Promises

by Aleatha Romig

  My mind filled once again with thoughts of Josey and Byron. He was gone. I was there when the police officer informed us. However, I’d never known what happened to Josey. “Lucy, if my mom is still alive, any information you have may help me find her.”

  “The letter wasn’t from a woman. The signature was from Neal Curry.”

  Araneae

  Neal Curry?

  My eyes narrowed as I took a step back, away from Lucy’s touch. “I-I’ve never heard that name before in my life.”

  At least Josey had mentioned Araneae.

  “Maybe he was the Hawkinses’ representative,” she suggested. “I don’t know.”

  “The Hawkinses weren’t real,” I said, tired of living with lies.

  “I always suspected.”

  “The last time I saw my mom, she told me to become Kennedy Hawkins for my safety. I did. Sterling has given me more. He’s shown me who I really am.”

  “And that is...?” she asked.

  I shook my head, not ready to disclose that information. “It will all come out soon enough. I want to see Louisa.”

  Her head tilted. “The last time you saw your mother? Was that before their automobile accident?”

  She was talking about the fictitious automobile accident the Hawkinses suffered.

  Instead of answering, I said, “You said that birth was close. Take me to Louisa or I’ll ask the nurses.”

  Again Lucy reached out to me. This time I took a step back and straightened my neck.

  Her blue eyes flushed with sadness. “Kennedy, I told you this today because I’m concerned about Mr. Sparrow. I wanted to call you as soon as Louisa told me that you were dating him. I started to call, and then I was afraid your phone might be tapped. I didn’t tell you this information to hurt you but to protect you.” Her head shook. “I’m not sure what he’s told you, but please think of yourself and of your friends. Powerful people usually get that clout by leaving skeletons in their wake. I’m not saying literal dead people. I’m saying secrets and lies that one day could come back to haunt him. I don’t want you or Louisa to be hurt.”

  Her speech hit me wrong. Suddenly, everyone was concerned for my well-being.

  Where have these people been?

  What was real and what were lies?

  Those same questions continued to swirl through my mind as I asked again to see Louisa.

  “Calvin, Louisa, Jason, and I...we all want what is best for you.”

  “I love Sterling. He loves me.”

  “We love you.”

  And you’ve lied to me for ten years. I didn’t say that either.

  “Lucy, may we go to Louisa?”

  She nodded. Together we passed the nurses’ station on our way to an LDR room. Lucy pushed the door inward. I didn’t notice the living room-like furnishings, the large TV, or even the window to the dark night sky. Instead, my gaze went to the person who for the last ten years I’d considered my best friend.

  Unfortunately, in the last five minutes, a cloud of uncertainty had descended, making me question everything. And then as if the sun broke through the clouds, my gaze and Louisa’s met.

  “Kenni,” Louisa called out, her genuine expression filled with happiness and sincerity.

  Concentrating on the here and now, I quickly went forward, wrapping Louisa in a hug. For no reason—or maybe for a million reasons—as we embraced and I closed my eyes, a flood of tears trickled down my cheeks.

  Louisa and I hadn’t seen one another since my last day in Boulder at Sinful Threads, before Sterling kidnapped me to Canada. In our ten years of friendship, it was our longest separation. And yet in this instant, we were reunited. As we hugged, I wanted to believe what Lucy said. I wanted to believe that the only nudge Lucy had given Louisa was for her to introduce herself to me.

  I wanted to believe our friendship was real.

  When I pulled back our eyes met and I said, “I’ve missed you so much.”

  Before she could respond, Louisa’s blue eyes closed and her expression changed. With a groan, her lips came together.

  Jason came forward, smiling at me as he reached for Louisa’s hand. “Breathe, beautiful. Breathe.”

  As I stepped back and away from the bed, Lucy came next to me and wrapped her arm around my waist. “I told you we are close to delivery.”

  I fought my instinct to flinch away from her touch as I watched my best friend work her way through a contraction.

