by K. T. Samois
It’s a moot question. Money greases many hands, and J’s always had a generous budget. Another text. Hardin doesn’t bother to get his hopes up this time.
MARTINEZ - 17:57
SIR. Not to nag, but I’m seeing a lot of firepower here. What are we going to do?!
“They’ve covered all the exits.” Rozier informs them, and Hardin’s stomach clenches tight as a fist. They’re trapped, and short of an armed shoot-out, there’s nowhere to go but with them. Fear-sweat prickles under his arms, cold as gunmetal.
Then, the inevitable arrives as a woman with a short bleach-blonde bob and a smile that doesn’t reach her almond-shaped eyes.
“Mr. Hardin,” she says in French-flavoured English, hands folded in front of her with business-formal poise. “Please order your team to stand down and come with us. All of you, if you would be so kind.”
“Don’t think we will.” Hardin replies with a tight smile.
The woman’s own goes bladed and wide. Her eyes flick to the exits, and then to the little red dot that appears in the centre of his chest for a second and then disappears.
“It was not a suggestion, Mr. Hardin. This way, please.” The young woman orders, making her way towards a hallway marked REGISTERED PERSONNEL ONLY, and pushing the door open.
***
She’s put them in a windowless room, all of them arrayed on cheap folding chairs, and left alone to stew.
“So we’re fucked.”
“Shut up, Martinez,” Shard snaps. It sounds like breaking granite. “What do you think it is?”
Hardin sighs, feeling a million years old. “It can’t be legit; they’ve left me my phone. I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t like it.”
“You’re about to like it a lot less.” That comes from the redhead who’s just had the door opened for her. She’s elfin short, with a spattering of freckles over her nose and tousled red hair cropped in a pixie cut. Her eyes are a bright and laughing green, but there’s a certain coldness there that he recognizes. Whatever else this woman might be, she’s dangerous.
“I’m sure I am,” Hardin agrees. “Who are you?”
“Do you know a lot of redheads, Mr. Hardin?”
“Captain,” Hardin corrects, tone terse. “And yes.”
The woman smiles with foxlike sharpness. Her eyes never warm.
“Then you know why I’m here.”
He does, and it’s his worst nightmare.
“Why isn’t Ree answering her phone, Evelyn?”
“Ree’s disappeared, Captain, and I believe it involves your ex.”
Every hair on his arms rose.
“Little ex?” Hardin hisses, and Evie stares.
“Fuck’s a little ex? Actually, don’t answer, I don’t care. J’s found her.”
“How do you know who J is?” Hardin says.
Evie just laughs at him. “We can play a rousing game of twenty questions on the way, how’s that? All of you, get your shit, and let’s go.”
“We’ve already got a flight, thanks,” Martinez says, arms crossed and ass planted in the chair like she’s grown roots. Before Hardin can open his mouth, Evie pulls rank.
“Okay,” she says, voice Antarctic. “You can fly coach. But I need the rest of you to get on my fucking level with this, because my little sister is currently enjoying the tender hospitalities of your-” and this look could flay Hardin to the bone, “-bullshit ex-girlfriend. So. My jet’s on the tarmac, there’s gas in the tank, and if my pilot has to use someone’s cooling corpse as a chock to rev the engines, so help me God, I will order her to do it.”
She fixes Martinez with a disdainful look. Her stare lands on each of them, and Hardin sits a little straighter under her icy regard.
“Understand me right now,” the eldest Araby sister says, and her voice is guillotine-sharp. “I have got this shit to handle, I am in a foul mood, and your little sharing circle is wasting my valuable time. Captain, are you flying coach as well, or are you ready to get this shit-show of yours on the road?”
Hardin stares at her, but he can’t hear a word of a lie. The ring in his pocket feels like an anchor in deep water.
I never said I loved her. Hardin feels his blood run cold.
“Get your shit. Now!” Hardin snarls at his team, and they explode into movement.
***
A statuesque Amazon with a short crop of sable hair performs the mandatory safety demonstration, while a cherub with blonde curls tucked under her pilot’s cap prowls the tarmac conducting a pre-flight safety check. She’s surrounded by a pack of black-dressed soldiers carrying assault rifles. As soon as the pilot boards the plane, the soldiers disperse to the entrances.
