by Rye Hart
“That intimidating?”
“Yes, which is another reason you should get a security system.”
“You want my neighbor to be an attack dog for my other neighbor while I guard myself against both of them?” I asked.
“A woman can never be too careful,” she said with a grin.
“So I take it you’ve dug into this guy with your super-secret spy skills?” I asked.
“A bit. I don’t think he has a job or anything around here yet. At least, not a job anyone knows about. But he’s already ruffled a few feathers.”
“How long has he been in town?” I asked.
“A couple months. Was renting a place closer to town until this past weekend when he moved next door. But people are talking.”.”
“People around here talk if you wear white after Labor Day for Christ sake.”
“Either way, the rumors aren’t good. He’s gruff and rather unfriendly. He cussed out old man Dillard the other day, apparently.”
“In his defense, we all want to cuss out old man Dillard,” I said.
“Beside the point.”
“No, exactly the point. Have you actually met this man? I mean, gone up and shaken his hand?”
“No, but I know—”
“Then you can’t judge him by the rumor mill. This town talks. It always does. And sometimes, it has a good reason to talk. But usually, it doesn’t. Just a bunch of bored old biddies with nothing better to do than make up some juicy stories to pass around the knitting circle,” I said.
“You still need that security system,” Nicole said.
“I’ll wait for that winning lottery ticket, and I’ll get one,” I said.
“Mommy, when’s the pizza gonna get here?”
I looked up and saw Lillian’s beautiful blue eyes staring back at me, full of her father’s spirit and calm.
I felt my heart leap against my chest as I smiled at her.
“Soon, booger. Soon.”
I watched a smile spread across her cheeks as a knock came at the door.
“Pizza delivery.”
“Just a second!” Nicole said.
“I can get dinner,” I said.
“Nope. You need to save up for that security system. I’ve got dinner tonight,” she said.
Nicole meant well.
She always did.
She always knew what was best for me.
I just hoped she wasn’t right about the mysterious man from out of town.
CHAPTER 2
GRAHAM
I sat bolt upright in bed, sweat pouring down my face.
Another fucking nightmare.
It was the same dreadful day that replayed like a broken record. Like a curse.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and looked at the clock on the bedside table.
Four in the damn morning.
I got up and walked to the bathroom, splashing cold water on my face and looked at myself in the mirror. The bags under my eyes made me look much older than my thirty-eight years. I rose to my full height of six three and studied my reflection. My dark brown hair was tousled from sleep, and my deep blue eyes were haunted.
All I made time for these mornings was my therapy of hitting the weights hard to take out my frustrations. My efforts resulted in well-muscled arms and a sculpted chest that narrowed to a V at my waist. I scrubbed a hand over my beard and sighed deeply.
It was the third time I had the nightmare in one week. Over the past year-and-a-half, the nightmare played out in my dreams and woke me from a dead sleep.
Knowing I wouldn’t be able to go back to bed, I climbed in the shower to wash the sweat and the haunted memories from my body and mind. The soap and water cascaded down my broad chest and thick thighs, and I scrubbed myself as if I could physically remove the memories.
It never worked.
Nothing worked.
I didn’t want it to work.
I coveted the pain.
The torment.
Pain was my way of seeking redemption. Redemption that I knew would never come.
I was living in my own personal hell, in the third town I’d moved to since that horrible night. I had to leave the place I’d once called home. It reeked of too many memories.
Too much guilt.
Too much innocence lost.
I walked to my kitchen to brew coffee, needing to kill time before Daniel would be awake in a few hours. He’d be up by five am his time. The Agency engrained that in him, just like it had in me.
Now, I was up before sunrise every damn day, but not because I had someplace to be. My mind was overwhelmed with memories that haunted me.
My little boy, Kason, had been sick that morning. He’d woken with a fever and his eyes crusted shut. I was pretty certain that he’d had pink eye, and my wife, Cary, had wanted to take him to the doctor to get checked out.
If I closed my eyes, I could still see the look of concern on her beautiful face. I could see the worry in her liquid brown eyes. I’d held her close to me and tried to tell her that everything would be fine.
Oh, how wrong I’d been. That was the last time I held her.
