The Pounds

Chapter 10:

Lily coughed again.

I was up and moving before I knew I was standing, through the hallway, into the bedroom, my hand on the crib rail.

She was fine. She was fine. She was curled up on her side with her bunny blanket twisted around her legs and her little face scrunched up and she coughed one more time in her sleep and then she snuffled and settled.

I stood there with my hand on the rail and my heart going way too fast.

"It's a cough," I said. To nobody. To myself. "It's just a cough."

"She's fine."

I turned around.

Kael was in the doorway. Arms crossed. Not looking at Lily. Looking at me.

"She's fine," he said again. "Kids cough. She's got a blanket on. She's warm. She's fine."

"I know she's fine."

"Then why are you white as a sheet?"

I looked at my daughter. Then at my hands. They were shaking again. Third time tonight.

"I don't know," I said. "I don't know. I just — every time something happens, every time anything happens, I think — "

"You think it's him."

"I think it's him."

Kael uncrossed his arms. He walked over to the crib and looked down at Lily. Just looked at her. Then he reached out and pulled the blanket up over her shoulder, real gentle, the way you'd do it if she was made of glass.

"She's okay," he said. "I got guys outside. I got guys on the roof. I got a guy in the lobby of the building next door with a scope on a window that looks at your bedroom. Nobody's getting to her."

"You put a sniper across the street from my apartment."

"I put a man with a rifle across the street from your apartment. He's not gonna shoot anybody unless he has to. But yeah. That's what I did."

I stared at him.

"That's terrifying."

"That's the point."

"No, I mean — that's terrifying to me. You just — you just did that. You didn't ask. You didn't tell me. You just put a guy with a gun across the street from where my daughter sleeps and I'm supposed to be okay with it."

Kael looked at me.

"You're not supposed to be okay with it," he said. "You're supposed to be safe. Those are different things."

I had no answer for that.

---

I went back out to the living room.

My mother was on the couch with a blanket around her shoulders that I did not remember giving her. She was sitting very straight, hands in her lap, looking at the wall.

"Are you okay?" I said. Stupid question. Of course she wasn't okay. She just told me she took money to leave me.

"I'm fine," she said.

"You're not."

"Neither are you."

I sat down on the floor. Not the couch. The floor. Right in front of her.

"Why now?" I said.

"What?"

"You could have come to me any time. Three years. Five. Any time. Why now? Why tonight?"

Colleen looked at me.

"Because three weeks ago the money stopped," she said. "And then a man put a phone in my hand and told me to call you. And I didn't call you. I waited. I sat in a motel room for two weeks with a phone in my hand and I didn't call you because I told myself it was the same thing I'd done before. I told myself I was protecting you."

"And then?"

"And then two days ago I walked into that diner and I saw you."

She stopped. Cleared her throat.

"You looked just like your father," she said. "Same face. Same way of carrying plates. And then I saw your little girl and I saw the way you looked at her and I thought — that's what I looked like. That's what I looked like before I left. And I walked out of that diner and I went back to the motel and I called the number and said, 'I want to see her.'"

"And the phone they gave you."

"Prepaid. No name. No nothing."

"Where's the phone now?"

"Under the couch."

Kael walked past us and crouched down and reached under the couch and came up with a cheap flip phone. He turned it over in his hand and then put it on the counter and didn't touch it again.

"I'm gonna have somebody look at it," he said. "But they won't find anything. Whoever gave it to you is good."

"And the motel?" I said. "Is it still there?"

Kael pulled out his phone. "Rook's checking."

"Your VP?"

"Yeah."

"What does Rook do?"

"Rook does the things I can't do because I'm too close to the person we're doing them for."

"What does that mean?"

"It means he's going to go to the motel and find out who's been paying for the room next to yours."

---

He sat down on the floor. Right there in the middle of my living room. Big man in leather, sitting on the floor next to me at four in the morning.

Colleen was watching us. She looked at me and then at Kael and then back at me.

"You two aren't — " she started.

"No," I said.

"Not yet," Kael said at the same time.

I looked at him.

"What?" he said.

"'Not yet'? Seriously?"

"I'm an optimist."

"You're a piece of work."

"Same thing."

Colleen's mouth twitched. It was the closest thing to a smile I'd seen on her face.

---

At 4:30 Kael got a call.

He looked at the screen. Then at me. Then he stood up and walked out to the hallway.

I followed him.

"Rook," he said. "Talk."

I stood in the doorway and listened.

Kael's face didn't change. But his voice did.

"When?"

Silence.

"How bad?"

Silence.

"Was there anything in the room?"

Silence.

"Then they cleaned it before they set the fire."

The floor went out from under me. I put my hand on the doorframe.

"Alright. Get a man on the owner. The manager. Whoever's working nights. I want to know who paid for that room and how long they paid for it." Pause. "No. Don't call it in. Not yet."

He hung up.

Kael turned to me.

"The motel," he said.

"It's gone."

"It's gone. Fire started in a supply closet about an hour ago. Burned down two rooms. Yours and the one next door. Nobody was in either one."

"But who — "

"The person who paid for your mother's room paid for the room next door. Cash. Three weeks ago. Same day she got the envelope."

"So someone was watching her."

"Someone was watching her and someone was watching you and someone has been planning this for at least three weeks. Probably longer."

