Determination

by S. E. Rose

  Jesse’s Playlist: “Believer” by Imagine Dragons

  The bungalows are just as I remember them. The reef is still crystal clear, and cats still meander between buildings. It’s breathtaking, but not as breathtaking as the woman I’m gazing at right now. I didn’t let Vanessa know when we landed. I wanted to surprise her. And I’m glad I did. She’s lying on her private deck looking like a billion dollars, every man’s fantasy and every woman’s wish compiled into one godly vessel. She has her headphones in, and she’s lying on her back. Her skin is tanned already from the few days she’s been here, and highlights brighten her hair, which falls in wavy tendrils around her face.

  I watch from the sliding glass door. Dean let me in. I don’t want to move yet. I study all her features. She’s perfect. I couldn’t dream up a more perfect woman. She is literally flawless.

  I slide the door open and she still doesn’t flinch. I wonder if she’s asleep. Her long lashes rest against her skin. Freckles dot her nose and cheeks. She looks so young at the moment, like she doesn’t have a care in the world.

  I hold up the flower I picked on my way down the path and walk over to her. I kneel down by her side. She opens one big blue eye and sleepily smiles at me.

  “You took long enough,” she says with a grin before she launches herself into my arms.

  “Sorry for the delay, mon étoile,” I whisper against her hair as I pull her tightly against me. I inhale her scent and I feel my body relax.

  She pulls back and looks up at me. “You didn’t text. When did you get here?”

  “Just a little while ago. I wanted to surprise you,” I murmur against her lips.

  “I like this type of surprise,” she says, still gazing into my eyes. Her hand reaches up and she caresses my cheek. I lean my head against her hand. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you too,” I say. I want to tell her that I love her, but the words get stuck in my mouth.

  She touches the bump on my head. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

  I nod. “Good as new.”

  “I was so worried,” she says, and she kisses me. I lose myself in her kiss for a few moments, enjoying the feel of her lips and tongue against mine.

  “I need to do some work, baby,” I say as I force myself to pull back.

  “Work?” she asks and then giggles. “What’s that?”

  I smile at her. “Very funny, but I need to do something. Baxter has secured Wi-Fi access I can use, so I’m going to go over to his bungalow and log in for a bit.”

  She looks disappointed. I kiss her cheek, then her nose, then her other cheek and finally her full lips. “I promise I won’t be long.”

  “Promise, promise?”

  “Yes, give me thirty minutes and then I’m all yours,” I say with another kiss and then I use every last inch of willpower I can muster to pull away and walk out of her bungalow. My body is literally on fire and desire is oozing from every pore, but I need to see what Walsh is seeing. I need to protect her, and everyone else for that matter.

  “Baxter?” I call out as I knock on his door. He opens it, and I see Dean on the deck. He’s got binoculars and he’s looking out over the water.

  He points to the desk, and I put my laptop down. I log in, slowly climbing through multiple firewalls until I reach the special place where Walsh has buried the data for me to see. It’s like I’ve climbed down into the depths of the earth or in this case the Web.

  I begin to open files. It’s like nothing I have seen ever. I call Walsh on the burner phone.

  “Walk me through this,” I ask him.

  He begins to explain what I’m looking at and I feel like my mind has just evaporated, literally, like “poof” and gone. Think The Matrix only crazier and then multiply it by ten.

  “So, those cities that keep changing, those are drop-off points, I assume. And the numbers, probably numbers of drug pounds if there is that asterisk or people if there is a hashtag,” he explains. I suck in a breath and see the name of a nearby island. I scan the other names, hundreds of them and I know there probably isn’t a place in the world that isn’t a couple hundred miles from one of these locations. Literally, nowhere is safe.

  “Fuck,” I say.

  “Yeah, fuck,” he answers.

  “We should turn this over to Jack,” I tell him.

  He hesitates, and I feel the goose bumps form.

  “Walsh?” I ask him.

  “Who does Jack have working on this?” he asks.

  “I don’t remember or maybe Jack didn’t say,” I ponder. “Why?”

