Page 10 of Ride Forever
I rolled my eyes and returned to staring at the comings and goings of the motel below.
“You had a dream about her, didn’t you?”
I flinched as Sloane’s words hit home.
“You can talk to me about it, you know. I’m not insecure about it anymore.” She dragged a lawn chair across the roof and set it beside mine, then flopped down onto the green and white plastic.
“You really want to hear about how I got my wife murdered?” I drawled. “What did I do to deserve you? Are you sure you’re not using me for my perfect cock?”
“Don’t,” she murmured, staring at me over the top of her sunglasses. “Don’t do that with me.”
I sighed heavily, my eyes still burning with the afterimage of my dream. I wondered what had triggered it. Stress? Maybe.
“I was the same age as you are now,” I said, staring across the desert. “Deep cover, away from Madison. I thought I was invincible. Why wouldn’t I be? I had the FBI at my back, ready to extract me if things got too hot.” I didn’t have to explain the rest to her. She knew how the ‘good guys’ had betrayed me. I’d lost everything in a matter of days. My entire life had turned into one giant mess.
“I was too late to save her, you know that,” I went on. “I didn’t just hear about her murder. I saw it. I saw the moment the life left her eyes. I saw the moment…” I trailed off, shoving away the image that had stirred me from sleep. “At first, working for Fortitude was the only thing stopping me from…” I shook my head. “I did messed-up things to forget. Every person I killed had his face. I liked it, Sloane.” I glanced at her and was surprised to see tears in her eyes.
“That was before,” she murmured. “That’s not now.”
“King shot her in the neck,” I admitted. “The bullet went through and through. She choked on her own blood while I stood in front of her unable to stop it… I pressed my hands against her neck, but…”
“Chaser…”
“Chaser is a murderer,” I snapped. “Gunnar was a stupid fucking boy who got his wife killed. What the hell have I done to fix shit? Who am I now?”
“We’re doing something now,” she said firmly. “It’s better than nothing at all. I made you a promise. The rest we’ll figure out as we go.”
“You made Chaser a promise,” I scoffed. Who was I supposed to be? Gunnar, Chaser, or something else? Man, husband, good guy, murderer, crook, hostile,evil incarnate.
Sloane angled herself toward me, the plastic lawn chair creaking with the movement. “You’ll always be Chaser to me. Not because of where you ended up but because it was the name you first gave me. If you want me to call you Gunnar… I can do that.”
“Gunnar’s gone,” I whispered.
“I can call you fuck face, how about that?”
My lips quirked.
“See? There is something in there after all.” She slapped me on the arm and leaned back in her chair. “What a pair we are.”
She was uncanny the way she turned shit around. I studied the curve of her breasts and the way her shorts rode up when she sat.
“The Hollow Men have a casino, you say?” she mused.
“The Halcyon.”
“You worked undercover with them,” she went on. “That’s valuable. The pain will last a little while longer, but instead of using it to forget, use it toremember.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ve shut it out for so long… The first rush is a bitch, you know.”
Sloane shuffled next to me and kicked her feet up onto the railing next to mine. I studied our boots and relaxed slightly when she let her knees fall to the side and press against my legs.
“Have you…” I began, my uncertainty throwing my resolve sideways.
“I never shut any of it out,” she murmured, staring out over the desert. “I percolate in misery and pain like a Sylvia Plath novel. Maybe that’s why I’m so whatever about the last few months. It hurts, but I can take it.”
I snorted and couldn’t imagine her reading a book of miserable poetry. She did have that huge-ass textbook, so maybe it wasn’t so farfetched.
“We’ll be all right, Chaser,” she said. “You’ll be all right. One last job. Remember that.”
I grunted and leaned my arm on the side of her chair, facing my palm toward the sky. She slipped her hand into mine, and I caressed the tattoo on her thumb. The crossed swords meant something else now even though the motto was the same.
Courage in adversity.
