Exiled Omnibus (23 page)

It was the third fuel station Terry had checked. He stepped out of the building and into Dallas’s downtown. He could feel the city’s smog soaking through his pores. He hated the city. He popped a cigarette between his lips and torched the tip with his lighter then exhaled his own smog that circled his head.

The pictures of Brooke and Eric were still in his hand. Terry knew they had to be running low on fuel, and Dallas was the easiest place to find it without people asking a lot of questions. The traffic was busy, and he dashed across the road to his van parked on the other side of the street.

It was a rust bucket on the outside. It had no hubcaps, the covers on both side mirrors had fallen off, and there was no telling what the original paint job had looked like. But it was like his Sunday school teacher had always told him when he was a boy: it’s what’s on the inside that counts.

Terry pulled the handle, and the sliding door clanged open. He closed it just as quickly after stepping in and flicked on the overhead light. The only seat in the van was behind the driver’s-side wheel. The passenger seat had been ripped out to make room for storage bins that were anchored with an intricate crisscross of bungee cords. The driver’s side of the van had a small shelf that ran along the middle of the wall. On it rested maps, a laptop, a ham radio, a police scanner, a lamp, a filled ashtray, a hook to hang his hat, a whetstone, and a carton of cigarettes. In front of the makeshift shelf was a chair bolted to the metal floor. He sat down and added his nub of a cigarette to the overflowing ashtray.

The passenger side of the back of the van was lined with weapons. AR-15s, 12-guage shotguns, a 9mm Glock, .45 Colt, and a briefcase that held his DRD Tactical Paratus .308 rifle; perfect for any jobs where he needed to maneuver a rifle in a crowded area. An array of knives clung to a magnetic strip. Boxes of ammo for each weapon rested next to an assortment of fragmentation, chemical, offensive, and illuminating grenades.

Terry snatched a six-inch hunting knife off the strip and grabbed the whetstone. He tilted the blade at a twenty-degree angle and ran the edge along the stone. The metal scraped against the synthetic rock, each motion of the knife down the stone methodical. Terry counted twenty strokes on one side of the blade then flipped the knife for twenty strokes on the other side. He enjoyed the manual process of sharpening his knives. It took skill and precision to maintain the proper angle and force with the whetstone. Whenever he had to sink the blade into another man’s flesh, he wanted the knowledge that he created the razor edge that made it possible.

Once the knife’s edge was satisfactory, he placed the blade back on the strip and turned on his laptop. Using decoding software he had purchased, he hacked into the police database to pull up any other information he could on Brooke Fontanne. Her address in San Diego, along with her Social Security number and driving record, popped up. He wrote down the license plate number in case she had been dumb enough to keep it. He examined the specifications of the Toyota cruiser that was registered in her name and the modifications she had made to it. The tires, suspension, and engine type all suggested it was an off-road vehicle, which would allow her to take alternative routes most police vehicles would avoid.

Terry reached for the carton of cigarettes and pulled one from the package with his teeth. He flicked the lighter open again, and the rush of nicotine coursed through his veins. He took another look at Brooke’s picture and checked the database one more time. He pulled up a file on her late husband Jason. Military. Marines. KIA. He smothered the smoldering tip of his cigarette in Brooke’s forehead.

His stomach rumbled. A diner’s neon sign glowed through the front windshield. Terry shoved Brooke’s picture into his pocket and made his way back across the street, where the door chimed as he walked inside. The vacant booths and stools were dusted with the grime of black soot that a pregnant waitress tried halfheartedly to wipe down. Two men in trucker hats sat at the end of the diner’s bar. Terry took a seat on the opposite end. The waitress waddled over to Terry and handed him a menu.

“Anything to drink, darlin’?” she asked.

“Sweet tea.”

The waitress nodded and walked back around the other side of the counter. Terry looked over the menu. He gazed over the fifty-dollar burger and down to the chicken. The conversation of the two truckers broke his concentration.

“I swear to god,” the skinny trucker said.

“They really shot at you?” the fat trucker asked.

“Yeah. If that lady wasn’t with me, I might have died.”

Terry set the menu down as the waitress brought him his tea. He took a sip and focused on the two men at the end of the bar.

“I’ve got to get another job,” the fat trucker said.

Terry’s boots clicked against the worn floor tiles. His figure blocked the light coming from the door, and his shadow slowly grew over the two truckers sitting next to each other. He came up behind the two men and dropped Brooke’s picture in between them.

“This the woman you were with?” Terry asked.

“Who are you?” the skinny trucker asked.

Terry thumped his forefinger on the paper forcefully. “Is that the girl?”

“Look, pal. I don’t know you. So why don’t you back off,” the skinny trucker said.

Terry twisted the skinny trucker’s arm behind his back and slammed his face into the diner’s bar. The fat trucker reached for a pistol on his belt, but Terry pulled the blade from the sheath on his leg and placed the edge right along the man’s throat. The waitress stood frozen, holding a pot of coffee.

“Is. That. The. Girl,” Terry repeated, applying more pressure to the skinny trucker’s arm.

