Call You Mine

by Claudia Burgoa

  You’d think she’s on my side, but nope. She knows the reason he’s calling, and she’s fucking logical. “I answered because I guess things are not going well with his dad, and he can only ignore him for so long.”

  “I can ignore him forever.” I sigh and warn her, “Leave it alone, G.”

  “He’s sick, and you have to at least say goodbye. It’ll be good for your soul,” she claims.

  Leave it to her to try to find a good excuse to make me give a shit. She has a badass family. If anything happens to one of them, we’re all there to offer support. I mean we because they’ve welcomed me as part of their family since I was a kid.

  “I’m soulless, so it doesn’t matter,” I argue while she groans in response.

  Baby, not everyone has a set of terrific parents like you.

  I frown when she says, “Beacon’s Jiminy Cricket.”

  Then smirk at her because she is like my conscience. The one who grounds me. The person who makes me be a better version of whatever the fuck I’m supposed to be.

  “Just less green, sassier, and cuter,” I correct and wink at her.

  I extend my hand and wiggle my fingers, asking nicely for the phone. “Hang up, G.”

  She turns around, ignoring me. I hope she knows what she just got herself into. I’m getting that phone, and she’s going to beg for mercy.

  “What is it that you need to tell him? I’ll convey the message.”

  “Fine.” She sighs loudly and makes an entire production of tapping the phone. “Speak.”

  “Beacon, our father died yesterday morning.”

  The entire room dims. I swear my heart stops beating. Grace rushes to hug me. I lean on her. Ever since Thursday, after the fucking lawyer called, I’ve been pretending that I don’t give a fuck. He didn’t care. Why should I?

  But I do care. No one deserves to die alone—not even him. I spent the flight from London to New York wondering if I should stop by his house. I did. I sneaked into the penthouse without anyone noticing. I saw him lying on a hospital bed, unresponsive.

  “I pray I don’t end up like you,” I said, kissing his forehead, and I left.

  Only Seth knows about it. I haven’t mentioned it to Grace. She’s been by my side ever since I went to pick her up at her parents’ house.

  Well, I guess there won’t be a family reunion to celebrate the miracle that the old man got better. I should just let everyone go. I don’t need the fucking hassle of dealing with them.

  “Tell him I don’t give a fuck,” I say, releasing her.

  I pace around the kitchen. This isn’t my problem anymore. Why should I give a shit?

  “When is the funeral?” Grace questions. I look at the ceiling, not sure if I’m praying that she just hangs up or if I’m annoyed by her worry.

  She shouldn’t care either. You care. Of course, she gives a shit. She’s your best friend.

  “In two weeks, in Baker’s Creek. We need him to be there—it’s not optional,” he answers.

  Grace and I stare at each other. Baker’s Creek is this small, picturesque town that we often visit since her cousin Tucker has a vacation home and family in the town. They don’t know my father is from there. I’m technically Baker’s Creek royalty—if it was a fucking kingdom.

  “Hmm, I know where that is.” Grace grins. I’m sure she’s planning on inviting her entire family to the funeral. “You hear, Beac, we’re going to Baker’s.”

  “There’s no fucking way I’m going to that damn town,” I announce.

  More like, I’m not going to the funeral, but we’ll be there during the next Decker family reunion.

  “Um, we were there just a couple of weeks ago.”

  Fuck, what is with her today? I charge toward her. “That’s it, you asked for it, G.”

  She screeches, running away from the kitchen.

  I catch her by the waist and begin tickling her as I shove her on top of my shoulder.

  She’s laughing, snorting, and yelling, “Stop! Put me down, Beac!”

  “You know what to do.”

  “Uncle!”

  I laugh, tossing her on the couch. She grabs my hand, pulls me to her while kicking me behind the knees, so I lose my balance. I end up on the floor and her on top of me. We’re both laughing at the nonsense.

  “You need to finish the call,” she mumbles when we finally calm down.

  “I don’t.”

