Noble Beginnings (10 page)

I raced down
I-495 doing close to one-twenty. The Audi rode as smooth as it did when it
cruised at eighty. I took the second exit and pulled into a residential
neighborhood and turned on a couple of random streets until I found a cul-de-sac
with two empty lots and two houses under construction. I swung the car around
and backed up, leaving the car facing toward the road.

“Christ, Jack.
Think I have a concussion now.”

I laughed as I
leaned across the front seat and fished through the glove compartment box for a
flashlight. I stepped out and turned the flashlight on and coerced Bear into
moving his hand away from his shoulder. The wound was deep, but clean.

“Doesn’t look
like it got any further than the muscle. Rotate your arm?”

Bear grimaced
as he lifted his right arm and twisted it. “Yeah, nothing’s broke.”

“We need to get
that taken care of. Tonight.”

“We can’t go to
the hospital, Jack. Feds’ll be on us in a heartbeat.”

“Yeah, I know.”
I looked up at the clear sky. The lights from D.C. drowned out the sky to the
northeast, but above us, the moon shone bright and strong and beyond its white
ring of light, stars dotted the sky. The cool night air washed over my face,
stinging the cuts and scrapes I received while running blindly through the
woods. “I need to clean these up, too.” I ran a hand across my face.

“What are we
going to do then?”

I hesitated. “I
know a place.”

“Where?”

“I think,” I
paused a beat, “I think that it’s best you don’t know until we’re close.”

I drove without
stopping for close to three hours. The clock on the dashboard said the time was
after twelve in the morning. We crossed into the city limits of
Charlottesville, Virginia. Shopping centers with empty parking lots lined the
main road through town. Cars huddled around late night restaurants and bars.
Neon signs announced their presence.

I pulled into a
twenty-four hour gas station and stopped the car next to an outward facing
pump. I placed the gas nozzle into the Audi’s fuel tank and clicked the handle
to auto pump. I walked inside the convenience store, grabbed a four pack of
water bottles out of the fridge and filled a 20 ounce cup with fresh coffee.
Hunger pains attacked my stomach, so I milled about a few minutes looking for
something to eat, ultimately finding nothing. I stepped up to the counter where
a freckle-faced teenager with red hair and a name tag that read “Stan” waited
behind the register. He asked me how I was doing without bothering to look at
me.

He grabbed the
water bottles and scanned them. Looked at the coffee and punched a couple keys
on his register. He looked up at me with a nervous tick of his head that threw
his hair to the side and out of his eyes.

“That all?”

“Gas at pump
three.”

He looked at
his display. “It’s not finished pumping yet.”

“Guess we’re
waiting then.”

He rolled his
eyes and looked away, adding a sharp click of his tongue to further express his
annoyance. He walked away, pretending to attend to something else, anything to
avoid dealing with people, I supposed.

I leaned back
against the counter and looked around the store, taking note of all the
security cameras. There seemed to be an overabundance of them.

“Have a lot of
trouble with robberies here?” I said.

“Huh?” he said.

“The cameras.”
I pointed to the four cameras positioned throughout the store, mounted to the
ceiling.

“Nah, maybe
just college kids stealing stuff.”

I nodded
slowly. Time dragged. “Gas done yet?”

He walked back
over, looked at his screen. “Yeah. Total’s forty-three fifty.”

I handed him
three twenties and waited for my change.

I stepped out
into the cool night air, put the coffee and water in the car and scanned the
parking lot. There was a payphone butted up to the corner of the store.

“I’ll be right
back, Bear.”

Two directories
dangled from the base of the phone. I grabbed the white pages and thumbed
through it, tearing out a page when I found what looked to be the correct
listing. I needed a map, so I went back into the store and asked the kid if
they had any regional map books. He pointed to an aisle full of books,
magazines and car accessories. A large regional map book of Charlottesville and
its surrounding areas sat next to a rack where the top of every magazine in the
row was covered except for its title. I searched the directory in the back of
the book, found my street and ripped out the corresponding page.

“Hey,” the kid
said. “You can’t do that.”

I walked to the
door. “I’m sure the cameras caught it, kid. You can report it.”

He yelled again
as I pushed through the door. I paid no attention to him. Got in the car and
started the engine. Backtracked half a mile and took the bypass around the
city. Hopped onto I-64 for a couple miles then exited into a residential area.
I turned on the dome light and compared the street names with the map in my hand.

