========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 Apr 1996 04:50:35 -0400 Reply-To: Sandra1012@AOL.COM Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Sandra McDonald Subject: You Break It . . . 6/7 Jeremy Greven stared down at his beer. Alcohol didn't help. Alcohol didn't solve any of his multiple problems. But as long as he kept drinking it, he didn't have to face the fact his life was a mess, his mother was dying, and several different police officers would be happy to throw him back in jail the first time they saw him. He was sitting at the bar in a dive that was filthy, smoky and dangerous even by the Hollow's standards. He didn't know what time it was, or even when he'd last showered. He felt as if he'd been sitting at this bar all his life, with brief nightmare interludes of prison rapes. He looked at the full glass. One more, and he'd hit the road. He'd been promising himself that for a long time. It never happened. The door swung open, letting in sharp rays of daylight. A young man came in, dressed like a city boy, blond curly hair framing a face that didn't belong in a place like this. "Hello, Jeremy," the stranger said. Jeremy squinted at him. Recognition tugged at the corner of his mind, and finally came out. "Richie Junior," he snorted. "Lost, are you?" "Not so much," Richie said, and took the next stool. He signaled for a beer. The bartender didn't blink, or ask Richie for legal identification. The Hollow, as a rule, didn't worry about things like that. "What are you doing here?" Jeremy asked. "I need a tune-up," Richie said. "I heard you're working at a shop." Jeremy studied the younger man. He looked tough and hard but empty inside, much like the way Jeremy felt. Funny to think they could be half-brothers. This college kid, with his rich dad and soft life, couldn't possibly imagine what it was like to walk in Jeremy's shoes. "Get lost," he growled. Richie didn't even glance at him. "You don't need the money, that's okay with me." Jeremy tried to work up a rage, but he was too tired for anything more than bitterness. "You trying to buy me off?" "I told you before, my dad isn't your dad. You can believe me or not. Did you ask your mother again?" "Leave her out of it." Richie shrugged. Jeremy slid a glance sideways again. The way Richie was staring at the bottles behind the bar brought up a few of his own memories. "A girl?" he guessed. Richie's gaze flicked his way. "What?" "Trouble with a girl?" "Leave her out of it," Richie mimicked. Jeremy nodded. Two hours later, with more beers in them and a cautious familiarity growing, they went outside to where the noonday sky had clouded with thunderheads. Jeremy stopped dead in his tracks when he saw what the Ryan kid had brought out to the Hollow. "This thing is worth a fortune," he said, looking at the clean lines of the T-Bird with worship in his eyes. "What are you, nuts? The guys will take this apart in seconds." "Not with me guarding it," a teenager said from the corner. A tough kid, with self-inflicted scars and tattoos up and down his arms, a ring through his nose, dead eyes. He and two others had presumably been paid to watch the car. Richie pulled out more cash - a rare thing these days, that - and gave them more. "Now beat it," he said. The teens sauntered off. Richie motioned to the car. "You want a ride?" Jeremy smiled. They took it took where Jeremy was crashing, a shop that specialized in over the border acquisitions, and let the mechanics there worship it as well. Then Richie and Jeremy gave it a tune-up, working until the first rain spattered on the tin roof over the shop. They talked of sports and cars and even women. For someone who couldn't have been more than nineteen or twenty, Richie Ryan knew a lot about all three topics. He was especially bitter about some recent girlfriend, who had apparently fooled around with some other guy, but Jeremy didn't catch all of the story and didn't think he was supposed to. When they were done, they watched the rain turn the dirt streets to puddles and Richie asked, out of nowhere, "So when are you going to go back to Utah?" They were drinking soda now, sitting on the T-Bird's hood. "How do you know about Utah?" Jeremy asked. Richie shrugged. "No," Jeremy said. "Not until she . . . not until she dies. Then I'll go back." "I can get you a good lawyer," Richie offered. "You mean, your dad can." "Whatever." "Why? Why, if you're so sure he's not my dad, too? Why did you come out here to find me? We're worlds apart, kid." Richie gulped down the rest of his soda and kicked lightly at the fender. "Because you remind me of a little kid I once knew. Named Jeremy. I only knew him for a little while, but I thought he was my kid, and I fell in love with the idea of being a dad." He crushed the can. "His mother left, and I never saw that little kid again." "You're young," Jeremy said. "There's