by Tara Brown
She smiled. “I'm just saying that instead of being a good agent, he gets drunk and into bar fights, or goes and fights in underground UFC matches when you're with Servario. He doesn’t do his job which he takes very seriously. It's odd.”
I gazed out the window as she drove. “Well, I'm telling you now, he doesn’t have any intention of acting out on whatever his feelings for me are. He made that perfectly clear. He might be mad at himself for how he treats me, but it’s all to keep me at arm’s length.”
“He's complex.”
“Exactly what I need in my life.” I scoffed.
She laughed with me. “You know he likes you. He likes you a lot. Servario does too. You are a hot commodity, milady.”
“I think I need another Servario break.” I gave her a grin. “You know what though? I’m so excited for you. At least you’re lucky. Jack is the best guy in the whole world.”
“No.” She put a hand up. “Shhhh, we don’t talk about it. It'll jinx it.”
“Okay. I just wanted you to know, he’s the best.”
“I know, right? He is.” Her sigh was lovely and sweet. I could have sipped from the nectar she was putting in the air. I could almost see it. She gave me a side-glance. “You think Steve is a bad guy?”
“Uhm”—I paused, contemplating it—“no, I don’t. I think he's a good guy, but we can't trust him. We can't trust anyone.”
“Not even Servario.”
My eyes were dry as I stared straight ahead and answered flatly, “No. Especially not him. We can use him and let him use us, but we can't trust him.”
9
New Evie
I rolled over in the bed, stretching and blinking to the sound of Luce doing something out in the living room. It had been a beautiful sleep, since I was absolutely exhausted. The time change, jet lag, being awake for so long, getting screwed all night long, and then of course, being served a nice warm cup of fuck you, Evie. It had all really taken it out of me.
I opened an eye to the panicked stare of Luce from the small crack in the doorway to the bedroom. I shot up from the bed as a trickle of blood dripped from her lips. She made a mewl like a sheep and dropped to her knees. She shook her head and mouthed, “Run!”
I couldn’t breathe or make a sound. Everything was stuck in the crimson liquid dripping down her lips. I tried to see past her. There was no movement.
“Luce, just tell me where she is. I know she's here.” James' voice rang out in the hotel room. I rolled over, silently dropping to the floor. “I didn’t recognize the young man with you, but you—you I recognized instantly. You haven’t changed a bit, still so beautiful and strong. I couldn’t believe my luck when I saw you.”
I breathed into the carpet, frozen for seconds before I crawled under the bed and watched his black leather shoes saunter in slowly. “I want my money, Luce. I know Evie has it. Servario moved it when I crossed him with Roxy. I know he gave it to Evie. He said it was my punishment. If you're here, so is Evie. Who else is with you?” He dropped to a knee over her body. They were barely visible through the crack of the doorway. “Does she know about us? Did you tell her?”
Luce made a gurgling sound. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I shook my head.
“You give her this note from me when you see her next.”
I held my breath and tears as he crumpled some paper into her bloody hand and got up. The door closed, but I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I lay there, frozen and scared. When I didn’t hear anything, I crawled to the edge of the bed and pulled the phone down to me.
I dialed the zero.
“Buongiorno?”
“Hi, Room 715. I need an ambulance. There has been an attack.”
“Ma'am, I can barely hear you.”
My voice wavered as I tried to speak louder, “Hurry the fuck up and send an ambulance. Someone has been hurt badly. An intruder is in the room. Hurry.” I hung up the phone and crawled to the door. I peeked through, but there was no movement. I crawled to Luce, gripping her hands. “Luce, can you hear me?”
She nodded, gurgling. “Kill him,” she croaked.
“Okay.” I wiped my tears and lifted her shirt to see the stab wound in her lungs. She would drown if they didn’t hurry. A knock came at the door as men burst through it. Police and first aid. They were talking Italian quickly, shouting at me. I pointed. “My friend, please help her. Some man came in here and hurt her.” I crumpled the paper I’d taken from her bloody fingers. They pushed me out of the way, and I ran and pulled on jeans and a tee shirt. One of the policemen grasped my arm as I tried to leave the room. “What happened?”
