Blood Men: A Thriller

I try calling Nat’s cell phone again. I’ve got blood on my hands somehow and it smears the buttons on the phone. I keep hitting the wrong ones and have to lean back and take a couple of deep breaths before trying again. My hands are shaking so badly I have to hold the phone in both of them to get it to work. There’s still no answer. Surely they’re okay. If something happened to them it would have happened at the house, not in public.

Jodie was killed in public.

So where does that leave me?

It leaves you and anybody close to you in danger.

The media coverage was extensive, so the men who killed Jodie certainly know all about me and think I’m coming after them. These people, they know I killed their friend. They know my dad gave me a name, and they suspect he gave me more than one.

I pull away from the curb. I find myself heading toward home, then decide it’s not the best place to go if I don’t want to be found. Could be the guy with the shotgun has made one phone call and another pair of men are descending on my house right now.

I change direction. The way the car is handling, with the wheel rim squealing on the road and my forearms burning from trying to control it, I probably wouldn’t have made it there anyway. Other cars slow down and people stare at me.

I pull over. I’ve put about two minutes between me and the shooter. When I open the door the three fingers that were jammed there are dislodged, all three connected by the back of the guy’s hand and a long piece of skin resembling torn wallpaper. They hit the ground, the middle finger tapping louder than the other two because of a silver ring on it. The ring has been flattened and has a skull on it; maybe that’s what kept his fingers from slipping out of the door. I climb out. My leg is covered in blood, my shoe so full of it now that it’s leaking through the material. I feel woozy and grab on to the side of the car to stay balanced. I try calling Nat again but there’s still no answer.

I get back into the car. There are dance-step footprints made up of blood on the ground where I was just standing. I start to feel dizzy, and then tired. I open the glove box and rummage through it. Tissues, a road map, a woman’s sunglasses. There’s a gym bag in the backseat covered in broken glass. It’s open, and I can see a woman’s clothes in there. Whoever this car belongs to, it sure as hell isn’t either of the men who showed up in it.

I rest my head back. Even with my eyes closed the world keeps swaying. I hold my hands on my leg and the blood is warm, the world fades and it takes me with it.





chapter thirty-three


New tax regulations were being standardized, Inland Revenue was desperate to take more money from those who were poor, rich, and everybody in between. There were seminars being run by enthusiastic men in suits, the kind of men you see on TV late at night selling home gyms and futuristic kitchen equipment. The fun part about the seminars was we all had to pay to go along and learn new skills so we could stay in line with the new tax laws—and of course the seminars were run by Inland Revenue staff—which was another way of them making money.

I was in a room of around a hundred people—you could look down the row you were sitting in and see that each person had about the same amount of boredom pinned to their faces, like we were all watching a twelve-hour mime show. I looked down the row and at the same time a woman was looking back. I offered one of those “weird, huh?” kind of smiles, and she offered a “this is bullshit but what are you going to do?” response. There was that awkward social mingling afterward, where we all stood around drinking orange juice and not touching the half-cooked sausage rolls. I think the food was deliberately inedible so it could be offered at the next seminar and the one after that—all cost-cutting measures. I introduced myself to the woman I’d made eye contact with. Her name was Jodie.

I was shy around women. I hadn’t really had much experience of them. I was afraid every woman I ever met was probably figuring I would try and cut them in half. Jodie didn’t seem to know anybody else—and I thought perhaps in her own way she was a little socially awkward too. All I knew was she was supercute and alone and her earlier smile had made me feel good about myself in some weird way. Before I knew it, I’d asked her out for dinner.

Our first date I spent in some nervous daze where I could hardly look her in the eye. Our second date we caught a movie and then sat in a café for hours—and again I have no idea what we talked about. All I knew was there was something about this woman that made me look forward to having a future.

Part of me thinks it’s happening right now—that first time I saw her, that first date, the first time we were in bed together. It’s a memory and a dream and at the same time it’s unwinding in front of me for the first time, all of it new and fresh and wonderful. Jodie is alive and in my world again and I want her to stay.