Chapter Twenty-Six: The Ride Home
THEY walked quickly through the deserted streets, listening to distant sirens as they approached. Nikki started to shiver violently before they’d traveled more than a block as the adrenaline drained from her system, the cold reasserting itself. Her mind felt lethargic, her thoughts wrapped in a thick layer of cotton, making it difficult to sort out coherent thoughts from the general background buzz. She was still trying to process what had happened, but felt as though she was doing it with a tenth of the normal output. A breeze swirled through the narrow side street they turned down, making her want to fold in on herself as her shivering increased. She winced at the pain in her hand, the torn skin stinging unmercifully where the antenna had whipped her palm; her wince brought the pain in her head surging back.
Someone just tried to kill me, she thought, the idea flickering to the surface of her churning thoughts as she struggled to understand what had just happened.
Daniel walked beside her, lost in thought, unaware of her confusion. She wondered if he had forgotten she was there. She struggled with her reluctance to break into his thoughts, feeling unaccountably shy. She walked in silence, fighting to form a coherent thought, to plan some reasonable way to start a conversation.
When Daniel’s truck came into view, Nikki sighed in relief, looking forward to recovering her jacket and curling up in front of the heater. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his head turn sharply in her direction at her sigh -- he really had forgotten her!
“Oh shit -- I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how cold you must be. You’re practically naked -- and probably going a little shocky, unless I miss my guess,” he added, studying her critically.
Nicolette nodded absently, but couldn’t find a meaningful response through all the layers of cotton packing her thinking machinery. She jumped when he draped his jacket around her shoulders, the lingering warmth from his body causing a shudder of pleasure and relief as she pulled the ends together around herself, completely engulfing her with room to spare. She sank into the warmth, the smell of leather and aftershave evoking pleasant associations, momentarily settling her thoughts. Her mind settled into a dull grey nullity for the short remainder of their walk.
Ten minutes later, she was sitting in the passenger seat, his jacket around her shoulders, her pink puffy jacket settled over her legs as the air blasting from the vents in the dashboard finally gave a hint of warmth. Daniel watched her concernedly as the sluggishness that had settled over her thoughts finally started to dissipate.
“Better?”
She nodded, “Much. My head’s still hurting, though.”
He mentally reprimanded himself for not seeing to his duties as a medical professional.
“Let me get my kit,” he added as he turned in his seat, reaching into the back seat for the white plastic box he kept there.
“That guy almost killed me -- though Tommy almost broke my neck saving me,” she murmured as a thread of cohesion began tying her thoughts together.
Daniel nodded as he dropped the kit in his lap, pulling out gauze and disinfectant, “He feels bad about hurting you, but it could have been worse. Dame la mano.”
She smiled faintly, pleased that the in-joke between them had survived despite their years apart. It was something his mother used to say, a phrase that both Daniel and his brother had learned to imitate with wicked accuracy.
He gently took her injured hand in his after she timidly snaked it out from underneath his jacket, watching with bright curiosity as rolled her hand palm up and examined the damage. He winced at the long abrasion slashing across the upper part of her hand, following her heart line just below her fingers, the skin torn and bleeding. She hissed in pain as he bathed the wound, garnering an apologetic glance from him before he set about bandaging it. She waived off his concern with an amused smile and a small shake of her head when he started to apologize.
“Tommy feels bad? How can you tell? I’ve never been able to read that guy.”
Daniel shrugged unconcernedly as he quickly and efficiently finished working on her hand and moved to check her head, gently guiding her torso so he could assess the damage, “A little blood, but it doesn’t look too bad. Nauseous? Dizzy?”
She winced again, “No. A little. I don’t know -- it just hurts.”
He nodded, “You’re probably concussed, but it doesn’t look too bad. If anything changes, speak up. You really should go to the hospital, but I know you’re going to ignore the suggestion.”
They sat in silence for a moment, Nikki watching as he packed up his kit with an efficiency borne of long experience.
“How much of this,” she raised her injured hand, “was Army versus paramedic?”
He didn’t answer immediately, turning to put the kit back, then putting the truck into gear. They were almost to the freeway before he answered, “That was mostly paramedic training. For Uncle Sam, I wasn’t a medic; I was infantry.”
She hesitated, then shook her head (and almost immediately regretted it as the throbbing momentarily expanded until her eyes were watering), "I don't know what that means."
He shrugged, trying to make the gesture seem nonchalant as he added tightly, "It means I spent more time looking for people to hurt than people to save."
