Jersey Six Read online

  JERSEY SIX

  Jewel E. Ann

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales are purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Jewel E. Ann

  ISBN: 978-1-7337786-0-2

  Kindle Edition

  Cover Designer: Jennifer Beach

  Cover Model: Javier Ruiz Montoro

  Photo: Rafael Catala

  Formatting: BB eBooks

  Dedication

  For Cleida

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Playlist

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Jewel E. Ann

  About the Author

  Playlist

  Build Me Up From Bones, Sarah Jarosz

  The Blower’s Daughter, Damien Rice

  My Arms Were Always Around You, Peter Bradley Adams

  Wicked Game, James Vincent McMorrow

  Awake My Soul, Mumford & Sons

  Love is Madness (feat. Halsey), Thirty Seconds to Mars

  One Track Mind (feat A$AP Rocky), Thirty Seconds to Mars

  Rescue Me, Thirty Seconds to Mars

  Dangerous Night, Thirty Seconds to Mars

  Someone You Loved, Lewis Capaldi

  River Flows In You, Yiruma

  CHAPTER ONE

  A simple bee sting can set off a chain of reactions to stop a human heart.

  The man glanced at the stormy blue eyes taking pity on him, and he chuckled to ease the worry in the young nurse’s mind. “I think I was stung by a bee. Years ago … maybe as a child.” He shrugged, scratching his dirty-blond bedhead while lowering his gaze to his feet, clad in blue canvas sneakers, dangling from the side of the hospital bed. “I remember a sting and burn on my neck. Before I knew it, my whole body started to turn red, and I felt itchy everywhere. Hives appeared out of nowhere. My face began to swell; my throat constricted. I couldn’t swallow … I couldn’t breathe.”

  “You remember that?” Faith asked.

  Faith—the perfect name for a nurse.

  “Yes. I think. I mean, why would that pop into my head if it didn’t happen to me?” The nameless man feathered his fingers over the burns on his hands. After countless surgeries, months of unimaginable pain, and the emotional tragedy of losing his memory, he stood on the precipice of being thrust into an unknown life.

  “I’m not an expert on amnesia, but I would imagine any memory is a good sign. So yeah, that’s good.” Faith’s encouraging smile brought a tiny bit of light to the darkness. For months she had bestowed unconditional kindness on the man covered in scars.

  Unrecognizable as a human. At least, that was what he thought.

  A monster.

  Something a young child could create with crumbly, dry, Play-Doh.

  Ugly felt like a compliment. Hideous and unsightly better described his appearance. Thick, raised, and uncomfortably stiff scars covered eighty percent of his body, making him unrecognizable. Erasing fingerprints—dissolving his identity.

  “Good, huh?” He wondered if anything in his life would ever be good again. “Good that I remember something? Good that I know to watch out for bees? Because let’s be honest … I survived a fire. The doctors said it’s a miracle that I’m alive. I’ve lost my memory. It’s unknown if I’ll ever get it back. Yet … my one solid memory is that I nearly died from a single bee sting.”

  The man chuckled. Glancing up at Faith, he found her wrinkled-nose expression rather cute. “So let’s review what we know. I can walk through an inferno, my skin literally melting from my body, but if on the other side there happens to be an angry bee … I’m a dead man.”

  “Unless you have an EpiPen, which I highly recommend.”

  He liked Faith. She had a husband and a two-year-old little girl named Izzy. They just got a dog, a doodle of some sort, and named it Gingie. He liked her all-American story. She was the best part of his day.

  “So how’s this all going to go down?”

  “What do you mean?” Faith cocked her head to the side, exposing two tiny moles on her neck. They were familiar because she comprised a large part of his new memory. The citrus scent of her rich golden hair pulled into a high ponytail, the pink lipstick, and the neon yellow sneakers would forever remain embedded into the working parts of his brain.

  “No one has claimed me.”

  No memory.

  No identification.

  And sadly, no one seemed to be looking for the nameless man.

  “And I don’t have anything—money, a social security number, a bed. Just … nothing. How do I pay for the hospital bills? Where do they even send the bills? Where will I sleep tonight?”

  Faith rested her hand on his hand. The scars made it difficult to feel certain things, but he felt her warmth, and it felt like everything.

  “I’m going to have someone talk to you about all of this. They will help you figure it out. A place to stay. Maybe a payment plan. And the police will continue looking for some leads on your family.”

  “What if I don’t have family? That would explain why no one is looking for me. What if they died in the accident? What if …” He shook his head, pinching his eyes shut. “What if it wasn’t an accident? What if I’m some sick serial killer who killed my family, blew up the home, and myself in the process? What if I hobbled incoherently to the hospital? Did they check? Do you think the police checked for arson, murder … something like that?”

