A Guardian Angel (9 page)

So much money,
Andy contemplated. Wealth was Graves' greatest weapon and his
ammunition was boundless.

“How do you
know so much?” Andy was curious. He finished his drink.

Haley smiled,
trying to pull off a humble demeanor. “Well, I mean, I am
pretty good at my job,” she explained. Andy waited for further
elaboration, but she said nothing about her brother in the police
department.
Good,
he thought. Andy had become worried at how
much she was willing to reveal to him.

In as much of a
joking tone as he could pull off, Andy commented, “I'm
surprised they haven't tried to kill you yet.” It tasted bitter
on his tongue.

Haley laughed with
modest volume in response. “To be honest, so am I,” she
joked back. “No, actually I do my best not to tread on any
toes. I keep pretty quiet and I'm sure I'll go by unnoticed until I
can finish my report and have it published. By then, I'm sure I'll be
in a much safer position.”

Just then the food
arrived, a good excuse for them to turn merry instead of worrying
about such evil things. It was a delicious, meal, during which Andy
learned about Haley's brother, Jacob, from her own lips. Andy could
focus more on the date after getting so overcome by crucial
information. His mind grinded its gears in thought as he contemplated
it all. It became hard to focus, but he managed. She explained her
love of her bicycle and how she used to want to be a long distance
cyclist. Her bike was named Douglas after her favorite writer. It had
been a gift to her from her now dead uncle who she spoke fondly
about.

With the meal
depleted, they left the restaurant and stepped outside in the cool
Lumnin air. It had chilled a lot while they were inside.

“You're not
ready to go back home, are you?” Haley asked Andy. She noticed
him checking his watch.

With a startled
look, Andy replied, “No.”

“Good,”
she grinned. Her eyes squinted from the upward motion of her cheek
muscles. “I'm having too good of a time to end it now.”

Andy looked down
the street, circles of light burning down from the lamps to break the
monotonous dark. “How about a walk?” he suggested. Haley
nodded with her enthusiastic, childish manner.

They talked about
so much as they strolled down the sidewalk. They laughed about an
Italian couple who emerged from a cafe shouting at each other in
their native language. Together, they bought a homeless man a
sandwich and some soup and left him twenty dollars. It was something
Andy knew he should do every time, something to make a habit of, but
it just never crossed his mind until Haley bent down and started
speaking to the homeless man. A light drizzle of rain began once they
passed a drunk falling over his friends, and Andy made the offer to
take her home.

“You afraid
of a little rain, Andy?” she asked with a smart tone.

“No, just,
you know,” Andy said, not sure if he knew what his point was.
“If it's gonna rain.”

“If it's
gonna rain, then I guess we're gonna get wet,” Haley said.
“Come on.”

She grabbed onto
the front of his jacket and pulled him across the street to a little
park. It had a tiny creek somewhere along the edge of it and trees of
all sorts. The little lamps staked into the grass looked like warm
beacons in a dark black sea. Haley kicked off her shoes and carried
them as they walked.

“You're not
gonna wear your shoes?” Andy asked.

“No,”
Haley answered. “The wet grass, the little pitter patter of
rain on the top of your feet. It's all kind of like being free, you
know?”

Andy perked his
head up a bit. He felt like he was having
Déjà
vu.
“Free?” he echoed.

“Yeah,”
Haley said. “Kind of like walking around naked in the sun. Or
making a fool of yourself and not giving a damn. Freedom.”

Andy supposed he
never really thought about freedom and where it comes from. Haley
seemed to suggest that it was something we all were born with, and
even in the worst of oppression, there were ways to express it. Like
with bare feet.
Is
that what this is?
Andy wondered.
Is
being with Haley my freedom? Can I have this forever?

The
look Haley gave him set his heart aflutter. In all
his
life, he couldn't recall anyone looking at him that way, with daring,
squinted eyes that gleamed like the pearl white smile below. That
loving gaze. He could feel it warming in his chest.
Why
was she so beautiful?

When they finally
emerged from the trees, Haley supported her head on Andy's shoulder,
and he rested his on top of hers. It was almost like hugging and
walking at the same time, knotted up together in impractical style.
He held onto her hand and she squeezed it like a pulse. When Steven's
car came into view, the two of them sighed. They stopped and stared
deep into each other's eyes in silence. Minutes bled on.

Haley offered,
“Would you want to come to my place?”

More than
anything in the world,
Andy thought. But reluctantly, he said, “I
can't.” He couldn't endure anymore of this feeling he had. Of
wanting to stay with her and run away from the rest of the world. To
ignore death knocking on the door. She looked disappointed. “I'm
sorry.”

“It's okay,”
she said with genuine warmth. She looked up at him with her
crystalline eyes, stepping close. “Call me.”

“I will,”
Andy promised.

She kissed him.

-Chapter Eight-

Lumnin's
Finest

Dreams swam through
Andy's mind as he lay asleep, disheartened. This time Andy was on
stage, playing guitar and singing Baba O'Rielly to a crowd of
featureless faces. He wasn't doing too bad. Once the song concluded,
he stepped off of the wooden platform and headed through the club
rather than back through the bowels of the backstage labyrinth. Many
people congratulated him on his performance, some requesting
signatures and photographs, others throwing out their affection for
him. He must have been a big deal.