  “Call it a suspicion or a hunch or whatever, but I think I know the guy who does their consulting work and let’s just say I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him,” Walsh says.

  I text Jack for a name while we continue to walk through names and dates.

  “Gunther Hanley,” I say out loud as I read the text from Jack. “But he only gave pieces of it to Gunther. Jack thought he had it all decrypted by this other guy who actually works with him, Hank Banovich. He threw Gunther some files to see if he could crack those, so Gunther hasn’t seen all of it which means Gunther can’t crack it.”

  Walsh laughs, but not in a good way. “Yeah, Gunther’s a real dick and he’s smart as shit. If I didn’t know better, I’d peg him for the guy who came up with this shit, but he was in a real bad accident a few years ago and I know through the grapevine he wouldn’t have been in any condition to put something like this together during the timeframe when it would have been created. Although, he is just the right type of fucker to do something like that. Hank is, well, he’s a wildcard. I don’t know much about him to be honest.”

  “Interesting,” I muse since Hank works for me too. I peruse photos and more times and dates embedded into the files.

  “Anyhow, what do you want to do with all of this?” he asks.

  “I need to talk to Jack,” I tell him. “Stand down till I figure it out.”

  “Aye, aye,” he says, and we disconnect.

  The skin on my neck prickles and I swivel around and come face-to-face with giant blue eyes.

  Oh, shit!

  “I’m almost done,” I lie to Vanessa. I see a glimmer of something in her eyes. Whatever thought she was having seems to dissipate quickly, and she smiles at me, but the smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

  “Sorry, I just missed you and I thought maybe I could talk you into hurrying up,” she says with a smirk.

  I smile. “I just need to make a quick phone call and make sure Jack knows I got here safely and then I’m all yours,” I tell her. I see her start to frown and I’m not sure if it’s because of me calling Jack or because she has to wait a few more minutes.

  She doesn’t ask about what’s on the laptop and I close the lid and turn to her, taking her face in my hands. I stare down into those impossibly blue eyes that look up at me.

  “Jesus, you are breathtaking,” I whisper and lean down and kiss her, showing her what I want to do to other body parts of her body with my tongue. She moans against my lips and I pull back and pat her on the butt.

  “Five minutes, alright?” I say, and she smiles, really smiles and walks back out of the bungalow. I glare at Baxter who is reading on a chair and he looks up at me.

  “What?” he asks with a sheepish look. “I figured she knew stuff, so no harm, no foul.”

  “Well, she doesn’t need to know about all of this, OK?” I tell him as I motion to the computer.

  “Sure thing, Mr. Ryder,” he says and at least has the audacity to look sorry.

  “Jesus, just call me Jesse for crying out loud,” I tell him exasperated.

  He laughs. “Yes, sir.”

  I roll my eyes and dial Jack’s number. He picks up on the first ring.

  “Jesse?” he answers and quite frankly sounds worried.

  “Yeah, I made it here,” I tell him before I launch into the new details I just learned from Walsh.

  “Fuck,” he swears under his breath. “Well, this is a blood
y fucking mess we have on our hands, isn’t it?”

  “Something like that,” I reply.

  “I haven’t worked with Gunther much, but I do know he’s some kind of super genius whiz kid. I think Walsh’s assessment is true though, I do remember he was in some kind of accident and was out of commission for a bit. He wouldn’t have seen all the data, just the bits and pieces I sent him, so he wouldn’t be able to unlock it. Hank though, he’s been trying to crack that code as well. Looks like your boy Walsh beat him to it. I wish he’d come work with us,” Jack says.

  “Uh, yeah, Walsh doesn’t do government work,” I reiterate what Jack has surely heard before.

  “So I’ve heard,” he laughs.

  “Walsh will get you the information, but, Jack, one of the current drop-off locations is a mere boat trip away from us,” I say.

  Jack is silent for a few seconds, clearly thinking this through. “I don’t want to move you, at least not right now,” he finally says.

  “I agree. There’s no way they know I’m here, so I think we are good,” I agree.

  “Let me talk with Bryce about this. What are the dates associated with that drop-off location?”

