Chapter Ten
The End?
“I do.” It was that simple, but infinitely complex in its ramifications on how my life had just changed. I was married. I had someone I had to look out for and care for now. I had someone to live for. Those concepts were all radical changes to the routine ebb and flow of my structured and dispassionate lifestyle.
I stood outside the judge’s chambers feeling awkward and unsure of what came next. Anna was inspecting her second ring, her face content with satisfaction. In fact she looked a bit like the cat that ate the canary. She looked up at me inquiringly as to what came next.
“What would you like to do?” I asked.
Her eyebrows rose and her expression was all tease.
I closed my eyes briefly feeling my face flush, “I didn’t mean for that to sound like that! I…”
Her hand closed over my mouth and her eyes were kind. “I know. You were just trying to be sweet and romantic and make my wedding day even more eventful than it already is, but all I want right now is for you to make me your wife in truth! Think you can do that Nikolai?” She asked seductively as she pressed up against me.
A chortle of laughter escaped from her, “Oh honey you’re about to blow a blood vessel!”
“Let’s go!” I gritted out.
She mock saluted, “Yes Sir! Ready to serve you anyway I can, Sir! At your service, Sir just give the order, Sir!”
I just shook my head; the woman didn’t have a serious bone in her body. We turned to go and I felt Kevin’s hand slip into my free hand. I looked down to see him looking at me. In a way his gesture completely made my day as much as the ceremony had. The end of something old and the beginning of something new.
We left and for whatever reason I thought it would be nicer to walk then ride back to the apartment in a taxi. We ambled on and I had to admit my control was slipping a bit as we neared the street where the apartment building was.
My pace inadvertently quickened and Anna gave me a cheeky smirk. I stopped dead in my tracks and then almost as quickly as I’d halted I hustled a surprised Anna and Kevin inside a corner bistro that we were beside of. In an awful form of dawning dread, I walked past the waitress picking out menus asking us how many were to be seated. I went to the glass window painted with advertised specials and gazed across the street at the apartment complex building.
I felt Anna press up against me and in a concerned whisper she asked, “What’s wrong?”
I scanned the opposite street. There! I saw the man I had seen for just a brief second, when I had been out on the street.
My eyes drifted to the right and I found the man that I had hoped not to and then further on I found another one. Three men or perhaps more, appearing as if they were but calmly people watching. The bitter truth set in. The cartels had found me or at least knew about where to look. How much did they know?
I pulled a burner cell out of my coat pocket and called a number by memory.
“This is security how may we help you?”
“Hi this is Tyre Benning in apartment 705 I need to speak with Todd Brown.”
“One moment please.”
There was a brief pause before Todd came on the line, “Good afternoon Mister Benning. What can I do for you?”
“Have you noticed any odd occurrences on my floor today? Any strangers?”
“Not that I’m aware of, Sir. We did have the halls painted about midmorning, but you received word of that last week. The painters will be back tomorrow to finish the trim work.”
“I need you to do me a favor Todd.”
“Anything for you Mister Benning! You know that.”
“I need you to take those two keys I gave you an open apartment 703 and 705. Open 703 first. Now this is very important Todd! Do not step into the room, but instead look down at the doorjamb about knee-high just below the lock. There will be a light there. I want you to tell me whether it’s red or green.”
There was a slight pause, “I’m on my way Mister Benning.”
“Just leave the phone on Todd.”
I could hear the jumbling of his movement and sometimes his breathing. I heard the jumbling of keys and then the sound of a door opening.
“The light is green Mister Benning.”
“Okay try the other door.”
I heard the noise of the key slide into the lock. An automated voice sounded out in Spanish and I cringed inwardly at the words.
“Go back to hell death angel!”
I didn’t even have time to yell to tell Todd to run. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I watched every window on the seventh floor explode outward as balls of flame erupted through them. They must have mixed some explosive compound like thermoplasm in with the paint.
