Daredevil’s Run

“Sure you do. Every damn time things start to get really good for us. Just because your mother messed up your head-”

“Don’t you dare blame my mother for this!”

“Why not? She’s managed to convince you every man’s a jerk like your father, leaving her cold when he found out she was pregnant. Well, I’m not your father, okay? I’m not a jerk. We’ve been working together, sleeping together-hell, we’ve been best friends-for five years, you should know that by now. We’ve got a good thing going. Or it could be good, if you’d quit trying to ruin it. It’s no big secret how I feel about you, I tell you often enough. So, now I’m asking you.” He paused to give her a hard, burning look. “Do you love me?”

Do I love you? The question was a white-hot fire burning inside her head. Somewhere inside the fire was the answer she feared even more than she feared losing Matt. The answer she couldn’t bring herself to grab hold of or even look at, as if, like some mythical curse it would sear her eyes blind, or turn her to stone.

“It’s…complicated,” she mumbled, her face stiff with pain.

“I don’t see what’s so complicated about it. You either do, or you don’t.”

She’d turned away, then. But she remembered Matt’s face…tight-lipped, stubborn as only he could be. And his hands…their movements jerky and hurried as he packed his climbing gear.

Cory heard the ruckus before he saw it, as soon as he entered the foyer of the rec center. He was able to follow the sounds of mayhem to their source, the indoor basketball arena, where, from an open doorway, the noise pulsed and billowed like a heavy curtain in a high wind. He braced himself and paused there to assess the likelihood that carnage either had already ensued within or was about to. He’d been in battle zones, live ammo firefights less noisy and less violent.

What he saw inside that huge room confirmed it: people here were trying to kill each other.

What it reminded him of was an epic movie battle scene set in medieval times. War cries and shrieks of pain and rage echoing above the thunder of horses’ hooves and the clash of steel swords on armor plating and chain mail. Except these battle chargers were made of titanium, not flesh and bone, and carried their riders on wheels instead of hooves.

Out on the gleaming honey-gold hardwood floor, four wheelchairs were engaged in a no-holds-barred duel for possession of what appeared to be a regulation-size volleyball. Now the ball rose above the fray in a tall arc, to be plucked from the air by a long brown arm and tucked between drawn-up knees and leaning chest. The four chairs swiveled, drew apart amid cries of “Here here here!” and “Get ’im, get the-” and “No you ain’t, mother-” then smashed together again more violently than before.

Cory’s fascination carried him into the room, where he found a spot in the shadow of a bank of bleacher seats from which to watch the mayhem. Now that he could see it more clearly, the contest on the court seemed less like a battle between medieval knights and more like a grudge match being settled via amusement park bumper cars- though the canted wheels on the low-slung chairs did resemble warriors’ shields, even down to the dents and dings. The occupants of the wheelchairs-four young males of assorted ethnicities-all wore expressions of murderous intent, but the chairs moved clumsily, slowly, and their clashes produced more noise than effect.

Again the white ball arced into the air, to be retrieved by a lanky black kid wearing a Dodgers baseball cap- backward, of course. After tucking the ball into his lap, the kid hunched protectively over it and slapped at the wheels of his chair with hands wearing gloves with the fingers cut off, pumping as hard as he could for the far end of the court. The other three chairs massed in frantic pursuit. One, manned by a stocky boy of an indeterminate racial mix, seemed to be angling to cut off the possessor of the ball, before it was smashed viciously from the side by another pursuer. Over they went, toppling forward almost in slow motion, chair and occupant together, spilling the latter facedown onto the court. Above him, the chair’s wheels spun ineffectively, like the futilely waving appendages of a half-squashed beetle.

Cory lunged forward and was about to dash onto the court to render assistance when his arm was caught and held in a grip of incredible strength.

“Leave him be. They got him down there, they’ll get him up.”

The reflexive jerk of his head toward the speaker was off target by a couple of feet. Adjusting his gaze downward, he felt a jolt of recognition that made his breath catch, though the face was one he’d seen only as a very small child’s. It only reminded him of one he’d last seen nearly thirty years before, and since then only in his dreams.

You have our mother’s eyes.

He didn’t say that aloud but smiled wryly at the broad-shouldered young man beside him and nodded toward the knot of wheelchairs now gathering around the fallen one out on the court. “You sure they won’t just kill him? They sure seemed to be trying to a minute ago.”

“Nah-he’s safe. He’s not who they’re mad at.” The young man reached across his body and the wire-rimmed wheel of his chair to offer his cropped-gloved hand. “Hi, I’m Matt.”

Cory put his hand in the warm, hard grip and felt emotions expand and shiver inside his chest. He fought to keep them out of his voice as he replied, “I’m Cory. We spoke on the phone. I’m your-” He had to grab for a breath anyway.

So Matt finished it for him. “My Guardian Angel. My bro. Yeah, I know.”

Chapter 2

He’d seen him come in, of course he had.

He’d thought he was prepared for this. Should have been. Hell, he’d talked to the guy on the phone two or three times since the day Wade had called him from the hospital to tell him the Angel he’d always thought was a figment of his childhood imagination was real.

“You look like Wade,” he said, feeling like he needed to unclog his throat. “A little bit-around the eyes.”

“Well, we both got the blue ones, I guess.”

This brother’s eyes were darker than Wade’s, Matt noticed. And looked like they’d seen a whole lot more of what was bad in the world. Which was saying something, considering Wade was a homicide cop.

“Yeah? Whose did I get?”

“Mom’s. You got Mom’s eyes.”

About then, Matt realized he was still holding his brother’s hand, and evidently it occurred to Cory about the same time. There was a mutual rush of breath, and he got his arms up about the same time Cory’s arms came around him.

Matt had gotten over being shy about showing emotions five years ago, so he shouldn’t be ashamed to be tearing up now. And he wasn’t.

He could hear some hoots and whistles coming from the court, though, so after some throat-clearings and coughs and a backslap or two, he and Cory let go of each other. Dee-Jon, Frankie and Ray had gotten Vincent picked up off the floor, and all four were churning across the floor toward them, along with Dog and Wayans in their regular chairs, moving in from the far sidelines.

“Woo hoo, look at Teach, I think he got him a girlfriend!”

“Hey, Teach, I didn’t know you was-”

“Yo, Teach, who the ugly bi-”

At which point Matt held up his hand and put on his fierce-coach look and hollered, “Whoa, guys-I won’t have any of that trash talk about my brother.”

By this time he and Cory were surrounded, and the exclamations came at him from all sides.

“Brother!”

“He yo brothah?”

“Hey, you told us your bro was a cop. He don’t look like no cop.”

“Yeah, he look like a wuss.”

Matt glanced up at Cory to see how he was taking this, but Cory was grinning, so he did, too. “Nah, this is my other brother. He’s a reporter.”

“You got a othah brothah? How come you never-”