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~~~
Drunken laughter and voices filled the bar. The room was rife with heat put off by so many bodies packed inside, but I was lucky to find a small table in a dark corner with Peter as my only company.
“I don’t know what you’re planning, Hunt,” Peter said over the noise, “but you’re a crazy motherfucker!” He laughed, took a swig of Lexington’s finest homemade beer and made a face as if he were swigging back horse piss.
The mug slammed against the table.
“When do you plan to talk to Wolf?” he asked.
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Shit, man, you’ve gotta tell me what this is all about.” Peter’s smile never left his face; a sure sign that the beer was doing its job.
“You know I can’t.”
Peter shook his head.
I was still thinking about the girl. It was already late, and I was convinced that by now she was lying in a shallow grave somewhere with her throat slit. I tried to focus my efforts on the blind sister, but already I felt as though I’d failed them both.
As more people entered the bar, threatening my small space, I called it a night.
“You’re not leaving already, are you?” Peter asked as I pushed the chair back.
“I’ve got things to do.”
I swigged down the last of my beer and set the mug on the table.
“I guess I’d go home early too with a girl like that waiting for me.” Peter grinned.
Ignoring the sharp stab of guilt caused by his comment, I told Peter good-night and stepped outside into the warm night air.
With my hands buried in my pockets, I walked along North Mill Street, past a brothel on the corner and several buildings converted into apartments. And then another building where used clothing and shoes and housewares were sold that had been confiscated on scouting runs. As American money no longer held value, citizens purchased items from stores all over the city with their worker’s cards, or they bartered. Like me, the soldiers never paid for anything—protecting the city from outsiders and helping make it a home for the people was all the payment required.
Protecting the citizens…I thought about how so wrong that was as I walked past the store. I shook my head and kept moving.
Instead of going by the brothel where Evelyn and the blind girl were, I cut between the buildings and walked beneath a pavilion where two guards stood smoking cigarettes. I could feel their judgmental eyes on me as I moved past. “New Overseer my ass,” one of them said. “Rafe’ll probably shoot him when he gets back,” said the other. I kept on moving until I made my way to my own building. Eight floors later, I exited the stairwell, letting the door slam closed behind me with a booming echo.
Thais was sitting at my desk when I entered the room.
I felt my heart stop, and my lungs felt like cement, but I let none of it show on my face. Swallowing down the relief that came upon me from out of nowhere, I closed the door slowly and walked through my room as casually as I had any other time.
“You said you knew where my sister was,” Thais spoke up from the desk. “You lied to me before, when you told me you didn’t know anything about her.”
I went over to my bed where I removed my gun and placed it inside the nightstand drawer; I took off the holster afterwards and tossed it on the floor.
“Why didn’t you leave?” I asked without looking at her.
“Because I believe you about Farah.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just do.”
I shook out my bed sheet and then stripped off my shirt, tossed it on the floor with the gun holster.
Thais stood from the chair, her long dress pooling around her ankles, and she came toward me.
“I want to know why you would do something so cruel to a blind girl—to any girl, but to a blind girl. I-I don’t understand.”
