by K. T. Samois
“Presumably the same thing you’re about to do to me,” she says. To her horror and gratification, it startles a giggle out of J. What should sound warm instead reminds her of glass shards falling on concrete; staccato bursts of dangerous noise.
“Ah, I can see why he’d like you.” the older woman admits. “You’re clever, aren’t you?”
There’s interest and curiosity in her eyes now. Ree doesn’t like it at all.
“Nothing to say to that?”
Ree watches J from under her lashes. The woman’s composure is good — almost perfect, in fact. But there are cracks around the edges where the truth of her shows: too-eager eyes, too-wide smiles. Ree knows a predator when she sees one and keeps her mouth shut.
“... speak.” J orders, voice sharp.
She gives the order as though commanding a soldier; or training a dog. Ree despises being ordered around, and her anger makes its way into her tone.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Ree lies. “I thought you wanted me to be quiet. I was just trying to, you know, play along.”
“Play along?” J looks livid at being dismissed thus; cheeks pale with fury.
See how you like it, Ree thinks.
J leans right in, until they’re face to face. Her breath is cool against Ree’s cheek, and she smells of expensive cologne. “Do you think this is a game?” J asks, and Ree knows she’s trying to intimidate her.
But she can’t. Not if I don’t let her.
“Isn’t it?” Ree fixes J with a flat look. “Hardin mentioned you enjoy them.”
That catches J’s attention like a fish-hook.
“He speaks of me?” She sounds curious and pleased, the way Hardin does when Ree strokes his ego. The unwelcome comparison makes her squirm.
“Only when you feature in his nightmares,” Ree says, voice icy, but J smiles as though it’s a compliment.
“That’s the most flattering thing I’ve heard in at least a month!”
Ree wishes she could roll her eyes at the narcissism on display, but she’d like to survive this.
“Yeah, okay,” she says instead, with every ounce of early twenties disdain she can scrape up.
“Tell me, Riona,” J asks, fiddling with a wickedly sharp knife. “Do you think he’ll dream of you, now that you’re gone?”
Ree feels the blood freeze in her veins. This woman is spoiling for a fight, and she came with weapons. Ree needs to stay smart.
“Probably not,” she says.
Hardin doesn’t dream unless he’s deep asleep. He’d admitted — once — that he only sleeps well at her place. Without her, she doubts he’ll dream at all. She thinks that’s maybe the kinder option. But Ree doesn’t tell J that.
“At least that’s pragmatic of you,” J says, going for magnanimous.
She doesn’t know him at all, Ree realizes in that exact moment.
It’s reassuring. If she doesn’t know Hardin, she can’t predict him. Plan C it is.
“I know what I mean to Hardin.” Ree says, and is careful to keep her voice as neutral as possible.
“I’m sure you think you do.” J oozes saccharine sweetness, like man-eating molasses. “Did you know what he was, little girl? Did you think it was going to be a bit of fun?”
“Have you met Hardin?!” Ree blurts out, incredulous. “Seriously, a bit of fun?! Really?!”
Hardin is a lot of things: protective, caring, considerate, and a good tipper with excellent table manners. He also has a way with knives, and she’s got no doubt that the hands that cradle her cheeks with such tenderness could snap her neck with little effort.
“Yes, I know what he was,” she says, slicing a delicate emphasis onto the word. “Why does that seem to bother you so much?” A terrifying idea strikes Ree between the eyes like a bullet.
“Are you jealous?!” It comes out as a sibilant hiss.
J sneers in response. “Of you?”
Ree looks around at the empty room. “Well, it isn’t of little ex. Why? Because she isn’t a threat? Or because she’s useful, J?” Ree’s voice has gone hard; this is the tone that cracks even Moira’s messy little mind open like a crab claw. If it can get her gremlin of a sister to confess to mischief, it can work on this bitch.
J is silent for a moment, and Ree’s eyes widen with realization. “Or is it because it’s me? Do I threaten you?”
J’s cheeks go icy with pale fury; when she speaks, her voice is surgically precise. “You are an impudent little bitch, aren’t you?”
