prospecting for the club.  Samuel planned to speak to Aaron over the weekend.

Crash had taken his lunch into the clubhouse, along with a crumpled order form, which Chiz had given him earlier in the morning, having scrawled on the back as many details as he could remember about Andy.  It made Chiz a little sad to think that he was going to have to get used to thinking of her by her real name.  Catching shit about the domme thing was bad enough, but about constant jokes about fucking a muppet were a step too far.  Even so, she would always be Elmo to him.  Chiz had still had the slip of paper that she had given him with her address on it.  It had somehow made into his rucksack, and never been thrown in the trash.  He’d had the name and address of her club, too, for Crash to start his search with.

As Chiz finished his sandwich, Crash came back into the garage and headed over.  Chiz wiped his hands on the paper napkin that the sandwich had been wrapped in as he finished chewing, and then took back the, now even more creased, piece of paper that Crash offered.

“Here you go, bro.  Club, home and mobile number.”

Chiz looked at the sets of digits.  “Thanks...”

Crash interrupted his distracted expression of gratitude.  “I checked her out, too, and her club.  You’re right.  It’s all legit.”

Samuel wandered over, tossing the wadded up remains of the packaging of his burger into the trash can as he walked.  “It is?”

Crash transferred his attention to his president.  “Sure is.  As long as everyone keeps their bits to themselves, no swappin’ juice of any kind, no stickin’ anythin’ anywhere, the only thing she’s riskin’ is an assault charge.  That’d be on her, or whoever was doin’ the whippin’ or such.  It wouldn’t blow back on the club.

Samuel nodded his approval.  “That’s good.”  He turned to Chiz.  “You okay to make the call, son?”

Chiz was still staring at the numbers.  “Yeah.  Yeah I am.” 

Chiz glanced up and checked the time on the wall clock.  His best guess was that Elmo was likely at the club.  He figured he’d try her mobile first.  Chiz realized that he had an audience. Samuel and Crash were standing and watching him, and showing every sign of sticking around.  “Excuse me, boys.” he muttered.

Chiz left the garage and walked out into the weak sunshine.  He’d get no more privacy in the clubhouse than he would in the garage.  Instead, he went over to his bike, and hitched himself comfortably against the seat.  His guts were churning.  He’d been less nervous walking into full-on firefights.  He’d missed her so fucking much, and the pain of missing her was still fresh.  There wasn’t a day that had gone by when he hadn’t reaffirmed his decision that walking away was the best thing he could do for her, but the regret was overwhelming.

He pulled his phone out of one of his coverall pockets, and tapped in the digits for Elmo’s mobile phone.

She answered the call quickly. 
“Hello?  Who is this?”

“Hey, doll.  It’s me.”

There was a long silence.  He could hear traffic in the background.  Wherever she was, she was outside. 

“How’d you get this number?”
  Her voice could be described as frosty at best.

“I had a friend find it for me.”

“Lose it.”
  Her command was terse. 

“Wait, doll.  Please.  Don’t hang up.”  Chiz almost shouted into the handset. 

There was silence on the other end of the line.  She wasn’t speaking, but she hadn’t hung up.  Chiz knew he couldn’t ask her about the specifics of a business case for a strip club and dungeon during a telephone call, during this telephone call.  He didn’t want to.

“Look, please.  Let me come see you.  I want to explain.”

“Explain why you walked out, and fucking rode off, without so much as a happy new year?
”  She interrupted him.

“Yeah. It was shitty move.  I’m sorry.”  Chiz looked around the lot to check that none of his brothers were in hearing distance.

“Why should I let you?”

“Because… because I haven’t been able to stop thinkin’ about you.  Please.” 

“I should tell you to drop dead.”

“But you’re not gonna.”  It was a statement, not a question.

He almost felt Elmo’s sigh, it was so heavy. 
“No.  I’m not.”

“I wanna come see you.  Will you see me?  If I ride over?”

“When?”

“I was thinkin’ I’d set off, about, now.”

The only answer Chiz got was the dull roar of an almighty explosion, a noise so loud that Chiz pulled the phone away from his ear with a jerk.  He thought he’d caught Elmo screaming, but the call had cut off.

“Elmo?  Andy?  You there?  You alright?  Doll?  Chiz pushed himself off his bike and started walking, fast, to the clubhouse.  His voice was getting more frantic with every step, and he didn’t give a shit.

Whether Elmo liked it or not, she was about to get a visitor.  As he ran into the clubhouse to change for the journey, Chiz could only hope that she would still be alive to talk to him about anything when he made it to Alabama.

