“Not yet.”
I settle back in my seat, lean my head against the headrest, and stare out the window.
I think I’ll stick with being Holly Lin for just a little bit longer.
For Joseph D'Agnese and Denise Kiernan
Part One
Little Angels
One
The girl is covered in blood.
That’s the first thing I notice. This section of town is dark and quiet as it typically is at three o’clock in the morning. The only light streams from a few scattered streetlamps posted along the block, and as the girl passes beneath the closest one, the blood stands out even more, a sharp contrast against her light brown skin.
She barely looks sixteen, just a kid, and she wears shorts and a T-shirt and carries a duffel bag, but it’s the blood that I focus on, the blood streaking her face and arms and soaking her hair and clothes.
“Please, help me, please.”
She mumbles it in Spanish, her words barely intelligible, and now that she’s nearly ten feet away from me, it’s clear that she’s limping. She’s favoring her left leg, barely putting any pressure on it, and now she’s less than five feet away and I can smell her, the blood, yes, but also the defecation. The girl has either pissed herself or shit herself or both, and she moves closer, still mumbling—“Please, please, help”—and she thrusts the duffel bag into my arms and then promptly falls to the ground.
Five seconds.
That’s the length of time that’s passed since I first heard the girl call out and turned and saw the blood.
Five seconds isn’t much in the larger scheme of things, but five seconds can sometimes be an eternity. In my past life, five seconds might be a question of life and death. Countries are saved or lost in five seconds.
I haven’t moved a muscle in the past five seconds, which is odd, because not too long ago I was very quick on my feet. I didn’t spend too much time deliberating on different outcomes. I just made a choice and went with it and hoped for the best.
But things have changed, and I’m no longer the person I used to be. That person is long gone, dead and buried, and the person I am now—a bartender, having just closed up the bar and now headed home—doesn’t deal with blood and guns and killing. For this new me, the most important thing that happens in five seconds is listening to a drink order amid loud country music and a chorus of uproarious voices and hoping I haven’t fucked it up when I bring it back to the customer.
The girl’s on her knees now, still mumbling in Spanish, and I take a quick moment to scan the block. It’s deserted. Of course it’s deserted—this area of town is usually empty during the day, the buildings long since vacated once their companies went out of business, and not once in the past year after I’d left the bar and walked home had I ever seen anybody on this block, let alone a girl covered in blood.
I realize I’m still holding the duffel bag. It was shoved into my arms so suddenly that I’d held on without much thought. Now I heft it—feels like it weighs fifteen pounds—and glance down at the girl.
“What happened? Who did this to you?”
It doesn’t hit me until a second later that I asked those questions in English, so I ask them again in Spanish, and the girl looks up at me, tears in her eyes, her voice a strangled whisper.
“Help me.”
Before I can say or do anything else, the girl jumps to her feet. She pushes past me as she hurries down the block, still favoring her left leg.
The duffel bag in my arms, I turn and watch her, incredulous.
“Wait!”
She doesn’t. She keeps going, faster now, and disappears into an alleyway.
I hurry after her, the thought of dropping the duffel bag not once crossing my mind, and I reach the mouth of the alleyway in time to see the girl has already made it to the other end. How she’s managed to get there so fast, especially with the limp, I’m not sure, but she stands there, her back to me, looking up and down the street.
I call after her again as I chase her up the alleyway, and I’m halfway there when the girl suddenly bolts into the street—just as the front of a car slams into her and sends her flying.
Two
The car screeches to a halt. The doors open, and two men step out. They aren’t frantic like you’d expect men who just hit a girl with their car would be. Instead, they appear calm, looking up and down the street at the dark warehouses, quietly closing their doors, slowly circling to the front of the car to check on the girl.
Both of the men look to be in their late-thirties, early-forties. They wear jeans and cowboy boots. One of them has on a white short-sleeved button-down shirt tucked into his jeans, the other a blue polo. The one with the button-down shirt also wears a cowboy hat. He’s the driver. He adjusts the hat as he gazes down at the girl’s body.
“Well shit, there she is.”
The other man says, “Yep.”
“She’s still alive.”
“Barely.”
“She doesn’t have the bag, though.”
“Nope.”
The man with the cowboy hat crouches down beside the girl.
“Hey.”
When the girl doesn’t answer—she lays sprawled on the macadam, a broken mess, even more bloodied than before—the man with the cowboy hat snaps his fingers in front of her face.
“Bitch, you hear me?”
The girl still doesn’t answer. Even if she wanted to, it doesn’t look like she can. A hoarse wheezing comes from her mouth. Several of her ribs probably shattered on impact. Some of them probably pierced her lungs.
I’m standing around the corner of the alleyway, still holding the duffel bag, leaning out just far enough to watch these two men and the girl. My first
