Broken Love

by Drake, Tabatha

  That’s right, assholes, not quite as hidden as you thought.

  Let’s just say I did the right thing running away with my damn tail between my legs. This family isn’t one I want to fuck with. I get the feeling my research only scratches the surface of that iceberg. There’s only one person I know who can confirm my suspicion and he’s living happily ever after in the Hollywood Hills with his movie star girlfriend-slash-stepsister.

  I dial his number from a coffee shop down the street from their new house, taking advantage of the shop’s free wi-fi signal to bounce the call through various towers and encrypt my location. Sure, the Hart twins found me in Boston, but I won’t make it so easy for them to track down my location in Los Angeles.

  “Hello?”

  “Fox! Old buddy, old pal! How are you?”

  I speak a little too loudly, drawing the attention of the damn hipsters and wannabe novelists sitting around me so I lower my voice. Adrenaline tends to mess with my ability to maintain calmness and my pulse is thumping like a damn drumline right now.

  “Boxcar?”

  “Yeah, man. Hey, listen… I’m in Los Angeles. Come have a drink with me.”

  There’s a long moment of silence before Fox finally sighs.

  “What did you do?” he asks.

  I snort in defense. “What did I do? What do you mean what did I do?”

  “Fox, who is it?”

  “Go back to sleep, Dani,” he whispers.

  I hear the ruffling of bedsheets as he stands up.

  “You still asleep, man?” I ask. “It’s noon.”

  “No, it’s five in the morning, actually,” he says.

  “What?” I glance at my laptop’s clock, trying to count the difference in hours, but I give up quickly. “Where are you?”

  A door slides closed. He answers at normal volume. “Tokyo.”

  “Tokyo?!” I spit, once again drawing side-eyes from people around my table. “Why the hell are you in Japan?”

  Fox yawns. “Dani’s on her contractually-obligated press tour for Night Trials.”

  “Oh, yeah. That movie you had a perfectly good screener for but refused to send me.”

  “You’ll see it with the rest of the world next month, Box.”

  “Dick.”

  “Why are you in Los Angeles?”

  I chew on my inner cheek. I really hoped to talk to him in person about this. There’s not much he can do from the other side of the Pacific Ocean and there’s no way he’ll make it here before the Hart twins do. Still, I can’t not tell him there are former Snake Eyes agents out there looking for him.

  “You have a problem, Fox.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  “Last night…” I lower my voice, taking full control of its volume. “Some Snake— reptilian folks showed up at my place in Boston looking for you.”

  “Are you sure?” he asks quickly.

  “Positive. My guess is they figured out who was behind the exposure and they aren’t too happy about it.”

  “Do you know who they were?”

  “Yeah, Elijah and Lilah Hart.” I wait for a reaction, but silence screams back at me. “Fox?”

  “I’ll be on the next flight home.”

  “No,” I say. “That’s a horrible idea. As of right now, they don’t know where you are.”

  “But they know where you are,” he says. “You don’t want to get cornered by the Harts, Boxcar… especially Lilah.”

  I laugh, forcing any manliness I have to the surface. “I think I can handle—”

  “No, Box,” he interrupts. “You really can’t.”

  I deflate. “I know, man. I’m kinda in over my head here.”

  “Lay low,” he tells me. “Just go into hiding for a while until I can come home and deal with it myself.”

  It’s always been my first instinct. Run away. It’s not like I don’t have the means to do it right now. I have plenty of untraceable money to throw at an escape plan. There’s nothing stopping me, except…

  “I can’t, Fox.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they know about Caleb.”

  Fox exhales. “Then, you know what you have to do.”

  “I know, but…” Our brief history rushes to the front of my mind. “I don’t wanna.”

  “Boxcar.”

  “This isn’t exactly the reunion I had in mind!”

  “Well, it’s the one you’re getting,” he says. “You can’t walk away from this. If she’s in danger, you have to tell her about it. Now.”