  After a minute or more, Louisa’s grip of Jason’s hand loosened, and she turned my way. “Jeez, these are getting stronger.” A smile came to her lips. “I’m so glad you made it. I hoped you would.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. My best friend was strong and positive even in the midst of giving birth. “Of course,” I said. “I told you that you couldn’t keep me away.” I looked to Jason. “Are you both all right?”

  He nodded. “Tell him thank you.”

  Jason’s gratitude and Sterling’s earlier words twisted my insides. It hurt to know that while Jason was thanking Sterling, I was the person responsible for their traumatic events. “I will.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lucy asked.

  Before we could answer, Louisa’s face scrunched again, and she reached out for Jason’s hand. As she rode out another contraction, the door to her room opened and two people, both dressed in scrubs, came inside.

  “Ladies and gentleman, I think it’s time.” One of the women looked to me, the new face in the room. “I’m Dr. Gorman. We’ve been watching the monitors.”

  I stepped back as the other person—I assumed a nurse—donned latex gloves and went to the foot of the bed. Her hands went under the sheet, making me feel a bit uncomfortable, like I was intruding. Before I could speak, the nurse did.

  “Yes, ten centimeters. We’re fully dilated.” She looked up at Louisa and to Dr. Gorman. “Are we ready to push?”

  I thought the nurse’s use of the personal pronoun we was misleading. Though I’d never given birth, I was confident only Louisa would be doing the work.

  Louisa’s blue eyes went from the nurse to Jason.

  The glance exchanged between the two of them was one of the tenderest expressions of wordless devotion I’d ever witnessed. Simply being an observer filled my heart with joy.

  Louisa nodded as Jason smoothed back her long brown hair away from her flushed face. “You’ve got this.”

  Louisa turned Lucy’s and my way. “I love you both—”

  I lifted my hands. “I’ll be right outside in the waiting room. I’ll let them all know that it’s showtime.”

  Pink filled Louisa’s pallid cheeks. “Private show, but we’ll let you know as soon as Kennedy Lucille makes her debut.”

  With the mention of the baby’s name, Lucy reached for my hand.

  Instead of flinching, I gave hers a squeeze. Next, I made my way back to the waiting room. As soon as I passed beyond the double doors, in the connecting hallway I was met with my own wordless expression. Unlike Jason’s to Louisa, Sterling’s was darker, less adoring, and more like one of questioning.

  “You were gone a while,” he said, his voice low, his tenor rumbling.

  “I’m sure my trackers were being followed. I wasn’t far.”

  “It’s to keep you—”

  I placed a finger over his strong lips. “It’s baby time.” My smile grew. “Thank you again. I couldn’t have made it here in time for the birth if I’d flown commercially.”

  His lips quirked. “Especially with a detour to Wichita.”

  “Yeah, I’d like to avoid those.”

  His arm snaked around my lower back as we walked together to the waiting room.

  I spoke to everyone. “They kicked me out.” All eyes turned to me. “It’s time.”

  The entire room buzzed with excitement.

  Looking back up at Sterling, I asked, “May we step out of here for a moment? I need to tell Reid something.”

  Sterling’s jaw clenched as his shoulders straighte
ned. “Patrick?”

  “Sure. He’ll find out anyway.” As I’d mentioned many times, the three men shared a brain.

  Once the three of us were in a nearly empty hallway—nearly, because I noticed one of the men from the plane casually reading a magazine, sitting in a nearby grouping of chairs—I turned to Patrick and Sterling. “When Lucy first took me back, she asked me if I was safe.”

  Sterling’s brow furrowed. “Why would she—?”

  “I swear,” I interrupted, “I’ve never before heard what she just told me. She said that when I moved here at sixteen, the headmistress of the school asked her if she and Calvin would keep an eye on me.” The words shouldn’t evoke emotion, but they did.

  “You’re saying that Lucy Nelson has had information that she’s only now revealing?” Patrick asked.

  I sighed. “Yes. The reason she’s doing it now is that she was given a letter saying that I might be in danger and to watch for the name Sparrow.”

