The Solitude of Passion (59 page)

“
Shit
,” I hiss.

“You baby. Nothing wrong.” She looks over at Colt and surmises the same minus the name-calling. She invokes her singsong tone once again as she speaks to the gunmen and points toward the hall. Mei pulls a scalpel from her pocket. In one swift move she creates an incision along her forehead.

“Stop,” I bark.

A seam of crimson trails down her check and corrupts her crisp, white uniform by way of red flecks. She does the same to the arm of one of the guards.

She speeds out something to Gao then turns to me. “Get out! Nice see you. Now go. No come back!”

Gao leads us out the hall until we come upon a door held open with a bucket. Mei must have known the floor was being cleaned—either that or she planned our escape like a prison mastermind. We run into an alleyway before Gao slows down out of breath.

“I go back. Goodbye, Mitch. Mitch brother.” He gives a half bow to each of us.

“Why?” I try pulling him with us.

“More work. Thank you for beautiful thing. I see you.” He points skyward, squeezes my hand with both of his.

The sound of footsteps, clutter the night. An entire army is about to materialize at any moment. This is it, fight or flight—prison or Lee.

“Gao, no!” I try to latch onto him, but he breaks free from my grasp.

“Goodbye, Mitch,” he shouts, bolting back in the direction of the detention center.

The area explodes with shouting.

“I have to get him,” I start to take off just as a shiny black shoe steps out from beyond the bushes—stops me dead in my tracks.

“Are you fucking nuts?” Colt pulls me back by the shirt, but something in me stalls.

Out from the brush emerges the familiar frame of a man. He wears a navy suit, slick gold tie, patent leather shoes—I know that face.

“Dad?” My heart races as I take a step forward.

“Dude, let’s go!” Colt’s voice elevates with panic.

“He can’t see me, Mitch.” My father gives a placid smile. “It’s over now. Lee needs you at home. There’s no reason for you to be here.” He nods with a touch of sadness in his eyes. “Go on. Get out of here. Go home on your own terms. Lee needs you to save her, one last time.”

Colt rains down expletives around me, but my ears are stopped up with the wonder of seeing my father. I’m immovable as stone. Tears flood my vision. My lips twitch out of control as a baseball-sized lump of grief lodges in my throat.

“Why did you hurt us?” I whisper. Of all the things to say, I suppose it was the least productive.

“I’m afraid I don’t have a good answer for you—just know that I’m sorry. If I could do it all over again, I’d do it different. But I wasn’t offered a second chance, a chance to ask forgiveness—to forgive, a chance to say goodbye. I wasn’t one of the lucky ones.”

“Let’s do this,” Colt drags me down the dirt path as my chest heaves from holding back tears.

My father fades into the scenery, until he becomes clear as velum.

“I forgive you,” I try to shout the words, but they come out less than a whisper. Something tells me he still heard.

Colt whisks me down the road without my permission as my father’s words siren through my skull like a warning, a salve.

Colt and I run through a series of narrow alleys. We climb over a chain link fence until we hit the general population. Colt finds an abandoned water bottle, and we wash our wounds before ambling along slowly as if nothing ever happened.

We finally hit the harbor, sacked and rundown like a couple of glorified carcasses. My father’s image is still fresh in my mind. I forgave him. It felt like a boulder moving off my chest just like it did when I made amends with Max after all these years.

“Shit,” Colt hisses as we hit the junk boat. There’s not a sign of our luggage anywhere near Gao’s boat.

“That’s why we took what matters,” I say, pulling him back up the pier. Colt and I still have our wallets, our passports—
ourselves
. We don’t hang around. We walk until we find a cab and head for the airport.

It’s time to get home to Stella, to
Lee
if she’ll have me. And, after the stunt I just pulled, it feels rather doubtful.

Max

Hudson and gold-tooth-Duane participate in a shoving match, exchanging a few words before Candi removes the keys from my brother’s pocket, and she and Duane take off in Hudson’s car. That should teach my brother for disabling a getaway vehicle.

Hud doesn’t put up much of a fight. He simply kicks his way into the house, cussing at jet engine decibels.

I walk out and meet him in the entry.

“What the hell.”

“Came looking for you,” I say, holding up a beer. “This is better than cable. You should sell tickets next time. So who’s the asshole with the gold tooth?”

“Some shit she’s been seeing.”

I don’t say anything about Mitch and his description of the bastard that shot him. But something doesn’t make sense.

“You friends with that guy?”

“Why would I be friends with him?” He picks up the piano bench and hurls it at the mirror, sending glass shards raining down with a crash. He speeds off down the hall in a tirade.

There’s something odd about Hudson—something more brewing here than just Candi’s Hollywood exit.

“Are you high? Dude, what are you on?” I quicken my gait and track him down to the kitchen where he’s on his belly digging in a cabinet next to the dishwasher.

“You’re not gonna help, so I gotta help myself.” He pulls out a wad of bills in a plastic bag with duck tape securing the middle. “Bingo.” He waves the money at me like he just caught a trout. “My secret stash.”

“I can’t
help you because I can’t help
myself,
” I bark. “In fact, you should hand over every damn dollar you’re hoarding, so I can pay the electric bill over at Shepherd.” I leave out Townsend. Although, the idea of Hudson helping out either of my businesses is a joke at this point.

“Now…” He holds up a hand. “I recall you threatened to call the cops on me.”

“Might not.” I’m pretty sure Lee will once I tell her about my new friend Duane.

“Might. That’s a loaded word, little bro.” He picks himself up off the floor. “One day you’re going to look back and remember all the things I did for you.”

“Like?”

“Like giving you Lee on a silver platter.” He pulls out a pocketknife and examines it in a stream of sunlight.

I don’t even ask the question.