Following the initial flash of flame, eruptions sounded out and the bistro shook hard, and several glasses behind the bar fell and shattered on the floor. Bombs left in paint cans no doubt.
People were running and screaming everywhere, while others just stood still in fascinated horror, as they watch the top three floors of the building start to implode down onto the gutted out seventh floor. It was quiet inside me and I heard the storm around me as if it was a dim murmur in the background.
How had they found me? I covered and recovered my tracks so well! The simple truth of it was I had stayed in one place too long. I never did that, but I had kept coming back to Philadelphia, because of Anna.
Anna!
They couldn’t know about her yet. If they had they would have grabbed her and tortured her and made sure to let me know about it somehow. They were like that. Monsters like them always targeted and abused the things and people a person loved most.
They hadn’t thought I loved anything. So they had tried to kill me remotely instead of up close and brutally personal. I stared at the burning building before me as fire trucks began to screech to a halt outside their sirens blaring. All those innocent people dead and more of them injured just to kill me.
Had I saved even half as many people from addictive lifestyles of misery as they had just killed? Was there any point to anything I had tried to do in my private war? If this was my legacy than what point was there in continuing if I was only going to reap more destruction to innocent lives?
I killed some they killed many. I pushed back a little and they shoved back hard. What point was there to fighting this war if this was the result of doing the right thing? Why not let evil desires reign. Let the drugs pour in and wreck more lives. Perhaps fewer lives would have been lost that way. But it wouldn’t stop there and I knew that.
Evil men with great ambitions didn’t depend on a single item to be the people that they were. They existed because they made choices to be as they were regardless of whatever item they were peddling at the time.
People make choices and some of those choices are wrong and those wrong choices hurt both them and others. As long as people desired items or feelings that while alluring, but in the end were harmful, there would be those who would sell it to them. In the 20’s it was alcohol. Now it was drugs. Soon it would cycle back to slavery and in fact it already was. In a hundred years the fighting could be over something as inconsequential as strawberry flavored water or as bad as someone with the money to pay that decided the taste of a newborn human baby was a delicacy worth paying for.
You had to fight darkness wherever you found it regardless of the cost. If one gave up the fight everything of value would be taken away. If one fought, that might still happen, but as long as the fight lasted there was hope of something better. So I would fight on, but what a cost to bear. Anna was tugging on me and I looked over to her.
“I thought you said I was safe?”
From the level of misery in her eyes I could tell that she saw herself to blame for the destruction of so many taking place before us.
“They’re not after you! It’s me they want!” I glanced back at the building wreathed in flames.
Anna safe? Anna wasn’t safe!
Anna wouldn’t ever be safe as long as she was with me! I turned back to her and her eyes reflected the tears she felt for the devastation taking place outside.
“What?” She asked uncertainly as she gazed into my face.
I grasped her head and kissed her with all the impassioned bitterness and heart sickness I felt in this moment.
I let go and whispered, “I love you, but I have to go!”
I ran back towards the bistro’s kitchen avoiding her wild attempt to grab a hold of me.
Anna tugged Kevin along behind her and hit the back door of the bistro hard with the side of her body. The rusty door clanged open so hard it hit against the brick siding with a loud bang. Anna stood panting in the alleyway with Kevin, who was about to have a fit. No one was in the alley!
“Tyre!” She screamed out at the top of her lungs.
Her fist came up to her mouth and she half bit it in the anxiety of the moment.
“No!” She screamed looking down the alleyway again.
Kevin started to become uncontrolled and she sank to her knees on the dirty pavement wrapping her arms tightly around him.
“Shhh! It’s okay!” She whispered in the calming platitudes known especially by mothers.
Her words were lies though. Everything was not okay! Her dreams were shattering one by one, but for the sake of her son she fought to keep the grief she felt from coming out.
It took her three days of crying and watching the news coverage of the incident to come to a consensus of what to do. The reporters were covering it as an extreme accident caused by a heavy concentration of paint fumes, which had combusted and ignited gas lines that had caused the loud explosions.
