Chapter Twelve #3
“I’d love one,” I say as I wrap my arms around him.
He’s gentle, but I still feel the soreness of my ribs as he hugs me.
I slide my hand up under his shirt and feel his badge.
I pull it free as I draw away from the hug.
I jab a finger at Walsh, drawing attention away from my right hand that is sliding the badge into my back pocket.
He had moved over to the door in order to pull it open for Lane.
“And you…I hope you’re involved in this because you’re a real ass,” I say as I bump into him.
I slide my fingers into his back pocket and pluck his wallet out with practiced fingers.
I rush over to Lane and grab his wrist as I pull him out the door. He doesn’t say anything as I lead him over to the elevator, and when the door closes, I look up at his face. His expression is hard set and completely unreadable, but I can feel the anger bristling under his skin.
“So…what’s our next step?” I ask.
“Go find a hotel and sit on my ass. Twiddle my thumbs, maybe. Eat fast food and become fat.”
I stare at him in surprise before quickly covering it up with disgust. “What? Then you’ll lose your muscles, and that’s not sexy or badass in any way.”
Lane’s frown deepens. “Yeah, and what the hell can a blind man even do to help besides getting in the fucking way?”
I look at him in confusion as the elevator door opens.
“Seriously, Lane? Just because some a-hole thinks you’re incapable of helping doesn’t mean you are.
Look at all of the shit you just did today.
” I pull him from the elevator. “If I had stopped every time someone told me I was useless, I wouldn’t have made it past age six. ”
“You’re not blind, Felix. You were poor and had a shitty upbringing. I think it’s different. You had options.”
“And you don’t?” I ask as I pull him out through the door. “So, it ends here? Everything ends here? That’s just it. Toss in the…rag? Is it rag? Is that how that saying goes?”
“Towel.”
“Oh…right. So…you’re going to toss in the towel?”
Lane stops suddenly and a woman who’d been walking behind us nearly runs into us since she’d been staring at her phone. I grab Lane’s arms and aim him toward me.
“Lane.”
He refuses to turn his head anywhere in my direction.
“So, this is it? Just…screw James. Let someone kill him because you’re blind.”
“Yep,” he says stubbornly.
I glare at him, really wishing he could see my annoyance. “Lane, you’re an idiot. An absolute idiot. Think about everything that happened today. Now, a normal person couldn’t do that shit, yet we lived through it because of you.”
“You don’t understand, Felix.”
“The only thing I don’t understand is how damn stubborn you are. Do you trust me?”
“Not in the slightest,” he says, and I know I’m winning this conversation. He wouldn’t joke with me if he wasn’t starting to teeter on the edge.
“Alright…well…how about this time you try? We’ll just…find James. Then we can go hide under a rock where you can roll around and scurry to your heart's content and if you keep your muscles, I promise to always stay by your side.”
The upset expression on his face changes to a grin that I can tell he’s fighting. “Fine. But we have nothing,” he says. “We don’t have money, we don’t have a car. We’re still wearing Reed’s clothes.”
“What are you talking about, silly?” I ask as I pull the badge out and smack his cheek with it. “I have a detective’s badge right here, so we can get in anywhere we want to go.”
His hand shoots up to mine and stops the badge from smacking his cheek again. “Where did you get this?”
He takes it from me and feels it over, probably making sure I am telling the truth.
“I stole it from García,” I say before smacking his other cheek with Walsh’s wallet. “And I stole this wallet from your good buddy Walsh.”
“You stole a badge and a wallet from two detectives? ”
“Correct,” I say with a smile.
“Are you an idiot?” he asks skeptically.
“Hmm…” I say as if I’m thinking really hard about it. “I don’t think so.”
Lane just starts laughing and I’m relieved. I’ve pulled him back over to my side where I like him.
“Walsh is going to lose his mind when he realizes it’s missing.”
“So, Detective, where are we off to first?” I ask as I pass him the badge.
“Away from here before they realize we have their wallet and badge. How much money is in there?”
I flip open the wallet and am instantly shocked by the amount. “We’re rich.”
“How much?”
I pull the money out before realizing that doing so is a good way to get mugged.
I am usually not so careless, but I have never seen so much cash, so I am not quite sure how a rich human interacts with it.
Probably not by waving it around on a busy Chicago street.
“I don’t know…close to five hundred,” I say as I flip through the bills.
“So, let’s head to James’s house. See if we can talk to his wife,” Lane says. “I may not have known James a long time, but he has been very kind and helpful to me. When I lost my eyesight, he was there to help me. I want to be able to help him.”
