Deadly Expectations (70 page)

Andre started to come to comfort me those nights I couldn’t sleep.
 
At first I just felt him in me, telling me to stay angry, to keep him close.
 
We would get our chance.
 
Me to get revenge on Damian for what he did to me and what he did to my sister.
 
Andre wanted to get revenge on his Lieutenant for being weak and being a coward.
 
But mostly because he just needed to.

The days became a week, then two.

The second time he came he sat at the table with me.
 
His uniform was dirty and smelly.
 
Mud was tangled in his curly blonde hair; his wire framed glasses were bent and cockeyed on his face, one eye looking sideways over the lens that was meant for it.
 
I wasn’t bothered by the deep jagged hole in his neck.
 
It had stopped bleeding decades before and the stain it had made on his clothing was brown and almost indistinguishable from the mud that covered him.

We would talk for hours.
 
About Alina, me, him.
 
I told him I was scared.
 
It just wasn’t worth it.
 
Damian had hurt my sister.
 
Hurt her so badly.
 
It was my job to let it happen.
 
To ensure that their child survived.
 
If fighting would cost me Paul then I didn’t want to do it.
 
Andre promised.
 
He would make sure Paul stayed away.
 
As long as I did what I was told Andre would take care of it.

He wasn’t always a killer.
 
He had been in love once before joining the army.
 
She had written him.
 
Pregnant by his brother.
 
She didn’t want him back.
 
Killing became his drink.
 
Every life he took erased another little piece of him and with it a little bit of the devastation he felt inside.
 
She said she would save herself for his return but it hadn’t taken her long to get in bed with someone else.
 
He should have married her before he left but she would have done it to him anyways.

Andre wanted to die every moment since he got her letter.
 
He would have cut his own wrists and bled to death at mail call but he believed that would be a sin.
 
So he embraced his work, hoping that death would find him doing something more honourable than crying over a Dear John letter from a worthless slut back home.
 
But Pilot had other plans.
 
He wouldn’t escape that pain until Pilot said so.

He didn’t want me to be like him, he explained.
 
He bore the guilt and remorse for the lives I had taken.
 
He needed it.
 
His little fix of dealing death to cope with the rejection he still felt.
 
But more than anything he was ready for death himself.
 
And peace.
 
And when Pilot’s task for him was done he would finally have it.
 
His task was to use me to finish off Damian.
 
I asked him if I was his puppet or he was mine.
 
He laughed.
 
Pilot was the puppet master.
 
We were both bound to his strings.
 
We would kill Damian together.
 
He would look after Paul.
 
And I would look after him.

So after three weeks of spending my days helping Alina relearn how to live and my nights helping Andre get closer to dying I put my head down on the table with exhaustion.
 
Andre’s rough hand rubbed my back; his calloused skin catching on the thin fabric of my shirt.
 
He whispered that it would be over soon, that he loved me for what I was doing for him.
 
He was the only one who would stick with me until the end.
 
I fell asleep wondering if I had gone insane.

Chapter 51

I woke up alone in my own bed in my little basement suite.
 
Night time.
 
Dark.
 
The only light came from the hall.
 
The little rechargeable emergency light Alina had sent to me two years before.
 
If it was on then the power was out.
 
My arms ached from the death grip I had on my pack.
 
I quickly went through it in the hall and found everything there.
 
My phone wouldn’t turn on; I had left the charger in the hotel and had been gone for three weeks.

Alina was dealing with the aftermath from Damian’s attack alone now.
 
She had been from the night it happened; the night I took the man from the mall.
 
I started to shake inside knowing I couldn’t talk to her.
 
Couldn’t let anyone know about her son.
 
That was my fault too.
 
She was on her own again.

I felt my way to the kitchen as my eyes filled with tears and panic started to build in my chest.
 
Ray would have to call Paul.
 
They could have been looking for me for weeks.
 
I felt along the pegs above the counter by the door and took the one off the third hook.
 
There was fresh snow on the ground and it froze my bare feet as I hurried up the black path and let myself in Bee’s door.

Inside was just as dark as outside.
 
No street
lights.
 
No numbers on her VCR.
 
I crept as silently as I could through Bee’s living room and past her closed bedroom door.
 
Tears still moved down my face and I kept my breathing quiet as I passed through into the kitchen.
 
Then cautiously around her table and chairs.
 
I knew where everything was but I was still careful.
 