They may have been fooling the public at large, but she doubted any investigator on the case would buy that theory. There had been fifty seven casualties and over a hundred others had been injured in and around the building as well as with the rescue operation. Anna knew why Tyre had run and she even understood his reasoning for doing so, but even then it still didn’t make it right.
She was heartbroken and angry all at the same time. When she found him she intended on giving him a real piece of her mind! After that she would never let him out of her sight again. But how was she to find someone like him? She didn’t know how to tread water in the underground of the world’s theater of intrigue. She didn’t even know if he was still in the country. Somehow she doubted it.
When it came to the man she loved and had married she knew practically nothing in terms of his history or where he might go. He was native born Russian, but Russia was a big place and she had Kevin to consider. The awful thought beckoned in her mind again to torment her, ‘She may never find him’!
She had to have more faith than that or…? Or she would really fall apart! She determined what her first step would be. She glanced down at the card in her hand. It had the contact info for the man named Flint. Tyre had said to contact this man if she was ever in need and he wasn’t available. Maybe this Flint would know where Tyre was or be able to help her find out where anyway.
She had debated calling the number several times over the past several days, but what she needed to do was better done in person. That meant she was going to Italy, which was scary for her. She’d never been in Canada or Mexico before let alone overseas, but if that was what it took than that was what she would do.
She wasn’t ready to give up on the rest of her life just yet. Yes, she had the money she needed to raise Kevin, but living life was more than just having the necessities needed for existence. In order to truly live you had to be alive inside too. Since Tyre had left it had felt like a piece of her was gone and the only solution to loving life again was to get him back.
A month went by, which was how long it took for her to get passports for her and Kevin. They’d been held over in the air waiting for the runway to clear for over an hour now and Anna was beginning to panic.
What if they ran out of fuel? Just then the plane began a gradual descent and the intercom announced they would be landing shortly, which ushered in a whole new array of panic inducing possibilities.
She was really going to give Tyre a piece of her mind after suffering through all this! It got choppy and then the tires hit pavement. When the plane came to a complete stop Anna breathed freely again for the first time in what felt like several minutes. She mopped the sweat off of her forehead and glanced at Kevin. He’d been a real trooper and hadn’t seemed to be fazed by anything, which was a miracle straight from God she firmly believed. He was looking at her in his usual way and if he could have had an expression she thought it would probably say something along the lines of ‘What’s wrong with you?’”
She smiled shakily, “We’re here honey.”
Now it was time to face yet another fear of hers, which was to find her way, alone, around in a foreign country with an autistic child that liked to wonder off. She’d watched far too many horror movies as a teen and now every half-baked corny movie plot was rising up to haunt her.
“Please God let them speak English!”
She whispered to herself as she undid her seatbelt.
The Italians she came in contact with were particularly unhelpful and even rude. To them she was just another American tourist. Finally she found someone who could speak English and would work with her. From him she found out were to rent a car and exchange money.
Anna sat in the seat of the little car clutching the wheel hard. She glanced in the rear view mirror at Kevin buckled up in the back.
Oh God don’t let me kill him or anyone else! She pushed the clutch in and turned the key. She’d had to drive a friend’s Jeep that was a standard for a while, but it hadn’t been a good experience. The experience had abruptly ended with the Jeep wrapped around a telephone pole. She’d sworn that day to never drive another standard. Apparently some promises were made to be broken.
She put it in gear and in an effort to not ride the clutch she let it out too fast. The car gave a weak attempt at movement and then died roughly. She gritted her teeth together. Hatred couldn’t even describe the level of apathy that she already felt for this little box on wheels. She started the car up again and this time she gave it more gas. The little car took off with an uncomfortable lurch that was repeated moments later as she shifted into second gear.
