Just Right (Part 5)
Wolfe: First the Bad News
I sighed when I saw the mess.
Another bad night. I barely remembered it. Hell, I barely remembered the fucking cab ride home, only that I’d gotten out a few blocks short and walked, trying to clear my head. Now, looking at the tragedy that was my apartment, apparently a victim of a big bad tornado the night before, I could only sit on the step just inside the front door and sigh. I pulled on the Ultra, noting how short it was growing, how close the blaze glowing at its tip was getting. It was my last one, but I had another pack somewhere in the disaster zone that dared me to get up and go find it. At the moment, all I could do was hang my head so that I couldn’t see it.
Instead, all I could see was her.
Red. The alley was dripping with it. Her and her life’s water, like rain from a few evenings before when we’d stood there under that pitiful lamp and I’d almost gone hoarse from screaming at her. Red in front of me. Red on the street, crawling across the pavement until it dripped into the storm drain at the…
