Page 24 of Intrepid

“D’you hear him?” Eli whispered, while I kept my eyes on the shady kid. “He’s got a whole box of it. I could sell that shit. My mom got a shut-off notice last week for the electricity. She’s been crying about it. An ounce could put an end to her stress.”

“What are you, a drug dealer now? And where do you tell your mom you got the money?”

“I’ll tell her I pawned some scrap metal, or something.”

I shook my head again. “No. I’m going back. It’ll be dark soon, anyway.”

“How far is your house?” Eli asked the kid.

It started to piss me off the way he kept ignoring me, entertaining the kid’s offer.

“N-n-n-not far. Just up C-C-C-Concord.”

Eli reached down, grabbing his skateboard from where we’d stashed them beside the car, and tapped my arm to huddle. “We’ll be back before dark,” he said low, and I stole a glimpse of the kid shifting on his feet, as though he couldn’t physically stay still. “I promise. Let’s just check it out. If it’s bullshit, we’ll jet. Not like this asshole can take both of us.” Eli glanced back at the kid and snorted. “Look at him. Doesn’t look like he eats much.” He huffed, tucking the board under his arm. “C’mon, man. I’m doing this for my mom. Don’t make me go myself.”

Everything in my gut told me to walk away. But that was the thing about gut feelings, they didn’t always win over the mind.

I hated that mine was intent to win. Teeth clenched, I wanted to slap Eli for laying a guilt trip on me. “Back before dark.”

6

Ty

Present day …

I tugged my hood down and tapped the welding rod against steel, lighting it up like a sparkler on the fourth of July. The spark hit the metal, laying a bead of alloy along the joint, with a sizzle that sounded like frying bacon. I never minded the welding side of ironworking—the peace and quiet, sometimes a few hundred feet in the air, where the world didn’t seem so ugly.

My dad had always said Detroit looked like a different city from where he sat most of the day.

Up there, I felt at peace, teetering along the beams so high up, it made the vehicles down below look like the Matchbox cars I’d played with as a kid. That was how I got into roof-topping. I particularly liked climbing tower cranes set atop buildings—the higher the better. Because, somehow, dangling from a jib over three hundred feet in the air put life into perspective.

Once upon a time, I used to film the shit, but I’d since gotten beyond that, realizing it wasn’t to impress anyone. Nah, I did it for the rush. For the sheer thrill of doing something most people wouldn’t have the balls to do, since most people hadn’t lived through hell and survived like I had.

But mostly, I did it because I could. Because there wasn’t a soul left on earth who gave a shit if I fell to my death, and that thought gave me the freedom to do whatever the fuck I wanted.

Around me, the walls of the abandoned building where I worked closed in, creating the perfect tomb. A place my conscience could go to die. It had to. How else could an otherwise decent human being pull off the shit I had planned the next few weeks?

As I fused the metal together, my mind drifted to the night before, and that golden-toned skin that’d smelled edible enough to eat. Sera, in something as simple as a pair of jeans and a tank, couldn’t have been more tempting than a slab of prime rib set before a starving man. A feast for the senses.

Everything about the encounter had somehow derailed me, frustrated the shit out of me, the way my body had moved in sync with hers. The way her sweet coconut smell had taunted me to bite down into that sugary flesh and pin her to the wall. And those wicked honey-brown eyes, like liquid amber, that could fuck a man up if he drank them in too long. Her scar gave her some humility, but not even that could take away from the fact she was so goddamn beautiful, it literally hurt to look at her. It pissed me off that she had any effect on me, and that I’d had to drown it all in a bottle of liquor when I’d left the club, because I’d refused to blow all that pent up tension on another nameless face, like so many nights before.

I hated having to uphold my charm, when all I wanted to do was throw her down and use her. But perhaps the worst was seeing some limp-dick trying to make a move on her, completely oblivious to the shit-storm he could’ve stirred.

A white hot flash of pain hit my arm, above an iron cross inked with my father’s date of death, and I froze, letting the small bit of slag fizzle out as it burned my skin. “Fuck!” My arm shook, as the blistering fragment of molten metal cooled against my flesh. Teeth clenched, I screwed my eyes tight to jagged light behind my lids, opening them again to the rod still holding its spark and the shit pool of metal I’d need to go over a second time. Even so, I kept on with the welding, grinding my teeth as the pain and the anger consumed me.

I needed it. I needed to remember what the hell I was there for in the first place. Not to frolic in some teenage fantasy romance, as if I had nothing better going on.

I had a job to do, and the job had an end—one that didn’t exactly fare well for Sera. She played a role, and I would need to bide my time with her, gain her trust, so that when the precise moment arrived, everything would be flawlessly executed.

Just as I’d planned, waiting for her to ship off to college, outside of her daddy’s watchful eyes. When she’d be vulnerable amongst the wolves.

She couldn’t have picked a better city to go to school, either. Detroit swallowed up girls like her every damn day. Rich chicks from the suburbs looking for some adventure, to sow their wild oats, or some shit. Only the hardened ones with thick skin ever stayed, and Sera didn’t fit that bill. She was soft, innocent, all the things that got eaten first when you lived in the city long enough.

In some ways, I felt sorry for her. I’d had an easier time watching and hating her from afar. Could’ve stayed that way, too, and she’d have never known what hit her in the end. But that’d be tragic. Because she needed to know why, and I needed her to feel the cold desolation I’d lived with all those years, to see the same ghosts that haunted me, to smell the burning flesh and taste it at the back of her throat until it gagged her.

The getting to know her shit had begun to wreak havoc on my head, and if I’d known how much she’d start to crawl under my skin, I’d have thrown her from that fucking rooftop the first night at the Savarine.

I knew better, though. Everything had to be perfect. One kill at a time. Anything outside of the plan made for messy, and I couldn’t afford messy. I couldn’t afford to be caught before the job was finished. Sera’s part in my act of vengeance needed to have meaning, not look like some sloppy, drunken accident.