Something snaps inside when you see your lover’s final breath.
She lay there; to the casual observer you would think that she was sleeping. She looked so peaceful now, but taking a moment you would see that the sheets did not rise and fall with her breathing, her extremities were already starting to take on a paler color, her cheeks were no longer so rosy as they had been a few hours earlier during dinner at Sarno’s.
I sat in the only chair in the bedroom staring at her. The poison had worked fast, it froze her muscles first so outwardly it looked like she did not feel any pain, though the reality was she probably suffered a lot. My poor Bonnie-lass, she looked so beautiful.
As I sat there I could feel my left eye swelling shut, the copper taste in my mouth let me know that I was still bleeding, I would probably loose a couple of teeth by the end of the night. I didn’t care. The first and second knuckle on my right hand were broken, it hurt each time I flexed my hand open and closed, had to keep the tendons from tightening up and making the hand useless, had to keep it as loose as possible. The blood on both of my hands was starting to dry, I wasn’t even sure at this point what was my blood and what was theirs. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her face. She was looking at me before she died, even managed to say my name as her last act before the light faded from her beautiful brown eyes.
There had been two of them when I came into the room. Now the second one started groaning, I hadn’t killed him after all. Slumped against the wall, he looked like he could have been passed out drunk. He moved his hand towards his broken jaw. Sitting across the room looking at her, I didn’t even feel the hard steel of the Glock 45mm in my hand until after I had fired four rounds into his chest. He slumped back down, his broken jaw resting unnaturally on his chest, and the blood pooling around him.
The pistol slipped slowly from my numb fingers, I was having trouble thinking clearly. I had acted instinctually, firing like that, it would have been smarter to find out why they had done what they had done, why they had killed the woman that I loved. I moved over to the bed, moving her hair out of her face, I kissed her gently on her cold cheek. I walked over to the man I had just shot and reached into his pockets. The fool hadn’t even left his wallet with his ID at home. With the ID I had a name:
MANUEL VELAQUEZ
It didn’t give me everything that I was going to need, but it gave me something to start with. Further searching turned up that he had a Smith and Wesson wheel gun, in a waist holster. Why he hadn’t pulled it out before would remain a mystery I didn’t care about. A quick inspection of his partner, a huge Hispanic, in the other room, as dead as they come with a large crack in his skull where I had smashed a cast iron skillet into it. Turned up less information, this one had been smarter, no ID or anything else on him that gave me anything. He did have about fifteen hundred dollars in his jacket pocket, a silver money clip holding the bills together, no way to tell if that had been their payoff or if it was just his usual bankroll. I pocketed the money and the clip. He only had one holster, under his left shoulder, it was empty, the gun that belonged in it safely tucked in my belt behind my back. I found two full clips for the gun and took those as well. I picked up the skillet from beside the body and smashed him across the face several more times until my arm could not lift it anymore. It did nothing to lessen my emotions, these guys weren’t the only ones, they were someone else’s hired guns, someone that orders these things, someone big, someone untouchable, someone untouchable until now.
Leaving the apartment was the toughest thing I had ever had to do. The cops were on the way and would be there soon, but I had no intention of being there when they arrived, it didn’t matter that it was self-defense on my part. There would be too many questions, too much time wasted, too long for the trail to go cold. If the people who were responsible for her death didn’t know what happened yet, they would soon and unless they truly believed in their own invincibility then they would be cutting any connections as fast as they could. I had tonight to find out what I needed to know, or I never would.
The roar of the engine of my ZX-10R Ninja sounded dull in my ears, only partially from the muffling the helmet provided. I was still thinking about her, I needed to get focused or I would never accomplish what I needed to.
