Soul Cycle

  Soul Cycle

  By Erik Hyrkas

  Copyright © 2015

  Copyright © 2012 by Erik Hyrkas.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, stored, or reproduced without permission.

  ISBN-13: 978-1512390780

  ISBN-10: 151239078X

  First Edition

  Edited by Michael McIrvin

  Cover art by Fiona Jayde

  For Jestine

  Acknowledgements

  While writing is a solitary effort, creating a book is not. It impacts the lives of your family and friends, and it takes time and effort from many people to create a finished work.

  Thank you, Jestine, for your support, understanding, and for being the first person to read Soul Cycle. I adore you for your patience and support.

  The following people helped make this story better: Kajsa, Alan, Liz (my mother), and Scott. I appreciate your feedback and valuable time.

  I also owe thanks to my editor, Michael, who polished my writing and made it better, and my cover artist, Fiona, for doing an outstanding job.

  Chapter One

  “Damn it!” Hunter grabbed a wad of used napkins and attempted to soak up the spreading pool of beer before it reached his poker chips.

  Brit leapt up and ran toward the kitchen, noticing with some irritation that her husband, Jax, was too engrossed in the football game to observe they were out of napkins on the table. While she crossed the room, Brit was a little impressed that Hunter could curse, mop up beer, and glare at Michael all at the same time, probably the most multitasking Brit had ever seen any man do.

  A hint of burnt popcorn lingered in the air and a pair football commentators talked incessantly on the large screen TV. She didn’t hate poker night, but this was pretty much how it always went: noisy chaos punctuated by bad smells and laughter, and that was all the men emitted. This was probably the reason Hunter’s wife didn’t come.

  “Sorry about knocking over that beer,” Michael said. He stood and bumped the table, knocking over a second beer bottle. “Crap! Sorry! Sorry!”

  “What is wrong with you?” Hunter deftly pulled cards and chips off of the table.

  “It wouldn’t be poker night if Michael didn’t spill his beer whenever I had a winning hand,” Aiden said.

  Michael’s face reddened. “The table is wobbly,” he whispered.

  Hunter made an exaggerated puppy-dog face. “Guys, the table is wobbly! It’s not my fat gut that keeps knocking over the beer! The table is wobbly!”

  Michael frowned at Hunter, then looked down at his beer-soaked lap.

  Jax leaned forward and sipped some of the beer right from the scarred and stained oak veneer tabletop.

  “Relax,” Brit said as she came in from the kitchen. “Michael is right. The table is unsteady. It’s no big deal.”

  She handed Hunter a fresh beer and a nearly exhausted roll of paper towels, then grabbed the soaking wad of napkins from him and went back to the kitchen.

  Jax followed her and grabbed a second, fresh roll of paper towels from under the counter.

  Brit grabbed his arm and leaned into him, whispering, “Why did you invite Hunter?”

  “Ah, Brit,” he whispered softly into her ear, draining any urgency she had felt. “Trina is worried that Hunter doesn’t have any friends.”

  “There is a reason,” she whispered back darkly. “I swear this is your sister’s way of torturing me.”

  “Trina likes you,” Jax whispered. “Listen, I know that Hunter is a little…blunt, but he’s actually a pretty good guy. I think he has friends, but he really doesn’t have any good friends.”

  “If Hunter keeps coming to poker night, we’re not going to have good friends either.” Brit kissed him. “Trina has hated me ever since the incident with the French dip and the Boston Terrier.”

  Jax kissed her back eagerly, and she smiled as she pulled away and went back to the living room with the paper towels she pried from his hand.

  “I had a pair of aces,” Aiden said.

  The TV announcer yelled, “Johnson has broken free! He’s at the twenty, the ten… Touchdown!!”

  “Looks like Green Bay has this game in the bag,” Jax said.

  Aiden pulled out a twenty dollar bill and handed it to Hunter. “I think I’m going to call it a night.”

  “There are still twenty-three seconds on the clock,” Hunter said with a nod toward the TV.

  “There’s no way the Vikings will come back,” Aiden murmured.