  Faith squeezed his hand. “You are the sweetest patient I have ever had the pleasure of helping. You never complained, even when I had tears in my eyes watching you endure the hardest parts of the debridement and healing process. Maybe you don’t have family looking for you. Maybe they assume you died. It happens. But you are definitely not a serial killer. Besides …”

  Removing her hand, she stood straight and shot him a tight-lipped smile. “They said someone literally dropped you off at the entrance to the ER. Right?”

  He nodded. “Supposedly. But they didn’t take me all the way into the building. Why would they just drop me off? And when the people here looked at the security cameras, all they could get was a make and model of the vehicle. It didn’t have license plates. What if I had an accomplice?”

  Faith crossed her arms over her scrub-clad chest and lifted a single eyebrow at the man.

  He shrugged. “Fine. It’s farfetched. I mean … I don’t feel like a murderer. That has to mean something, right?”

  She giggled a beautiful, life-is-good giggle. “I
f they arrest you, I’d go with that defense.”

  He couldn’t hide his grin nor could he fully grin because his body was nothing more than a heap of stubborn scar tissue and bones.

  “You wouldn’t believe how many injured people get dropped off at the ER entrance or even the fire station. Gunshot wounds, stabbings, burn victims … we see it all too often, like taking an animal out in the middle of nowhere and just leaving it. A cruel act, but not entirely inhumane. Clearly these ‘Good Samaritans’ don’t want the victim to die, but they also don’t want to be questioned for many reasons that might not have anything to do with the victim.”

  He nodded, eyes squinted.

  “I’ll be right back. I’m going to see who’s available to meet with you to discuss further care, rehabilitation, finances, and so on. Okay?”

  The nameless man swallowed hard and nodded slowly.

  When Faith disappeared, his hands started to shake, and his pulse took off like it needed to cross a distant finish line. Her words jumbled in his mind, and her smile and that laugh he loved replayed on repeat, but it was no longer cute and endearing. It mocked and berated him. Faith’s eyes lost their sparkle, rolling in annoyance that she had to stare at his wretched face all day and pretend that he had a family who would be looking for him. Paranoia attacked him.

  Warm.

  Sweaty.

  Dizzy.

  Nauseous.

  He needed out of there before anything bad happened. Sliding off the bed onto wobbly legs, he pinched his eyes shut to silence the voices. They were louder than before—screaming at him to get out. His mastery over ignoring them began to slip. They would no longer be silenced.

  So he did the only thing he could.

  He ran.

  Screeching tires, deafening horns, and echoes of profanity poured over the man as he staggered through the busy streets of Newark.

  Whispers, cringes, pointed fingers … they fed the voices, giving them more power than they deserved.

  He weaved his way down an alley, the flickering streetlight never fully penetrating the darkness. Stumbling over empty liquor bottles, water-stained crates, and crumpled wrappers and cups, he collapsed onto a pile of leaflets in a corner. When light from a passing car on the street washed over the opposite wall, he caught sight of a tattered blanket.

  “Christ …” He wretched, hugging it to himself to keep warm on the late November night. It reeked of sour vomit.

  He surrendered to sleep once the meowing cats, slamming trash lids, and flittering dance of the wind sweeping more trash in his direction silenced the voices.

  The next day he discovered people were quite generous to homeless burn victims. An elderly man handed him a full pizza and a twenty-dollar bill. A young girl gifted him a half-full juice box, making her mother quite proud. By the end of the day, the empty half of his pizza box resembled a tip jar, but he didn’t have to do anything to earn the money. Looking pitiful proved to be his best talent.

  Unfortunately, winter in New Jersey showed no mercy. After a week of living on the streets, he needed something warm. An unlocked car under an overpass worked fairly well, until the owner returned the following morning with a tow truck and chased the homeless man away.

  Then, as if there was some higher power who gave a tiny shit about the homeless man, he passed an old building—a familiar building.

  Marley’s

  The angry, fighting voices in his head stopped, and one single voice—a new voice—whispered to him.

  “Chris.” He exhaled, tears burning his eyes. “My name is Chris. I used to box at this gym. Oh god …” A hard lump formed in his throat. He wasn’t lost anymore. And he wasn’t a nameless nobody.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The stench of sweat and leather mingled with antiseptic, packing a punch of its own for anyone who walked through the door of Marley’s boxing gym. In just over two decades, it went from a popular gym that churned out some well-known professional fighters to a haven for the worst criminals, human monsters, and housing for the occasional homeless person if Marley took pity on them.

  However, everything changed for the worse when Marley died.

  Laminated member passes evolved into simply showing a concealed weapon to gain entrance. Nobody dared to walk through the door without a loaded gun or one hell of a respectable left hook.

  A constant string of profanities danced to the thud, thud, thud of gloves beating against bags or fists ripping flesh while lawless sparring stained the rings with shades of red.

  “Who’s Fuck Face over there?” Judd wiped his bloodied lip while climbing the ropes to find his unsteady legs after the only female member dropped his ass in under thirty seconds.

