Chapter forty eight
Nervousness turned to shock. "The Priest?"
I think the hairs on my neck were up, or maybe I hadn't heard right.
"Yes, the Priest," his smile was warmer now. "Doesn't look like a onetime drug smuggler, does he? I'd been ambushed in this dark, little room by the entire team.
Max promised to get rid of every speck of me."
"Consequently, he chose gasoline; an explosion that'll wipe off every trace of evidence. There, Howard somehow had this speedy change of heart and decided I never deserved to die."
All the while I was listening,I was striving to force my shivering body still. He'd gone through all of that? At this point, I had developed double thoughts about coming clean. He seemed to have a natural bad energy towards criminals. Who didn't?
"They'd set up a bomb in the enclosed gas filled room," he was perspiring, probably piecing in fragments of the dreaded event into one blurry picture. On his face, there was that visible sign of fear like he was presently reliving the moment. "I'd never been that scared in my entire life. Why should any fourteen year old go through such a trauma? I won't lie, I'd cried when searching for any possible opening to get out of that place. When there wasn't much luck with that, I just…gave up. Until Howard showed up."
"Where was the rest of the crew," I asked with a frown.
My brother quenched his scorching gut with a large gulp of red wine. Right after, he cocked both brows and replied. "Not so far away. Meanwhile, Howard had assumed otherwise. Seemed his plan from the start was to wait till everyone had gone so he could return for that one big rescue."
"I'd been like half dead when he found me" he explained. "And so, he'd practically shoved an arm under my shoulder and helped me scurry through a back door.
He paused to look up at me. I found it completely unexplainable how he managed to plaster that grin on in the midst of such a throwback.
I was completely unaware of the tears lining my cheeks at the instant. Still, I remained silent and listening.
"Moments later, we were a good distance away from the cabin. That…" he paused, his gaze dropping, "…that was when the explosion happened. I don't think some of Max's buds knew the severity of gasoline while they'd lingered about. An unfortunate handful had been scorched in it."
At his words, I remembered the six bodies I'd found on the road that dark night. He'd not still explained how his necklace got into someone else's grip though.
"We thought we'd made it when we'd found out an empty bus had pulled up before us," he smiled. "But then, there came a bullet digging deep into my hip that none of us saw coming."
The laugh he let out was half drowned with tears. There was no sort of a suitable consolation I could offer with the mental state I was in.
Inside my head was a hullabaloo of every sort of emotion you could think of; and the only way I'd expressed it was the ceasing of my every motion. I could only manage a few blinks now and then; blinks that produced only more tears.
Noah went on to explain how Max had caught sight of them and pulled the trigger.
"I'd screamed when the bullet dug in," he shrugged indifferently, slowly looking upon me now. "I always knew a bullet wound was supposed to feel bad but…man,that was crazy. Howard did not seem to care nevertheless. In fact, with Max now on our tails, his determination only seemed to go over the edge."
"Wounded or not, he practically shoved me into the bus and followed suit. I couldn't sight much of Max before the vehicle doors came shut, but I did see the rage in the look he had on and the strides he came in. While I'd laid there, bleeding,sore, hopeless…dying, Howard pushed the shivering driver away and took the wheels. Long story short, we'd paused at the nearest clinic and saved my life. Even though it cost me my movement, I'm well alive, Jeffery."
His story was realistic…I'd give him that. However, it didn't help me, did it? If anything, the horrible feeling inside had only increased.
Thinking about it now, he was the only one who'd truly gone through hell. He'd alighted from it like it never happened though. While I…I'd made it feel like the end of the world for me.
All the while I'd been waiting at home for him, who would have known he was somewhere out there going through all that.
Was it also Max's doing that the Officer had lied about the corpse being Noah's? Or maybe the necklace too?
"Why didn't you look for me?" Deep down, I was fighting to control anger. Sometimes, no matter how regretful you got, you never really changed what had happened, did you?
Even if they had succeeded in ending his life, I had no justified reason to do what I'd done.
Noah laughed right after another sip of wine. There I was wondering what was so funny about the question. "Oh, I did search. Howard had helped me find some guy who was supposed to go fetch you," his stare on me was narrowed, suspicious. "But then, you weren't there and Uncle's corpse stank with his sins. Which brings us to your part of the story, Jones. Where did you go?"
Gradually, my heart rate doubled. However, after second thoughts,I realised it was time to quit being a coward. "Having confirmed you dead, I think i got fed up and ran away. Stuff happened and I was on a truck to LA, determined my life's purpose was to avenge your death."
Then, I knew there was definitely no going back.
I sensed his body go stiff at my words. However, I never gazed straight at him so as to avoid trailing off mid sentence.
The aura change was sudden and direct, like a sword stab I could feel deep in the chest.
The fingers he had around his glass's stem were slightly shaky now; controlled but shaky.
Generally, I could sense he had a spark of emotion building up that he tried to suppress until he got my full story, hopefully not the ending he had in mind. Well, I hope he could handle regrets cause I was going to disappoint.
Then onwards, the rest of my words were a stutter. I was afraid. "Noah, what if I told you Max and his three friends were all dead and I'd killed them?"