Crap. There went my theory about Christos and Jake being out at a bar. “Mads, ask Jake if he knows where Christos is.”

“Why would he know where Christos is? He’s been with me all evening.”

“Can you please just ask him?” I pleaded.

“Jake,” Madison said, “Sam wants to know if you know where Christos is.”

“I haven’t talked to him since yesterday,” Jake mumbled.

Great.

Madison relayed the news, “Jake said he hasn’t seen—”

“I heard,” I interrupted.

“Is something wrong?” Madison asked, obvious concern in her voice.

I didn’t have time to explain everything to her. I needed to go look for Christos. “It’s, ah, it’s nothing.” I tried to sound like it was no big deal so she wouldn’t start worrying. “I just need to talk to Christos. If for some reason he calls Jake, call me right away, okay?”

“Are you sure nothing’s wrong, Sam?”

“Yeah. Everything is fine. Go back to sleep.”

I heard the rustling of covers.

“Mmmm,” Madison murmured, “I don’t think Jake is going to let me. Call me tomorrow, Sam. But if you really, really need me, call me right away.” Madison made a purring noise. “Scratch that. Don’t call for at least twenty minutes.”

I heard Jake scoff, “Twenty minutes?”

“Okay,” Madison said to Jake, “make it forty. But that’s all you get, cowboy. I have class in the morning.”

“Don’t worry about it, Mads,” I said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Okay. Bye, Sam.” She giggled before the phone line went dead a second later.

I envied her in that moment. She was snuggled up with her man, the two of them safe from all the harm in the world. I set the phone down on the kitchen table and looked at Spiridon.

He laid a comforting hand on mine once again. “I know you’re worried, koritsáki mou. Why don’t you try calling Christos again?”

“Okay.”

He winked at me, “Isn’t there an old saying, the fifty-first time is the charm?”

* * *

CHRISTOS


A shadow blurred past the corner of my vision. Something huge and dark whipped past my head from the side and was gone before I could register what it was. I followed the motion as the thing curved out over the ten story drop below.

A lone barn owl had beat wings past my face, only a few feet in front of me. I’d never heard him coming. He was dead silent. Totally in his element.

I watched in awe as he soared out past the distant moon, floating above the canyons between me and the ocean. He sailed through the air languorously, searching for prey. I was transfixed by the hunter in his natural environment. What a simple life he led.

Without warning, the owl’s wings folded and it dove into the darkness. I followed it’s plummeting path, watching intently as its wings exploded mere feet above the ground, the owl landing in a pool of amber beneath a streetlight. A second later, the owl flapped furiously and rose into the air, a mouse dangling from its talons. Then the owl disappeared into the black night with its prey.

I was in awe of the swiftness with which all of that had transpired. One life ended so another could flourish.

I realized I had a choice to make.

My life…or Samantha’s.

I wanted her to flourish.

My face knotted in agony. My chest tightened as jagged knives of regret stabbed me from the inside out. How the fuck had I fucked things up so badly? I inhaled deeply, ready to shout my lungs out in an attempt to release some of the tension ripping my heart apart.

Then I realized shouting would call attention to myself.

Nyyhmy Hall was shaped like a blocky letter H when you looked at it from the top. The balcony was on the top side of the fat horizontal bar of the H. The thick vertical columns of the H held all the dorm rooms, the windows of which faced the balcony where I stood. Because it was San Diego, and it was no cooler than sixty degrees outside, many of those windows were open. Since this was a college dorm building, several of those windows had lights on, and some had their curtains open. If I started shouting, I had no doubt heads would start popping out of those windows like gophers checking for eagles overhead. The last thing I wanted was an audience or someone calling campus security and telling them there was another jumper on the tenth floor. I was enjoying my peace and quiet.

I took a deep breath. My stabbing regret eased a fraction. I took another breath.

That was when I realized I’d been looking at my situation all wrong. Eagles, owls, gophers and mice.

First, the owl and the mouse. For all I knew, that was a mama owl with baby owls back in her nest that hadn’t eaten in weeks. No one wanted baby owls to go hungry. I know I didn’t.

Second, the eagle and the gophers.

We all know which animal I was in that scenario.

No matter how much confusion and pain writhed in my guts, I would never be a gopher. I was the predator in my life, not the prey. I was not going to live my life cringing away from danger, always wondering when the death strike might come raining down from above.

I was going to step boldly into life and dance with danger.

I wasn’t going to give up.

Like the eagle and the owl, I was going to bare my claws and teeth and do what I did best.

Fight.

For myself. For Samantha.

For my life.

No one was going to bring me down and tear me apart. Not even the judicial system. I never took the easy way out. That’s how I’d ended up in this predicament in the first place. Because I liked living dangerously.

I was up here because the day I’d met Samantha, it had taken me less than half a second to decide that Horst Grossman, the fat fuck who was up in her face, was way out of line, and needed to lay off her shit. The easy thing would’ve been to ride away and forget all about her.

But that wasn’t how I rolled. Not that day, not tonight, and not at my trial. If I was going down, I was going down fighting.

I still hadn’t told my attorney, Russell Merriweather, whether or not to accept the plea bargain from the District Attorney. The offer was one year in jail in exchange for a guilty plea. Probably only nine months with time off for good behavior. That was the sure thing. If I went to trial, I risked up to four years in state prison if the jury found me guilty. Fuck it. I liked risks and I liked fighting.