“Nobody’s outside. No witnesses. ATC in the tower, but the ATC looks... well-fed.” Rozier’s got his nose all but glued to the window, moon-bright eyes wide. He giggles. “Signal jammers on the wing! We will be an unidentified flying object.”
“Have fun, Padre. I could get used to this one-percenter shit.” Shard stretches out his long legs on the custom leather couch, settling in with a soldier’s greed for comfort.
“She gets that a lot,” the bundle of Hermes-orange blankets in one of the deep bucket seats says, and Shard jolts like he’s stepped on a blue-ringed octopus.
“The fuck?!” He snaps as a sleep-tousled head pops up out of the nest of blankets, blinking at the assemblage with bleary eyes.
“Oh. Hi, Hardin! Are we there yet?”
Hardin groans.
“Moira, why are you here?”
Ree’s youngest sister shrugs, eyes never leaving his demolitions expert. “Alibi. I told the parents Evie was taking me and Ree to Comic-con to meet up with Sile.”
Shard makes a strangled noise. “Was that even English?”
Hardin can feel the migraine’s vise closing in, and rubs his sinuses in a half-hearted attempt to stave it away. The engines thrum to life and the plane taxis, perhaps a bit faster than necessary. Rozier gives the ground one last hard look, closes the window-screen and then his eyes, and begins his customary prayer under his breath. Martinez is less sanguine.
“So Captain,” she tries. “If your girlfriend-”
Hardin looks murderous, and Martinez scrambles to rephrase. “If Ms. Araby’s sister’s got a jet, why d’you have a day-job?”
Hardin stares at her audacity.
“Martinez raises an excellent point, though, Captain.” Theo says, because it’s true. “How do we know this woman’s who she says she is? Do you trust her?”
“We’re here, aren’t we? I do, at least this far. We also have the same objective: Riona, returned alive and unharmed. And I can tell who she is — there’s a strong family resemblance.”
Rozier opens an eye at that. “Seven sisters share a face?”
“Give or take. Their mother’s some mad scientist or something. I think she grew them in the lab.” He wouldn’t put it past Mrs. Araby. He doesn’t look over at her youngest daughter, intent on avoiding Moira’s jackal smile.
“There’s two singletons, a set of triplets, and twins. You’ve only ever seen Riona; put them all in a line-up and the resemblance is striking. And Riona is an open book regarding her family; the only one she’s ever been cagey about is-”
The hammered-gold doors in the middle compartment of the jet open, revealing an office panelled in black lacquer polished to a mirrored sheen. He can see ammonite fossils reflecting their iridescent sheen on her built-in office bookshelves, and what looks like an original Klimt hanging on the wall.
When Ree had told him to leave Evelyn alone, he’d expected a family fuck-up. Maybe a mid-level felon, or a high-priced escort.
Clearly, he thinks, as the redhead in the bespoke suit and Audemars watch settles into the leather chair at the head of their congregation, I have miscalculated.
The woman smiles as though she’s read his mind; the effect makes him think of a fox with an egg in its maw.
“Me.” Evelyn Araby finishes his sentence with a wintr
y smile. “And she has a day job because she wants one, I guess. I’ve offered. Hi, Hardin. Nice to meet you, finally.”
“How did you know Ree’s missing?” It isn’t a question.
It’s obvious Evelyn isn’t used to taking orders, but his expression must convince her of the seriousness of his request, because she gives him a straight-forward answer.
“She missed family lunch on Sunday, and when I went to check it out with Moira, she wasn’t there.”
“Ree never misses family lunch.”
God knows she’s dragged him to every single one.
“And of course there was this,” Evie says, and slides the phone across the table. It’s a model Hardin’s never seen before, which means it’s either bespoke or the original prototype. Given the circumstances, he suspects it’s the latter. The video quality is incredible, so Hardin can see Ree, and—
“The woman with her is Isabel Drozdov. No major military experience to speak of, but a crack at code. No known affiliation with J, but that’s not to say they couldn’t have swiped right on some app or something.”