I offered, “I don’t know, I was sleeping. I woke and she was like this. I heard a man talking and then he was gone. I called for help.”
“You heard him and you stayed in the room?” His tone was filled with judgments.
“I hid under the bed.” I was ashamed.
“While your friend was being hurt?” His tone didn't improve, neither did my shame.
“I should have helped her, but I was scared.” And weak and pathetic.
“Did she know him?”
“Yeah. I think so. I think he's an American she dated.” That little comment he’d made didn’t escape my notice. “It sounded like him anyway, and I know he's in Rome right now. We ran into him last night.” I described James to a T and gave the police officer the name of the person I thought it might be, lying and saying he was an ex-boyfriend of hers. At least that way Interpol and the Italian police would be searching for him. He questioned me until Coop and Jack showed up.
They were obviously both scared when they saw the police and the blood. I couldn’t meet Jack's eyes. The police officer left his card for me with the hospital's name on it and walked past Coop and Jack.
When we were alone I muttered, “We have to hurry. Luce's been taken to a hospital.”
Jack's face paled. “What happened?”
“I'll explain on the ride over. We need to hurry.”
When we reached the hospital, we ran inside, regardless of who would see us or recognize us. I didn’t have my wig on, just my jeans and a ponytail. She was in surgery when we got there. Coop gave them her medical information as Jack and I sat against the wall, waiting. He was silent and I was sick with shame.
“I should have helped her, Jack. I'm sorry. I woke up and he was there, and they must have been fighting. She must’ve been protecting me.”
“It was her job, Evie.” He was straightforward and I was sickened.
It didn’t change the fact that I had hid while she was nearly dying in the next room. I went to the bathroom and sat on the toilet and rocked back and forth. The training hadn’t kicked in. Survival had. I imagined my kids with no one but him—James. I’d seen the things I had to protect and Luce wasn’t one of them. She was my teammate, and I had not protected her.
I got up to wash my face in the sink as Coop came in.
“What the fuck, Evie? Why didn’t you help her?”
“I don’t want to talk about this right now. I feel bad, really bad.”
He shoved me slightly. “You should. She was your partner and you let her nearly die. They’re not sure if she's going to make it, and you let him get away. You should’ve killed him. A real agent would’ve.”
“I know.” I shoved him back. “I know that. Don’t you think I know that?”
“No. I don’t think you do. I don’t think you get this at all. We aren’t your bodyguards anymore. You aren’t the yoga mom anymore. This is the real deal, you’re on the team. Fucking start acting like it, before I ship you home. I have half a mind to do it now. You get into Servario's, and instead of getting the info and getting out, you stay and fuck him all night long. You need a nap so Luce has to watch over you and now she's hurt. This isn’t the Princess Evie show. It's a fucking mission to find your ex and kill him, find out who tried to kill you and kill them, and find out who’s after the Burrow and kill them so we can all have a normal life again.” He was spitting mad. H
is face was flushed with rage. “Do you even realize we are double agents now because of you? We have to kill the list of dangerous criminals and threats to the Burrow before we can be normal again.”
I had no excuse and no answer. I stood there, biting my lip to prevent it from quivering. “I know. I'm sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, it pisses me off more. You piss me off. I can't believe you stayed the night with him. Why? You like getting used like a slut by the bad guys of the world?”
My hand flung out fast as horrible words left my lips, “You sold me to him, you bipolar fuck. You set me up for it in front of everyone, knowing our history.” When my hand made contact, he didn’t budge. He stood frozen as his cheek turned bright red.
“Okay, I deserved that." He took a deep inhale. "I just don’t get why you didn’t get something useful from Servario or kill James. You let Luce get attacked. Why aren’t you being the girl I know you can be?”