  “Yeah, but…” I snap my fingers. “I know! You can call her and I’ll—”

  “Nope.”

  “Dammit.”

  I sit back and sigh loudly.

  Caleb Fawn. The love of my life.

  The bane of my existence.

  “Fine. I’ll go see her.”

  “If something goes wrong, she can protect you.” He’s not wrong. Caleb saved my ass plenty while we were all overseas. “You should be able to find her in the loft above—”

  “Above her shop.” I twist my neck until it pops. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Been keeping tabs on her?”

  I wince. “Kind of.”

  “Well,” he says, “you never know. Maybe she’ll be happy to see you.”

  I laugh. “Doubt it. I haven’t seen her since…”

  My words fail.

  Almost two years later and I still can’t say it out loud.

  “Since we came back,” I say instead.

  “Just keep your cool and everything will be fine,” Fox says. “I’ll try and get stateside as soon as I can.”

  “Stay away, man,” I say. “I’m not worth getting caught over.”

  It’s quite possibly the most heroic thing I’ve ever said but it’s also honest. Fox’s life matters to other people.

  Mine? Not so much.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “I can’t just sit out here and do nothing. I’m coming home.”

  “Fine.” The air around me weighs heavy and smothers my shoulders. I push it aside. “Oh! How about — instead — you stay in Japan and take Dani to one of those love hotels. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.”

  Fox chuckles. “I’m not doing that.”

  “Seriously! I read about one in Shinjuku. They’ll deliver a girl to your room and you can eat sushi off her bellybutton. Dani will love it!”

  “This conversation is a pretty sterling example for why you’re still single, Boxcar.”

  “Ooo! Look at me!” I mock. “I’m Fox Fitzpatrick. I’m a man of action. I jump out of windows and date movie stars! We can’t all be James Bond, dude. Some of us are perfectly content with being Q.”

  “Quit stalling and go talk to Caleb.”

  “Fine. Say hi to your sister for me.”

  “Stepsister.”

  “Still weird.”

  “Bye, Box.”

  “Buh-bye.”

  I hang up and fall forward until my head hits the table.

  Caleb Fawn.

  The last time I saw her, she told me she never wanted to see my face again.

  Not exactly how a man pictures the end of his honeymoon, but…

  Shit happens, right?

  Chapter 4

  Boxcar

  Then

  I jiggle my hands, listening to the metal clanging of handcuffs latched around my wrists. The chain is fastened to the floor beneath my chair, making it nearly impossible for me to stand up. I guess this is where they throw prisoners of war they need to question. It sure would be nice if they did that — or, at the very least, made some sort of contact with me. The walls are made of metal and I’ve officially sweat out all the water that soldier gave me.

  It has been about an hour since they dropped me into this room. I could easily have picked the cuffs by now, but I’d really rather not get shot today. It’s not like I could just sneak out of here without someone noticing.

  I’m fucked. No ifs, ands, or buts about that. I
’m on the road to Fuckedville with a one-way ticket. No stops. No piss breaks. No way out — but can they really blame me for doing what I did? I’m sure they would have done the same if they could. Stuck in the desert with no water, trapped with nothing but a laptop and brains. Of course, I sent out that signal. I’d do it again if I had to.

  Finally, the door opens and that same tall, butch son-of-a-bitch who threw me in here steps inside. Sergeant Rhys, if I recall?

  “Excuse me,” I say, clearing my dry throat. “May I have some water, please?”

  He slams the door behind him and lingers over my chair. “You’re in some trouble, son.”

  “I’m also an American citizen,” I say. “Last I checked, that warrants a sippy cup.”

  He smirks and crosses his arms over his chest, flexing his mighty biceps as if it would intimidate me. “How did you hack our equipment?”

  “I already told you.” I sigh. “Your equipment functions through satellites, which transmits waves—”

  “You’ve said that already.”

