Chapter 70
Chapter 70
I could still see him there. Shaking his head. Frank was little more than a gnat, weakly fighting my hand. But I had him. We’d won.
I closed my eyes and listened closely, and there it was again. Bones’s whisper. “Bishop...”
When I opened my eyes I could just barely see him. “Sheep are lost without a shepherd.”
I didn’t let go. I squeezed harder and felt something being crushed. Frank’s face was turning blue, and his eyes were bulging.
“But he’s—”
Bones tapped me. “Bishop.”
I looked at Bones like he’d lost his mind. “He’s not one.”
Right here was where I’d learned the lesson I didn’t want to learn. Bones’s final class. Last exam. Spoken in two soft words. “You sure?”
It struck me now the same way it struck me then. A freight train to the chest. The pieces fell into place, and for the first time in my entire life with him, I saw the enormity that was Ezekiel Walker. The towering, unfathomable completeness. Hatred had filled me. Revenge consumed me. But not Bones. The inescapable truth was Bones had come back. One last rescue. He’d walked down into the slave market, eyed his brother held in chains behind prison bars, and told the slave master, “I’ll buy him back.”
When the master huffed and said, “With what?” Bones had simply said, “With me. ”
And he did.
I, David Bishop, write love stories for a living. But I’d never dreamed of a love like that. It was inconceivable. If I’m honest, had I not seen it and felt its breath on my face, I would doubt its existence.
Bones was coughing now. Almost uncontrollably. Dark specks on his chin. I lifted him and was headed for the door when I felt the bullet tearing through my left shoulder. The impact spun me. I dropped Bones, and then Frank grabbed him and disappeared through the passageway that had brought us into this room. Gunner and I bolted through the door and began running back down into the hell from which we’d emerged. We reached the bottom, found the other door open, and continued down the wide stone stairs and through the massive underground cathedral. Oddly, a string of lights lit the walkway. At the far end, under the orange glow of an overhead light, Frank had dragged Bones’s limp body back inside his childhood prison of bars. Gunner and I hurdled a stone table and bench as Frank filled the air with a wall of 9mm rounds headed in our direction. Seeing Frank pick up a rifle and level the muzzle, I grabbed Gunner by the collar and rolled behind a stone outcropping as .226 rounds showered our position. When the rifle ran empty, Frank threw it down and continued dragging Bones back into his prison.
Where it all started.
Frank dragged Bones’s body to the edge of the well and used him as a shield to protect himself from me. For several seconds, Frank knelt, staring at his brother. I knew if I didn’t make a move now, I’d lose any opportunity. Just one shove, and Frank would send Bones down that well and I’d never get to him fast enough. Bones would never survive the impact with the water a hundred feet below, nor the half-mile swim to the Zodiac. If I had a chance with Bones, we had to go out the front door. Not the well. Slowly, I stepped out from behind the stone base of the bars, unlatched the prison door, and stepped inside. Offering Frank a target.
I walked toward Frank, closing the distance, leveling my rifle muzzle at him, my laser held steady on his forehead. If he twitched a muscle in my direction, I was going to blow the back of his head off. But doing so would cause him to fall backward, taking Bones with him. I had to separate Frank from Bones. Gunner crept along behind me, growling. Frank sat on the edge of the well, holding Bones’s body across his lap. Cradling his head and shoulders. Bones’s left arm hung limp, dangling in the empty air of the well, while his right arm was wrapped around Frank’s waist. I tried to will Bones’s fingers to move, to send some of the signals he’d learned to make in this very room. But he made no such motion. For several seconds, Frank just stared at his brother. Then he looked at me, shook his head, and struggled to speak, proving that I’d crushed his voice box. He tried again but could only manage a whisper.
“This was no rescue mission. It was a prisoner swap.”
I was confused. “Swap?”
He studied his brother, then me. “Him for you.”
Realizing his brother was dead, Frank reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a picture, and stared at it for a long moment.
I had closed the distance to within five feet. Bones was almost within arm’s length. But I could not, and on that day, I did not. Frank set the picture on the ground, to make sure I saw it, then he pressed his forehead to his brother’s, kissed his cheek, and without warning pressed the Glock beneath his own chin and pulled the trigger.
Standing over the well, Gunner quiet at my feet, I jerked as the memory echoed again. Frank’s head had rocked backward, launching his body over the edge and into the blackness, dragging Bones with him. One brother intertwined with the other, so much so that discerning who was holding who was impossible.
I stared down into the well and saw again the horror that haunted me. I had lunged, reached for Bones’s leg, but he was too heavy. Given the bullet that had passed through my shoulder, I couldn’t hold him. I stared at the fingers he had slipped through. Trained to save. To rescue. I couldn’t when it counted the most.
The indomitable man I knew as Bones disappeared into the darkness. Seconds later, I heard the splash.
As much as I hated Frank, I was like him in one regard: my identity was inextricably tied to Bones. I was Bones’s protégé. Friend. Partner. He had saved me as a kid and, on two occasions, given me a reason for being. I was both who I was because of Bones and what I was because of him. I could take credit for nothing. Everything about me tied back to Bones. He made me, shaped me, and he was not just my mentor—Bones was my hero. With him gone, I was floundering. Proving once again that identity flows out of ownership. We can’t know who we are until we know whose we are.
Staring down into that dark shaft descending into the earth, I knew whose I was. And whose I’d always be.
Gunner lay at my feet, his head resting on the rock. Whining quietly. He, too, remembered. I lifted the silver coin from my pocket. The one the mysterious, riddle-speaking man had given me as a child when we’d met at the Seagull Saloon. It was worn. Hand-oiled from decades in my pocket. I read the inscription. The eleven words that had changed my life: Because the needs of the one outweigh those of the ninety-nine.
It was time. For this reason I had come. I turned it one last time, then opened my fingers. Releasing the coin. I let it go. It turned, flipped slowly in the air, and disappeared in silence into the dark below, splashing several seconds later. In that moment, I finally told my friend Bones goodbye. But I could not use words. Because I could not speak.