The Shift

Chapter 3:

"Relax," he said. "I'm not the one you're running from."

I want to be clear about what happened next, because it wasn't brave. It wasn't a movie moment. I didn't slap him or pull a gun or say something cool.

I laughed.

I don't know where it came from. It just came out of me, this ugly little laugh, the kind you do when something's so messed up the only other option is crying. My hands were shaking. My eyes were burning.

"Relax," I said back. "You're standing by my car holding my real name in your pocket at one in the morning. Yeah. Relax. Great advice."

He didn't smile. But something in his face changed. His eyes moved, just a little, over my face. Like he was checking something.

"Your hands are shaking," he said.

"You said that already."

"You didn't stop."

"It's been a long night."

"Where's your kid?"

The ground went out from under me.

I said, "What?"

"Your kid," he said again. Same voice. Same calm. "You got a daughter. Two years old. You call her Lily. She's at the sitter's right now because you work nights and you don't like leaving her with the teenager next door."

I took a step back.

He didn't follow me.

"I'm not gonna touch you," he said. "I'm not gonna touch her. I'm telling you what I know so you stop pretending you're invisible. You're not invisible, Ella. You haven't been invisible in three years."

Three years.

I had a whole life in that number and it was all blood and quiet, and this man had it in his mouth like it was nothing.

"Who are you?" I said.

"Kael."

"I don't care what your name is."

"You asked."

"I don't care what your name is," I said again, louder, and my voice cracked right at the end, which I hated. "I'm asking what you are."

He put his hands in his pockets. Casual. Like we were two people having a normal conversation in a normal parking lot.

"I own this bar," he said. "I own a few other things. I got a club. Forty-odd men that answer to me. And a few years back, I had a problem with a family over in the east end. Family name of Cross."

I felt my lungs go small.

"Now," he said, "a lot of Crosses. Big family. Rotten from the bottom up. But there's one of 'em that made a mess on his own. Little bit younger. Little bit meaner. Doesn't answer to his old man. Goes by Damon."

The parking lot tilted.

"You know him," Kael said. Not a question.

"No."

"Ella."

"I said no."

"You got a scar on your forearm," he said, and nodded at it. "Six years old maybe. Cigarette."

I looked down. I couldn't help it. And my jacket sleeve was pulled up just enough.

"He do that?" Kael said.

The thing I hate most about that night is what happened next. I didn't say anything. I just — nodded. One little nod. And then I had to look away because my eyes went hot and I was not gonna cry in front of this man in a parking lot.

Kael didn't say anything for a while.

When he did, his voice was different. Flat. Like the knife had come off the table.

"Get in the car."

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. "No."

"Ella."

"No," I said. "I don't know you. I don't know what you are or what you want or why you got a file with my name on it, and I am not getting in a car with you just because you said something nice and grew up big."

Something moved in his face. Something almost like —

Respect. Maybe. I don't know. I'm not a mind reader.

He said, "Then I'll follow you."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously." He was already walking toward a bike, all black, parked right in the middle like it owned the lot. "You drive to your kid. I'll be behind you. Then you go home. I'll be outside."

"For how long?"

He swung a leg over the bike and looked at me.

"Till I know where Cross is."

I got in the car.

I don't know why I got in the car. I could've gone back inside. I could've called the cops. I could've driven to Delphine's and grabbed Lily and kept going like I'd done before — the freeway, a new town, a new name, three hundred dollars and a car I'd never give back.

Instead I got in the car and let a biker follow me across town at one in the morning.

And here's the sick part.

I felt safe.

That's the part I don't say out loud. That's the part I'd never put in one of those diary apps on my phone. Two years of checking my rearview at every red light, two years of flinching at doorbells, and I drove nine miles with one headlight behind me and my shoulders came down from my ears for the first time since I left Damon's kitchen floor.

It made no sense.

It made all the sense in the world.

---

Delphine's is on the ground floor of her house. She leaves the porch light on for me.

I parked and Kael stopped his bike at the curb and killed the engine and didn't get off. Just sat there. Like a statue.

I walked up the steps.

"You're late," Delphine said at the door, half asleep, holding Lily on her shoulder. My whole daughter, asleep, in that little pink onesie with the bunnies, one hand bunched in Delphine's shirt.

"Rita's friend's bar. Triple pay." I reached out. Lily came over to me easy, warm, heavy. She snuffled into my neck.

