In the distance I hear a woman ask, “She alive?”
A man replies. “Found her in a doorway. Wall collapsed all around her.”
“Squatter?” says the woman.
“Nah, Angel’s Night volunteer.”
I have visions of a neon shirt. I’m on my back, being wheeled somewhere. The stretcher continues its journey but it’s rough going. The ground beneath the wheels is uneven. They catch on something and refuse to budge. Near my head I hear the man curse. “Shit,” he says. “Goddamn piece of junk.”
I hear him move away. There are bright lights flashing beyond my eyelids. I don’t want to open them, but I suddenly remember that I’m in Detroit and I seem to be strapped onto a stretcher. Images of exorbitant American medical bills float through the air. Going to a hospital in America on my budget isn’t an option. My hands instinctively undo the straps holding me down. I get off the stretcher and immediately fall to my knees. My legs don’t want to work. I see the smoldering wreckage of a building nearby and everything comes back to me.
I wonder where Ryan Russo is.
When I blink the heaviness away from my eyes, I find my answer. To my left is another stretcher, but this one has a body bag on it. The image of medical bills is replaced by jail bars. With it comes the realization that although Russo is gone, I have a very powerful enemy in this world. My imagination makes a few connections that appear unlikely at first, but I can’t seem to let go of them. A kind of certainty blossoms within me. All along I was thinking that I was being pursued because I was looking into my father’s past but this has nothing to do with him. I’ve brought this on myself. There’s only one person who would want me dead badly enough to put a hit out on me, who would even have the resources to find me here in Detroit. I was responsible for the deaths of two people last year, both belonging to the spectacularly wealthy and well-connected family he worked for. Dao. Only, a man like Dao, if he was back stateside, would do it himself. So he’s not here in North America, but he is alive. This is the only explanation I have, crazy as it seems. But it feels right. It feels true.
The lights from a car coming down the street remind me that I called Sanchez back at Nate’s house. But I don’t know where my phone is.
I have to get out of sight.
My legs are useless, so I crawl on my hands and knees to the end of the lot where the grass is near waist high. The unmarked car pulls up to the curb and Sanchez gets out. He’s on his cell phone. Hidden from sight, I watch him shake his head at the empty stretcher and look around, confused. He calls something to a fire fighter in the distance, then moves cautiously toward the warehouse. The back of the building is still on fire.
From the grass outside I watch it burn. There’s something so wrong, and so beautiful about it. In the distance there is the wailing of another fire truck.
I begin to laugh. Something has come apart inside me.
For me hell is cold. What is happening here is a cleansing. Soon this building will crumble and something new will take over. I close my eyes, and wait for it to happen.