  I open the computer up and look at it again. “Three days from now,” I say.

  “Hmmmm,” Jack murmurs. “Stay put for now and I’ll be in touch.” We say goodbye and I sit staring at the changing data on my screen. I keep willing the data showing a drop-off point near us to change, but it remains stagnant on the screen. I sigh and close the lid.

  “Don’t worry, Jesse,” Baxter says, using my name for the first time. “We got your back. Just relax and go enjoy Vanessa.” He smiles at me. “I mean, shit, I would if I were you, she is H-O-T.”

  I chuckle. “Yeah, I’ve noticed,” I say.

  “Seriously, man, go relax. No one knows you are here. You aren’t even checked in, Bryce made special arrangements with the manager of this hotel.” He rolls his eyes. “I, on the other hand, am visiting my lover…,” he says as he nods toward Dean who is still scoping out the beach with his binoculars.

  I start laughing. “I think you may have drawn the short stick,” I say.

  “Well, I definitely drew a stick,” he laughs.

  I shake my head trying not to picture that and walk back to my bungalow.

  Vanessa is in the shower when I walk back in, so I quickly toss off my clothes and go straight to the shower. The shower is half open, and I can see the hot, steamy water running down her body. She only has tan lines from a skimpy, string bikini, although I can tell she’s been sunbathing in the nude because the lines are somewhat faint. I’m not sure how I feel about that. The thought of anyone except me seeing Vanessa naked suddenly has me feeling all caveman. I’m grappling with this new feeling I’m having, but I keep moving toward her like a moth to a flame. Her face is directly under the shower spray. I stand behind her wondering if I should alert her to my presence, so she doesn’t freak out and then she reaches behind her back and runs her hand up the length of my cock and I smile.

  “What took you so long?” she asks, her words sound breathless.

  I lean down and nip at her shoulder. “I needed to call Jack,” I admit.

  She nods. “What are you not telling me?” she asks as she turns around and looks up at me, her blue eyes compelling me to tell the truth.

  I sigh. I don’t want to keep anything from her, and I also want to protect her and right now I don’t know how to marry those two notions.

  She reaches up and runs a hand along my jaw and then cups my face. I gaze down at her and marvel at how someone who’s seen so much, done so much, can still seem so innocent. I place my hands over hers and bring them down to my heart.

  I pick a direction to take and then jump off the cliff.

  “Let’s go talk,” I tell her, and I lead her out of the bathroom, and toss her a bikini. She looks at me confused. “Put it on.”

  She complies. I put on my swim trunks, and I open the hatch to the reef. We climb down and swim out to the edge of the reef. When we arrive, we tread water and stare at one another.

  “I’ve told you about the craziness that happened to Laura, Lily, and Zoe, right? How Jack got Laura mixed up with a Russian crime boss and then she killed him and then Lily found out her biological father was working with this guy and now had a new crime boss. And that this new crime boss happened to be working with Zoe’s finance, Cody. And Cody killed him when they were in China last year.”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember I said that Mohammed, this international crime boss, wanted a USB drive that somehow ended up in Cody’s bag and Zoe found it?”

  “Yes.”

  I try to remember what details I’ve told her over the past weeks. “Did I tell you Jack ended up with the USB drive?”

  “Uh, I don’t remember,” she says.

  “Did I tell you that I helped decode some of the data?”

  She shakes her head as her eyes widen.

  “I did. I have this new software that is really good at unlocking encryption. I was working on it for the CIA, this is all classified, by the way.” She nods her understanding. “I decoded some of it and Lance did the rest. Anyhow, it turns out Mohammed’s brother, Saeed, is looking for this data. Somehow, he must know that I have the only other copy and that the USB drive is with the CIA.”

  “So, do you still have it?” she asks.

  I nod. “I gave it to my friend Walsh, the one I took the trip with a few days ago. And he found some embedded data, crazy data that shows a whole new level of data that is constantly getting updated from multiple servers all over the globe. The data is showing exchange points for drugs…and humans.”

  Her eyes widen even further and I’m sure they can’t possibly get any larger than they are in this moment. She gives me a strange look and then shakes her head.

