Chapter Seven

fyi: strong language, alcohol use

I haven’t been home in a week. I’ve been staying at my mother’s, keeping mostly to the guest bedroom that used to be mine. I’ve left the room only to use the bathroom and make myself an occasional meal, usually ramen noodles or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The doctors prescribed me anxiety medication, but I’m afraid to take it – I don’t want to feel drugged up again. So I’ve been a complete wreck with nothing to do about it.

I haven’t been back to work, so I’m pretty sure I no longer have a job. I dropped my classes and called the hospital I volunteered at to quit. I just can’t bring myself to go back to normal life now. The murder attempt – my murder attempt – keeps playing over and over in my head and I can’t shake it. At least I’ve stopped crying. Now I just catch myself staring up at the ceiling all the time.

I’m traumatized and I know it – I also know I should be trying to get back to my normal routine. But Cameron won’t speak to me or even see me. I’ve tried to visit him at his work, but just once. It was an awful experience. The moment he saw me, he turned around and walked away… all the way out of the building, before driving off. My best friend wanted so badly not to see me that he left work to get away. I was humiliated.

I even tried sending a text to my mom’s ex-boyfriend, Tony, since he was so willing to meet up with me before. But he never responded. The only one who is here for me now is my alcoholic mother, who I have not seen sober once since I’ve been here. Not that I’ve checked very frequently.

Occasionally she knocks on the door to try to get me to come out and talk. She knows I need to talk to somebody, and I believe that she truly does want to help, but I also truly don’t think she really knows how. I’m not ready to talk yet anyway. But I know I should. I know I need to stop wallowing in self-pity and do something about my situation.

I lay in bed for several more minutes, my stomach growling angrily. I need to get up and make food. I wonder what it will be: another gourmet peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or a new and exciting flavor of Maruchan Ramen? Salt and MSG sound good, so I think I’ll go for the latter.

I finally force myself up, feeling suddenly dizzy from the self-inflicted dehydration and starvation. I slowly make it out to the kitchen, where my mom is sitting at the kitchen table, drinking… coffee?

“Got some whiskey in there or something?” I ask her, with a little more attitude than I anticipated coming out of my mouth. She looks at me.

“Just enough,” she says, her hands noticeably trembling. “I need to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“What happened to you and Cameron?” she asks, ignoring my statement.

My eyes well up immediately. “I said I don’t want to talk. Leave me alone.”

“He was coerced.” She’s suddenly staring into my eyes with a lifeless expression on her face.

“Wh…what?” I ask, rattled.

She says nothing. The entire house is silent; I can’t even hear the clock ticking in the living room or the light breeze outside. She takes a sip of her whiskey coffee, and the sound of her setting the mug back down on the wooden table is surprisingly loud.

“Mom?” I ask timidly. “What’s going on?” I wonder if she’s drunk, like she usually is. But she seems different. I haven’t seen her this calm or this solemn since my childhood.

“I drink because of the voices. You hear them too.” She stands up, abandoning her coffee, and walks unsteadily to her bedroom door which is just beyond the dining room. “You need to tune them out. They can only hunt you if you listen.”

“Mom, what are you talking about?” The mention of Cameron and the voices has me worried now. And what does she mean, they can only hunt me if I listen?

“Forgive Cameron. He has no choice. I’m going to bed now. I’m tired….” I look at the clock – it’s 2:00 in the afternoon.

“Mom, what–” I barely get the words out before my mom falls to the floor in front of her bedroom door, unconscious.

Solomon Beinoni – Several Days Earlier

I’m sitting in the driver’s seat of a borrowed car, inside an acquaintance’s garage, out of town. Tony, my fellow police officer, is sitting next to me. Unwillingly, from the way he is staring off into space and barely speaking. He has the slightest tremble, which wasn’t there before yesterday. His eyes look haunted and his knee is bouncing up and down, shaking the car. He’s nervous, and I know why. Declan Wolfe is why.

Declan Wolfe and a couple of his puppets within law enforcement each played their parts in capturing and forcefully interrogating Tony for attempting to pass along information to the target, Vienna Barron. They held him and questioned him for eight hours before releasing him, while making sure that nobody suspected anything and ensuring Tony made it back to work the next day like nothing happened. They left minimal, almost nonexistent physical marks; mentally, though, Tony is obviously scarred.

He hasn’t said anything to me about his eight hours of hell, but I know all about it because for the last several months, I too have been working for Wolfe. I’m one of his informants, and only in the last couple weeks have I began to realize that Wolfe is doing more harm than good. That realization had been solidified after he put my friend Tony here through electric shock therapy to get a little information, and the fact that he wants to put a twenty-year-old college student in the ground helped solidify my stance as well. I need to stop him. Somehow.

Tony finally speaks. “I know you want to help Vienna. I appreciate that, I really do – I wanted to help too, of course.” His knee starts bobbing up and down faster. “But all I fucking did was meet up with her at a park and they knew about it. I told no one what I was doing, Sol, no one. Not even my wife.”

“I won’t let them find me,” I say, rather pathetically. Of course I can’t completely prevent being caught, all I can do is make as little noise as possible. Tony catches my error and gives me a sideways glance.

“Wolfe has ways that we don’t even know about,” he says. “Somehow he’s able to gather intel that’s barely even intel. Somebody whispers something, thinks something that Wolfe doesn’t approve of, and he’s on them like a bloodhound.”

“Yeah, that’s a fucking problem,” I say. We’re silent for a few minutes, and at some point Tony realizes he’s been shaking the car because his leg stops bouncing suddenly.

Tony sighs. “Look, I know a guy. I can meet up with him without leaving any digital trace. He knows a couple guys who have some military background – Marine I think, at least for one of them. They’ve proven themselves to be highly effective bodyguards. Maybe we can set Vienna up with one of them temporarily. At least until we figure something else out.”

“I’m assuming you trust this guy?” I ask.

“With my life.”

“No way to trace anything back to you?”

“I guarantee it.”

“Alright, Tony. Make it happen. We sure as hell don’t have any better ideas.”