Ah, found you, Ree thinks, as the woman’s ristretto attitude shows.
“But it’s true,” Ree continues, voice soft but inexorable as sand in an hourglass. “I threaten you. I’ve got everything you took for granted — the gig, Hardin…”
J freezes in place, as though a terrible thought has just occurred to her.
“The job?”
Ree meets her gaze, smiles her best customer-service smile, and nods. “Yeah. I got to quit my day job and everything.”
J slams the wooden table so hard that the knives rattle.
Ree jolts like a cat, straining against the bonds in an instinctive reaction. J seems to control herself in the next moment; her fury compresses down into her smile, and Ree feels the pit of her stomach drop.
“Do you know,” J says as she picks up the first knife she’d toyed with. “I’m not even mad. That’s going to make this-” she whispers, tracing the blade of the flaying knife against Ree’s burnt forearm, “-so much more gratifying.”
“See?” Ree hisses through gritted teeth. “Told you. Crazy bitch.”
J laughs as she presses the blade down into newly healed skin. When she shifts the knife to 45 degrees, Ree hears herself make the first little whimper. She allows it. It’s like lemon in a hangnail.
Pain’s always easier to bear when you can swear about it. Sinking into memory, Ree thinks of Hardin and lets the rest of the world drift away for a while.
***
“You are not serious.” The big bald man looks one blink away from a stroke when the youngest Araby steps out of the Starbucks bathroom.
Moira’s smile looks like something out of a deep-sea documentary.
“As the situation,” she hisses, swinging the backpack carrying a change of clothes for her and Ree over her shoulder. “But admit it; their faces are gonna be funny.”
“Are you even legal, child?”
Trust Roz to ask the sensible questions. His watercolour eyes hold her gaze.
“For a whole hot second,” Moira replies with reptilian patience. Martinez arches an eyebrow incredulously, but the waif gazing up at her doesn’t flinch, and she’s reminded of some nasty carnivorous lizard. Martinez expects her to lick her eyeball any time now.
“Look—” the girl says, seeming to feel Martinez’ judgement.
“Already got a mom, lady; I don’t need a Mami,” she snaps and then pauses, and clearly checks Martinez out. “I mean, unless you’re into that,” the girl adds after a second.
Martinez recoils. “You’re a fetus. I have a kid your age.”
The girl looks vaguely disappointed, but it passes like the shadow of clouds. “Bummer, but all right. Look — there’s some freak with a leash up there, and she’s got my sister on the other end. I know how to get that door open from the inside without drama, so why don’t you save your ethics for someone who cares about ‘em?”
She says it like it’s absolutely obvious, as though she routinely plans ways to open doors from the inside. Every single one of these bitches has ice water instead of blood in their veins.
“What did your parents feed you all as children?” Martinez asks, aghast. Her phone dings with a text from an unknown number —
[UNIDENTIFIED NUMBER]
We were all breastfed.
Martinez flinches. “... this fucking family.” she snaps to Roz. “Where did you even get that costume?!”
The girl blinks at her. “What costume? We went to St Sebastian College.”
“Oh my God!
” Shard breathes. “Is that outfit real?!”
Moira chuckles, a sound like the fall of freezing rain.
“Yea. Ree’s gonna laugh. If she’s alive, I mean,” she adds, almost as an afterthought.
***
It isn’t until they’re thirty-five stories in the air, swinging in a stiff breeze, that Hardin’s brain catches up to his adrenaline. He rechecks his pack-out and his ropes, then checks them again. Beside him, Theo gives the all-clear sign. The earbud crackles.
“Diversion team will breach the door. I’ve jammed communications in and out. Thirty seconds to engagement, gentlemen. On my count.”
Hardin doesn’t like Evie’s mission-control calm. “You sound like this isn’t your first time.”
Her low chuckle sounds delighted.
“A lady never tells, you cad. T-20.”
Hardin braces himself against the lip of the roof and does not look down.
