Leviathan Read online

  My touch fully wakes her. She cranes her neck to meet my bleakest smile.

  “Ro,” she whispers, eyes fluttering.

  “Shh. Don’t speak.”

  The wine forces my back to slouch against the cushions. In the television glare, my head swims with the alcohol. Maybe exhaustion. Maybe trauma of the last few days has finally caught up with me.

  Holding onto Maya’s hand, for what may be the last time ever, all I can remember is Tim appearing to me at seven years old, offering perspective because my only friend in the world had left me.

  Why are you crying, little one?

  Looking at my shrunken aunt, who saved me after Daniel Knox shot my mother and himself at the bottom of a gravel pit, I don’t know if something else will kill her before the emphysema does.

  I can only hope she will soon be at peace.

  When I wake, looking up at the clock on the wall, it reads four in the morning. One eye proves easier to open than the other.

  I shouldn’t have drank so fast.

  Turning my head, the sight of my guardian angel standing over Maya forces a quick return to reality. No emotion in his blank stare, he towers over the armchair- almost meditating.

  “Tim?”

  The shift to me is slow and pained. As if I’ve interrupted some disturbing ritual, his eyes inhabit a sadness deeper than I’ve ever met with.

  “It’s beginning, Ro.”

  Sitting up, I squint.

  “What’s beginning?”

  The man who calls himself Death grimaces, because he is a presence of a different world.

  A Grim Reaper.

  “We have to make a choice, Ramona.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say, still too weak to push myself off the sofa. “What choice?”

  Gaze returned to Maya, Tim takes a moment before answering.

  “You asked me not to make this painful for her. We are at that crossroads now, Ro. Her heart can no longer sustain any quality of life. The lungs gave up long ago. Tomorrow,” Tim says, “she will begin the agonizing descent to the end of her life.”

  “How do you know this?” I manage. The wine made me groggy, unequipped to deal with end-of-life-decisions.

  “Because, it is simply my job to know.”

  “And you’re certain?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be certain?”

  “So what you’re saying,” I snipe, “is your system is one hundred percent accurate? Accounts for all miracles and comebacks?” If there is anything relevant to what I’m saying, it is lost on him before I think of another question. “Why are you letting me have a say in this?”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, you wouldn’t ask anyone else’s relatives, you would just fucking take them. But you have some weird, creepy obsession with me, Tim. And I’ve never quite been able to put my finger on it until just this moment. Maybe being Death gets lonely; or, as you’ve said, “It is a long time to do a job of this nature. You have to find things to care about, or you go insane.’”

  “Driven to madness,” he says.

  “Might have paraphrased. Sorry. What if you take her, and she could have lived another ten years?”

  I have challenged him to think about what he’s really doing. The man who calls himself Death leaves little wiggle room for error. Tim finally steps away from my aunt, shaking his head. His fingers try to smooth out lines of a frown draped over his face.

  “I’m just doing what you asked, Ramona.”

  I don’t even want to hear it.

  Telling him to leave my aunt alone until I return, I grab my jacket, anticipating predawn chill. Craving movement, rather than stagnation, I take the stairs rather than the elevator.

  Stagnant is Maya, with Death standing over the armchair she calls a bed. Stagnant is Jordan West’s trail, even with the boatload of new information I unearthed within three days of my assignment.

  I need progress, not to twiddle my thumbs.

  Out the back door, it’s a short walk to my SUV, nestled within yellow lines. I was right about the temperature; thank God for foresight. Backing out from my spot, the headlights break up molecules of darkness hanging over the lot.

  I don’t have a destination. Just need to drive, clear my fucking head. Try to connect all these little puzzle pieces, yield a location on Emily Rickard, and bring her home safe.

  Unfortunately, my sense of direction does not agree, and I pull up to a pay booth at the corner of Massachusetts and Third. Never tears in reserve, I would purge all the emotions, if I had any to begin with. Brushing hair behind my ear, I exit the car and enter the booth. I open a massive tome of white pages, thumbing past two thirds of the book below a black box. Reaching a section in the book’s second half, I retrieve a quarter from my pocket, dialling the numerical sequence listed.

