Page 73 of Liar Byrd
I move away from the den to avoid waking Byrdie. “And you’re here to chew me out about it?”
I don’t regret what I did to the gardener. He needed to die, and if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s killing.
“No.” He glances at me. “How is she?”
“Not good.” I lead the way into the kitchen, and Nash follows. “You should speak to her.”
Nash doesn’t respond.
The only reason I know he’s still there is the almost silent brush of his footsteps on the carpet, and the awareness I honed in countless war zones. Someone sneaking up on me rarely happens anymore.
I’d known the moment Byrdie had slipped out of her bed in the den and started limping toward the kitchen.
Head down, pretending to be absorbed by my task of assembling and disassembling my gun, I’d watched her through my lashes as she clung to the shadows, long dark brown hair falling around her face, nervous teeth chewing on her lip. Slender white toes peeked beneath the hem of inches-too-long sweatpants she borrowed from Makhi.
I return to my seat at the kitchen table. And to my task. The bottle of whiskey remains untouched. It’s there as a reminder. A warning. And a test.
Can I go another night without a taste, or will nightmares chase me into a bottle again?
“I don’t know why you do it to yourself.” Nash’s eyes are on the bottle when I glance at him as he takes a seat opposite me.
He’ll have checked the level and deduced there’s as much in it as there was yesterday and the day before.
I pick up my gun and concentrate on disassembling it. Aside from smoking a cigarette, which I could never bring myself to enjoy, even though I appreciated how it would distract me, nothing clears my mind better than this.
“Talk to her.” Head down, I unload the six bullets from the chamber. “I can kill. You know pain, and she’s hurting. You can help her.”
I understand pain too, but mine is different from his and hers. My words won’t touch her the way Nash’s will.
He’s gotten better. I’ll give him that. He’s worked hard because he knows how sharp my ears are. But I learned to listen in war. I learned how listening can be the thing that saves you or kills you.
So when I lift my head, I’m not the least bit surprised to find I’m alone.
My eyes settle on the bottle.
Balcones Texas Single Malt.
It reminds me of home.
Fruity, sweet, smoky, and vanilla. I can almost taste it.
My mouth is dry, and my mind is thick with the sounds of men dying.
The memory of a pale, slender, bruised back shoves itself into my mind as I reach for the bottle.
I lower my hand and refocus on my task.
Byrdie is in trouble. Someone is after her. Someone found her before, and they might again. Now is not the time to drink. I can’t do what I might need to do again as a drunk.
I empty the gun's chamber of bullets, and I check the chamber automatically.
Then I begin the process of taking the gun apart, laying each part down in front of me, then picking each piece back up and putting it together again.
Maybe I like control too much for this process to be so calming.
Maybe this is a symptom of too much death that my mind has gone.
When I’m doing this, I can’t think.