  She holds my face. “I know it hurts. Maybe it doesn’t have to be a final goodbye but a new hello.”

  “No. I’m better without them, G.”

  I push myself up and help her stand up. We find my phone, and I say, “Look, asshole, I don’t give a shit about the old man.”

  “We agree, Beacon. Yet, we’re here trying to deal with his shit one last time.”

  Grace and I frown, looking at each other.

  Mills? she mouths.

  “Mills?” I ask, fucking confused.

  G pulls out her phone and shows me his calendar. He’s supposed to be in New York. The Orcas are playing the Rangers…right about now.

  Why is he there? He could’ve called me. Actually, why hasn’t he reached out to talk about our father?

  “Yeah, and Henry is here, too,” he responds. “Just do this once, okay?”

  I want to say no, but I’m not leaving him alone with those assholes.

  “Fine. Send me the info. I’ll be there. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have family shit to do.”

  “Your wife?” he asks.

  I laugh because wouldn’t that be fucking amazing.

  “Nah, I don’t do that shit. My best friend invited me to have brunch with her family. See you later, assholes.”

  “I wish you had said goodbye to him.”

  “I did,” I mumble.

  “What?”

  “On Thursday, we stopped in New York. He was unresponsive. I scanned his chart and sent it to Seth. He got one of the doctors to explain to me that he was about to die soon.”

  She nods. “You wanna skip brunch?”

  If anyone would like to know the definition of the perfect woman, go no further. Grace Aiko Decker Bradley is it. She knows me so well. I do want to stay. It’d be easy to agree. I don’t. She needs her family. These weekly meals make her happy. I wouldn’t keep her away from her people. Never.

  “Everyone is expecting Beac’s French toast,” I say, trying to let go of my dad and the call.

  She rolls her eyes. “Just so you know, they’d love you even without your casserole.”

  “You get muffins tomorrow,” I remind her. She grins. “Only if you stay with me for one more night, though.”

  She hugs me, and I absorb all of her while holding her tight.

  “What are you doing here?” Mills arches an eyebrow and glances from Grace to me. “I appreciate all the presents, but can you keep it to just one per visit?”

  “The last time we visited you ran out of finger paints,” Grace answers. “I’m sure you haven’t replaced them.”

  Mills smirks and says, “Sometimes I wonder if the toys and crafts are for you or my kid.”

  She grins. “I like to think it’s for both.”

  Grace makes her way inside the house. When Arden sees her, he yells, “G!”

  “He doesn’t need all these presents, but I appreciate them,” Mills tells me when I enter the house and hand him all the packages we brought. “Though, I wish you had called telling me you were coming?”

  “So you could clean the place?” I glance at the living room that’s filled with dinosaurs. “Lucky for you, I’m pretty good at the Jurassic and Crustaceous periods. We can handle this gig.”

  He rolls his eyes.

  “Not that I don’t like you to visit, but why are you here?”

  “We were just passing by,” I lie.

  He laughs. “Really? You decided to take a drive and ended up in Canada?”

  “Something like that,” I confirm.

  “I told you to call him before we dropped by,�
� Grace claims.

  “It’s not like he’s throwing a dinner party and we’re interrupting him,” I state, glancing around. “Unless you called your brothers to visit you, and I wasn’t invited.”

  “I knew you were going to give me shit about it.” He mumbles the last words.

  “It’s just weird that I wasn’t invited to this brotherly reunion.” I shrug.

  Mills grunts. “It wasn’t a reunion. Hayes and Henry texted me in the middle of the game to announce that our father died on Saturday. Somehow, they knew I was in New York. They asked me to join them at Henry’s office. When I arrived, they were on a video conference with Pierce. Hayes is the one pushing for this reunion.”

  He looks at Arden and then back at me. “He’s going through a middle life crisis of sorts.”

  “His dad just died…your father just died four days ago. It’s okay not to be okay,” Grace says. “How are you doing, Mills?”

  “That ‘okay not to be okay’ makes zero sense, G,” I argue.