  Jersey Six shrugged, ripping the tape from her hands. “Your gold tooth?” She nodded toward her feet.

  Judd glanced behind him at the blood-covered gold crown on the mat. His tongue made a quick inspection, poking through the gaping hole in his already gnarly smile. “Jesus Christ, Jersey. Ya ain’t gonna give me a break, huh? Thanks a lot.”

  “Mouth guard. Dumbass. And stop saying ain’t gonna.” She kicked the tooth closer to him, knowing he wasn’t working with enough brain power to consider the simplest of precautionary measures—not that she could point fingers with her eighth-grade level of education. But she knew mouth guards saved teeth, and “ain’t gonna ain’t going to college.” A Dena Russell quote. Jersey’s attention shifted to “Fuck Face” looking around the place like a lost tourist. Jersey had no idea how he managed to get through the door.

  Hopping down, she rolled the tension out of her shoulders and headed toward the back room to wash up.

  “Excuse me?”

  A cringe distorted Jersey’s face, making the rest of her body tense in response. No one said excuse me at Marley’s. He might as well have bent over and asked to have a dick shoved up his ass. “You’re clearly lost.” She turned. “Can I make a suggestion? If you want to leave with four working limbs and your asshole intact, I suggest you slither back out the front door without attracting any more attention.”

  “I used to train here.”

  Jersey’s unkempt eyebrows slid up her sweaty forehead while she released her tangled, black hair from its ponytail.

  He cleared his throat. “Obviously, no one would still recognize me.”

  “Obviously.” Jersey inspected him. “Fuck Face” wasn’t an exaggeration. The guy’s face looked like the lone survivor of an atomic explosion. Layers of thick, pearly scar tissue made his blue eyes appear sunken into his skull. It crawled down his face and along his neck like dry, cratered earth. His gray hoodie and matching sweatpants hid most of his body, but the burn-like scars covered his hands as well.

  Maybe he had trained there. Members of Marley’s wouldn’t have the money for a cosmetic surgeon if their bodies were distorted like the one standing before her.

  “I need a place to stay.” He held out his hand.

  Her gaze held his desperation-filled eyes.

  After a few seconds, he let his hand drop. “I wouldn’t want to shake my hand either.” He scratched his dirty-blond head—the one part of his body that looked somewhat normal. She thought he might be in his thirties, maybe forty or so. It was hard to tell with his skin severely scarred.

  “I don’t shake hands with anyone.” Jersey shrugged.

  “I need a place to stay.”

  “You said that. I’m not the owner.” She turned.

  He grabbed her arm. Jersey didn’t think. She just reacted.

  Smack!

  “Fuck Face” hit the floor with a thunk. A few chuckles drifted from the distance. There were no heroes at Marley’s Gym. No one stopped a fight, saved a life, or blinked at death.

  “Chris …” He groaned, planting his hands next to his head, peeling himself from the grimy concrete. Blood oozed from his nose. He wiped it with the hood of his sweatshirt, unsteady on all fours. “My name is Chris.” He lumbered to his feet, bringing him nearly a foot taller than Jersey’s five-
seven stature. “I wasn’t trying to frighten you.”

  She grunted. “Frighten me? You didn’t frighten me. You grabbed me.”

  Chris flinched. It was hard to notice with his distorted face, but she caught the slight reaction.

  “Sorry.” He pressed the hood of his sweatshirt to his nose again. “I get it. You don’t like to be touched. I’m sure you have good reasons. It won’t happen again.”

  Jersey responded with an easy nod as she focused on the blood smeared down his face. “Your blood’s in the water. I’d get out of here before the sharks circle.”

  “It’s cold. I need one night.”

  “It was cold last night.” She shrugged. “November in New Jersey.”

  “Last night I slept in a car.”

  “Sounds like a solid choice.” Low on sympathy and high on the memory of knocking Judd out, she strutted toward the back of the gym.

  “The owner of the car kicked me out and called the cops.”

  “Again,” she said on an exasperated sigh, “I don’t own the place.”

  “The guy in the front office said I could stay one night if you agreed to it.”

  “No.” Jersey’s feet screeched to a stop, keeping her back to Chris. As Marley’s only son, George took over the gym after his father died.

  George didn’t box.

  George didn’t take out the trash or hire anyone else to do it.

  George didn’t do math.

  George had no clue how to run a business.

  Marley left his gym to a forty-eight-year-old with some sort of mental disability. Nobody knew what exactly was wrong with George; they just knew he wasn’t all there. He mumbled to himself and spent most of the day coloring superheroes in warped, water-damaged children’s coloring books with broken crayons piled in a grease-stained, fast-food bag.

  “That’s bullshit because George doesn’t share that many words.” She continued into the back room.

  “Fair enough. He didn’t say that. I asked who was in charge and he nodded toward you. I’m good at reading between the lines.” Chris shadowed Jersey like a pesky fly.