His Frozen Heart (18 page)

I nodded. “He said he did, but I don’t
know for sure. Libby’s still unconscious. The doctor said her brain
is bruised, so they induced a coma to help her heal.”

“
You’re not going back to
your place tonight.”

“
I know. I’ve already made
other arrangements.”

His eyes were fixed on mine. “Cancel
them. You’re staying with me.” I wanted to argue, to tell him I
could take care of myself. But when I looked at the lines etched in
his face, the expression wasn’t one for me to fear: it was an
animalistic, protective look. Unexpectedly, he reached across the
front seat and gently took my hands in his. We sat there motionless
for several minutes with him stroking my hands with his fingertips
before he leaned toward me, gathered me in his arms, and pulled my
head to rest against his chest. Dave murmured, “We’ll figure this
out. I promise to keep you safe.”

Thinking back to the Dave I had known
in high school, he had always come across as sort of a hollow
person, an exterior shell that could have completely caved in on
itself in a strong wind. This man holding me in his arms wanted to
protect me. He wanted to be a safe harbor, and my ship had seen
enough turmoil for one day. I allowed my body to go limp in his
arms, to feel the rigid strength encircling me.

After several minutes I eased away
from his protective embrace to look into his eyes. “You’re sure?
This isn’t your problem.”

Dave pursed his lips together then
answered, “It’s mine if I make it mine. We’ll stay at my garage
tonight. Let’s go.”

I shook my head, “The cops are
probably staking your garage out.”

“
We’ll drive by. If we see
any patrol cars, we won’t stop. If no police are around, we can
park your car inside the garage.”

The one thing that kept bothering me
as I pulled the car out of the convenience store parking lot was
the image of Dave at Bank Shot last night. I had talked to him.
Could I have been mistaken? This morning when I met with him, Dave
was adamant that he hadn’t been there, and that was before he knew
any of the events that had happened last night. I wanted to believe
him, but I couldn’t afford to let my guard down.

As we turned on a main street headed
toward his garage, I asked, “The part I don’t get is, I am sure I
saw you at Bank Shot last night. I even talked to the guy who
looked like you.”

I glanced at Dave. He didn’t seem
suspicious or at all on the defense about my revelation. He just
shook his head and said, “Well, unless his name was Mark, you might
have had too much to drink.”

Without a second’s hesitation, I
slammed the brake pedal all the way to the pavement. My Chevelle
gripped the asphalt hard as the lapbelt held me firm against the
seat and I used my arms to cushion my face against the steering
wheel; Dave’s head crashed hard into the windshield. Without so
much as a glance in his direction, I killed the car and bolted out
the door, running down the street like a mad woman. I was a full
fifty feet down the sidewalk before I heard his heavy footsteps
giving chase.

I screamed for help as loud as my
voice would allow, as frozen tree branches whipped past my head. We
were in a residential neighborhood with cars parked in driveways
indicating people were in their homes.

His voice boomed behind me, “Wait!!
Candy, wait! Holy shit, you saw Mark?! Candy, stop!”

My chest was tight as the arctic air
burned my throat. My eyes watered from the cold, and my heart
thundered in my chest. He was only a car length behind me and
gaining ground with every stride. He would catch me if I didn’t do
something quickly.

I was approaching a two-story brick
home where I saw movement inside. Running at full speed, I
propelled myself off the sidewalk to try to cut through the lawn to
get to the front door. The foot that launched me off the sidewalk
slipped on a spot of ice. Before I could even try to high-step
through the deep snow on the lawn, I was on my back, looking up
into the black sky above.

It took a millisecond to realize I was
on my back only yards away from safety when Dave grabbed me and
held me on the ground. His voice raw and his breathing labored,
“You saw Mark? He’s here? When did you see him? Candy, where’s
Mark?”

Confusion overwhelmed me. Dave didn’t
think he was Mark. His eyes stared down into mine while he grabbed
my arms, holding me firmly in place in the snow. “Oh, my God, you
saw Mark. You saw him and thought he was me. Holy shit, Candy, you
saw my brother.”

