Luthecker (16 page)

“You didn’t want to admit it, to yourself, to him, to your mother, but deep inside, you
knew
what was happening, and how it was all going to end. Your brother was going to end up dead or in jail, and most likely jail, because he didn’t have it in him to go out in a blaze of gunfire. And you knew all of this. Didn’t you?”

Neither man broke eye contact. Alex realized he was on his feet, standing directly across from Yaw. The intensity in the room was palpable. Alex, the quiet one who rarely spoke, was suddenly loud, intense, and holding his ground with the much larger Yaw. It spooked everyone in the room.

Yaw finally responded.

“Yeah. I did. And I also knew that that was never gonna happen to me.” His words had a clear tone of defiance, the matter of fact nature of his delivery indicating this was a mantra he had repeated in his own head countless times.

“Of course it wasn’t. Once you saw the patterns of his behavior, you made a different choice. And once you made that decision, you reconciled your life to that one choice, that what happened to your brother, would not happen to you. But you still fear the possibility. Am I right?”

“Yeah. You are.”

“And I can see all that, as clear as day. It’s not magic. And I’m not psychic. We all see patterns of behavior in other people, and how they react to their environment. I’m just way better at it than anyone else.”

Yaw slowly sat down with the others.

Master Winn stayed silent, watching them all with curiosity.

“That’s his past. What about his future? You said you could see the future.” Camila asked.

“And why are you so curious?” Alex answered quickly, and Camila instinctively sat back.

“Time’s not as linear as you think it is, and I never said I could see the future. I said I could see how people’s lives turned out. There’s a difference.”

He was becoming emotional with his responses, beginning to snap at them a bit, and he didn’t like it that their curiosity was causing him to lose control. They had risked their lives for him and they had a right to know. He tried to calm himself. He didn’t understand why their questions made him so angry.

“Don’t tell me.” Yaw announced, interrupting his train of thought.

“I don’t want to know how it all turns out. I’ll find out all on my own.”

Alex looked back at him. After a moment, he gave Yaw a slight smile.

“Thank you. You just did us both a huge favor.” He softly replied.

“I don’t always understand you, Doctor Alex. But like I’ve always said, I’ve got your back.” Yaw told him.

“And I, yours.” Alex responded.

“Pardon me for interrupting the bromance, but you still didn’t answer the question. Why is the government after you? What exactly did you do?” Chris asked.

“Three years ago, I told them something about someone. It saved some lives, but it got me on their radar. I caught them off guard, and I managed to lose them. Last night, I did it all over again. But this time, I’m not so sure there’ll be any getting away.”

He looked over his group of friends, Master Winn.

“They’re after me because they know what I can do. And they want me to do it for them.”

They all sat there a moment, trying to make sense of Alex’ words.

“There’s another question that needs to be answered, and answered right now.” Master Winn said, finally including himself in the conversation.

“Alex shared with you what he believes to be the truth. Knowing what you know about him from training, and knowing, regardless if you believe what he just shared with you or not, that if you decide to move forward with this delivery, you will also be choosing to carry his burden of pursuit.”

He made a point to look each of them in the eye.

“Do you still want to retrieve the New York package, and deliver it to the Watts safe haven? If you choose to step aside there will be no loss of honor. “

“Not a damn thing’s changed to me. I’m in.” Yaw said, without hesitation.

“Let’s do this.” Camila followed.

“We’re already running late.” Chris added, and they all shook hands to confirm.

They all looked at Alex. All his life, he had isolated himself, he thought, afraid of what others might think. And none of that mattered to the people in this room.

“I’m one hundred percent in.” He finally responded.

“Good. But new developments considered, we need to plan accordingly.” Winn added.

They all drew closer to their instructor as Yaw stood next to Alex.

“So you really know how it all turns out for people?” He whispered to him.

“Most of the time. Not always.” Alex replied, and as he looked at Yaw, it dawned on him why he had been upset moments earlier.

Their fate had been suddenly lost to him. Camila’s future pregnancy, her relationship with Yaw, Chris, Master Winn, all of it, was wiped away from his mind, the patterns of their lives now completely indecipherable chaos, lost within the momentum.

