“You know I’m grateful,” my sister said, unfazed by Max’s anger. “But that’s got not one thing to do with you pouncing on my little sister.”
“Sam,” her fiancé warned as he tried to take hold of her arm, but she pulled it out of his grasp.
“No, Kyle. I know he’s one of your best friends and I like him too, but he’s dangerous.”
Max straightened his muscled torso, folding his arms tightly across his chest, now staring hard at my sister.
“What?” I could barely get the words out. “Wh-what are you talking about?” I tried to move, but my legs had lost their strength. Max took hold of my elbow and I gave him a grateful smile.
My sister’s eyes volleyed back and forth between the two of us, and I could see her brain working on overdrive. Max draped his arm around my shoulders, the weight of him giving me a sense of reassurance somehow, but Samantha’s whole body tensed up.
“Sam-Sam, this isn’t like you. You need to tell me—right now—what’s going on and why you would say such a thing about Max. And Kyle? Why aren’t you defending your friend?”
Kyle’s jaw set tight, making the muscles twitch. Max’s grip grew firmer, and he tugged me closer to him.
“Man, you know I’d take a bullet before I’d ever let anything happen to her.”
Kyle scrubbed his hands over his face. “I know. That goes without saying.”
Max offered a chin lift. “Right, so then why the fuck is your woman carrying on and you look like you’re ready to lose your shit?”
“Because,” Samantha interrupted, “his ‘woman’ knows enough about your ‘side’ activities, and the people you hang with, to estimate it’s just a matter of time before you piss off enough of the wrong people for those you care about to become revenge targets.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to Jess,” he bit back. “And if it weren’t for me and ‘my people’, you wouldn’t be standing here now, in one piece, able to cast judgment on me. You’d be in an unmarked ditch or, even worse, so fucked in the head with the nightmares of what that animal had planned for you, you’d be no good to anyone.
“And to think, I’ve still been kicking myself that I didn’t get there even sooner, that you had to endure getting the shit beaten out of you.”
Sam’s eyes darted to mine and I knew right then and there that she had lied about the severity of her injuries months ago, about much of what had, or almost had, happened to her. Blood rushed to my ears, making a whooshing sound inside my head.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
Samantha’s shoulders dropped, her expression resigned. “Ah honey, I just…I didn’t have it in me to deal with all I was feeling, much less worry about how it would affect you too. I know that sounds harsh, but…”
“It’s all right,” I said, not wanting my sister to beat herself up over her decision. “I get it.”
I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile, because truth was, how many years had Samantha been the strong one for the two of us? How many times had my big sister defended me when someone bullied me at school and then spent hours later on role-playing other similar scenarios so I would be better prepared the next time? How often would it be Sam, not our mom or dad, who would come in to comfort me when I had a bad dream? I loved our parents dearly but they had poured much of their rearing efforts into Samantha. By the time I came along, the novelty of parenting had lost some of its luster and they had no issue passing some of the torch on to my big sister.
And just as it has always been between us, with one glance, I was able to communicate all that to her. Sam breathed a sigh of relief and I knew we were good. Sam then turned to Max.
“I didn’t know you blamed yourself,” she said, her voice losing the rancor from before. “I wish I did because I would have told you to let that go.”
“A man’s gotta work shit out in his own time.”
Samantha nodded. “I understand. I’ll never be able to repay you, but that said,” she stopped to take a deep breath, as if bracing for what she was about to say, “you need to tell Jess all of who you are, what you do…what you’re capable of. Let her make an informed decision. Otherwise, I know my sister. She’ll have you in the starring role of her own romantic fairy tale. Frankly, it looks like it’s already started.”
“Wow, you make me sound like some naïve little kid. Is that how you see me?”
Sam batted her eyelashes and, in an exaggerated, singsong voice, said, “You have the same eyes as the man of my dreams, Max!” She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “Your words, Jess, so, um…yeah, I think you’re a bit naïve when it comes to men, especially a man like Max.”
I pursed my lips. “I said he had the same eyes as the man in my dream! A dream I had, by the way, with Mama there. And she told me to follow the man with the pale green eyes, even if it was scary and uncharted. So, that’s what I’m doing.”
Sam’s lips parted and Kyle coughed into his hand. They eyed each other, then both gazed back at me.
“Jess, honey,” my future brother-in-law gently began, “you’ve always had a dreamy quality about you, living with your head in a book, and Lord knows, we love you for it. But you can’t really believe you dreaming about your mama is the way to make choices about your life, right?”
“I miss them too, you know,” Samantha interjected. “All the time. I dream of Mama and Daddy too.”
“And?” I pushed. “Do they talk to you? Do you listen?”
“I mostly dream about the past, about them being alive, in this house,” she answered. “They never talk of the future, Jess. I think yours is about something else.”
“What do you mean?”
My sister sucked in her top lip and glanced over at Kyle, as if she needed the sight of him to shore up her resolve.
“What?” I probed. “Just say it. We’ve never censored what we needed to say to each other or, no offense, Kyle, looked to someone outside to help us talk to each other.”