I remember sitting on the edge of my boy’s bed for a few moments, smoothing the dark blonde hair away from his flushed face. I bent down and kissed him before going to jump in the shower for work.
Little did I know when I left the house that morning, that it would be the last time I’d ever see them alive. If I’d only taken the day off to go to the doctor with them. If I’d only done any number of things differently that day, they’d still be alive.
I felt my heart begin to race, and I paced back and forth in my kitchen. I huffed a deep agonizing breath out into the air. It was happening again. A panic attack.
I needed to find something to do other than replay that nightmarish day in my mind or I was going to drive myself nuts.
Talking to Daniel would help. Daniel had become my closest friend through our years of field work at the Agency and he was the only one from my old life who I still communicated with. He’d been the only person who witnessed my downfall from start to present. Everyone else was locked out of my life for good.
It was better for them. Safer.
Daniel took care of most of the funeral arrangements.
A funeral I could hardly even remember.
I wanted to be left the hell alone.
Isolated from the world.
Bourbon tasted better than coffee, and the tears I should’ve been shedding came in the form of holes in my bedroom wall.
The police department in DC was filled with half-brained idiots. They called the shootings a simple home invasion and dropped the investigation after only a few weeks due to lack of evidence. It was a fucking joke.
The alarm system had been disabled, and the windows broken from the inside out. Nothing in the house was missing, and nothing was overturned as if someone was looking for something.
Home invasion was the cover-up. Something was off. And because I hadn’t seen it sooner, my wife and son paid the ultimate price. In the end, it was my fault. I should have seen it coming.
Fuck. I could have stopped it.
After months of drinking away my guilt, I put down the bourbon and packed up my shit, leaving my badge and my gun on my desk at the Agency. I didn’t even leave a resignation letter or speak a word to any of my co-workers who tried to voice their bullshit words of sympathy. I didn’t need anyone’s fucking pity.
I walked out on the CIA, never turning back. I changed my last name and altered my date of birth and took off for parts unknown. The agency would not be happy with my leaving, as I had not been properly debriefed.
I knew things they didn’t want anyone else to know and, leaving in such circumstances, they figured I might have gone rogue.
That in combination with my skills made me a threat. I could take on ten men at once and leave them all unconscious without breaking a fucking sweat.
Fuck them. Let them feel threatened.
Not one fucking case was opened to get to the root of my family’s killers. The Agency accepted the word of the damn police department. That told me something was wrong with the whole situation. The family of one of their highest-ranking agents was murdered in a home with the newest and best security system at the time, and they didn’t care to look farther into it? I hated everyone in that damn office for not taking it more seriously. We were trained to believe that nothing that happened around us was random or coincidental.
That left me to do the digging myself. I went over everything that had led up to that day in my head over and over. An operation had gone south not long before. Had someone I’d put away come at me for revenge? The endless unknowns were enough to keep me up most nights.
I wasn’t going to rest until I found out.
God as my witness, justice would be served for my family.
I needed to get as far away from the Agency and my former life as possible. I’d lived in two remote towns before settling into Bend, Oregon.
I made it my mission to fit in somewhere just enough to be left the fuck alone.
So far so good.
***
GRAHAM
I headed to my truck as a sound caught my ear. I looked over into my neighbor’s yard and saw a little girl running around on the grass. Her dark red hair was billowing around her shoulders, bouncing in small curls as she flapped her arms around. She kept yelling to her mother that she was a bird trying to take off and fly around the city so she could see the world below. I saw a woman step out of her house, tired and worn down as she heaved a heavy sigh.
Beautiful.
I cursed myself at the thought.
I unlocked my truck as I watched her pile her daughter into the rust bucket vehicle she owned. By the looks of it, it was a complete piece of junk. Putting a child in that kind of car was not a good idea.
I guess desperate times called for desperate measures.
It would never hold up in an accident. I watched her hastily get into her car as it bounced on its chassis, rocking with every movement like the unstable piece of shit it was.
I slipped into my truck and closed my eyes. Daniel flew into town, wanting to meet with me, probably to talk my ear off about blending in and shit. My mind flew back to that night I’d lost everything. I could hear the droning of the monitors in the ICU as a shiver ricocheted down my spine.