  After two rings, he picks up.

  “Royce.”

  “It’s Knox.”

  The detective on the other end groans.

  “What time is it?”

  “Four forty five.”

  “Did I miss something?” he asks, giving all my current impulses pause. “What happened in L.A.?”

  “Um,” I reply into the receiver. Outside, droplets begin to fall from the sky against the booth. “I’m not calling about that.”

  “Oh,” he says, “What’s up, then?”

  Without thinking, I ask the question on my tongue’s tip, knowing it could very well be the worst decision ever.

  “Can I come over?”

  There is a pause on Royce’s end.

  “Ryan?”

  “Um, yeah. Sorry. You just caught me by surprise, considering the...you know. Earlier.”

  Beyond the booth protecting me outside a supermarket, much like the ones Jordan West steals children from, the droplets have turned to full rain. Aggressive bubbles of condensation splatter against the booth’s sides, imploding on impact. Without patrons to congregate cars in the parking lot, only the cold street lamps offer my darkness guidance.

  “Westminster,” Royce says, “1800 Ninth Street Northwest.”

  “Okay,” I reply, “I’ll see you soon.”

  Hanging up the phone, I exit the booth, climbing back in my SUV and turning out of the lot. It only takes a few minutes to reach Westminster, and Royce buzzes me up. The building is nothing impressive for a Washington Police detective.

  When he opens the door on the third floor, I say nothing. Grabbing his t-shirt complemented by plaid pyjama bottoms, I drop my purse in the lobby, pushing my lips to his own. My foot kicks the door closed behind me. The place is musty and I could swear, there’s a sink full of disgusting dishes.

  Normally, I would judge.

  My aunt is dying. I don’t give a flying fuck.

  Royce returns my kiss. I only stop long enough to drive him to his living room, where he collapses on his back before I climb over him, pinning his abdomen between my legs. Removing my top layers, Royce does the same. The wine fucked me up and logic is absent, where it would normally warn me against this kind of stupidity.

  Royce rolls with it. He initially tries to get on top, but that’s not the way it works here. He is my emotional pittance tonight, to make up for all the ones I no longer have.

  Chapter Eight

  The fourth time I met the man who calls himself Death wasn’t until I was twelve. Five years had passed since he appeared at my bedside, comforting me about Lexi. By that point, I had settled on the fact the strange, suited apparition was probably some imaginary friend made up to overcompensate for my parents’ deaths.

  By that point, I was rebellious. The breadth of things I did not understand had unravelled any respect for authority- to the point I found myself under arrest in the back of a large retailer for theft.

  It was stupid, really. For a bag of makeup I barely knew how to properly apply, I was stuck in a little white room, sneering at a burly security guard who apprehended me in the parking lot. Surrounded by decrepit CCTV equipment, we waited for Maya and the cop
s to arrive.

  When the loss prevention officer left the room for a few minutes, leaving me to consider my actions in silence, Tim appeared next to me.

  Not smart, Ro.

  His sudden surfacing in the blue plastic chair startled me. Not a thing about the man in a suit had changed. Hairs of his beard were no longer, the lengths on his head still perfectly in place.

  What are you doing here? I asked.

  Tim grimaced, and I looked up at him, wondering if I might have finally lost my mind.

  Making sure you know this isn’t your path, Ramona Knox. Your potential is wasted in a place like this. What were you thinking?

  I wasn’t.

  Still not. Waking next to Royce on his living room floor, dawnlight pours between his curtainless windows. I quietly gather my clothes, dress, and slip out the door, wishing to avoid a certain awkwardness over breakfast. The detective stirs, muttering, but does not wake before I guide the front door to a quiet latch.

  Returning to my vehicle, parked on the road outside Royce’s building; an unexplainable tide of emotion washes over me as the car door slams, sealing me in silence.