"Uh-huh." Delphine's eyes went past me, down the steps, to the bike at the curb. "And who's that."

"Nobody."

"Girl."

"Delphine."

"Mm." She crossed her arms. "Because that's a big nobody."

"Thank you for keeping her."

"That's a very big nobody who is currently looking at my house."

I turned around. Kael was looking at my daughter.

Not at me. At Lily. Asleep on my shoulder. He had one hand on the handlebar and his cut still on and a whole city of trouble behind him and he was looking at a sleeping two-year-old like a man who'd never seen one before.

I don't know how to explain it, but his whole face changed. He looked — young. Younger, anyway. Like something in him had been locked up and it just came unhooked for a second.

Delphine said, quiet, "Ella. Is that the father?"

"No."

"Because he's looking at her like — "

"He's not the father."

"Okay." She didn't sound convinced. "Okay. You call me if anything. Anything, you hear me? I don't care what time."

"I will."

I carried Lily to the car. Buckled her in the back. She didn't even stir.

When I got in the front seat, I sat there for a second with the keys in my hand.

Then I got out again and walked over to the bike.

"You can go home," I said.

"No."

"I'm going to my apartment. I'm going to put her to bed. And then I'm going to lock my door and go to sleep and wake up and work at Rita's tomorrow like a normal person."

"Okay."

"You don't have to follow me."

"I know."

"So why are you?"

He looked at me for a long time.

Then he said, "Because there's a black car in the lot behind Rita's tonight that's been sitting there since six. Nobody got out. Nobody left. Plates come back to a shell company in a state where I don't have friends."

I felt cold.

"You knew?" I said. "You knew and you let me walk out to my car alone?"

"You weren't alone."

"Kael."

"You weren't alone," he said again. "I was twenty feet away the whole time. I know where every one of my men is standing at all times. You walked out that door and you weren't alone." He nodded, once, at my car. "Now."

I didn't ask anymore.

I drove home.

He followed.

---

My apartment building has six units and a front door that doesn't lock right.

I carried Lily up the stairs. My neighbor upstairs was playing his three songs. I unlocked my door with one hand. I put Lily down in her crib, took off her shoes, and pulled the blanket up to her chin.

I stood there for a minute and looked at her.

Black car, I thought. Since six.

I walked to the kitchen window.

The bike was at the curb. Kael was on it, facing my building, one boot on the ground. He had his phone out and he was typing something. Then he put it away and just sat there.

He didn't look up. He didn't know I was watching.

At 2:14, my phone buzzed.

I didn't recognize the number. I answered anyway, because apparently I've lost my mind.

"Hello?"

"You're still up."

I didn't answer.

"Windows face the street," Kael said. "You put your kid down at two-oh-six. You've been at the window since two-oh-nine."

"That's creepy."

"Yeah."

"Seriously, that's — "

"I know." A pause. "I'm not gonna say sorry. I'm just telling you I see you."

I leaned my forehead on the glass.

"What do you want from me?" I said.

"Nothing tonight."

"And tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow," he said, "you're gonna come to my bar. Not the one on Harrow. The other one. Behind it. There's a door."

"Kael — "

"There's a door," he said again. "And you're gonna knock on it, and someone's gonna open it, and they're gonna hand you a key to that door, and you're gonna take it. And then whenever you're scared, whenever that black car shows up again, whenever anything feels wrong — you're gonna come through that door. Day or night."

"I'm not doing that."

"Okay."

"I mean it. I'm not — I'm not yours. I'm not anybody's. I ran across half of a state so I'd never be anybody's again."

Kael was quiet for a minute.

Then he said, "I know that, Just Ella."

And I heard something in his voice that I wasn't ready for. Something rough. Something that sounded almost like —

It doesn't matter what it sounded like.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay what?"

"Okay," I said. "I'll think about it."

"Good."

"Don't follow me tomorrow."

"No."

"I mean it."

"I know."

I hung up.

I stood in the kitchen with the phone in my hand, in my two-room apartment with the broken handle on the bathroom door and the hole in my daughter's shoe, and I looked down at the street.

Kael was already looking up.

He lifted one hand. Not a wave. Just — put it up. Like, hi.

And behind him, three doors down, a black sedan pulled away from the curb.

Chapter 3 Ends.