“Isabel.”
“Yeah. That’s her name.”
Hardin’s expression must give something away, because Riona’s eldest sister pins him with a look that could flay atoms.
“Which you didn’t know- oh my god, you’re a hot mess, aren’t’cha?” Moira snickers like the little gremlin she is, and Hardin wants to throw himself out of the emergency exit. He refrains.
“None of this explains how you know J.”
Evie takes the sort of breath that begs for patience. “I’m richer than she is. That’s how I know J.”
“You bankroll her?!”
“What? No! I troll her. She’s one to hold a grudge, isn’t she?”
“Great, just what we need,” Shard mutters.
“Shard.” Theo says as a warning. Moira’s placid expression has sluiced away to reveal the reptile underneath, and she’s picked up her bundle of orange and scuttled over to him. Shard doesn’t back down. Instead, he leans in, broad face unfriendly as granite cliffs. “What? I’m not wrong!”
Moira bares her teeth up at him, unblinking.
“So what? That’s my sister she’s got. She spent all her time worrying about you guys, and now she’s the one getting hurt!” Hardin thinks he can detect a hint of emotion in her voice, the first sign of true human sentiment.
“I get that!” Shard snaps. “Some of us use sarcasm to cope.”
“That’s cute,” Moira says, tone flat. “I bet your therapist’ll care. You should tell her. While you’re there, ask her what sort of coping method my sister’s using right now.”
“Disassociation.” Hardin says. He remembers the way Ree had frozen when that ugly little man had leered at her. Moira considers it for a moment and then nods.
“Yeah, probably.”
Shard goes the colour of concrete. “Jesus.”
“Excuse me.” Hardin says and flees for the only space with a door.
When Evie enters and shuts the door behind her, he can’t muster the energy to care.
“Can we not do this now?”
“No,” she says, brutal as a kidney punch. “We need to do this right now, before I kick you and your insubordinate subordinate out of my whip.”
Amid all the horror, Hardin can’t help but snort.
“You call a private jet your whip?”
“When you get your own, you can call it whatever you want,” Evie snaps. “Listen, Hardin, I like you-”
She does? If this is Evie when she likes somebody…
“-but you’re a messy guy, and it’s splashing back on Ree.”
He knows and hates himself for it. “All right, then. What do we do?”
“Finally, a question worth asking. But… why are you asking me? Isn’t this literally what you do?”
“Technically, yes. But we don’t have the resources to take on J. Wherever she is, it’s a fortress. I was with her day and night for years, but I have never seen her with her guard down. Nothing surprises her. The plans you planned around her plan? She has plans for those, Evie. And she has Ree, and she is going to hurt her-” He can feel his chest tighten, but then Evie lands her second blow.
“Hardin, I empathize with all your excellent points,” Evie says, voice board-room brisk. “But I need you to stuff your hands down your pants, get a grip of your balls, and give yourself a little squeeze, because we don’t have the time for you to have a breakdown right now.”
“Jesus, Evie.”
“Hardin. My sister is the most determined person I know, yours truly included, so your psycho ex-girlfriend-slash-megalomaniacal-employer will not break her.”
“You’re very confident in Ree’s ability to withstand torture, Evelyn.” He has seen what J can do to a person. He’s sure he’s survived at least a bit of it himself, although he might have called it foreplay at the time.
“Hardin, you understand what Moira is, right?”
“I know she and Ree are close.” Hardin’s cautious. He knows better than to trust non-sequiturs.
“Mm. Diplomatic. Yes, close. Moira uses Ree as something of an external conscience. They’re close in age, right? And Moira’s always, always loved Ree. And as a kid… Ree loved butterflies. Went fucking nuts raising caterpillars in her bedroom. Roisin hated it, but Ree sang to the cocoons, fed the worms the nicest leaves. And then one day, we were out with Dad on campus, and Moira saw a monarch butterfly. She must have been about six then, and Ree just a little older. And Moira ripped the wings right off that poor butterfly and brought them over to Riona like they were earrings.”
