Seven of Swords

by Knight, JJ

  I hear a rustle, then a clunk of something hitting the floor. Then another. I’m not sure what that means.

  There’s a whisper, and I sense the person moving, almost silently. I think he’s taken off his boots. Probably more. Great. I’ll be able to add this experiences to my list.

  He stands near my head. I can hear him breathing. I sense him lean in, and then hands reach for the strap of the ball gag.

  And that's when I catch a whiff of something very familiar.

  Lilacs.

  The first word I say when the gag leaves my mouth is her name.

  Jade.

  28

  Jade

  I think this boy knows me.

  "How did you find me?” he asks.

  I lean down, my elbows braced on the edge of the bench. Our faces are only an inch apart.

  "I know everything about you," I say. And I do.

  I lower my voice to barely a whisper. "There are four cameras trained on us right now. I had no time to try to pull any video switcheroo or tap any lines. So what we do, when we do it, we will have to do quickly.”

  "All right."

  I lift the blindfold away, and Jacob lifts his head. Our eyes meet.

  “Nice turban,” he says.

  I touch the enormous gold scarf. “I had to look rich and eccentric to get in here. You cost me more than that Scandinavian tiara I stole.”

  “Fair trade,” he says. He seems so happy to see me. It's an expression I don't think I've ever seen on him.

  "Did I catch you before anyone else…”

  He gives me a huge grin. "You are my first."

  I hesitate a moment at that, but I don't say anything. Not while the cameras are on us, the microphones straining to pick up our conversation. I’m glad I got here quickly. And I'm also glad to know the ins and outs of the Den. I can't believe Antony put someone at Jacob’s level in here.

  "I tried to pull a diva and insist that they not have security footage of this room, but they refused. That it was for my safety with a dangerous criminal like you."

  “I’m so dangerous.”

  I smile. “You are to me.”

  His eyes get quizzical, but I move on, walking back to the wardrobe to grab the silk robe hanging on a hook. I throw it over my shoulders and move behind him, flogger in hand.

  “We have to look convincing,” I tell him. “Or maybe I’ll make it real.”

  “Oh, will you?”

  I adjust the bench to be flat and lie down over his back, letting the robe drape over us both. The feel of him against me is the first thing that has calmed me since I broke out of his bunker.

  I think he feels it too, his forehead dropping to rest against the bench.

  "Why did you come for me?" he asks.

  I lean very close to his ear. "Because I want you.”

  He goes very still. “I’m glad.”

  I rest my head against his neck and let my arms fall, the silk robe covering my actions. I have to shift to reach the shackles at his wrists. They are solid and round. No keys. Just a seam where they fit together. Antony’s special. No matter. I can get them.

  “The hall has four guards,” I say. “We’ll have to get past them."

  "I saw," he says. His head turns, and he spots the oversized cowboy boots I removed earlier. "Nice."

  "You like them? I bought them with the money from my very first heist.” I pull a pin out of my hair. “Do you think I could free you with a bobby pin?" I hold it in front of his face.

  He laughs. "I think you can do anything."

  “Well, I can’t.” I laugh and stick the bobby pin in his hair. I pull a piece of what appears to be cellophane out of my bra. I slide it down to one shackle to stick it to the surface. Then I take another one and put it on the other. The cameras can watch that all day, but they won’t catch the subtlety of this technology.

  I wiggle down his back, my tongue leaving a trail down his spine.

  “Like that?” I ask, nice and loud for the cameras.

  “Maybe,” he says.

  I leave the robe on him as I move down and behind him. I bite one of his butt cheeks.

  “Hey!” he says, and I laugh.

  While I’m low, I place two more rectangles of the cellophane on his ankle shackles. Now all four are ready.

  I go over his back, crawling under the silk robe.

  "This is going to be a little painful for you," I say, lifting the flogger.

  "I can take it," he says.

  I kiss his shoulder, close to his ear. “If we get separated, the car that was in the rock at your bunker is one block due east. Meet me there."

