The Red Hunter

“It’s an oven in here,” she says, bowing at the entrance and slipping off her flip-flops. She’s a student here, too.

I flip on the ceiling fans that literally do nothing except move the hot air around. The tall windows are open wide, just letting in the sounds of the city. There is no breeze.

“How’d they do today?” she asks

“Marisol got a little overexerted,” I say. “But she’s okay. They all did great. They’re getting stronger.”

She nods. “It’s a good thing,” she says. “What about you?”

“I’m getting stronger, too.”

She regards me with kind eyes, someone used to seeing beneath the surface. I am still getting used to talking to people, allowing myself to be seen. “You seem—well.”

“I’m—um—getting there.”

“That’s a lot,” she said. “Considering.”

? ? ?

WHEN THE GIRLS LEAVE, THE space is quiet except for the continuous music of the city streets—horns, and tires on asphalt, air brakes, and manholes clanking, construction and voices, the hiss of buses. I sit a moment in the center of the room, and draw in and release several deep breaths.

Inhale: I dwell in the present moment. Exhale: It is a wonderful moment.

I almost mean it.

? ? ?

IN THE BACK, PAUL IS doing the books. He is thin, drawn through the face, but stronger than he has been in years. A new cocktail of meds, stem cell therapy, and a new technology called an Aerobika Oscillating Positive Expiratory Pressure Therapy System has him stable and moving about more. There’s no cure for what he has, but he has more time than we thought. And none of us can ask for more.

“How are we doing?” I ask.

I sit in the chair across from my desk, which used to be Mike’s. I haven’t changed much in this space, though I did take down his display of Tibetan masks. I still see the one he wore that night in my dreams. Another nightmare among many that visit me when I am unquiet.

But I loved Mike, and that hasn’t changed much either. I hate what he did, what he would have done. But there was also a man who pulled me back from the edge and taught me everything I knew. He held me, bandaged me, massaged me, iced me, and taught me how to grab the harness of my power and never let anyone take it back, not even him. That was the real Mike, too. And I can keep that Mike, I decided. And I’ll let the other man—the dirty cop, the man who hired the Beckham brothers and Didion to take the money back from my father, the one who didn’t stop it when he could, who was responsible for all the horror in my life—whether he intended that or not—go.

Paul put a bullet through his heart in the warehouse. Mike is gone. That Mike is not going to be a part of my life moving forward—not in anger, or hatred, or thoughts of revenge. I’ve finally learned the lesson he tried to teach me. I wish it hadn’t cost so much to understand.

“You’re in the black, kid,” Paul says, looking away from the screen.

He issues a cough, and I brace to race for the inhaler, but he gives a quick wave to indicate he’s okay. “Last two months, you’re turning a profit.”

Mike left the school to me in his will, along with all its mountainous debt. When I recovered from my multiple injuries, including a bullet wound in the abdomen, I infused the place with the cash left in my account, hired some teachers and a marketing firm. We have an afterschool pick-up, some teen volunteers who get free instruction, a kiddie class on Saturday mornings, and the free Saturday afternoon for the girls from Melba’s group home.

That money. It will do some good.

We hear the elevator ping and I go outside to see Boz shuffling in, sweating like he’s run a mile.

“Christ,” he said. “Is there any place worse on earth than this city in the summer? I don’t know how you do it. And—hello? Air-conditioning.”

I get him a water in a paper cone from the fountain and take him into the back, where it’s cooler. We have an ancient air-conditioning unit that barely works in the window. He sits down hard across from Paul.

“I thought you might like an update,” he says. “I heard from my buddy at the precinct.”

Paul and I exchanged a look. It was tricky. There were things that I knew now, that Paul had always known, that Boz didn’t know. Boz didn’t know that Paul had organized the original heist. I had not been linked to Didion’s murder.

“Josh Beckham has been released with time served,” said Boz. “You probably heard that. Because he was a juvenile at the time of the initial incident and he was acting under duress from his brother. Your testimony that he tried to help you escape, and the testimony from Claudia Bishop that he came to the house to try to keep his brother from coming for the money helped him. Now he’s free to take care of his elderly mother.”

I am happy about that, as happy as I can be.

“We know that it was Rhett Beckham and John Didion who were guilty of murdering Chad and Heather, and the crimes against you, Zoey. And that it was Mike who hired them that night.”

Boz stops to look between us.

“So I guess what everyone’s thinking is that your father organized or helped carry out that heist and hid the money. Mike, we’re supposing, felt that he didn’t get a fair shake and that’s why he sent Didion and Beckham to Chad’s place.”

Paul nods, looking solemn, rests his head in his palm. And my body is tense suddenly. Boz didn’t come out here to tell us things we already knew.

“But—you know,” he says, looking back and forth between us. “With everyone dead—Mike, Didion, Beckham—there are things we just may never know.”

Poor Boz. This thing had been haunting him for years.

Paul found me that night because he’d installed the Find My Friends app on my phone. He’d installed the app on my phone when he started to suspect that I had killed Didion. When he figured out where I was that night, he’d ducked out of the hospital and took a car service, following my blue blip on the screen of his phone.

“With Seth gone, and that phantom bag of money, too,” said Boz, shaking his head. “He’s the only person who Mike may have talked to. And the money, the bag it was in. Maybe there might have been some DNA evidence even after all these years.”

“They still can’t find him,” said Paul. “That’s amazing.”

“All that cash, untraceable bills,” Boz said. “He could be anywhere.”

Seth. He was the piece that didn’t fit into the puzzle. I couldn’t believe he’d go to work for Mike. Also, that money. I’d seen it there next to Mike when we were both lying on the ground. Could Seth have taken it and Paul not seen him? Paul claims that it was there one minute, but that he was so consumed, thinking that I was dying in his arms, that he never noticed that it was gone. The idea that Seth would take it and run off. It did not fit. But what else?

“There were other people involved,” says Boz. “Must have been. We know that. I’m sorry. We just may never know who.”

Lisa Unger's books