  “Can’t believe that you bet the Vikings would win,” Jax said as he walked toward the kitchen.

  Aiden’s left eye twitched.

  Brit handed the fresh roll of paper towels to Hunter before turning to Aiden. “Thanks for coming over, Aiden. Are you sure you don’t want to stay a bit longer? I was about to bring out the pie. It’s strawberry!”

  Aiden shook his head. “Thanks Brit, but I think I’ve had enough for one night. Besides, Marcy will be glad that I’m home early.”

  “Good night, Aiden,” Jax said as he returned from the kitchen with a stack of napkins.

  “Thanks for growing my daughter’s college fund,” Hunter said, smoothing out a wad of crumpled twenties.

  “G’night,” Michael said while trying to blot beer from his shirt with a fist-full of paper towels. “Oh, I might be a little late picking you up on Monday morning.”

  Aiden grabbed his long, dark wool coat, which stood out among the collection of nylon jackets on the coat rack, and turned back to Michael. “Month end has started. I may have to commute separately.”

  “Sorry,” Michael said. “I’m watching my sister’s dog this weekend and need to drop it off at her house early.”

  “It’s okay,” Aiden said as he opened the front door. “We can resume our normal schedule on Tuesday.”

  “The roads are icy,” Brit said. “Drive safe.”

  Jax set the napkins on the table and began to sweep sticky, wet poker chips onto a plate so that he could wash them.

  Aiden nodded and slipped out the door. Cold air blew into the room for the moment the door was open, dispersing the stack of clean napkins across the room. Jax and Michael both scrambled to pick them up. Hunter shook his head and smirked.

  Brit turned on the porch light and watched Aiden trudge through the ankle-deep snow toward his car, a little tan hybrid, across the street. She gasped as a massive crunch of plastic and steel resounded from outside.

  “Holy shit!” Brit shouted. “Aiden!”

  Brit ran out the door in her socks with Hunter and Jax followed. Aiden’s car door had been ripped off, leaving rent and disfigured metal behind. Blood and gore splattered the vacant car door frame and smeared along the front quarter panel of the vehicle. A car had skidded past Aiden’s vehicle into the one parked in front of him. The tail-end of that vehicle obscured the location where she knew Aiden must be lying.

  Brit stopped with a look of horror on her face. Cold winter wind swirled about her, blowing her hair into her face. Hunter ran past her to the wreckage. Jax pulled out his phone and hit three buttons.

  “We need an ambulance now,” Jax shouted into the phone.

  The driver of the other vehicle got out. “I was sliding! I couldn’t stop.” He was shaking. “There was nothing I could do.”

  “Aiden?” Hunter asked tentatively as he knelt. Brit couldn’t see Aiden from behind the wreckage, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. There was so much blood.

  Hunter was obscured by the front end of a smashed Honda, but she could see enough of him to know that he was attempting CPR.

  “What happened?” Michael asked from behind her.

  Jax put an arm around Brit and she tucked her face against his chest. He was still talking to the 9-1-1 operator, but she
only caught bits of what he was saying.

  Hunter stood and placed a bloody hand on his face, a look of defeat and sadness etched on his features. “I can’t feel a pulse,” he said. “Every time I push… The blood…” He trailed off and looked at his hands. His sweater had splatters of blood on it like somebody had used a squeeze bottle to spray deep-red juice on him.

  Brit let out a sob. Tears tracked her face and she leaned heavily into Jax. Hunter might be an ass, but she knew he was trained in first aid. Nausea and dizziness coursed through her.

  An ambulance pulled up with a pair of police cars. Two EMTs hopped out and ran toward the bloody mess. Hunter backed away. The EMTs stopped in their tracks a few paces from Aiden. One, a squat, heavyset man, returned to the back of the ambulance and opened it while the other, a tall, muscular man with a scraggly, blond beard, knelt near Aiden and pulled on latex gloves.

  “You should get inside,” Jax said.