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s the girl,” he said.

“Where was she headed?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where did you take her?”

“I dropped her off just outside the city by I-20. Then I left. That’s all I know. I swear.”

Terry released the skinny trucker’s arm and lowered his blade from the fat one’s throat. Both truckers were drenched in sweat. Terry sheathed his blade. He picked up Brooke’s picture and went back to his seat. The waitress was still frozen with the coffee pot in her hand. Terry finished the rest of his sweet tea, threw a five-dollar bill on the table, and left the diner.

***

The Mississippi air was thick with bugs and heat. Red maples and dogwood trees stuck into the air, bare of their colorful leaves. The cruiser’s tires crunched over sticks, dead grass, and mud. Brooke had followed the signs for the small motel, which lay just up ahead.

The motel was nestled in the depths of a drying swamp. A single light illuminated the front window next to the door. The shutters around the windows sagged. Chips of paint revealed the rotting wood underneath. Brooke brought the nose of the cruiser to a wooden log, which acted as a perimeter for a makeshift parking lot. The cruiser was the only car there.

“Wait here,” Brooke said.

She unbuckled her seat belt and headed inside. The door squeaked, and an old, wrinkly woman sat behind a small counter. A tiny fan blew her thin white strands of hair backward, and an old sitcom rerun played on a twelve-inch black-and-white television. Brooke had to hit the small bell on the counter to get the old woman’s attention.

“I was hoping to get a room?” Brooke asked.

The old woman led Brooke, Eric, John, and Emily around back, each of them carrying their packs. The old woman didn’t say anything when they passed the bullet-riddled cruiser on their way around. Brooke wasn’t sure if that was because the she just couldn’t see it or if she was too eager to get back to her show.

The room she gave them was small, damp, dirty, and hot. But all of that fell to the wayside at the sight of the two double beds against the walls.

“Awesome,” John said.

The sun set, and after a quick dinner of MREs, John and Emily passed out. Eric agreed to take the floor and give Brooke the remaining bed, but neither of them could fall asleep as quickly as the kids. They whispered to one another, trying not to wake either John or Emily.

“You know, I’ve always hated MREs,” Eric said. “But for some reason today they were incredibly delicious.”

“I’m just glad I was able to get Emily to wolf some down. She’s always been a picky eater.”

Brooke kept adjusting herself on the bed, looking for the cool part of the sheets. The heat was different here than in San Diego. It felt heavier, more humid. She had never sweated so much in her entire life.

“I can’t believe this heat,” Brooke said.

“Must be all of that sexual tension,” Eric said.

Brooke had to cover her mouth to stop the burst of laughter that erupted.

“It wasn’t
that
funny,” Eric said, sheepishly. “Besides. I don’t think Jason would approve.”

It was the first time Brooke had heard Eric mention her late husband. She knew the two of them had served together. She knew that Jason had saved his life, but she never understood how the two of them got along. They were polar opposites.

“Why didn’t you guys stay in touch?” Brooke asked.

“He had you guys, and I had my military career. There wasn’t much else I wanted to do besides fly. The tours in the Middle East were just a pit stop.”

“How did you know you wanted to be a pilot?”

“
Top Gun
.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“What? It was a great movie.”

“It’s got to be more than just that.”

Eric hesitated. He drummed his fingers on his chest. “Actually, it was my dad. He was a pilot. Commercial. Not military. He would take me up when I was little. When we were up that high, I didn’t feel so small. Everything else looked tiny except me for once. He smoked like a chimney, though. Lung cancer got him while I was in high school, and the flights stopped. I couldn’t think of anything else but getting back in a plane. A recruiter came to my school one day, and that was that. I enlisted the day after my high school graduation.”

“I’m sorry about your dad.”

“Thanks.

“Do you regret it?”

“Joining? No.”

“I never asked Jason why he joined.”

Brooke felt a stab of guilt over that. Of all the things she had learned about her husband, she’d never asked about what was probably the biggest decision of his life. She knew that he’d loved his job, that he found purpose and meaning in it.

One night after he came back from his second tour, he broke down while they were lying together in bed. She wasn’t sure if she should pry, but he ended up telling her about a house raid they had gone on. The father pulled a gun on them, and Jason had to take him down. It was his first kill.

His superiors told him not to dwell on it. He was on a mission with an objective, nothing else. If someone decided to try and stop that mission, it was his duty to eliminate the threat.

Eliminate the threat.
Her mind went back to Phoenix and the two Mexicans she had gunned down. They were threatening her children. She eliminated them.

“It’s not something you can prepare for,” Brooke said.

“What isn’t?”

“Killing someone.”

Eric propped himself up on his elbow. Brooke wasn’t looking at him. She kept staring at the ceiling, her arms folded on her stomach and her hair spread out on the pillow underneath her head.

“What happened?” Eric asked.

“It doesn’t matter now. It’s over.”

Exhaustion started setting in. Brooke could fee her eyelids sagging. Her body felt heavy, and her mind was foggy. She rolled to her side and closed her eyes.

“Good night,” Brooke said.

“Night,” Eric replied.