DAYBREAK: a gripping thriller full of suspense (Titan Trilogy Book 3) (17 page)

Brendan bought new clothes. A simple suit from Brooks Brothers; a Regent fit, black, with a white shirt. He lingered over the ties. He decided he hated ties, and didn’t get one. He also bought a pair of jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. Crossing back through Midtown towards Grand Central Station, he stopped at a Duane Reade and bought hair dye and clippers. He boggled at the cosmetics section, confused by the sheer number of products, until he found some simple foundation make-up that he thought would work.

He put all his purchases in a new duffle bag, got on a train, and schlepped himself north to the Bronx. He kept one eye over his shoulder to see if he was being followed.

He wasn’t.

It took twenty minutes walking around in the Bronx to find the address. He moved south along Courtlandt Ave in Morrisania, a section with low-rise brick buildings, sidewalk shops, fruit and vegetable stands. Everything was cast in the heavenly glow of a low sun. As he passed a tattoo parlor, Roma Pizza, and
Mr. Income Tax
the sun sank until it had slipped behind the buildings
.

The traffic was thinner at the end of the avenue and few people were out on the streets. A stooped woman pushed a shopping cart full of rattling cans over the uneven sidewalk. Signs declared
King Steaks
,
E-Z Stop Deli
,
Bronx Laundromat
, some of the windows were broken.

At 146
th
Street a yellow sign read
No Outlet
. Brendan headed in and walked until he found the number 945 spray-painted on a single-story building, with a garage door open. Rap music thumped out into the evening.

Brendan walked in. The stained concrete reeked of gas and oil. A dark Chrysler minivan was up on a set of blocks. Tools were on the pegboards. A man emerged from the back, wiping his hands on a dirty rag. He was olive-skinned, built like Tony Laruso, without an ounce of flab. He looked Brendan up and down, his eyes crawling over Brendan’s new suit, and he moved closer. The menace emanated from him as sharp as the smell of gas in the air.

“The fuck’re you?”

The man had cold eyes, and Brendan stared right back, never breaking eye contact. If Laruso had been true to his word, things might be alright. If he’d been lying, Brendan probably wouldn’t make it out of here alive. He took a step forward. “Tony sent me.”

The man seemed to hesitate. According to Laruso, this guy was meant to be Bosco. Laruso was supposed to have gotten a message to Bosco by now. If he hadn’t, there was a safe word.

A safe word
, Brendan thought. Sure. With no gun on him, against a man who looked like he’d been born under the hood of a Mustang, there was nothing safe about this.

Bosco’s menacing stare held for a moment, but then his lips split into a wide grin. “Fuckin’ Laruso,” he said. “How is that fat
chooch
? Come on in back; let’s get you what you need.”

* * *

An hour later Brendan returned to the Sheraton in Midtown. He stopped at the front desk and handed the clerk a small package. The clerk was someone new now; beneath her plastic smile, the young woman looked like she’d withstood hundreds of guest complaints already that day. The corners of her mouth turned up in practiced glee and she said she would be happy to mail the package out for him. She also informed him his room had indeed been switched to one with no mini-bar.

He thanked her and she handed him his newly minted room-key card. He noticed her eyes lag over his face for a moment. She caught herself and then looked away.

I’ll start telling people I’m a cage fighter
, Brendan thought.

He took the card from her outstretched hand and put it in his back pocket. He bid her good night and headed towards the elevators.

He spent the next hour sitting on a different floor from his new room, watching from the nook where an ice machine softly rattled and hummed. He kept his eyes on the door to the room he’d first been given. He drank a Pepsi from the vending machine next to the ice dispenser. By the time he’d finished it, no one had come by.

A couple in their fifties, looking like they’d had a good evening, walked to the room and keyed the lock, talking and laughing with one another. The door swung shut.

He waited. He’d gotten good at waiting.

At last the elevator doors opened and Sloane stepped off. He’d been alone for a decade, languishing in jail for seven months, standing in this same spot for a final few hours, and now there she was.

The way she was standing there, he was reminded of the first time he’d met her — in Argon’s house in Hawthorne, when she’d had Brendan’s gun. The one the New York Police Department had now.

“Hey,” he said from down the hallway.

She turned around. She was even prettier than he remembered. She wore a Rugby shirt, jeans, and running shoes. Her hair was pulled back in a high ponytail. He took her all in: the slight tilt to her smile, her small ears and nose, large bright eyes taking him in. Those eyes looked sad.

“Jesus, Brendan,” she said. “What did they do to you?”