Five hundred feet further she had to stop for traffic, which necessitated starting the painful process of driving a standard all over again from a dead stop. The navigation device had far too many hours listed until destination reached. What did they do to tourists guilty of vehicular manslaughter in Italy?
It wasn’t so bad when she got out into the country and didn’t have to stop often. That is the views weren’t so bad. She couldn’t say she’d ever been on more curvy narrow roads before then she was now, but at least there wasn’t much traffic.
She was pretty sure that she was lost. The navigation had her going on and on and it only seemed to become more rural with every passing moment. She entered a private drive that seemed to drag on and she was just about to despair of an ending when the villa appeared.
Tyre’s friend must be as fabulously wealthy as Tyre seemed to be, if not more! She pulled up short of the giant columned carport. Somehow it seemed silly to park so mundane of a little bucket of bolts in so prestigious of a spot. Shaking in apprehension with what was left of her already frayed nerves she got out and unbuckled Kevin, who had been blessedly asleep for hours. He had been so good and she felt an upsurge of pride over how her son was handling this new experience.
She stepped up to the inlaid old wooden doors of the villa and reached up to hammer the knocker down a few times. She stood waiting with her hands on Kevin’s shoulders. She heard voices and then steps and then one of the big doors opened. The figure she saw was not what she had been expecting.
Her expectation had been of some short rotund Italian guy, who would give her the eye over and then ask her if she knew or was part of the ‘Family’. Instead she found herself looking upward to meet the piercing eyes of perhaps one of the most strikingly beautiful women that she had ever seen in life.
“Can I help you?” The beautiful woman asked with guarded curiosity.
Anna stuttered to say what she had been rehearsing the entire trip here, but failed to get out a single word of her speech.
Something in her failure to perform must’ve convinced the woman that she was no threat because she opened the door wider and stepped gracefully off to the side and gestured for them to come in, “Won’t you come in please.”
She asked courteously.
Kevin actually moved first, which gave Anna the impetus to follow. The big door closed and Anna half turned to keep an eye on her capable looking hostess, which is when she saw the gun.
Anna’s eyes grew big and she clutched onto Kevin tighter unsure of how she could protect him in this situation from such a potential foe. Her tall hostess gave her an apologetic smile as she slipped the handgun into a drawer of an ornate table near the doors.
“We don’t get many visitors and it pays to be careful.”
The tall woman walked closer and it was hard not to step back from her approach. She made Anna feel even more acutely aware of her somewhat diminutive size. Anna met her eyes through an act of will and was relieved once again to see no malice there for her.
“What is your name?”
“Anna and this is Kevin.” Anna finished quickly in response.
The woman’s smile was genuine as she took them both in visually. “My name is Lisa. Won’t you have a seat?” She said gesturing towards a sitting room off to one side of the massive foyer and Anna directed Kevin towards it.
Everyone sat down and an awkward silence ensued. Lisa smiled at someone behind Anna and Anna turned to see who it was. A toddler that couldn’t be much older than a year had stumbled into the room rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“All done with your nap Taleah?”
The little girl saw her mother and gave a gap toothed gurgle of joy and took off for her at high speed. Anna smiled taken in by the sight of the mother with her child.
She felt herself relax a little more around her hostess. It became readily apparent what the little girl was after and with a soft laugh Lisa through a small blanket over the toddler and began to nurse her discreetly.
The sight of the nursing child didn’t bother Anna, but instead it sent a pang of longing through her to experience doing the same with a child of her own again. She had loved nursing Kevin, but with all the stress of working two jobs and sometimes three to make ends meet she had lost her milk after only a couple of months. She had always felt like she’d cheated Kevin out of something good by losing her milk supply so early. She looked up from the outline of the baby under the blanket to see Lisa watching her.
“You’re safe here Anna. It’s okay to let your guard down a little. No one here would ever hurt you or your son I promise!”
Anna nodded as tears slid down her face and she relaxed her tight grip on Kevin. The woman was genuine and Anna knew it was okay. Tyre had been right to tell her that this was a safe place to come to.
