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“Fuck!” I hiss again, looking around the neighborhood at the little picket fences and yards scattered with children’s toys and bicycles. I need a place to hide, but all of the houses look occupied. I won’t risk breaking into a house with kids inside. I cut the engine to my bike and use my feet to roll down the street. My Harley is loud, and the last thing I need is a nosy neighbor calling in a noise complaint.
A frustrated snarl climbs up my throat, and I am about to give up all hope when I notice one of the homes with all its lights out and no sign of kids’ toys in the yard. It’s a few houses from where I am, and I cautiously move toward it. The house is totally dark with no signs of life inside.
With what little strength I can summon, I roll my bike up the driveway and maneuver it to the side of the house. There’s a privacy fence around the yard, and I cautiously peek over it, checking for any indication that kids or a dog might be inside the house. There is none, so I quietly open the gate and roll my bike through it, closing it again behind me. There’s a door to the garage, and luck must finally be on my side because it opens easily. Sliding my gun from my waistband, I check the safety and slip it into my jacket pocket. Entering a house armed is a risk, but it’d be far worse not to be prepared.
I’ll only be here for a few hours at most. I just need somewhere safe to hide and call Priest to send help, then I’ll bandage my wound and take something for the pain while I wait for a ride. I stumble around in the dark garage until my hand finds a doorknob, breathing out a sigh when I realize it’s also not locked. After slowly opening the door, I pause to listen to make sure that no pets are waiting on the other side to jump me before walking in.
I clutch my arm as I stagger into the house, struggling to stay as quiet as I should. A thin layer of sweat builds on my forehead as I stumble my way through the small kitchen, but I know I must hold on. I cannot afford to lose consciousness in a stranger’s house.
I search the single-story structure quickly, making certain it is actually empty. In the master bathroom, I come upon a first-aid kit that looks brand new and fully stocked. Perhaps I should question why this kit seems more advanced and well-equipped compared to the basic ones carried in supermarkets, but I barely give it a thought.
I grab the bandage tape, antiseptic wipes, and sterile pads, dropping them on the bathroom counter. I find some pain relief meds and swallow them dry before slowly stripping my jacket off. My black shirt is soaked with blood, and I hiss as I peel it off my body; black spots bloom behind my eyes as pain almost sends me dropping to the ground.
The wound is deeper than I’d realized. Still, I’m grateful not to have to dig out a bullet by myself. I’ve had my share of gunshot wounds before; it’s impossible to avoid them forever in my line of work. But each time, the intense pain takes me by surprise. At least the throbbing of my head distracts me from the pain in my arm a little bit.
I grit my teeth as I grab a washcloth from the counter and wipe away as much of the blood as I can. Then I use the antiseptic wipes to clean the wound. My vision goes spotty, and I sway on my feet. I’m forced to sit down and brace myself against the tub. Just as I reach for the sterile pad still on the bathroom counter, I’m hit with a wave of nausea, and everything goes dark.
I flicker in and out of consciousness. At one point, I think I see an angel dressed in blue, and I reach for her, but I can’t lift my arm.
I think I must be dead, but it makes no sense. After the life I have lived, there is only hellfire waiting for me.
Sometime later, I hear a soft voice and feel gentle hands caress my body. Then there’s pain, and I hear my old man’s voice. That’s when I know I truly am in the pits of hell. My father made me who I am. He taught me how to shoot when I was ten, and any sign of weakness was met with a blow to the head. He got shot on a job, doing something far worse than I ever have. That’s how I know he’ll be the first to greet me in hell.
Like father, like son, I suppose.
My past plays out in my head as I feel myself slip away. My old man’s ugly mug is the last thing I picture, and I realize that death isn’t as peaceful as I’d always imagined it would be. The ghosts of my past haunt me here too.
Chapter Two
Holly
I’m having a rough day.
I know people say that when Starbucks runs out of their favorite syrup, and sure, that happened to me too, but it’s not the only reason my day has been awful. Maybe I should have taken it as a sign that my day was going to be hell when a man ran into me on the sidewalk, upending my caramel latte—sadly without the caramel since they were out—all over my scrubs. He didn’t even stop to apologize. I was already running late for my shift, and not only did I have to rush into the locker room to clean up and borrow a fresh set of scrubs, I had to go to work uncaffeinated.
Perhaps I could have made do with the disgusting hospital coffee and suffered through my shift, but it only got worse when I walked into a code blue and was quickly thrown into action, the adrenaline only wearing off hours later when the patients were all in stable condition. Before I could even settle down for a break, my supervisor was in my face, yelling at me for arriving for my shift a few minutes late. Minutes after he’d left, my phone lit up with a message from the bank reminding me to pay my mortgage by the end of the month, or they’ll seize the house.
Christ, the thought of losing the house my aunt left me makes my heart clench with grief, but there is no way I can get that much money in two weeks. I barely have eighty bucks in my account, and even that has to last me until my next paycheck.
The final cherry on top of my shit day was when my supervisor found me just as I was about to leave to tell me a coworker had called in sick and I was needed to work a double. Despite how exhausted I was, I could only agree. I need as much overtime as I can get.
So yeah, I am indeed having a bad day, and all I want is to grab the bottle of wine I was gifted a few months ago and take a warm bath in an attempt to forget about everything. I’m not even going to bother with a glass. I’ll drink the wine straight from the bottle.
The plan is simple, and I focus on that during the bus ride home. As much as I hate taking the bus, I have to save wherever possible, and the price of gas far exceeds the cost of a bus pass. I pull out my phone, tempted to spend money I can’t afford to waste on a pizza, but my phone dies before I can even open the delivery app, saving me from myself.
I kick my shoes off the second I step into my house, dropping my purse to the floor. I am tempted to just collapse on the couch, but I force myself to stay up. I hightail it straight to the kitchen and dig around in the cabinets for the wine a friend from work got me for my twenty-fourth birthday a few months ago. I’m not much of an alcohol drinker, and I was going to regift it to someone that would actually appreciate the expensive bottle, but now, I am glad I kept it because I plan on indulging myself tonight.
Now if I can only remember where I stashed the darn thing.
“Where the hell is it?” I whisper impatiently, flipping open cabinets as I search for the bottle and letting out a triumphant sound when I find it. I grab it, but before I can open it, I hear a faint noise that makes me freeze. I stand still and wait for it to come again, and when it does, goosebumps rise all over my body.
The noise is low, but it sounds like the moan of a person in pain.
Oh fuck, did I walk in on a robbery? I blink back tears at the thought, more resigned than afraid.
This is my life. The hits just keep coming.
I grab the wine bottle by the neck and creep out of the kitchen, my survival instincts nonexistent. It would make much better sense for me to sprint out of the house and yell for my neighbors to call the cops, but I am more pissed than afraid. Life is already trying to cripple me, and now someone thinks they can just sneak into my house and get away with it? This house is the only thing left that I care about.
