A Guardian Angel (5 page)

“So this is
her brother's place?” Andy asked as the silence drug on.

Steven nodded,
chewing on some gum he had brought. “One of these,” he
gestured.

“What does he
do?” Andy continued.

“Oh, well
he's a cop,” Steven answered. “One of the head
lieutenants of the LPD.”

Andy nodded as he
leaned back in his seat and looked at the building, wondering which
of the doors they were waiting to see open.

He felt the true
weight of his dedication when Steven shook him awake some time after.

“Hey, stop
snoring,” Steven said, shaking the hitman's shoulder. “You're
making my thoughts too loud to hear.”

“Has she come
out?” Andy asked, pulling himself back into the shape of the
seat and wiping away a trace bit of drool from his lips.

Steven pursed his
own together and shook his head, displaying that even he became
impatient with the situation. Andy didn't know how much time had gone
by. Darkness swirled outside the car, so he hadn't slept the entire
night. In fact, it could have only been a few minutes. He had no idea
when he had fallen asleep. It was two in the morning now.

“Is it
possible that she knows we're here?” Andy asked, putting all of
his tone to the task of making it sound like a hypothetical question
and not his immediate assumption.

“No,”
Steven replied. Andy knew that that was the answer. Nothing provided
evidence behind that, only that he knew Steven to be a professional.

Several hours
passed with Andy fighting a losing battle against unconsciousness.
Steven jostled methodically in his seat, shaking the car as they sat
in complete silence. The sun rose. Andy felt worn and much older than
he had the night before.

Then Steven's
posture piqued Andy's interest, saving him from falling asleep again.
The data collector sat straight up, sitting on his knuckles and
holding his mouth open as if he was about to speak. Andy sat forward
as well and peered out the windshield at the Five Points.

A door opened and a
woman slipped from behind it.

“There she
is,” Steven whispered. It was no less exciting for him as it
was for Andy. He always loved remembering that he had the
perseverance of a hunter. Along with that also came the obsession
with his prey.

A brunette woman,
petite in stature and girlish in fashion, emerged from apartment one
with a red and purple backpack strapped over each shoulder. When she
bent over a bike at a rack and began working on a lock, Andy could
see a bright white peace symbol stitched into the backpack. He sat
forward on impulse, jolted like a man experiencing
Déjà
vu. It left him with the feeling that something waited on the tip of
his tongue. But it had fled him.

She bikes,
Andy noted.
Perhaps an accident?

He couldn't make
out any distinctive features about her other than her size and the
abundance of bright colors she wore. Knowing that she biked made her
easy to keep track of as they began to tail her, but it became
difficult to do in Steven's car without drawing attention. Andy did
not want to lose her trail.

They had to pull
over after passing her once so that they did not get too far ahead of
her. Andy looked over at Steven as the nervous young man poured
scribbles into a notepad with furious precision. He hesitated to
speak, worried he might derail Steven's train of thought. As the data
collector wrote, Andy saw Haley pedal right past the car through his
window. She turned and caught a brief look into the man's eyes. Andy
froze as she rode by. Steven did not look up.

“Let's follow
her,” Andy suggested once he saw a break in the writing.

“Not in
this,” Steven replied in a tone that hinted that Andy would
agree, which he did. Still, he wanted to know how they would keep up
with her. Steven looked around outside as if he hadn't seen it in
quite a while, which was likely true with the concentration he put
into his writing. He started the car and then eased it onto the road.
He took the same course as Flynn. They drove right past her a second
time. She glanced back over at the car and Andy tried to cover his
eyes but moved too slow. He did his best to be unrecognizable. It
wasn't so much about being dressed or posed inconspicuous as much as
it was about being boring. There should be no reason to remember
their faces.

They pulled into
the parking lot of a laundromat a few blocks away. Steven grabbed
every bit of clothing that he could find within the vehicle, handing
what he couldn't carry to Andy. He didn't quite follow the rouse, but
still entered the building after the stalker. Steven went to a
machine in the right corner, closest to the window. He started
jamming the clothes and blankets into the device and then rummaged
through his pocket for coins. He pulled out an insignificant looking
pile and asked Andy if he had any change. He thanked him once two
quarters dropped into his palm and then began working the machine.

“She'll pass
by in about a minute, give or take,” Steven said. “Here,
take this and go outside.” He handed Andy a Camel filter.

“I don't
smoke,” Andy told him.

Steven smiled a
tight smile at him, like a parent preparing to explain the rules.
“Well then, find something worth doing outside so you can get a
view of where she's going,” he said. “Come on, you don't
have to inhale, just puff it.” He turned back to the machine,
checking the settings. “Or act like you're doing something
illegal.”

Andy did smoke. It
wasn't a fact that he was proud of, but neither was his job and like
this, his job was no body's business. He was in the process of
quitting when he arrived in Lumnin but he knew that one cigarette was
a small sacrifice to make. Still, he felt awkward as he smoked. Like
someone who didn't really know what he was doing.

Then the bike rode
by. It was a townie, the wide seated
sit-on-this-and-you'll-get-somewhere type of bicycle. The frame was
slathered in flower decals, the whites of the daisies blending with
the neon blue of the metal. It was a distinctive vehicle.