“Alright, where’s he live?”
“Hail a cab,” he says.
I eye Lane like he’s crazy. “And…I do that how, exactly? I mean, people in movies just like…run out in the middle of the road and cabs just leap off their path to them.”
“Wave at one.”
“Ooh…that sounds scary. We could just steal one. I’m better at that,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Let’s just get back on the train, it’ll save us some money,” he says, so I start walking. When we reach the train station I notice there’s an ATM in the corner that a man is leaving.
“Hold on, there’s an ATM,” I say as I grab his wrist to stop him.
“You have a credit card with you?” he asks.
“Yeah, Walsh’s,” I say, surprised he has already forgotten that I’d stolen it. “We’ll try his birthday for the code. You’d be surprised how many people use their birthday.”
Lane looks at me in surprise. “We’re not just going to wipe out his savings. You already stole five hundred from him,” Lane says like he can’t believe I would say such a thing.
“It was a joke.” It was not a joke.
“You were seriously going to take it, weren’t you?” he asks.
“Sorry, Saint Lane, we can’t all be perfect like you. He was a dick to you. Losing a couple more hundred wouldn’t have hurt him,” I say. Or a thousand.
“Is this a…regular occurrence with you?” he asks.
“Of course not. Now come on,” I say as I walk away from the ATM and over to the ticket machine.
But Lane is clearly not done with this conversation. “How much money of mine did you steal?” he asks.
Now it is my turn to look at him in surprise. “None! I’ve been good! I turned my life around when I became an adult!” I say.
“So, I have made you resort to your old ways?”
“It’s fine…we would have paid him back.” Maybe. “You’re rich.”
“Not exactly,” he says. “And I’m not paying him back. I can’t stand the man.”
I stare at the ticket machine. “How do you buy a ticket?”
“Just follow the prompt,” he says.
“Uh huh…” I say as I stare at the machine, again wanting to tell him that if he would have just let me steal Walsh’s car, we would be at our destination by now. It’s not like we couldn’t return it.
I purchase the tickets and then lead us to the turnstile.
An attendant steps up between me and the turnstile before I can set the ticket against it. He holds a hand up, making me stop so abruptly that Lane slams into me.
“Sorry, dogs have to be in a carrier bag,” the attendant says.
“Alright. Do you have a Walmart bag? If you have four, I could put a foot in each,” I tell him.
“Felix,” Lane says in his “teacher” tone. “He’s a service dog, I’m blind.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, please go right ahead,” the man says.
We get on the train without any more issues and easily make it to James’s apartment complex.
It is a large building right in the middle of the city.
I see a lady passing through the door, so I scoot right up and grab it before the door locks.
I hold the door open for Lane and head inside.
Directly in front of us is an elevator, which we take up to the third floor.
“What door number?” I ask as I look down the hallway. It reminds me of a hotel with the colorful carpet and wallpapered walls.
“Hmm…I don’t remember.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know the door number?” I ask.
“Well…I usually walk in and recognize the area. I’ve been here quite a few times and just…know.”
“Do I knock on each door?”
“No…it’s in this area,” he says. “Muscle memory.” He walks from the elevator and down the hallway a bit before stopping and turning. “It’s right here. This feels right.”
I walk over to where Lane is facing a small table with a fake fern on it.
I walk up to it and shake the leaf of the fern.
“Hi, James’s wife, it’s nice to meet you,” I say before realizing the joke isn’t as funny when the recipient can’t see.
“Here, Lane, she wants to talk to you.” I pick it up and move it toward his face until a dusty leaf touches his cheek.
“I will take this plant and shove it up your ass,” he says as he bats it away.
“Ooh…you know I like stuff up there, but it’s a bit too big,” I say.
“Trust me, I’ll make it fit,” he says before pushing it away.
“Oh Lane, you know how to turn me on ,” I purr as I run a finger over his groin. The startled look on his face excites me and I grin, but a noise stops me from saying anything else.
Someone steps off the elevator, so I put the fern back down. “Hi, where does James live?” I ask the old lady as she hobbles toward us.
“Next door,” she says as she jabs at it with her cane.
“Great, thanks,” I say.
I knock on the door as the little old lady continues down the hallway and disappears through a door. We wait a few minutes, but there’s no response.
“What do you want to do?” I ask.
“Fuck…I don’t know. What time is it?”
“I don’t know…it’s dark outside.”