  “You found it?”

  “I did.”

  “Damn.”

  “I wasn’t supposed to?”

  “I figured you’d set out on foot.”

  “Antony left behind four guards as a parting gift.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “We’ll talk later,” I say. “Time to get out of here.”

  "I'm ready," he says.

  I bring the flogger down hard onto the floor, making a sharp, loud, and very distinct noise to set off the cellophane devices.

  All four shackles burn bright for just a moment. Jacob sucks in a breath as each ones goes pop pop pop pop. I bring down the flogger repeatedly to mix up the sound.

  "I'll treat those burns later. We gotta go.”

  I leap off him and toss him the robe. I shove my feet into the boots and rush to the door. I have to act fast, before the people monitoring the video can figure out what we’ve done and alert the guards.

  I knock four times, the signal that I’m ready to leave.

  The guard opens the door. "Finished so soon?” he asks.

  Jacob smacks the door into the guard’s head. He stumbles back.

  I open it wide, hurrying out to shove the other guard at Jacob. He clocks him with his elbow, sending him down.

  Jacob grabs my hand, and we dash down the hallway. “Did you bring any weapons?” he asks. The other two guards have started running our way.

  “I did.” I pull my taser from my boot.

  The guards approach. Jacob is a blur of brown silk as he tackles one. I zap the other with my taser the moment he gets close. When Jacob gets his man to the ground, I tase the hell out of that one. The rest of the hallway is clear.

  We turn down the hall to see four people running for us. I pull a smoke bomb from my boot and toss it. On impact it shoots out a foul-smelling fog.

  “This way!" Jacob says.

  We turn and head back the other direction. These are offices, as I recall. One has a huge, ornate wooden exterior, which I seem to remember belongs to Antony himself.

  "Wait," I say.

  I use the heel of the heavy boot to kick in the door. Antony is in there. His guard stands up.

  "A parting gift," I say, and pull a small sleep bomb from my boot. I pull the pin and toss it right to him. He catches it like a ball, and then quickly chucks it to the corner of the room.

  Doesn’t matter. It releases the chemical at first impact.

  He's already starting to slump over the desk. The guard covers his mouth, but within two steps, he’s stumbling. We run on past the door, laughing. Jacob holds my hand.

  There's just one exit to go. Nothing flashes or alarms. They don't upset the paying clients when something like this happens. All the alerts are going out through earpieces. People will be heading this direction. They’ll know now to use gas masks, but that will take them a moment to arrange.

  "God, this place is a maze," I say. I don't know it well enough to take us directly to an outside door.

  "This way," Jacob says. "It's how I came in."

  Two more guards head for us as we spot the exit.

  We look at each other.

  "I got the tall one," I say.

  He gives me a grin. "I want the big one for myself."

  The men pull guns on us, so we instinctively leap for them before they can properly aim. The guns fire, but no
thing hits me. I take my guy down and use the zapper on his arm where the nerve runs through, forcing his fingers to release the gun. I snatch it up.

  "Come on, Jacob," I say.

  He's on the ground with his guard in a tight tussle. There's blood. I can't tell whose it is.

  I circle them, looking for an opening in their wrestling match. The guard flips on top of Jacob, exposing the back of his neck. I tase him at the base of the skull so long that he slumps down.

  "Are you hurt?" I ask Jacob.

  "It's just a flesh wound.”

  When he stands I see he’s hit in the shoulder. Hopefully, it hasn't done anything more than wreck some muscle.

  I take his good arm and pull him toward the exit. He's running a little less quickly than he was before.

  I push out the door. There are two guards there, but with Jacob injured, I don’t even hesitate. I shoot them both in the legs with the guard’s gun. It will keep them from coming after us, but it shouldn't kill them.

  Jacob is definitely slowing down. I start to panic that he's been shot in the heart or the lungs or something that will kill him. But I have to get him away.

