Vigilant (17 page)

“Kids?”

“Yeah older teens or something. But watch. It gets crazier.”

Ari watched as a guy rushed to the Vigilante, stopping his attack. The new guy had on gray sweats and a black jacket. His baseball cap fell to the ground as he challenged the Vigilante, revealing short cropped hair. His motions were fluid. Skilled. For a moment the kid might have had the upper hand, but the Vigilante did something totally out of character. He reached his hand inside his jacket.

“Oh my god, is that a gun?” Ari cried.

He leveled the gun at the man in the sweats, who stood before him with his hands up. He’d surrendered. What was the Vigilante doing? Why did he have a gun? “He never caries a gun,” she said. The man glanced upward he looked directly at the camera. His movement was enough for Ari to see his face. She gasped.

“I know him. He’s from the GYC.” Raising her voice she called, “Davis! Come here! Davis!”

“What?” Rebecca asked.

Before she could answer Davis stood by her side and also asked, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Alvarez,” she told him, pointing at the screen.

He didn’t reply but felt his body stiffen. They stood silently and watched the screen as the Vigilante ordered Alvarez down on his knees.

“What is he doing? What’s he doing?” Ari asked.

The Vigilante lifted his gun and held it to the boys head. Ari shifted her body toward Davis but couldn’t stop watching as the Vigilante fired the gun. Alvarez’s body rocked from the bullet and dropped to the ground. The screen went black.

“Oh!” she cried, pressing her face into Davis’s shirt. Rebecca ran from the room, slamming the door to the bathroom down the hall. The sound of her retching echoed down the hallway.

Davis gently pushed Ari back and walked away.

“Wait! Davis, where are you going?” Ari asked, following him.

Without responding, he walked out the front door, slamming it shut behind him. The glass shattered from the force, sending pieces down to the ground like hail.

* * *

“What happened here?” Nick stepped over the pile of swept up glass. The maintenance guy was in the middle of replacing the door. “Did the kids get in a fight?”

“Valid assumption,” Ari said. “But no. It just broke when someone closed it. The glass must have been faulty or something.”

Ari didn’t follow Davis the night before. The group was still in process and she couldn’t just leave. Holding back tears, she thanked the men from the GYC for coming. None of them realized one of their members had been just been executed on camera.

“Let’s go to my office,” Ari said to Nick.

Once the door was shut, Nick pulled her into a tight hug. “I’m sure you saw the news last night. About that kid from the Youth Center?”

Nodding into his chest, feeling uncomfortable with their closeness. “Yeah, I saw it.”

“Had you met that kid before? I know you have a student there.”

“His name was Oscar Alvarez. Oliver and I saw him fight. He was very talented.” Ari was surprised he fell to the Vigilante, but she supposed a gun outweighed even the most skilled hands.

“Guess the Vigilante isn’t such a good guy after all,” he said into her hair.

“No, I guess not,” she agreed. Ari pulled away and sat down. If the Vigilante wasn’t good, then what did that mean for her? The two times he’d saved her? The two different times she suspected he’d been in her room? She’d suspected Davis had been the Vigilante but now? It was impossible. Who was it? “I wonder what happened, why he used the gun.”

“Maybe he decided to finally show who he really is? Whatever he wanted to prove, the cops are all over this. He’s now considered armed and very dangerous. Their top priority.”

Ari stared at the pile of papers and files on her desk. Shanna’s was on top. She was willing to give her another chance but she had to track the girl down first. She was so close to graduation that screwing up now seemed idiotic.

“What a mess.” Ari had to admit her caseload looked more and more depressing. Hope and Shanna were missing. Maria was dead. Now Davis would have to go to another funeral. She thought about how upset and hurt he seemed yesterday.

“Hey,” Nick said, rousing her from her thoughts. “You okay?”

“Just thinking about how these kids seem to be drowning. Either running wild or being murdered on the streets. I keep trying to find a way to help, but nothing seems to work. It doesn’t matter what I do or you or Davis…we can’t save these kids.”

A line creased between Nick’s eyes. “Davis?”

“Yeah,” Ari said. She shifted around some papers on her desk. “I really should call him. He was here when it happened.”

“Here? With you?”