“I’m so out of my league! I’m not good at any of this…… stuff!” Anna breathed out in a rush, already trusting the other woman.
“I know just where you’re coming from honey!” Lisa responded with emphasis.
Anna twisted her hands in her lap together, “I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve dropped in on you so unannounced?”
Lisa smiled, “Now that you mention it I am rather curious as to your appearance here. Why have you come Anna?”
Anna looked down, “A man….” She stopped.
She looked up and met Lisa’s eyes squarely, “The man that I love told me that if I was ever in need of help that I should come here. In specific he told me that I could find a man named Flint here who would help me.”
Lisa’s eyebrows rose slightly and then she glanced off to the side, “It would appear you have a visitor darling.”
A man stepped into the room smoothly from a place beyond it where he had been evidently listening from. Anna swallowed hard; this man very much looked like he could take care of trouble both big and small. The question was would he help her?
“Anna this is my husband James a.k.a. Flint. James this is Anna and her son Kevin.” Lisa looked at Anna directly, “Do you need privacy?”
Anna raised her hand quickly, “Oh no please don’t move on my account! It’s nothing secretive that I’ve come here about.”
James sat down beside his wife his eyes reflecting his wife’s curiosity as to their strange visitor. “So Miss Anna what is it you need help with?” James asked inquisitively.
“It’s not Miss, its Mrs. Nikolai Gravitausky.” Anna said softly, as she intently watched his face for a reaction to her words.
Her words brought a shocked expression to James features that had his wife looking now at him with genuine curiosity. “While I’ll be!” James breathed out under his breath.
“What?” Lisa asked of her husband, as her look of curiosity started turning partially to concern.
He turned to her, “Nikolai Gravitausky is Tyre’s real name.”
Lisa’s eyebrows rose expressively, “Wow!” She said exclaiming softly giving Anna a new appreciative glance.
James’s face had switched from shock directly to concern. “Where’s Tyre?”
“I don’t know.” Anna replied.
“When did you see him last?” James asked.
Anna looked down, as she unconsciously felt at the diamond rings on her finger, “Our wedding day.”
Lisa and James looked at each other meaningfully, as a short sob shook through Anna. Lisa smoothly transferred a sleeping Taleah to James and moved over to Anna.
Lisa gave Kevin a comforting smile as she slid around behind Anna and enfolded her with her arms. Anna didn’t resist the hand that eased her head back to rest against Lisa’s shoulder.
Anna just kept crying, “I want him! I need him!”
Lisa just held her tightly and kissed the top of her head softly, “I know honey!”
Kevin just watched what took place a silent witness to the scene of raw emotion. James disappeared with Taleah and then he was back alone kneeling before Anna.
He took her hands into his grasp, “Anna I’ll help you anyway I can. Can you tell me a little more what happened?”
Anna nodded, as she tried to stifle her emotions down. Lisa pulled the baby blanket off of her shoulder and handed it to Anna.
“Oh no I’ll get stuff on it!”
“That’s what washing machines are for. Blow your nose honey.”
Anna took the blanket and wiped at her face and sat up a little straighter.
“What do you want to know?” She asked.
James shrugged, “Start wherever you like.”
Anna looked pensive for a moment about where to start. “I met Tyre at a bar I was working at. I’ve had hard times for a while.” She quickly added, as if in a way of an excuse for being a barmaid.