  I jerk the key fob to the Aston Martin out of my bra and immediately start clicking the Morse code.

  Jacob is wheezing. Dammit. It’s a lung.

  He slows down more and more until he’s stumbling, bent over.

  "Come on, Jacob," I say. "I gotta get you out of here before I can get you help."

  Blood has soaked through the robe, making it sticky and dark.

  We’re still a good distance from the garage where I parked.

  "The car," Jacob says. He staggers to a stop.

  "What about it?"

  "It will come to us.”

  “How?”

  He presses a button on the key fob. “Talk to it."

  Seriously? After all that Morse code I did?

  "Janet," I say into the fob. "Come get us."

  I hear the zoom of a motor, and in seconds, the car appears up the street. I hold on to Jacob as it screeches to a stop next to us.

  The doors to the club smash open, and a half-dozen guards pour out and lift their guns.

  I open the passenger door and shove Jacob in. I don't bother to go around the car but dive across his body.

  "Go, Janet, go!"

  I jerk the door shut and stay in Jacob’s lap. Gunfire explodes all around the car as Janet races forward.

  “Where would you like to go?” Janet asks, her voice ridiculously calm despite the bright flash of bullets hitting the windows and frame.

  “Where should we go?” I ask Jacob.

  Janet won't be able to navigate the city streets well without a clear destination. I learned that on our way here.

  "Don't take me to the Den hospital," he rasps. "They’ve probably all got a kill order on me by now."

  I press my hands into his chest. The wound is lower than I thought. God. It probably is his lung. Not his heart. He’d be dead otherwise.

  "I'm so sorry, Jacob. It was foolish of me to just go blazing in by myself. I should’ve put together a team. I should've had a plan."

  He shushes me. "It was perfect."

  His breathing sounds gurgly now. Blood in his lungs. I can hear it.

  "I have to tell you something," I say. "It's really important."

  Janet careens around the corner, and I hold onto the seat behind Jacob.

  "What is it?" he asks.

  "I chose you," I say. "I chose you as my mark on this job for a reason."

  "What do you mean?"

  “I was so mad. So dang mad that you turned out to be a jerk. I infiltrated the Den just to find you again. But you were so nasty about women. Such an asshole. I was destroyed.”

  “Jade. I’m sorry…”

  “Shut up. Let me finish. But then I went to steal your tiaras and that night…it was so much like I remembered.”

  “You remembered?” His eyes, glossy with pain, search mine.

  “Janet, turn on the light inside."

  The front compartment illuminates. I peel off the gold scarf covering my hair. It's back to red now, as close to my original color as I could get with something off the shelf. Two hundred dollars’ worth of red extensions have returned it to the length that he might remember.

  "How did you do this?” He fingers a long piece of it.

  "Extensions. But there's something else."

  I slide a brown contact from my eye and toss it aside. Then I remove the other.

  He looks into my face.

  “Your eyes are green.” He can barely talk.

  I half sob, half say, “They are.”

  "It's you," he says. “Emerald.” He touches my hair, my cheeks, and brushes his thumbs across my eyelids. “How did I not recognize you?”

  “I’m not eighteen anymore,” I say. “I dyed my hair. Kept my eyes brown. Stayed fake tan. I’m really good at playing a role.” I push on my boobs. “I might have a little extra in here. You know, for the job.”

  “I should have known you.” He seems horror-stricken.

  “It was a long time ago,” I say. “And it was just that one time.”

  His hands can’t stop touching me. "I never forgot you," he says. “I’ve looked for you. What happened?“

  “My mission has always been to infiltrate the Den. I went to Club Y six years ago on my own to get started, but my father collected me a day later. He said I was too young for all that. I only met you there. Twenty-four hours with you.”

  “You came back to the Den? Why?”

  “To destroy it from the inside. You’re a bunch of sexist pigs, and my mission since I was eighteen was to wreck your cozy fraternity.”

  He coughs and a thin trickle of blood escapes his lips. “You’re right.”