She fumbled around for the card with his phone number. She never saved it in her phone. That would have made it too easy. “A group of his boys came out to do a presentation for my self-defense class. Rebecca saw the video footage and called us over.” She found the card buried under a pile of messages. “If I could only find the phone.”

She rummaged around the desk. A pile of folders fell off the edge, revealing her phone. “Ah.”

“So you and this Davis guy have gotten close?”

The question startled Ari and she forced herself to act naturally. “I wouldn’t say ‘close’,” she lied. She started dialing the phone.

“You seem like you have a lot of work to do,” he said. Ari glanced up and noticed the tense line between his eyes was still there. “Can I come by tonight?”

“Sorry, I have so much junk to do today. Every day, I get further behind. But tonight sounds great.”

“I’ll bring dinner.”

“Thank you,” Ari said. Nick leaned down and gave her a kiss. Warm and soft. Something nice to hold onto for the rest of the day.

* * *

Peter waved Ari back when she entered the gym. No one was at the counter, but he and a couple of the guys took turns in the gym area pummeling the tar out of a weight bag. Loud, angry music played over the speakers, so loud it made her chest vibrate. She guessed that was one way to get out the aggression.

“I’m so sorry,” she said to Peter. “You let me know if I can do anything, okay?”

“Thanks.” He wiped the sweat off his forehead. “You looking for Davis?”

“Yes, is he here?”

“Go on back to his office. I’ll get him.”

Ari followed the familiar hallway to his office. She paused before opening the door, wondering what she was doing there. Where was this going? How did the lines between her and Davis get so muddled? Was she there as his co-worker or secret lover? Did she offer comfort with her body or a sympathetic ear?

Confused but determined, she pushed the door open. She stopped herself from sitting on the couch. After the other day, it seemed inappropriate. They’d crossed—no smashed—through the boundary lines and she had no idea what to do. “What have I done?” she muttered to herself.

Davis appeared at the office door damp and clean from a shower. He wore a dark blue long-sleeved thermal and jeans. The smell of his soap followed him into the room, masking the sweaty smell from the gym.

“You didn’t have to stop working out for me,” Ari said.

“It’s okay.” He shut the door. “How are you?”

“Me? I think the better question is how are you?”

His jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed. “Managing. For the kids. The guys.”

Ari took a step forward, fumbling for words. “I just...” She held her hand out, wavering in its destination. She didn’t have to decide though. Davis grabbed it and pulled her to his chest.

“Can I?” he asked. His mouth right above hers. She saw the pain in his eyes and the pink of his lips.

“Yes.”

* * *

They only kissed. Slow and lingering filled with sorrow and pain. Davis led her to the couch and she sat in his lap. His hands didn’t wander, neither did his mouth. After some time, he buried his face into Ari’s sweater.

She raked her fingernails over his stubbly hair. He wanted to feel something other than the horror of Alvarez’s death. Ari understood this. They were the same. The same desperation and hollowness had led them to one another.

Feeling the need to connect, Ari reached for her sweater sleeve. She pulled it up to reveal the tiny star on the inside of her elbow. “I got this one when I graduated. Oliver and I drank too much tequila and we agreed to go get a tattoo. He chickened out, of course.”

Davis ran a thumb over the star, sending a chill up her spine.

“These three,” she inched up her skirt, revealing the tender flesh on her inner thigh. “Came after a particularly interesting night in Vegas. I should have tattooed it in glitter.” Ari dropped the skirt before he could touch her.

Davis looked at her with tired, wary eyes and she ran her hand down the side of his face, sliding her fingers down his sharp, tight jaw.

“The ones closest to me are these two.” She shifted and showed the two tiny dark stars on her collarbone. “I got these when my parents died.”

“So these represent events in your life?” His fingers ran down her arms, but his eyes stayed glued to the stars.

“Moments. Things I don’t want to forget. Feelings I want etched in my skin as a reminder.” An awkward silence passes between them. “You wanted to know what they were for. That’s what they mean. Scars of my life.”

They sat quietly together and Davis touched the tattoos that he could see. He took a deep breath and said, “My mother died when I was thirteen. That’s when my father opened the gym. He had been a fighter when he was younger. A boxer.” Davis pointed to the old cracked gloves hanging by the door. “To save me, he said. I had all this pent-up anger and energy and no mother to soothe it away. He wanted to teach me to use my power for good.”

