Page 2 of Double Shot
“Take care of her, mate; Sadie…”He paused, his face grim as he tried not to choke up, I think. “Take care of her. She’s the best thing that has ever happened to either one of us. If the worst has happened, I hope she knows how much I love her, and care for her… and I swear,”he jabbed a finger at the camera,“if you let anything happen to her, mate, I’m going to haunt your sorry ass.”
Sadie had been watching over my shoulder the first time I had been running through his tutorial videos. She had needed to hear the sound of his voice, to see him even if it was a just a recording.
“Sadie. Love. Poppet.”He paused the recording to collect himself.“If you have to see this, I am so very sorry. We’ve not known each other long, but you have meant the world to me, and I know you mean the world to Kyle too. I hope that you’re alright. I hope you both are safe, away from whatever happens.”He wiped at his eyes with his sleeve.
“You’ll need to take care of Kyle too, Sadie. He’s a hard-ass, and hardheaded, and he doesn’t listen for shite. Don’t deny it, mate.”She had broken into sobs by that point.“Take care of each other, and I’m sorry, if you’re watching this.”
There was a long pause.
“I love you both more than I love my own life. It has been an honor to serve with you, Lachlan, and I haven’t words, Miss Brooks. Good luck, Godspeed. God Save the Queen and you both.”
The video had ended there.
It was like having the bomb go off all over again, being forced to relive that great ginger moose slamming the door and facing the elite of the Escadrille alone... I shuddered, and it was all I could do to not break down then and there, sitting in front of the laptop with Sadie holding me like a life preserver.
A part of me that I hadn’t imagined could even be vulnerable had died – it was shaped like him. Roan had always been burrowed into that fortress on the Head, surrounded by his guns, computers, and all the drones and remote-control things that I barely understood. This was not how it was supposed to have gone down. He should be the one sitting here, taking care of Sadie, not me. I didn’t deserve her, and I sure as shit didn’t deserve the sacrifice that he’d made for me.
That had been months ago, and the emotional wound still felt just as raw and just as bloody as the day it’d been dealt. The bullet wounds had healed much faster by comparison, the cracked ribs as well. Now, the physical injuries barely bothered me unless I went all out in the gym. That was something I had been doing. I needed the physical pain. It let me fool myself into thinking I could drown out this emotional shit… but I couldn’t.
I remembered Roan, when everything went south the first time after he lost his leg and was discharged from the Royal Marines. He had fallen into the bottle, packed on weight, and almost ended himself with those shit life choices. But then he had pulled himself around, quit drinking like he had joined one of those twelve-step cults or AA. Except he hadn’t. It’d been all him.
He gave all of his stress and frustration to the iron in the gym, first at the rehab center, then when he moved into my apartment, the apartment complex gym. One of the first indulgences we had bought ourselves was a fully kitted-out home setup – treadmill, elliptical, a weight bench, several specific machines for different muscle groups. He threw himself into it, and it was his cathedral of self-inflicted pain.
He also took over the finances, and I found out how much money I had been wasting on renting things, leasing cars, and all the rest. I pushed him, kept him from giving up. He pushed me and kept me from just settling in.
How close had I been, back in those days, to give up on all the life skills the army had taught, all my experiences in Afghanistan and half a dozen other miserable third world countries, to just go back to being a civvie? What would I have done, become some gym-stalking fitness trainer, worked in some corporate backed self-defense dojo, ended up in some dead-ass dead-end public sector job sitting at a desk or in a cubicle? I could have done paperwork until I broke inside and went on my own personal Project Mayhem where my lurking issues and documented rebellious disorders came to a head with something – a mass shooting, a bomb and manifesto jag, a highly public suicide. He fucking saved me like I saved his ass.
Working out wascathartic, and so was the work that we were both trained for, he liked to say. That was a Roan word for things that hurt like hell at the time, but you feel better afterward. There was some truth in that. While I was running, or pushing iron, I didn’t have time to think. Everything was concentrating on my breathing, on muscle control, keeping count of the reps like a Catholic counting the penitent prayer out on their rosary beads.
Cathartic things kept you from going nuts or joining nuts.
The alternative was picking up the bottle and letting it finish what Chauvignon had started.
I did break down one time. Inside my bug-out bag there was, of all fucking things, a sampler flight of artisanal gins, each with a different sprig of some herb in each glass bottle. What had he imagined, that we would take theRum Runnerout on a leisurely loop around the bay while everything went up in flames?
He probably fuckingdidthink that, having cocktails while we were whisked away in that beautiful, powerful, sexy boat he had purpose-fitted for just that very thing. I think the thing that actually broke me was realizing that all those little surprises, those little Easter eggs were done. There would be no more topflight booze from places I had never heard of, no more pairs of the most amazing leather shoes from places in Europe. He knew my goddamn shoe size in different countries, and now that he was gone, I was going to have to buy my own goddamn shoes and I realized I didn’t know. I didn’t know my own fucking shoe size. I mean,what the fuck?
I was glad that Sadie had been asleep when that dam broke. That she didn’t have to see me lose it. She was counting on me to be the strong one…Roanwas counting on me to be strong for her…
For the first few weeks, we both slept a lot. We were both broken. I don’t know that I could have hidden it any better. I know I wished to, but a wish in one hand and shit in the other and you tell me which filled up faster.
We left the Eastermont Hotel and ended up taking a train across the country, leaving the DC area, heading north to pick up different rail lines that ran west, until we ended up in the location that he had designated as Safehouse Omega. The safehouse to end all safehouses. Our most fortified one.
Safehouse Omega was buried under yards of Montana soil, hundreds of miles from any other vestiges of civilization. The surface was a small observation hut, and some facilities for gardening and ranching. If we wanted to bring in livestock, or plant seed, we could have. The place had been some sort of vintage fallout bunker that had been built back in the paranoid ‘60s when the entire western half of the world had lived under the menacing red shadow of Russian nuclear war. There was the Wolf Fork Creek that fed into the north side of the property, and the Dry Wolf Fork that wrapped around the south and west sides. It was a frozen fucking wasteland when we arrived. It was nearly zero, and snow had blown into piles taller than our heads.
The winter had buried us under a hell of snow and ice.
There were some creature comforts – television, radio, computers, all of it several years behind the curve. The television was barely forty-five inches, but the place had no Wi-Fi. Everything was still wired in. The important things were there, armored doors, a secret location, pantries full of the supplies we could live off of for a long time.
At first it seemed odd that there were three snowmobiles. There was no way he could have guessed about Sadie when this place had been set up, but then it was Roan. There were three, so if one went down, we would still have had two to work with. I had not known about this place, but from the notes he left, Safehouse Omega was a hitman time-share. I saw the list of other professionals who had access to this place and had also footed some of the bill.
Some were retired now, some were dead, others were still working out in the field. I didn’t worry about any of them. There were less than a dozen of us, and we all knew each other. Our backgrounds had overlapped – we were all ex-military, or ex-intel. We knew who we were and what we wanted and were as close to a fraternal order of assassins as you could get without it turning into a goofy over-the-top action movie with a five-star Hollywood-leading man.
Stuff like this and his investment gaming must have taken up his time when I was out in the field, capping mafiosi and shagging escorts.
I was thankful for him, for everything he did, even as I was cussing him while doing bicep curls, or push-ups.
I started slow; the first month had me seldom moving unless it was to check on the generator or the solar panels. The wounds were still fresh, and the ribs killed me. After I could move without popping painkillers, I started working out again. Just the treadmill at first and then adding weights. That second month, I felt like a crippled old man, working with the lightest weights.
