Afterthoughts - cont.

The memory faded from his mind like smoke in the breeze.  It just wouldn't leave him alone - 7 years on and still he couldn't prevent himself from reliving that moment whenever he fired a gun.  Until recently, that night would just tease at the corners of his consciousness - that dark place in the recesses of his mind, a place he could duck away from; though the last two months had bought the memory back, snowballing with each recollection. Right now, Dale leaned against the boxes of his former life - trying to hide the cold sweat that clung to his brow.

 

"Please.. I'll get it, please..." Ignoring the pleas, Dale walked over and crouched before the wimpering heap on the floor and looked at him for a few minutes, like a magnanamous teacher with an endless pateince for his pupil.

 

"Now, you see, there's a problem with that." Dales voice quivered ever so slightly - only those closest to him would have noticed. "You told me you'd have it yesterday, but I didn't see it.  You told me you'd have it today... yet I don't see it. So there are two possibilities here - either you think I'm stupid, so can lie to me without retribution.  Or, you think you can play me - feigning to throw a tennis-ball accross the park for me to blindly chase air." The heap whimpered.  "so which am I: stupid, or your play thing?"

 

"Harrison please - I didn't mean... you're not-" A cross-bow bolt came from behind Dale and embedded itself into the heaps forehead.  In one swift movement, he released the Rhino 20ds dual action revolver from its shoulder holster, and rotated 180 degrees, raising his aim at the new arrials head.

 

The head, as it happened, was blonde.  The head, was gorgeous.  Recognising Kelly, he replaced the gun and began to stand, wondering how long she'd been there.  It was almost impossible to sneak up on Dale Harrison, Kelly being one of few people to ever have managed it.  And the only one to have done so and survived.  If she had been standing there after he blew out the heaps kneecap, she would have recognised the slight vulnerability in his voice, which would cost him.

 

"The shitbags lying." She said, folding the cross-bow to slide into the custom strap mounted on her thigh.  "The whole batch was shipped out three days ago - and that little runt was playing the same game with every dealer who would listen, hoping for a payout before someone catches on.  Well guess what... catch!" Though her voice was a velvet smooth as always, there was a harshness to her cadence.  She'd been running with Dale and his Merry Band of MisFit Toys as she called them, since the beginning. But as the only chick in the grouop, she was always trying to prove herself to be just as good as any of the guys.  If she ever stopped to look, she'd notice that she was the toughest bitch in play without all the extra bravado.  Her lithe physique and model looks put any man, and most women, on their back foot as soon as they saw her, intimidated by the beauty, she herself was oblivious to.  Covering it in combat trousers, steel capped boots and a tank top - proving herself, once again, equal to the men around her.

 

"That's not good," Dale said, hoping she'd just arrived, "without a cut, or at least a sample, we're screwed.  At the rate this shit is getting the red carpet treatment into veins and on to the Happy-Land Express direct to the crematorium, every doper in London will be checking out soon."  Dale ran his fingers through is hair, deflated, before looking back up at Kelly, "Was that the only reason I now have a body to dissapear?"

 

"No, check his knee.  It's already started healing - this fuckers a morph'.  The bullet popped out almost as quick as it went in, whilst you were... erm, thinking."  Great - she'd seen.  And their lead on Red was a) full-moon challenged, so fuck knows who he's been talking to, and B) dead.    This was not going well.

 

*//THIS IS A CONTINUATION OF <em>AFTERTHOUGHTS.</em>IT IS JUST A POSSIBLE DIRECTION FOR THE STORY.  WOULD LOVE SOME FEEDBACK.