“One night I noticed this guy at the end of the bar watching me. It was all he did for hours. He kept coming back at intermittent times over the course of a year and a half. At first I was a little creeped out by it, but as time went on I got more curious about him. Finally one night I decided to confront him and rattle his cage some. To my surprise he stuck around. We had a date and things really heated up. I liked him and he seemed to find contentment from just watching me breathe. We got closer and I saw the genuine person that he was even though he tried to hide it. Things got even more serious and we decided to marry. My past stepped in though. I’m something of an activist in conjunction with autism matters, because of my son and what caused him to become autistic. I’m scheduled to appear before the Senate in a little under two months. If things go well some very wealthy private companies could lose huge amounts of money and become liable to be sued. One company in particular wanted my movement stopped. I think they killed some of the members of my team and they scared the rest of them off, but I refused to stop. They sent assassins and if it wasn’t for Tyre I would be dead and Kevin would be alone. Tyre killed the men they sent and stayed with me until I was better. He was gone most of the next day and when he came back he told me I was safe and that I didn’t have to worry about them coming for me ever again. I don’t know what he did to guarantee that but I believe him. The next afternoon we were married. We left the courthouse and started back to my apartment to….” Anna glanced at Kevin.
Lisa smoothly interjected, “To have fun.”
Anna nodded her head with a rosy tint to her cheeks. “Tyre must’ve seen someone or sensed something was off. All I know is that he hustled us into a bistro across the street from our apartment complex and called a security guard at the apartments. The security guard checked my room and then Tyre’s. The whole floor exploded, when he checked Tyre’s apartment. I imagine you saw or heard something about the fire in Philadelphia a month ago?”
James nodded grimly.
“I said something I shouldn’t have as I watched those people die. I asked Tyre, ‘I thought you said I was safe?’ I was still too caught up in the moment of how I had almost died to comprehend in that moment that I wasn’t the target, but that Tyre was instead. He said as much, as I watched him putting stuff together in his mind almost knowing what he intended to do before he did it. He kissed me and told me he loved me and then he ran away. I understand what he was thinking. I know he just wants to keep me and Kevin safe, but I don’t want to be safe! Truly it’s impossible to ever be safe from any form of mishap. You could be nothing but safe conscious and still be taken out by a drunken driver or a falling meteor. I want to find Tyre and have the life it was intended for us to have together! I do not want to live in fear, but neither do I want to live life alone! I’ve weighed the risks. Yes, if Kevin and I are with Tyre then we are more in the line of fire, but it’s a risk I’m willing to make in order to experience the life I know we could have together. It’s worth the risk and there are no guarantees with either route that is chosen. I want to tell him that to his face! Please if you can will you tell me where he is?” Anna asked imploringly.
James’s face was nothing but kindness, “Like you said there is a higher risk with being together. I’ve had to face that reality in my own life. But you’re right living life to the fullest always comes first otherwise you might live physically longer, but not really experience what living should be about. Tyre is a very emotional kind of guy believe it or not. Sometimes he lets himself act on something in the emotion of the moment before he’s considered all the angles. I think he’ll come to the same conclusion as you have, even as Lisa and I have.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Anna asked in concern.
James looked down and then back up, “Anna I’m not sure I can find Tyre for you, but I’m going to try don’t fear! Why I said what I did is to give you hope that he might figure things out and return on his own.”
Anna shook her head no, “Even if he did figure it out he would be too embarrassed to come back, because he would think he had failed me and that I hated him now. He’s fragile like that emotionally. He really doesn’t think anyone can truly love him. He won’t come back, not on his own!”
“I think she’s right James.” Lisa added softly from behind Anna.
After a moment of consideration Flint nodded his head in grim acknowledgment that they were likely right about how Tyre would respond. “I’ve worked with Tyre for many years now and I know places that he frequents from time to time. I knew that he frequented Philadelphia and I’ve been concerned about him ever since the explosion. If he thinks he’s being hunted then he’s completely gone to ground and he won’t frequent any of his usual places.”
“So you’re saying it’s hopeless! That we can’t find him?”
“No I didn’t say that! But it is going to be more difficult to find him. I work with other people like Tyre. We frequent places, but we only have one home, which we keep secret above all else. A friend of mine, Galloway, bet that he could find not only the location of my home within three months, but also Tyre’s. To my surprise Tyre seemed interested in the bet and