“Fine, Jess, you want to know what I think is really going on?”
“Yeah, just say it already.”
Samantha stared for a couple of beats before her eyes filled with tears. She looked away, wiped them quickly away with both her hands.
“I think I’ve been a horrible big sister.”
I was stunned, couldn’t have been more shocked even if she had tagged me with a Taser gun. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve been so selfish, first in how I grieved for them and then in getting all wrapped up in Kyle, I somehow left you behind.”
Samantha faced Kyle. “We should live here while our house is being built. We shouldn’t leave her alone.”
“What are you saying?” I breathed, blinking rapidly, my clutch on Max tightening. He gave me a reassuring squeeze back.
“It sounds like Sam doesn’t think you have the capacity to live on your own and make decisions for yourself, which is the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard.”
“This doesn’t concern you, Max,” Samantha snapped. “And I get you like her. I can’t blame you. She’s an ethereal beauty with a mind and imagination unlike anyone. Of course she has the capacity to take care of herself. But Jessica is different, Max. There’s a fragility to her, an innocence of spirit. I’ve worked hard my whole life for her to keep that. And having someone like you and the stuff you’re dealing with out there? That’s exactly the kind of shit I don’t want polluting my sister’s soul.
“Jess? I love you and I am so sorry I haven’t been here more. That changes right now. But you believing Mama’s coming back from the grave and visiting you in your dream to guide you toward your intended demonstrates to me just how lonely you’ve been.”
“I don’t know what I’m more furious about, this outdated image of me you’ve been obviously carrying around for way too long or you insisting Max is no good for m
e without anything real to back it up!”
“You don’t think I have real?” Samantha got into my face. “Go on,” she goaded, “ask your dream man about what he does when he’s not building bikes or fixing helicopters.”
“Fine, let’s get this over with,” I retorted while untangling my arm from around Max, facing him. “Go ahead.”
“Fine,” he gritted out. “This isn’t how I wanted to tell you. I wanted you over at my place for dinner. For it to be just the two of us.” He shook his head, both hands on his hips, but he met my eyes and kept going.
“Besides owning my business, I’m part of a group called the Order. We’ve been around a long time, in different configurations and permutations. When ordinary citizens rely on the governing body’s laws and its enforcement agencies for justice and they fail for whatever reason, the Order amends those injustices by whatever means necessary. We are select in who we take in and the cases we take on. And we are extraordinarily careful in our execution. The only reason why we are even having this conversation right now, that you are even hearing about its existence, is because they were integral in rescuing your sister from Derek Schiller.”
My head jerked back as if I had been broadsided. “But I thought,” I started, then turned to Sam. “You told me…everyone told me the police found you. At that cabin in the middle of nowhere.”
“The police did come and get me.” She eyed Max, who gave a slight nod, which must have been a sign it was okay to continue. She grimaced and took a deep inhale. “But by the time they arrived…” Her exhale came out shaky, and Kyle pulled her into his arms. “If it hadn’t been for Max and his crew, I would’ve been raped and severely disfigured by the time the police got there. Instead, his guys took Schiller out and I was spared.”
“What do you mean, ‘took Schiller out’?”
“You know exactly what that means, baby,” Max piped in, his tone even, steadfast.
I didn’t know how to begin processing what they were saying. It was a gruesome, larger-than-life scenario, something that didn’t happen to the people from my town. But then again, Samantha was always telling me Vienna wasn’t anything special in the sense that anything could happen here just as it happened anywhere else.
“So, you’re telling me, you…killed him?”
“No, I didn’t kill him,” he told me, and the wave of relief I experienced was overwhelming. “But,” he went on, “I’ve killed as a soldier when I was over in Afghanistan.”
“That’s different. You were a solider following orders for a democratic nation, trying to establish freedom and order in an area of the world where women and children could be executed for just trying to go to school.”
“Jess—” his voice lowered, “—I may not have been the one to take out Schiller, but I have killed outside of my time in the military. It’s not often. The Order prefers utilizing alternative forms of enemy containment. Besides ex-military, we’ve got expert computer hackers, people who work deep inside the federal government. We usually wipe out an enemy’s assets or credibility within their illicit networks and feed them back to the sharks. But Schiller was, unfortunately, particularly shrewd and tapped into some heavy shit, so in cases like his, wet work was required.”
“He was hurting other women,” Sam said in a rush. “It wasn’t just because of me and my connection to Kyle that they stepped in.”
“I can’t imagine if something would’ve happened to you,” I said, staring off, my mind whirling with all the information I’d been given. “But I also can’t…how can you and your—” I was searching for the right word, “—crew…how can you play God? Why didn’t you just hold on to Schiller and hand him over to the police? They would have charged him with kidnapping, assault, attempted rape… Shouldn’t that have landed him in jail for years?”
“He was a well-connected son of a bitch,” Max answered. “He wasn’t just some whack job with a hard-on for your sister. His days in the theater were numbered, and he knew it. He always had a taste for rough trade, particularly with young women. He kept off of law enforcement—and our—radar by selecting foreign girls, usually those who didn’t speak a lick of English, brought over here thinking they’d be domestics or students, only to end up in human trafficking rings. He was moving from client to coconspirator.