still time." "True," Richie agreed. Then trouble walked down the road in the shape of two men and two of the teenagers that had guarded the car earlier, including the one with the self-inflicted tattoos. "I want that car," said the tall, lanky, gaunt-looking leader to Jeremy. A bulge under his jacket revealed the presence of a hidden gun. "Billy," Jeremy started, "this is a friend." Billy didn't appear to care. "I want your friend's car." "Can't have it," Richie said, not seeming to move an inch, but Jeremy sensed a minute change in the way the younger man was sitting. "Not the right answer," the leader said. "Where are the keys?" "In the ignition," Richie said calmly. "Try to take them, I'll break your wrist." "T.J., you do it," the leader grinned. The teen with the tattoos moved towards the driver's seat. Faster than Jeremy could blink, Richie had him down in the dirt with his arm twisted up behind his back and his wrist dangling at an odd angle. Billy reached inside his jacket, but Richie somehow got to him first and was knocking him down with a series of carefully controlled blows. The other two moved to jump Richie, but Jeremy dropped one into the mud and sent the other scurrying away. "Thanks," Jeremy cursed. "Now I got to find a new place to stay." "We'll find you one," Richie promised. He didn't even look winded. He looked as if he'd actually enjoyed the fight, although he show a flicker of remorse as he quickly examined T.J.. He slid more cash into the teenager's pocket. "Get a doctor to set that. And give up the life of crime, okay?" If T.J. had an answer, it was lost in the blast of a gunshot as Billy fired at Richie. The kid took a bullet in the back, and was thrown against the hood with a sickening thud. Jeremy kicked out, connecting his boot to Billy's jaw, breaking it, watching the outlaw slump to the ground. Blood was pouring down Richie's back from a dreadful hole punched through his shirt. The blood stained Jeremy's hands as he manhandled the kid to the passenger side before he collapsed totally. "I've got to get you to a hospital," he said, gunning the T- Bird's ignition and hurling the car down the Hollow's muddy main road. Beside him, Richie gasped for breath. His complexion was a horrible blue-gray, and he was shivering. "It's okay . . . " he managed. "Not as bad as it looks . . . " "It looks like shit," Jeremy said, swinging out to the highway. On one side of the road, hillside and rock led further up. To the other, a sheer drop led down from a ledge to the long, narrow, poisoned lake below. "Just hang on. I'm not taking the rap for your murder, so you better stick around and testify on my behalf, okay?" Richie actually laughed. "Deal," he said, then choked on a mouthful of blood. Jeremy floored the accelerator just as ancient pick-up truck that belonged to a member of Billy's gang barreled down from the hillside, slammed into the back of the T-Bird, and sent it sailing over the ledge like a giant, broken, mechanical bird. By the time Jeremy thought to scream they had crashed eighty feet below, flipped, rolled forward, dropped another thirty feet, and were hanging on the T-Bird's side off a lower shelf of torn rock and trees. The lake hung dizzily in front of the smashed windshield. The ribs of the convertible top had ripped open, letting rocks and dirt and ripped leaves fill the car. Jeremy hung from his seatbelt in the wreck of metal and glass and plastic, his ears ringing with aftershock, his own mouth full of coppery blood. Silence descended. Silence, except for the steady drop of rain. "Richie," Jeremy whispered. "I'm here," came the shaky reply. Amazingly enough, Richie sounded better than he had before the crash. Jeremy twisted to see the kid beneath him, pinned to the passenger door and the ground beneath it. "But I might be in trouble," Richie acknowledged. Jeremy stared in horrified fascination at the broken chunk of windshield wedged against the kid's throat. The car slid a few inches closer to the lake. Jeremy found in the screech of metal that he could scream, and wasn't half bad at it. "You've got to get out of here," Richie said. "Before this whole thing drops again." "I can't leave you here," Jeremy said. Half-brother or not, the kid's life was already in danger from the gunshot, and Jeremy couldn't see abandoning him. "Listen to me," Richie said firmly. He didn't sound hurt at all. Jeremy twisted to look at him again. The kid said, "First you loosen your seatbelt. Then climb up through your window. Slowly, carefully. This thing is going to go, and there's no way I'm not going with it." "You'll die," Jeremy insisted. Richie managed a wan smile. "I'm tougher than you think. Now do it, slowly. When you get out, find a phone. Call Dawson's bar. Tell him or his wife or his daughter Andrea what happened. No one else. Don't call the cops, you understand me? Dawson will know what to