Burn (Indigo) Read online

  He didn’t rise to the bait. “That mouth of yours is always what got you into so much trouble. Got you out of it, too, especially when you did that thing where you circle your tongue—”

  “I don’t do that with Gian.”

  Sumchai flinched.

  “Gian’s a lot bigger than you are.” She opened a cabinet above the counter and took out a drinking glass. “I don’t have the room to maneuver the way I did with you. Of course, I could have shoved a whole Twinkie in my mouth alongside you . . .”

  Snarling, Sumchai charged her, only to be caught in the face with a quick, hard whack with the frozen milk. A comical squawk of pain and surprise flew out of Sumchai’s mouth, along with a bloody tooth and a pink rope of saliva. With a dull tink, the tooth landed on the vinyl tile floor. Cinder’s second blow, which connected with his chin, knocked him off his feet.

  On his hands and knees and drooling blood, Sumchai glared up at her. “I’m going to kill you slow this time, kitten.”

  He lunged at her, only to introduce his chin to her heel. It came at him fast and hard enough to drive his head backward, his body flopping after it. He scrambled out of the kitchen, grabbing the gun he’d tucked into his waistband. Relentless, she didn’t stop to gauge the effect of her first kick. She pursued him, a series of powerful ax kicks driving Sumchai toward the living room wall.

  Her final kick, a sweeping roundhouse aimed at his head, missed its target. Sumchai clumsily ducked under it and vaulted over her sofa, positioning himself on the far side of it to give himself a chance to regroup and catch his breath.

  Fists clenched, Cinder stood ready for her second big battle of the day, a deadly smile cloaking any fear or reservations she might have had about resorting to lethal force. “Threaten all you want, Chai,” she stated evenly. “I’ll have an answer for you. Gian’s a really good teacher. But I guess you know that, since one of his former students kicked your face in at the mall earlier tonight.”

  He cocked the gun, almost playfully aiming it at her. “His students might show a bit of talent, but your big boyfriend was off his own game tonight. He couldn’t dodge a single bullet. Are your reflexes any better?”

  Cinder’s heart seemed to stop. Her lungs ceased function. Her brain couldn’t digest Sumchai’s implication. The warning call. It had come from Gian’s phone, but Gian hadn’t made it . . .

  Sumchai spat out a gooey clot of blood. “Only three bullets left.”

  “Y-You—”

  “He took the first two on his knees,” Sumchai sneered through a sinister laugh. “He was flat on his back for the last one. Some hero. He’s a lot tougher on paper than in real life.”

  Cinder withstood his taunts, battling with her stomach to keep its meager contents inside her. She swallowed hard, over and over, fat beads of sweat tickling down her face. “Did you kill him?”

  “No. The bullets did.”

  Cinder’s eyes closed. She fell to one knee, bitter fluid lurching from her stomach in a hot rush that ran through her fingers. On her hands and knees, she couldn’t stop the convulsions of her belly, even after it had emptied.

  “Holy cow, that stinks!” Sumchai laughed. “I think I might get sick, too.” Walking sideways to keep from turning his back on her, he went to one of her living room windows and opened it wide, the action awkward because of the gun in his hand.

  A gust of chill night air, faintly scented with burning leaves and damp earth, helped cool Cinder’s brow and settle her stomach. Most important, the fresh air helped her think clearly.

  “Remember the time we went to my brother’s rugby game, and he got hit in the nuts?” Sumchai stood in the window. The darkened windowpane his mirror, he used the tail of his shirt to wipe blood from his chin. “He vomited on the field, and it made two of his teammates vomit. It started a chain reaction that had guys on both teams vomiting everywhere.” He cackled again, the sinewy muscles of his exposed abdomen jumping. “God, that was funny!”

  There was nothing funny to Cinder about his stop on Memory Lane. The thing she best recalled about that rugby game was his insistence that she wear a thin, tightfitting sweater to the field, one that showed off her body but did nothing to protect her from the frigid day. She had been flattered at the time, pleased that he wanted to show her off. Now, she wanted to slap herself for her stupidity in confusing his pride in her appearance with pride in a possession.

  But I’m not stupid anymore. She had learned his lessons well, gaining an understanding he hadn’t counted on. She stood and slowly walked into the bathroom.

