Page 13 (1/2)
"I’m still not sure how you convinced the owners to shell out the money," I said
"I can be very persuasive when I want to be, and besides, they didn’t shell out anything I paid for the remodel"
"Oh I didn’t realize"
"I hear that the owner’s a little crazy anyway She’s always getting into sticky situations I was glad to help her out with this re itself The only contact I had ith the landlord, Mr Za of jealousy spiked within alled me I was not a jealous person Had never been jealous of anyone for any reason, but in walks Reyes Farrow and suddenly I’ you know, I’ll be boiling rabbits
"Why haven’t you come to see me?" he asked as he stepped to an overstuffed sofa and sank into it, stretching his legs out in front of hi he did every day, had done his entire life I wondered what prison had been like for hierators he could raid whenever he wanted to And I wondered what all of that would have been like, that kind of restriction, that kind of punishment, for someone who didn’t even commit the crime for which he had been sentenced Would the lack of freedohts and followed him "I don’t know The last time I saw you, you’d been shot with a fifty-caliber bullet because of me I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me"
"So all the notes on your door didn’t clue you in?"
I sat on a chair that catty-cornered his seat "Fine, but you’d still been shot"
"And?"
"And…" I wasn’t sure how much to tell him about how I felt About what had happened and hoas choosing not to deal with it in classic Charley fashion I pressed ether, then said, "I killed a man, Reyes Ato kill you"
And that was the truth of it A man I’d turned in as a bank robber had been hell-bent on ainst hi to be a sniper in the uy was a loon with a hair-trigger temper, so it was probably only a h to try to take me out from a rooftop a hundred yards away His plan would have been successful had Reyes not stepped in front ofto catch it when it continued toward me on its path of destruction He had literally taken a bullet for e one that should have ripped hi across Reyes’s torso that caused the spark of rage to burst within uy I reached inside his chest and stopped his heart before I took the time to consider the consequences Then I looked back atbeside Reyes, an expression of shock still evident on my features
I had left my body I had killed a man and I’d done it incorporeally, a fact I still had a difficult ti as truth
"I’m just not sure how uilty I took his life He could have reforh or the next Shakespeare, but noe’ll never know because I didn’t give him the chance"