“Where’re we
going?” Bear asked. He held his right arm tight to his chest. It had been
partially numb for the last hour. I began to worry he suffered nerve damage.
Not a good thing for his career.

I said nothing
and kept my speed steady at forty miles per hour while checking the names on
the street signs of every neighborhood we passed. Finally, I found the street I
had been looking for and made a right turn into the cookie cutter neighborhood
full of two story colonial style houses. It looked like the builder made three
models available and decided to follow a model a, then b, then c pattern during
construction. I pulled over to the side and stopped next to the curb. The page
torn from the white pages sat on my lap. I found the address and compared the
house numbers, then turned off the dome light and pulled away from the curb.

“Jack,” Bear
said, half question, half demand.

“Jessie,” I
said.

Bear laughed
for the first time since being shot. “Kline?” He shifted in his seat to look at
me directly. “Jessica Kline?”

I hiked my
shoulders a few inches and looked away.

“After what
happened to you two?”

I said nothing.
After another thirty seconds, I found the house number I’d been looking for,
drove half a block past and parked the car next to the curb.

*
* *

We stood on the
front porch for five minutes staring at the red door. Bear leaned back against
a post running floor to ceiling, clutching his shoulder, a look of pain spread
across his face.

“Knock on the
damn door, Jack.” His breath formed mist in the air, rising up, enveloping his
head before disappearing. “C’mon.”

I leaned
forward and rapped on the door with my knuckles. A moment later a light flicked
on inside. I heard hands tap against the door, the way they would if someone
leaned up against it perhaps to listen for a moment. The porch light turned on
and the door cracked open as far as the security chain lock would allow it.

“Who’s there?”
Jessie asked.

I took a step
back and moved over so she could see me through the crack in the door. Our eyes
met and locked in a stare that only two former lovers could share.

“Jack?”

“Hey, Jess.”

“What’re you
doing…? Is everything OK?”

“Yeah. No. Can
we come in?” I turned sideways and nodded toward Bear. “He’s hurt.”

“Riley?”

“Heya, Jessie,”
Bear said.

Jessie closed the
door. I heard the sound of the security chain sliding in its lock, and then the
door reopened. She stepped back. She wore a white t-shirt and blue sweatpants.
She smiled and tucked strands of her dark brown hair behind her ear while
extending her other arm in a “come on in” gesture.

I took a step
in and stopped in front of her and stared into her dark brown eyes. Opened my
mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I had no idea what to say.

She was the
first to break off the stare.

“Oh my God,”
she said. “Riley, what happened to your shoulder?”

“That something
you can take care of?” I asked.

She nodded.
“Yeah, we get a few gunshot wounds into the ER. I’ve assisted with enough of
them to know what to do.” She started toward the other side of the room. “Come
to the kitchen.”

We followed her
through the foyer and living room to the back of the house. Bear entered the
kitchen first. The room was painted off white, with a tan tile floor and
stainless steel appliances. Dark wood cabinets stretched along three walls and
a decorative blue tile back splash stretched between the cabinets and dark
granite counter tops.

“Sit,” Jessie
said, pointing toward the kitchen table. She turned and rifled through a couple
drawers under the countertop.

Bear took a
seat. I leaned back against the fridge.

“Jack,” she
said. “Above the fridge, in the cabinet, grab a bottle of whiskey. Put it on
the table.”

I did as she
said, taking a pull from the bottle before setting it down in front of Bear. He
let go of his arm, grabbed the bottle and took a pull himself.

Jessie turned
in time to witness Bear taking a drink. Her lips stretched into a frown.
“That’s for your arm.”

“You don’t have
anything else?” Bear asked.

She nodded. “Of
course I do. This will numb it a bit, though.” She lifted a pair of scissors
and cut his sleeve off. She dabbed peroxide onto a hand towel and wiped the
blood away from the wound area, then poured peroxide into the hole in Bear’s
arm.

Bear flinched
at first. His face twisted. A moment later he eased up.

Jessie waited until
the white fizz from the peroxide settled down, then opened the bottle of
whiskey and poured it into the wound.

Bear grimaced
and groaned.

“Works fast,”
Jessie said.

He nodded and
sighed.

I reached for
the bottle to take another drink. My hand was met by Jessie’s as she slapped it
away.

“I’m not done,”
she said.

She grabbed a
pair of small forceps off the table. “Riley, grab hold of the table and your
chair. Squeeze tight.”

He did. His
large knuckles turned white.

“Don’t break
her chair,” I said.

Neither of them
said anything.

She placed the
forceps against the open wound and Bear jumped an inch.

