I didn’t remember dreaming but I knew I had. I woke up feeling like I’d run thirty miles; drenched in sweat and fighting to draw in air with raw, ragged breaths. I sat up on the couch and rubbed my face. What time was it? Why was I in the living room? Why did I feel a malicious black cloud looming over me like some sort of comic strip character? And then it all came back, crashing like waves over my head. Holy shit, Kimber was here. And she wanted something. I felt the fear shower me like ice cold rain as I recalled pieces of the night before. We were going back.
Kimber’s bag was next to the door and she was sitting at the table reading one of Seth’s look-how-smart-I-am philosophy books. As I sat up I slid the evidence of my addiction under the couch with my foot, praying she hadn’t already seen it.
“Morning, Sam,” Kimber smiled, without looking up from the book.
“Why in the fuck are you so chipper. You remember where we’re going right?”
“Yes.” She put the book down and looked over at me, beaming. “I’ve just missed you so much.”
It was a genuine statement and my mouth twitched into a little smile at her words. Goddamn it, I was happy to see her, too. Buried underneath all the fear and numbing pain was a glowing euphoria. I had never been happier than when I was with Kimber and Kyle. And one of them had actually come back from the void of the past.
I stood up. “Just let me shower and pack and then we can get on the road…that is, if you’re still planning on going.”
“Yes, I am,” she said. “Are you?”
“Yeah, it appears that I am.” I had run out of arguments.
Seth had already left for the day so I locked the apartment as we headed down to Kimber’s car – a 10-year-old Mazda sedan. She took my bag and threw it into the backseat next to hers and then climbed in.
“So, eight hours, huh?” I asked as she started the engine.
“Yep. But I can probably do it in seven.”
“Fuck me, don’t rush on my account.”
Kimber pulled her sunglasses down and pulled out of the apartment complex. I looked back and wondered if I’d ever see it’s crumbling, graffiti-covered walls again. Or if I even wanted to.
*
“Stop staring at me.”
“What?”
“You’re not as sly as you think you are,” Kimber muttered.
“Sorry, it’s just…I never thought I’d see you again.”
“Neither did I.” She sighed.
“You look good. Pretty. You know, like healthy.” I stumbled all over my compliment.
Kimber raised an eyebrow. “Thanks, I think.”
I laughed nervously. “You know what I mean. You look like you’ve done well from yourself the last ten years.”
Kimber frowned and remained quiet for a minute as if debating whether to tell me something. “I never told anyone where I came from.” She said finally. “My mom said she had family in Anaheim but I couldn’t find them. Everyone thought I was just a runaway. Cops picked me up almost immediately and put me in a halfway house. Sorry about your car, by the way. They impounded it. I don’t suppose you ever got it back.”
I shrugged. “No, but who cares. It was just an old Honda.”
Kimber threw me a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry. Anyway, the halfway house kept trying to identify me so I ran away from there, too. Eventually I got a job. Southern California is a great place to live if you don’t have an ID, by the way.”
“I’m sure,” I said.
“After that I went to community college and yeah…I’ve just been sort of biding my time.”
“Are you sure you want to just throw all of that away to expose your rapist?”
Kimber winced at my words and I immediately regretted them. “No, him I want dead. And throw all what away? I’ve been planning this for an entire decade.”
“Well…you’ve still done better than me. I’m a- I have…my life’s a mess.”
“Were you really in prison?” Kimber asked.
“Yeah.” She didn’t say anything. “Felony possession,” I volunteered.
Kimber nodded. “And you’re still…” I knew what she was asking.
“Yes.” I said. “So what’s your plan?”
“Well…first we’re going to rent a room just outside of town. Remember that one motel off exit 113? Prince Ridge Inn or something.”
“Outside of town, I like it.”
“And then I’m going to meet with my contact sometime tomorrow.”
“Right.”
“And then we just…go from there.”
“Go from there?’”
“Yep.” Kimber nodded but wouldn’t look at me.
“Please don’t tell me this is your plan.”
“Our contact will give us more direction.”
“Your contact.”
“Yeah.”
“Do I know this guy?” I asked.
“I didn’t say it was a guy, and it doesn’t matter.”
“Why wouldn’t it matter?”
“Because this person has told me stuff that can only mean they are on our side.”
“Yeah, like what?” I asked.
“Like the sheriff’s schedule.”
“My dad.”
“Yeah. He’s…he’s still sheriff in Drisking.”
I hadn’t doubted that. “What else?” I asked.
