“I’m saying your heart stopped and was restarted.”
I closed my eyes. “Shit, aren’t you supposed to have life flashes before your eyes or visions or something when you die? A light or pearly gates?”
Mason grinned. “Speaking from experience, I’d take a shock to my heart over third-degree burns.”
I couldn’t recall seeing any rerun reels of the important moments in my life.
As my head ached, I tried to recall. We’d killed that piece of shit and then stepped onto the porch. It was then that the world went dark. Maybe my lack of ‘life before my eyes’ meant it wasn’t my time, or maybe that my destination wasn’t accessed through pearly gates with streets of gold, but someplace warmer. I had a twinge of guilt, knowing there were two women waiting in that paradise for me. Could there be a man too? “Your father was a patriot in the true sense of the word.” I hadn’t been able to reach Walters again, but I wanted to talk to him more about my father.
“...I guess this is where you are meant to be,” Mason continued to talk.
“Lorna. When I die, she’ll be my last thought.”
“Well, you’re alive so be ready to face her.”
“And tell her we went to Gordon Maples’s house? She never told me what he did.”
“He fucking confessed,” Mason said. “I don’t care what fucking bullshit Nancy told her.” His green eyes went to the front seat as he lowered his voice, “Maples deserved to die.”
“I’m not arguing. I just don’t know how to tell Lorna that we went there without bringing up the memories that she won’t want to face.” I leaned forward and wheezed. “Fuck, I feel like I was kicked by a mule or maybe a Clydesdale.”
“Like I said, you’re going to have a nasty bruise, and there’s a good chance you have a few broken or cracked ribs from the compressions.”
My gaze went to the rearview mirror. The driver’s eyes met mine. “Phillips, thank you.”
“Doing my job, Mr. Murray.”
I wasn’t certain that saving people with heart compressions was part of his job description, but if it wasn’t, we needed to update our Sparrow employee protocol. Pain shot from my chest as I exhaled. “Shit, so much for in and out of his house. My mind is still choppy. What the fuck happened?”
The SUV exited the highway and entered the city traffic.
“Maples is dead,” Mason said.
“Yeah, I remember that. Gutted like a fat fish.”
“In hindsight, we should have cut off his dick.” Mason scoffed. “...If we could have found it.”
I reached for my chest. “Don’t make me laugh.” My gaze met his. “We fucked up.”
Mason shrugged. “There will be more cleanup than we planned, but it’s getting taken care of. It will. Sparrow made some calls. The incident on South Morgan will go into the books as gang retaliation. Seems as though a shipment of over a hundred kilos of heroin was inadvertently delivered to the wrong house. Instead of being an upstanding citizen, Gordon Maples asked around, looking for the most lucrative avenue of sale. Word got around, the intended recipient wasn’t happy. Soon the police will find half the stash in the attic.”
“Attic?” I asked, recalling that was where Mason had said they’d slept.
He nodded. “Yeah. It was a lot smaller than I remembered.”
Scenes replayed in my head. There was Maples tied to the dining room chair as he watched his insides become his outsides moments before he took his last breath. And then we were leaving. The girl was across the street and there was a man. “What about the girl?”
Mason exhaled as he sent a text message. “He gave her a code. When I tried to get rid of her and the baby, Maples fucking told her to take the baby to Mrs. Stephens. I heard it, but I was too focused on him and on wanting to make him suffer. I should have known.”
“I was there. I heard that and I didn’t think anything of it.”
“It was a code. Now, I can see it. The way she responded. I fucked up.”
“How would we know that?” I asked.
“We should have been paying better attention. We didn’t. Neither one of us did for the same fucking reason. Sparrow is going to ream us out and we deserve it. We weren’t thinking like soldiers for Sparrow or for any other regime.”