“Sounds like a smart man.”

“He was.” Davis swallowed, gaining control over his voice. “When I was sixteen, he opened the residential program. He took in boys from all over Glory City, trying to make a better life for them. He had a gift for choosing the right kid for the program.”

“Kind of like you.”

He shrugged. “Every kid is a risk. There’s always a level of wildness about them. Can we really tame the streets out of them? He thought so.”

“Do you?”

He bit his bottom lip. “I’m not sure. I’ve made mistakes before. Like Antonio. My father made mistakes, too. The first boy we took in, he and I were like brothers. My father trained and educated us together. We fought and squabbled like family, too, vying for my father’s attention. Even after new boys came into the program, he and I were the big shots. That’s how we ended up doing the competitive fighting. Dad needed a way to contain our energy and aggressiveness toward one another. So he started these trials, pitting us against one another. Using the rules of the games kept us under control.”

“Again, he sounds like a smart man.”

Davis rubbed his face with his hands. “He didn’t anticipate our rivalry, though. Over the years, our anger only grew with one another. My brother and I fought over girls, school, work…anything. But the last fight. It was the worst. So dumb, but so bad.”

“What happened?”

He shook his head. “The fight doesn’t matter. It ended with my father dead.”

Ari recoiled. “You killed him?”

“No! No, of course not.” He brushed back the strands of hair that constantly fell in Ari’s face. “My brother and I were in the ring. Prepared to fight to the end, this time. To the death. Seriously. I wanted to kill him. He wanted to kill me.”

“That sounds crazy.”

“We were crazy. My father knew our rivalry and egos had escalated too far. When the fight got too rough he stepped in between us to stop it. Right when my brother leveled a massive punch at me. His fist slammed into my father’s skull and that was it. He never woke up.”

“Oh, Davis.”

“This,” he pointed to the gash through his eyebrow. “Is the scar I took away from that fight.” He lifted up his shirt and pointed to another one on his side, thick and gnarled. “This came from the last time I saw him. When he tried to take the GYC from me. Claiming he had as much right to it as I did.”

“He wants the youth center? All of it?”

“He thinks he has rightful ownership of it. We’re not blood—he has no legal legs to stand on.”

Ari tried to process the story she’d just heard. “Where is he now?”

Davis laughed darkly. “That’s the interesting question, Ari. He was tried as a juvenile for killing my father, so he was released after four years, when he was twenty-one. We had an altercation then,” he touches the scar on his stomach. “We agreed then he could live his life and I would live mine—just keeping our distance and peace.”

“Has it worked?” Something about the expression on Davis’s face told Ari it hadn’t.

“I thought so. I hadn’t seen him in years. He disappeared. Until last night. Until I saw that man kill Oscar.”

“What?” I ask. “Last night?”

“My brother executed Oscar last night. His death was a message for me.”

Ari couldn’t hide her shock. “Your brother is the Vigilante?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Then what are you saying?” A million questions ran through her mind.

“That was not the Vigilante last night. It was an imposter. That was Reg, attempting to wipe away all the good he’s done. Trying to hurt me.”

“But…” Ari didn’t even know where to begin. “How do you know?”

“Ari, I loved and fought with my brother for years. We had the same teacher. It was him.”

What was Davis saying to her? Or not saying? “Are you going to call the police? Turn him in?”

“I haven’t decided how to handle it yet, but promise me one thing.”

She nodded hesitantly. “Sure.”

“From now on, I need you to trust me. Completely. If he hurt Oscar he could hurt you, too.”

* * *

“You’re kidding,” Ari said to Detective Bryson. He’d called right as she left the GYC.

“No,” he said. “I hate to be the bearer of this bad news but somehow Jace Watkins got out on bail.”

“Why would they do that? And without telling me?”

“I can’t explain it either, Ari. Seems like he got himself a new lawyer and managed to get a new hearing set. The bail was high, though, twenty thousand. I doubt the judge thought he would make it.”

“Who paid it then? Because I can’t see Jace having a spare twenty-thousand dollars around, either.”