I cross my arms, darting my gaze from the manila folder to her position by the window. “How did you get all those documents? Did you already talk to Tristan about this?”
“Tristan doesn’t know,” she says matter-of-factly.
“Mom… What’s going on?”
She lowers her head, eyes closed, as if she’s remembering.
“You remember when Papa was still here?”
“Of course.” I have vague memories of my grandfather. When my father brought my mother to the United States with him, he also secured a visa for my grandfather. He moved back to Honduras a couple of years after Mariana passed away. We spoke by phone sometimes, but I haven’t seen him in years.
“He helped us when Mariana was very sick. Before you and Mariana were born, he’d been working at a research facility just outside of Boston. The relationship with the company soured after a few years. Papa disagreed with some of their practices. They wanted him to skew his research to benefit the company, and he disagreed. Adamantly. When he left, he published a paper on it in one of the popular medical journals. There was an investigation. The company had to pay fines, but they persevered.”
“What does this have to do with Mariana?”
She comes back to the couch and sits. “We were desperate, Isabel. You can’t understand the lengths a person will go to for their child. We would have done anything to make her well. None of the treatments were working.” Her lips tremble slightly. “Papa’s old company was working on an experimental drug. It was still in trials. Papa went to them.”
“But there was bad blood between them.”
“He agreed to retract his statements, reimburse the fines, even if it bankrupted him. Anything if it would help Mariana.”
My jaw falls slightly. “So you agreed.”
“We signed waivers, a stack of nondisclosures that would protect them if anything were to go wrong. We would have signed anything.”
I feel sick, but go to her and clutch her hand, needing to hear the rest.
“She died two days after the first treatment.” She exhales shakily. “We couldn’t save her, but they stole the only time we had left.”
I’m stunned, repainting the story in my mind with this new information.
“You really think they killed her?”
My mother lifts her now stony gaze to mine. “They were unreachable. Even before she’d passed, they wouldn’t answer our calls. After she died, Papa received a sympathy card from the man he betrayed with the paper he published. Just his signature. He knew then it was justice for what he’d done.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “That was over twenty years ago. Even if what you’re saying is true, if they killed her to get back at Papa…”
“Isabel, why would someone want you dead?”
I scramble for possibilities, an exercise that always seems to draw up fruitless conclusions. “Maybe Dad is involved in something.”
She crushes my hand in hers. “Sweetheart, no.”
TRISTAN
I spent the night scoping out Jay’s apartment in the city. After dawn broke, I followed her to the airport, checked the times for her flight to New York City, and promptly headed back to the apartment, arriving just after her scheduled takeoff.
Considering she was the manager of a high-profile mercenary ring, her security system was surprisingly easy to hack. Within twenty minutes, I was able to bypass the system, and now I’m standing in her immaculate luxury apartment. Not a thing out of place. Not even a coffee cup in the sink. I drag my finger along the granite countertop separating the living room from the kitchen. Not a speck of dust.
I journey down the hall to her bedroom. Not a wrinkle to be found. I lift the corner of the bedspread to find the sheets tucked in tightly the way every cadet would be taught.
I open the bedside drawer to find a handful of over-the-counter medications, including a few sleep aids. Nothing else. Her closet is meticulously arranged. Light blouses to dark, all grouped by garment type and color according to the spectrum. If I thought I had OCD tendencies, Jay had me beat hands down. Either that, or she didn’t really live here.
I go to the second bedroom. A glass-top IKEA desk is set in the corner, flanked by three short filing cabinets. If she doesn’t live here, she definitely works here.
I pick the lock of the first cabinet, its contents surprisingly sparse, with only a dozen or so files set in the hanging folders.
RED - Stone, Tristan
I withdraw the file that catches my eye first and sift through the first few pages. My enlistment paperwork. Grades and assessments on my skills and basic aptitude. What appears to be a thick stapled brief of the mission in Helmand that Brennan told me about. I skim over it, matching up his account to the official report. Oddly, nothing seems to slant toward my gross negligence.
I was your superior. I could have shut it all down.
Brennan’s words ring through my memory. Then Jay’s.
A lot of blood on your hands.
I move on to a stack of slick photos. They’re gory and probably would not affect me at all if they didn’t depict the wounds my body sustained. Nine gunshots. I’ve counted them more than once. I should have died.
I turn them over, and my focus shifts to the first page of medical records. As I begin reading, a subtle but sharp ring emits from the entryway. The tinny sound of tile being struck by a dime—the one I strategically placed on the door handle in the event Jay decided to come back home.
I set the file down and stand, drawing my gun as I do. Without a sound, I glide to the side of the doorway to wait and listen. The quiet click of the door closing. Jay’s heels across the kitchen floor. The static of fear and danger in the air. The shit I live for.
“Check the bedrooms,” she murmurs.
The almost imperceptible sound of footsteps on carpet gets closer and disappears when her associate steps into her bedroom. Anticipation sizzles in my blood, tingles in my fingertips as I ready myself to face Jay and whoever has come to protect her. Have I ever looked forward to an introduction more?