  “I’m coping,” Mills responds to her, rolling his eyes at me. “She’s right. How are you handling it?”

  “He isn’t,” Grace responds. “The man is in denial. How about you?”

  Mills shrugs. “I have an appointment with my therapist tomorrow. There’s the usual anger, sadness, denial…I think we all have that ongoing. I spoke to Vance and he refuses to think about our father until the funeral.”

  He grabs a couple of beers from the fridge, and we go out to the deck.

  “You okay?” I ask him, pointing at his knee. “While you were with Hayes, you could’ve told the asshole to fix your knee.”

  He shakes his head. “We grabbed some lunch after the calls. He seems lonely. We’re all a bunch of pathetic losers.”

  I laugh. “Thank you. I always wanted my big brother to call me a loser.”

  Mills takes a sip of his beer, looks at the horizon and then back inside where Grace is laughing with Arden. “You’re in love with her, yet you’re just friends.”

  “Our lives are complicated.”

  “That’s the thing. We just can’t figure out how to coexist with another person. Henry is single. Hayes is still pining for Blaire—”

  I whistle. “Good luck getting her to forgive the asshole.”

  He nods. “That’s our problem, we fuck up all the time. Pierce is in the middle of a divorce. I only attract gold diggers.”

  I’m tempted to tease him and say, “You mean, puck diggers.” If I do, he’s going to tell me I don’t take him seriously—like ever. Arden’s mom did a number on him. The guy has trust issues.

  “We can’t find happiness. That curse our grandmother used to warn us about might be real, you know,” he concludes.

  Leaning against the railing of the balcony, I wonder what it would take to stop us from doing stupidities. Maybe we keep looking at our ancestors’ failures. It’s the fear that cripples our emotions and gets the worst of us. When I look at Grace, for the first time in eleven years, I wonder if I could make things happen for us.

  Maybe someday?

  Chapter Four

  Beacon

  The air is slightly cold and humid. Sweat runs down my back as if we were under the sun—we’re not. It’s already dark. My jaw tightens. “What the fuck is taking so long?”

  If this moment had a soundtrack, it’d be something composed by John Williams, and it’d sound close to the score of Jaws. While growing up, no one believed I’d be able to stay quiet in one place for more than a minute. If I have a target, it’s easy. When I use one of my people as bait, it’s fucking impossible.

  “Calm the fuck down, Beac,” Sanford says over the earpiece. “We’ve done this a million times.”

  He’s right. We’ve been training for thirteen years, working for eleven. I’ve led missions for five years. We’re professional musicians, and also agents for the best high intelligence agency in the world.

  That doesn’t make this moment any easier.

  He can say shit, but his girl isn’t in the line of fire, pretending to be a naïve college girl looking for the frat party everyone is talking about. Mine is. Fine, Grace isn’t mine, but she’s my reason to live.

  It’s about the same, right?

  And no matter how many times we do this, it’s nerve-wracking to wait, watch, and stay calm.

  We can’t fuck this up. I can’t lose the girl or the assholes.

  This is it. Our last chance to get a lead on the trafficking cell that has been kidnapping college girls in Portland. Classes are over. Everyone is in the middle of finals. In a few days, everyone is either going back home or starting a summer job. When that happens, these fuckers will disappear. They might come back when the next semester starts, or they’ll move the operation to another big city.

  It happened last year in Atlanta. We were so close. I don’t want them to get away—again—but having Grace as bait is fucking killing me. I want to toss her over my shoulder and take her away from harm.

  If she could hear my thoughts, she’d be so fucking upset. The woman knows krav maga, jiujitsu, and karate. She knows how to use a knife. That’s her weapon of choice. They are easier to use than guns, according to her. She can take care of herself, but that doesn’t take away my need to protect her.

  “You know what would be easier?”

  “If you shut up?” Lang responds. “I have at least seven different cameras to monitor.”

  He’s in Seattle in his home office looking at the monitors on the wall. I bet there’s one where he’s playing a video game while we wait. As usual, he watches everything from a safe distance. The guy flies the drones.