I began to cry, partly out of fear from slapping him so hard, and partly out of shame and feeling lost, completely. “That reckless girl is gone. I have to be a mom, Coop. I have to live for my kids.”
He grabbed my arms, shaking me slightly. “Evie, your best chance at living is ending this shit. Fight back and end it, and you can be a mom. Fight back and make this all go away.”
“I'm sorry.”
He still seemed like he might kill me, possibly at any second. “Don’t be sorry, be strong.” His voice wavered, “Stop letting him and James be the most powerful things in your life.”
I closed my eyes and let go, attempting to see it all in perspective. I listened as Coop's footsteps left me alone. I didn’t want to be there when he came back so I took the opportunity to go think quietly and alone.
Instead of watching the door, waiting for the doctor to come and give us the bad news, I wandered the halls of the hospital, but they were worse than sitting outside Luce's room. I found an old set of stairs that led to a quiet place, far removed from the pain and suffering of the hospital rooms. It led to the roof of the hospital. It wasn't a clean place. In fact, it was old and dirty, but there was a great spot to sit and mull over the essence of my existence.
I sat on a concrete form and gazed out over the ancient city, letting the last couple months run through my head. Coop, although his delivery always sucked, was right. I was letting them all be bigger than I was. My insides tightened as I contemplated. I had to stop being Evie the victim and become Evie the spy. I needed to process and find the answers myself, instead of waiting for Coop to do everything.
I needed to focus.
James. James was the key to it all.
I got up and paced.
He must have known from the start who my father was. Was that possible? At this point, anything was possible.
My father was a smart man, but James—he seemed invincible. We all treated him like he was stupid, but was he? I paced as I tapped my fingernail against my nose, processing. Of course, James knew who my father was. That was the only way this all made sense. He had used me to get to my father. He’d dated me, knocking me up, and married me as part of the job.
“Evie.”
I turned to find Coop frowning at me. “Piss off, Coop. I'm thinking.”
“Yeah.” He pointed. “I can tell by the steam coming off your head.”
I ignored him and continued to pace. “There’s something about it all that doesn't quite make sense, but if you think about the bigger picture, maybe it does. How does he keep getting so lucky, and how did he get involved in the first place?”
Coop cocked an eyebrow. “What?”
“Nothing.” I waved a hand at him, almost thinking aloud. “I mean, what if James knew my father was the Master Key from the very beginning? What if he only dated me because he was a plant from the start, and my father was the enemy's best guess at who the Burrow's protector was? We both know he accidentally got me pregnant and married me because he had to, but honestly, what if it was all an act? What if his being in the CI was the act? What do we know about him for sure?”
Coop sat in the spot I had been, the only spot without pigeon shit. “We know he was an only child to two older parents. Both are dead now, but they were at your wedding. They got sick and died of cancer in the last couple of years, did they not?”
“Yes.” I frowned. “I always thought it was weird they both got cancer. I was scared for my kids.”
“It is weird but not uncommon nowadays.”
"What if he was a plant from the start, a kid plant? What if he isn’t loyal to our country? What if he's a spy—like a real one who's left over from the cold war?”
Coop seemed ready to scoff at the idea but he didn’t. He sat there, thinking. “If he was a plant from the start, he must have been planted in the US when he was a kid or picked up as a young cadet. He was a cadet, wasn’t he?”
“He was. He always busts on Mitch for not wanting to be a cadet.”
Coop sighed. “Fuck, if he's a real spy, not just a sold-out double agent, then we have major issues on our hands and no one is going to back us up. We’re in too deep now. We can’t ask for aid without risking your kids and God knows what else.”
“Then we take this down, just us.”
“Just us and Servario?” He sounded dubious.
“No. Just us. I don’t want to ask him for help until we know what his plan is. He’s too aloof and sneaky.”
“It'll go faster if we use Servario to lead us to James, and he might be our only chance.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Wow, how did that sentence taste?”
