Slow Burn (8 page)

I looked around again. There was no one here.

I was freaking myself out for no reason.

I unlocked the driver side of my car.

I looked around again.

“Get a grip, Leigh,” I said. The only way I was going to be able to shake this fear was to prove to myself that everything was okay.

I opened the door and got out of the car.

I didn’t hear the bullet, but I felt it.

It punctured my chest. It felt like being hit by a train. It pushed me back into the car. I fell back, and my head glanced against the emergency brake. For some reason, that pain seemed sharper and more intense than the one in my chest.

I was bleeding. I was bleeding a lot.

I wanted to scream, to call out. I wanted to laugh at my own stupidity. Why had I gotten out of the car when Griffin told me not to? But all of that was fading quickly, swirling away from me. I was being funneled down into a dark hole, like...
Alice in Wonderland
...

I smiled. I liked that story.

But no. I needed to be thinking about doing something. I’d been...

What had happened?

Everything was warm. And dark. And quiet.

That was all I knew.

Chapter Five

I woke up with a start. I was lying crumpled in my car, my legs dangling out of the open door. There was blood all over my shirt and the seat. It was on my hands. It was spattered on the inside of the windshield.

If it weren’t for the serum that my father had given to heal me after that car accident, I’d be dead right now. But the serum made me invulnerable. I could be shot in the heart and still live. I’d known this intellectually. Experiencing it was something entirely different.

But the people in Operation Wraith knew that about me too. Why bother shooting me, when the only way to kill me was to sever my spinal cord and keep it from healing?

I sat up shakily.

That was when I saw Griffin and a man in the black suit in the parking lot in front of me.

They were circling each other, both holding knives.

I got out of the car. Oh God. Griffin had to fight this guy now, and it was all my fault. If I hadn’t run for cocaine, he wouldn’t be in this situation.

I bit my lip. I had a problem, didn’t I?

The man in the suit poked at Griffin with his knife.

I let out a little cry, worried about him.

Griffin turned at the noise. He saw me, but it meant that he was distracted long enough for the other guy to stab him in the shoulder.

Blood poured out.

“Sorry,” I called. I was really screwing everything up, wasn’t I?

“Sit tight and let me handle it, doll,” said Griffin.

The man in the suit smirked. “Doll? You were always too soft when it came to women, Griffin. It’s your biggest weakness.”

Griffin feinted left. “Your biggest weakness is falling for fake-outs, Matt.”
Matt blocked Griffin’s feint.

Leaving him wide open on the other side. Griffin stuck him in the neck with his knife. It was a quick motion, in and then out. Blood flowed out of Matt onto Griffin’s hand.

Matt stumbled, moving away. He put a hand to his neck, wincing. “You had everything, bro. You had the chance to do whatever you wanted, with no consequences, and you threw it all away.”

“The chance to be a killer?” asked Griffin. “No thank you.” He advanced on Matt.

Matt recovered, bringing up his knife. “How is Beth, anyway?”

Beth? Who was Beth?

Griffin charged Matt. “Leave her out of this.”

Matt sidestepped. “You’re a killer, anyway, you know. We saw what you did to James in Cumberland.”

Griffin caught Matt’s wrist and twisted, forcing Matt to drop his knife.

Matt swore.

Griffin tugged Matt’s body against his. He brought up his knife and slashed the back of Matt’s neck.

Then Griffin let go. Matt’s body fell to the ground, lifeless.

Griffin nudged Matt’s head with his foot, pushing it so that it bent forward, touching his chest.

I turned away. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t look at me. “I have to separate the wound or it will heal.”

I didn’t understand. “What?”

His shoulders rose and fell. He was breathing heavily. “If I cut off your finger, and I put it right back where it belonged afterward, it would heal. But if I didn’t, if I kept the flesh separate, you’d lose a finger.”

I thought I got it now. He was making sure that Matt was actually dead.

He turned to me. “Your car okay?”

I nodded. He’d saved my life. He’d killed a man, someone he knew by first name, and he didn’t seem the slightest bit upset about it. He frightened me. But I was also really grateful. If it wasn’t for him...