  Close behind her wielding the gun, Sumchai watched her wash her hands, rinse her mouth, and splash cold water on her face. Sparkling droplets of water dripped from her eyebrows, nose, and chin as she stared at her eyes in the mirror.

  He’s not dead. He’s not. If he was, I’d know it. I’d feel it . . .

  She gripped the clean white porcelain of the basin, the sleek muscles of her arms and shoulders assuring her that she had the power to pay Sumchai Wyatt what she owed him for every bruise, scar, nightmare, and tear he had ever caused her.

  She slowly turned to face her ex-husband. “Put the gun away, Chai.”

  He giggled. “Why?”

  “You aren’t going to shoot me.”

  “The jury’s still out on that, kitten. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do to you.” His black eyes zeroed in on the front of her white tank top. The ribbed cotton was wet and translucent in places, molding itself to her flesh. Sumchai licked his lips, perhaps recalling the days when he’d been permitted access to that flesh.

  “You’re not going to shoot me because you won’t have your gun.”

  He raised it, bringing it close to her head. “Is that righ—”

  Cinder moved forward, meeting the nozzle of the weapon. In seemingly one motion, she spun into Sumchai’s body, her back to his chest. Before he could complete a howl of pain, she had taken his gun arm, bent it backwards over her own, and twisted the revolver from his grip. She used the butt of it to strike him across the face before she helped him out of the bathroom with a very well-placed flat-footed kick to his solar plexus.

  Sputtering for breath, Sumchai landed on the living room floor, paralyzed and in pain long enough for Cinder to grab the mesh lingerie bag on top of her laundry hamper. She dropped the gun into the bag, pulled it closed, and wrapped the drawstring around her fist a few times.

  Standing over Sumchai, she clenched her teeth and swung the bag as though it were a bolo. But instead of throwing it to somehow ensnare Sumchai, she battered him with it, landing a hard blow to his torso. He grunted and struggled onto his elbows and knees. Cinder delivered another vicious blow, this one hitting Sumchai’s ribs with a sickening crack. She bit back a smile, hoping that she’d broken at least one of his ribs. She deposited her third shot in the same place.

  His paralysis worn off, he shrieked, throwing himself at her with one hand hooked into a claw while he clutched his injured ribs with the other.

  Cinder deftly dodged him, letting him crash into her sofa. She ran for the front door, Sumchai close behind her. She had the door open when he grabbed the back of her tank, yanking her off her feet. Swinging her homemade bolo, she landed hard on her tailbone, crying out more from anger than pain over having missed her target.

  Sumchai’s fingers burrowed into her hair, using it as a handle to drag her back into the living room. Kicking and screaming, Cinder dropped the bag containing the gun to claw at his fingers.

  “I loved you more than anything, you bitch, and you threw it away,” he roared at her. He heaved her ahead of him.

  “You never loved me! You wouldn’t know love if it sat on your face! You gave me obsession, jealousy, distrust, rage, selfishness, and your damn insecurity! You possessed me. You never loved me.”

  “I tried to give you everything.”

  “You tried to kill me.” He blocked her path to the front door, and there was every chance he would reach the gun before she could if she tr
ied to race him for it. She drew her final weapon. “That night you tried to kill me? That wasn’t all you did to me, was it?”

  Sumchai smiled. A filmy coat of blood covered his upper teeth. “A husband has the right to enjoy sexual congress with his wife.”

  Striking away sudden tears, Cinder pressed on. “Tell me, was it good for you? Did you like it better with your partner unconscious? Bleeding. Dying! As horrible as that day was, you actually managed to give me the one thing I’d ever wanted from you.”

  Sumchai stared at her, perplexed. Then, understanding broke over his face. For the merest second, his expression relaxed, and he looked like the man she’d once loved. “A baby?” His head whipped left and right as he scanned her bookshelves, walls, and tabletops. “Why don’t you have any photos? Where is—”

  “He’s dead.”

  “He? You aborted him,” Sumchai shouted. “You killed my son?”