“Okay, well they also told me that they know where all the records are.”
“What records?”
“You know, all the data for the Borrasca operation – the incriminating stuff.”
“Alright.”
“And…well…um…they told me things about Kyle.”
“Yeah? I can tell you things about Kyle, too.”
“Sam.”
“Kyle’s gone.”
“No, he isn’t.”
“No? Actually yeah, because I saw him with my own eyes before I left town. I talked to him, too. He’s empty, Kimber. There’s no one there.”
“You’re wrong.”
“He’s a total vegetable.”
“You’re wrong, that’s wrong. My source told me he’s just sedated.”
“Sedated? Sedated for nine years, Kimber?”
“Yes,” She said with false conviction.
“So your source is just telling you things you want to hear.”
“I believe it’s true.”
“Kimber, I saw what they did to Kyle. They straight up beat the death into him. The only part of Kyle left on this earth is his mangled body.”
“Stop, Sam.”
“I’m sorry, I just, I can’t go through this again. Not with Kyle. I’ve already mourned him and you should, too.”
“We need to know for sure.”
“Hold up, wait, so this little trip isn’t actually about getting the records or killing the asshole who hurt you or helping those people. This is some sort of ill-conceived rescue mission, isn’t it?”
“Partially.”
“So that’s your rush, then. You got some bad info that Kyle is alive and you’re running off halfcocked to get him.”
“No.”
“Why don’t we just go straight to his house and pick him up then, huh? We can be back on the road by dawn.”
“I don’t know where he is. The Landy’s moved him.”
“Then what are we doing? If I’m going to die for this, Kimber, I deserve to know why.”
She jerked the wheel to the side of the highway and slammed on her brakes. “Fuck, Kimber!” I yelled. My head cracked against the window and I was still seeing stars when I realized that Kimber was out of the car. I rubbed my head until the throbbing stopped and then followed her to the back where she was standing over the open trunk.
Inside were dozens of guns, at least 30 of them. There were rifles, handguns, a shotgun, and boxes upon boxes of ammo. “Are you planning to storm the Alamo?”
“Does this look like Kyle is all I’m after?”
“I’m actually a little scared of you right now.”
“I want all of this to end. I want Kyle back, yes, and it’s true that that’s why I showed up so suddenly. But I want more than that, Sam. I want him dead.”
I understood her hatred for Clery but if we were going to murder people I wanted Jimmy Prescott dead, as well. And when the time came – and if I was certain he was culpable – my father, too. “How did you get all these?”
Kimber shrugged. “It’s taken me a few years, lots of traveling around the southwest to gun shows and stuff.”
“Okay, well close the truck before somebody driving by sees your fucking arsenal. This is Illinois, for fuck’s sake.”
She slammed it shut and we got back into the car where I sat rubbing my head and lamenting at the bump that was already forming there. When I realized Kimber hadn’t started the car I looked up to find her gripping the steering wheel tightly and staring straight out the windshield. She was fighting back tears.
“Kimber, I’m sorry.” I said. She blinked a few times to clear her eyes. “I’m being a total asshole, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” But I did know. My mind was cloudy from years of drug use, I had no filter, and I had problems controlling my emotions – which swung back and forth like the pendulum on a clock, and changed just as often.
“No, I…I never should have asked you to come. It was wrong.” She breathed the last word and she dropped her hands from the steering wheel.
“Asked?” I said.
She covered her face. “You’re right, I manipulated you. You don’t even know me anymore; you shouldn’t be here.”
I leaned over the center console and hugged her. Kimber recoiled at my touch like I’d delivered her an electric shock. “I’m sorry! Shit, I’m sorry.” I said.
“No, it’s okay, I just, I don’t like to be touched.”
This was new Kimber. I pulled out my pack of Marlboro’s and lit a cigarette without asking if it was okay. “Fuck, Kimber, I’m a piece of shit. I’ve always been a piece of shit. I probably should be here, honestly. You’ve given the opportunity to do…something with my life. But I’m fucking scared and it’s making me a dick.”
Kimber leaned back and wiped her eyes. “You really don’t have that much to worry about, Sam. You’re still the son of the sheriff and he won’t hurt you.” I had considered this too and it made my skin crawl. Son of the sheriff. If what I suspected was true, then that would make me heir to Borrasca. My stomach lurched in revulsion.
“Maybe. Let’s just get to the hotel and we’ll decide what to do. We probably want to make as little noise as possible while we figure out where Clery and Prescott are. We do not want anybody to know we’re back in town.”