He felt a childish blush of self-consciousness and almost put up a hand to obscure his face. He leaned against the wall, suddenly drained, as if all the strength he’d been building for the past months was just to get him here, and now that Sloane was standing there, he could collapse. Rest.

She walked down the hallway to him. Standing in front of him, she brought her hands to his face, and touched his skin. He jerked his head back — a reflex action. He forced himself back towards her touch. Her hands feathered over his skin, her sterling-silver rings shining in the overhead light of the hallway.

“Come on up to my room,” he said.

She didn’t ask for an explanation as they stepped into the elevator and took it to the next floor. They watched their thin reflections dance on the brass surfaces.

He opened the door of his room and stood aside so she could go in. He got the impression that something was different about her. She still looked like the Sloane he remembered, the one he’d imagined day in and day out for seven months, but something had changed. He couldn’t put his finger on it. Maybe it was just the time that had passed — people couldn’t expect things to remain the same with half a year gone. They’d known one another so briefly, even though they had been through such harrowing events together, time was time. Or, maybe it wasn’t even her who was different. Maybe it was him.

He closed the door. Sloane ventured over to the windows and took in the view of the city at night.

“So what’s with the smooth moves?” she asked. He remembered her voice so distinctly, the subtle impairment in her speech. Sloane’s motor cortices sent slightly misguided signals to her pharynx, maybe her tongue. He had never asked her the extent of her injuries from being born the way she had. She was asking why he had given her the wrong room number — his old room — instead of this one.

“Two people were following me earlier tonight. All around the city. I lost them. Or, they’re just hanging back at this point. They could be on you, too.”

She turned around to face him, smiling. “Nobody’s following me.”

“They let me rot in there for seven months. They let me fight my way out.”

“And you did.”

“Yeah. I did. But they’re allowing it to happen. Paying out the rope. Maybe seeing if I hang myself with it.” He looked down, studying his hands, the one with the absent finger, the wedding ring long gone. “I don’t know . . .”

Sloane crossed the hotel room. “Brendan,” she said, stopping in front of him. She was six inches shorter than he was, so with his head lowered she looked right up into his eyes again. “You’re a skeptic who wants to believe.”

“Oh, is that what I am?” He felt a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“Mmhmm. You’re an idealist-pessimist.”

“I see.”

She moved toward him. They hugged, and he rested his chin on the top of her head. “Is this okay?”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you, too.” She pressed her face to him, her words muffled. “They hurt you.”

“They tried.”

He could smell her — the shampoo in her hair, the detergent of her clothes, but something else, too, something anomalous. Like sea air.

“I can’t believe what you did for me,” she said.

“I did what I thought was right. I brought you into all of it.”

She was silent. He tried some levity. “So, what have you been up to for the past seven months? Seeing anyone?”

It was a joke, but Sloane pulled away, and she turned her face up to him. He was grinning, but she remained serious. “How about we don’t talk about it right now. Can we just not talk about any of it? For now?”

He stared into her eyes. “Okay.”

She started to unbutton his shirt. “Always so sharply dressed, Mr. Healy.”

He found himself still grinning, but the nerves were cycling through his body. This was what he wanted, this was what he had wondered about, fantasized about. This was what had helped him survive the inside. And now here it was, it was happening. There was just something not quite right — he knew she was brazen, that she was someone who didn’t take orders, did what she wanted; he’d known that from the first moment he’d met her. But there was an even greater self-possession about her now that he hadn’t quite expected. The Sloane he remembered and had conjured in his mind over the days, the weeks, the months, was a spitfire, intelligent, but also a bit dark and aimless. This woman undressing him was all those things, but she didn’t seem aimless.

You’re over-analyzing.

Maybe. People tended to misunderstand other people, and we made up the past every time we remembered it.

Brendan stopped resisting. He let Sloane pull his shirt off. He held his stance as she touched the scars on his chest before taking her own shirt up over her head. He helped her. Her breasts were small in the cups of her black bra. He bent over and leaned into her, kissing her. Her hands came around his lower back again, her tongue flickered in over his teeth, and he inhaled her scent, pulling her into him, lifting her up.

Cotuit Bay. The tug boats cut frothy grooves through the gray water. The long, dusty piers creaked in their pilings. Kayaks beached along the wet sand with scattered broken seashells. Million dollar homes rimmed the bay, lamplights flicked on as the sun set. In the distance, Jennifer thought she could hear the sound of thunder as the earlier storm continued to roll away. Or maybe it was helicopters.