  All this time, I have tried to convince myself there is nothing inside; that I am dead as my parents, and nothing can affect me. I’m not sure where the source is, but its effect is a torrent, drowning me under the weight. It forces my head to the steering wheel, all my hair around my face.

  If there’s anything worse than flying, it’s crying.

  We have to make a choice, Ramona.

  The sea rocking me, pouring down my eyes- supplanting whatever pleasure my terrible judgement yielded, with an empty fucking hole- brings flashes of a hundred different people back to me, pieces of conversations surfacing momentarily.

  Then, fast as they came up for air, the voices are pulled back under.

  I’ve already lost two of my best agents to this individual, Knox. I have a city in panic over whether kids will come home after school. They disappear from parks, grocery stores, museums. All it takes is their parents’ heads turning, they are gone. These people pop out of the ground like worms, steal our fucking sunlight, and tunnel back down below.

  We are the beast of the sea.

  Do you know anything about this case, or did Director Hazel send you still in diapers?

  Yahweh is our weapon.

  Maybe I bit off more than I can chew.

  This is not your path, Ramona Knox.

  Then again, I wasn’t given much choice. Emily Rickard wasn’t given a choice.

  I’m never going to see my baby again, am I?

  Regaining composure, I wipe a disgusting mess of tears and mascara from my lower eyelids. Looking at myself in the rearview, I don’t meet the eyes of my reflection. I study the cheeks and the downturned lips, but not my eyes.

  I despise myself, and have never been able to.

  Sniffling, I put the car in drive, and pull away from Royce’s apartment building, merging into the left lane. The SUV weaves between morning traffic, gunning for the Hoover Building. I make a mental note to attach sirens to the roof so I can blow through lights on a whim and avoid slow drivers in the left lane.

  Kidding.

  More than anything, I want to shower and sleep. I can’t do either, requiring a pit stop at the drugstore for deodorant and cheap make-up. Unlike my younger self, I have enough money to pay for it.

  Back at my car, I begin placing the key in its ignition when something catches my eye. In a parking lot the drug store shares with a supermarket, it would not catch my attention if I weren’t hunting the most notorious child abductor in the world.

  A man in a hooded blue sweater exits the grocery store, pulling a child by the arm. A girl. Like her minder, the small head is covered in a sweater hood several sizes too large for her. Based on the height, she can’t be no older than eight or nine.

  The little girl fights him, small wrist enclosed in the larger grip. To any other bystander, it might look like a parent pulling their unwieldy offspring away from a tantrum. I know better.

  Not bothering to close my car door as I bolt from the driver’s seat, let alone taking keys out of the ignition or locking up, I advance toward the pair, cutting between parked cars.

  If that is one of West’s crew, I may be able to stop this madness.

  The man cuts a sharp left out the doors, beelining down the sidewalk of lesser stores and restaurants, including the drug store I came from. In this quiet D.C. suburb, my pounding feet disturb everyday noise civilians fall desensitized to.

  Making gains, the man becomes more than a glimpse behind pillars of the outdoor mall. He bends down to tell the youngster something, just as several white-shirt managers come bolting out the sliding double doors of the grocery store behind me. In tow, two frantic parents spin in every direction.

  It gives all the reasonable cause needed to draw my service weapon, aiming it at the suspect.

  “FBI!” I yell, “Let go of that child!”

  His head turns to meet my command, but our locked gazes do not last long. He lets go of the struggling girl, breaking into a sprint across the parking lot. As the parents spot their kid, the mother screams, rushing to her. I bark at the stunned managers to call the cops and FBI.

  From what I saw of his face, the man is not Jordan West. But he knows where Jordan West is, and so I must stop him.

  Every instinct and emotion filters through adrenaline as I sprint after the perpetrator. Reaching the busy boulevard at the parking lot’s edge, he cuts through four lanes of busy traffic. Several cars skid to a stop; one hits another, which is rear-ended by one other. All the vehicles surrounding the pileup are given more warning than those involved, and swerve to a halt with no further collisions. The suspect gives no mind to crunching destruction and bent metal hoods left behind him, grinding morning traffic to a halt. He continues up the opposite sidewalk. Traffic brought to a standstill is the only reason I can keep up with the pursuit.

