And maybe He’s dishing out do-overs.
Neon has spotted me and a spark of panic flashes across his unshaven face a second before he turns and runs.
See? Instincts.
The bugger is fast, has longer legs and is in shape.
But so am I. This younger me has chops and I’m churning up the sidewalk like a man on fire. “Stop!” I yell because I’m supposed to, right? But there’s not gonna be a response.
Neon doesn’t even glance over his shoulder as he motors down the sidewalk.
He passes Aldrich, Bryant, and cuts south on Colfax.
I motion to Burke, hopefully behind me, to keep going and I follow Neon between two houses, across an alley, and over to Dupont.
He crosses the median, to the honking of a car, and thinks he’s going to lose me in the cemetery.
Hardly. I ran track in high school. And I have my young lungs back.
Burke’s yelling behind me, but I’m not losing this guy. He’s agile and fast, as if used to running. That’s my brain already applying judgment, I know, but it fuels me as my lungs burn.
Lakewood Cemetery is 250 acres of mausoleums and headstones cluttered with trees and footpaths.
I know this place.
I gesture Burke to angle down the footpath while I veer right to cut off Neon. He heads across open ground, past an alley of headstones and markers, trampling over them with impunity.
Spotting Burke, he cuts right. Well, Burke would scare me, too, sprinting right at him like a defensive end.
But Neon is my prey and when he trips over a marker, I leap.
He’s bigger, more solid, than I anticipate and shrugs me off even as we slam into the grass. I’m rolling and on my feet before he can find his. I take him down with a fist to the jaw.
My hand explodes, but Neon takes the hit like he’s expecting it. He shakes it off and lets out a curse.
“Get down!” I yell, but he’s not having it. Incredibly, he lunges at me.
That’s all I need to unleash everything inside me. The queasy, irritating deja vu that has me stuck in the past. The horror of the desecration of so many lives and frankly, even the sweat pouring down my back and the burn in my fist.
I’m here because of him.
He’s tackled me, but I trap his legs, pull his head down into my shoulder and slam my fist into his ear. He struggles, so I hit him again, and when he pushes away from me, I flip on him, my knee in his gut and crunch my fist into his face.
It’s all blurring now—the shouting, the heat rolling off me, the cursing of the man fighting back.
He lands a couple blows in my ribs, but I’m impervious. Then Burke pulls me off, shoves me away “Step back, Rem!”
He grabs Neon in an arm bar, flipping him onto his stomach. “You—stop moving. Stay down!”
Neon stops struggling and I sink to the grass, breathing hard.
Burke shoots me a look. “What’s wrong with you?”
Me? I stare at him. “What—he was in the crowd!”
“Maybe,” Burke says, his hand still on Neon’s back. Now, he leans in close to the man. “Talk. Why’d you run?”
Neon swallows, glares at me, shakes his head. There’s a confusion on his face that doesn’t make sense, and there’s nothing clicking in, no memory that might clear this up.