You must be a big
deal, Andy thought to himself, in order to wear an overzealous red
suit like he did. His custom made black leather cowboy boots were the
only thing breaking his entire red attire. He looked and felt like
hot shit. That was only reinforced by the multitudes of unfamiliar
faces appreciating him aloud.

He walked past them
all and stepped outside into the empty streets, eager to leave his
fans behind and get on with his night. He wanted to be alone. His
performance had lacked in his opinion despite what anyone else told
him. He hated doing covers.

“Hi,” a
fragile voice came from the side of the door. Andy was surprised by
it and turned fast to see a small nine-year-old girl sitting
passively on a green metal bench.

“Hello
there,” he said in hope that that was going to be the end of
the conversation. It wasn't.

“I'm your
biggest fan,” she told him. Her tone, however, seemed unexcited
upon meeting him.

“Oh really?”
he said, sounding interested. “Well, what's your name?”

“Haley
Flynn,” she told him with apathy.

“Well,
Haley,” Andy started, walking over to her and getting down on
one knee so that his gaze was level with hers. “I'm your
biggest fan.”

She smiled,
overjoyed. Andy felt proud of himself as he patted her head and
turned away. He started to walk to the park across the street.

“Please don't
kill me,” she said.

He stopped for a
moment and looked back at her. Nothing came to mind when he searched
for a response. She just stared at him indifferently as if nothing
had happened, and after a moment, he turned away and continued his
stroll.

Nothing gave peace
to his darkened heart quite like the park at night. It seemed empty,
almost as if it only existed for him at that moment, waiting for him
to visit and welcoming him with warmth when he did. The trees
assembled in gnarled attention for him. He almost wanted to offer
them to be at ease, but he knew nothing could change their respect
for him. It was returned.

But it wasn't the
trees he came to see. There was a small pond hidden off of a trail
near a tiny pedestrian bridge that was his favorite place to slip
away from the world and reflect on himself as a human being. And
finally he had found it.

As he slipped off
his boots, he stared into the water's surface. He saw stars in the
reflection. He watched the moon dance in the delicate waves. Only
here could he see all of the universe and feel like the only one in
it. Like he was lost to the rest of existence and no one could come
find him, even if they wanted to. He was glad no one wanted to. It
gave him comfort rather than made he feel lonely. It rebalanced him
so that he could eventually go back out into the sea of gibbering
idiots.

He dipped a toe in
and was shot in the back. He witnessed the bullet exit his chest in
horror. There was nothing that he could do now except fall into the
water, never to resurface.

Steven had drunken
himself into a minor coma by the time Andy had awoken in the late
afternoon. Andy did nothing to wake him and instead left with his
car. The keys were in their usual spot.

He pulled up in the
alley beside Jacob Flynn's house and shut off the engine. He sat,
pondering in the dull silence of the driver's seat, wondering why he
had come here. He had all of the information he could get at surface
value. Anything that could be inferred from observation, from lurking
in the shadows like he did now. It was all at his disposal. All he
had to do now was call her. No, he admitted, he knew he wasn't taking
notes while he was here. There was nothing he wanted other than to
see Haley Flynn. All he needed was to know what she was still okay.

It was a while
before he saw her in the bedroom with the large, exposed windows. She
was wearing a girlish blue collar shirt over a pink tank top,
carrying a suitcase that she tossed out of view. She then disappeared
behind the wall after it, leaving Andy by himself.

He pulled out his
cellphone and dialed her number by memory. It rang twice before he
could see her pop back into view with her phone to her head. Her lips
moved out of sync with the words, off by just a fraction of a second.
“Andy! How are you?” she greeted.

“I'm good,
how are you?” he replied. He kept an eye on her just as she
slipped back out of view from the window.

“Great,”
she breathed. “I've made such a breakthrough with work. Do you
want to go out tonight?”

“I'd love
to,” Andy said quite honestly, “but I have work to do.”
He wasn't lying.

“Oh, man,”
Haley groaned. “Because I'm flying out to deliver my report in
like literally a few hours.”

Andy could feel the
warmth in his flesh decrease. Raising an eyebrow, he began to feel
dread. “Really?” he said.

“Yeah, Andy,
I'm so sorry,” she answered. “I was able to finish up my
report and I need to bring along some of the evidence I've gathered.
I won't be coming back.”

Then he felt it.
Crushed into the corner he felt he could not escape from. The light
of hope had ceased even being small beams that broke the darkness.
There was nothing but fear now as his realization carved into his
brain. It etched like the chiseling of a tombstone. Either he or
Haley Flynn's fate will be sealed tonight. One of them must die.
There were no words, nothing he could manage to say, nothing that
could blink onto his consciousness so he hung up the phone and then
turned it off. He pulled out of the alley and fled, scaring himself
half to death when he accidentally cut off a police cruiser.

He sped up to give
it room when the siren flared up and the lights started flashing.
Andy pulled over to the right in front of someone's yard. The cop car
pulled in behind him and then sat there. It laid still for quite a
while, its siren silent but the lights loudly danced through his back
window. Finally, an officer stepped out.

He rapped on the
driver side window. Andy let it down.

“Officer, I'm
sorry for cutting – ” Andy began.

“Do you know
how fast you were going?” the officer interrupted. He was a
strong-jawed white man with a furry black caterpillar asleep above
his lips. Or so it looked.