Page 27 of 72 Hours

Couldn’t I?

One of Zac’s parakeets called mournfully from a tree on the outskirts of the trailer park. A discarded page from a newspaper rustled around the wheels of one of the silent homes. I stepped carefully across the rough ground, my boots brushing up the grit and dried oil. There were people moving in the distance, where the perimeter of the park ran into the surrounding neighbourhood and where more regular folks drove their cars to work and dropped their kids off at school. But everywhere around my own trailer was deserted. No shouts from the kitchens, no shrieking of children’s battles. No cigarette smoke, no revving of bikes’ engines.

The black unit loomed large in front of me, and I stopped a few feet away so that I could see the track around both sides. There was no further movement, but awareness still thrummed on the fringes of my mind. My gun felt strangely sticky in my palm. I knew that something was wrong, of course I did. This was the first time I’d called on my training in months. But you didn’t forget those sorts of things.

I just wished I could get the memories of “old” Niall out of my mind. It was all too damned distracting. We’d parted in the most final of ways, and there wasn’t much that could be salvaged from that. I thought I was still angry with him. I knew it still hurt to have him around. But he was only here for a day or so, surely. Would soon be on his way again; would soon take his scowling face out of my home and leave me to get on with my exile in peace.

I wished that were true. The peace part. With all of my heart.

The wind around the trailer park hissed in my ears and teased the loose hairs at my neck. I peered carefully at the dark chasm under Junk’s unit, which was the only hiding place I could imagine, though you’d have to be pretty small and have a damned strong stomach to crawl about under there....

When the noise finally came, I admit that I was unprepared for it. I was prowling around like some kind of macho hero, but in all honesty, my mind was far away in both time and place, seduced by the memory of so many things. Aromas of cooking food in Niall’s kitchen; the rustle of clean sheets in the bathroom cupboard; the muted sound of the evening traffic outside the Westbridge block. The pictures he once had on his wall, black and white sketches of a place he used to live, long before his time with the Team. Laughter at our favourite TV comedy show. The feel of his thick, soft hair snagging between my fingers as I ran a hand through it to pull his head towards me....

I remembered so much more of that apartment than just the bricks and mortar. The same bricks and mortar that had been blown up and left as a devastated mess. I let my attention drift for a few vital seconds just as a dog finally started barking somewhere beyond Junk’s trailer. Was it Dylan? I saw a sudden burst of movement from behind the unit, and I turned to cover it, but maybe I was just a little too slow. Maybe I was just a little too blinded by the angle of the early sun reflected on the metal plates of the roof.

Whatever the reason, I never saw any sniper or any gun. I heard a low whistle and that strange whine you sometimes get from a gun that hasn’t been oiled for a while. There was a breath of new wind by my left ear and a distracting flash of brightness.

Then the shot hit me, and I went down on my knees.

I remember thinking what a fucking idiot I was, not to have sensed the danger. I remember wondering whether Junk was okay, and—even more stupidly—whether the dog was. I remember thinking that people made a hell of a fuss about gunshots, because surely it didn’t really hurt much at all, just a scrape across my flesh and a tearing of my shirt....

Then the pain flared through me like a hot brand, and the thinking faded swiftly to black, leaving me with an overwhelming feeling of disgust.

Stupid, fucking stupid idiot.

​​​Chapter 12 – Tuesday 10:56

“Tanner?” The voice was sharp and it hurt my head to listen to it. “Dammit, Tanner, open your eyes and answer me.”

“Fuck off,” I said, but all that came out of my mouth was a fuzzy mumble. Pissed me off, because I really wanted to get that message through to the person who’d dragged me from my comfortable rest. Because consciousness was far from comfortable. My head hammered and my eyes burned inside the closed lids. It felt like someone was trickling the contents of a boiling kettle down the left side of my body, and judging from the anguished complaints of my nerve endings, this was while someone performed what felt like open-heart surgery on me, fairly clumsily and equipped only with fire tongs. Oh—and without anesthetic.

I knew the real meaning of “feeling like shit.”

The voice faded out of my consciousness for a while. I thanked God for that, not that I’ve ever had all that much credit with him. I think some tears rolled down my cheeks, what with the pain and all. Fuck. How embarrassing.

Then I seemed to be waking again. The pain was duller, though no less uncomfortable. There were a couple of voices in the background this time, and gradually the words became clearer.

“He’s conscious but he needs to open his eyes, we need to know how badly he’s hurt.”

Niall’s voice. Nice and strident, of course. God forbid he should make allowances, even as my whole body felt like it had been spiked open to the elements.

“Fuck off,” replied someone else who wasn’t me. But I admired the sentiment—and the courage. “Who the hell are you to tell him what to do? Fuckin’ suspicious that this all happened just after you turned up.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

I peeled an eye half open because, despite my pain, this sounded damned interesting. I could see two blurry figures above me. Guess I must have been lying down; I seemed to be indoors, too. Where was I? My trailer? Someone else’s trailer? On the banks of the Nile? I thought I recognised the unintentionally retro decor of my own living room, but gave up trying to work it out, and concentrated instead on my companions. One of them I already knew was Niall. Turned out the other one was Junk himself. He’d lived on this park since he was a kid; in fact, his mom still lived a few trailers away, and they were surrounded by plenty of other relatives of assorted shapes and sizes, like I might have mentioned before. Junk was the patriarch of the site; his word was wisdom and law and punishment all rolled into one. I liked him a hell of a lot. Think he tolerated me in return.

Not as tall as Niall, but a damned sight broader, and not one for bothering with first warnings. I knew they’d be a match for each other.

Junk’s voice was very aggressive. Very. He didn’t take well to strangers.

“You think we didn’t see you movin’ into Mac’s unit yesterday, tough guy? A bunch o’ well-armed weirdos sneakin’ in at the crack o’ dawn like there’s good reason to keep out of everyone’s way. And now my dog’s shit-full o’ drugs and Mac is shot and all we got is a snivellin’ little turd who swears he had fuck all to do with it.” Even though I couldn’t focus very well, I could hear the venom in Junk’s gravely voice and see the threatening way he leaned over towards Niall.

I waited for Niall to respond. Knew he wasn’t backward in coming forward.

“And so where were you in all this? If that dog’s so excellent at protection, don’t you think that’s suspicious, too, that he’s conveniently out of the way at the first sight of danger? Something or someone must have led the gunman here. He knew his way around well enough that Tanner never saw him coming.”

“Hey!” I gasped. They were talking like I wasn’t there. Like I’d needed saving, like some kind of newbie who’d failed his entrance exam for the Department...