Out of Nowhere (The Immortal Vagabond Healer Book 1) (18 page)

She shrugged. ‘It’s OK. How could you guess? Traditionally, a bunch of ancient-language nerds sitting around in their carpet slippers sipping Earl Grey aren’t known for sending teams of thugs with knives to torture people for information. The Tweed Ninjas are a closely guarded secret.’

‘The best thing to do,’ I thought aloud, pacing, ‘is go to ground. I have some money and fake papers stashed. I can get you some IDs, we can be off the radar in a day. Then, we pick a new city—’

‘I’m not running,’ she said. Not defiantly. Just with absolute conviction.

‘Sarah,’ I pleaded, ‘think about what these people are willing to do. I’ve seen how people react when they begin to think what I can do is a threat.’

‘So have I,’ she pointed out.

‘And that is what I can’t risk. No. I’m not going to have them work their way through my friends. I’m not putting people I care about at risk.’

‘I’m staying here. I have a life.’

‘I’ve had to pull up stakes before. It’s not that bad. It’s starting fresh. We can go anywhere. I’ve never gotten to Australia. You want to see Australia?’

‘Sean, I’m not leaving. I like my job. My family is here. My friends. I’ve known you for a week. Now, you’re good company, a good cook and there’s that thing
you
do with
your
tongue, but I’m not running away. You want to stay here and deal with this, I’ll be right by your side. You run, you run alone.’

I opened my mouth to argue, but saw a look in her eyes and realized there was no point. I’d seen that look on some of history’s famous faces, generally followed by fixed bayonets and a period of stark terror. Wellington had worn that look at Waterloo, and MacArthur at Inchon. Of course, so had Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden and Travis at the Alamo, so I won’t say I viewed it without some trepidation.

I took a deep breath, that little voice screaming at me to run, get out, move across the country, grow a beard, go to bartending school. I wrestled it down. I was going to stand my ground, for once. These people had hurt a woman I loved, and one who’d helped me out, and they wouldn’t stop coming after my friends just because I went away.

I blew out a long breath. ‘If you stay, then I stay.’

She nodded. ‘That’ll do.’

I held her then, gently, protectively. She squeezed me tightly, then kissed me with a fierce intensity. It was desperate, possessive, almost violent, like she needed to assert herself after all that had happened to her tonight, all the helplessness and confusion and fear.

I felt a surge of relief, a loosening of the knot in my gut. The buoyant exhilaration of a bullet dodged, a skirmish survived. Whatever I still had to face, at least Sarah wasn’t leaving me. I crushed her against me and returned her kiss. Too much emotion and adrenaline still flowed through both of us, demanding an outlet.

We made it to the bedroom, but only just.

* * * *

Afterwards, on the tangled sheets, her head on my shoulder, I lay still for a long moment, drinking in the warm, comforting exhaustion. The fact that she wanted to stay with me blunted the fear, softened the edges of danger and doubt.

I couldn’t explain why she meant so much to me. I just accepted it.

That begged the question: why did I mean enough to her that she was willing to face knives and fists and whatever else might be waiting? And not just in the abstract; she had actually felt the effects of that danger. She hadn’t even passed comment on my extraordinary age. It would come, I was sure, but her capacity to just accept me was extraordinary.

‘Hate to break the mood,’ I said, ‘but I have to ask why you seem to be taking all this in stride. Not that I’m complaining. But I didn’t expect it.’

She was quiet for a moment. ‘Because I finally want to have my cake and eat it too.’

I waited, content to enjoy the feel of her body against me as she marshaled her thoughts.

‘My family is working-class Irish,’ she said. ‘Dad was a successful contractor. My relatives, and everyone in the neighborhood, were roofers, carpenters, plumbers, one or two cops and firemen. The boys, anyway. The girls worked until they got pregnant, then raised kids and volunteered at school. Nobody I grew up with had any vision or goal beyond the house in the burbs and seeing little Timmy play baseball. They lived for the beer after work and opening day at Fenway.’

