Not Your Average Man

Chapter 1-3

How I managed to sleep, I don’t know. But I did.

I woke knowing there were things I had to do. Pack. Collect all Mick’s gear to take with me. Decide where I was going. I’d thought about several places, dismissing each one for different reasons—too small, too big, too cold, too hot. Too far away. Not far enough away. At least I didn’t have anything to keep me here. Or more—anyone. Friends? Yeah. A few of them from the club. But they wouldn’t really miss me when I was gone.

As I packed, I kept the TV tuned to the local news channel. So far, it seemed that no one had found Carl’s body. Not too surprising, considering where it was. I knew that would change eventually.

I tried eating breakfast and found it made me nauseous. A reaction to last night? Probably, I figured. Just because I’d lived with and loved a hired killer—and even helped him with his plans—didn’t mean I was ready to fully deal with being a killer myself. Not yet.

Thinking of that reminded me, again, of Jason and why he’d murdered Mick. He did it for what he considered the right reason—to save me from myself and get me out of Mick’s clutches. There was one unassailable problem with that scenario. You see, as much as we were the best of friends, and had been forever, Jason had never seen the dark side in me. The side that let me accept what Mick was, and what he did. Mick’s logic was unassailable. “If not me, someone else will do it, and I don’t kill innocents.” He’d grimaced a bit at that last. “At least not that I know of, and I do check.”

Yes, at first it was hard to reconcile the man I’d fallen in love with, with the killer I’d discovered he was. That happened soon after our relationship had begun. Mick had pulled no punches. Because he loved me, he’d sat me down one evening and said, “I can’t be with you and live a lie.” So he’d told me everything—knowing somehow that I would keep it to myself, even if I walked away. But I didn’t. Walk, that is. In fact, after the initial shock wore off, I found it exciting. That’s when I knew there was another side to me. A dark side, as I thought of it.

I proved that for sure when I killed Carl—with no regrets afterward.

I packed the clothes from the closet and the dresser, except for a couple of pieces that had been Mick’s. They were so worn that I hadn’t taken them to the drop box for a local shelter along with the rest of his things. That was something I’d dealt with soon after his death, to try to gain at least a small amount of closure.

Finally, I emptied the safe, putting the cash and other small items into the hidden compartment at the bottom of what had been Mick’s shaving kit—minus a set of ID documents that said I was now Wayne Blackstone. Mick had gotten the ID for me in case things went bad on a job and we had to vanish to keep him safe. With that done, I put my personal items into the kit, which went into the bag holding my few books and my laptop.

Before closing the suitcases, I checked one more time to be certain I hadn’t forgotten anything. Then I set them, plus Mick’s two cases, by the front door.

With that done, I went to get my car, pulling it up to the back door of the building. It took two trips to get everything into the trunk and backseat of my two-year old Sonata. My whole life fits into a car. Sad. Of course I wasn’t taking furniture and household items, but still.

The last thing I did was slide the apartment keys under the manager’s door. Then, with one last look at the building, I pull out of the lot onto the street. From there, I headed west out of town. To where? I hadn’t decided yet. But I knew it wouldn’t be a big city, where I’d feel like an ant in an anthill, or a town in the middle of nowhere, where I’d stand out as a newcomer.