  Cinder closed her eyes and took a few quick, deep breaths. She had spent most of her marriage and the months following Sumchai’s attack in a state of constant anxiety. Sumchai’s absurd, cruel accusation was the catalyst she needed to allow that sickening, tense feeling to evolve into the one emotion she had kept corralled deep inside for too long. It seeped from its hiding place, permeating her cells, flooding her brain, hardening her heart.

  Anger. That was the one thing Sumchai had never tolerated, the thing that earned his wrath fastest.

  From the first time he had hurt her for being cross with him, she had kept her anger caged as one would any wild, unpredictable thing. With her hair around his neck, her skin under his nails, and her future beyond this night in peril, the anger within her began to smolder. The heat of it reached Cinder’s skin, searing her from the inside out.

  She began to burn.

  “YOU KILLED HIM!” Her arms stiff at her sides, her fingers rigidly splayed, Cinder screamed so loud, she tasted blood at the back of her throat. “I didn’t know I was pregnant until almost three months after you attacked me. I was still in the hospital, and I started to bleed. He couldn’t survive.” She hooked her fingers into her abdomen. “How could he, not after the way you cut me! You killed him, Chai. You killed your own son.”

  “My son . . .” The words quivered from his lips as he stared at Cinder, tears shining in his black eyes.

  “When he died, so did any shred of forgiveness or pity I might have had for you.”

  Sumchai wavered on his feet, and Cinder hoped he might actually pass out. He ground his fists into his eyes, his shoulders quaking. “My son,” he moaned, staggering toward the front door. He picked up the bag containing the gun and returned to the living room, taking the gun from the lingerie bag. “He would have been my legacy. He would have had my name.”

  “He would never have known you existed,” Cinder declared, her teeth clenched.

  His misery turned to fury, Sumchai roared and flung forward his gun hand.

  Cinder dropped to the floor, sweeping her right leg in a circle as hard as she could. Her inner right ankle struck Sumchai’s shins, bringing him crashing to the floor. The shot meant for her went wild, shattering one of her living room windows instead of her chest.

  Still on the floor, Cinder raised her right foot and brought it crashing down on Sumchai’s right hand. The bones cracked around the gun and he shrieked, calling her the worst names hateful men had for women. Faintly from outside, Cinder heard activity, then a man’s voice, loud and clear through a bullhorn. “Sumchai Wyatt, this is the Webster Groves Police Department.”

  On her hands and feet, her butt in the air, Cinder crawled clear of Sumchai’s reach while he used his left hand to uncurl the fingers of his right from his gun. “The residents of the building have been evacuated and armed officers with authorization to fire are located throughout and around the residence. Exit the building and surrender yourself and your hostage.”

  Cinder found her feet and ran for the door. The gun now in his left hand, Sumchai fired at her once more, the sound of the shot startling her. Clipping the doorframe with her left hip, she spun into the stairwell and into three policemen crowding the landing outside her door.

  The officers passed Cinder down the stairs as though she weighed no more than a doll, her feet scarcely touching the floor. On the lower landing, in full combat gear, they surrounded her, shielding her.

  Eleven steps above on the landing outside her door, Sumchai emerged, his gun drawn, to find three automatic rifles pointed at his head and chest. Through the officers in their heavy black gear, he searched for Cinder. Spotting her, he smiled, cracking the blood drying on his face.

  “Lower the gun, mister,” one of the officers said, his voice slightly muffled by his helmet. “You’ve still got a chance to walk out of here.”

  Cinder wanted to look away, but she couldn’t, not with Sumchai so intensely holding her gaze. “He won’t,” Cinder murmured. “He won’t stop until he does what he came here to do.”

  The officer nearest her pressed closer to Cinder. “What’s that?”

  “Kill me.”

  Sumchai gritted his teeth and fired at Cinder. She drew in her shoulders, closed her eyes. The officers around her huddled tighter, leaving her too little room to expand her chest to breathe. Gunfire erupted in the close stairwell, temporarily deafening Cinder. When the officers eased off her, she opened her eyes. Two of them started to hustle her down the stairs, but she looked back over her shoulder. Before she lost sight of her doorway, she saw an officer on one knee tucking Sumchai’s gun into a chest pocket of his flak jacket. The soles of Sumchai’s feet faced the narrow balusters of the railing. He lay flat on his back, unmoving, his blood spilling over the landing in a ruby trickle.