  I pause. “Well, sir, you asked twice.”

  “Where’d you learn to do that?” he asks.

  “I looked it up.”

  “Where?”

  “The internet.”

  He chuckles but he’s far from amused. “You looked up how to hack into highly sophisticated government equipment on the internet?”

  I scoff. “Your equipment is hardly sophisticated, Sergeant. I can list off about a half-dozen more exploits that are just as easy to break into and don’t require nearly as much effort. Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of radio frequencies and mechanical engineering could figure it out.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  He chews on his lip for a moment. “You’re in some trouble.”

  “You have a real problem with repeating yourself, man…”

  “But I can get you out of it.”

  I raise a brow. “How?”

  He turns and grabs the second chair from the corner and sets it down in front of me. “How old are you?” he asks.

  I straighten up a little taller as he sits down, listening to the familiar jingle of cuffs. “Twenty.”

  “As it stands right now, you’re looking at about twice that in prison.”

  “Oh, please,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I sent out an S.O.S.”

  “And you put the lives of myself and four of my men at risk in the process.”

  “That’s not very PC of you, Serg,” I say. “I believe one of the soldiers who dug me out was a woman.”

  “Kid...” He leans forward. “I’m serious. Now, I can ship you back home today where you won’t see the outside of a cell until you’re sixty or… you can wise up and work for us.”

  I wait for his stare to break but he never flinches. “What?”

  He eases back in his chair. “You say our equipment is subpar.”

  “Your equipment blows, actually.”

  “So, fix it,” he says. “I’m sure you have a few ideas in that head of yours, right?”

  “I might.”

  He stands up. “You work for us, tighten our security, keep me and my men safe, and you won’t see a day behind bars.”

  “For how long?”

  His chin juts to the side. “You got somewhere else to be?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Quite…” He reaches into his pocket and withdraws a key. “Let’s just say long enough for me to forget to ever ask you what the hell you’re doing out in the middle of the damn Afghani desert alone in the first place. Does that sound fair?”

  My eyes scrape the floor. “Yeah, that’s fair.”

  “Smart kid.”

  He gestures for my hands and I raise them as high as the chain will allow.

  “Come on,” he says, letting the open cuffs fall to the floor. “Let’s go meet my team.”

  He leads me outside. I immediately hold up a hand to shield the sun from melting the fucking eyes out of my skull. I don’t know how they do it. Here I am in a white shirt and its done nothing to keep me cool since I got here while these guys walk around in outfits made of who-knows-what. Looks thick, whatever it is. I can’t imagine what these guys must smell like after a single day…

  The camp is small, surrounded by nothing but desert on all sides. A large tent sits in the center with communications equipment stacked on tables and large generators to power them. There are three jeeps parked in a line on the far side next to a pair of very cringe-worthy porta-potties. On the opposite side, some soldiers sit around a long table with prepackaged food, enjoying a shade that I would very much like to get under.

  We finally walk into a small barracks with about two dozen cots — two rows of twelve with an aisle between them. The tent overhead has been torn in several places and crudely repaired with duct tape. It must be downtime as most of the cots have body-shaped lumps in them. I guess you catch whatever sleep you can out here.

  The air grows tense as we pass the occupied mattresses. Some soldiers stand to attention, but the sergeant waves them down. All of them stare at me as I pass by them and their faces tell me all I need to know about their thoughts.

  Who’s this asshole?

  Rhys stops at the back of the tent and my eyes instantly fall on the girl who helped dig me out.

  She lies on her back with her neck propped up on a really uncomfortable-looking pillow with a very tempting bottle of water in her small hand.

  “Team, this is Carson,” Rhys announces, his eyes scanning the four cots at the back.

  I force myself to stop gawking at the girl to make eye contact with the other three. One gives me a smile. He helped me out and gave me water, so we’re cool. The others I also recognize but only because one kicked me to the ground while the other put me in cuffs as soon they laid eyes on me.