If I kicked a chair I would wake her up and she would rain fire on me.
 
I held my hands out before me for the door to the little hallway that branched off to her back porch, the bathroom and the stairs up to Ray and Denis.

The next thing I knew I slammed into the wall, my arm shoved painfully up my back.
 
Cold metal pressed hard and twisted angrily just under my ear.

“Don’t move asshole,” someone breathed into my other ear, “or you’ll break your own arm.”

“D … Denis?”
 
My
voice shook with the sobs I had been holding and fear
in response to his sudden move behind me.

As quick as he had grabbed me he let me go and put his arm around me.

“Oh, shit, Anna,” he said, “I’m so sorry.”

“Denis,” I said again, “where’s Paul?”

“Denis?”
 
Ray’s voice upstairs then I could hear him coming down.

I put my arms around Denis and held on, shamelessly crying now.

“It’s Anna,” he said.

“Kiddo?”
 
Ray asked.
 
He peeled me off Denis and held on to me.
 
I could hear a snap as Denis put his gun away.

“Call Paul, my phone’s dead and I’ve been gone for weeks.”

“I’ll get her downstairs,” Ray said, “get your phone and meet me there.”

“Okay.”

I heard Denis go up and Ray and I went back through the house.
 
Denis caught up to us before we got to my open door.
 
Ray took me down to my room following Denis with a flashlight.
 
I could hear the beeps as he dialled through the speaker.

“Yeah?”
 
Paul had been woken up.

“John, it’s Daniel,” Denis said.
 
“Rachel is here.”

“Uh,” he grunted.
 
I could hear the phone on his whiskers as he rolled over.
 
“She’s here in bed with … Rachel?”

“I’m here,” I said as I started crying again.
 
“I woke up here.”

“John,” it was Ray, “can you get back right away?”

“
Rach
?”
Paul said.
 
He sounded wide awake now.
 
“How did you get there?”

I was still crying.

“She says she woke up here … was gone for weeks … I don’t know,” Ray said for me.

“I’ll be on the road in ten.
 
Love you
Rach
… I’ll call when I’m in the truck.”

Denis stayed with me while Ray risked another trip past Bee’s door for the first aid bag.
 
He sat beside me on my bed holding me and let me sob all over his shoulder.
 
I had settled down a bit by the time Ray returned.

“I want to give you something to help you sleep,” Ray said.
 
Even in the dark he would know where everything was in the bag.

“No Ray … I don’t want to sleep more.
 
I don’t know where I’ll wake up.”

“Please Anna, you’re falling apart.”

“You know sometimes I just need to cry, if I needed sedation I’d be hysterical.”
 
I pushed the words out between heaving gasps for air, my bottom lip flapping on my teeth when I inhaled.
 
I backed into the corner of my bed and wedged myself in between the headboard and the wall.
 
Denis’ phone rang and he went down the hall to take it.

Ray crossed his arms.
 
I heard shuffling at the end of the room and in the light from the hall I could make out another man there, standing between the dressers.
 
Light coming in along the door hinges caught a lens of his glasses and winked at me.

I won’t let you go anywhere,
Andre said,
we need to keep it together.

I nodded in the dark.

Don’t go soft on me,
he sounded angry
.
 
They’ll sedate you … keep you from getting revenge for Alina.
 
They don’t understand what you have ahead of you like I do.

I sucked in air for a huge shaking sigh and tried to pull myself together.
 
Ray was right.
 
I hadn’t slept well at Alina’s and could use a rest especially if I was still seeing Andre, but not the kind of rest Ray wanted.

“No,” I whispered to Ray.

The power came back on as Ray was getting what he would need out of the bag anyway.
 
I looked to the end of the room and Andre was gone.
 
I could still feel my chest heaving trying to cry.

The vial Ray had out didn’t look like the morphine or the
Gravol
we had given Paul.

You’re right,
Andre said from somewhere
.
 
They gave you something else at the hotel.
 
They lied.

“No,” I said again firmly this time keeping most of the shaking out of my voice.

He watched me for a minute then put the things away.
 
I pulled the blankets up over my mouth and concentrated on breathing into them.
 
Andre was right.
 
They would try and stop me.

“I want to be alone Ray,” I whispered.

He was still sitting on the bed with me when I fell asleep shoved in my corner.

“I couldn’t find her gun,” Paul was saying, “or her wallet and passport, bunch of stuff.”