Hardin feels a bit queasy. He can imagine the expression on Riona’s face, rounded and sweet with youth, and wracked with sorrow at the gift. “That must have been… a bad day.”
“Awful, man, awful. I’ve never heard Ree scream like that, never. I never want to again. And I guess Moira doesn’t either, because she’s played Simon Says with Ree ever since. So when I say that Moira lacks affect and empathy, you know what I mean.”
“I do.”
Hardin’s met people like her before. Most aren’t so well-adjusted… but he also is very glad that Moira seems to have adopted him into the family.
“So when I say that the only two people on God’s green earth who can shut Moira up mid-bitch are my mother and my sister, you get it. Are they somehow less intimidating than J?”
Having met all three, Hardin can say that they’re equally alarming. A tiger, a hippo, and a shark will all kill you. The only question is how.
Evie takes his silence for assent, and ploughs on.
“Right. So. Ree’s counting on us to get to her as soon as possible. Do you have the requisite skill-set, or am I going to outsource this?”
“We can do it. I know the layout.”
“You do? How?” For the first time, there’s a note of surprise in her reply. Evie sounds suspicious, so Hardin takes a certain pleasure in his response.
“Ree and I are house-hunting and considered it. It still doesn’t solve the logistics, though.”
“Oh,” Evie says, and Hardin knows he’s scored a point. After a moment, she nods. “Okay, yeah, fair. So you can handle the… heh, penetration-”
Hardin looks at her venomously, but Evie’s fox-sly face widens into an unrepentant grin. “But the tools and toys- that’s where I come in. I can be the tech guy if you go get Ree.”
“What about J?” Hardin takes a quiet moment to fantasize about him, her, a locked room, and his old set of knives.
“What about her? Does she look like my problem? Exercise your best judgement.” She shrugs. “But points for Gryffindor if you wreck the bitch. She’s fucked with the wrong family.”
***
It isn’t a lot of fun to be the subject of an interrogation. It’s painful, nasty work made worse the longer it goes on, so Ree distracts herself from her dread and her pain with a bit of background noise.
“These were Hardin’s, did you
know?”
J’s tone is conversational, even as she runs her thumb along the blade of one of the knives she’s laid out on the table beside them.
Ree’s seated in an uncomfortable modernist chair that’s all angles and designed for appreciation, not use. It isn’t by choice, either; J has tied her arms to the chair, and she can’t move. They’ve put her in a tunic, some sleeveless hospital gown, and the new skin of her scar feels J’s gaze keenly. Ree wriggles her fingers and focuses on what she can change.
“I had made the guess, yes. He’s mentioned you.”
J smiles, beautiful and cold as a serac. “I’m glad.”
“Don’t be. It wasn’t complimentary.”
“No, it wouldn’t be,” J says with a benevolent smile.
“He’s ungrateful,” she adds in a stage whisper, as though imparting some great womanly wisdom.
Ree doesn’t buy it for a second. She’d need to use a thesaurus to describe Hardin’s lesser traits, but ungrateful isn’t anywhere on that list. On the contrary. He’s grateful for any small kindness.
“If you say so,” Ree says, and J’s eyes narrow to shards of glass.
“I do.”
Ree takes a breath and trades a bit more pain later for a lot more information now. “And you’re the expert on Hardin?”
J looks up from her knife collection, gaze every bit as bladed.
“I’m an expert on lots of things, little girl. Unlike you. Did you really think you could handle Hardin?”
Thoughts of every time she’s ever handled Hardin ricochet through her mind like errant pinballs. Maybe it’s the stress, or the adrenaline, or the absurdity of the entire situation, but Ree can’t help it. She giggles.
J’s look turns glacial, but Ree is shaking her head with rueful amusement.
“Handle Hardin? What is he, an attack dog?” Ree’s eyes go cold as jade. “He doesn’t need a handler, J.”
“You’re naïve if you believe that. Do you know what he did with those knives?”
She’s underestimating you, Ree. She thinks you’re some dumb little thing. If she thinks that, you’ll be dead. She won’t keep something that bores her. Ree takes a gulp of air and hopes she lives to regret this.