  “So, they’re trying to get it from you because they think your data will be easier to get than trying to get their USB drive back from the CIA?”

  I nod.

  “Jesus, Jesse, that’s crazy, like Hollywood movie crazy,” she says under her breath. I ponder her statement for half a second because she’s actually had some cameos in a few films. If anyone knows Hollywood movie crazy, she surely would.

  I swim over to her and put my arms around her in the water. “That’s why I agreed with Bryce that we needed to be distanced from each other, but then things happened and, well, against my better judgment I’m here.” I see a hurt look in her eyes and I caress her face. “There’s no place I’d rather be than with you, but I also want to protect you at all costs, even if it means sacrificing my time with you. I need to know you’ll be safe.”

  “What about you?” she whispers, and her eyes fill with tears. “Who’s going to protect you?”

  “Oh, mon étoile, I can take care of myself. I have for a very long time,” I say.

  “But you shouldn’t have to,” she admonishes me. “You don’t have to take the weight of the world on your shoulders, Jesse.”

  “Oh, baby,” I say as I wrap my arms tightly around her. “I just want this to be over. I want to be with you and not just on a faraway island.” I kiss her eyelids, her nose, her cheeks and her lips.

  “So, what’s next?” she asks me.

  I shrug. “I’m waiting for Jack to call me back with a game plan.”

  “Do you think we can trust Dean and Baxter, it’s Baxter, right?” she asks me.

  “Yes, sweetness, I think we can trust them. In fact, I actually really like Baxter.”

  “Alright,” she says as she clings to me in the water. “Will you stop keeping things from me though? I feel like I’m losing my mind here. I can take it, shit, I can even help. I’m not some dumb, useless singer, you know.”

  I pull back and look into her eyes. “Mon étoile, you are anything but dumb and useless. You are a wonderful singer, but that’s just one small part of you. Why would you even say such a thing? You’re amazing, inside and out.”

  She
sighs. “Nat used to say that to me sometimes. ‘You’re so dumb, Vanessa, seriously, it’s a good thing you’re gorgeous and a good fuck,’” she says, mimicking her ex-boyfriend’s voice.

  “Nat Richards is a fucking prick who didn’t deserve to touch a hair on your head, sweetness. Don’t listen to a thing that douchebag says.”

  She grins at me. “You think that?”

  “Sweetie, I know that. Seriously, his reputation as a total prick precedes him.”

  Vanessa’s stomach grumbles, and I look down at her belly in the water. “I think we should feed you,” I add. She giggles.

  “I suppose so. I haven’t eaten lunch yet and I guess I am hungry.”

  We swim back to the bungalow and toss on clothes for dinner. Again, it takes all of my willpower not to rip her clothes immediately back off of her. Dinner is relaxing for some reason. We share a bottle of wine and reminisce about our first time here together. It’s luau night, and we decide to stay and be entertained. I keep waiting for my phone to buzz, but nothing happens.

  After dinner we walk down the beach and sit there, staring out at the reef. It’s beautiful, even at night. We can hear the waves crashing against the reef in the distance. Vanessa leans her head on my shoulder and I wrap my arm around her and kiss the top of her head.

  “I missed you so much, Jesse,” she whispers. “I thought about you constantly.”

  “The feeling is mutual, my love,” I murmur back to her and kiss her forehead. “Let’s go back to the bungalow.”

  “OK,” she agrees, and we stand and meander, hand in hand.

  I’ve all but forgotten that Dean and Baxter are with us. I turn to them as we enter the room. “We won’t be going out again tonight, guys, so feel free to relax,” I say to them. They both give me shit-eating grins and I roll my eyes as I follow Vanessa inside.

  By the time I lock and bolt the door and pull the curtains closed, Vanessa is sitting naked on the bed. I suck in a breath as I gaze at her glorious body. I walk over to her slowly until I’m standing in front of her, my legs touching her knees. She gazes up at me and gives me a shy smile and I caress the side of her face. I start to unbutton my shirt and she makes quick work of my pants. In a matter of seconds, I’m also naked.