He Called Me His Weapon, So I Died and Came Back Free novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Man at Table Six

A rich man watches her wrist all night, tips too much and leaves a card, and the name on it is the name of the man she killed.

Pru stepped between us with the coffees, and the big man in the grey jacket looked away.

He asked the nurse one more question, shook his head at the answer, and walked down the hall.

I breathed again. He had seen a patient's hand move on a blanket, nothing more.

They let me out four days later.

Pru took me home to a two-bedroom apartment over a laundromat, and told me which room was mine.

There was a dresser and a window and a wall of photographs of me.

In the photographs, I laughed with my mouth open and hung off Pru's shoulder. I had never laughed like that in my life.

"You work at the Gull," Pru said, from the door. "Tuesday through Saturday, the late shift. Rent's due on the first. I'm sorry. I know it's too soon."

"I'll go tonight," I said.

"Calla, you can't."

"I need to learn how to carry a tray before I forget how." It was the best lie I had.

I went that night.

The Gull sat at the end of Pell Street, three blocks from the warehouse, and I almost turned around at the corner.

But Corvin's men drank on the other side of the street, in the places with the green doors.

The Gull was for dockworkers and tourists and people who wanted to be alone.

The owner threw an apron at me and said I looked like death. I said thanks.

It took me an hour to find my feet. The body was slower, and I kept reaching for balance I didn't have.

By ten I could carry four glasses and read a table from across the room.

By midnight the place had thinned out to a man asleep at the bar and a couple arguing in a booth.

Then the door opened, and the whole room changed temperature.

He was tall and broad, in a dark suit with the tie pulled loose, and he had a white scar splitting his left eyebrow.

He didn't look at the menu or the bar.

He walked straight to my station, table six by the window, and sat down with his back to the wall.

"Whiskey," he said. "Whatever you pour most of."

I brought it.

He didn't touch it. He looked at my hands.

I put the glass down and he looked at my left wrist, and then at my face.

His eyes were grey, and bloodshot, and very steady.

"Your name?"

"It's on the tag."

"I can read," he said. "I asked you."

"Calla."

He turned that over for a moment. His right hand opened and closed on the table.

"Sit down, Calla."

"I'm working."

"There's nobody here."

"There's a man at the bar and a couple in the booth, and I get paid when they leave."

"Then I'll pay for them to leave."

He said it flatly. He meant it.

I stayed standing. "What do you want?"

"I don't know yet."

It was the honest answer of someone who had never been refused.

I should have been afraid of him. I couldn't tell yet what I was.

He had a hard mouth and a tired face, and he had not slept in four nights.

"I buried my brother this morning," he said.

I held the tray in front of me.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"Everyone says that." He still hadn't touched the drink. "I came here because I couldn't stand the house. I walked past this window and saw you pick up a glass. You tapped your wrist before you did it."

My stomach went cold.

"Did I?"

"Twice. Right here." He touched the inside of his own wrist with two fingers. "I want to know why."

"It's a nervous habit."

"That's not nerves."

"Then I don't know what it is," I said, and my voice came out steady, because I had lied to Corvin for nine years.

He studied me for a long time.

Then he laughed, one short breath through his nose, and picked up the glass.

"All right," he said. "Don't tell me."

He drank it in one swallow and set it down.

"Bring me another, and sit with me while I drink it. If you say no again I'll just keep coming back."

"Is that a threat?"

"It's a schedule."

The owner was watching from behind the bar with his eyebrows up. I shook my head slightly at him.

I did not sit.

I brought a second whiskey, and then a third, and he never took his eyes off my wrist, and I never let it move.

At two in the morning he stood up and dropped a fold of bills on the table.

It was a thousand dollars.

Under it was a black business card, heavy and cold.

He stopped at the door and looked back at me, and his scar pulled when he frowned.

"Same time tomorrow," he said, and walked out into the rain.

I turned the card over.

The gold letters said WAINWRIGHT FREIGHT, and under them: Bram Wainwright, President.

I stood in the empty bar with his brother's name still ringing in my head.

I had killed Dermot Wainwright six nights ago, and I had just served his brother a drink.

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