“Steady, Riley,
steady.” Her voice was low, breathy, soothing.

A shiver of
remembrance traveled down my spine. Why I hadn’t tried to call or reach out to
her during the past five years?

“Now I’m going
to extract the bullet,” she said. “You ready?” She looked up at Bear.

Bear nodded and
forced a loud exhale. He rolled his head to the side and then sat up straight.

She expertly
guided the forceps into the wound and grabbed hold of the slug buried in Bear’s
shoulder, eliciting a groan from the big man as she gripped and pulled the
bullet out.

“All done,” she
said as she dropped the bullet into a glass tumbler. “OK, now I’m going to
clean this out and stitch you up.”

I stepped out
back while she stitched Bear’s arm. The cold air hit me with more force than
earlier, perhaps an effect of the whiskey, not that I’d had all that much. But
it had been such a long couple days that the warming effect of the alcohol
gripped me much sooner than it normally would have. I glanced up at the sky,
figuring I would get a great view of the stars out here in the country. No such
luck though, as gray clouds had overtaken the sky.

The door opened
behind me and Jessie poked her head out. “All done in there. Want to come back
in?” She smiled. The gesture relaxed me.

I followed her
back inside, through the kitchen and into the den. She clicked a black remote
and the TV turned on, tuned to one of the twenty-four hour news stations. The
sound was low and I couldn’t make out what was being said. I didn’t need to
hear it, though. A familiar face appeared on the screen in the form of a
picture.

Delaney.

“Christ,” Bear
said.

I shook my
head, knowing what was coming next.

The picture of
Delaney shrunk and moved diagonally down to the side of the screen. My picture
was shown next with the words “Armed and Dangerous” flashing underneath and the
words “Person of Interest” in a smaller font below.

“Well, at least
they got part of it right,” I said, turning to Jessie and Bear. “I am a pretty
interesting guy.”

Bear laughed,
Jessie didn’t.

“Jack,” Jessie
said, her voice trailing off at the end. “What’s going on?”

I reached out
to her. “Jess, you know what I do, right? The whole reason we split up is
because...”

The remote
dangled from her hand. Her mouth opened, a stutter escaping every few seconds
in place of a response.

“Jess, I’m
being…we’re being set up. That man, Delaney, he was trying to help us. We met
at a park. He had information.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the
carbineer with the key hanging from it. “This key, Jess, whatever this key
unlocks will give me the information I need to clear us.”

She shook her
head. “Get out.” She rose. “Get out. Now. Both of you. Leave.”

I got up and
placed my hands on her shoulders. She tried to squirm away.

“Look at me,
Jess. Look in my eyes.”

She stopped
shaking her head and lifted her chin, her eyes meeting mine. We engaged in that
familiar stare again that said too much had been left unsaid, left undone.

“It’s me, Jess.
Jack. Look at me and tell me if I’m lying.” I looked between her eyes. “I
didn’t kill Delaney. I’m being set up. The last seventy-two hours have been a
cat and mouse game and I’m the mouse.” I paused. “Believe me?”

She shook her
head. “I don’t…I don’t know, Jack. You come in here. Bear’s all shot up—”

“What happened
to ‘Riley’?” Bear said.

“— and now
this? I just…” She sat back down and curled one foot under her, looked up at
me. “I believe you, Jack.”

I pulled the
wooden coffee table closer and sat on the edge and took her hands in mine.
“Thank you.” I squeezed her hands. “I’m sorry to have dragged you into this.
Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you’re—”

Her phone rang
and I shut up and we all turned toward it.

“I better get
that.” She stood, grabbed the portable phone and disappeared into the kitchen.

*
* *

The news
coverage continued for another thirty seconds without providing much
information. A good thing, I figured. It meant they know much, or someone
hadn’t fed them much. Yet.

Bear turned to
me. “Christ, Jack. We’re done for.”

“We need to get
a hold of Abbot. He can stick his neck out for us.”

“The mountains
are right there,” he said pointing over his shoulder. “We can hide out for a
few weeks.”

I shrugged and
said nothing while waiting for the commercial break to end and the news to
return.

Jessie returned
a moment later, holding the phone out. “It’s for you, Jack.”

I grabbed the
phone from her hand.

She continued.
“Who would know you’re here?”

I shook my head
and held the phone to my ear. “This is Jack.”

There was
nothing but silence.

“Hello?” I
said.

“Yeah, Jack?”

“Who’s this?”

“This is Jack
Noble, right?”