No Time for Caution

by K. T. Samois

  She’d worked like a dog on that bid, found every pain point and sales pitch, checked everything ten times if she checked it twice. And he’d dismissed it — her — out of hand.

  Maybe you can’t do this, Ree. Maybe you should just take everyone at their word and settle for being pretty.

  She throws herself onto the couch, takes one look over at the shut door, and bawls.

  ***

  Hardin lopes along one of the side-paths of his early morning run. Instead of the crisp air of dawn, it’s the thick mugginess of August in the city. Sweat sticks his shirt to his back and sluices from hairline to waistband.

  It feels fucking terrible.

  What feels even worse is the realization that Riona isn’t wrong.

  Hardin knows he’s made a terrible mistake.

  She’ll kick you out after this, soldier. What’s your contingency plan?… Another flophouse? Another shitty single bed. His breathing is haphazard, cadence all wrong. His stride is off, and his nerves jangle. Hardin’s gut squelches. He doesn’t want to fight with Riona. He doesn’t want to lose her.

  Not over this.

  He needs a clearer mind. If he gets a clearer mind, he might devise an apology that will convince her to take him back. Because she has to take him back. Even if he’s just insulted her intelligence, the one slight Ree won’t suffer.

  Have you considered begging?

  He might have to, because the thought of a world without Riona feels wrong, somehow. Too lacking in colour, in laughter, in unexpected moments of boldness, and infinite hours of tenderness.

  You’re a shameless old tomcat; you’ve gotten domesticated. Gotten soft. Given the kitten the whip, you fucking pansy, running after a woman’s skirts, hiding behind a woman’s skirts-

  It’s his father’s words, J’s voice, echoing like a funeral knell in his head. He pushes his pace to outrun them, but his foot hits a scree of loose gravel on the trail side. Hardin’s ankle goes out from underneath him, and he goes down with a shout of surprise.

  Even as he stops his roll, he knows his ankle is fucked.

  A look down confirms his fear; it’s already swelling. His hip is agony as well, and for a sick moment, he’s afraid he’s damaged it. Hardin gropes at his side, extracting his shattered cellphone out of his side pocket, grimacing. No doubt he’ll have a corresponding bruise, and now he can’t call anyone.

  Just like the day to deliver.

  He turns for home, tail between his legs. Every step is agony, but he puts his head down and limps back home.

  ***

  Ree isn’t sure what makes her perk her head up and look around.

  There’s nothing amiss except the day, nothing out of place but her mood. But she’s restless, still anxious with energy. She checks the stove. Nothing to see; all the knobs on the range are off. She checks the windows; all the latches are tightly shut, and the little dowels at the bottom are still tidily in their places.

  She’s checking the last of the windows in their bedroom, when she hears the front door open and then click shut. The footsteps stop in the foyer, and Ree scowls. What, are you afraid to face me?

  But it isn’t Hardin that stands in the doorway when she enters the living room ring for round two. Instead, it’s a young woman with a pretty oval face and solemn eyes, a slim build, and a gun in her hand.

  “Smart homes,” the young woman in her foyer says. “They’re cool, but you can’t trust them.”

  There’s something itching the back of Ree’s brain. The girl looks familiar, and she wracks her memory to place her.

  “Those electronic keys are stupid easy to hack,” the girl says, like she’s giving advice. Ree snaps back to focus.

  “What do you want? I don’t have a lot of cash, but you can take the silverware…”

  Maybe it’ll be as easy as her jewellery or Hardin’s watch. She doubts it, but it’s always good to start with low-hanging fruit. The girl laughs; it sounds like broken fingernails on glass.

  “Just to say hi.” It’s still that brilliant facade of false cheer. “Or don’t you remember me?”

  Red flag, red flag. She doesn’t know the answer this woman wants to hear. Lacking knowledge, she errs on the side of politeness.

  “I- I’m sorry. I can’t say that I do,” Ree stammers, because that gun is way too close for comfort. “But please, refresh my memory?”

  That doesn’t seem to help.

  “Butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. Does Master? Guess he must. I can’t imagine why he’d stay with you otherwise.”

  “Master?” The realization feels like falling through ice. “Hardin.”