  Not so cool.

  All four of them stand up and Rhys steps to the side. “This is Rogers,” he says, pointing to The Kicker, a muscular man with buck teeth and black hair. His hand moves down the line to The Cuffer, yet another muscular guy except he’s got red hair and a cleft chin. “This is West — Fitzpatrick — and Fawn.”

  Fawn. That’s cute.

  “Sup?” I greet.

  “Carson is going to be joining our unit from here on out,” Rhys explains.

  The girl blinks with confusion. I don’t notice if the others do the same as my eyes are pretty much locked on her. Her hair is trimmed short, auburn in color. The tent blocks plenty of light but I can easily see green irises shining out from behind her long eyelashes. Pointed cheekbones, concave cheeks.

  She’s fucking gorgeous.

  What the hell is she doing all the way out here?

  “In what capacity, sir?” she asks.

  Rhys shrugs. “I don’t know. A civilian… intelligence freelancer. That sounds official enough. Basically, he broke our equipment and he’s gonna fix it for us.”

  “Well, it’s not really broken,” I say. “It’s just shitty…”

  “Either way, he’s part of our unit and we’ll treat him like it from here on out. Sound good?”

  “Yes, sir,” they all say in unison.

  I flinch at the sudden bark of voices. I guess I’ll just have to get used to that if I’m going to be hanging out with the cast of Platoon.

  “Fawn,” Rhys says. “I’m sticking him with you. Keep an eye on him.”

  Her posture sinks. “Sir—?”

  “Show him around. Teach him the rules. Keep him from getting shot at.”

  She steps forward, trying very hard to keep her cool. “Sir, I’m not—”

  “As you were, boys,” Rhys says, spinning around and darting down the aisle fast enough to dodge her questions.

  I turn back to the team, my eyes once again falling on her. “You can call me Boxcar,” I say.

  Fitzpatrick steps forward as The Kicker and The Cuffer wander back to their cots again to ignore me.

  “Fox,” he says.

  “R
abbit,” I say, shaking his hand.

  He chuckles. “It’s my name.”

  “Cool. I figured, but then again, why give up the opportunity to list off cute, woodland creatures, am I right?”

  Fox’s hand drops to his side and he gestures to the girl. “This is Caleb.”

  Caleb.

  She stands still, ignoring the hand I extend out to her. Only her eyes move, staring down over her little button nose at my dirt-covered fingers.

  “Excuse me,” she says.

  As she darts past, I catch a quick whiff of her scent — one far more pleasant than I ever thought possible in this area of the world. I can’t imagine she has perfume stashed in her footlocker, but I detect flowers in my nose for a brief, wonderful moment. I turn to watch her exit and my eyes fall to her perfectly toned ass as it sways back and forth with anger.

  I look at Fox. “Was it something I said?”

  “Rabbit, probably.”

  “Ahh…”

  Fox pats my shoulder and shifts around to plop back down onto his cot. “She’ll adapt. Always does.”

  He gestures for me to sit down on the cot next to his — Caleb’s cot — and I’m not about to pass up the opportunity to smell her again, so I lower myself down.

  I gaze over my shoulder, meeting the suspicious eyes of the other soldiers scattered about the tent. I lean forward to whisper. “Am I gonna get a code red in here, or…?”

  He chuckles, running his hand over his buzzed, brown hair. “Nah. Tensions are just a little high right now.”

  “Why?”

  “War.”

  I smile. “Of course. Silly me.”

  Fox’s attention draws behind me and I turn again to see Caleb rushing back into the tent. Her eyes are downcast. Her cheeks are bright red with a subtle, controlled rage. As she reaches her cot, she spots me sitting on it and she halts in her tracks.

  “Caleb…” Fox clears his throat with playful eyes. “You okay?”

  She inhales a deep breath, one that obviously fills her lungs to the very top. “I’m fine.” Her voice quivers softly.