Dave’s expression was full of joy. I
wasn’t able to form a coherent sentence as the front porch lights
flicked to life on the house while I lay helplessly on their
snow-covered lawn. A man in his mid-forties stood at the opened
door and called out, “Are you okay out there?”

I opened my mouth to scream again, but
when I did, Dave did the most unexpected thing: he leaned down and
kissed me. Not a romantic, “I’ve been waiting for you my whole
life” kind of kiss, but a kiss full of nervous energy. It
completely disarmed me. I wasn’t capable of thought, much less
speech. When his lips released mine, his brown eyes were staring
down into mine accompanied by a smile bright enough to light the
night’s sky.

In a daze, all I could choke out was,
“Your brother? I didn’t know you had a brother.”

He must have decided his quick action
had not only stopped me from screaming, it had bamboozled me enough
to keep me from making an escape into the safety of the stranger’s
house. Dave rolled off of me and stood, holding out both of his
hands to lift me to my feet. The homeowner still stood in his
doorway, but no longer worried that I was being attacked. Instead
he gave us a look that silently said, “Yeah, I remember being your
age.”

Dave held up a hand. “We’re fine. She
just slipped. It’s a little icy out here.”

Concern colored the man’s face, “Is
she all right? She’s not hurt, is she?”

I shook my head, “No, I’m
fine.”

My breathing was erratic from the
sprint. I wanted to put my head between my knees to catch my
breath, but Dave wrapped his arm around me and started ushering me
back toward my car. “Walk it out, we need to move your car before
someone hits it.” Not waiting for me to catch my breath, Dave
asked, “You met Mark? What did he say?”

In my rush to escape, I had left my
car in the middle of the street, keys in it, with the driver’s door
wide open. If someone hadn’t yet called the police or stolen it, it
would only be a matter of time. Dave’s excitement was evident as he
continued asking questions I could only nod or shake my head to
because I was out of breath. “Was he looking for me? Does he live
here? Do you know how I can reach him? What did he look like? Did
you tell him I lived here?” I kept stealing glances at him. He
looked outrageously happy, trying unsuccessfully to keep a
goofy-looking grin off of his face in between all the questions.
There was a cut on his forehead, and he used his coat sleeve to
wipe the blood that was dripping down his cheek.

I tried to make sense of what he had
said. Mark was his brother? How did he have a brother he’d never
mentioned and I’d never met? Mark knew Teddy? Teddy called Mark
“Boss.” The man who was waiting in my house to finish me off this
morning knew Mark? By the time we reached the car, I was still
breathing like I had finished an Olympic sprint, so the questions
sailing through my head were just stuck there. Dave let go of me
about ten feet before we got to my car. No doubt he had just as
many unanswered questions as I did.

He wiped his head a second time, this
time smearing the blood that had already collected on his coat. He
looked like a really bad Halloween decoration. As we approached my
car, I noticed that in addition to the small hole with spider-web
like cracks around it on the driver’s side of the windshield, I now
had a matching spider web on the passenger side of the windshield
where Dave’s head had bounced off.

Despite all the questions in my head,
the only thing I asked was, “Do you want me to take you to the
hospital. It looks like you need stitches.”

“
No. I’m a fugitive,
remember. I can clean this up at my apartment. Let’s
go.”

Chapter 12

Since his revelation that he had a
brother, Dave hadn’t said much of anything on the drive over. He
was lost in his own thoughts and didn’t seem to want to let me in.
We pulled up in front of Dave’s garage. I had planned to park on
the street like I did at my house, but he motioned for me to pull
into the driveway. “Hold on. Let me go in and open the door. You
can park in the left bay tonight. I don’t want anyone to see your
car outside.”

It took him little time to unlock the
front door, go inside and open the large bay door on the left. A
purple custom car was in pieces in the front of the bay. The flared
fenders and boxy frame gave no indication as to what the car might
be. Dave motioned for me to pull in behind it. He guided my car in,
and when I got out to inspect his guidance, I saw that my car’s
bumper was less than a frog’s hair away from the other car’s back
bumper.

“
Are you sure I’m not too
close?”

