Run With Me (4 page)

He booms once more, swearing as
he rushes back towards the door. I stand still to the side, waiting
for it to open. I hear his hands scrambling at the lock and the door
swings open. I act fast now, moving quickly from the side. He sees me
but there's little he can do. I've done this a thousand times. It's
hard wired into me.

My left foot is behind his ankle
in a flash as I duck forward. He tries to swing at me but I dive
under his punch and thrust at his throat. He's a big man – fat, not
muscular – and falls hard, my foot tripping him up as he crashes
backwards into his apartment. He grunts as he lands heavily on the
floor, and tries to scramble to his feet. But when his eyes fall back
onto me, he stops in his tracks and holds his hands up.

“
Who....who the fuck are you?”
he asks, his voice shaking slightly.

I stand ahead of him, a gun
clasped to my palm. I hold it out to the side, my eyes staring down
on him, but don't point it towards him. I know how it feels to have a
gun pointed at you. This guy isn't in for that treatment....unless he
makes a move.

“
Here man,” he says, ripping
his wallet from his pants, “take it. Look around you, there's
nothing here...I ain't got shit to rob.”

I don't move my head, but keep
staring at him. I can see in my peripheral vision that this place is
a dive.

“
Give me your phone,” I say,
still standing over him, unmoving.

“
It's over on the table.” He
gestures towards a coffee table stacked with old pizza boxes and beer
cans.

“
Give it to me,” I order, my
gun hovering to my side.

He's shaky as he stands to his
feet, glancing over at me as if he expects me to put a bullet in the
back of his head.

“
It's not worth much, man,
seriously. I ain't got nothing here,” he says, handing the phone to
me.

“
Sit on the sofa,” I say,
taking the phone from his hands, “and don't move.”

He moves nervously to his seat
and sits down, his eyes still hooded in fear and confusion.

I flick the phone open and move
through his contacts, searching for a name: Kitty. I don't see it. I
move back to the start and check down the list alphabetically. I see
the contact for 'Cuz', and glance back to the guy sitting in front of
me. He shifts under my stare and speaks again: “what the fuck is
this bro....”

I look back down to the phone
and check through his latest calls. I'm looking for calls from 'Cuz'
but see none. I put the phone in my pocket now and step casually
through into the nearest room. It's a bedroom, and stinks of weed,
just like the entire place. There's nobody in there. I check the
bathroom too, but it's empty.

I move back into the main room
and pull up a chair, setting it in front of the sofa and the fat guy
weighing it down. I sit and place my gun on my lap, before pulling
the phone from my pocket and tossing it towards him.

“
Cuz is your cousin Kitty
isn't it?” I ask as he catches the phone.

“
Erm, yeah.”

“
Have you heard from her?”

His eyes narrow into a frown.
“Kit? Not for months, nah. We're not close family bro.”

I stare at him, searching for
any lie in his eyes, any change in his voice. He seems honest. Too
stupid to lie convincingly on the spot.

I pick up the gun again and eye
it up menacingly for effect. “I'm trying to find her. Do you know
where she might be?”

“
No, I don't know man. I don't
even know where she's living now.”

“
Is she close with other
family members? Your parents?”

He grunts. “My parents....fuck
no. Her other aunt and uncle though, yeah they were close I guess.
Like I say man, I don't keep in touch with her...”

“
Pick up your phone,” I say
quickly. “I want you to call her.”

“
Call her? Why? What's this
about.”

“
Don't ask me questions. Just
do it.” The inflection in my words is heavy, serious.

Slowly he lifts the phone to his
ear. “What shall I say? I never speak to her.”

“
I don't care, ask her how
she's doing, whatever. Just get her on the phone.”

“
Why do you need to know where
she is. You're not going to hurt her are you?” He eyes my gun
again, which remains lightly gripped in my hand on my lap.

I don't answer. I just look at
him as a few long moments pass.

It's enough.

He dials the number and I can
hear it connecting in the silence of the room. It rings once, twice,
three times, then clicks to life.

I can hear a voice on the other
line. It's quiet and I can't make out the words. Then Kitty's cousin
speaks: “hey Kitty, errr, how you doing?”

More muffled sounds.

“
Yeah, just calling to see how
you are. We haven't seen each other in a while...”

I can hear her cutting him off.
She sounds confused.

“
Seriously Kit, a guy can't
call his fav cousin once in a while. What's up with that....”

He glances up at me and shrugs
his shoulders. There's a look on his face of “what the fuck shall I
say...what the hell am I doing”. I lift my hand to my neck and make
a slicing movement.
Cut it off.

He frowns deeper and fumbles his
words a bit.

“
Ah hey Kit, errr there's
someone at the door. I'd better grab it, OK. I'll call you back...”

He hangs up and breathes out.
“Dude, what the fuck is this.” His voice is rising now, his anger
brewing.

“
Hand me the phone.” I say
casually.

He shakes his head, so I lift
the gun once more, stepping towards him.

He shrinks back again and holds
up his cell. I take it from him and slip it into my pocket. Then I
turn and walk back towards the door. He's behind me, spouting more
words of confusion as I pull on the handle and step back out into the
doorway. He doesn't have a clue what's going on. He doesn't have to.

I'm back in my car in a moment,
pulling my own cell from my jacket and dialing. It rings and picks up
quickly.

“
Rick,” I say quickly, “it's
Colt. I need a favor.”

Kitty

It's quiet. So quiet I can hear
the rustling of leaves in the trees outside the house. It's dark too,
the stars and moon blocked by a swamp of heavy cloud, fat with rain
and ready to spill.

