The men grabbed his bag and scattered before his body even hit the ground.
the windows were up in the car.
I was a block away.
I couldn't hear it when he hit.
But I felt it.
The impact.
Somewhere deep inside of me.
I didn't think in the moment. I threw the door open, flying down the street, dropping down beside his body, tears streaming, begging him to hold on.
"No cry," he demanded, hand raising even as blood slipped from between his lips and I knew he was dying. "No cry. You made life brighter," he told me, chest starting to rattle, throat starting to choke on his own blood. "Take it," he demanded to me, tone almost desperate. "Take it all."
Those had been his last words to me, his life draining away with one godawful, horrific death rattle.
My entire body was shaking, tears streaming.
"What did he mean?" Roderick asked.
"I didn't know right at first, until I moved his hand which he had put to his chest. But it wasn't his chest. It was covering the key around his neck. He wanted me to take everything. Before his bosses got wind of his murder, I imagine."
And with little other choice, I pulled the key as the sirens got close, getting back into his car, driving it back to his place, letting myself into an apartment I knew I would never see again, a place that had been a refuge for me.
And I walked down the hall to the locked room, slipping in the key, opening the door.
Finding the guns.
Finding the cash.
Everything I would need to get started.
"So you did."
Taking a deep breath to push back the bad memories, I nodded. "Yes, I did."
"Was Vas a... boyfriend?" Roderick asked, tone careful.
"No. No. It was never anything like that. I think he was... lonely. Being so far from home, not able to make any contacts in case they stab him in the back. I think he just liked having a friendly face around. Like a friend or a sister or something, never anything even remotely romantic. He was just... a good man who needed company."
"Getting started was rough, hm?" he asked, reaching to turn down the volume on the GPS.
"After Vas? Yes," I told him honestly. "Let's face it. Gun running is - as a whole - a boy's club. No one wanted to take me seriously."
"What is this from?" he asked, pulling to a stop at a red light, reaching over to snag my chin, turning my face, then running a fingertip down the scar on my jaw, one that met me in my reflection every morning, reminding me never to let down my guard.
"My first deal," I admitted, trying to ignore the way that my belly fluttered at his soft touch.
Was there anything more shocking than a soft touch from a rough man?
"Don't want to talk about it?" he asked, having to release me to keep driving, making me oddly wish we were having this conversation somewhere stationary. So his hand could stay there. Or, better yet, move on, find other delicious places to touch.
"Ah, no. It's fine. Just me being green, naive, a bit too excited to get going in this new career path with no actual training, no way to defend myself. I made a contact with a member of some low-level street gang for a few AKs that I had from Vas along with a couple of the guns I had stolen from Eman all those years before, kept stashed in my storage locker. They decided they didn't want to pay what we had agreed on beforehand. I refused to back down. The leader pulled out a knife to do this," I told him, waving toward my face. "And attempted more. But I kept a souvenir from Vas - one I kept tucked in my waistband."
"You killed him?"
"Honestly? I don't know. I double-tapped and hauled ass."
"Did that need stitches?"
"Maybe it would have healed better had I gone to get some," I mused, shaking a head at my paranoia back then, terrified that somehow someone might figure out how I really had gotten the injury, and then I would have been hauled off to jail or something.
It was amazing the things you believed when you didn't know any better.
"You want to stop for lunch?" Roderick asked, letting my story rest for a while. It had been the longest I had spoken in a long time, the most details I had maybe given anyone before, save for maybe Cam who simply never had a way to interrupt me, I imagine.
"Lunch sounds good," I agreed.
The rest of the drive was less tense, conversation easier, though not quite as personal. We talked of little things. Like what our homelands had been like. Mine, Mexico. His, Puerto Rico. About coming to America. About how it was impossible to find decent empanadas or burritos in any restaurant in the States.