Chapter Eleven
“Haunted - to come to the mind of continually; obsess.”
Charming
I dreamt about her last night. I heard her voice calling my name.
I heard her laughter and then I heard her cry.
I pushed the covers off before daybreak and the air was still frigid due to lack of the sun.
I went to make coffee, thinking the brew would help chase away my thoughts (and yeah, maybe the brandy I was going to pour in), but I found myself staring at the coffee maker and wondering what she would have thought about all these modern day appliances.
I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t be alone. The minute I left Storm last night and climbed into my Porsche, I’d thought of little else other than her. I needed a distraction. A face to look at other than the one that haunted me.
I pulled up the address on my phone, got dressed, and drove to her apartment. I knew she would be pissed; I was actually looking forward to her hideous attitude and screechy voice. Anything to drown out my own memories.
Her apartment had been a little bit of a surprise. It wasn’t gaudy and over the top like I thought it would be. It was almost classy. And the posters of Marilyn Monroe reminded me of old Hollywood. She, however, had been over the top.
She pushed me so far with her attitude that I threatened her with G.R.’s wrath. That was the first time I ever threatened to sic him on someone. Usually I fought my own fights. She just knew how to push all my buttons and piss me off like no one else could.
Still, the way she climbed out of my car, without looking back, leaving her precious sugar behind, had made me feel… bad.
I told myself it was because of who I thought I’d seen last night. The reason I was feeling things. The reason I was so on edge.
So now instead of being haunted by one woman, I was being haunted by two.
I wasn’t good with idle time to fill. I was used to working…
on pursuing a Target, a job, until it was complete.
But this one was different. I couldn’t pursue the senator’s daughter like I would any other woman.
I had to wait. I had to be patient. Building up trust wasn’t something I could do overnight.
I went to a gym in the bad part of town. Pulled my Porsche into the alley next to the entrance. There was a bum sitting near the dumpster, reading a tattered paper. He eyed my car and my clothes when I got out.
I fished a couple twenties from my pocket and extended them to him. “Watch my car. Don’t let anyone touch it. If you have problems, come get me. If it’s still here and undamaged when I come out, I’ll give you two hundred bucks.”
He eyed the cash in my hand.
“This now. Two hundred after. Got me?”
He nodded and took the cash.
I went toward the back door.
“You know there are better gyms on the other side of town. Gyms for your kind of folk,” he said.
“Yeah,” I replied and went through the door.
There were better gyms. But he was wrong about my kind of folk. I might look the part of a high-society man. I might have the money and the connections. But deep down beneath it all… I was a fighter.
The gym was one large square and smelled like no one had cleaned it since it was built.
I walked past the free weights, the heavy bags hanging from the ceiling, and the many jump ropes hanging on the wall and into the tiny locker room where I kept a locker.
I undid the lock and pulled out my gym clothes, stripping away the high-society man and putting on the one I was born as.
When my wifebeater, shorts, and shoes were on, I went out to the ring.
There was a guy there, a little bigger than me, and I made eye contact with him. We both laced up some gloves and got in the ring.
I didn’t hold back. The mood I was in wouldn’t have allowed me to anyway.
Even after all these years, after all the bodies I’d been through, I still remembered how to box.
There wasn’t anything like it. Just two guys and their fists.
Back in my days of boxing, I used to think that sheer will was what won fights.
I still believed that. But I also learned that those who didn’t have enough will to win cheated.
I took a glove to the eye, felt the skin around it split and the warm trickle of blood down my face. The cut stung instantly because my salty sweat mixed in with the blood. The guy that hit me backed off, figuring I would get out of the ring.
I wasn’t getting out of the ring.
I sprang forward and delivered a series of rapid hits that had him shaking his head to clear his vision.
I pounced again, dropping him to the mat but still punching, still delivering blows.
It took two guys to pull me off. It wasn’t until they literally tossed me out of the ring that I snapped back to reality.
I stood up, wiping at the blood on my face and peering into the ring.
The guy was unconscious. He had a split lip and it looked like a broken nose. The way he lay so still, I wondered if he was dead. Is that what I looked like the night I died? Was I that still and pale with blood on my face?
I realized the room was entirely too quiet. I glanced around. People were staring. Everyone was staring. Except for the men who were bent over the man I pummeled.
I hadn’t been trying to kill him. I was just trying to forget.
And then I realized if he were dead, I would have broken yet another one of G.R.’s rules: kill no one but a Target.
I’d gotten away with it once… many years ago. Something else I really didn’t want to remember. Afterward I’d walked around in a state of panic thinking G.R. would find out and Recall me. But he never did.
I didn’t think I would get that lucky twice.
The man in the ring moaned and relief poured through me. He wasn’t dead. It wasn’t really that I valued his life so much—I had no value for life at all.
I just didn’t want to make this job any harder than it already was.