“Ten. Nine. Eight-”
Hardin checks the ropes one last time. He doesn’t want to invert, or have a knot slip. Theo checks his as well, but he’s far more casual about it.
“Three. Two. One - Go.”
As one creature, he and Theo slide down the ropes.
They make it down to the penthouse balcony with no interruptions. Hardin can believe his good luck. So he doesn’t, and keeps his head on a swivel as he hooks onto the balcony, pulling himself and Theo over the railing. The wrap-around terrace features low architectural concrete planters filled with tall bamboo. It’d looked pretentious in the photos. In person, the effect is claustrophobic.
He tabs his goggles from night vision mode to infrared; three heat signatures pop up, hidden by the foliage. One’s stationed by the double doors leading to the great room; two others stand guard at the door leading to the second bedroom.
He catches Theo’s attention with grim doggedness; a few quick motions of his gloved hands later, and Theo nods. He slinks his way towards the man at the main door; a quick stab with a fast-acting tranquilizer and the man sags against the wall. Hardin doesn’t wait. He makes his way towards the spare bedroom. Theo follows behind, both of them staying low and keeping quiet.
On cue, they slip out of the bushes on either sides of their targets, covering mouths with gloved hands, and helping their incapacitated victims down to the ground. When they manage it in tandem, Hardin bares his teeth in something, too feral to be a smile. He turns to the patio door. It’s locked from the outside.
“Evelyn?” Hardin hisses under his breath.
“I see it,” she crackles down the line. “Tech everywhere. You’re in the blind spot now, from what I can tell, but you’ll need to be fast. I’m going to need to be fast. Fuck, oh, God, quick!- quick like a bunny- yeah, and we’re good!”
The door in front of him clicks, once; the locking mechanism retracting.
“See?” Evelyn says over their headsets. “Shit like this is why appliances don’t need Wi-Fi.”
***
Moira walks right up to the door, utterly fearless, and rings the doorbell. Martinez stands to her left, and behind her, eyes studiously focused on the middle distance with military reserve. Moira’s grin is the same colour as the ragged end of a severed limb, and her teeth are wolf-white. Her black hair is long, thick, and lustrous as a black widow’s carapace; she’s split it into two pigtails curled into perfect waves. Mink-black eyelashes frame bottle-green eyes; she looks up through her bangs as she pouts up at the man barring the door.
His eyes, of course, crawl all over her, wrapped as she is in her old high school uniform.
“You lost, baby girl?” The guy’s all but dripping with greasy interest, but he doesn’t crack the door more than an inch.
“No... I don’t think so...” she says, sounding a bit more stupid than she actually is. “I got told to come here and blow whoever answered the door.”
“By who?”
Moira shrugs, popping her bubblegum with entirely unfeigned teenaged insolence.
“Daddy, do I look like I’m smart enough to ask questions?” Moira drawls, and Martinez struggles to keep her face bare of repulsion.
“Why you so curious?” The girl continues. “My boss gave me an address and an order and told me to be a good girl, so here I am.”
She runs a hand over the doorknob with a slow twist of her wrist. Martinez wishes she were anywhere else.
“Are you gonna let me come in?” Moira asks, and there’s a pouting tone to her voice now that seems to hook into this creep’s id. He leans forward, raking his glare over Moira. Despite this not even being her principal, Martinez still wants to take this dude apart on principle.
“You talk a good game, baby-girl,” the man leers. “But who the fuck are you, talking shit with that pretty mouth?”
Moira takes the time to finish blowing her bubble; she pops it with a quick flash of a little pink tongue. The man can’t stop staring at her mouth. “I’m some girl working for some guy who works for somebody he calls J. He told me someone told him to send me to this address, to be a good girl.”
She can see the name work magic; the man’s friend gets up from his seat and comes over. Bigger and burlier, he laughs and claps a hand on the doorjamb, staring down at the a hundred and ten pound teenager and her scowling escort.
“The fuck, man.” He laughs at his colleague, low and dismissive. “You wanna check her ID, too? Make Jesus proud of you? Move your bitch ass out the way,” he says, jostling their gatekeeper out of sight and opening the door a crack wider.