This had never happened to him before, and the shock of it made him feel a bit unsteady.

Camila picked up on it.

“You alright?” She asked.

“What? Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired. But ready.” He replied.

She nodded and smiled, turning her attention back to Winn.

Alex went back to his thoughts, realizing that he had stepped into the momentum to save a woman he didn’t know at all, and in the process, he had changed things completely for those closest to him. He instinctively looked to the floor as it dawned on him that somehow he might have doomed the lives of the only people he had ever known as friends.

BEDSIDE

“H
e’s stable. All we can do now is wait.” Doctor Ardisher told Nikki. She had been pacing the hospital waiting room, downing cups of automatic coffee machine swill, trying to clear her head.

“Can I see him?” Nikki asked.

Ardisher, a young Persian man in his mid-thirties, was the best neurosurgeon on staff at UCLA. He peeled the sweat stained blue surgical cap off the matted down thick head of hair atop his crown. His mask still hung down around his neck, and his eyes showed the weariness of five hours of emergency surgery.

“He’ll be isolated in recovery for the next six hours.” Ardisher replied. “You can view him through the observation window, although I’d recommend waiting. You should go home and get some rest, come back later this afternoon.”

“When will you know anything?” She asked, ignoring his recommendation.

“The next twenty-four hours are critical. If he gets through them, he should stand a good chance of recovery.”

“Will he have any…?”

She couldn’t get herself to say the words “brain damage”, but there was no confusion about the question.

“We won’t know that for some time. “

He put his hand on her shoulder.

“He’s a strong young man. He did about as well as could be expected considering his injuries. The rest is in God’s hands.”

Nikki held back a strong urge to break down.

“I have to get some rest, but I’ll be back this afternoon to check in on him.” The doctor continued. “The nurse will come get you.”

“Thank you.”

Ardisher nodded in response, and gave her a weary smile for reassurance.

Nikki watched as he walked away and disappeared around the corner, before turning back to the double doors that led to the ICU. She was bone-weary and looked a complete mess, still wearing the evening’s black dress, her face streaked from the mixture of tears and make up. She was still trying to process the rapid succession of events during the last few hours of her life.

Something about the strange man in the club and his ominous warning had struck down to her very core, and she couldn’t explain why. Despite her initial misgivings that evening, she had eventually decided to go with Scott, but after a complete stranger’s words, she’d had a quick change of heart. She told her brother that she was tired, and she just wanted to go home. Ben still had wanted to go with his friend however, to listen to the surf and maybe get a little high, laughing off the bizarre warning and her pleadings to come back to the apartment with her. They had offered to give her a ride home, but Ben’s place was in the opposite direction from Scott’s beach condo, and using the excuse that she didn’t want to inconvenience them, she had called herself a cab. The reality of the matter was that she just didn’t want to get in that car. Both men waited with her the fifteen minutes for the cab to arrive, trying to convince her to come along with them instead. But she wouldn’t budge. She had it in her mind to go home. As the cab pulled to the curb, she had asked Ben one last time to come back with her, and he had smiled, kissed her on the cheek, and said not to worry, and that he would see her in the morning. Now she feared those were the last words she would ever hear from her brother.

The cab had just pulled in front of Ben’s apartment when she got the call from the police. She remembered screaming, and yelling at the cab driver to take her straight to the hospital. Everything beyond that seemed a blur to her now, time slowing down and distorting itself in her memory, none of it seeming real, as if this was someone else’s life she was living. Somehow, less than an hour from when she was talking with them, Scott was dead, her brother in critical condition with a head injury, all the result of Scott’s new M5 being wrapped around a tree on Sunset Boulevard.

The one thing that was crystal clear and undistorted in her mind from the evening was the stranger’s warning that took place only moments previous to the accident. Not just the man’s words, but also his face, his eyes, which had locked so hard onto hers, had looked right through her. It was as if time stopped. Who in the hell was he? He told her directly not to get into Scott’s car, without explaining why, and for some reason she had listened. He must have known it was going to crash. How could he have known something like that?