  Brit wasn’t wearing shoes and her feet stung from the cold pavement. Tears were running down her cheeks and freezing on her sweater. The tip of her nose was already going numb in the winter night air.

  The heavyset EMT was rolling a gurney out of the back of the ambulance at an unconcerned pace. His lack of urgency made Brit want to scream. The scraggly EMT pulled something from his pocket, and Brit saw a brief white flash. He was holding a small device, possibly a phone.

  “You sick fuck,” she said loudly. “Did you just take a picture of…” She couldn’t say Aiden’s name for some reason. It simply wouldn’t come out. She sobbed. “Him?”

  A clean-shaven police officer cleared his throat from behind the EMT, which startled him and caused him to drop the phone, which slid on the ice under the car. The officer had a jagged red scar across his cheek that dominated his otherwise good looks. His dark hair was short and had a military perfection to it. He was tall and broad, and he was quite possibly the largest, most muscular person she had ever seen.

  The EMT glanced around momentarily, and Brit was sure that he was searching for his dropped phone.

  “Peter,” the officer said, eying the scraggly EMT for a long moment.

  The EMT reached a hand into his pocket, like he might pull out a gun, and took a step back.

  The officer glowered. “I wouldn’t have expected to find you here.”

  The EMT looked nervously at his partner and then back to the officer. “I don’t want any trouble. I’m not doing anything.”

  “No shit,” said the other EMT. “Give me a hand.”

  The officer pulled out a tiny phone similar to the one the EMT had dropped, looked at it momentarily, and then glared at the EMT. “Hmm. Do you know what is missing here?” Then he lowered his voice and Brit could barely hear him. “I better find it tonight. I wouldn’t want to have to report this incident.”

  “I don’t know where it is,” the EMT said. His voice was higher pitched and strained now.

  “Well, they don’t walk away on their own,” the officer said with a nod toward Aiden’s body and a chuckle. “For your sake, I hope you figure it out. It isn’t going to look good.” Brit was confused by the cop’s laughter in the face of such gruesome circumstances, and Aiden’s friends were here…

  “Seriously, Peter, I need your help now,” the heavyset EMT said.

  Peter gave a last look at the officer and then turned his back on him to help load Aiden on the gurney.

  Jax, his arm still around Brit, pulled her into the house. She leaned heavily against him as they walked. She was reluctant to leave Aiden, but she didn’t want to see them take him away either. They had been friends since high school, and the only reason Jax had invited him was because of her. In a way, she thought, Aiden was dead because of her.

  Chapter Two

  Brit sat on the stuffed chair in the living room studying a small rectangular piece of black glass with rounded, smooth edges and no markings on either side. She had thought it was a phone when she saw the EMT drop it after the police officer startled him, and she went back outside to fetch it after the emergency crews had left because she didn’t want pictures of Aiden’s dead body floating around the Internet. Despite the dim streetlights, she could still see frozen blood splattered on the road. The object the EMT dropped didn’t appear to be a phone, however, but a piece of heavily tinted glass two inches wide, four inches long, and approximately a quarter inch thick.

  Hunter set an empty beer bottle down on the table next to fourteen other empty bottles and a twenty dollar bill. He looked out the window and shook his head. “That stupid fucker.” He slurred the words together.

  Michael snored loudly on the couch. Jax was talking on the phone with Marcy, Aiden’s wife, who was at the hospital. Brit wasn’t sure why she was there. After all, Aiden was dead.

  “Don’t drive,” Jax said. “We’ll come get you. The roads are icy, and besides, you shouldn’t be alone.” He listened for a moment and then responded. “We’ll see you in ten minutes. Just wait there.”

  Hunter stood. “I’m going home.” His shirt had spurts of blood on it in multiple spots and he still had a bloody handprint on his face. He had washed his hands, but there was blood on his forearms he had missed.

  Brit stepped in front of him. He was easily a foot taller than her and probably twice her weight. “You are not in any condition to go anywhere.”

  Hunter clumsily tried to sidestep her but stumbled. Brit was a little impressed he hadn’t completely fallen over. She helped steady him.