  The aircraft is several feet above Grace. It’s far enough that no one in the ground can see it. The video technology installed in the drone makes it possible to film and take pictures of everyone around the quad. It should be able to capture the faces of whoever tries to take our girl.

  “You know what we should be doing?” Fish asks.

  “Recording an album, figuring out how to get Beacon out of his father’s will, or playing video games,” Mane answers. “Why did I sign up for this shit? I swear you said, ‘We will form a band.’ Not, ‘We will be working as—’ What are we? Some fancy look-a-like of a CIA-Interpol-FBI private agency with no retirement plan, dangerous working conditions, and a fucked up schedule.”

  San laughs through the communicator.

  His question is complicated.

  We’ve been friends for a long time—since preschool. Grace’s mom likes to pair up people she thinks might have things in common, including music. One thing led to another, and we found ourselves learning martial arts with Mason Bradley. Several years later, here we are, working for him. I can’t say that we do this during our spare time because sometimes we play in specific venues to scout or work on a mission.

  Mane is right. There are times when it is confusing to understand what we do—even for us. Are we musicians or agents?

  We can be both. Our band is renowned worldwide. We love playing—just like we love working for The Organization. They shouldn’t complain about the working conditions. Today is a lot better than other missions.

  “This reminds me of Moscow four years ago,” San says.

  Well, this is a lot better than being in the middle of Red Square having a red laser pointed at my chest. Back then, I was the bait and not in charge of the team. Yet, I feel a lot more anxious. G’s safety is on the line. One mistake and…I don’t want to think about what could happen to her.

  My heart picks up its pace when I spot a guy talking to Grace. She tosses her head and laughs. Then she tilts her body just a bit to the right.

  “That’s the signal,” I remind them.

  Sure enough, there are two more guys close by watching their conversation. A prickle climbs the back of my neck as she nods and walks willingly with him.

  “Got a few shots of the four guys,” Lang says over the communicator.

  “I only count three,” San, who is on the hig
hest point of the area with a rifle, announces. He’s a trained sniper. “Where’s the other one, Lang?”

  Lang sends a text with the pictures of the suspects. One of them is the guy walking beside Grace.

  “He’s taking her to an alley. There’s a van parked there,” Lang alerts us.

  Fuck, it’s taking all of my self-restraint not to run and stop the operation. It’s not because I don’t trust her. I do. I’m just irrational.

  “We get them, we pursue them…what’s the deal?” asks Mane. He’s the closest to the van.

  “Follow her lead,” I answer.

  One of our drivers is ready to tail them if she decides to get in the van with them. I pray that she doesn’t do it. The last time this lady let someone kidnap her, it was a fucking challenge to rescue her. It’s not impossible, but I don’t want a repeat.

  Grace stops right in front of the restaurant that’s next to the alleyway. The guy pushes her slightly. She steps back. He grabs her arm.

  “Wrong move, buddy,” San mumbles. “I’ll shoot him if he tries something else.”

  “He’s about to get his ass kicked,” I murmur when he pulls her.

  She takes off one of her hair pins. She stabs him in the side. Then, with gracefulness, she twirls, lifts her left leg, and kicks him in the shoulder. Once her feet are back on the ground, she lands a short jab square on his nose. This woman loves to break noses. The guy drops to the floor.

  “Okay, we have the other three guys making a run for it and leaving their man on the ground,” Lang alerts us.

  “God, you have to stop talking so much,” Grace complains as she starts walking away from the scene. “The guy is down. I swear I barely touched him. There are two more inside the van. I’m not sure if they are the ones we’re looking for, but these guys are up to no good. I had time to toss a couple of knives to the tires. They can’t go anywhere.”

  I text the team, assigning new duties for everyone. The police should be here to pick up the van and the guys in a few minutes.

  “Everyone stays away from the scene. The cleaning crew is approaching. They’re taking him into custody,” I order.