The nurse had not come for her yet, and she decided she would not wait any longer. She pushed through the double doors and padded down the hallway of the ICU barefoot, her high heel shoes long since tossed onto a chair in the waiting room. As she got closer to the post surgery recovery wing, her heart began to race, and her hands began to shake. She turned the last corner, and nearly ran into the nurse.

“Miss Ellis?”

“Yes.”

“I was just coming out for you. I wanted to prepare you, he looks a little rough, but he’s resting comfortably. You can still wait until later today.”

“No. I want to see him now.”

The nurse nodded, and led Nikki down the hallway, stopping in front of the observation window of her brother’s room.

Nikki saw her brother through the window and all the air left her lungs.

He lay completely still, surrounded by cold and angular machinery, wires and tubes attached all over his body. The top of his head was completely wrapped in white bandages, a small spot of blood visible on the side of his temple, a stark contrast to the white of the gauze. The skin around his closed eyes were a deep purple-black, and a long cut stitched closed ran down the length of his left cheek.

Nikki burst into tears, and she began to feel faint. Her vision suddenly narrowed, and the room began to spin. She put her hand on the window glass to keep steady.

“Are you all right?” The nurse asked her.

Nikki didn’t answer. She gathered her strength and regained her composure and carefully removed her hand from the observation window before instinctively wiping her eyes and straightening out her dress.

“I’m fine. I’ll be fine.” She finally replied. As she kept looking at her brother, she suddenly found herself growing very angry.

“You need some rest.” The nurse told her, gently grabbing her arm to get her attention.

“You can’t help him any more today, but when he’s better, he’s going to need you, and you won’t be able to do anything for him if you haven’t slept for two days.” She continued, with the well-rehearsed authority that came from experience.

“If there’s any change- “ Nikki started to reply.

“We’ll call you.” The nurse finished for her. “I promise.”

• • •

When the cab dropped her at her brother’s apartment, it was 1pm in the afternoon. She walked into the unit, peeled off the dress, grabbed a blanket, and crashed on the couch, not even bothering to wash her face. The exhaustion finally hit her, and she was fast asleep in less than ten minutes.

She woke with a start over four hours later, and checked her phone for the time: It was 5:23pm. She rubbed her face to help shake off the disorientation of sleep, and slowly got to her feet. She realized that she hadn’t eaten anything in over twenty-four hours, and trudged over to the kitchen area, and opened the refrigerator door. She scanned over various leftovers. Nothing looked appetizing. She was starved, but the anxiety had made her stomach sour, and she couldn’t eat. She shut the refrigerator and headed towards the bathroom. She was still exhausted, but felt that a shower, a couple of Advil, and a Starbucks quadruple shot latte should both ease the pain of her headache and wake her up enough to go straight back to the hospital.

She searched the medicine cabinet for the Advil, found the bottle and popped a couple pills before stripping off her bra and panties and stepping into the shower. The hot water struck her skin and it immediately caused her body to relax. She closed her eyes and let out a long breath of air, the stress easing somewhat, before it began to dawn on her again what had happened to her brother, and her sense of panic once more started to overwhelm her. She felt alone, and powerless to help him. She had mulled over the thought of calling Michael. She knew that if she asked, he would fly out immediately, and she could certainly use the support right now. She decided that she would go to the hospital, check on her brother, and if she felt that she needed to, she would call him from there.

She stepped from the shower and dried off. She went to the bedroom, grabbed some jeans and a T-shirt, and got dressed.

The incident at the club was really beginning to eat at her. She felt a great deal of anger about what had happened, and this stranger who had confronted her was the easiest place to focus it. She wanted to know exactly who this man was who had warned her. He must’ve had something to do with the accident, she thought. How else could he know? Maybe Scott had enemies that her brother hadn’t known about. Ones that wanted him dead. She decided she would contact the police. She put her still wet hair up in a ponytail, and began searching for her keys when the doorbell rang. She approached the front door and looked out the peephole, and saw a fish-eye view of two men in suits and ties. The police, she thought. Maybe they were already investigating. She opened the door.