  “There’s the lightbulb,” the girl says, lip curled into a sneer. “Don’t act like it isn’t true. I know it is; I saw you together! I watched you.”

  Oh, fuck today. I know her now. It’s the laser-tag girl, the one I ran into a couple times. The one who shot- me.

  Ree’s stomach squelches.

  “I’m sure this is all a misunderstanding—”

  The barrel of the gun swings to point at her face, and Ree freezes.

  “I’m sure there is. A big one. I just can’t understand what he sees in you. You’re so… civilian.”

  “Did you just call me basic?” When Sile had told her that her quick wit was going to be the death of her —

  But it works.

  The woman with the gun snarls at her, gesticulating with the hand not holding a .45 at blow-job distance. Ree wants to claw her whiskey-coloured eyes out, but bides her time and picks her battles.

  “Look at you!” The woman is white-lipped and red-cheeked in fury. “You’re just some big-titted blow-up doll he can use. You won’t ever be able to give him what he wants!”

  Ree lets the invective wash over her. I don’t need to explain myself to her. She doesn’t know you. Don’t let her draw blood.

  It doesn’t quite work, and the woman leans in, scenting blood.

  “I bet you’re just an amateur,” she whispers, breath hot on the shell of Ree’s ear. “You probably have to ask him how to fuck.”

  That one stings, and instinctively, Ree bares her teeth.

  The girl laughs and clicks the safety off of her weapon. Ree doesn’t back down.

  “But I want an answer, Riona. What is it you have that I don’t? What makes you so special?!”

  ***

  Hardin’s ankle is screaming at him by the time he sees the door to their building. He breathes a sigh of relief at making it home, but it’s swallowed whole by the dread he feels at the thought of facing Ree. Hardin isn’t looking forward to this conversation, but there is no choice.

  All right, soldier. Time to face the brass.

  He tilts his face back for a breath and notices the elevator security camera error light blinking. His stomach goes cold.

  It could be a code error. It could be a wiring fault.

  The ride to the fourth-floor apartment is interminable. When the doors spring open, he rushes out. The keypad to their door is flashing, and when he pushes it, the door swings open. He follows, watching his corners, but all thoughts of tactics disappear when he sees Ree on the business end of a barrel.

  It’s chambered, cocked, and loaded, and if the gunman’s form isn’t perfect, she’s no weekend warrior either. Worse, he recognizes her. He remembers those pretty doe eyes and that hard set to her mouth. Hardin remembers the sound of her voice, begging for him, for more, for harder-

  But what’s her fucking name?

  Before he can open his mouth to make matters worse, he catches Ree’s glance. Her eyes plead for him to wait, and so he shuts his mouth with a click and looks for options.

  Your weapons are in the gun safe in the bedroom. You won’t make it there with your bum ankle, and with your broken phone, you can’t even call the cops… not that you could give a name if she asked.

  “Please-” It’s the first time Ree’s spoken since he came in, and the woman’s eyes fix on her.

  “Please, what?!”

>   Hardin watches as Ree takes a deep breath. After all these months, he knows her tells. He can see the fear in the tightness of her jaw, in the way she carries herself poised. She hasn’t cried or broken down in the face of this madwoman, though, so she’s doing better than most. Ree’s flying blind; the way her hands tremble gives her away.

  “Please let me show you what it is. There is something, but… but it isn’t what you think.”

  “I don’t want to see shit. What is this, some trick?”

  “What? No! How could we trick you? He just came in!”

  “Don’t talk shit!” The woman snarls, and Ree holds her hands up.

  “Okay, okay! Just let me show you and I promise you’ll get it. I don’t even have to move. I’ll keep both of my hands right where you can see them, okay?”

  What is she planning? What sort of magic trick-

  “Hardin?” Ree’s voice might tremble, but there’s steel girding it underneath. She pulls herself up to her full height, shoulders back and down, all long lines and refined elegance. Ree’s always looked soft. Now Hardin realizes how much of that is an illusion. No matter how supple the sheath or well-tooled the design, a knife is still a knife.

  “Kneel.” Ree’s voice is a silk-wrapped command.