  “You can stay in the guest room,” she said with a gesture to the first door in the hallway. “The sheets are clean and the shades are very dark so you can sleep as long as you’d like.”

  Hunter took another wobbly step toward the door, and then either reason or fatigue must have set in because he turned and ambled toward the guest room.

  Brit grabbed his car keys from his jacket as a precaution.

  “Let’s move Michael to the kid’s room,” she said.

  They didn’t have kids yet, despite months of what Jax called “hard work,” but that’s what they had named the room the day they moved in and neither of them had wanted to name it anything else.

  Jax nudged Michael and he opened his eyes blearily.

  “You’ll be more comfortable on a bed,” Jax said. “Upstairs, first door on the left.”

  Michael nodded and stumbled upstairs.

  Jax held out Brit’s jacket to her.

  “Thanks,” she said and gave him a hug. Having her jacket fetched did not usually warrant a hug, but after the evening’s events, she was reminded of how important Jax was to her. He returned the hug and gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead.

  “Are you crying?” he asked.

  She brushed a tear from her cheeks. “No,” she said and sniffled. “Marcy is waiting; let’s get going.”

  Jax looked worried and more than a little helpless for a moment, but he opened the door and they were off.

  Regions Hospital was in St. Paul and not far away. Jax took the side streets, which hadn’t been plowed recently but constituted the shortest route even if it wasn’t the quickest. Despite the urgency, his habit of looking for the shortest route prevailed over any desperation to get there quickly.

  The added time gave Brit time to think. Unfortunately, she didn’t want to think. So, instead, she studied the black glass rectangle the EMT had dropped. Nothing about it seemed special, beyond the fact that it had no apparent purpose. Why would anybody carry around a pocket-sized piece of glass? She had thought she saw a flash, but maybe it was light reflecting off the surface of this shard.

  As she studied the shiny surface, another thought occurred to her. There were no fingerprints on the glass, not even hers and she had been handling it for a while. Her phone couldn’t go twenty seconds without having finger smudges all over it, and so she thought this odd.

  “What do you have there?” Jax asked.

  “It’s just a piece of glass,” Brit said. She held it up. “The EMT dropped it when he
lping Aiden.”

  Jax glanced at her as she put the glass against her face. “What are you doing?”

  “Checking to see if I can smudge it with my lips,” she said.

  “Umm. Sweetheart? Wasn’t that on the ground?”

  “It doesn’t look dirty,” she answered. She held it up to the dim light in the car, turning it in different directions. There wasn’t a sign of a fingerprint or lipstick. “It still looks perfectly clean, no matter what I do to it. I wonder what it is.”

  “Maybe it is a replacement screen for a new phone,” Jax said.

  Brit frowned. If it was a replacement screen, she would have expected it to be thinner and bigger. Not that it was thick, but still, she reasoned it was about half the thickness of her phone and that was far too thick to be used as a screen in any normal phone. There wouldn’t be room for any electronics in the case.

  They pulled into the hospital visitor parking lot. Jax got out of the car briskly, but Brit found herself being held back by the dread of seeing Marcy’s face. Marcy wasn’t a close friend, but Aiden had been her friend for a long time, and seeing somebody else sad over her loss was a devastating thought.

  Brit was still sitting in her seat, crying, when Jax opened her door. Concern etched his face.

  “You can wait here. I’ll find Marcy,” he said.

  Brit sniffed and nodded. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  She didn’t want to stay in the car alone, but she knew that Marcy’s loss was greater than her own. She had to pull herself together before she saw Marcy. Brit knew that Marcy would need the strength and support of friends who weren’t too busy crying over their own loss.

  Brit got out and moved to the backseat. She didn’t want Marcy to feel alone on the drive from the hospital, and being in the backseat of any car at night, especially after losing your husband, would be traumatic.

  By the time Jax returned with Marcy, Brit had managed to compose herself. She momentarily considered getting out of the car to hug Marcy, but she thought that she might have a complete breakdown and the two of them would probably freeze to death outside before they could stop crying long enough to get into the car.