New York City
May 11
Tox pushed the elevator’s cage door to the side with his good arm, inserted his key into the deadbolt left-handed, and shouldered open the door to his home. He stopped dead in his tracks. A man about his age sat in the folding chair next to his ratty couch. He was dressed casually in faded jeans and a gray t-shirt, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, fingers loosely intertwined. He met Tox’s gaze, his face expressionless. Without hesitation, Tox pulled the Sig from its hiding place behind some steel shelving by the door and pointed it at Caleb Cain.
“I’d like to talk to you.”
“I know who you are, motherfucker.”
“No. You don’t.”
Caleb stood, extended his arms, and turned in a slow circle. He then lifted each pant leg, to show he was unarmed.
“I was never going to hurt Calliope Garland. I was paid to do a job. That job did not include a body count.”
“And this job? It’s done?”
“Let’s just say my business with Calliope Garland is concluded.”
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just put a bullet in your brain.”
Caleb spun into Tox in a quick move, grabbing the arm that held the gun. Tox was almost happy to let it go, a little hand-to-hand, hand-to-face, hand-to-ribs was exactly what he craved with this asshole. This wasn’t Tox’s first time fighting winged, but he needed to be very careful with his injury. Tox had the height advantage but Caleb was quick. They were equally matched. There was only one difference. Tox seemed to be the only one doing the punching. Caleb dodged, maneuvered, feinted, but he never swung a fist.
Before Tox knew it he was chasing Caleb around the room like a crazed child. Caleb hopped up on the couch and ran down the length of it, jumping back to the floor. They faked left then right around the folding card table where Tox ate. Finally, with a surge of angry frustration, Tox threw the table aside and charged, enveloping Caleb in a one-armed bear hug. Caleb boxed Tox’s ears, trying to break the hold, but Tox dropped his head and barrelled Caleb into the cinderblock wall, knocking the last bit of air from his lungs.
Struggling for breath, Caleb took a gasping wheeze and choked out, “Hello…”
He tried again. “Hello…” He coughed.
“Hello my baby, hello my darling hello my ragtime gal…”
Tox staggered back.
Caleb lifted a hand to an imaginary hat and mimed lifting it from his head, stopping only to cough and fill his lungs.
“Stop. Just fucking stop.”
“Miller, it’s me. It’s Miles.”
“You fucking piece of shit.” Tox charged him again and wrestled him to the ground.
Miles huffed out words as he took punches from his twin, never returning a blow.
“When we were six you told me you saw Mrs. Conroy’s boob. She dove in her pool and her bikini top came off. You hated mom’s banana bread, but you ate it anyway. You’re scared of spiders but you made me swear not to tell because you didn’t want to be afraid of anything. I put rubber spiders in your bed for weeks.”
The wrestling match had slowed, and Tox realized that he was now simply hugging Caleb, clutching him to his body. Tox rolled off of him and stared at the ceiling.
“What did we drink before bed?”
“Mom let us each take a cup of milk up, but I had the Nestle’s Quik from the pantry hidden in our closet. After she kissed us goodnight, we’d make chocolate milk.”
Tox rolled to his feet and walked to the window. Under normal circumstances, he would never turn his back on an opponent. But this was Miles. He knew it now. He knew it when he walked in and saw him sitting there. Miles’s role from birth had been to look out for him; he wouldn’t stop now. As Tox predicted, Miles stayed on the floor and let him process.
Tox had seen death, had faced it himself. He had lost both his parents and his twin. He had been shot twice, stabbed, and been nearly blown to oblivion freeing Steady from under an overturned Humvee. He had witnessed the worst kind of inhumanity, had endured pain most would never know. But standing there, looking out the window at the Bowery rowhouses, with his twin brother at his back, he did something he had never done.
He cried.
“Mile?”