“I appreciate the question you’re asking, but I’m telling you, there was a good chance he would have worked out some sort of deal, had charges reduced, ended up walking on a technicality. The ring he was part of, if they don’t have a client on a bench, they often have some other shit on someone and we’ve seen people in their network get off with nothing. We didn’t want to take that chance, not just for Sam, but for God knows how many women who ended up bound and gagged in a cabin in the woods, with a tableful of torture devices and not a fuckin’ soul in sight.”
I pulled my hair, taking in a series of deep breaths, trying to absorb what he was saying. I broke out in a cold sweat and brought a hand to my forehead.
“Jess, are you all right?” my sister asked, her brows knitted together.
“Uh…” I began, but then a wave of nausea hit and I bolted for the bathroom, lifting the lid just in time as I threw up the bottle of wine from last night. I clutched the sides of the porcelain bowl, feeling sweat run down my back.
A minute later, someone came up behind me, taking my hair in hand and then placing a cool washcloth on the back of my neck.
“Thanks,” I whispered, as I flushed the toilet and tried to clean myself up.
“Let me help you up,” Max offered, not waiting for a reply. He shut the lid on the toilet while I covered my mouth with my hand.
“I need to brush my teeth. Excuse me for a sec,” I murmured behind my palm.
“Do what you gotta do.” Max stepped sideways so I could get out of the powder room and into my bathroom.
I washed and scrubbed thoroughly, examining myself in the mirror before going back out there. Was my sister right? Was I too “delicate”?
Just as I was about to join the rest of them in the family room, I heard them talking amongst themselves. So I hesitated and listened.
“Max, I know you’re careful,” my sister cautioned. “And I don’t mean to sound ungrateful for everything you and your men did for me. But she’s the only family I’ve got left.”
“No, I get it,” he bit out. “Nothing touches her.”
“Man, she couldn’t even hold it together just hearing about it,” Kyle added. “I don’t expect you’re going to come home and share the details of your vigilante day, but how is she going to be part of your life if she can’t even stomach the small part you’re sharing with her?”
No one answered him.
I walked into the room, already feeling my skin heat up.
“I got sick because I drank too much last night, not because of what Max told me, okay?” My voice came out, like, three octaves higher than usual. God, I sound like a kid. No wonder they don’t take me seriously.
“So you’re totally okay with what he does?” Sam asked. I didn’t miss her incredulous tone, and the look on her face made me feel like I was letting her down.
“I think you two have had your say,” Max said. “Now it’s time for Jess and me to have some words.”
They checked in with one another, and then gave a nod to Max and me. Samantha wrapped her arms around me, clinging hard. “I’ll call you later, okay?”
I nodded, still silent as I walked them outside and they got back in their car, slowly driving down the block. I just knew Kyle was taking his time, not driving like his usual bat out of hell, in order for my sister to have a last look. As I stood on the porch, I couldn’t help but shake my head as I watched Sam stick her head out the window like a puppy, giving me a wave and mouthing “love you”. Just like I did when we were kids, I answered her with the sign for “I love you”.
Then I wrapped my
arms around my middle, almost like I was physically holding myself back from running down the street after her. I loved her so very much and the idea of disappointing my sister made me sick to my stomach. Even though she was telling me she loved me, and I knew that love was unconditional, I couldn’t escape the sadness in her eyes.
“So? Are they right?” Max called out behind me, leaning against the doorjamb, hands inside his front pockets.
“I don’t know,” I answered while walking past him and back inside. He closed the door and positioned himself directly across from me, taking both my hands in between his.
“They’re cold.” He started rubbing them. I gave a small smile.
“Yeah, it doesn’t take much. Poor circulation, or something like that.”
I studied my hands in his, a contrast of opposites. It was just yesterday I reveled in his strength, would have dug the way his skin felt against mine. Now I couldn’t help but picture those hands around a gun, his finger ready at the trigger. Did he prefer using a weapon or did he come up behind his victim and twist their neck until it snapped? I shrank away from his touch.
“Guess that’s my answer.”
I cast my eyes towards the floor. “I just need a little time is all. It’s a lot to take in.”
“Look at me, baby,” he gently ordered while getting closer to me.
I gazed up, the pale green heat of his eyes burning into me. How can just one look from this man affect me so?
“Since Piper’s come into my life, my role with the organization has changed. I’m rarely on the frontlines like I used to be. No wet work. No direct infiltration and little interrogation. These days, I’m really more of a gearhead for them than anything else.”
I swallowed and nodded.
“What that means, Jess, is nothing touches you.”
I stared at him, taking in everything he was saying, but before I could even register what was happening, his hard body surrounded all of me, with his calloused hands traveling up the column of my neck, lightly scraping my throat in the most unexpectedly delicious way. His hands made fists in my hair. My mouth gaped, and that’s when he brought his mouth down on mine.
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