She paused. ‘I hate to sound so condescending, I really do. But I was the first one in my family to graduate college. I put myself through grad school, since none of them could see why anyone would waste money on more education when I should be finding a nice boy while I still had my looks. I got my PhD in 2004. You mention that year in my dad’s house and he’ll cry tears of joy because that’s the year the Sox finally beat the Curse of the Bambino and won the World Series. I wanted to get out of that world so badly, to meet boys who had read something deeper than the sports pages of the
Herald
or the pledge on the back of a Rolling Rock bottle.’

I laughed at that.

‘So I went to college. I met boys who could play the guitar and quote Byron. I was excited until I saw that their intellectualism was just a different kind of parochialism. They were only halfway men. Sure, the boys I knew from the old neighborhood spent too much time out drinking with Sully and Fitzy, punching each other in the arm and calling one another a “buncha quee-ahs”, but even if they got hammered on a Thursday, they dragged themselves to work on Friday. They were never too sick or too hurt to do anything, and if they said they’d help you move a piano on Saturday, they showed up, hungover or not. The grad students could quote Marx and Engels and talk about the plight of the worker, but they had no idea who the worker was. They couldn’t change out a light switch or check their oil or work a sixty-hour week. They were all for women’s equality and empowerment, but they still wanted a relationship on their terms, not mine. They wanted to think and talk and profess theories about how the world should be, how people should be, but they didn’t want to be those people. They were unreliable, unable to stand on their feet.’

‘So then,’ she kissed my neck, ‘you walked into my office, swaggering like Douglas Fairbanks with a bag of swords over your shoulder, and swept me off my feet. And you were educated and well read, you could cook, you
listened
instead of just waiting for a chance to talk. And then, when I needed rescuing, you showed up, and you were strong and terrifying and savage without hesitation. Intellectual, sensitive, but reliable and... well… masculine, I suppose. So now, at last, I want to have my cake and eat it too.’

I squeezed her shoulder. All that was flattering, but frightening in its own way. ‘That means a lot.’ I kissed her. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get us out of this mess.’

‘You sure you want to stick around?’ she asked. ‘You’re risking more life than I am.’

‘Life’s what you make of it,’ I said, as much to my inner voice as to her, ‘and I’ve been pretty tough to kill so far. You’re in? Even seeing what could happen?’

‘I have faith in you,’ she said., ‘I saw you fight back there. You’re really terrifying when you want to be.’

I felt a tightness in my chest. I didn’t feel comfortable with so much faith placed in me. For all my military service, and some of it fairly decent service, I’d tried to avoid as much responsibility as possible. In fact, one of my most carefully honed skills was knowing when to get out of Dodge.

Sure, I survived the Alamo, but that was luck, a decent command of Spanish, a knack for fast talking and the foresight to stab an enemy about my height and steal his uniform jacket. The fact that it was pretty dark out, everybody’s face was covered in soot from firing black powder muskets, and the Mexican army’s love of big, conspicuous hats with wide, concealing bills all helped.

‘You look tense,’ she said. ‘Grab a shower, I’ll give you a backrub and we’ll figure out our next move.’

‘Sounds good,’ I admitted. ‘How are you holding up?’

‘Surprisingly well,’ she replied. ‘Better than ever. You do good work.’

I wondered at that as I walked into the bathroom. I turned on the shower, stepped inside, and let myself think as the steam rose around me. Was I sure I wanted to stay? Well, yes. OK, that was easy.

So what do I do now?

That one wasn’t so simple.

I was sure I wanted to find these bastards and make them pay. For Sarah, and for Tiffany, and for threatening my current situation, with which I was very happy. It felt strange to be planning to take on such a challenge. I’d been running so long. Sarah shamed me with her unhesitating courage. Maybe I should have been chasing English professors instead of waitresses all these years.

I toweled off, pulled on a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a robe and came out. I smelled fresh coffee. Sarah pushed a mug into my hand.