  “Stop that man!” I yell at bystanders. My sneakers, which don’t go with the rest of my ensemble, feel the weight of each movement forward. The gun moves with my arms, and I can barely breathe as I leap over the hood of one of the totaled cars.

  Across from the grocery store lot is a row of apartment buildings. Some are built on small shops like the flower shop, whose manager is setting up an outside display as our conflict reaches her doorstep. The suspect crashes right into the display, pushing the lady tending to it to the ground. He recovers, but can’t make up the distance I’ve closed.

  Rather than shoot him, I opt for three warning shots in the air. The harsh sound is not something people in this neighbourhood are accustomed to, sending those on the sidewalk to their stomachs, hands covering heads.

  “Stop, or I will shoot you!”

  The perpetrator chooses not to obey, because he knows the game is over.

  Closing my left eye and aiming for the lower leg, I pull the trigger. The bullet sent across the space between us buries itself in the man’s calf. He screams, collapsing on the sidewalk. The shell shocked crowd disperses as the sound of blaring sirens comes barrelling down the boulevard from either direction.

  The man tries to muffle his leg’s newfound sensations. A mass of mutilated tendons and muscles and blood replaces where it was whole moments earlier.

  I’ve never shot anyone before. Plenty of training targets met my aim at Quantico and in the years before I ever considered a career in law enforcement, but never have I harmed another person with a lethal object.

  If I hadn’t been here, that kid would be gone forever. Just like Emily Rickard, Grace Hawkins and so many others.

  “Move, and I’ll fucking kill you,” I tell him. The sirens go quiet but remain flashing as their brakes screech and velocity is truncated. Several DCPD officers are launched from the cruisers, weapons drawn. “Where is Jordan West?”

  When the suspect does not divulge the information, I don’t think. I don’t consider. In front of a hundred sets of eyes, I press
my heel on the gaping wound in his lower leg, sending him into grunts and stifled screams.

  “Where is Jordan West?”

  The perp’s jaw clenches between fits, trying to hold onto the knowledge in his possession. If this doesn’t compel him, nothing will.

  As predicted, his allegiance to West is undying. Removing my foot from the gunshot wound, the perpetrator collapses his head on the concrete, just as a Jeep ferrying Stephen Hardwick and several other agents pulls up.

  “Jesus,” my partner says, stopping at my side. Looking down at the man who almost got away with someone else’s child, there is little else to say. “What the holy fuck happened, Knox?”

  I can’t respond. Apprehending him took away all breath I require to form words. All I can do is let the chuckle escape my throat, panting to regain air.

  Wiping sweat from my forehead, I have no answers to share. Hardwick tells the cops to put him in the Jeep. He will escort the prisoner back.

  “Okay,” I reply, “I’ll meet you there.”

  As the man is pulled toward the vehicle, I have no remorse. He does not struggle against the group which strongarms him off the ground, shepherding him into custody; only winces and grimaces as weight is placed on the oozing limb his leg has become.

  People on the sidewalk stare at the woman who had the gall to pull a gun in a crowded parking lot, then fire it when the suspect would not heed her command. For every face rendering judgement on my soul, I share their disgust. I would judge her, too.

  Breath returns to me, but sanity is long gone.

  Chapter Nine

  I don’t remember much about my parents. Other than one story which defines them, Maya didn’t fill in many blanks. On some level, she was bitter with Tiffany over what happened to their mother- after she fell sick, Maya was left to pick up the pieces. As with every other time in Tiffany Stewart’s life, she chose addiction over family; drugs and sex and shallow love over lifelong loyalty.

  In many ways, Maya was the mother to me Tiffany never could have been. There are very few pictures of my mom which include me. Most are party shots, as she held a beer or joint in her hand; or worse, was all over some dude in the background of another couple’s happy photograph.