“
What, you think it’s going
to roll back tonight?” Since the car pieces I had parked behind
were just that – pieces, not even attached to a frame with wheels,
I agreed that it was unlikely to scratch my bumper.

In the light of his garage, the wound
on his head was clearly a gash; stitches weren’t an option – they
were a necessity. He pulled off his bloodied coat, grabbed a greasy
rag off of a bench and held it to his head. The sight of blood had
never bothered me before, but the torn flesh exposing his skull was
another story completely. I motioned for him to take a seat near a
bench, “Hey, we’re going to need to call the
paramedics.”

He lifted the disgusting cloth away
from his face as a second wave of blood flooded down over his eye.
He quickly replaced the rag, “It’ll be fine.” His excitement was
evident, “You’re sure you saw Mark last night? He’s in the
city?”

Tentatively I answered, “Yeah, I
thought it was you. He looks just like you.”

“
Everyone used to say that
when we were little.”

The cloth in his hand was soaked. Less
interested in helping coordinate a family reunion, I told him,
“Look, I’m going to call an ambulance. If you lose much more blood,
I’ll have to take over around here, and no one will want me fixing
their cars.”

His free hand grabbed my wrist. “I
said I’m fine. What did Mark say? Does he live here?”

I shrugged my shoulders, “He didn’t
say.”

“
Well, what did he
say?”

“
I already told you: he
made fun of that Teddy guy for losing to Libby.”

“
That’s it?”

“
I thought it was you,
Dave. The fact that you were telling me to call you Mark was weird,
so I didn’t get wrapped up in a big conversation. He said something
about being there again next Tuesday night. What’s the big deal?
You haven’t seen him in a while?”

A solemn look gripped Dave. “You could
say that.”

“
When was the last time you
saw him?”

“
I don’t know. A long time
ago.” He pressed his lips together like he was trying to keep words
from spilling out. He lifted the rag again, and although it was
saturated, blood was no longer oozing from his head. “I’ve got to
go upstairs and take care of this. I’ve got a first aid kit in the
bathroom.”

A first aid kit? He was in for a real
shocker if he was planning on Neosporin and a Band-Aid. “C’mon up.”
Without so much as a backwards glance in my direction, Dave tucked
behind a Coke machine that hid a staircase.

One of my jobs was as a housekeeper
for a couple bachelors, so I assumed all single men lived like
pigs. As I emerged at the top of the stairs, I was shocked to find
an apartment that was spotless. A bright chandelier hung in the
center of the room and lit the tiny room up like a carnival. Framed
posters of cars were hung on the walls. A sofa and recliner faced a
large screen television along one wall. A second wall was lined
from floor to ceiling with cabinets – enough cabinet space for a
commercial kitchen. A dinette with two chairs was tucked in close
to a refrigerator and efficiency stove. On the far end of the room
stood a massive king-sized bed, which also faced the over-sized
television. Next to it was a Bo-flex machine wedged into the
corner. There was no dresser and no obvious closet: it looked like
a big open room pretending to be an apartment.

There was one door off to the side
that must have been a bathroom because Dave disappeared into it as
soon as he climbed the steps. Water ran inside, and I expected Dave
to come marching out ready to take me up on my offer to go to the
hospital at any second.

Minutes passed. The water that had
sounded like a sink’s faucet stopped, but was replaced by the sound
of a shower. I looked around awkwardly, wondering where he kept his
clothes. Without purposely trying to be nosey, I opened one of the
kitchen cabinets along the wall. Perfectly folded t-shirts stood in
a pile on one shelf, boxers on the shelf below, and socks in a
plastic tub on the shelf even with the floor. I moved to the side
and opened another cabinet: precisely folded jeans were piled up
side by side on the shelf at eye level. Who used kitchen cabinets
for a closet? I went down the line opening each cabinet: one held
magazines, another blankets and sheets, a fourth one pillows. I had
to admire his ingenuity. I counted the cabinets: there were eleven
across, with two stacked on top of each other – a brilliant way to
store things in an apartment which was probably never intended to
be living quarters.