“When Mitch came looking for you at some party back in high school, I pointed him in your direction. Personally, I was sick of listening to the two of you jawing over her, but when I saw you take her to the room, I was damn proud of you buddy.” He slaps his hand over my shoulder. “Too proud to keep it to myself. Had to find Mitch and share the big news.”

Hudson.

I close my eyes a moment. “That didn’t give me Lee.”

“Nope.” He glances up from polishing his knife. “You were too stupid to hold onto her.”

“I got her back.”

“Until Mitch showed up again.” He blows hard against the blade.

“She’s still with me.” I’m not cluing him in on the big powwow the three of us had the other night—or my borderline pleasure of watching Mitch walk off the plank on his way to China.

“We’ll see.” He shrugs. “I tried taking care of things for you. The guy’s got some nether-world missile shield around him. Impenetrable—he’s an immortal or something.”

“He’s mortal all right. You jacked him up pretty good. He’s got a banged up arm to prove it.”

“I’m no more guilty than you are.” His brows rise as he settles those red-laced eyes over mine. “We didn’t pull the trigger, now did we?” His lip curls on the side.

Shit. “I gotta go.” I make tracks for the door.

All those years—all that torment of losing Lee—losing
Mitch
, it was orchestrated by Hudson and his backward intentions—all to hurt Mitch and exalt me in the process like some fornicating frat hero.

Stupid.

That’s Hudson in a word.

Lee

Steve arrived late.

The babies are tucked safe and sound and, more importantly, healthy in the NICU. Each one of them is thriving and breathing on their own. They’re beyond adorable, each wrapped like a burrito with their pink and blue caps pulled over their little blonde heads. Kat is passed out for the night, so I take off.

The sun melts over the horizon, leaving trails of burnt orange lingering in the sky. Instead of veering toward the coast, I head over to Townsend field to see if Max is still there, maybe surprise him with a little more than a kiss.

I glance back up at the ever-darkening sunburnt sky. There’s something odd about it, ominous even. Everything about the stale, silent world outside my windshield is reminiscent of the last time we lost Mitch. I’ll never forget the horror of hearing how they found him. How a fire had ripped through the car he was in—
supposedly
in. I wonder what it’ll be this time. A bullet? A plane crash? A knife to the throat? They all feel like real possibilities—nefarious promises. Something doesn’t feel right. All these unsettled feelings, the unexpected birth of Kat’s babies, the fact Max and I haven’t talked since this morning, which isn’t normal for us. Something is definitely off. The charred sky knows something, and for once I want in on all its damn secrets. A warning siren goes off in my belly, and I want to know just what the hell this impending doom is. I don’t like not knowing, I don’t like suspense or decision-making. I was never a fan of those chose-your-own-destiny books in school.

I glare up at the invisible eye of God. “That’s what we pay you for,” I hiss. We pay in trust and honor and all those noble things my parents taught me before You snatched them back. I glance at myself in the rearview mirror. There I am. Haggard. Older—tired beyond measure. I'm rattled—unsettled by something mysterious that hangs in the air like a sickle.

I pull into the empty lot that lends an incredible view of the fields.

No sign of Max, but that doesn’t stop me from getting out of the car and taking on the angry sky in a shouting match.

“Where are you?” I bark it out at the red-faced universe, but really it’s the creator of all this madness I’m pegging with my anger. It feels good to scream—cleansing on some level. “I told you I couldn’t make a decision!” My entire body starts in on a series of convulsive shivers, despite the molten heat permeating me like a membrane. All of this vitriol brewing inside me, it wants to spew from me like vomit—it demands to. I’ve become a kettle, the lid rattling just before it blows. If I leave all of this toxicity in my bloodstream for another second, I’m going to die from the poison, right along with my child. “
You
were supposed to be in control!” My voice echoes off the fields like a song. “Where are You?” It comes out shrill, a scream rising in octaves that never lets go. “You failed me because you’re nowhere. Get down here—do something if you’re real. I’m so tired of breaking everybody’s heart. I want some action. I want it
now
. You hear me? Do You fucking
hear
me?” A hollow whisper pulsates through the air. My voice reverberates off the landscape as if mocking me, so I fill the silence once again. “Answer me, damn it. Right this second. I
demand
an answer!”

A roar erupts from behind. A loud rush of wind ignites to my left, and I look over in disbelief. Row after row of vines light up like torches. A line of fire races along, swift as a stream, taking down the crops like dominos. In less than ten seconds, Townsend field is in flames all around me. It burns with vigor, with a vengeance that only the danger of a fire can provide. A choir of dancing flames thunder and snap, all in my honor. I had the audacity to take on God, defame Him with my insolence, and the punishment is proving swift.

The heat permeates my clothing, sends my adrenaline into overdrive.

Dear God Almighty.

I’ve damned the whole place to hell.

Mitch

The souvenir kiosk is bustling as I sift through the mediocre offerings just prior to boarding. A small snow globe with the great wall encapsulated in a plastic bubble garners my attention. Looks odd yet amusing, so I clasp it in my palm. I think Eli might like it. He can hurl it at Max every now and again, probably me, too. I move over to the dolls—tall ones, small ones, porcelain, plastic. I hold up a bright red geisha for Colt’s opinion.

“I’d do her.” He’s thumbing through the x-rated postcards, to use as a “bookmark” he claims. The fact he hasn’t picked up a book in a decade doesn’t seem to factor into the decision-making process. In his defense, he might have meant picture books.

A plastic kabuki doll garners my attention—all the inconspicuous drama locked in her face, her sideways secretive glance, it lends a sense of mystery—but it’s the paper rose she’s clutching in her hand that has me mesmerized. It has so much meaning. I have to get it. I don’t ask for Colt’s opinion, just pay for my trinkets.

The overhead speaker goes off and announces the boarding for our flight.