Stephanie Tyler - Vipers Run

“Don’t let them win, Cage. Please . . .”

“You sound like you know what it’s like.”

“I do. And I let someone win and I hate him for it.”

There was such a long pause that I thought I’d lost him—I closed my eyes and just waited for what seemed like forever.

And then he said, “Fuck, Calla. Would strangle the son of a bitch who hurt you” in a voice so strong and fierce that I actually took a step back and hit the wall.

“I’d let you,” I said softly.

“What did he do to you?”

“I can’t tell you.” I couldn’t tell anyone. It had been all locked up, put away. Except it never really was. “There was this guy. I was fifteen. He—” I couldn’t say much more except, “He took so much from me.”

I waited for him to say he was sorry, that he wished he could do something, because there were so many wishes associated with what had happened to me.

Instead, he growled, “Did anyone make him pay?”

Even though that’s not what Cage was asking, I thought of the money in my account. The pictures. “No,” I whispered.

“He will pay. I promise.”

How many broken promises had I waded through? “Don’t.”

“Don’t defend you?”

“Don’t promise.”

“Too late.”

“I don’t goddamned believe you, Cage, so take it back.”

“Who gets into a fight with a dying man?” he asked out loud.

“I don’t believe in promises.”

“And I . . . don’t . . . break them. You need to be . . . prepared.”

Prepared? What did that mean? “Don’t do this to me.”

“What are you afraid of?” he challenged, sounding more resolved by the second.

“That you’re going to want to know what happened to me. That you’re not going to want me.”

“I think you’re really . . . scared that I might . . . want you, and you’ll have to let . . . those walls . . . all the way down.”

I wanted to tell him this was a hypothetical conversation, that I was happy he was going to live, but that I’d make sure he didn’t find me.

And what are you going to do, Calla? Quit Bernie’s and run away?

“I don’t want to believe you,” I told him.

“But you do.”

“Maybe,” I admitted.

“Fucking meet my angel in the middle of hell,” he managed, more to himself than me. “Gotta go, Calla. Remember . . . what I said.”

“Cage, please let me do something for you.”

“Babe, you have no idea what . . . you’ve already . . . done. I . . . Shit.”

“Please.”

“I’m . . . coming back.”

“I believe you,” I said, because how could I not? Because I wanted him to. “Let me help you.”

There was a silence and then he coughed and then, “Gonna give you a number. Remember . . . it.”

“Of course.”

“Bernie . . . tell him . . . immediately. Important.”

“I will.” I memorized the last thing I’d know about Cage. Ten numbers that meant nothing. “I’ve got it.”

“Say. Back.”

I repeated them and he sighed. “Good. Sorry . . . so sorry.”

Sorry? For dying? For giving me a relatively simple job? For not letting me help him? “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more, Cage.”

“Jesus. You did . . . everything.”

“Cage . . .”

But the line clicked off. I blinked back tears, unable to stop the small sob that made my shoulders lift involuntarily. I was yelling then, slamming the desk with my fists before I pulled my shit together.

Feeling like I’d failed.

Another loss. My whole life was loss and pain, and why I thought it could be any different, I had no idea.

I looked up at a picture behind Bernie’s desk, hanging low on the wall. I’d never really noticed it before, because if I was in here, Bernie was in his big chair, which partially covered it. Why it was hung so low was another story, but I finally realized that Bernie was one of the men wearing an Army uniform. I grabbed a magnifying glass to look at the names on the uniforms. There was one man, his head turned to the side . . .

“Calla?”

“Bernie!” I dropped the magnifying glass and turned, wanting to hug him. I handed him his phone and started babbling about Cage and the numbers.

His face paled. He looked behind him, out the window and then tossed me a set of keys. I caught them instinctively. “Black truck in the corner of the lot. Walk to it like it’s yours. Get in. Hit the GPS and follow where it takes you. Money’s in the glove compartment. Do you understand?”

“Bernie—”

“There’s trouble, honey. Please, do what I say. Now.”

He walked out then. I don’t know why, but I grabbed the picture from his wall before I went out the back, grabbing my bag along the way.

