32. Father
Chapter 32
Father
Taz
“Why are you helping me?” I asked, even though I was following him down the hallway, reacting to him the way I would to a seasoned soldier I was with in an urban combat situation. “Are you Ghost?”
I knew the answer. But I had to ask it anyway.
Joaquin Guerro was Ghost. Joaquin Guerro was my father. Joaquin Guerro was Cobra.
But the transitive property of those three facts could not link itself in my mind. Cobra, the man at my side now, was my father, and a spy. And he had saved my life.
“I’d love to catch up.” He pushed open a door and shot the people inside. “You wouldn’t believe how much I want to catch up with you.”
I followed to the next, opened the door, and fired one shot at the biker in his cut, huddled in the corner, shaking pistol at the ready.
“But it’s not the time,” Cobra-Ghost-Joaquin said.
He pivoted left, and I swept right as we went into a larger room, our weapons scanning from the corners inward, as we fired on the occupants.
“Why should I believe that you are who you say you are?” I asked, as I fired off two shots at a man that came at us, his cut covered in so many patches that it looked like a Boy Scout’s sash.
He didn’t stop to answer my question as he led us down further down the hall, clearing every room on the way. I didn’t need to ask why. You didn’t want to walk past a room, then get shot in the back. There was only two of us, and if we got surrounded, we’d get deader than disco.
“You’re a skeptic like your mother,” he complained. “You and her are the same height, with the same hair, same cynicism, but the rest of you is all me. You were born at Bakersfield Medical Hospital. I drove her there myself and held you the moment you were born. I cut the umbilical cord too. You came out with your eyes wide open, and you had one tooth out already.”
That last one was true. I was born with the unusual dental abnormality. And it turns out that newborns with teeth? Super ugly looking.
“That enough?” He kicked down a door, and fired two rapid shots, accented by the groan of his targets.
No, it wasn’t enough. I had a million more questions, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever get them answered.
I’d skirted death too much already. I wasn’t guaranteed that later would happen.
“Why did you leave us?” I asked.
“That’s a longer story, sweetheart.” We exited that room, down the hall, to the last door and into a stairwell. “I left your Mom with a credit card, and a bank account. You told me you never got it, right?”
I bristled, remembering what I had told him about my father back at the Bar.
“I’m going to have words with your Ma about that later,” he said, disgruntled, as he placed his foot on the bottom step. He paused, when the sound of gunfire slammed through the door, rocking it on the hinges. There was a firefight on the other side.
“Shit,” I remarked. “Bold of you to assume we’ll live long enough to do that.”