The woman who rode
such a distinctive bike was a small structured white girl. She did
not resembled an adult other than her curves and her mature eyes. Her
cheeks softened against the bone unlike the pillow-like cheek of a
baby so many women strove to keep. Lochs of shimmering brown hair
framed her features in the early morning breeze. She looked like she
should have been a model of some kind, the eyeliner and mascara
applied to draw out the crystal blue hue of her irises. Those eyes
burned into Andy's as she looked at him for a third time. He ignored
her as much as he could, the image of her face still on the inside of
his eyelids. He watched her take a sudden right about a block down
and dismount from her bike. Andy flicked his cherried Camel into the
parking lot and slipped back into the laundromat through the flimsy
glass doors.

“Did she go
by?” Steven asked, perched upon the edge of the machine he
used.

Andy nodded. “She
parked her bike just a block down.”

“Good, I was
a little worried she had turned,” Steven commented. He jumped
off of the shaking device. “Alright, so I need you to stay here
and look like we didn't abandon my laundry. I am going to tail her on
foot.”

“Why don't I
tail her?” Andy asked.

Steven made a face
like he was about to say something that Andy wouldn't like and that
he didn't much like thinking about it. “To be honest, I'm
worried you won't know what you're doing,” he replied.

Andy felt like
replying that he had killed more men than Steven ever shook hands
with, but he bit his tongue.

“Once a face
is seen, it is stored in a person's short term memory. Like the
history on an Internet browser,” Steven started explaining.
“When that same face is seen again, it resurfaces in their mind
and they suddenly focus on it. It becomes more interesting than we'd
want to be. It only draws attention.”

It made sense.
“Okay,” Andy said, a little late to interrupt like he
wanted. “Go.”

Thirty minutes
passed while Andy finished the laundry and then waited around the
idle machine, hoping Steven would return at any point. Once it had
become obvious that he couldn't stay in the laundromat any longer, he
pulled out his cellphone and called the contact labeled “Data.”

“What?”
Steven answered the phone.

“I can't stay
here. The laundry is done,” Andy explained.

“Get in the
car. It's unlocked. You'll find the key behind the brake,”
Steven directed, wind ripping past him and into his speaker. “I'm
going to keep at this for a while. Drive home.”

Andy didn't like
it, but he eventually agreed. Grabbing the pile of warm linen off the
top of the drier, he pushed out the glass door and drove back to
Steven's house with a little luck. He fell asleep.

-Chapter Five-

Circumstance

“How did it
go?” Andy asked several hours later when Steven arrived back at
the house.

“Really
good,” Steven said. “I'm starting to learn about Flynn's
routine at the least, but I can't be certain from just one
observation. I want to try again tomorrow morning. Same time as she
left today.”

“Alright,”
Andy said, and asked no more of him. Steven was no doubt exhausted by
now and he could find out what information he had collected after a
well-deserved nap.

Again, he dreamed.
This time he was looking at his own face in the mirror. The features
had been sanded off, nothing about him more distinctive than anybody
else. He even had trouble recognizing himself. All he could really
see were his eyes and the black rings that had begun to develop
around them.

Rolling waves of
sadness hit him, one succeeding after the other. Each one hurt worse
than the last until he forced himself away from the reflection that
he hated so much. From there he started walking down an elongated red
carpet that stretched from the bathroom, down the hall, and into a
large cathedral-like chamber. The carpet became more worn and hideous
as he got nearer and nearer to its end. Once he found himself there,
before him sat a large wooden throne.

The throne was
Gothic in appearance, the arms raised up on twisted and gnarled
looking sticks, designed by nature to be despised. The wood itself
looked deader and darker than any wood he had ever seen. He knew that
it had not been finished that way either; it was crafted by the
divine just for him. He took a seat at it and felt all the horrible
feelings that lived in the arms crawl up onto him and burrow into his
skin. He felt worse than when he was staring at his reflection.

Upon his touch, the
seat lowered a crown onto his head. Its material seeped down on his
hair and suffocated his nostrils. It was made of excrement, the only
fitting crown for him. It felt familiar and he welcomed it even
though he hated it as well. It only reminded him of his sadness and
justified it all for him. There was no pity he felt for himself; only
punishment.

A photo of the
young Haley Flynn was smashed and defiled at his feet. He dared to
look at it and it stole him. Upon his gaze, the woman in the
photograph started losing all of her color. As her hair began falling
out in clumps, her skin began to rot and she twisted into an
unrecognizable corpse. That killed him. There he broke down, sobbing
for the first time he could remember.

He cried over the
jet black suit that he wore, staining it with the crimson blood that
flowed from his eyes. Every drop changed the tone of the material and
soon he was sitting in a suit of dripping blood. His uniform of evil.

He couldn't take it
any longer.

Slipping his bare
feet into the most evil looking pair of boots he had ever seen, he
fled from the chamber. Fled from the carpet. Fled from the throne. As
he ran, he tore off his crown of shit, increasing in speed until he
was in a full blown sprint. He rushed out of a door and came out into
a courtyard.

In the middle of
this vibrant lawn sat a crystal blue pond. On the shore nearest to
him was a lamp post, illuminating the night time ripples that ran so
elegant through the otherwise still waters.

This was it
,
he decided.

Off slipped his
boots by the shore as he tested the water. It was cool, feeling as
relieving as aloe on a burn. The burn that was his accursed
existence. At that moment he decided that he would drown himself in
the pond. No more would he sit on his throne or wear his crown. That
was not who he wanted to become. He would much rather die.