“We’ll take that, then,” he said. “I’ll put the body in the car I stole and hide it somewhere.”

He was all business. Two minutes ago, the broken, bloody thing on the pavement had been Matt. Now, it was “the body.” Of course, Matt had been trying to kill me. I guessed Griffin hadn’t had much choice.

“Get back in your car and lock it,” he said. “And this time stay there.”

“What does it matter if it’s locked?” I said. “That’s not going to stop a bullet.”

“No,” he said. “But if there’s someone else out here and he shoots you, it will make it harder for him to get at your body and cut your neck.”

I gulped. I got in the car and locked the door.

Griffin pounded on the window of the driver’s side of the car. I was sitting on the passenger’s side because my blood was all over the other side. I reached over and unlocked the door. He opened it, yanking a plaid blanket off his shoulder. He arranged it over the seat.

“Where’d you get that?” I asked.

“The car I took,” he said. “It was in the trunk. I grabbed it because I didn’t feel like sitting in blood. We’ll clean your car up properly later.” He sat down on the blanket.

“You think of everything, don’t you?” I said. The blood on my shirt was stiffening. Everything felt surreal. I could hardly believe that this had all happened. My life hadn’t been normal since I woke up after that car accident, but with every passing day, it got weirder and weirder. And Griffin didn’t help matters. He made things extremely weird.

He shrugged, starting the car. “I do my best.” He pulled out of the parking lot.

“You’re going the wrong way,” I said.

“I know that,” he said. “I can’t be sure that Matt was alone. Someone else might be following us as well. I’m going to drive off course a bit. If we have another tail, I’ll lose it.”

“So, you knew that guy? The one you just killed?” I felt a little sick at the thought of it.

“We were both Operation Wraith,” said Griffin. “Doesn’t mean we were friends.”

I twitched. “Does that make it easier? The fact he wasn’t a friend?”

He didn’t answer.

I stared straight ahead. The narrow road disappeared beneath the car. I watched the white line.

“They trained us to disconnect,” Griffin said suddenly.

I looked away from the road, at his perfect profile. His Adam’s apple bobbed.

“They taught us how to turn off our emotions,” he continued. “When your life is in danger, you can’t afford things like guilt or sentiment. You have to be sharp. You can’t let anything else get in your way.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “You planned for me to get shot, didn’t you?”

“I knew it was the best way to draw out the Op Wraith agent,” he said. “I knew it wouldn’t hurt you. If you’d been in the car, it would have gone a lot smoother. As it was, I was almost too late.”

“Sorry,” I said. And then I started to laugh.

“What’s funny?”

“Just the fact that I’m apologizing to a guy who got me shot. That’s kind of funny.”

“You’re fine.”

It was as though he’d turned off. The way he had at the party earlier. He’d shut down, become stone. It was as though he was two different people. My laughter grew more bitter. “I don’t think I’m fine.”

“Sure you are.”

“No,” I said. “No, I don’t think so. My father’s dead. I’m being chased by the men who killed them. I’m being protected by a guy who has no problem getting me shot, who’s able to turn off his guilt whenever he wants. I’m not fine.”

There was another long silence. I heard him draw several breaths, as if he was getting ready to say something. Then he would let them out, not saying a thing.

“I would never let anything happen to you,” he said, finally. “I need you to believe that. Do you believe it?”

“Why should I?” I said. “I don’t mean anything to you.”

“I promised your father,” said Griffin. “I owe him. He helped me get out of Operation Wraith, and I hated it there. You have no idea what that place was like.”

“Worse than prison?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Worse than prison, because in prison, you knew why you were getting fucked with. Everyone’s motives were clear. But in Op Wraith, they wanted to use me. They wanted to change me into someone else. Strip away who I was so that I could be a killing machine for them. They didn’t only teach us how to fight and how to fire guns. There was this psychologist we had to go to. She’d break us down, find out all our secrets, all the things we were ashamed of, everything that made us tick. And she used all that information to control us.”

“It sounds horrible,” I said.