I hear him again, along with his measured exhale. I tuck my gun back in and wait.
Come to Daddy.
He steps into the room, gun first. I clench the barrel and twist it hard with my left hand. His finger cracks, and then so does his face as it makes sharp and repeated contact with my right.
He stumbles into the room and throws punches I deftly avoid. In the milliseconds before his face starts gushing blood, I realize he’s not anyone I know from Company Eleven. I’m almost disappointed, but it makes disposing of him less complicated.
I take two fists of his jacket and knee him in the groin. He doubles over with a painful grunt. It’s the last sound he makes before I jack my knee up into his jaw. His head jerks toward the ceiling with a snap, and he falls to the floor in an awkward heap. A few heavy seconds pass.
“Web? Do you have him?”
Jay’s alarmed voice echoes down the hall. I can taste her panic from here. I step around the lifeless body. I’m jonesing to see her fear up close.
“Web?”
I edge down the hallway. Then I see her ahead of me, dressed in her navy pantsuit, a pistol hanging by her side. Her eyes widen a second before she raises it.
“Don’t,” I say loudly.
She freezes but keeps the gun aimed at me.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” I lie with my whole body, from the words on my lips to my unnaturally relaxed stance, even though I’m ready to duck and draw.
Her jaw is tight. Her cheeks are flushed.
I raise my hands in mock surrender. “Jay, I just want to talk.”
I say her name like it means something. Like I’m glad she’s here. Truly, I am. I’m even more satisfied with how restless her hands are on the gun. She doesn’t want to kill me. Yet.
“Should I call you Jude?”
Her nostrils flare. “I should shoot you.”
I smile a little. “Isn’t that below your p
ay grade?”
“It is, in fact.”
I take a slow step toward her.
“Don’t. Just stay there, Tristan.”
“How am I supposed to tell you what you need to know when you’ve got that thing pointed at me?”
She lets out a nervous laugh. “Do you expect me to trust you now?”
“I’m not pointing a gun at you. That’s a pretty good display of trust, don’t you think?”
“This isn’t a fair fight, and you know it,” she utters.
She’s right. I don’t care what training she has. I’m at an advantage. Physically outmatched, if she’s not willing to shoot me, she’s fucked. Of course, she may not want to shoot me, but I’m not ruling out the possibility.
“I trusted you for three years, Jay. Never asked questions. Never said no.”
A tense silence stretches between us. This twisted partnership between us weighs it down. The camaraderie that grew around succeeding and surviving her missions.
“I’m aware of our track record, Tristan.”
“So you’re saying it doesn’t count for anything?”
She works her jaw. “You were paid to do a job.”
“You were paid. I changed my mind. There’s a difference.”
“Our credibility was at stake. It is still at stake.”
My lips curl with a sneer. “Your credibility? Are you serious?”
“You’ve been paid very well thanks to the credibility of the organization as a whole. You gave me no choice.”
I take another step toward her. She flexes around the grip.
“What about Crow?”
“He was in the area,” she says flatly.
I don’t believe her. “He was following me the whole fucking time.”
“I often use fail-safes. You know this.”
True enough, I’d been backup on a few particularly important assignments. Sometimes the first line botched the job. But this was different.
“A twenty-five-year-old schoolteacher? You think I needed a fail-safe for her?”
“It was important. The client was eager. I’ve told you all of this.”
I narrow my eyes. “Who is it? Who’s this VIP client you need to please so badly?”
“You know I can’t tell you that.”
I laugh because she’s consistent to a fault. “I bet you’re employee of the month every damn month.”
Then something changes in her countenance. I’ve hit a nerve. Touched on some truth.
I come closer. She steps back, keeping steady on her black pumps.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I say in a quiet, firm voice. A voice she can trust.
“You kill people for a living, so you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t buy it.”
I keep walking toward her. She raises the gun a fraction. I pause before continuing my advance. She’s flushed again, her hands shaking.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I say again. “I just need to know.”
“Red, just stop right there.”
I slow to a stop. She can almost touch my chest with the muzzle. I don’t focus on that. I narrow my gaze to hers.
“You saved me, you know.”
Doubt has cast a pretty big shadow on that possibility recently, but I spent a long time believing Jay had a hand in giving me the only life I could have. I reach for gratitude and try to communicate it in the tense space between us.
“I just want to talk… Without you pointing a gun at my heart,” I add gently.
She’s only half-lowered the gun when I grab her wrist, duck to the side, and wrench it from her. She screams. The sound comes to an abrupt halt when I wrap my hand around the delicate column of her neck. Her eyes go wide when I grip hard enough to cut off her air supply.
“Who wants her dead?” I growl with far less finesse. I am the monster she knows me to be.
She tries to shake her head, but her skin is already rising from pink to purplish-red.
“You going to tell me or not?”
She closes her eyes. Damn. Employee of the month indeed. Her lips tremble, and the rest of her limbs do too as she claws at my grip. Then I realize she’s pulling the same card. Banking on some unspoken connection or sense of loyalty between us so I’ll stop.
