Fire and ice

Epilogue

A pair of police detectives grilled Matt as he lay on a gurney in the emergency room awaiting treatment. He told them everything he knew about the slayings at Nitko and at the Retro.

But he didn’t really have to convince them.

By the time he got to the hospital, they’d found Terri Bonach, and she backed up his story. And there was the mother, who credited him with saving her child.

And Kevin Radowski was still alive, somewhere in the same hospital, under heavy guard.

They said that Matt had probably saved thousands of lives.

But it was the few that he didn’t… and especially Shelly… that he couldn’t stop thinking about.

If only he’d killed her the instant Mr. Dark had touched her…

But he hadn’t had the guts.

Or the heart.

Shelly was broken long before he’d met her, but no more than millions of other people who were living lives they hated. The anger and bitterness were just small parts of her. There was joy in her, too. He’d seen it. He’d felt it. Maybe if she’d lived long enough she could have figured out how to let the good feelings overwhelm the bad. Or maybe not. But that was just life.

Then Mr. Dark had touched her and the bitterness and anger were all that were left.

Matt had kept hoping until the last minute that he could save her from what Mr. Dark had done with his touch. But he could never save her from what her life had done to her-and what she had done to herself. The seeds had been planted long ago. Mr. Dark just showed up for the harvest.

So now Radowski was alive and Shelly was in a body bag.

Matt figured the prosecution would seek the death penalty, but even if they were successful, no telling how many years K-Rad would spend on death row filing appeals. Books would be written, movies would be made, and curious women would make him their pen pal. Three hots and a cot, and worldwide fame. That was probably what he had wanted all along, and that was probably what he was going to get.

It wasn’t fair that K-Rad survived and Shelly did not.

Score one for Mr. Dark.

The plant may not have blown up, but K-Rad was still alive, someone other psychopaths could look to for bloody inspiration.

Matt asked the detectives about his ax.

The cops told him it had been used to kill a woman in the bathroom.

Matt asked for it back, which shocked the cops.

“It belonged to my grandfather,” he told them. “It’s very important to me.”

The cops figured that since the perp was dead and there wouldn’t be a trial, they wouldn’t have to hold on to it.

They were going against department regulations big-time, but they owed him something for stopping the bomb.

So they washed the blood off of the ax and gave it to him in a gym bag so nobody would see it.

He asked for one more thing.

He wanted his name out of the papers. He wanted no credit whatsoever for what he had done.

Or not done.

They were okay with that, too.

Matt spent several hours in the emergency room but refused to be admitted to the hospital. Hospitals were not good places for him. He healed too fast, which inevitably raised questions he didn’t want raised.

An on-call surgeon removed the bullet from Matt’s shoulder and the shrapnel from his leg. Once he was sewn up, cleaned, and bandaged, Matt dressed in a set of surgical scrubs he found on a linen cart, took the staff-only elevator to the basement, and walked out of the service entrance of the hospital before the media arrived.

Gym bag in hand, he slipped through the parking lot and up the ramp to the highway. A mile or so later he came to a sign that said 95 South to St. Augustine. He stuck his thumb out.

He didn’t know where he was going, but he was in no hurry to get there.

Because he knew one thing for certain.

Death would be waiting.

About the Author

Photograph by Pete Helow

Jude Hardin holds a BA in English from the University of Louisville and currently works as a registered nurse in a major urban medical center in North Florida. When he’s not pounding away at the computer keyboard, Hardin can be found pounding away on his drums, playing tennis, reading, or down at the pond fishing with his son.