She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,234

all things, I believe I’ll miss the night sky most of all. The absolute vastness of it, the unknown. While we’re down here fighting our pesky little battles, we’re really just a speck on the shoe of the universe. Any problem life may present seems so small, so insignificant, when you simply look up and realize your true place in all things.”

“You have a lifetime of night skies ahead of you.” I said the words knowing they weren’t true. I think I said them not only for her benefit but my own. As if speaking such a thing out loud would make it so.

“Thank you for the last few days, Pip. For all you’ve done for me. You’ve been one of the few constants in my life, perhaps the only bright spot. I never thought I’d know love, to be loved and to love another, and yet you are all those things to me. You have been all those things to me my entire life, for our entire lives. If I have any regret, its that I shied away from you so, that I held you at such a distance rather than embrace you years ago. I didn’t want to expose you to what I was, what I did, and what I knew I would continue to do. It was easier for me to push you away, to tell myself that was the right thing to do. I regret the talks we never had, the lost nights we never shared.” Stella looked back out over the fields and leaned her head on my shoulder. “Do you remember the paintings in my house? Landscapes and cities, far-off wonders and places?”

I nodded.

“As I painted each one, I pretended you and I were there, visiting each of those places together—the Golden Gate bridge, the Grand Canyon, the lights of Paris and the pyramids of Egypt, the streets of New York and the wilds of New Orleans, far open fields and hidden lakes lost among ancient trees. My hand in yours or your arm around me—you taking me in your arms and kissing me at each new place, my illness nonexistent in those wanderings of my mind. In many ways, we’ve already spent a lifetime together, and I’m grateful for that but I am grateful for these past few days most of all. My Pip, my wonderful John Edward Jack Thatch.”

Stella shivered, and I pulled her closer. I considered going back for a blanket, when a deep-throated rumble filled the night.

“We’ve got a car approaching. Came over Rankin Bridge, just turned on Carrie Furnace Boulevard. Moving fast. Let it pass or take it out?”

Static.

Dunk’s voice followed. “Single car? How many passengers? Can you tell?”

“I only see one, just the driver.”

My father’s voice, then, “Get those headphones ready. It might be Pickford.”

I had set our headphones down beside me. I reached over, turned on the power switch, and handed a pair to Stella.

Dunk again. “Let it pass. Shooters on the roof, standby. I give the order, I want a rain of bullets on whoever steps out. Only if I give the order, copy?”

A dozen voices replied in confirmation.

I spotted it, rounding the bend at the far end of Carrie Furnace Boulevard. The car went over the railroad tracks, then picked up speed on the straightaway, with dusty rooster trails at its back.

A black Pontiac GTO.

Preacher’s car.

“Is that the car we left behind on Whidbey Island?”

“Yeah.” I leaned forward to get a better look. Preacher must be pissed.

I half expected whoever was driving to pull the emergency brake, yank the wheel, and slide the car to a stop from a high speed drift. That’s probably what I would have done if given the chance behind the wheel of a car like that. But rather than accelerating as the GTO drew close, the black Pontiac slowed and came to a stop about twenty feet from the main building, the high beams slicing through the night.

The engine let out one final growl as the driver tapped the gas before killing the motor.

The driver leaned over and opened the passenger door, then opened his own.

“Shooters, steady,” Dunk said over the radio.

I could see the driver in the car. A middle-aged man with short brown hair, wearing a white shirt and what looked like a white coat. I picked up the radio and pressed the transmit button. “That’s not Pickford. Repeat, that is not David Pickford.”

“Copy,” Dunk replied.

The driver leaned over. It looked like he was messing with the radio.