Chapter Seventeen

Andy didn’t leave her house until the painters that she’d hired had shown up.  She wanted to make sure that work got underway on the eradication of the graffiti before she left them to it.  Her neighbors hadn’t said anything outright to her, but she could tell from the looks that she got as she drove past, and from the way their cars slowed as they passed, that it was causing a stir. 

The magnifying glass that Chiz had inadvertently held up to her life had made Andy realize that she wanted more from a home than her current house was capable of providing.  But in her attempts to right her life back onto its even keel, she had decided that she would carry on as if Chiz had never existed.  If he’d never existed, then the truths that she’d found did not need to be acted upon.  Now, it seemed, she would be moving whether she liked it or not.

Following the late start, Andy decided that she didn’t have time to squeeze in a trip to the gym before she had to be at the beauty salon.  As it was, she would only just have time to grab something to eat before her first client arrived.  She was anticipating a busy day at the dungeon.  When she’d checked the diary the night before, she’d noticed that they were almost fully booked from quite early in the morning.

She dressed in a leather skirt, fine knit sweater, and her leather jacket.  In a nod to the cool weather, rather than wear her prized Louboutins, she donned stockings, and a pair of knee high, heeled, slouched, suede boots.  It was only as she was about to slide into her car that she noticed that she’d dressed all in black, and that given the skirt and jacket, she was probably confirming some of her neighbors’ newly-developed suspicions.

Satisfied that the painters were painting, and not sitting and drinking coffee, she set off to get buffed and shined.

As she was walking from the parking lot to the club, her phone rang.  She didn’t know the number. She prepared herself to fend off a random marketing call as she hit ‘answer.’

“Hello?  Who is this?”

“Hey, doll.  It’s me.”

The voice stopped her dead in her tracks.  Fortunately the sidewalk wasn’t busy.  If anyone had been behind her they would have barreled straight into her.  The ground seemed to tilt.  It was the endearment that brought anger washing over her like a wave of icy water.

“How’d you get this number?” 

“I had a friend find it for me.”

“Lose it.”  Two weeks.  He’d waited two weeks.  He’d had the means to find her, and he’d waited two fucking weeks.  He’d turned her life upside down and inside out, okay she’d let him, but still, and ridden off into the sunset, dawn technically, and waited two fucking weeks! 

She was pulling the phone away from her ear to hit the disconnect when she heard him shout.

“Wait, doll.  Please.  Don’t hang up.” 

Andy wasn’t sure why she put the phone back to her ear.  She had no idea why she hadn’t just cut the call.  Maybe it was because she missed him.  Maybe it was because of the thing that she’d thought she felt building between them before he’d left.  Maybe.  The anger died to a low simmer, but did not ebb completely away.  It stole her words.

“Look, please.  Let me come see you.  I want to explain.”

“Explain why you walked out, and fucking rode off, without so much as a happy new year?”  She interrupted him.

“Yeah. It was shitty move.  I’m sorry.”
  Well at least he was admitting it.  That was a start.  Andy mentally shook herself.  A start to what? 

“Why should I let you?”

“Because.... because I haven’t been able to stop thinkin’ about you.  Please.” 

Oh, fuck.  And just like that, she knew she was going to let him back in.  Maybe on a probationary period at first, but she couldn’t deny that he was the first man she’d felt something for in such a very long time.  “I should tell you to drop dead.”

“But you’re not gonna.” 

Fuck.  She could tell from the tone of his voice that he knew that he had her.  That she was such a pushover made her sigh.  “No.  I’m not.”  She looked down at the sidewalk.  She hadn’t taken a step forward since she’d answered the call.

“I wanna come see you.  Will you see me?  If I ride over?”

“When?”  This was the clincher.  How important to him was she?  If he said two weeks from Saturday, he’d be shit out of luck.

“I was thinkin’ I’d set off, about, now.”

Andy had no idea what she was about to say to that, because her world literally exploded.

The bang, although that was an inadequate word to describe such an all-consuming sound, was so loud that it was disorienting in itself.  But then the blast wave knocked her off her feet, and that was when Andy knew, with a clarity borne of instinct, that a bomb had exploded nearby.

She hit the sidewalk hard.  All the breath left her body in an instant.

Time seemed to stop, and when it started again, it was at a much slower pace than before.

Andy felt as though her head had been wrapped in cotton.  She couldn’t seem to hear anything, except for a strange, high-pitched tinkling.  She realized the windows in all the buildings around her had exploded out into the street.  The tinkling was the sound of the shards of glass landing as they covered the world in a crystal snowstorm.

She was a few doors down from her club.  There had been a few people wandering the street, on their way back to work from lunch, or heading for a late meal.  As the glass finished falling, and the fog around her head began to dissolve, the screams, shouts and moans of the injured, and the survivors, started to swell and grow.