I stand at the window and look
out onto the street. There are a couple of parked cars silhouetted
against the dying light, sitting in driveways outside large houses. I
can see a thin light flickering in the distance, a TV playing behind
thick curtains. Further down the road are more dots of yellow,
spilling out from inside windows. There aren't many houses on this
street, only a few littering the long stretch out of town. It's
somewhere I used to love coming to as a kid, when the bright lights
and booming sounds of LA grew too much. A haven, that's what it
always was.

And it's a haven again now. But
only for tonight. I can't stay here.

I step away from the window and
glance at the bag sitting to the side of my bed. It's unzipped and
there are clothes mashed together within, essentials hastily thrust
inside . I had no time to fold, no time to organize. The whole thing
was a rush, a blur, a nightmare that I can't wake up from.

I can still see the image of
Tara's lifeless, bloodied body. It's like it's been etched onto the
front of my eyeballs, a vision that I can't escape from, one that
haunts my waking thoughts. Her pretty face, locked in a permanent
expression of fear, of pain. The last thing she must have seen makes
me feel sick. A man, a gun, a flash of light, then eternal blackness.

I know it should have been me in
her place. The thought causes a swell of guilt to rise up inside me.
It wasn't a break in. It wasn't a case of random murder. It was a
hit, one intended for me, and Tara took the bullet in my absence.

I've been wondering how they
knew I was there, how they'd known that I'd witnessed Michael Carmine
pulling the trigger on that kneeling, begging man. I should have
turned and walked away. I should never have been there in the first
place. And now, Tara's dead. And it's all my fault.

A crack of thunder makes me jump
slightly, breaking the silence of the room. Almost immediately I hear
the sound of heavy rain begin to crash down on the roof. It grows
quickly loud as the heavens open and empty themselves out. I look
back to the window, where the black sky is now filled with water,
droplets jumping wildly on the window sill as they rush through the
open window.

I move forward quickly and pull
down on the glass, shutting it tight and quickly drowning out most of
the noise outside. Another rumble of thunder shakes the foundations
of the house as lighting comes down with it, illuminating the world
outside. I see a cat rush quickly under a car for shelter. It already
looks soaked to the skin.

A ring sounds behind me and I
turn, my heart jumping suddenly. I see the phone on my bed lighting
up and singing its tune. I edge forward and peer at the number, a
frown creasing my forehead.

“
Brad?” I whisper in
confusion.

I lift the phone to my ear as it
rings a third time and press the button to connect the call.

When I speak my words are
cautious and wary. Brad isn't someone I hear from often.

“
Brad....hey, how are you?”
I say, my voice tentative.

“
Hey Kitty...how you doing?”
He sounds awkward, his words forced.

“
I'm...OK, I guess. This is a
bit out of the blue Brad...is something wrong. Are you all right?”

“
Yeah, just calling to see how
you are. We haven't seen each other in a while...”

“
Um,
I know, it's been a long time....is anything up?” It's weird
hearing his voice again. I can't remember ever talking to him on the
phone. I'm racking my brain to think of the last time we were
together. Probably as a family before my dad went down....

“
Seriously Kit, a guy can't
call his fav cousin once in a while. What's up with that?”

“
Fav cousin? I'm your only
cousin Brad. Did you have something specific you wanted to talk about
or something...”

“
Ah hey Kit, errr there's
someone at the door. I'd better grab it, OK. I'll call you back...”

“
But....” I try to respond
but can already hear the phone going dead.

“
What the fuck?” I say to
myself, my mind racing.

I drop the phone back to the bed
and stare at it for a few moments. I'm waiting for his call back, for
some sort of explanation. I mean, that was the most cryptic thing
ever. Totally random.

Seconds pass and turn to minutes
as the rain continues to slash against the windows. Cracks of thunder
boom through the house on occasion, but I can hardly hear them now. I
wait, anxiously, to see my phone light up again.

But it doesn't.

Those minutes turn to half an
hour, that half an hour to an hour. Questions run through my head as
I settle on my bed. I question why he called in the first place, I
grow anxious at the stiffness of his voice, the forced nature of his
words. The entire situation is fucked up, but then Brad's always been
like that, always been a completely random guy.

Weed. He smokes it all the time,
or at least he did the last I knew of it. It's probably screwed with
his head, made him paranoid or something. I don't know, never gone
there myself, but I've known guys who have done some weird things
when high.

As I lie and wait I begin to
feel the heavy scent of sleep bearing down on me. I haven't slept in
two nights now. I'm scared to do so, scared to shut my eyes for what
I'll see. The thunder and lightning is still rumbling, the storm
still emptying its payload over the city. The sound of rain tip
tapping on the roof is strangely comforting, soothing my tormented
mind.

I struggle to keep my eyes open.
My eyelids are heavy now, drawn together like magnets. Tara. My
thoughts return to Tara. The image of her on my sofa; her life, so
full of promise, cut short. I see flashes of gunshots tearing into
her as she studies, then the sight of the kneeling man hitting the
tarmac, blood pooling beneath his body.

I toss and turn as I tumble into
a troubled sleep. The storm keeps roaring but I don't hear it now.
Everything turns silent, my mind bending inward as I lose
consciousness. I'm lying, clothed, on my bed, the room lit dimly by a
lamp on the bedside table. It's the first I've slept in two long
nights.

I see flashes in the blackness,
accompanied by the sound of booming thunder. I wake, suddenly, my
mind quickly alert, my eyes open wide. I quickly scan the room but
see nothing, no one. I can feel the sweat soaking through my T-shirt,
my hands and forehead clammy and hot.

I reach for my phone. No call
back from Brad. Nothing.

It's late now, the minutes just
ticking past 3 AM. I can only have been out for a few hours.