‘I put a splash of whisky in it,’ she said. ‘I know you need your caffeine, and I think we both need another drink.’

‘Thanks. You’re too good to me.’

‘I am,’ she agreed. ‘It’s my curse. Now, sit on the edge of the bed and get that robe off. I’ll see if I can’t massage some tension out of those shoulders.’

I complied readily. The laced coffee burned its way down to my stomach, the warmth of the alcohol spreading out to my limbs. Sarah sat behind me, close against my back, her knees on either side of my hips, kneading my knotted shoulders with strong hands. I groaned as she worked the sore, tense muscles.

‘Oh, that feels good.’

‘You’re very tense,’ she replied, pausing to knock back the last of her coffee. She rolled the empty mug, still warm, across my shoulders, letting the heat sink into the tissues. ‘How’s that?’

‘Oh, God, feel free to keep that up as long as you like.’

‘You know,’ she said, working away, ‘this is the first time anyone ever came to my rescue. Of course, it is kind of your fault I was in danger, but it was exciting, nonetheless.’ She leaned close and kissed my neck. ‘It means a lot to me that you decided to stay. And that you opened up. That must be tough.’

‘You believe me?’

‘Why not? I mean, how many guys can heal with a touch? And you have a skill set that includes cooking, history, literature, medicine, and stabbing thugs to death. Your story explains all of that. You sounded sincere. And why would you make that up? There has to be a more plausible lie.’

‘Fair enough,’ I conceded. ‘It feels good to talk to somebody. It’s like a weight off.’

She leaned into me, her nails sending shivers down my spine as she ran her fingers through my hair.

‘Lie down,’ she breathed in my ear, ‘I want to get your lower back.’

I did as directed, and she drove the heels of her hands deep into the muscles of my lower back and buttocks. She leaned over me as she did, I could feel her breath as she panted with the effort. Her hair hung down, brushing tantalizingly over my skin.

I rolled over and slipped an arm around her. ‘I think you’ve worked out most of the stiffness.’

‘Or not,’ she smiled, her hand working its way south. ‘It looks like you still have a little stiffness. Or maybe not so little.’

‘Be careful,’ I warned, ‘too much flattery and I may become insufferable.’

‘Fear not,’ she said, swinging her legs to straddle my hips. ‘I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.’

Yes, I told myself, I had definitely been missing out by not dating English professors.

Chapter 19

SARAH SIGHED CONTENTEDLY and whispered, ‘I’m glad you decided to walk into my office that day, you know.’

I breathed in deep, inhaling the scent of her hair, the clean smell of her shampoo with an edge of sweat beneath. ‘So am I,’ I replied.

After a while we got out of bed. I made coffee and turned on the news, wondering how an apartment full of dead bodies would play on the local broadcast. To my surprise, there was no mention of it.

I flipped to another station, wondering how a triple murder wasn’t a lead story. My struggle had to have gotten the downstairs neighbors nosy. In the projects of Philips Mills, neighbors turned up the TV and didn’t get involved with the violence next door, but the solid citizens of North Andover generally didn’t roll that way.

Sarah’s phone rang. She looked at the number then at me. ‘It’s the police.’

‘Better take it,’ I replied. ‘Act surprised. Say you’re out of town.’

She nodded. ‘Hello... This is she.’

I smiled. English professor.

‘Oh my God! No, no, I’m fine. I had no idea... I’m... away. In Vermont. No, not business… Just a little Bed and Breakfast... Not that I can think of.’

I began to make the classic “cut it short” motion across my throat.

‘No. No. Look.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Is there a number I can call you back at, officer? Sorry, Detective. Alright, thanks. Yes, yes, I’ll be in touch.’

She hung up. I smiled and applauded. ‘Encore.’

‘Thank you, thank you.’ She bowed. ‘But I really want to direct.’

‘So, what’s the story?’

‘Well, they said there was a break-in and my apartment was trashed.’

‘That’s all?’