I was going to roll the dice and go to trial.

I grinned and shook my head. I don’t know why I’d been so stressed about all this. Like most women, Lady Luck had the hots for my shit. No reason why she wouldn’t back me up at my trial.

Still balanced on one foot with my knee in the air, I lowered my foot down to the railing and stabilized myself.

As I was about to hop back onto the balcony, my phone rang, startling me.

The sound cut through the nighttime silence.

I hissed and pitched forward, I was so surprised. My arms whirled automatically and my hips thrust back violently, counter-balancing my weight. If I over compensated, I was over the edge of this railing and three seconds later, over with permanently. I strained to regain my balance. Agonizing seconds later, I recovered my center of gravity and hopped onto the cold cement balcony.

Was Lady Luck calling to tell me something?

Before Your Love by Kelly Clarkson continued playing through the tiny speakers on my phone.

Not Lady Luck.

Samantha.

I rolled my head back and chuckled. “Fuck,” I mumbled to myself. She’d almost killed me. Tragic irony was a funny thing, as long as it didn’t happen to you.

I answered her call. “Hey,” I mumbled.

“Where are you?” Samantha begged.

“Out getting some fresh air.” I sat down on the cold cement balcony and slid my socks and boots on.

“Are you all right?” she asked, worried.

“I’m fine, agáp—” I stopped myself short. Calling her that right now felt like an empty promise I couldn’t keep for long. Shit was going to get real when I went to trial. I didn’t want Samantha getting her hopes up if things went bad. If I was acquitted, great. But if the jury found me guilty? Nobody was going to throw a party.

“Please tell me where you are, agápi mou,” Samantha said, her voice resonating with a penetrating fear tempered by her bold, fearless love.

Her confidence peeled back some of my reckless resistance. If I said nothing and kept her completely in the dark, I’d feel like a stubborn dick. “I’m at SDU,” I sighed. “Everything is okay.”

“I need to see you, Christos.”

“Now isn’t a good time.” I shook my head at how lame I sounded.

“What do you mean?” she pleaded. “We were talking about some really important stuff and you ran out. Why?”

Did I tell her I’d run because I felt like an idiot? That I was embarrassed by my past? Shit, I could barely admit it to myself. Or did I talk about how my life still balanced on a knife edge thinner than the balcony railing I’d just been standing on?

If I ended up in jail, I’d end up going back to my old ways. I’d have no choice but to harden up and fight my way through each and every day I was stuck in lock up. I knew from experience that prison would get under my skin and dirty my fingernails no matter how hard I tried to hold onto the life I’d been building for the last two years. What kind of institutionalized prick would I be after four years in prison? Would Samantha want to know me then? Would I want to subject her to whatever damage I was sure to suffer from living like a barbarian?

Who was I kidding?

She needed better options than that.

I stifled an insane laugh as I considered how her parents might feel about the whole thing. I was pretty sure I would agree with them.

I shook my head. “Look,” I said gruffly, “I really don’t want to talk about this right now. I need time to think.”

“Come home, Christos. No matter how bad you think things are right now, I love you. Your grandfather loves you. We’re here for you.”

Why did her words tear my guts apart?

Fuck, I couldn’t deal with this.

“Samantha, I need to go.”

“Christos! Please don’t hang up! Tell me exactly where you are and I’ll come right now.”

Her voice sounded jumpy, like she was running with the phone in her hand. I heard the beep beep beep of her VW’s warning bell and a door chunking shut.

“Are you in your car?” I asked.

“Yes. I’m driving out of your driveway right now. Don’t move a muscle. I’m coming for you.”

She wasn’t going to let me get away. It’s not like I was going to run down to my bike and bolt before she got here. I’d already done that earlier.

I shook my head and grinned. I hated to be predictable. Besides, I needed to talk to her sooner or later. And what the hell else was I going to do tonight anyway? Get some quality sleep before my pre-trial hearing?

Yeah, right.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the Adams College parking lot, where the motorcycles are.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Don’t speed,” I said ironically, “I wouldn’t want you getting in an accident.” I meant it. Although my safety was low on my list of priorities, hers was still at the top of my list. “Why don’t we hang up so you can focus on your driving?”

“No!” she shrieked. “Don’t you hang up your phone until I’m standing right in front of you!”

I had to admit, her insistence was endearing. “Okay, I’ll stay on the phone. But at least put yours on speaker and put it in your lap, or in a cup holder or whatever.”

“Okay. My phone is in my lap. Keep talking.”

“Ahh, do I recite poetry now?”

“If you’ve got anything memorized.”

“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe…”

“What language is that?” She giggled.

“English?”

“Are you sure?” She sounded like she was smiling.

“Yeah. It’s the Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. I had to memorize that shit in the seventh grade. Wanna hear the rest?”

“Do you know the translated version?”

“No,” I chuckled. “But it’s about some kid who slays a crazy dragon. It’s pretty ridiculous.”

“What, slaying a dragon?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“That’s not ridiculous. Isn’t that what you do all the time? Slay dragons?”

I shook my head. “Not the last time I checked.”

“What do you mean? Remember Big Foot? That hairy biker guy at that coffee shop in Pacific Beach? Xanadu? The guy who tried to kidnap me so he could mate with me and make missing link babies?”