Two weeks earlier, he’d gotten a call that made him close his office door. He never closed the door. And when he’d finally emerged, he’d been pale and distracted. Twitchy, even.

For the rest of that week, he answered all his own calls. But then things seemed to go back to normal. We dealt with the usual cases . . . some heartbreaking, some frivolous.

I supposed I could call in my father, ask for help. Or I could throw off everything, once and for all, and thank Cage by actually going free.

When I got into the black car and turned the key in the ignition, I’d made the choice. As I pulled the car out of the lot, I heard gunshots, four in a row, and I forced myself not to go back and check on Bernie. Instead, I followed his orders and got the hell out of there. Running from my past and present . . . and realizing I had no clue where my future lay.

My mind swam as I forced my attention on the slippery, rain-slicked roads ahead. Thankfully, the truck gripped the road, as if it knew I didn’t have the strength to focus. Normally I’d never drive like this, but the roads were clear and I figured the only one I’d be hurting was myself.

Mom was killed by a drunk driver and then two years later, Grams died. I’d come home from college for the funeral and found out that my brother had taken everything out of Grams’s accounts, using her debit card. Except for my settlement money, which he couldn’t touch. My mother had never been able to either, which was why my father had put it into a trust for me in the first place. I had money at my disposal, but I wouldn’t give in and use it. It was blood money, as far as I was concerned.

I was supposed to start a job in London this past fall. Instead, I’d found myself sitting in the office of a private eye named Bernie, explaining that I needed to find my brother and get the money and the deed to the bar back.

Bernie had looked at me a long time before he’d said, “Sweetheart, even if you had money, I wouldn’t take your case. You’ve had everything taken from you already.”

I’d refused to break down in front of him.

He’d continued. “I knew your Grams. She was a good woman. Your brother’s an ass. Put it behind you, live your life.”

“How?” I’d asked, trying not to sound pathetic.

“Work for me.”

And from there, I’d started to rebuild. And I realized that a lot of people had it worse than me. Taking pictures of husbands for suspicious wives—and vice versa—was the bulk of his business, but there was so much more he did for people.

Bernie had given me my life back. A job, a place to stay, and he was kind. His wife and daughter had been killed by a drunk driver ten years earlier, and he’d spent the rest of his days helping people get justice. We were drawn together by the pain of circumstance and I worked hard to help him.

And now I was going someplace Bernie had sent me. He’d done everything to protect me from the seedy side of his business. I had to trust this was no different.

I followed the GPS, driving for about six hours nearly nonstop to pass the North Carolina border. I took one quick break once I was across that state line, for gas and the bathroom at a busy enough rest stop peppered with minivans and tired children asleep in their seats.

Happy families. At least they appeared that way on the outside. I got back into the truck and drove away from the appearance of happy as fast as I could. I was more focused, but I hadn’t been able to stop shaking. The heat was turned up so high that the windows fogged.

Finally, I was directed up a long private drive that was close enough to the beach for me to smell the salt water. I had a choice there—I had a truck and some money and I could just cut and run.

But Bernie had never steered me wrong. He’d never given me a reason not to trust him. And whoever was at the end of this driveway was now my only real connection to Cage.

I pulled all the way up to the big house, parked and stumbled out of the car. The whole day—my entire past—swirled around me like an impending storm. The worst hadn’t come yet, the pit of doom in my stomach unsettling me to the point of shaking.

I barely pulled myself together to make it up the path. The gun from the truck was barely concealed in my bag, and the man who stood in the now-opened front door of the house caught sight of it immediately, his eyes casually flickering from it to my eyes.

“That’s more dangerous for you if you don’t know how to use it,” he noted. He wore dog tags, a black wifebeater and jeans with bare feet. He was good looking in an almost movie star kind of way, but there was nothing plastic about him.

I wanted to say that I knew how to use it—and I did know how—but those words wouldn’t come out.

But I did hear some moaning in the background, and I wasn’t imagining it, because he called over his shoulder, “Guys, can you stop rehearsing for a minute?” before turning back to me and saying, “Are you here for a job? Because I don’t take walk-ins or women.”