There was a body in the middle of the street, directly outside her building.  It was not moving.  Smoke rose in faint wisps from the smoldering clothing.  Andy stared at it dumbly as the world intruded on her shocked state.  The knowledge that it was Joe hit her, and made way for the chaos surrounding her.  Suddenly, everything was at full volume.

Sirens were beginning to join the human-made din.  Andy scrambled to her feet, tottering on her heels.  She staggered forward.  She knew, although she didn’t know how she knew, without going to the body, that Joe was dead.  Perhaps it was the blood staining the blacktop, perhaps it was the way the shattered glass framed him like the petals of a flower.

Her club was nothing more than a smoke-filled cavern.  What had been the corner of the block had been shaved off.  The façade was missing.  Brickwork and twisted iron lay on either side of the gaping hole like the peeled-back skin of a biology dissection, with the innards of the building exposed like the organs of an unfortunate frog.

Andy stumbled into the ruins.  Her throat was dry.  She coughed, hacking on the soot, brick dust and smoke.  Her mouth felt gritty.  There was a smell that made no sense to her, or that her brain didn’t wish to make sense of.  It was an amalgamation of barbecue and bleach.

Thoughts were careening around Andy’s head in no logical order.  She picked her way over the remnants of the furnishings of the strip club, looking carefully where she set her feet.

The sounds of fear and pain from the street receded, the further inside that she ventured.  But a new sound took their place, a single, long groan.

The door to the stairs had been blown off its hinges, and was embedded in the wall behind the bar.  Andy stepped through the hole, and found Jackie lying in a twisted heap at the bottom of the stairs.  At first she was sure that her friend was dead, until Jackie groaned. 

Andy nearly threw up when she saw that one of Jackie’s feet was missing completely.  She had a random thought to go looking for the missing portion of limb, until an iota of sense kicked in, and reminded her that her friend was in danger of bleeding out.

Andy dropped into the rubble and tugged off one of her boots with shaking hands.  She ripped off her stocking, and tied it around the bloody, mangled stump, all the while distracting herself from the gore by mumbling trite reassurances.  Jackie groaned louder, but did not open her eyes.  Andy thought maybe she’d hit her head as she’d been thrown down the stairs and into the wall by the explosion.  That was what it looked like.

She was tugging her boot back on, intending to try and climb what was left of the stairs, when she became aware that her leather jacket was missing.  That was odd.  She didn’t remember taking it off.  There were large, long cuts on her arms that were bleeding freely, but Andy disregarded them, since they caused her no pain.

She’d taken two steps, and come across an arm that she didn’t recognize, when someone took hold of her shoulder.

“Miss.  You can’t go up there.”

Andy turned, and tried to wrench away from the alien form of the firefighter with his helmet on and visor down.

“But… my friend… there’s people…”

The firefighter took a firmer hold of Andy’s arm and tugged.  She lost her footing, and he caught her and lifted her into his arms.  He began to carry her towards the street.

“But… Jackie…  the others…”

“Miss, your friend is receiving medical attention.  It’s our job to go looking up there, not yours.  You need to get to a hospital.”

Andy tried to find the words to make him understand how important it was that she go up the stairs, that she needed to see if anyone else was alive, that there would be people up there, lots of people.  But before she knew it, the firefighter was dropping her onto a gurney.  The street was crowded with emergency vehicles and flashing lights.  Firefighters, police and paramedics were rushing around in between the knots of dazed survivors. It was barely-organized bedlam.

“Shock, possible concussion, and multiple lacerations.  Walking wounded.”  The firefighter stated to the paramedic who started prodding at her, and shining a flashlight into her eyes.

As soon as the firefighter let go of her, Andy tried to get up off the gurney, but now the paramedic held her down.  “No, miss.  You need to come with us.”  A strap was fastened over her pelvis to prevent her from getting up, and then a second paramedic appeared and the world dipped and tilted as the legs on the gurney folder in on themselves as she was shoved into the back of a waiting ambulance.

The journey to the hospital was a blur of questions and tests.  The pain of the cuts on her arms and face was beginning to seep through the thick blanket of shock.  As the pain came, so did nausea.  All the heat seemed to leave Andy’s body, and she began to shiver uncontrollably, The medics tucked a silver foil blanket around her.

The confusion at the hospital was too much for her battered senses.  Andy shut her eyes and tried to block everything out, but people kept asking her questions, her name, her address, the date, her date of birth.  She tried to answer them, but the effort of delving into the confused mess of her brain made her head ache.

When darkness began to creep in at the edges of her vision, Andy didn’t fight it.