Why this coffee shop? My question to Booker needles me. It’s not a chain store, rather an artsy hole-in-the wall. I remember donuts being served from the back patio during an art show I attended shortly after I moved to the neighborhood. Donuts and organic coffee.
The explosion has littered said coffee—beans and grounds—along with glass and debris onto the street. A piece of burlap is soaked and tattered on the pavement. My gaze lands on it, and something about the logo—four leaves, four beans—nudges me.
I’m not sure why I pick it up, but a memory sloshes through my brain.
It’s cut off by the sight of a woman advancing on the scene. She’s young, dark hair and with a jolt, I remember her. Only, not from the past, but from my present. My real life.
Mariana Vega, real estate investor and current mayor of St. Louis Park, my district. She’s younger, of course, her hair long and in tangles, but she still possesses the take-no-prisoners approach she lives by in city council meetings.
The kind of stance that can deny a guy a building permit—appeal pending—for a second story on his garage, an addition that would make the perfect office. Maybe a place where a writer’s words wouldn’t get tangled, stuck—
“She looks upset,” Burke says.
She’s yelling at Booker, gesturing to the shop. Her face is streaked with tears, however, and she’s almost sympathetic.
“She’s the owner.”
I’m not sure how I know that, but it feels like the right answer. And, despite our history and my clear memory of her cold-hearted verdict against my muse, I feel a twinge at her distress.
Although, maybe the insurance is her seed money for her massive empire. A random and unlikely motive, but I tuck that information away, and return to the pictures spread out on the Camaro.
“Hey,” Burke says quietly. His tone makes me look up. He’s staring past me, toward Eve, but beyond. “See the guy in the neon green shirt?”
I glance at the man. Maybe in his late twenties, he’s well over six feet, with inky black hair and a dark gaze that is seared on Mariana.
“Does he look like this guy?” Burke points to a man in a shot at yesterday’s scene. The man in the picture is standing across the street from the bombing, holding a coffee cup.
Could be. Dark hair, and although he’s wearing a baseball cap in the picture, the face seems similar.
Everything inside me ignites. Please.
“Close enough,” I growl and in a breath I’m sprinting.
I shoot past Eve even as I hear Burke give a shout. But I’m not slowing down.
I want him. Just to question, to put the pieces together, but my gut is screaming—yes.
Maybe this, right here, is why I’m here. I still don’t know how, but maybe, cosmically, there is a God out there who follows my nightmares, the cold clench the past has on my life.
And maybe He’s dishing out do-overs.
Neon has spotted me and a spark of panic flashes across his unshaven face a second before he turns and runs.
See? Instincts.
The bugger is fast, has longer legs and is in shape.
But so am I. This younger me has chops and I’m churning up the sidewalk like a man on fire. “Stop!” I yell because I’m supposed to, right? But there’s not gonna be a response.
Neon doesn’t even glance over his shoulder as he motors down the sidewalk.
He passes Aldrich, Bryant, and cuts south on Colfax.
I motion to Burke, hopefully behind me, to keep going and I follow Neon between two houses, across an alley, and over to Dupont.
He crosses the median, to the honking of a car, and thinks he’s going to lose me in the cemetery.
Hardly. I ran track in high school. And I have my young lungs back.
Burke’s yelling behind me, but I’m not losing this guy. He’s agile and fast, as if used to running. That’s my brain already applying judgment, I know, but it fuels me as my lungs burn.
Lakewood Cemetery is 250 acres of mausoleums and headstones cluttered with trees and footpaths.
I know this place.
I gesture Burke to angle down the footpath while I veer right to cut off Neon. He heads across open ground, past an alley of headstones and markers, trampling over them with impunity.
Spotting Burke, he cuts right. Well, Burke would scare me, too, sprinting right at him like a defensive end.
But Neon is my prey and when he trips over a marker, I leap.
He’s bigger, more solid, than I anticipate and shrugs me off even as we slam into the grass. I’m rolling and on my feet before he can find his. I take him down with a fist to the jaw.
My hand explodes, but Neon takes the hit like he’s expecting it. He shakes it off and lets out a curse.
“Get down!” I yell, but he’s not having it. Incredibly, he lunges at me.
That’s all I need to unleash everything inside me. The queasy, irritating deja vu that has me stuck in the past. The horror of the desecration of so many lives and frankly, even the sweat pouring down my back and the burn in my fist.
I’m here because of him.
He’s tackled me, but I trap his legs, pull his head down into my shoulder and slam my fist into his ear. He struggles, so I hit him again, and when he pushes away from me, I flip on him, my knee in his gut and crunch my fist into his face.
It’s all blurring now—the shouting, the heat rolling off me, the cursing of the man fighting back.
He lands a couple blows in my ribs, but I’m impervious. Then Burke pulls me off, shoves me away “Step back, Rem!”
He grabs Neon in an arm bar, flipping him onto his stomach. “You—stop moving. Stay down!”
Neon stops struggling and I sink to the grass, breathing hard.
Burke shoots me a look. “What’s wrong with you?”
Me? I stare at him. “What—he was in the crowd!”
“Maybe,” Burke says, his hand still on Neon’s back. Now, he leans in close
