Cold City Streets (27 page)
Authors: LH Thomson
Cobi ran down the street, and it felt familiar and comfortable, a safe place for a little boy. He knew all the neighbors, the folks on the stoops, the other kids his own age. And Allan was there, happy, strong, supportive. His father wore a smile on his face and his best uniform. Next door, in the Hedley family’s front yard, Ms. Hedley played with her young daughter, drawing chalk pictures on the clean, new concrete while Michael and his mother sat nearby.
He could smell something in the air, something different, an electricity that hung like palpable humidity, a tingle under his skin. The trees that flanked the boulevard were green-turning-gold, and the gentle autumn wind brushed the leaves off of fragile branches, beginning their southern descent to the climes of winter. It was Detroit, from so long ago… but it was Edmonton, too, maybe a street in the northeast, the kind of place where things could finally get back to normal.
Beside the hospital bed, Jessie watched him twitch slightly in his sleep, the only other sound a hum from the unit monitoring his vital signs. He looked peaceful, his face relaxed. They said he’d lost a lot of blood, but that the bullet lodged in muscle tissue, avoiding anything major. Sooner than later, they expected him to wake up.
What would she say to him? Working for peanuts and getting shot in a train tunnel, thousands of miles from home? No one there for him other than his boss? He’d been brave beyond what she had any right to expect, certainly beyond anything Paul Sidney had a right to expect.
And right up to the end, he’d given the kid, Tommy Orton, every chance to make things right. He was a good man, and she felt stinging guilt that Cobi took a bullet for his trouble.
His head moved again, his brow furrowed as he fought off some unseen worry. His eyelids flickered.
“Cobi?”
A woman’s voice. Was it Sarah standing there looking down at him from just above?
“His lids are fluttering. I think he’s waking up.”
The dream faded to black for just the briefest of moments, a flash of darkness that gave way to the soft light of a hospital room and Jessica Harper standing beside his bed, a nurse right beside her.
“What happened?” Cobi asked. “Head feels like cotton…”
“That’s the sedative,” the nurse said. “You’ll go in and out for a while, probably.”
Jessie smiled gently at him. “You got shot, remember? In the tunnels…”
“Tommy. Did he…”
She shook her head. “Mariner says he had no choice. Two bullets to the chest.”
“He saved my life, Jess.”
“He’s a good cop. You’ll probably want to tell him that when you get out.”
“He’s…?”
“In stable condition. He won’t be jumping down onto the LRT tracks any time soon…”
“Probably good.”
“Yeah… speaking of which…”
“I didn’t have a whole lot of choice. I didn’t even know Mariner was a cop until he was halfway down the tunnel.”
“Uh huh. You’re a brave man, Mr. Tate.”
Cobi felt awkward at the compliment. “Ms. Harper…”
“Paul Sidney is already free and on his way to see his family. You’re a good man, too... And I hope maybe after everything is said and done, you can maybe see that yourself a little more now.”
Cobi thought of the dream again, just for a moment, and a small smile played across his face. Then he looked serious again, troubled.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just… thinking that maybe things went the way they were supposed to, for a change. But I didn’t want the kid to die.”
“In the end, we make our own decisions, our own choices,” Jessie said. “To me? You’ve made all the right ones so far. You gave him chances. He had choices, too, and he made the wrong ones.”
“I couldn’t fix the situation, you know? I couldn’t talk him out of running.”
“Some people aren’t made to be fixed, Mr. Tate. But maybe some of us are, when we try hard enough.”
That made him smile again. “Well, okay. That’s a start. That’s something good, right? Something to build on.”
“Yeah. Something to build on.”
Jess heard those same words three times in two days: from the cop, Mariner; from Andrea and Paul Sidney when he’d been released to be with his family; and now from Mr. Tate.
Cobi.
She couldn’t help but smile right back.
From LH: Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think of the book! You can
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Also by LH Thomson:
Quinn & The Dead Man’s Daughter
Terrible People Doing Terrible Things
Also from JIL Publishing:
Shadow Agenda: an action suspense thriller by Sam Powers