But, like she said, I kill people for a living. The prospect of ending her life doesn’t make me squeamish. I can win this round, even if it costs me information I badly need. Seconds pass. Precious life-saving seconds.
Yes. Her lips mouth the word. A couple more seconds, and her now bloodshot eyes go wide again. The real panic is setting in.
“Yes? Is that what you said?”
She has a death grip on my forearm. Her nails dig into my flesh, but I don’t care. I hate her. The part of me that can watch her die without remorse is the part she made—the killer in me who she shaped and encouraged until I was barely human.
When she starts to go weak, I snap out of my vengeful thoughts enough to loosen my hold on her throat. Just enough to let air flow. She drags in a desperate breath.
“Tristan.”
“Wrong name. Tell me who put the hit out on her.”
“I don’t know.”
I don’t waste a minute. I grip her throat again, more tightly than before.
She’s clawing at me again like she wants to talk, so I give her a little space to. She sucks in a series of ragged breaths before speaking.
“I don’t deal directly with the clients. I’m only the manager, Tristan.”
“Who does?”
“He’s a shadow, Tristan. You’ll never find him.”
I bring my face close to hers. “Did you forget?” My voice is barely above a whisper. “I am a shadow, Jay. You killed me. I can see pretty well in the dark now.”
Tenderly, I run my thumb over the place where the integrity of her windpipe would give with some focused pressure. “What’s his name? Your boss.”
She swallows, wincing over the discomfort it brings her. “Soloman.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Tell me more about Soloman.”
“He’s got clients all over the world. There’s no amount of money you could offer that would turn this around. He only takes the most expensive jobs, or the most difficult. Governments, Forbes 500, well-funded militias, the deepest pockets.”
“Then why Isabel?”
She blinks. Tears gleam in her eyes. Tears of fear. Tears of impending death.
“I don’t know, Tristan. I don’t know. He wanted you and said it was important, so I sent Crow as backup because he was close.”
I drag my fingertips along the back of her neck. She starts talking rapidly again.
“I can find out. I don’t know how, but I’ll try. Please, Tristan. Let me at least try.”
“I’m not feeling merciful. Didn’t you talk to Crow? I thought I made it clear.”
Her lips tremble. “I got your message.”
“I was hoping you would. It took extra effort to keep him alive. You didn’t take it to heart, though. You killed Isabel’s friend, and now I’m really pissed off.”
“It was supposed to be her.”
I shake my head and tsk softly. “You’re lucky it wasn’t. You’d already be dead.”
She exhales a ragged breath full of her own fear. I look her over. She could intimidate Isabel from behind her desk, but now she’s nothing more than a twig I can’t wait to snap.
“Who was it? The one who killed her friend?”
She hesitates a second before nodding toward the hallway. “You’ve already been introduced.”
I make a small sound of surprise. “I didn’t recognize him.”
“He’s new. Like you were once.”
I’m thoughtful a moment but can’t bring myself to get emotional over it. I made choices. So did he.
Tires squeal outside. We both peer through the bay windows in the front. Two black SUVs park abruptly along the curb. She looks back to me.
“They’re here for you.”
“I guess
I should get going,” I say casually, even though I’m more than aware of the clock ticking until I’m outnumbered.
A furious tremble takes over her body. “Tristan, please. I’ll get you the name. I can’t get Soloman to stop looking for you, but I can get you the name. I know I can. You have to trust me.”
The car doors shut, and several men start toward the apartment.
“Tristan, please…”
The itch to put a permanent end to her tearful pleas is strong, a reflex away. But something holds me back. Whatever exists between us was forged in blood and lies. I know that violence and betrayal begets more violence and betrayal.
“I’ll find you again, Jay,” I promise, because the business between us is far from over.
“I won’t give you a reason to. I’ll get you the name.”
No matter what she says, I know I’ll be seeing her again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Isabel
I stand before the mirror, trying to decide how I feel about anything, let alone this new look.
My mother smooths her hand over my hair, slick now from being stripped of its natural color and heavily conditioned. I run my hands through it experimentally, testing out how it feels and falls. My simple no-style length has been artfully chopped into an edgier bob. Bleached blond, a little wavy and messy, the overall look is dramatically different but satisfyingly on trend, which was nothing I ever cared about before. I tug at the clean-cut tips that fall just past my jawline.
“Remember how you used to threaten me if I ever dyed my hair?”
She smirks. “If J.Lo can pull it off, so can you. You’re beautiful, Isabel. I really like it. Do you?”
I think I do.
She puts her arm around me and tugs me against her side. “Are you ready?”
Our eyes meet in the mirror.
Am I ready?
For this new life?
For death?
I’ll only be dying on paper, of course, but it’s enough to make me feel ill when I really take it in. People I know will mourn. They’ll remember the twenty-five years of my life and bemoan that I was taken too soon. Then they’ll forget me over time. I’ll be memories in photographs. No one will know I’ve started over except my parents and Papa, who’s using his contacts in South America to stage a death that will hopefully deter or at least delay the people who’ve been after me.
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