Old Habits

I opened my eyes to dim yet blinding fluorescent light shining down on me. I winced, turning my head to shield myself, and winced again as searing pain shot its way through the back of my skull. It felt like a thousand hammers bashing against the back of my brain, breaking from the inside out.

  I took a moment to gain my composure, holding in a squeal as my body ached relentlessly against my attempt to adjust myself in the bed.

  I was in a bed.

  As I looked around, my surroundings were foreign yet completely familiar. It was a setting I’d seen in countless movies and television programs; the eggshell-colored walls, the new yet retro chairs sitting at the end of the bed, the curtain mounted to the ceiling directly to the right of my bed so as to give me privacy if pulled, even the dim bulb hanging above me. Clarity hit me as I noticed the IV in my arm and the beeping machines I was hooked up to, blood pressure, heart rate, and countless other factors being monitored.

  I was in a hospital.

  Trying not to move my head too much, I saw a set of buttons and speakers embedded in the thick plastic railing of the bed, and though I wasn’t sure what over half of them were for, I knew one of them was an emergency call button that would summon a nurse to my room. I thought momentarily, concluding if I could manage to hit the button, someone would come running and might be able to explain exactly what had happened and how I had gotten there.

  At the moment, I knew the basics. I knew there had been a showdown inside mine and Gabe’s apartment.

  I knew Scarface and Fuchsia had died during the showdown, but I had no idea who had killed them. It could have been Gabe, or it could have been one of the SWAT members who had escorted Officer O’Kelly into the building.

  All of the SWAT officers had been killed, at least the ones who had entered the apartment. I had no way of knowing how many had been waiting outside in case the battle moved out of the apartment and into the hallway.

  I also knew I had stabbed Harrison in the head.

  Everything had unfolded so fast, but I was sure I hadn’t stabbed Harrison out of pure spite, though the possibility had crossed my mind at first. He had put everyone I cared about in danger for a second time, and nearly killed Gabe, Kip, and Riley. So, I did what anyone in my position would do; I killed him instead.

  And that’s when everything went blank. If I was in a hospital, at least momentarily confined to a bed, almost unable to move, bandages wrapped tightly around my aching waist, then what had become of everyone else?

  A glimpse of Geet rushing an injured, furious Gabe out of the apartment flashed in my mind, followed by a masked SWAT member doing the same with Kip and Riley.

  I raised my hand to press the call button, hoping to get some answers, but my hand stopped about three inches short of actually hitting it. I reached again, feeling a cold, metal pressure against my wrist as my hand refused to move further once again. Craning my neck, I saw briefly the two pair of handcuffs, one latched around each wrist and connected to either side of the bed railing.

  I was trapped.

  I tried one last time to reach for the button, hoping the cuffs might miraculously give way, allowing me to call for a nurse, but no such luck was mine. Relaxing, I took a second to focus my blurred eyes on the window across the room and saw by the skyscrapers outside, and the sound of cars whizzing by, I was still in Chicago.

  I heard the door to my room slowly unlatch and fluorescent hallway light crept across the linoleum floor as the door slid open. In a panic, I pressed my head against the pillow and closed my eyes, seeing the digital wall clock’s readout of “03:18AM” less than a second before my attempt at playing possum.

  I heard boots shuffling across the floor, trying desperately to be quiet, but the room itself was lacking sound to the extent even a pin dropping could be heard from the hallway. Luckily, it sounded as if the shuffling boots belonged to only one person, not three or four of Harrison’s men coming to finish the job of sending me to meet my maker. Of course, with me handcuffed to the bed, it really wouldn’t have taken more than one to kill me.

  The boots came to a stop at the foot of my bed and the frame creaked as the owner leaned forward, placing his or her palms against the mattress.

  I kept my eyes closed, making sure not to squeeze them too tight. This was it.

  “Jamie, Jamie, Jamie…” The voice belonged to Gabe, but there was something about it, something sinister, sinister even for him, that caused me to keep my eyes closed. For some reason, I wanted to know what he was going to say before revealing to him I was actually awake.

  “Look what you’ve gotten yourself into,” he continued. “You’re bruised, broken, and almost bled out from a gunshot wound. You’re also chained to a bed. Not to mention you smell like death. I guess the nurses were instructed not even to give you a sponge bath. You’re probably too much of a risk, killer.”

  He took a deep breath and lifted his hands from the bed, walking around the room. I could hear his boots again, but couldn’t tell for sure where he was going. I thought he was near the window.

  “Wow, no one’s even sent you any flowers or anything,” he said with a little laugh. “I bet no one’s even come to see you. Who would?” He paused as if waiting for me to answer and then began to speak again.

  “I know up until this point our working relationship hasn’t been the best. Yeah, I have some anger and control issues, but I’m not entirely to blame; you said it yourself. We make a plan and you always seem to do something against it, like you’re trying to sabotage us or something. If I didn’t know you better, if I didn’t know what an idiot you are, I might think you did all this on purpose. I might think you never wanted us to succeed at all. But no, I know better than that. I know you’re just as into this as I am. We’re the same.”

  I fought to keep my eyes closed, resisting a strong urge to respond to Gabe’s harsh words. He was never one to mince his words, but there was something in his voice I had never heard directed towards me before: hatred.

  “The good news is Harrison’s out of the way. We wanted that. But the bad news is you didn’t follow the plan, as usual. You see, and I really hope you’re not in too much of a coma to hear this, I was supposed to kill Harrison. I never even bothered to tell you how the ‘Harrison’ job title works. You kill Harrison, you become Harrison. That job was meant for me, and you took it. You didn’t even mean to, but you took the only thing I had going for me.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears and wasn’t entirely sure I was comprehending Gabe correctly. If what he was saying was true, and I was Harrison, then I was also now the biggest drug lord in Chicago.

  I cautiously opened one eye and saw Gabe sitting on the window ledge, gazing at the city outside, encased in a whirlwind of white snow.

  The shootout had taken place on Halloween night, and it was snowing. How long had I been in the hospital?

  “The way I see it, you saved my life that night. I was seconds away from dying, and you saved me. But in the process, you just went ahead and stabbed Harrison in the head. Very creative, by the way. Points for that.

  “Now you’re him, at least for a little while. As much as I hate to admit it, I can’t kill you just yet. As much as I want to just take one of these pillows and hold it over your face, you saved me, and I’m letting you live, which in my book makes us even. I’m not one for sympathetic gestures, but you deserve at least a fighting chance…” He trailed off as if in deep thought.

  I heard him stand and begin to walk back across the room as every muscle in my body tensed. He continued past my bed and stopped momentarily at the door.

  “Tonight, you get to live, Jamie—I mean Harrison,” he said with an almost-forced laugh. “But after this is all over and you get out of those handcuffs, and you will, I’m going to hunt you down, and I’m going to kill you.”

  Though my eyes were once again closed, I knew he was smiling the way only Gabe Malvado could.

  He said before walking out the door for good, “I don’t
leave loose ends. I promise.”

  A Sneak Peek at the finale to the

  Ivy League Trilogy...

  Loose Ends