She waited a moment, waiting for him to continue while the cottony pain began to subside. She realized he wasn't going to elaborate when the silence began to stretch, then stared out the windshield, momentarily at a loss as she once again grappled with the notion that Daniel might have changed more than she had in the intervening years. She wondered if there would be fewer surprises if she started thinking of him as a stranger, with no expectations to confuse her. The throbbing in her head coupled with the ache in her hand made it hard to focus her thoughts, to find a follow up question. She gently tilted her head back against the headrest, trying to soothe herself with the white-noise vibration of the truck and the airy roar of the vents blasting heat into the cab. She breathed in the lingering smell of disinfectant and gauze bandages that permeated the air, along with the faint touch of his cologne. She recognized the scent from their high school days.
Another thing that hasn’t changed, she thought, a faint smile briefly crossing her lips.
“Where have you been, Nikki? You just...up and disappeared.”
She jerked upright, surprised that the road noise was lulling her to sleep. Vaguely she wondered if her concussed head might be contributing to her sleepiness. His voice was quiet, but she could hear the throb of emotion when he spoke, could clearly see his knuckles turning white on the steering wheel; she suspected if the air hadn’t been at full blast, she would have been able to hear the tendons creaking.
She could sense he wanted to say more, but as the silence began to stretch out, she realized he was waiting for her. She sighed, tilting her head back as she foundered on resignation and despair, feeling her eyes stinging with unshed tears. Faintly, the remembered smell of eucalyptus drifted through her thoughts.
Eff it, she thought, coming to a decision, no more secrets.
“Los Angeles.”
He frowned, feeling his frustration and betrayal begin to ignite his anger as the silence lengthened, “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say? That’s all I get?”
She shook her head, as she turned to stare through the passenger window at passing traffic, watching the city lights rhythmically flickering past, feeling the futility of trying to steer a ship which was already past the point of righting itself, “I don’t know how to start.”
Once again, that rusty, misshapen truth presented itself to him; he reached for it, even as his conscious mind shied away from it, trying to cling to a false truth. He could feel it tearing and drawing blood as he finally started to take hold of it, to accept the version of truth it presented.
She could hear his anger, but she could also hear the pain underlying it, “I’ve been assuming we could just pick up where we left off. But after tonight... I realized where I’v
e seen your necklace before. I’ve been kicking myself for not remembering it sooner. Al-Anon? The three legs of the triangle -- recovery, service...” he faltered, trying to remember what the third side represented.
“Unity.”
He nodded, “Unity, right. A lot of the guys I know find their way to AA once they get back. It can be tough to make the adjustment if you’ve seen a lot of combat.”
“A lot of combat,” she murmured, her brows furrowing as wondered if that applied to Daniel. She felt her heart tearing at the thought.
He hesitated, “Nikki, I’ve been trying to be straight with you where I’ve been, but looking over the last couple of weeks,” he hesitated, “you haven’t really told me anything. That you’ve been in Los Angeles...that’s pretty much all I know. We need to have an honest conversation about that, and about what happens next.”
She sighed, tilting her head until it was pressed against the glass. She liked the cold, smooth sensation against her skin, despite the way the vibrations of the road made the back of her head ache. She closed her eyes, unable to stand the sight of her own reflection, “Okay -- but not tomorrow -- I have to be up early in the morning and I need the rest. Especially after everything that’s happened tonight. Daniel--”
“The longer you put this off--“
“I know, the more difficult it’s going to be.”
“I was going to say ‘The harder it’s going to be to trust you’, but yeah -- what you said is probably also true.”
She shook her head, rolling her forehead back and forth against the chilly window glass, “Saturday, then. I’ll text you the address of my new place.”
“I’m taking you there right now, aren’t I?”
She snorted, “Right. Scrambled brains.”
They sat in silence, Daniel navigating the freeway until he hit the 92W, beginning the short ride westward over the mountains to the coast. She hesitated, briefly afraid he might interpret her fear as a self-serving distraction. She decided keeping it to herself wasn’t the right way to build trust, though she wondered how she was going to explain that she saw men wearing wooden masks with iridescent purple eyeshine in the club...and she had the uncomfortable sensation they weren’t wearing masks...and that Mr. Ford was dead, despite his fondness of mochas at 6am.
Eff it, she thought again, no more secrets.
She braced herself and said, “I think someone tried to kill me, tonight.”
His head turned sharply, his expression concerned despite the hint of skepticism that crept into his voice, “Intentionally tried to kill you?”
“Someone pushed me. I stumbled in front of that car because someone pushed me.”
He frowned, “There were a lot of people on that sidewalk, Nikki...”
“I wasn’t nudged -- I was shoulder-checked. I saw the driver in the club; I think he was watching me.”
“You saw the driver...Nikki, it was dark in the club, there were a ton of people there -- how sure are you?”
“Daniel...he looked...he was pretty distinctive.”
Daniel turned, his brows drawn together as the implications began to register, “Distinctive? What do you mean? Have you seen him somewhere else?”
