Sweet anticipation spread through my veins as I asked one more question before pummeling him.
“Who is she?” I asked, my chin jutting in the direction of the still motionless, bloody woman.
“Just a cunt who deserves what she got.” The sick sneer remained on his face until the first contact of my fist. The rest was a blur. I don’t know how long I hit him. At least until he stopped moving. A shot in his leg, just in case he decided to come back to while I went to check on the girl.
She had a pulse. Gently, I pulled her long blonde hair away from her face. Her eyes were closed and the swelling was already beginning. My eyes trailed up and down her battered body, and rage swelled inside of me again.
My eyes darted over to the man, and he began moaning softly, barely moving, like a dying piece of roadkill. I rose, my stride unflinching, with more purpose than I had ever felt in my life. My gun was heavy in my hand. My bicep twitched as it went off, my hand holding onto my weapon steadily, with ease, with confident intention.
And then he stopped moving. Suddenly. Easily.
And just like that, the stillness returned. But, while the peacefulness I loved had only been interrupted by a few moments, now, everything was different.
That stillness now came with a price.
I stood over her, staring down at this strange woman, and wondering what the hell I had stumbled upon. Who was she? A hooker? His lover?
I rifled through the El Camino, and found nothing but a bottle of lube in the glove compartment and a few condoms under the front seat. Two joints were in the ash tray, which I pocketed. No purse, though. I walked over to the dead guy, taking him in briefly before looking through his pockets. I wasn’t much on fashion, but even I could tell his suit was cheap by the thin, rough fabric and his shoes, while very shiny, weren’t even real leather. His stringy black hair was slicked back away from his ugly, pock-marked face.
I found his wallet, with an ID that said he was Franco Javier Corona and had an address in Gresham. Three hundred and fifty-seven dollars in small bills, and two hotel card keys, and not much else. I pocketed the cash, and tucked his wallet back inside his suit jacket.
I looked at the girl again, and shook my head. Something wasn’t right. She was too healthy, too pretty to be a hooker. Way too fucking pretty to be the dead guy’s girlfriend. Her skin, while bruised and scratched, was smooth and toned, with a perfect bronze sheen to it. Her curvy hips swelled away from a taut, strong core of perfect ab muscles that I could see a flash of because her black tank top was pushed up against the swell of her full breasts. Every hooker I had ever seen was emaciated and ravaged from drugs and other various abuses, and the girl laying in front of me looked as healthy as a prized horse.
A prized, knocked-out, completely unconscious horse.
I realized then I needed to work fast. She would just have to tell me who she was when she woke up. But for now, I needed to get her out of here, and clean up this mess.
I took a step towards her, and my eye caught a slight movement to my left. I looked over in the shadows, and couldn’t believe my eyes.
An owl. The owl. No, it couldn’t be, I thought. But he was a dead ringer for the damned owl that had appeared only twice in my past. And just like before, he sat there, staring at me, his huge eyes blinking, calm and noble, looking as if he owned the fucking forest. Could it really be the same one?
If it was, then I knew this was a terrible omen.
The first time he appeared was so long ago, it almost felt like a dream. Twenty years ago and it was the last and only time I had ever loved a woman. I was a naive twenty year old, and I couldn’t wait to marry Julie. Young or not, naive or not, I knew she was the one I needed to spend the rest of my life with. We got married on the Oregon coast, both of us wearing black leather and huge smiles. After a year of love-drenched bliss, she died in a senseless car crash coming home from work. The night I lost her, this damn owl showed up as I stampeded through the forest, screaming at the moon in a drunken rage and grief-filled bout of insanity. He sat perched on a rock, his huge golden eyes blinking at me, his eyes filled with what I perceived at the time to be understanding.