Kimber nodded. “And the sheriff.”
“And…and the sheriff.” I didn’t want to think about it. I had buried the assumptions about my father’s guilt years ago, under enough black tar heroin to kill a horse. I guess it was time to remember.
Kimber’s bag was next to the door and she was sitting at the table reading one of Seth’s look-how-smart-I-am philosophy books. As I sat up I slid the evidence of my addiction under the couch with my foot, praying she hadn’t already seen it.
“Morning, Sam,” Kimber smiled, without looking up from the book.
“Why in the fuck are you so chipper. You remember where we’re going right?”
“Yes.” She put the book down and looked over at me, beaming. “I’ve just missed you so much.”
It was a genuine statement and my mouth twitched into a little smile at her words. Goddamn it, I was happy to see her, too. Buried underneath all the fear and numbing pain was a glowing euphoria. I had never been happier than when I was with Kimber and Kyle. And one of them had actually come back from the void of the past.
I stood up. “Just let me shower and pack and then we can get on the road…that is, if you’re still planning on going.”
“Yes, I am,” she said. “Are you?”
“Yeah, it appears that I am.” I had run out of arguments.
Seth had already left for the day so I locked the apartment as we headed down to Kimber’s car – a 10-year-old Mazda sedan. She took my bag and threw it into the backseat next to hers and then climbed in.
“So, eight hours, huh?” I asked as she started the engine.
“Yep. But I can probably do it in seven.”
“Fuck me, don’t rush on my account.”
Kimber pulled her sunglasses down and pulled out of the apartment complex. I looked back and wondered if I’d ever see it’s crumbling, graffiti-covered walls again. Or if I even wanted to.
*
“Stop staring at me.”
“What?”
“You’re not as sly as you think you are,” Kimber muttered.
“Sorry, it’s just…I never thought I’d see you again.”
“Neither did I.” She sighed.
“You look good. Pretty. You know, like healthy.” I stumbled all over my compliment.
Kimber raised an eyebrow. “Thanks, I think.”
I laughed nervously. “You know what I mean. You look like you’ve done well from yourself the last ten years.”
Kimber frowned and remained quiet for a minute as if debating whether to tell me something. “I never told anyone where I came from.” She said finally. “My mom said she had family in Anaheim but I couldn’t find them. Everyone thought I was just a runaway. Cops picked me up almost immediately and put me in a halfway house. Sorry about your car, by the way. They impounded it. I don’t suppose you ever got it back.”
I shrugged. “No, but who cares. It was just an old Honda.”
Kimber threw me a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry. Anyway, the halfway house kept trying to identify me so I ran away from there, too. Eventually I got a job. Southern California is a great place to live if you don’t have an ID, by the way.”
“I’m sure,” I said.
“After that I went to community college and yeah…I’ve just been sort of biding my time.”
“Are you sure you want to just throw all of that away to expose your rapist?”
Kimber winced at my words and I immediately regretted them. “No, him I want dead. And throw all what away? I’ve been planning this for an entire decade.”
“Well…you’ve still done better than me. I’m a- I have…my life’s a mess.”
“Were you really in prison?” Kimber asked.
“Yeah.” She didn’t say anything. “Felony possession,” I volunteered.
Kimber nodded. “And you’re still…” I knew what she was asking.
“Yes.” I said. “So what’s your plan?”
“Well…first we’re going to rent a room just outside of town. Remember that one motel off exit 113? Prince Ridge Inn or something.”
“Outside of town, I like it.”
“And then I’m going to meet with my contact sometime tomorrow.”
“Right.”
“And then we just…go from there.”
“Go from there?’”
“Yep.” Kimber nodded but wouldn’t look at me.
“Please don’t tell me this is your plan.”
“Our contact will give us more direction.”
“Your contact.”
“Yeah.”
“Do I know this guy?” I asked.
“I didn’t say it was a guy, and it doesn’t matter.”
“Why wouldn’t it matter?”
“Because this person has told me stuff that can only mean they are on our side.”
“Yeah, like what?” I asked.
“Like the sheriff’s schedule.”
“My dad.”
“Yeah. He’s…he’s still sheriff in Drisking.”
I hadn’t doubted that. “What else?” I asked.
“Okay, well they also told me that they know where all the records are.”
“What records?”
“You know, all the data for the Borrasca operation – the incriminating stuff.”
“Alright.”
“And…well…um…they told me things about Kyle.”
“Yeah? I can tell you things about Kyle, too.”