“I came in there with memories,” he said. “People who hurt me. Op Wraith taught me how to turn any target into an old bully. So that when I took down the man they told me to take down, it felt personally satisfying every time. Like I got to kill that bastard over and over.” His knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. “I fight that. If I have to kill, I want to feel like I’m killing the person I’m actually killing, for the reasons I have to.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. I felt for Griffin. Not for the first time, I thought that his life had been needlessly difficult. I wished there was a way I could sooth him, make things better for him. But I had no idea what to do. I put my hand on his arm.

“Don’t.” His voice cracked.

“You killed just now because of me,” I said softly. “I know that. I know I can’t ever repay that. Thank you, Griffin.”

“You don’t gotta say things like that.” He pulled his arm out of my reach.

“I’m not saying it because I have to.” I leaned back in my seat. “All of this was my fault. I threw a tantrum, and I put myself in danger. All so I could get this.” I took the bag of coke out of my pocket.

It was stained in my blood. I found myself wondering if I could wash it off somehow. If the drug would still be good.

“I have a problem,” I said.

“The coke?” he said. “Yeah. You could say that.”

“I think I need help,” I said. “I don’t want to live like this anymore. If you’re going to keep saving my life, I want to have a life that’s worth saving.”

“That mean you’re going to stop fighting me on everything?”

For a guy who was feeling all uncomfortable with my gratitude, he sure bounced back quickly. But he was right, I did make things harder for him. And I was realizing that only made things harder for myself. “I promise I’ll stop fighting. I’ll wear boring brown clothes to class. I’ll come straight home. I won’t go to bars. And I’ll do my best to stop using cocaine. I want to be officially done. Go to Narcotics Anonymous meetings or something.”

“Okay,” he said. “I know some people it’s worked wonders for. Let’s lie low for a little bit, and we’ll figure out where the closest meeting is.”

I fell asleep in the car before we got back to Thomas. Griffin took us on a winding, roundabout course all over the area, apparently so that if there was anyone besides Matt there, they wouldn’t be able to follow us home.

Even so, once we were back in my apartment, we had to be careful. From the phone call they’d traced in Cumberland, they’d figured out the general area where I was. Griffin didn’t think that they’d narrowed it down too much, not if they only knew that I’d been buying drugs in Morgantown. But it was always better to be cautious, according to Griffin. So, we didn’t leave the house for two days. He said that if they knew where we were, they’d strike during that time, and if nothing happened, I could go back to class.

We spent that two days getting everything out of the apartment that had anything to do with cocaine.

Luckily, blow is not one of those drugs that requires a whole lot of accoutrements to use, so it wasn’t like getting rid of my whole life. But it wasn’t easy either. I did have two cute little coke spoons I’d gotten in Boston. They had to be thrown away. And I found lots of tiny bags stashed around the house. They were my emergency stashes, and I’d put them there a long time ago. They were there for the times when you get to the end of a bag, and you’re like, “Damn, I wish I had more coke. Just another hit or two.” I had made it so I always had another hit. Somewhere.

It took forever to find all of them.

Griffin helped. He wasn’t angry or anything, and he didn’t make fun. He just helped me clean things up. And when I reminded him, he helped me look for a Narcotics Anonymous meeting.

The closest place was Grafton. They had meetings on Thursdays at 7:30 at the Blueville Church of God.

We went.

The meeting was in a room they used for Sunday School or something. It had one of those felt boards up on the wall, with little pictures of felt Jesus and Mary and a whale. Maybe the Jesus was actually Jonas. Or whatever the guy’s name was who got swallowed by the whale.

There was a table in the middle with chairs. When I came in, only two people were sitting in them. They were two ladies in their forties or fifties. I wasn’t sure how old they were. They were both wearing too much makeup and clothes that were too tight for them. They smiled at me when I came in. One of them was missing teeth.

Okay. Wow.

So, when I moved to West Virginia, I have to admit I was a little worried because I’d heard stories about what this place was like. I thought it might be like
Deliverance
or whatever. But then I got settled in and everyone was normal. They were just regular people like me. They didn’t even have really strong accents. I figured it was bad press.