From the Ashes by Jeremy Burns

Author:Jeremy Burns [Burns, Jeremy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Crime
ISBN: 9781936558339
Google: gsMkcXFRAHwC
Amazon: 1611880947
Publisher: Story Plant
Published: 2012-01-17T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

Brooklyn, New York

Except for wheezing to catch their breath again, Jon and Mara were silent until they reached their stop in Brooklyn. Partly from shock, partly from exhaustion, partly from embarrassment of the scene they had caused, and partly from fear of who might overhear them. As soon as they were off the train and on the street again, Mara broke the silence.

“That was the guy from Michael’s apartment?” Mara asked in a hushed tone.

“Yeah,” Jon said, his eyes darting around for any sign that, somehow, their pursuer had managed to track them here. “I’d say he’s pretty pissed about our little scuffle.”

“Geez, Jon. You think he works for them?”

Jon nodded forcefully. “I’m sure of it.”

“Then we’re probably on their hit list by now, huh?”

“Oh God.” His forehead creased with concern as he placed a hand on her shoulder. “Oh, Mara, I’m so sorry to have dragged you into this.”

“Forget it. Let’s just do what we came out here to do,” Mara said halfheartedly, but the concern on Jon’s face was also etched into hers.

A block later they turned onto Higbee Place. Checked the address. It was stownhouse just up the way. The home of Catherine Smith.

The pair spotted the house, climbed the narrow staircase – limestone or some sort of inexpensive masonry – and rang the buzzer. The long-dead husks of what once were flowers sat withered and forgotten in terra cotta pots on either side of the door. The olive-green paint of the door itself was chipped and peeling, faded by the sun and torn away by the relentless march of time.

The screech of a deadbolt sliding across metal sounded from the other side of the door. The knob turned, and the door cracked open, a security chain drawn tight across the opening. A single gray eye, surrounded by wrinkled and weathered flesh, appeared in the aperture.

“Yeah?” asked the eye’s owner in a raspy female voice.

“Ms. Smith?” Jon inquired.

“Who’s askin’?”

“I’m Jonathan Rickner, Michael Rickner’s brother. This is Mara. We need to talk to you.”

“Michael’s brother, huh?”

“Yes ma’am. It’s really important.”

Catherine Smith grunted. “Always ‘really important’ with youngsters,” she mumbled. “Gimme a second. Stand back, stand back.”

Jon and Mara took a step back from the closing door, heard the chain being removed from its slot, and the door opened again. The figure of an old woman, hunched and gnarled by time and a lifelong addiction to nicotine, greeted them. Well, not quite greeted, for the scowl on her face held an entirely different message. Her outfit was a simple, threadbare linen dress that may have once been something close to white, with tiny blue flowers patterned sporadically upon the cloth. Now, the flowers were a sickly green and the dress itself was nearly as yellow as the old woman’s remaining teeth. The cause for the yellowing was likely the smoldering unfiltered cigarette that she held limply between the fingers of one hand, and the thousands like it she had smoked in her sixty-plus years with the habit.

“Well, don’t just stand out there,” she urged.

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