  The cords in Sterling’s neck protruded as the strain on his jaw increased.

  “She said something else,” I added. “She said the letter she received telling of my possible danger was signed by a man—Neal Curry.”

  Both Patrick and Sterling exchanged looks.

  “Does that name mean anything to you?” I asked.

  Patrick shook his head while Sterling’s eyes darkened. “I-I don’t know,” he finally said.

  “Can you pass this on to Reid?” I asked.

  Patrick’s phone was in his hand. “Sending it to him now. He may be asleep, but he’ll get the message as soon as he wakes.”

  Sighing, I leaned into Sterling. “I keep forgetting that it’s the middle of the night.”

  The man with the magazine was looking our way. He nodded to Sterling who nodded in return.

  “Is this level of protection overkill?” I asked.

  He hugged me closer to his chest. “Nothing is overkill when it comes to keeping you safe.”

  Sterling

  I wasn’t comfortable with the situation. If I hadn’t promised Araneae connection to her best friend from the beginning, we wouldn’t be here. We’d be safely tucked away with Lorna and Reid, high in the sky in Chicago. The medical center was too open, too exposed, and yet I didn’t see any options to avoid where we were. Instead, we did the best with what we had. Between Patrick and I, we’d taken all the precautions we could, men watching the entrances and exits and men stationed near the entrance to the women’s wing and the labor and delivery department—the one Araneae had just seen. Even the nursery was being watched. That was being monitored by Shelly, Patrick’s operative here. A woman in the nursery was less suspicious than a man. Marcel, the man Lindsey introduced as her boyfriend, was also a Sparrow.

  Watching over someone and fraternizing were two different things.

  That would be dealt with, just not here and now.

  It was obvious by his expression that he didn’t plan on seeing me in Boulder.

  The task at hand was too much for our four associates and the ones we had here on the ground. That meant that once again we’d called on Carlos’s men for help. As Araneae went back into the waiting room to her old world, my gaze went to the window in the hallway.

  The sky was beginning to lighten, yet even with the breaking of dawn, the outside protection from the cartel was nowhere to be seen. That didn’t mean they’d let us down. It meant that they were the shadows of this domain. That’s what they did, how they operated, what they preferred. My men weren’t from here, weren’t recognizable. That was why the Sparrows were inside and the cartel was outside.

  Before Patrick and I made our way back into the waiting room, I turned my direction to him. “What do you think about what Araneae said about Neal Curry?”

  His head shook. “I think it’s a fucking clue, maybe the missing piece Reid needs to track down the Marshes.”

  I ran my hand through my hair. “Again, the warning about the Sparrows.”

  Though his lips flattened, Patrick didn’t answer.

  If my father had helped hide her, why were the warnings always about Sparrow?

  “My father knew she was alive—he’d shown me her pictures—until McCrie was killed. That’s when Josey Marsh rushed Araneae to the airport and Kennedy ended up here.” I was thinking aloud, unsatisfied to be in the waiting room around too many people. “If Lucille Nelson is telling the truth...” There was no motivation for her to lie. She could have simply never told Araneae. “...then the letter accompanied Araneae to the boarding school. It was the same time as McCrie died and Araneae was moved away.” I ran my hand through my hair. “I don’t think my father killed nor ordered McCrie killed. The other day, McFadden practically admitted to ordering the kill of McCrie. Something we may never know is why.”

  Patrick nodded. “What happened ten years ago? What rocked the boat? What caused McFadden to turn on McCrie and Allister to turn on Araneae?”

  “It was the same time as when they exhumed the remains in the grave in Cambridge,” I said. “The same time my mother said my father thought he’d been lied to, that Araneae was really in the grave, not the teenager he’d been watching.”

  “No offense, Sparrow, but I don’t trust your mother, her memory or honesty.”

