Kick (The Jenkins Cycle Book 1) (30 page)

Never before had the hand that guided me from body to body moved in ways less mysterious than it had this time, and here I’d squandered every chance given to me. By all accounts, the world had lost a wonderful person. If not Nate, who else would dole out millions in lottery winnings to needy kids? Who else would call Tim “Big Bro?”

I had no voice because I had no larynx, but somewhere inside me I shouted,
I’m sorry! Nate, I’m so sorry!

Moments later, within the confines of my no-dimensional prison, a door opened.

***

Oh, hell no.

It was another one-off doorway with that same sense of invitation surrounding it. Just like last time, I gathered I’d be somehow welcome if I reached out to it.

I’ve developed a theory about these one-offs, though a self-serving one. It goes like this: there’s a difference between the soul and the human brain. The brain tells you you’re hungry, you’re tired, you should go to work every day, check your mail, that kind of thing. Base things, everyday things, just enough to get you from point A to point B without screwing up too much. The soul, on the other hand, is more like a distillation of you in your entirety. If it were a single word, it’d be the one word that best described you. So if you helped little old ladies cross the road and never ate with your elbows on the table, yours would be a golden word imbued with wonder. Alternately, if you were a serial killer who never recycled, then yours would be a bad word indeed, full of sinister meaning and dark portents.

When these doorways open, part of me thinks they’re advertising to me, saying, “Hey, I heard you’re an ok soul working for the Big Guy, so come on in.”

Instead of reaching out, this time I decided to wait for it to go away. I’ve let them leave before—usually after a particularly annoying trip. Like that time I’d wound up in the body of a four hundred pound slumlord who liked to burn his buildings down while his tenants were sleeping. Normally I could have handled the weight, but the son of a bitch lived on the fourth floor of his own building and hadn’t fixed the elevator in three months. Or the air-conditioning. And he had cats—mean ones who knew I wasn’t their master. When I finally pulled a belly flop off the balcony I took two of the mangy critters with me.

Unlike the other times I’d ignored a doorway, this time it didn’t go away. No sweat off my back. With nothing better to do, I resumed my sitcomathon. And, yes, I was kidding about the cats.

Probably.

***

Hiding somewhere in the fifth season of
M*A*S*H
, I felt a strange sensation, almost like a pulse—from the doorway. When it happened, the images playing through my mind intensified, a thing I never would have imagined possible since my memories were already so vivid. For the first time in my experience, I couldn’t distinguish between the reality and the memory. I
saw
my sister sitting next to me that night in front of the TV, laughing as Hawkeye played yet another trick on Hotlips Houlihan. And I didn’t just remember her laughter: I
heard
it with ears I wasn’t supposed to have.

Then the moment passed and everything went back to normal. The experience had been brief, lasting no more than a few seconds. I didn’t have adrenal glands so my heart couldn’t pound or my muscles seize up in terror, but a feeling that had never existed in the Great Wherever filled its place: uncertainty.

The Great Wherever, as much as I hated it, was something I could depend on no matter how weird things got back on Earth. But this strange behavior from the doorway… it scared me.

I shifted my attention back to it and noticed it was a little less
there
than it had been originally.

Hey!
I willed toward it.
Where do you think you’re going?

Just like that, the doorway came closer. If it had a tail it would have wagged it.

I wondered what that meant. I got Nate killed and now he wanted me for another job? Again, I recalled my mistakes with Nate and Erika and the whole Centreville disaster. Every one of them avoidable if I’d been born with the requisite character to do so. For once in my life I wanted to do the right thing, even if it didn’t involve working an angle for myself. Life wasn’t just about pie and chocolate milk, dammit.

I’m putting my faith in you
, I willed outward, and hoped it would hit the person in charge of all this.

Only partially wondering if there’d be chocolate milk and pie waiting for me on the other side, I reached…

***

Light snoring. A moment later, I realized it wasn’t mine but the person next to me, in bed.

A quick, frantic check confirmed there were no handcuffs on either myself or the small-framed person sleeping beside me. Also, nobody was pointing a gun at anyone. Both great omens.

