Dave Zeltserman - Bad Karma

She shook her head hastily, fighting to hold back the tears. “I thought when we left Massachusetts we were all done with this. I didn’t think I’d ever have to see you like this again.”

Off in the background Emily scowled angrily at him. He turned his focus back to Susan.

“Darling, I promise you this is nothing. In a few days it will all be forgotten.”

“I don’t think I’ll be forgetting you looking like this anytime soon,” she said. “And we have to leave our apartment!”

“Just for a few days.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“Later, when we get in the car.”

“No. You tell me here and now!”

One look at her and he knew there was no sense arguing. Emily stood behind her with her square jaw jutted out as she shot daggers his way. As much as Shannon loved Susan, he knew Emily was a close second. Fiercely protective, he had no doubt she’d throw her body into a line of bullets to protect Susan, and he knew right now she wanted to kick his butt for upsetting his ex-wife.

He told them everything: about Pauline Cousins, her daughter, the Vishna Yoga Studio, the True Light cult, the Russians.

“Oh my God,” Susan said, her eyes beseeching Shannon’s. “They know where we live? How could you do this to us?”

“They probably don’t even remember the address,” Shannon mumbled, barely able to meet her eyes. “Anyway, this will all blow over in a few days.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

“It will. Please, Darling, trust me. All they wanted to do was scare the hell out of me. Make me decide it isn’t worth my time looking for Melissa.”

“But you’re not going to stop.”

Shannon swallowed, shook his head. “How can I?” he asked, lowering his gaze. Then looking up until his eyes met hers, he asked, “You wouldn’t want me to stop, would you?”

She stood motionless for a long moment before shaking her head. Then she bit her lip as she gave him a brave smile. “We’ll have fun spending a few nights at the Boulderado,” she said. “And if we have to, we’ll find a new apartment. Or leave Boulder.”

“That’s not going to happen,” he insisted with as much bravado as he could muster. But the thought was still out there-if these Russians were willing to beat him up as a first warning, what would they be willing to do for a second? Susan turned to Emily and the two women hugged, with Emily briskly rubbing Susan’s back. “You take care of my girl,” she warned Shannon. He nodded that he would, then got Susan’s bags, and brought them down to his car. When he went back for her bike, Emily sidled up next to him.

“You know who you look like now?” she asked. “Mickey Rourke from ‘Sin City’.”

“Thanks.”

She walked behind him, adding, “Don’t worry about nothing. I’ll keep an eye on your place.”

“If you hear anything, call the police. Call me also. But don’t get involved.”

“Maybe, or maybe I’ll go in and knock some sense into them myself.”

He stopped and gave her a hard look until she agreed to simply call him and the police. She was a character, from Oklahoma originally, and as tough as she talked, all five foot six and a hundred and thirty-five pounds of her, Shannon would probably choose taking on one of the Russians again than a fired up Emily. He lifted the bike to his shoulder and started down the steps. Emily followed, telling him how she passed by the Vishna Yoga Studio every day when she went to work and had at one time thought of signing up for classes. The last part came out more as a question. He turned to her, gave her a wary eye. “Don’t,” he said.

When he joined Susan in the car, she gave him a pensive smile. “You think something happened to that girl?”

He nodded. “I think so. Otherwise they would’ve let me talk to her instead of going through all the trouble they did.”

They drove in silence after that. When they got to the Boulderado Hotel’s parking lot, Susan took hold of his bandaged hand and brought it to her lips. He looked over, felt a hollowness deep inside as he caught her somewhere between smiling and sobbing. Tears started to run down both her cheeks and he wiped them away with his thumb.

“Look at us,” she said, sniffing, trying to hold back more tears. “We’re both a couple of messes. Do you think they’ll let us check in?”

“Darling, the way you look right now there’s not a person alive who could turn you down for anything.”

She put both hands behind his head and brought him to her, kissing him hard. When he winced, she pulled back, alarm in her eyes. “Oh God, I’m sorry,” she said. “I hurt you!”

“I’m just a little banged up, that’s all.” He took hold of her chin with his thumb and forefinger and kissed her gently, tasting the saltiness of the tears that had made their way to her lips. The last thing he wanted to do was pull away, but after a minute or so he forced himself to. “I guess we should check in,” he said.

“I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time earlier,” she said.

“What? You had every right-”

She put a finger against his lips, cutting him off. “No I didn’t,” she said. “I blamed you for this. Which is crazy because if you were the type of person who’d be willing to abandon that poor woman and her daughter, I probably wouldn’t love you as deeply as I do. I guess after what happened with Charlie Winters, and our time here in Boulder being as peaceful as it’s been, this hit me pretty hard.” She paused, her voice softer as she added, “Memories from that day started flooding back.”

Shannon removed her finger from his lips and kissed her long and hard, ignoring the throbbing that radiated from his jaw and cheek. “Darling, we’ll get back to what we had, and I swear I’m not letting any of this stuff get close to you.”

“I know you won’t. I also know if you could handle Winters, these Russians will be a piece of cake.”

Shannon nodded, but in his gut he knew she was wrong. Winters had been insane, a murderous madman, but these two Russians were detached cold-blooded killers. Shannon knew that the moment he saw them. As cunning as Winters was, he was driven by bloodlust and made mistakes because of it. These two Russians were no less ruthless but were driven solely by expediency and need, which made them far more dangerous.

Forcing a laugh, he mentioned how pissed off Emily had looked. “For a minute I thought she was going to mop the floor with me,” he added.

Susan joined in with a sad laugh. “For a minute, I thought so too,” she said.

When they checked in, the desk clerk appeared flustered as he glanced uneasily at Shannon, but in the end took his credit card and gave them the keys for their suite. After their divorce Susan had gone back to using her maiden name, Kerry, and they used that when registering in case anyone tried calling hotels looking for Shannon. The clerk took Susan’s bike and stored it in a back room for her.

The Boulderado, a Victorian-style turn-of-the-century hotel that in the eighties had been restored to its full grandeur, anchored the downtown mall area. They’d eaten at the hotel’s restaurant a few times on special occasions and Susan would always comment then about how fun it would be to stay there for a night or two. As she stood in the lobby taking in the spectacular stained glass ceiling and the Victorian-style furnishings, her mood brightened. By the time they got to their suite, she was almost her old self again, lively, excited, like a kid in a candy store as she took inventory of the antique cast iron bed, the Victorian furniture, the white lace bedspread and the old Western-style paintings of open prairies. She stopped briefly to run her fingers along the surface of an antique walnut table that had an inlaid chess board carved into it. As Shannon watched her he breathed easier, grateful for her change of mood.