BOSSY BROTHERS: JOHNNY

by Huss, JA

  “But the status quo isn’t fine. People are rising up all over the place. They’re tired of it. They see through it. They—”

  “For fuck’s sake, Johnny. The Way is behind that too. All of it. Every bit of it. You don’t think that they’re not controlling the masses by organizing protests? If what you told me is true, they own charities just so they can use displaced populations in their sick science experiments. Just so they can use the people all those protesters rise up about. I mean, think about it. They are the most powerful group of people on the planet. They have the ability to start and fund wars. The whole world spins on the axis of the Way.”

  “Jesus,” I huff. “I thought I was the most cynical guy on this planet. But you, Megan Machette? You’re way more suspicious than I am.”

  She sighs. “I just know a little more about what’s happening than you do.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like—”

  “You know what?” I say. “Stop. Don’t tell me yet. Can’t we just have this one night? Don’t we deserve a few hours of peace? Why do we have to talk about this now?”

  “Because in a few short hours our lives will be over, Johnny!”

  She is becoming hysterical.

  So I do the opposite. I calm myself down and take a deep breath. Then I say, “Don’t you think that’s the best reason of all to forget about it? At least for a few hours? And just enjoy the time we have left?”

  She huffs and folds her hands on her stomach and looks up at the sky. “Fine.” She points up. “There. I see one. And here’s my wish… I wish for payback.”

  I stare at her for a moment. Because her expression is hard and the little bit of light from the sliver of a moon cuts sharp shadows across her face. “Payback, huh? Like… revenge?”

  She nods but says nothing. Just clenches her jaw and stares up at the night.

  “I’m not sure that’s the spirit wishing-stars are looking for.”

  “Too bad,” she says. “That’s just too fucking bad. Because I’m angry. I’m so mad that I was given this life. Furious that I’m the one who has to make these decisions. I never asked for any of this and—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I say. And now it’s my turn to sit up and look down at her. “Easy there, killer. I get it. I’m furious too. I don’t want this any more than you do. But one night, OK? Just… one night. We don’t have to do anything right now. We can’t actually do anything right now. So…”

  “My father is being tortured as we speak and you want me to—”

  “Fucking forget it,” I say. “Just… whatever.”

  I can’t justify this when she’s probably right. So fuck it.

  I give up too.

  There is a long silence after that.

  Long silence.

  I’m just about to get up and go back inside—maybe call Logan, or Jesse, or Joey and see if we can figure out a way to make this all work out—when she says, “Sorry.”

  I turn my head towards her and wait for the rest.

  “I’m sorry. You have done more for me in the past few days than pretty much anyone else aside from my father. So I owe you. And if this is how you want me to pay you back, then fine. I’ll find some stupid stars to wish on.”

  I think she holds her breath. But when I turn to look at her, I see that she is crying.

  “What’s going on?” I ask. “Megan, I promise. We’re gonna figure it out. We’ll get him back and—”

  “That’s not it,” she says. “That’s not it. I’ve been lying to you. I have a huge secret and they used me to get to you. They told me that if I just let you rescue me and took you to that island, that my father would be safe. But I did all that. And...”

  “And then I killed everyone,” I finish for her. “I killed everyone and messed up their experiments. And now the deal’s off.” I exhale. Long and loud. “It’s all my fault.”

  “But I believed them! That’s the part that pisses me off! I believed them, and did what they asked, and it’s not over. I was so fucking stupid!”

  She sits up and looks down at me. And the fear on her face makes me shudder. “Don’t you get it?” she whispers. “I want you, Johnny Boston. I want you. And now I’m going to lose you too. And I can’t do it anymore. I just can’t!”

  I reach out and put my arms around her. Pull her down into my chest. She struggles against me, still trying to get all the words out. But I hold her tight anyway.

  “Shhh,” I say, petting her hair. “Shhh.”

  She’s sobbing now. Maybe still talking, but if she is I can’t understand what she’s saying.

  “I get it,” I say. “I want you too.”

  “You’re lying. You need me and my secrets.”

  “I do,” I admit. “I’m not gonna lie about that. If you’ve got something that can help me, then I need it. But I’m not gonna sell you out, Megan. I won’t leave you behind. I have never had anyone standing next to me before. Until you. Not even Logan was there like you are. And I’m not going to let them take you. Even if I can somehow make a deal with them, I won’t sell you out and leave you behind. I promise.”

  Her shoulders drop. Her crying stops. Mostly stops. “You will,” she says. “And it won’t even be your fault. It’ll just be the right thing to do.”

  “What do you mean?” I say. “The right thing? That’s not true.”

  “You say that now because you don’t understand what we’ve done.”

  “Who?”

  “My father and me.”

  “OK,” I say, drawing in a deep breath. “Can you just start from the beginning, please?”

  “The beginning?” she says. “I’m not even sure where that is anymore. All I know is that I’m part of something big, and deep, and evil, and there’s no way to get me out of this now. The whole fucking plan hinges on the fact that if they kill us…”

  But she stops. Blows out a long breath of air.