“Sam.”
“Kyle’s gone.”
“No, he isn’t.”
“No? Actually yeah, because I saw him with my own eyes before I left town. I talked to him, too. He’s empty, Kimber. There’s no one there.”
“You’re wrong.”
“He’s a total vegetable.”
“You’re wrong, that’s wrong. My source told me he’s just sedated.”
“Sedated? Sedated for nine years, Kimber?”
“Yes,” She said with false conviction.
“So your source is just telling you things you want to hear.”
“I believe it’s true.”
“Kimber, I saw what they did to Kyle. They straight up beat the death into him. The only part of Kyle left on this earth is his mangled body.”
“Stop, Sam.”
“I’m sorry, I just, I can’t go through this again. Not with Kyle. I’ve already mourned him and you should, too.”
“We need to know for sure.”
“Hold up, wait, so this little trip isn’t actually about getting the records or killing the asshole who hurt you or helping those people. This is some sort of ill-conceived rescue mission, isn’t it?”
“Partially.”
“So that’s your rush, then. You got some bad info that Kyle is alive and you’re running off halfcocked to get him.”
“No.”
“Why don’t we just go straight to his house and pick him up then, huh? We can be back on the road by dawn.”
“I don’t know where he is. The Landy’s moved him.”
“Then what are we doing? If I’m going to die for this, Kimber, I deserve to know why.”
She jerked the wheel to the side of the highway and slammed on her brakes. “Fuck, Kimber!” I yelled. My head cracked against the window and I was still seeing stars when I realized that Kimber was out of the car. I rubbed my head until the throbbing stopped and then followed her to the back where she was standing over the open trunk.
Inside were dozens of guns, at least 30 of them. There were rifles, handguns, a shotgun, and boxes upon boxes of ammo. “Are you planning to storm the Alamo?”
“Does this look like Kyle is all I’m after?”
“I’m actually a little scared of you right now.”
“I want all of this to end. I want Kyle back, yes, and it’s true that that’s why I showed up so suddenly. But I want more than that, Sam. I want him dead.”
I understood her hatred for Clery but if we were going to murder people I wanted Jimmy Prescott dead, as well. And when the time came – and if I was certain he was culpable – my father, too. “How did you get all these?”
Kimber shrugged. “It’s taken me a few years, lots of traveling around the southwest to gun shows and stuff.”
“Okay, well close the truck before somebody driving by sees your fucking arsenal. This is Illinois, for fuck’s sake.”
She slammed it shut and we got back into the car where I sat rubbing my head and lamenting at the bump that was already forming there. When I realized Kimber hadn’t started the car I looked up to find her gripping the steering wheel tightly and staring straight out the windshield. She was fighting back tears.
“Kimber, I’m sorry.” I said. She blinked a few times to clear her eyes. “I’m being a total asshole, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” But I did know. My mind was cloudy from years of drug use, I had no filter, and I had problems controlling my emotions – which swung back and forth like the pendulum on a clock, and changed just as often.
“No, I…I never should have asked you to come. It was wrong.” She breathed the last word and she dropped her hands from the steering wheel.
“Asked?” I said.
She covered her face. “You’re right, I manipulated you. You don’t even know me anymore; you shouldn’t be here.”
I leaned over the center console and hugged her. Kimber recoiled at my touch like I’d delivered her an electric shock. “I’m sorry! Shit, I’m sorry.” I said.
“No, it’s okay, I just, I don’t like to be touched.”
This was new Kimber. I pulled out my pack of Marlboro’s and lit a cigarette without asking if it was okay. “Fuck, Kimber, I’m a piece of shit. I’ve always been a piece of shit. I probably should be here, honestly. You’ve given the opportunity to do…something with my life. But I’m fucking scared and it’s making me a dick.”
Kimber leaned back and wiped her eyes. “You really don’t have that much to worry about, Sam. You’re still the son of the sheriff and he won’t hurt you.” I had considered this too and it made my skin crawl. Son of the sheriff. If what I suspected was true, then that would make me heir to Borrasca. My stomach lurched in revulsion.
“Maybe. Let’s just get to the hotel and we’ll decide what to do. We probably want to make as little noise as possible while we figure out where Clery and Prescott are. We do not want anybody to know we’re back in town.”
Kimber nodded. “And the sheriff.”
“And…and the sheriff.” I didn’t want to think about it. I had buried the assumptions about my father’s guilt years ago, under enough black tar heroin to kill a horse. I guess it was time to remember.
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