The room was dark, so I couldn’t get a good look at her, but the meager light coming from outside revealed medium length blond hair and fair skin.

Carefully, trying not to wake her, I slipped out of bed and headed for a door leading to a short hallway. The house wasn’t very big—certainly nothing like Nate’s Fortress of Awesomeness. No, this looked to be a small, humble house with a lived-in and well-loved look. Wholesome and good.

Visible by a single, amber nightlight, I could see a collection of photos along the wall. Lots of pictures of the kids playing at the park with mom and dad or out in the yard eating hotdogs or playing catch. Great kids. Great mom. Sandra looked beautiful. A little older. More mature, but never fading. And she seemed happier with Peter Collins in every picture than any day spent with me.

I couldn’t believe it. I’d come back in the body of Peter Collins. The guy I hated in college, and more recently, chased through a parking lot trying to frighten to death. It wasn’t fair to me, it wasn’t fair to him, and just how in hell was it fair to Sandra?

Then the second realization hit me: Peter lived somewhere in the Centreville area. For the moment, I pushed off thinking about that. Too much.

I looked at more pictures. Sandra with Peter, my old rival. She looked so happy, almost like a different person. He did too. So why on Earth did he waste his time with Tolstoy in some miserable coffee shop when he had such a wonderful family at home? He always was a putz. Rather than feel good for them, instead I felt a wave of jealousy so intense I had to steady myself against the wall.

Then, inexplicably, I got kicked.

What the hell?
I wondered, recovering.

Somebody up there needed a reminder on how this worked. I show up, hunt around for clues in doughnut boxes, movie theaters and coffee shops, and then go home in a few weeks for a long, quiet weekend. Kicking so soon—it had never happened before.

I passed the kids’ rooms and a bathroom on my way to the rest of the house. On the dining table rested a purse, a set of keys, a wallet and a cell phone. I checked the purse and noticed another phone tucked neatly into a small pocket. I picked up the one on the table.

Since the late nineties, breakthroughs in cell phone technology had made my job so much easier. Voice mail, call history, the local time and a calendar had removed a lot of the complexity of getting around in a strange body. And these days, phones even came with neat video games. I opened the phone and checked the time. 1:07 a.m. When I checked the date I nearly cried out. Not a single day had gone by since Erika killed her Hun Bun. Unless the clock on the wall or the time on the phone was wrong, I’d been gone for about three minutes.

I felt light-headed. The kick, the clock and the calendar, all of them came together in a perfect storm of rare and much needed clarity: Erika. Back at Nate’s. About to find Tim and kill him, possibly—and the tape, to destroy it, definitely. I was still in the game. I cast a prayer out to anyone listening to help me. I didn’t pray for time because I had all I’d get.

And the clock was ticking.

***

I didn’t know where Tim or Rob lived. I didn’t know where Peter lived. Maddening. This was stuff I could have figured out before it was too late. Instead, I had jewelry to buy and strip clubs to go to.

From the laundry room, I secured a pair of dark pants and a white t-shirt. Luckily, Peter’s fascination with everything Japanese turned a risky return to the bedroom into a simple walk to the front door, where I found four pairs of shoes lined up in a neat row. Just looking at the shoes together—the little ones next to the big ones—brought back a shadow of jealousy. Peter had managed to find peace in this world when so many of us had not.

Hooray for him.

After grabbing his keys, I slipped out of the house as quietly as I could through the sliding glass door in the kitchen. You could never trust the front door of an unfamiliar house to pull open silently.

Peter lived in a tight row of townhouses, all of them small and maybe fifteen to twenty years old. I didn’t recognize the neighborhood, but felt confident I’d be fine as soon as I got to a major road.

I wandered down the sidewalk clicking the “Lock” button until I heard a
chirp
and saw a car blink its parking lights. Peter’s stupid hybrid.

I slipped in, belted up and made my way out of the neighborhood. I hooked a left for lack of a better direction, and then another left into familiar territory—about a quarter mile from the coffee shop where I’d exacted my juvenile revenge on Peter, and about four miles from Nate’s house.

I tore down the road on my way to Nate’s. There weren’t any police along the way, which suited me fine. I refused to drag Peter into this in any official capacity.