  “If they kill you what, Megan? What happens if they kill you?”

  “Then it’s over.”

  “What’s over?”

  “The Way is over. So you see,” she says, pushing up from my embrace just enough to look me in the eyes. “You can’t save me and your family. You can’t get me out and them out. You can’t change this, Johnny. We have no future together. None. Because I’m your goddamned get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  Words come spilling out of her mouth then.

  Paragraphs of words. Whole pages—hell, entire books of words. She does start from the beginning. She tells me all about her childhood, and the people, and the lab. She tells me all about her father, and what she knows about his job. I think some of those were recent revelations using my rat theory to piece it all together.

  But that fountain of youth project is nothing to what she tells me next.

  I just… lie there. And listen. Trying to force her words to make sense as she goes on, and on, and on about what her and her father have done.

  And it is my get-out-of-jail free card.

  Megan Machette and her father are the answers I’ve been looking for.

  They are the solution.

  But there’s a catch.

  She’s absolutely right.

  There is no future for us.

  She can save me or I can save her, but we can’t save each other.

  Dawn is still hours away when Logan’s tender boat slides silently up next to my yacht and Megan and I get in. Then, just minutes later, we’re boarding through the garage and making our way up to the crew level where the hazmat girl is being held.

  Logan is leaning back against the wall opposite the girl’s locked cabin door with his arms crossed when we arrive. He straightens and makes a big production of using his hands to shrug. “I dunno, man. It’s a fucking crazy story. You don’t have to go in there.”

  “Nah,” I say. “I do.”

  “She could be lying,” Megan says.

  “She could be,” I say, ru
nning my fingers through my hair. “But if she’s not, I need to know.”

  Megan frowns and nods, then says, “Well, it’s three o’clock in the morning and I’ve got a big day tomorrow, so I’ll be up in my room.” Then she turns towards the ladder and starts climbing up to the next level.

  She’s all business now. Like spilling all those secrets to me last night was the purge she needed and now she feels… well, I’m guessing not clean, exactly. But… unburdened. Like Gilgamesh after he wrote his story down on a stone.

  “Ya know,” Logan says, once Megan has disappeared, “she’d make a good partner in crime.”

  “I know,” I say, then sigh. Because it’s not that simple. Wanting her and keeping her are two very different things. And I have to make a choice tomorrow when we go back to Prison Island. I glance up at Logan and say, “Thank you. You’ve gone above and beyond for me.”

  “I want those assholes. I want them bad. No one fucks with my friends.”

  I nod, getting it. “It’s… kind of delicate at the moment. So…” And I’m about to tell him he should be prepared to adjust his expectations, but I stop myself. He won’t want to hear that. Logan has only been out of the mob for two years and he’s already starting to forget what it’s like to be owned. “I’ll come find you when I’m done here. You don’t have to wait.”

  “OK.” He sighs. “I’ll be up top planning a war.”

  He’s not joking so I don’t smile. Just nod back and open the door.

  The girl is hunched up in the shadows in the room’s far corner, sitting on the floor with her knees pulled up to her chest. There’s a plate of uneaten food on the side table near my side of the bed and the only light is the reading lamp built into the headboard, which shines a spotlight down onto the pillows.

  The room isn’t big because we’re on the crew level. There’s no chair and I’m not going to sit on the bed, so I lean up against the head door and cross my arms to take her in.

  She’s small, and by that I mean both short and slight. Her blonde hair was pulled back earlier, I remember that much. And it still is now, but in a very I’ve-been-through-hell-today way that comes off both disheveled and kinda cute. In a little-kid kind of way. Because now that I see her out of that hazmat suit, that’s what I realize she is.

  A fuckin’ kid.

  “How old are you?”

  “Fourteen,” she says. She’s already talked to Logan. That’s why I’m here. She told him some serious shit. So she’s not confrontational and she’s not mean. Which I appreciate more than she knows.

  “What’s your name?” I ask. This she did not tell him and she hesitates now. “OK. I’ll go first. I’m Johnny Boston. I run the bank up north. And Megan Machette is my partner. Logan isn’t one of us. But I am Way. And I’m trying to help you.”

  She draws in a deep breath of air and says, “I’m going to tell you the same thing I told Logan and that’s all I’m going to tell you. Everything that was going on at that lab was just one giant failure. But that disease they were cultivating? We needed that. So they sent me in to grab a sample.”

  She holds up the silver canister.

  The infectious fucking canister that I had forgotten all about after she put the cap on it. My stomach does something I have never felt before in my life and might not ever feel again. I can’t even describe the gut-clenching feeling inside me right now. The sick realization that I’ve been played and the whole world is about to pay for my mistakes.

  “My team is very worried about me right now so I would appreciate you taking this information in the spirit it was intended and letting me go.”

  Her team.