“Come on in, baby,” he says with an ugly expression of genuine interest on his face. “You a good church girl? I’ll get you speaking in tongues.”
Martinez dares a look down; Moira looks uncomfortably interested.
“Okay,” she chirps far too quickly for Martinez’s liking, but rallies by adding, “but Boss said security comes with.”
“The fuck,” the first guy snaps, but Moira pins him with a flat look.
“Chill, baby. See? It’s a woman. It’s just.. two of you, one of me — I guess my guy doesn’t want bruises on his peaches, you know? But she can face the wall, if you’re shy. Or she could watch, daddy,” she tells her prey. “If you’re into that.”
“Fuck,” the big man blurts, and flings the door open greedily.
Moira steps neatly into the broadness of his chest and viciously slams her fist into his windpipe.
He collapses to the side with a gag.
“Sorry,” Moira tells the man, sounding genuinely contrite. Martinez glares at her for a moment before pulling the trigger and nailing their nosy Parker with a tranq dart. He lands on top of the big guy with a wheeze.
Martinez looks at the aftermath: a pile of bodies, an open door, and a teacup sociopath in a literal schoolgirl uniform.
“What?” Moira asks.
“Ew,” she says with a full-body shudder.
Moira nods, nose crinkled as she steps over one body.
“Yeah, but it worked.”
“Oh, what the fuck.” Shard’s eloquent response makes Roz snort out a breath as he shadows the medic into the doorway.
***
Be a good girl and keep tabs on this for me.
She can do that. She can be good.
Isabel stares at the screen with rapt attention; she doesn’t want to miss anything.
Whatever anything might be.
And there is something, eventually. It’s just a single unlocked door, late at night. That’s all. Just a little door opening. One hinge, simple as 1’s and 0’s.
But it’s the guest door to the terrace.
And the terrace is 35 stories up in the sky.
With a door that opens from the outside, because there’s a maiden in the tower and a dragon to guard her.
Isabel checks again and sees nothing else.
It’s probably nothing. Probably nobody. But no doorknob needs Wi-Fi.
Isabel runs a system diagnostic, just in case. She wants to be good for J. She promised she would be. It
wouldn’t be good to be sloppy. When the same bug pops up, Isabel picks up the phone J gave her, and dials the only number in it.
It rings, and rings, and rings, and rings and rings-
Isabel hangs up. Putting her phone in her pocket, she turns off her computer and heads for the door. It’s probably nothing.
But it never hurts to double check.
Chapter Thirteen
Hardin has heard wealth defined as never having to ask the price of anything. Early on, he’d even believed it. Now, he thinks his perspective might have shifted… but he can still recognize billion-dollar views when he sees them.
It’s also a nightmare to infiltrate.
The cavernous expanse is avant-garde modernist, so white it hurts the eye to focus on any one feature. Mirrors expand the space and send sight-lines awry; the glass walls open to the city hundreds of feet below in a vertiginous drop. Hardin’s stomach squelches at all that sky.
He shakes his head to get back in the game. She’s doing this to disorient you. Don’t fall for it. Where is she keeping Riona? Master bedroom? The more he considers it, the less likely it becomes. J wouldn’t want to get her own rooms messy.
He motions to Theo to take the master suite. He wants nothing to do with it. He knows where Ree is.
It’s nerve-wracking to pick his way through the all-white halls; he can’t hear a damned thing, not even footsteps. The air has a dead quality to it, and that means soundproofing. There’s no noise from the room either, but that doesn’t mean anything.
“Evie.”
“On it. Seriously, you think she’d be a fan of a good old-fashioned deadbolt, but here we go and you are in-”
The door swings open with a gust of stale air, and Hardin’s corner-clearing before she’s even finished her sentence. Once he’s inside, he notices two things in quick succession.
First, it smells like an abattoir, making Hardin’s blood runs cold.
Second, Ree is a smear of red over by the glass wall.