  I choke back a sob and wipe the blood away with my thumb. “But you’re different than I thought.”

  He holds on to me as if I might disappear on him again. “No, I’m a pig. But I’m learning.”

  “I need to not lose you now. Can you do that for me?"

  He nods, but his eyes are starting to cloud over. He drops his arms. The robe is soaked in blood.

  I lean forward to kiss him. He won't die on me. He really, truly can't.

  29

  Jacob

  The first thing I see when I open my eyes is Jade. She sits on the side of a hospital bed, peering down at me.

  "Well, Jacob,” she says, “you were wrong about the flesh wound."

  I look down at my body, covered in a sheet. I feel prickly all over. My head aches as if I got hold of some bad whiskey.

  "What did they get?" I ask. The words come out croaky and harsh.

  "It wasn't as bad as we thought. Your ribs punctured your lung, not the bullet. You'll be all right."

  Her hair is long and red. I remember this now. Not just from in the car as we left Club Y. But before. So long before.

  She looks away from me, and I realize a man is standing in the doorway.

  "That's my dad, Quincy O'Donnell. He arranged for you to come to our private hospital."

  I try to sit up, but things don't work quite as I expect them to, and I barely lift my shoulders from the bed.

  Jade presses her hand on my shoulder. "Don't make them sedate you again to keep you still," she says. "Antony has put a hit out on you, and I have convinced my dad that you should be part of our operation."

  “A hit?”

  "Yeah. With the Vigilantes, no less.” She frowns. “We were pretty shocked. But if the Vigilantes wanted you dead, you already would be. I’m not even sure Quincy O’Donnell can stop one of them.” She glances up at her father, and he shrugs.

  I’m pretty shocked by this revelation. Antony has the power to put out a hit with the Vigilantes? Of course he doesn't know that my brother is one. That's why I had a car. Our mother comes from a Vigilante family. She turned the position down. I did too. But my younger brother, Zaccai—he did not. We haven’t seen him since he left fifteen years ago.
That was part of the deal.

  I can’t tell Jade this, not yet. It’s the sort of secret you must keep until you have a potential Vigilante of your own. That’s a long way off.

  So I simply say, “Thank you.”

  Quincy O'Donnell enters the room. "I remember the day I brought my daughter home from Club Y.” I'm amazed that he doesn't even flinch when he says it. I can't imagine finding my own daughter in a bondage club. "Something had happened to her. And it’s taken six years for me to figure out what."

  He steps forward and extends a hand. I lift mine, way more shakily than I would like, and accept it.

  "You’re welcome here. You're also free to walk away. At least as soon as you've healed up a bit. I have a feeling my daughter will be more than happy to serve as your nursemaid." He shakes his head. "I began to wonder if I'd ever see a day when someone caught her interest for more than ten minutes. It seems you're the man."

  He turns on his heel and leaves the room.

  Jade shoves aside some of the tubes and wires so she can lie down next to me.

  "You’re an easier mark than I thought you would be," she says. "But I'm happy to continue your training, if you like."

  I shake out a little laugh, wincing when I jiggle something that isn't ready to be moved. "I just might take you up on that."

  "I've been thinking about Ireland," she says. "I'll fit right in there. And I've never been. Have you?"

  "Nope."

  Her glorious hair, half hers, half existing only until she grows out her own, flows across my chest. I lift up a piece of it. I can't believe she’s Emerald. And I can't believe I didn't know her the moment she walked into my room.

  Dark hair, red hair. Pale, tan. Brown eyes, green eyes.

  And the breasts. Those were definitely new.

  Except maybe some part of me did. I knew right off that she was different. I just had no idea she was also exactly the same woman as that vision I never let go of.

  "I figure we should probably get to know each other a little more. It's been sort of a rushed courtship,” she says.

  "Is that what we’re calling it?"

  "It's probably going to be good to see you in a situation where we’re not about to steal something or escaping people who are trying to kill us."