  Oh, clever girl, he thinks, and does.

  ***

  Ree’s always found the idea of a stand-off at high-noon a bit silly.

  Everyone standing around in a triangle, guns out and sun blazing off the metal, tension crackling at the smell of barrel oil and gun-powder in the air, while an apathetic horse munches on ditch-weed and doesn’t give a damn.

  The clock ticks and Ree wonders if her cause of death will be “crazy ex.” The other woman’s eyes are wide, and in them, she can see a firestorm of emotions. Incredulity. Anger and — and jealousy.

  And then the silence breaks with a strangled, “What the fuck.”

  Just as she does, Ree’s cellphone trills. Evie’s ringtone is some upbeat pop song, and it pierces the air like a power-drill.

  The woman bolts. She shoots Hardin a hate-filled look, stuffing the gun in her pocket as she goes. Ree’s cellphone is still ringing, but she ignores it. She’s listening to the door click shut. Once it has, her legs turn to water, and she feels like she wants to throw up.

  “Is she gone?” Ree asks and hates how frightened her voice sounds.

  “Yes.” Hardin says, and that’s what gives her courage to pivot and face him.

  He looks the way she feels.

  Which is to say: like shit. But he’s alive, and she’s alive, and their earlier argument is tomorrow’s problem. Right now, all she wants is to hold on to him and never let go. Fight or not, he makes her feel safe.

  Ree holds out her hands to help him up and prays he doesn’t hold a grudge. As soon as he climbs, wincing, to his feet, she folds herself into his embrace.

  “I was — Oh, God, she had a gun. And she was right there — the keypad. She hacked the keypad! And she had a gun!”

  He tries to soothe her by smoothing her hair, but she tosses her head like an agitated mare. “I was so scared! Hardin, who was she? Is that J?”

  He shakes his head. “No. That’s not J.”

  “Then who the hell is that?!”

  “I don’t know.” All the sound in the world fades out to a snowfall silence, oppressive and heavy. Ree’s stomach churns.

  “What?” She’s never heard her voice so flat.

  He at least has the decency to sound embarrassed about it.

  “I don’t know her name,” Hardin confesses, and Ree counts back from ten. It doesn’t work.

  “She sure seemed to know you.” It sounds a little bitter aloud, but she’s too done with today to care.

  “You-” he starts, and Ree cuts in with a flat look.

  “What? No. No ‘you’ language today, Captain. Today we’re using lots of I statements. I’ll demonstrate.”

  She uses her Moira Voice, the brisk, no-nonsense and takes-no-prisoners tone that can make her gremlin of a kid sister behave. It seems to have the same effect on her Captain, because he snaps to attention.

  “I am having an awful day, Hardin. I have been yelled at for trying to help someone with a cover letter. Then, I got held at gunpoint by my boyfriend’s crazy ex — but not the actual crazy ex he warned me about, though. A different one, and to be completely honest with you, I am freaking the fuck out. So even though I’m really mad at you, I think I’d like a hug.”

  He stares for a moment, wide-eyed and silent, until she finished her little rant.

  The moment it’s completed, he’s wrapped her in his arms, and Ree’s content to not move for a while. She’s tired of fighting Hardin; they’ve got bigger fish to fry.

  “I am sorry, Riona,” Hardin says, and she sighs.

  “Yeah. We’ll get to that. Right now… I feel like I’m freezing. Is that natural?” A terrible thought slaps her, and she swats at herself. “She didn’t shoot me, did she?”

  “You’d know, Ree.” He doesn’t seem to find her paranoid flailing funny; he looks even grimmer.

  “My hands are shaking,” she says, and Hardin wraps both of his around hers. The warmth of his hands feels like home, and comfort, and all the good things in the world.

  “Come here, kitten. All of you is shaking.”

  “I — Hardin? Are you all right?”

  “No,” he replies. “But it’s not anything you’re unaware of. It’s just a miserable situation. For whatever it’s worth, you handled it well.”

  “The alternative was ending up a True Crime episode, so I’m just glad you played along. I thought for sure I was gonna be a goner there.” She can tell she’s babbling; he cuts her off with a gentle kiss to the brow.

