Page 4 of Triple Threat

I sighed.

I still felt like half the person, maybe less, than I had been before.

Lach had been a better help with that than any of the shrinks or support groups I went to. I just wasn’t that sort of guy, not the big blubbery type to hug and cry it out. Lach pushed, and I pushed back. I was in better shape than when I had two legs. The gym in the house was my support group, and my therapist was the bench-press bar.

‘Where did you serve,’ they would ask, ready to tie on the yellow ribbon, wave the stars and stripes. ‘Oh, the British Royal Marines,’ I would tell them.Oh, that there were Marines and armies that weren’t American, how tedious.

It could have been worse… there were lads that I had done work with, who had the uncommon position of being veterans from armies that had fought the Americans, or the British. One of the best comebacks I could remember was a poet of a man who made no bones about being a veteran and then seeing the shock on people’s faces when he told them he wasn’t GI Joe US Army, but had been a commander in the Iraqi Republican Guard.

Same went for one of the toughest men I had ever met, a whippet of an Argentinian who remembered the Falklands War.

One of the things I never managed to escape was the order and routine demanded by the regiment. There were no running miles now. I could still run if I fit the prosthetic, but damn the thing, and damn the handful of neighbors, the few that noticed. If I had a mad fit to run, there was a treadmill.

More physical training, exercise in the gym.

Shower.

Breakfast. Six days a week it was protein – eggs, rasher of bacon, steel-cut oatmeal for some carbs. One day a week, on Sunday, I attended my personal church. The Black Watch was one of those faux Irish pubs through the week, but on Sundays the owners did a proper English breakfast, with tea if it was early, Guinness if it was even earlier.

Codger that ran the place was a salted piece of wood that claimed to have been in the Royal Navy back when it had battleships. He came to the States, and found out that Americans loved fake Irish food better than the real thing. But he had his regulars, and he still flew the Union Jack. Proper fellow, him.

The largest source of chaos, Kyle Lachlan, was the only reason I was still alive. After the IED took my leg, I came too close to giving up. My life had been the regiment, and the regiment didn’t have many openings for one-legged men. Recovery and PT afterwards had been hard, almost too hard. Then there was this damned American wolf right at my heel.

How I ended up in an American hospital, well that came down to a lot of finger pointing and a lot of higher ups covering their brass. I wanted to call it quits, maybe take up being an alcoholic, a cripple, maybe a beggar. That seemed better than trying to move forward, but the smiling American wouldn’t let me.

Then he pitched me. He knew how I worked, and wanted me to come work with him. Independent contractor, picking up the old tools and putting them back to work. The tools, the computers and drones, it didn’t matter how many legs I had, they still worked fine.

Fast forward and we’re pro. I’m six years sober, and bloody fucking rich.

But Lach is still chaos, crashing through life like the most charming shark, a wolf that was into snatching panties instead of sheep. I needed that chaos, otherwise the routine would overwhelm me, maybe even fall in on myself in a ball of OCD tics and twitches. But the converse is true, my organization, my order, he needs it. Without me, his recklessness and impulsiveness would destroy him. Bond needed M, Frodo needed Sam, and history is full of real mavericks who would have gone off if it wasn’t for the bannerman holding them up and together.

I have to remember that chaos is in and of itself neither good nor bad, but necessary. This is harder to keep in mind when Lach shows up with an unconscious woman and a damaged car. I wasn’t really surprised when he left. He kept his carnal indulgences to himself when he was working, and St. Anne’s had been a buffet of coconut-oiled flesh and decadence. I cerebrally didn’t begrudge him his womanizing; it was what he did. But I did envy him, because the thing I really lost wasn’t my leg, it was my confidence. And he oozed it.

* * *

The womanbarely fit the description; she had matted blue hair, was painfully thin, her face gaunt, and she was absolutelyfilthy. She was small enough, and easy to pick up off the bed and carry to the bathroom. The tub filled while I checked her. She had good pupil reflex when I shined a light in her eyes. She had bruises, scrapes, but no broken bones and nothing life-threatening. Maybe more importantly, there were no track marks on her arm, no necrosis from the more horrific drugs on the street, and her teeth looked fine if in need of a brushing –no meth use.

What was concerning was the way her breath rattled in her chest. That sounded bad, like pneumonia, and that wasn’t something I could handle. Stitches, treating burns, and the rough and ugly of Marine triage? Splint a leg, set a broken bone, pull bullets out of flesh wounds, that, sure. Internal injuries, serious illness, I wasn’t a bloody doctor.

I placed an encrypted phone call to Maxine Rutledge, Doc Max to most everyone. I gave her the short version – skinny Caucasian woman, respiratory distress maybe pneumonia, no apparent drug use. Max said she would be out in the morning, unless it looked like it was life-threatening. I told her she would be expected.

Getting back to Miss Brooks meant addressing the rest of the problems I could deal with, like the unfortunate smell. A bath would set that to rights. I eased her into the tub and started cleaning her up. In the dramas this would be a sensual or erotic thing – soapy water and naked breasts – but there was nothing like that. She was dead weight, and I felt more empathy for her than anything else. She was obviously surviving a hard life, and barely by the looks of it.

The blue hair dye came out fairly easily, though I hoped it would come out of the tub as well. Her hair was bottle bleached under the cheap blue, and it looked pretty rough. We would handle hair dye or a haircut when she woke up. Instead, for now, I let her soak and went through her pockets, looking for something to go on besides Lach telling me what her name was. She had a dollar and change, some random debris that I could only assume was sentimental in nature – a flat polished stone, a guitar pick – and a few other sundry items.

It was a sad accounting, that.

The matter of shaving came to mind.

After a great amount of debate, I opted to split the difference. Shaving legs and armpits was less challenging than shaving someone else’s face. A man who wishes to be a hermit or unnoticed learns many small trades, and I could handle a razor or pair of scissors enough to trim a man’s hair. I was certainly no cosmetologist where she was concerned, but I could do a little. If she wanted to do more personal landscaping than what I did, it would be on her to handle it when she was awake.

I was tired once she was tucked safely in one of the guests rooms. She would be sore and famished when she woke, but the kitchen was well stocked. Since therewasa guest, I went room to room and locked the doors that didn’t need prying eyes in them – Lach’s room, the pantry, certainly the arsenal, and lastly the garage.

After all that, I had another task to look after.

The sedan.

One of the best tools in an operative’s tool bag was to remain inconspicuous. Silver was the most common automobile color, and four-door sedans were common to the point that people’s eyes slid over them and only noticed them enough to avoid hitting them. There were things more inconspicuous, but no respectable operative would drive a light blue minivan.

---