I sat down. On the floor. Again.

"I can't do this," I said.

"You can."

"Kael."

"You can. You're doing it right now."

I put my head in my hands.

"Every time I think it's the worst it's gonna get," I said, "it gets worse. Every single time. I ran to this town and I hid and I got a job and I got a sitter and I did everything right and it's still — "

"It's still the worst," Kael said. "Yeah."

I looked up at him.

"You're not helping."

"I'm not trying to help. I'm trying to tell you the truth."

"The truth about what?"

"That it doesn't stop. It doesn't get easier. It doesn't end with a car chase and a bad guy falling off a bridge. It ends when one person stops breathing."

I stared at him.

"You're a real ray of sunshine," I said.

"I've been told."

"Has anyone ever told you that you're terrible at comforting people?"

"Yeah."

"Did you listen?"

"No."

I laughed. I couldn't help it. It came out of me, this ugly little laugh, the kind you do when something's so messed up the only other option is crying.

Kael's mouth moved. Not quite a smile. Close.

And that's when he did it.

He took off his cut.

I don't know how to explain what that looked like. He just stood there in his t-shirt and took off the leather vest and held it in both hands and then he walked over and he crouched down in front of me and he put it around my shoulders.

It weighed a ton.

Ten pounds, maybe. Leather and patches and metal pins and a PRESIDENT rocker on the back. It hung off me like a coat on a kid.

"There," he said.

I looked down at it. Then at him.

"What is this?"

"It's mine. Now it's yours."

"Kael."

"It's ten pounds. You put it on and you feel it and you remember that I've got ten pounds of weight and a whole club and a guy with a scope on the building next door and all of it is for you." He looked at me. "You're not alone. You haven't been alone since the night you walked into my bar. And you're never gonna be alone again. That's not a threat. That's a promise."

I sat there in his leather with my mother on the couch and my daughter in the next room and I felt something in my chest crack open that I'd been holding shut for three years.

"Kael," I said.

"Mm."

"Thank you."

He stood up.

"Don't thank me yet," he said. "You're coming with me."

"What?"

"Tomorrow. You, your kid, your mother. You're all coming to the compound."

"Kael — "

"You're coming with me. I'm not asking."

"I have a job. I have an apartment. I have — "

"You have a mother who's been paid by a man who set a fire in a motel tonight. You have a man who's been watching you for weeks. You have a daughter who's asleep in the next room and a guy on the roof across the street with a scope on her window. You don't have a job and an apartment anymore. You have a situation."

I stood up so fast his cut almost fell off my shoulders. I caught it.

"Don't do that," I said.

"Don't do what?"

"Don't take over my life. You don't get to walk in and make decisions for me because you're scared. That's not — that's not what I'm doing here. That's not what I'm going to be."

Kael didn't move.

"You think I'm scared?" he said.

"I think you're terrified. I think you've been terrified since the parking lot. I think you saw somebody watching me and something in you broke and you've been running on fumes ever since. And I get it. I do. But you don't get to fix that by putting me in a compound and calling it protection."

The apartment was very quiet.

Kael looked at me.

"You're right," he said.

I blinked.

"What?"

"You're right. I'm scared. I'm scared because my father got out of prison three weeks ago and the first thing he did was buy a room next to your mother's and the second thing he did was put a phone in her hand and the third thing he did was set a fire. And he hasn't even called me yet. That's what scares me. He hasn't even called me yet and he's already three moves ahead."

He stepped closer.

"But I'm not gonna lie to you and say I'm not gonna put you in a compound. Because I am. And you can hate me for it. You can hate me for the rest of your life. But your daughter's gonna be alive at the end of the week and that's the only thing I care about."

I looked at him.

"I don't hate you," I said.

"Give it time."

"You're a piece of work."

"I keep telling you."

And then — I don't know why. I honestly don't know why. It wasn't planned. It wasn't romantic. It was four in the morning and I hadn't slept and my mother was on the couch and my daughter was coughing in the next room and there was blood on his knuckles and his leather was around my shoulders and I could smell him — leather, and smoke, and something clean underneath.

I kissed him.

It was a terrible kiss. I caught the corner of his mouth. My nose bumped his. My hand was on his chest and his cut was hanging off me and I was pulling him down by the front of his shirt and he was so surprised he didn't move for a second.

Then he did.

His hand came up and wrapped around the back of my neck. His other hand went to my hip. And he kissed me back, and it wasn't a terrible kiss anymore, it was the kind of kiss that makes your knees stop working, and I made a sound in the back of my throat that I hadn't made in three years.

Then he pulled back.

"Ella," he said. His voice was rough.

"Don't," I said.

"Don't what?"

"Don't say we shouldn't."

"I wasn't gonna say that. I was gonna say we're in your mother's hallway."

I opened my eyes. My mother was on the couch. Looking at us. One eyebrow up.

I stepped back. His cut slid off my shoulders and he caught it.

"We need to — " I started.

His phone rang.

The look on his face changed. Not scared. Not angry. Something underneath.

He looked at the screen. Then he turned it toward me.

FATHER.

He didn't answer.

He let it ring. Four rings. Five. Then it stopped.

He put the phone back in his pocket.

"Get your stuff," he said. "We're leaving in twenty minutes."

Chapter 10 Ends.