  * * *

  Zae and Chip stood together near the nurses’ station in the Critical Care Unit of Missouri Medical Center. Cinder was tempted to call out to them, but decided against it. Not that she could move words past the hot lump of emotion plugging her throat as she passed the glassed-in rooms of the hospital’s most imperiled patients.

  This is my fault, she thought dismally. Eve and Gian . . . they were targeted because of me.

  No amount of guilt would force her from the ward, not until she saw Gian with her own eyes. If Zae and Chip ostracized her for bringing Sumchai into their lives, they would just have to do it after—

  “Baby girl,” Zae sobbed, rushing to Cinder with her arms wide. Chip greeted her, too, throwing his arms around her and Zae. “I had no idea what was going on until I got here and talked to Karl. I would have gone over to your place if—”

  Cinder drew away from her. “Karl?”

  Chip squeezed her shoulder. “He saved Gian’s life.”

  “Honey, are you okay?” Zae cupped her face, stooping a little so she could look into Cinder’s eyes. “Sumchai didn’t get to you, did he?”

  “Yes, he did,” Cinder answered absently. She peeled Zae’s hands from her face, and looked beyond her to the big man in blue scrubs sitting on a padded bench in the wide hallway. “Excuse me, please.”

  She went to the bench and sat down.

  Karl, who had been staring at his hands, looked up at her.

  “That was you who called me,” she said softly.

  “Gian’s phone was the closest one,” Karl replied. “You’re number one on his speed dial. Before he passed out, he told me to warn you.”

  They sat in silence, the pariahs. She for bringing Sumchai into Gian’s well-ordered life, he for being the distraction that had thrown them off the scent of real danger.

  Karl broke the silence by clearing his throat. “I was at Grogan’s, asking for my old job back. I saw the front window of Sheng Li had been busted, then a brick came flying through the door. Some guy ran out, and I went over there.” He took a long, shuddering breath and ran his hands over his thighs. Cinder took his left hand and held it in hers. Blood darkened the crescents of his fingernails and filled the cracks of his knuckles. Gian’s blood . . .

  At Karl’s feet sa
t a clear plastic bag filled with bloodstained clothing. Cinder stroked the back of Karl’s hand, then closed it in hers, resting it on her lap.

  “I called Gian’s mom and Chip and Zae once Gian was in surgery. I owe you such a big apology, Cinder,” Karl said softly. “Gian, too. I’ve been so angry and unhappy since the auto plant closed, and I took it out on everyone around me. I’m so sorry, Cinder. I—”

  She cupped his face, turning it to hers, and she pressed a tender kiss to his cheek. She gave him one more kiss, and said, “I think we’re even. No more apologies.”

  They sat hip to hip, awaiting news of Gian. Zae and Chip joined them, Chip leaning against the wall with no room on the bench. The minutes dragged by, their vigil broken only when Zae stopped a nurse to ask for an update on Gian’s surgery.

  Gian’s mother, brother, and sister arrived, and a nurse moved their larger group to a private waiting area. Mama Piasanti stoically counted off her rosaries while Pio paced before the window overlooking the parking lot. Lucia wiggled in beside Cinder and put a comforting arm around her shoulders.

  Four hours after Gian went under the knife, the gray-haired surgeon who took care of him walked into the waiting area. “He’s being wheeled into recovery,” he said. “Mr. Piasanti suffered three gunshot wounds. We recovered bullets from his upper arm and liver. The third was a through-and-through. That bullet entered at the right crest of Mr. Piasanti’s ilium and passed straight through, exiting near his kidney without penetrating it. Thank God for small blessings.”

  “Will he be okay?” Pio asked.

  “As long as he remains free of infection, I see no reason he shouldn’t make a full recovery.”

  Mama Piasanti slumped against Lucia in relief, murmuring a prayer of thanks.

  The surgeon turned to Karl. “Mr. Lange?”

  “Yes,” Karl said.

  “One of the bullets nicked Mr. Piasanti’s brachial artery. I was told that you were the one who placed the tourniquet on his arm.”

  “Yeah, that was me. ”

  The surgeon offered his hand. Karl shook it. “You saved his life. He would have bled out in a matter of minutes if you hadn’t been there.”