  “It’s fucking hard to learn secrets that have been buried for a decade or more,” I admitted with exasperation in my tone. “I agree with you, but my mother seemed adamant. What I don’t trust—or should I say who I don’t trust—was her source. My father could have easily lied.”

  “It seems,” Patrick said, “the only living player in the three-way scenario with Allister, Daniel, and Rubio...is Rubio.”

  “Who the hell is or was Neal Curry?”

  “Someone who knew Araneae was alive after she was rushed out of Chicago. Someone who knew exactly where she'd show up.”

  “The obvious answer would be the Marshes,” I said. “After all, Araneae said her mother rushed her to the airport and gave her the new identity. We need to be sure the letter addressed Araneae as Kennedy.”

  Patrick nodded as he looked down at his phone.

  “Reid probably isn’t awake,” I said. “When he is, I want to know what he can learn about Neal Curry as soon as he learns it.”

  Our man back in Chicago had a full plate. What with our normal activities in and around the city, learning the contents of the lockbox, and tracking down Neal Curry, it was a lot for even Reid. Patrick and I needed to get back to Chicago to do our part.

  Patrick looked up from the screen of his phone. “Reid’s awake. He just texted me and said he’s on the Curry thing.” Patrick continued to read. “It sounds like he’s also been up most of the night. When Lorna fell asleep, he went to two.”

  “Did he say how she’s doing?”

  Patrick’s eyes moved from the screen to my gaze. With a slight shake of his head, his lips curled upward.

  “Fine,” I replied to his smirk. “Araneae is making me soft.”

  “It’s not soft, Sparrow. It’s compassion. Doesn’t always work in this world, but it’s not a bad thing to have, especially not for the right people.”

  I grunted.

  It was new for me, and it wasn’t.

  The people who resided in our apartment were there for one reason. I fucking gave a shit about them. They were to me like the people in the waiting room were to Araneae. They were the weakness of Araneae’s that I’d purposely exploited. She gave a shit about those people. That’s why we had Sparrows here on the ground until this thing with McFadden and Araneae was settled.

  I just wasn’t certain what settled would mean. According to my mother, it meant obliteration.

  “Lorna’s still asleep,” Patrick replied, pulling me from my thoughts and relaying the information on his screen. “Reid also said he’s making progress breaking the encryption. With the age of the data storage, he believes the bit key will be comparatively shorter than if it had been encrypted today. His biggest problem was breaking into the ou
t-of-date storage devices without damaging the data.”

  It could be compared to video games. I never had time for that shit. The war I played was real. However, we have capos with excellent hacking skills, surfers of the dark web, who began their education as gamers. Reid had to figure out how to essentially play a twenty-six-year-old video game on a new, incompatible console.

  “He broke through the issues with reading the CDs,” Patrick said, “and has multiple computers running, devoted to finding the encryption scheme.”

  In my head I imagined the screens upon the wall on floor two, the data spinning and running with all the possibilities until the right one was found. With the computer power we had in our operation, literally thousands of possible schemes could be attempted per second.

  The door from the waiting room opened.

  Araneae’s cheeks were wet and eyes red.

  “What is it?” I asked, rushing toward her.

  “She’s here.”

  My pulse increased as I reached for Araneae’s shoulders. “And...is she—?”

  Araneae reached for her phone and swiped the screen, bringing a picture to life.

  Araneae

  “Look,” I said as I held up my phone. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

  Sterling shook his head as he pulled me close. “Fuck, Araneae.”

  “What?” I craned my neck upward.

  “The tears. In our world, they usually mean something bad.”

  With my arms around his waist and his around mine, the world felt right. “This is what I was talking about, Sterling. You always jump to the most negative conclusion. Kennedy Lucille is here. She’s beautiful and according to Lucy she has a very loud cry. She also has ten fingers, ten toes, weighs seven pounds and twelve ounces, and is twenty-one inches long.”

  “Sunshine, those most negative conclusions keep us on top of all possible scenarios.” Sterling turned to Patrick. “Message Darius for the car and Marianne for the plane. We’re headed home.”