  Who the fuck does she work for?

  I collect myself. Push that sick feeling down. And calmly ask, “Where are you gonna go?”

  “Home.”

  “Look, I understand if you believe… certain things about your life, and your family, whatever’s left of it, and—”

  “Don’t fucking patronize me, Johnny Boston.” And now she’s on her feet, pointing her finger in my face. I almost take a step back, she’s that fierce. “I know who you are. I know what you do. I know a lot more about what’s really going on than you ever will. So do not. Patronize. Me.”

  I hold up both hands in surrender and back up towards the door to give her space. “OK. So… you’re just gonna hand that sample over to whoever and then what? Infect the world with it?”

  “What are you? Stupid? They’re trying to infect the world with it. We’re trying to stop it!”

  “Who is your team?”

  “I’m not telling you that. You can ask me that question a thousand more times. You can torture me all you want. I’ll never tell.”

  “I’m not going to torture you,” I huff. “I’m just trying to figure out what’s happening. OK? That’s it. Are they making a vaccine? Was that why they needed those pregnant women?”

  She says nothing.

  “I already know about the longevity experiments. Megan told me about her rat. I know they’re infecting migrants in camps trying to make antibodies.”

  The girl scowls. “Should I clap for you?”

  I didn’t really know that. It was just a guess. But her answer tells me it was a good one.

  “You don’t care?”

  “I have a job to do. That’s all I care about. I want to do my job and just go home.”

  “Where’s home? Some pathetic prison island? Do they make promises to you, kid? Like the ones they made Megan? Those promises don’t mean anything. I can get you out if you help me. Take you out of the Bahamas. There’s a bigger world out there—”

  “I don’t live down here,” she spits. “I live in America.”

  Well, that’s a surprise. “Then why are you here?”

  “I told you. I’m on a job. A job you just fucked up by showing up early. And my team is gonna be very fuckin’ pissed off when they find out you stole me.”

  “What? Who are you?”

  “You don’t need to know who I am. You just need to understand who I’m not. I’m not some dumb girl who works in a lab because her daddy told her to. I was sent there to grab a sample of their little infectious disease and I had one hour left on my contract when you showed up and ruined everything.”

  “Hold on a second.” I laugh. “You, a little girl, were sent to grab a sample of an infectious disease so dangerous it requires level four biosecurity? By who?”

  “How the fuck should I know? I’m a professional. I don’t ask questions.”

  “You’re fourteen years old, kid.”

  “I’ve been on the job since I was ten, OK?”

  I laugh at her. She’s been on the job four years and she thinks that’s some big deal?

  But then I frown. Because by the time she’s twenty she will have been doing this kind of thing half her life. And by the time she’s thirty—hell, who am I kidding this kid isn’t going to make it to thirty. She probably won’t make it to twenty.

  “And let me tell you something else,” she continues. “I like my life right now. It’s going pretty good. So again”—she stresses the word—“you need to let me go.”

  “I could’ve blown your face off back in that lab.”

  She scoffs. “As if.”

  “I’m a professional too. I could kill you right now.”

  “I’d like to see you try.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You’re no professional. They set you up and you fell for it. You fell for the oldest trick in the book.”

  “You’re fourteen. You don’t know anything about old tricks.”

  “Ha. That’s funny. I was born an old trick.”

  This makes me pause.

  She was bred, and trained, and used. And now she’s here with me, caught by mistake.

  And what did she mean? I fell for it?

  “I’ll spell it out for you,” she says, like she’s reading my mind. “If it will move this little transaction along a little quicker. You were sent down here to bur
n that lab down, Johnny Boston. That lab was a clean-up job. They wanted it gone and for whatever reason they wanted you to do it. Two birds, one stone. Oldest trick in the book.”

  I just blink at the little girl.

  “Yeah, and if you hurt me or refuse to let me go? I have three men more dangerous than you or anyone you’ve ever heard of who will swoop in with the wrath of hell and make you pay.”

  “You’re lying,” I breathe. But my heart is hammering inside my chest right now. My lungs are tightening. Because I know she’s not. I know this creepy little girl knows more about me, and my life, and what I’ve been doing all these years than I ever will.

  And I’m suddenly… very fucking afraid of the truth locked up inside her.

  “Need more? OK. Fine. I’ll give you more. How about some details to sweeten the pot? The Way is breeding babies to force them to make antibodies which can then be injected into mature humans, who will then be exposed to a deadly infectious disease. If they live, yay. We made a vaccine for the worst epidemic this planet will ever see.” She holds up the silver canister. “If they die, back to the old drawing board. You see, their grand plan involves decimating two-thirds of the world’s population. It’s not easy to do that without fucking up the whole planet. So…” She shrugs. “Infection. That’s way better than a nuclear war, don’t you think?”

  “What?” I just stare at her.

  “I’ve got one more little secret to spill if you want it. And it’s about your mother, Johnny Boston. Do you want to know my secret?”