She shook her head, then hesitantly added, “It was weird...he was distinctive because it looked like he was wearing a mask of some sort, but...”
She trailed off, suddenly reluctant to give voice to something that, even in her own mind, sounded crazy.
Matter of factly, he supplied, “...But you don’t think he was.”
She nodded in mute assent, unwilling to give voice to her suspicions, feeling a small trickle of relief that he had at least spared her that.
He fell silent, lost in thought as he processed the implications of her revelation. He hadn’t seen her drink, she hadn’t been showing signs of other drugs that he could spot. He supposed it was possible that she was more severely concussed than either of them realized...but as he studied her, she didn’t seem disoriented or in any way impaired. It sounded absurd -- masked men following Nicolette into a San Francisco club, then orchestrating a premeditated hit and run -- but some intuitive tickle augmented by the strangeness of the last week gave him pause. He sat back, trying to wrap his head around it, to process all the implications, perhaps find some course of action buried in the data. There was too much information he didn’t have, he decided, and too much weirdness to sort through.
She interrupted his thoughts as she quietly added, “We still need to compare notes on our weird dreams.”
He smiled faintly, the corner of his mouth turning up for the briefest instant as he recalled their earlier conversation, “We do.”
They lapsed into silence, but it wasn’t a restful or comfortable silence. She sensed that he was still grappling with his distrust, just as she was grappling with the disaster she saw rapidly approaching. She struggled with despair, her pain robbing her of words.
As the freeway ended, she directed him to turn left on the Highway 1, heading south. Eventually, he made a right turn, heading toward the ocean, driving down a short dead-end street lined with modest homes. At the end of the block, he saw a white and red striped barrier marked with a yellow warning sign indicating the end of the road. The street ended abruptly, no cul-de-sac, just the barrier and a low sea-grass covered earthen berm. The hill sloping down to the unlighted beach. Faintly, he could see the long line of breakers extending along the rocky coast, the white foam of the breaking waves dimly visible in the surrounding darkness.
Nicolette reluctantly shrugged off his jacket, missing the warmth and the reassuring smell of leather and him. He watched as she pulled on her pink puffy jacket, wincing at the movement. The clock on the dash of his truck suggested that she’d get an hour and a half of sleep, tops.
“How’s your head?”
She was surprised by his question, realizing that the pain had gone down during the latter part of their drive, “It’s better. It still hurts, but it’s already starting to feel better. I guess there’s some advantage to knowing a medical professional.”
His smile was polite, but he sounded sincere as he answered, “That’s good. I’ll check in on you in a couple hours; make sure to text back or I’m going to be knocking on your door and dragging your behind to the ER. And Nikki...”
She waited, a brief moment of hope igniting in her heart.
“...if you see any of those weirdos, the maskers, call me. Don’t let them get you alone. And take a picture if you can.”
She forced a smile, struggling with her disappointment, “Okay. 10-4, or, roger -- whatever it is you guys say.”
He smile became a little more genuine, his eyes crinkling the slightest bit, “Any of those work.”
She hesitated, wanting to hug him, kiss him goodnight, anything to reassure herself that the gulf that had sprung up between them was bridgeable, that even the smallest legitimization of their meeting as a ‘date’ might bolster that hope. But after a long pause, she opened the door and slid out, hating herself for her cowardice. She started to close the door, to slam it really, but caught herself at the last second, pulling it back open. Daniel turned to watch her, surprise evident in his expression, “Dan...”
She hesitated, suddenly unsure what she intended to say, her throat constricting painfully as she tried to explain...she wasn’t sure what. He watched her struggle for a moment. Disappointment washed through him when she deflated, clearly giving up, “Good night.”
He nodded, “Sleep well.”
She closed the door, then turned and headed around the side of the house, going through the fence into the yard where the little in-law cottage stood next to the Magnuson’s pool. He could see a hint of the cottage roof over the fence line. The second the gate closed, he felt a hollow emptiness opening in his chest, acutely aware of the missed opportunity. He was still struggling with the ripping, ragged truth that he had first begun to accept earlier that evening.
He glanced at his reflection in the rear view mirror. r />
“Asshole,” he muttered at himself.
He dropped the keys into their bowl by the door. He slowly settled on his couch, the tired springs creaking. He impulsively pulled out his phone and texted her, “We can work this out” though a small voice in the back of his mind registered doubt.
He was surprised when she texted back almost immediately, “I don’t think you’ll feel that way tomorrow.”
Feeling at a loss, he moved to his bedroom and collapsed onto his bed. It had been a surprisingly trying evening, his emotions scraped raw. He had expected to fall asleep instantly, hoping the next morning would being some clarity to his feelings.
Unfortunately, it was almost dawn by the time he finally slept, though his feelings remained murky.
The Wilderness