If I got to the house and found Rob’s gun missing, that would mean Erika still planned to go through with her threat to kill Tim. If that happened, I’d call 911 from Nate’s house and say a crazy woman named Erika was on her way to kill Tim Cantrell, brother of Nate Cantrell, and no, I didn’t know where Tim lived. Then I’d hightail back to Peter’s place and hope I hadn’t left behind any evidence.

As I neared the road into Nate’s wealthy neighborhood, I saw a pair of headlights pause briefly at the stop sign and then turn left, passing me. I recognized the silver Passat immediately, as well as its blonde and often beautiful driver. Erika didn’t look very pretty at the moment—face all squinched up, brows furrowed. She glanced my way as I passed but showed no signs of recognition. Why would she? I was just some guy in a car. I considered following her but stopped myself. Peter could get hurt. If she had Rob’s gun, she’d shoot anyone in her way.

Reluctantly, I continued to the house and parked.

Rob’s home invasion had ruined the door, splintering the frame from the latch all the way up. Unable to lock it, Erika had settled with simply pressing it shut. From outside, you’d have to look close to see the door wasn’t flush with the jamb.

I looked around. None of the neighbors’ lights were on. Honestly, since arriving last Saturday I hadn’t seen any neighbors, at least not on this street. In a rare moment of insight, I considered Nate’s tastes. Nate liked pizza and Ferraris and hiking—he wasn’t the McMansion type. No, if I were to bet on who picked out the house, I’d put my money on Erika.

Perfect place for a murder.

I went in.

Chapter 33

The main floor looked the same as the last time: a messy post-wedding disaster area. There was probably something to say for not having to clean up in the morning, but my heart just wasn’t in it.

I climbed the stairs and proceeded to the master bedroom. There, I found the doors opened wide, terrorizing my hindbrain with the smell of blood and excrement. Willing myself forward, I stepped into the room.

“Oh, man,” I said, softly.

Seeing it all from a new angle put a ghastly perspective on things. The sheets were filthy from the blood oozing from the wound in Nate’s side. His head rested flat on the bed, fuzzy cuffs securing him to the steel headboard.

Rob had clearly soiled himself after falling. To my regret, I saw the wound in his face. The bullet had taken Rob high on the cheek, parting the skin immediately around the entry wound like a split plum, revealing a shatter of teeth and bone and dark red blood.

I felt bad for Rob. If what he’d said about his childhood were true I could almost understand his actions tonight. I knew he’d be judged for his crimes, but not by me. For my part, I wished him peace.

Rob’s gun was still there.

When I stepped around the bed and saw Erika’s gun resting on the carpet where she’d dropped it, a wave of relief coursed through me. Tim would live through the night.

When my eyes swept back to Nate, I saw his head tilted my way. He was looking right at me.

“Who… are… you?” he said, in a raspy voice full of pain and confusion.

I screamed something, then fell backward and tripped, crashing to the floor. My heart hammered in my chest hard enough to crumble a sidewalk.

How’s he still alive?

I hadn’t realized it was possible to be kicked so soon from a living body.

Maybe something to do with the minister?

There was so much I didn’t know, even after all these years. Until Nate, I never would have suspected I could come back in the body of an innocent.

Nate’s eyes had closed, but he was still breathing. I knew exactly jack and squat about first aid, but I had to do something. I rushed downstairs and recovered the packing tape I’d used to reseal Erika’s boxes, lifting it with a finger through the hole so as not to leave prints. Then I ran to the powder room and grabbed a towel. When I got back to the room, I put what I had on the bed and tucked in my t-shirt. Then I slipped a pair of Nate’s socks over my hands. I didn’t want anything of Peter’s touching the bed if I could help it.

I managed to get a four-inch stretch of tape started off the spool and fought to keep it from curling back and sticking to itself. I folded the towel into a dense, even-sided square and pressed it to Nate’s wound. Then I taped it in place. Everything was too wet and messy for the tape to do much more than keep the towel from moving. Hoping the worst field bandage ever would hold, I hurried to Nate’s wardrobe and returned with a leather belt.