  “Riona, you’re cold and you’re in shock. Let’s get you under the blankets. We can talk there.” He shifts, wincing in pain as his damaged ankle takes the worst of the strain.

  “Yeah, but can you walk there?”

  His mouth quirks at the lacklustre rhyme. “With some help, I’m sure I can manage.”

  So they do, taking brief steps. Ree supports his bad side, bearing his weight. It isn’t quick, and Ree is dog-tired by the time she handles Hardin into bed and crawls into it with him.

  It might be the middle of the afternoon. She doesn’t care; she curls into a little comma against Hardin and never wants to leave. His arms wrap around her and his hand plays with her hair. After a little while, she feels brave enough to ask. “Is it always that bad when someone wants to kill you?”

  His hollow-eyed gaze says it all.

  “And J is worse than that?”

  He nods, lips knife-slash tight.“ J makes this one look like a swim in the shallow end.”

  Ree’s blood chills in her veins to hear it, and she can feel the fear-sweat prickle under her arms. There’s nothing Hardin can do to assuage it, and he doesn’t try. He just holds her.

  “I’ve taken precautions, Ree.” Hardin promises, but all Ree can think of is the look of hatred the woman had worn when first walked in.

  “Okay. Tell me later. We can talk about this later. For now… let- let it just be us.”

  She curls up against him, but sleep doesn’t come easily and is red-tinged when it does.

  ***

  The harsh early morning light cutting through the kitchen blinds hurts her weary eyes, but Ree sits at their breakfast table sipping a cup of coffee and staring at the stripe on the floor.

  She can hear the noises of Hardin waking in the other room; the creak of the bedspring as he stretches himself to full consciousness — and the thud as he hauls himself out of bed. Ree never leaves bed first. She ices over all of the hurt feelings when he comes into the hallway, still calling for her.

  “Riona!”

  “Good morning, Hardin,” she says, because the sun is shining and the birds are singing and she’s not dead.

  “There’s coffee in the pot.” On a normal day, she might enjoy making him a cup and serving it to
him in bed while he wakes up. Not today. “Serve yourself a cup, and then take a seat. We need to talk.”

  “About yesterday-” he starts, and Ree has had enough.

  “Don’t start. I’m not in the mood to play games this morning, Hardin. I slept like shit, because I kept having this awful nightmare that I got held at gunpoint by a woman I didn’t know while she screamed at me to answer a catch-22 about her ex. Then I’d wake up, and it was a memory instead.”

  She’d cried in the bathroom this morning. Her eyes still hurt.

  “So. We’re going to talk about why your ex-submissive held me at gunpoint in our home, and-”

  “Riona-,” Hardin tries to interject, and she pins him with a look that could split atoms.

  “Did the middle of my sentence interrupt the beginning of your excuse, Hardin? Because as I was saying — I’d like you to tell me about J, because the way you speak about her scares me.”

  She’d given it some thought last night, lying awake in their bed. Hardin speaks about J the way she imagines an addict might talk about their next fix, and it chills Ree to the marrow. She wants to know what it is this woman has on Hardin, even as the thought makes her eyes prickle all over again.

  “I deserve to know.” Ree says and tries not to feel pitiful asking for small crumbs.

  He looks up from the cup of coffee he’s doctoring, and his eyes are hollow with apprehension. The silence stretches out for what feels like a small infinity, until Hardin sits down across from her and answers.

  “Her name is J. That’s it. Nobody knows anything else about her. Not where she came from or where she goes. Not where she lives. She’s a ghost. Most don’t even know what she looks like. I do. I was… her body man. Whatever she needed, I provided. Including, on occasion, answers from people who didn’t feel like being forthright.”

  Ree can see Hardin’s hands tremble as he takes a sip of his coffee. He sounds… like he misses it. Like he’s proud of knowing that information about her. But his voice darkens into a warning.

  “You need to understand, Riona. She’s bad. She enjoys cultivating people. I’d been in the forces for a while. Just made Captain. Done a few tours already, brought teams back whole, not a scratch on them. I was making a name for myself, getting attention for my… skill set, if you will. J was active in the private sector even then, but subtly. She doesn’t like to involve herself.”