Page 9 of Double Shot
“Yeah.” He took a seat, and I hugged my knees. “I’m ready,” he said, and I shook my head.
“No, you’re not—”
“Sadie, just tell me.”
“After Simon, I lost everything, and it was the first time I was homeless. I was twenty-three and…” I stopped, hating that I had to drag out old pain and heartache atop all that was fresh and new.
“Take your time,” he said gently and perked up slightly.
“These two guys, they uh dragged me off the street into the abandoned YMCA and down into the bottom of the empty swimming pool.” I swallowed hard and rubbed my lips together. “They took turns,” I murmured and I couldn’t bring myself to elaborate beyond that.
“You know who they are?” he asked.
I shook my head. “The cops never found them,” I said.
He leaned back and sighed out, covering my shaking hands with his. I glanced up and his intense gaze snared mine.
“This Turk guy, you hate him?” he asked me. I nodded slowly. Not just for what happened to me, but also for what he did to Simon, tous. I most assuredly hated him. How many other Simon and Sadie’s had his poison ruined?
“Enough to kill him?” he asked me, and I froze. I had to think about that.
I thought about it and he let me, but he’d captured my eyes with his so thoroughly that there was no breaking eye contact while I did.
I thought about Simon, I thought about me, and I thought about all the other nameless, faceless victims of the garbage Turk slung for them to inject into their veins. I knew, deep down, it didn’t matter – that as soon as Turk died there would be another to take his place to pedal whatever poison he’d had the occasion to broker to the desperate… but still…
“Yeah,” I answered him, and I began to sweat, knowing that once I took this step, there would be no going back. “Yeah, absolutely,” I said.
Kyle nodded and hooked a hand behind my head, pressing his lips against my forehead like he had earlier, only this time it didn’t have the restorative power that it had before. No, it took him wrapping his arms around me tight and holding me close for awhilefor the tension to leave my body, and even then, I felt the stain would never come out of my soul.
What was I doing?
Chapter Three
Lachlan…
Our departure from the Wolf Creek bunker felt like walking into a new world. For six months we had lived a stark lifestyle, with the minimal offerings of the bunker, and our own company. There was internet and television, but there were no other people, no restaurants, nothing like that. There was a township that we had ventured to a handful of times, but paranoia made those trips few and far between. The people that owned and ran the shops didn’t know us, but they knew the type. Hyper-survivalists and preppers were as common as cattle in Montana. They didn’t have to know us. We showed up, bought a vehicle load of supplies, and left after paying cash.
The only real indulgence on those trips was stopping at the diner and having eggs and sausage that Sadie and I didn’t have to cook.
Buttoning up the bunker and cleaning up after ourselves didn’t take long. We hadn’t made much of a mess, and there was little enough left to take care of. Our last trip into town was to replenish non-food consumables that we had used during our stay – toiletries, detergents, batteries, and the like.There was a list, and it even indicated which places in town carried the various required items.
As we drove from the bunker down to the rail station, I was hopeful that I would never see such a miserable place in my life again. I couldn’t understand how people could live here deliberately. The island of civilization there was, was full of yeehaw and cheap beer, too much red meat, and guns. I knew I was shallow, but there was more to life than bloody red steaks, brown liquor, and collecting guns.
Riding on a train for three days to get back to Indigo City wasn’t my ideal mode of travel, but it was cheap. Our cash on hand was limited, and I wanted to get boots back on our home turf before cracking into our more extensive resources.
The time on the train gave me the opportunity to call and message the people I needed to deal with. There was our gun guy, and our other gun guy, my tailor, that I hoped to God he knew my shoe measurements; sneakers were just fucking awful. Then there was the armorer, and our car guys. They had all been used to working with Roan, not me, but thankfully theydidknow me. All of this would have been a lot worse otherwise.
I was thankful that they were professional to the level of not asking about him. That was part of the job – you didn’t ask about someone if they had gone missing. If they were missing, that meant that they were dead, and it was just a factor of the job.
Despite that professional courtesy, it was still awful. I could feel that space, the verbal space where they paused, knowing me, and knowing my partner handled everything, and that we’d been off the grid for half a year. They fucking knew.
I would spend what felt likehourssitting on my phone, talking through a headpiece. Sadie would occupy herself with books, or streaming things to watch on the Kindle tablet I’d gotten her. I could tell that the length of the trip wore on her. Hell, I felt that as well. Some of the conversations ran longer than I wanted, and part of me wanted to just yell at some of them to just fucking handle some of this shit on their own. There were nine million fucking questions, and even on things I liked, guns and cars, itstillwore me thin.
How did he fucking do this?
How did he have the patience?
I guess Sadie saw that I was getting frustrated with some shit spit asshole over some bullshit renting a furnished house, so she changed seats and laid down next to me, her head in my lap. After a few minutes, my tone softened, and I was toying with a twist of her mahogany hair. I finished my last call for the day, a very eccentric person named Guy, and our final arrangements had been made to procure our body armor.
