Render - A Shadowboxer action thriller file

Render

“You’re all right,” she said.

“Just all right?”

She snuggled in closer and rested her head against his shoulder. The wind through the half open window of the van stirred her wispy blonde hair against his chin and neck, but he didn’t complain.

“Just right,” she whispered into his skin.

Sweat coated both their bodies, drying to a salty sheen, half ocean, half stolen time in a bed in the back of the van.

One of her hands moved across his body.

He didn’t look down to see what she was doing. It was a familiar route.

She was tracing the contours of his scars.

There were plenty of them.  A long thin white line from a knife, stark against his sun tanned torso. Two pucker wounds in his left shoulder, like tiny volcano humps.

If he rolled over, she could trace whip marks, and belt marks, like miniature ridges that lined the corded muscle.

She had asked once.

When he didn’t answer, she accepted the silence as answer enough and let it go.

It was one of the things he liked about her.

Liked, Brill thought and sniffed.

“What?” she asked in a sleepy voice.

“Nothing,” he tightened his arm and curled her closer to him. “Just…happy.”

“You sound surprised, man,” her accent was English, though she hadn’t been home in more than five years.

He almost shrugged, but didn’t want to disturb the way she was on him.

“I guess I am,” he confessed. “I didn’t see myself here.”

“With me?”

“With you,” he said. “Living here. Living like this.”

She balled up her fist and gave him a light punch in his tight abdomen.

“I like this life,” she said.

“I do too,” Brill answered.

“You sound surprised again.”

He took a deep breath. The air made his lungs expand, raising her head level with his lips. He tilted forward and planted a kiss on top of her hair.

He stumbled out of the thick jungle six weeks ago onto a narrow three lane highway that cut along the African coastline.

It was an out of the way place, and fifty kilometers from the rainforest ravine that was the perfect spot for an ambush.

Which is what happened.

He survived.

The others did not.

He slipped up the angled ditch and stood on the side of the asphalt, the afternoon sun dripping toward the west and waited.

Waited for the bullet to rip through the foliage and take him out, like it did the rest of his squad.

Waited for something to happen.

Change came in the form of a square box van with a four cylendar engine complaining about the steep grade.

Strands of long sun bleached hair escaped from a loose pony tail and fluttered around cheap metal aviator shades as she pulled up next to him.

The glasses gave him an up down and she smiled.

“You’re supposed to stick your thumb out, mate.”

Brill held up his arm and stuck out his thumb.

She nodded her head for him to climb in the passenger seat and when she asked where he wanted to go, he just said away.

Her name was Glory, and she took him to a beach.

He watched her surf for three hours, and took the warm beer she offered from a faded cooler.

She gave him a blanket to curl up with in a folding chair outside of the van she called home, while she slept inside behind locked doors.

“I’m hungry,” said Glory.

It was his turn to check the lines.

She had a good system and he learned it fast.

Wake up before the sun and throw fishing lines into the surf to catch breakfast.

Scrounge up a small fire for fish burritos seasoned with lime or lemon.

Check the waves for the perfect set and hit the water for a few hours while the lines caught lunch.

Chill and work through the noon day sun. Glory was a travelling journalist photographer, who wrote from the back a van she lived in.

Fish for dinner and a star filled sky for company next to driftwood fire.

They had moved twelve times in eight weeks, following a pattern in the water he couldn’t recognize.

She knew the signs. There was a storm in the mid-Atlantic shooting surf five thousand miles away to crash up on the South African coast, and she chased the waves.

There were stops at roadside stores to replenish meager stores of spice, and citrus fruit and cases of beer. She called in stories and sent mailed packages of photo canisters to an editor in the States.

“My turn to cook,” Glory began the process of untangling their twisted legs.

“I’ve got it,” Brill tilted her head toward him and pressed his lips to hers.

He slid open the van door and stepped onto a sandy mat set up like a patio outside. He slipped into the tattered remnants of his BDU’s cut into shorts and cinched them over his hips.

He tossed a couple of pieces of driftwood onto the coals of the fire and stirred the ashes so they would catch, before he trudged through the sand toward a line in the water a few hundred meters from their camp.

Three long poles were jammed in the sand, propped against sticks to maintain the angle toward the water.  One hundred pound test line ran across the steady line of white caps that washed up on the shore.

Brill grabbed the first line and began to haul it in, the satisfying feel of extra weight on the end was the promise of a good meal.

All the fish had trimmed his muscular form even further, burning away any vestige of fat and making his skin thin. The lines and striations of each muscle flexed and rippled under the sun as he coiled the thin line in a neat loop on the ground next to his foot.

He could see the silver flash of the big fish body as he pulled and tried to guess what it was before he finished.

A frogman stood out of the surf three meters from him and aimed spear gun at his chest.

Brill dropped the line, and took a step back.

He heard the pounding footsteps too late, hidden by the steady crash and roar of water.

He spun around, and a second man in a wetsuit tackled him toward the water.

Rough shells and packed sand scraped a rash across his bare back, the salt water burning as he flipped the diver over his head and rolled on top of him.

A third appeared next to him as a wave disappeared and slammed the butt of his weapon across Brill’s head.

He fell off the diver who tackled him and tried to stand up. Bodies slammed into him again. One jammed a needle into his neck.

He heard the automatic hypodermic hiss something into this jugular.

“Brill!” he heard Glory scream before the world went dark and the denizens of the deep dragged him into the ocean.

KEEP READING CHAPTER TWO


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