Free Gray Night by Gregory Colt Page A

passed the trashcan I thought I smelled blood. I made it to the bathroom just in time. I thought I would vomit again, but the trash needed taken out right then. I went to do it and took the lid off prepared to run back to the sink. But, there was no smell. I took a closer look and there were no clothes, no blood, no anything. In fact, it was a clean new liner. Scented with lemon no less.
     I stood there a full minute breathing deep before going back to the sink and cleaning up while making a mental note to thank Adrian. I hadn’t realized he’d taken it out. That was… thoughtful. He’d still ran off leaving me alone to do all the work and I was pissed about that, but he made sure I wasn’t left alone three feet from…that. I was thankful. And a million times more comfortable in these sweat clothes. And the coffee with purified water was good. I was better off in every way right then than at any point all morning. What I needed now was another distraction, something to focus on, to stay busy.
     I played with my phone for a minute, investigated Roarke’s weird black candle, and then spun a loose knob on one of the desk drawers. Two seconds later I had the top drawer open.
     There was the .38 where Adrian had left it on top of a blank notepad with some scattered pens and pencils. I shut it and opened the larger bottom drawer. It was full of loose papers, newspaper clippings, photographs, and a large album with loose pictures stacked beside it. The top photo looked like Adrian. A young Adrian. Interesting.
     I admit I was curious to do some research on Knight. I was convinced he didn’t have anything to do with this morning. But, research is what I do and I wanted to shed some light on the mystery that is Adrian Knight. So I lifted the heavy album onto the desk along with the loose stack of photos.
     The top one was of Knight and the rest of the stack was him and two other young men all smiling and wrestling and making ridiculous poses. I flipped open the album and browsed over the first page of photos to see if I could identify the two guys. Only a handful of pictures had labels. Nick Roarke’s name was on the back of one or two of them, but the third man only appeared every couple of pages. Between each photo it was obvious months had gone by, years perhaps, and only one of his pictures were labeled. It was the three of them again. One of the earlier ones. What looked like dirt, or soot, covered them. Made their shining dog tags stand out even more. On the back, it read Premier jour de printemps‘99 . First day of spring 1999. In French. Fascinating.
     
    * * * *
     
     The garage was quiet and still except for the ice machine I was using and distant grunts and groans coming from the boys who sat in the dirt against one of the outside walls.
     I filled five quart-sized Ziploc bags with ice and walked back into the salvage area in front of the garage, tossing one to each boy as I passed.
     “What’s the last one for?” Brandon asked as I sat down in front of them with the last bag of ice.
     I sat and looked at him.
     “For me,” I said, resting the ice over my wrists. They had torn raw again during the fight and bled along with my knuckles.
     Brandon gave a half-hearted snort and straightened his back careful to keep the ice over the corner of his eye. Looked like it would bruise nicely come morning.
     “Winning is not all it’s cracked up to be,” I said to no one in particular.
     “Losing’s not so hot either,” the guy on Brandon’s right said.
     “Well, there’s that,” I said.
     I took another look at them to see if I’d missed anything more serious. A black eye, two busted lips, a bloody nose and sore ribs, but it looked like their pride had taken the brunt of it.
     “All right guys, let’s try this again,” I said.
     Brandon looked like he would get angry again, but the others were happy to stay sitting right where they were. I focused on Brandon.
     “I mean let’s start