do." The car tipped precariously. Jeremy clenched the steering wheel with stark white knuckles. "I don't know if I can." "You have to!" The kid's voice came like a whip. "Do it. Go!" Jeremy followed his instructions. Richie watched from below, throwing every ounce of silent inspiration and prayer he could into the man's movements. The glass against his throat made breathing and concentrating very hard. His body had healed from the shot, he could feel that, but both legs were numb from the waist down and his right arm, pinned beneath him, was badly broken. He'd worked very hard at keeping the pain from his voice. Both MacLeod and Satoshi had taught him how to control it. Satoshi. Satoshi and Andrea. "Richie, I'm going for help!" Jeremy called from outside the car. "No!" Richie yelled back. "Just get Dawson!" No more sounds from Jeremy. Only the falling rain. If Richie closed his eyes the water sounded like the ocean below the cliffs of Glenfinnan, when he'd last walked them with Mac. Was that only two nights ago? The water also sounded like the rolling waves off the South China Sea, beyond the temple of the goddess Tin Hau. Abruptly it occurred to him that he was paying the price for taking a head on Holy Ground. Mac and Methos had both been wrong. There were prices to pay, meted out by destiny or fate or luck. Helplessly he began to laugh. He was still laughing when the ground dropped out beneath the T- Bird and he, the car and a guillotine of glass went crashing down into the lake below. *** Early the next afternoon, standing in a freezing rain that might never stop, Joe Dawson turned to David Kelly and asked, "What did you do with Jeremy?" "He and his mother are on their way to a private AIRIS treatment facility in New Mexico," David said. "And the parole board in Utah?" "Assuaged." Joe nodded and turned his attention back to the oily lake in front of them. "What about Andrea?" David asked after a few more minutes of watching Methos and MacLeod dive repeatedly down into the lake's murky depths. "I haven't told her," Joe said. He was too old to be standing out in this weather. He was cold and wet and tired. And his eyes felt gritty, with grief yet to come. In three decades he'd come to look upon Richie as one of his own children, and if he was truly dead in the black murkiness of the water there would be a price to pay for never having spoken of his affection. "Good idea," David said. "She doesn't need to worry." "I wasn't thinking of her, I was thinking of me. I wasn't brave enough to tell her." Methos and MacLeod started wading to shore. The cold of the water showed in their shivers, MacLeod's blue lips, the stark whiteness of Methos' face. The two Immortals had been diving for hours, trying to find the wreck and free Richie's body. Their mortal friends moved to the shoreline to offer blankets and coffee from a Thermos. "We found it," MacLeod said as he pulled off his mask and let it drop to the rocks at his feet. He gulped some coffee down, but gave no indication of getting warmer. "About fifteen feet down over there. It's buried upside down in at least eighteen inches of silt and muck." "And Richie?" David demanded. Methos couldn't stop shivering. "You can barely see down there, even with the flashlights - " "But I found his hand," MacLeod said flatly. His features darkened. "His right hand. Still attached to his arm, but I couldn't reach in any further." Joe didn't want to think what it must feel like, to hold a floating dead hand in your own, to know it belonged to a beloved friend. "And we don't know if his head is attached to his neck," Methos said. "But we've got the tow truck," Joe said, with a glance down the small access road. T.G. Enterprises owned a tow company among its other assets. "We can get the car up and free him then." David's eyes went to the lake. They'd made Jeremy Greven describe precisely the scene inside the car, and Jeremy had mentioned broken windshield. As gently as possible, Methos said, "We don't know if pulling the wreck out will make it better. If he's wedged in there wrong, it could - " " - rip his head off," David said, in a voice as cold as death itself. The four men looked at the lake in grim silence. "It's your decision," Methos said abruptly to MacLeod. David almost voiced an opinion, but quieted himself. After a moment Joe understood Methos' reasoning. Duncan MacLeod had know Richie the longest. Had been his teacher, his mentor, his surrogate father. MacLeod didn't meet their gaze. He was staring at the water, but remembering standing on the cliffs of Glenfinnan with Richie just a short time ago. The day they reconciled after MacLeod's Dark Quickening. The night Richie died in a quiet suburban street, Tessa's corpse at his side. "We can't leave him there," MacLeod finally said. "We have to at least try." After a moment of unspoken prayer, David signaled the tow truck.