The setting sun burned the beach sand a deep gold. She took off her shoes and walked barefoot through the long shadows down to the water’s edge. Bostrom was just behind her. “See over there,” she pointed across the water to a line of buildings on the other side, “that used to be The Cotuit Inn. Now it’s all condos.”

She glanced at Bostrom, his face dark in the eventide. She breathed deeply, inhaling the minerally smell of the beach, the saltwater air, the traces of gasoline from the motorboats trolling nearby. The whole thing was surreal, being back here, a place of sanctuary; taking a moment like this after the recent harrowing events, she could almost forget what was happening.

She looked up into his eyes, which caught the light of the late sun.

“Bostrom, I’ve decided: I like you. But if you’re about to take me to a group of vigilante cops-turned-revolutionaries, some paramilitary group who thinks the US Military or UN Troops are about to occupy American soil, and trot out the second amendment for us all to rally around, I’ve got to tell you, I’m going to stay right here. Right here on this beach. Maybe never even let my own people find me. Maybe be done with it all. Because the only thing that’s going to come from civilians fighting against our own military is the death of more civilians. Our women, our children, good men like you.”

He gazed at her. “I hear you.”

“Look. Right here. Right where we’re standing. This is where children play. So I’m being straight with you — if you want me to be involved in some kind of revolution, despite everything you’ve told me, and even after what I’ve seen, I don’t want any part of it.”

“You have to trust me.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him.
Trust
was a word a lot of people had been using lately, herself included. A breeze tousled her hair.

“I like you too,” he said. “And there’s one last thing you need to know. Maybe it will help you.”

“What are you talking about?”

He watched the tugboats cut a path through the water. “One of the top people in Nonsystem. One of them is someone you’ve already met.”

She stared at him until he turned to look at her. “Tell me.”

He turned on one of his smiles. “Over dinner,” he said.

She immediately opened her mouth to argue, but then thought better of it. She was starving. Her last meal had been a paltry continental breakfast at the hotel in Rochester. That seemed like days ago. But, she was a complete mess, her clothes still damp from the rain.

“I’m not going anywhere until I take a shower and change. Okay with you? My family’s home is not far from here. Or, I guess you already knew that.”

* * *

During the 1970s, a popular Cotuit restaurant called ‘The Harbor View’ was torn down, much to the dismay of residents and regular visitors. A private residence was constructed in its place. Years later, when the residence sold for a tidy sum, the new owners learned of the history and put a ton of money into a new restaurant for the town, which bore the unimaginative name of ‘The Harbor View Too.’

Jennifer remembered the town debating the merits of the new name. But, eventually the people settled in to enjoy the Baked Stuffed Filet of Sole served with Lobster Newburg sauce, the Broiled Famous Boston Scrod (fresh from the waters of Georges Bank) or the Bouillabaisse a la Marseillaise — the menu declared that this famous French creation combined finfish and shellfish in a sauce made from fresh tomato, leeks, saffron and garlic.

“How about the steak?” Jennifer said, looking up at the waiter.

“Oh, our roast prime rib is especially succulent. Comes with a baked potato. The steak has been drizzled with a . . .”

“I’ll take it,” she said smiling and setting down her menu. “Rare.”

“Excellent.”

“Same,” Bostrom said. He ordered a bottle of red wine for the two of them and the waiter nodded and walked off scribbling in his pad. A college kid home for the summer, Jennifer thought. The Harbor Too was as nice as she remembered. Floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows overlooked the Hyannis Bay, fifty feet below. It was dark now, the stars hazy motes in the sky, the lights of Cotuit village twinkling in the humidity off in the distance. A ghost of herself looked back. Jennifer felt surreal again for a moment, disembodied.

At least she’d gotten to change. She was wearing clothes she hadn’t put on in years, adding to the surrealness. And then there’d been the phone message from Brendan Healy. It had just about floored her. She’d checked her voicemail from the house landline to hear Brendan report that he was out of jail and in New York City. He’d given her the name of his hotel, and told her he’d be in touch.

She reached for her wine and slipped the stem between her fingers and cupped the smooth, round shape of it. The other patrons in the restaurant murmured contentedly, silverware softly scraping ceramic. She realized there was music playing, soft rock in the background.

The feeling persisted. Like she had stepped into a new existence. She looked at Bostrom, her palm still cupping the undrunk glass of red wine. He stared out the window. Down below, the bay waters turned white with chop as a wind swirled through.

“Okay,” she said to him. “Talk.”

His eyes met hers. “Alright,” he said.