“Bad. But I don’t want to waste a lifetime chasing James. I want him dead as badly as you do.”
I slumped onto the seat next to him, almost on him to avoid the poop. “Fine. But I want you to know I'm really sorry I let Luce get hurt.”
His tone softened, “She was protecting you.”
“I should’ve been protecting her too.” I stared at my feet. “Did you know she and James knew each other?”
His gaze jerked toward me. “What?”
"James asked Luce if I knew about them and then gave her this." I handed him the note he’d stuck in her fingers.
Meet me tonight at dusk at Caesar's Curia!
He read the note as I muttered, “Apparently, they might have been lovers. While he was trying to kill her, he said she was still just as beautiful as before and he missed her. Something to that effect.”
Coop's face was stoic but his eyes were on fire. He got up fast, bolting from the rooftop. I sat a minute longer, trying to imagine how it would all work out. How I could find the agent I once was and let go of the mom I seemed stuck as. Coop was right. The only way to end it was to become the emotionless thing I used to be. No pain, no gain. But how would I explain that to my kids?
10
History Lesson for Dummies
I had followed Coop down to the hospital room, but he wasn’t in the hallway with Jack when I got there. I sat across from Jack. It took me a minute to notice the strange look he was giving me. His lips twitched as if he wanted to say something but he didn’t. I nudged him with my foot. “Just say it. Just tell me.”
He swallowed hard. “I have a bad feeling about a couple of things I found in his phone.”
“Oh. Uhm, okay.” My heart raced, but I pushed my feelings down. Clearly, he didn't want to tell me he hated me. For some reason the thought of Jack hating me was akin to my own son hating me.
“Firstly, he’s an avid fan of some really weird porn sites.”
“Gross.” I wrinkled my nose but I had to admit it. “Maybe he's a sex addict.” It was weird saying that to Jack but it made sense.
“Okay.” He paused and then continued, “Awesome. Even awesomer, I think he has a thing for voyeuristic fetishes and girls getting touched on city transit.”
“Awesomer isn’t a word.” I paused for a second. “Are there any young people on the sites?” My brain was panicking—full-fledged, four-alarm panic. Was Servario a
pedo?
“No, all nineteen and up but some are dressed in schoolgirl outfits, and they are always matched with older guys. It's mostly Asian girls getting groped and shit on trains and buses. It's supposed to be like the girl doesn’t know it's happening, but the acting is pretty bad. Like how do you not notice an old dude’s finger going up your—”
“Whoa!” I shuddered. “Okay—God. I don’t want to know. Fine, so he likes grown women in schoolgirl uniforms getting molested on buses?”
“Right. And trains.”
“Jack!”
“Sorry. The other sites are all equally as dirty.”
“Okay.” I rubbed my eyes. “I can’t say I never saw this coming.” I also couldn’t say I was okay with it all. “He’s a pervert, I knew that.”
Jack seemed mystified. “Did you think he’d need to go to the sites a couple of times a day? His history has him on these sites several times a day, for prolonged periods.”
I waved my hand. “Moving on.”
Jack sounded reluctant, “The other thing is, he has your mom on speed dial, but the number is one none of us have. I dialed it and she answered with some crazy code, but I recognized her voice. I hung up before she figured out it was me.”
“Oh my God,” I moaned into my hands. “For fuck's sake. Is anyone ever going to give me the whole story? Just one story, all at once? Like really, this is annoying. Give me the phone.”
He gave me a hesitant look. “Maybe we should wait for Coop?”
“No,” I snarled. “Dial the number, Jack.”
He jumped, pressing a button, and handing the phone over to me. I sat with it up to my ear.
“4475293. Nightingales and butterflies have it in common?”
“MOM?”
She paused. “Evie? Was that you who called earlier? How did you get this phone? Oh God, Evie, what have you done?”
“Jesus, Mom. What the hell? You've been calling Servario? You have a nightingale code with him? What the hell? Are you guys friends?”