I gripped the steering wheel and clenched my teeth. It was taking me longer and longer to pull myself from those visions. I cranked up my truck and lurched forward, making my way to a diner on the other side of town. Bend, Oregon, looked like a nice enough place to settle down in after the few catastrophes I’d gotten into over the past year and a half. I’d settle in places and people would get curious, ask too many questions and try to talk me in circles. People from small towns could do their research like the best of them, which was why I figured Bend would be the perfect way to go.
Small enough to be unnoticeable but large enough to hide in.
“Hey there, Graham.”
I embraced Daniel and patted his back before we sat down in a booth.
“Figured for a while there you weren’t coming,” Daniel said.
“When the hell have I ever not met with you?” I asked.
“You ditched me once in Kettle. Once in Fredericksburg. Another time in—”
“I get your point. Sorry. I’ll try not to fuck up Bend this time.”
“You gotta settle somewhere, Graham. Every time you kick up a storm and move, it leaves a bigger paper trail,” he said.
“I’m working on it.”
“You’re not keeping a very low profile.”
“I’m keeping an incredibly low one. Keeping myself afloat on bullshit jobs that don’t require official paperwork, not getting involved in business that isn’t mine. Not my fault people are curious about some asshole walking around town.”
“Have you tried not being an asshole?” he asked with a grin.
I looked at him, straight-faced for a moment.
“Graham, come on. Loosen up a bit. Bend might be the place you’re looking for,” he said.
“No place is the place I’m looking for anymore,” I said.
“Have you been back?”
“No,” I said. “I have a job to finish.”
“You have a life to assimilate. But that doesn’t mean you can’t go visit their graves.”
“They’re buried in DC, Turner. The fuck do you expect me to do?”
“What you always did with the CIA. Go in undercover and give yourself some closure.”
“You don’t think that’s what I’m doing? Getting closure?” I asked.
“Not the way you should,” he said.
“Sorry you don’t like my plans.”
“If you’re serious about Bend, you need to remember your CIA training. It’s imperative that you blend in. And right now, you’re doing a shit job of it. People are already staring at us.”
“Because I’m new.”
“No. Probably because you pissed someone off,” he said.
“Not my fault people wanna talk and I don’t.”
“That’s the thing. You have to talk. If they want you to talk, then talk. If you don’t wanna talk, then get yourself an off-grid house and live alone.”
“You know I can’t do that until the job’s finished.”
“I hear you loud and clear. But you’ll be moving in another month if you don’t clean your act up,” he said.
“What the hell do you expect me to do?” I asked.
“Get a part-time job. Trim up that beard. You look homeless.”
“I am homeless.”
“You’re renting a house.
“Not what I meant,” I said flatly.
“Graham, I know you’re still hurting.”
“You have no fucking idea what I am right now.”
“Hey, I’m not here to harass you. But if you want this to work, you have to suck it the fuck up. You have to blend in. Get a job. Interact with people. Give them a reason not to think you’re a piece of shit they should be digging into,” he said.
I clenched my jaw as I looked around the diner, taking in the way people were darting their gazes back to their plates. I hated it, but I knew Daniel was right. I’d be forced out of this small town in Oregon before I could plant roots again if I gave people a reason to talk. But there wasn't much business around here that didn’t require interaction with people.
Except for mechanic work.
But I wasn’t sure if I could stomach that.
It made me think of Kason every time I worked on my truck.
“They got a mechanic shop around here?” Daniel asked.
“I hate that you can do that,” I said, cringing at how well my friend knew me.
“It’s the only other skill you’ve got. Unless you wanna open up a martial arts studio or something.”
“Or a gym.”
Daniel grinned at me, and I shook my head. I didn’t smile nowadays. I couldn’t. But Daniel got me close sometimes. I stared out the window as our waitress approached us and gave her my order so I could get the hell out of there.
“How’s the new place?” he asked.
“We’re really gonna do this?” I asked.
“Yep. How’s the new house?”
“Decent enough. The owners have already informed me they would be willing to do a ‘rent to own’ situation,” I said.
“See? Something to work toward.”
“I’m not planting roots here.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Why should I?” I countered.
“Because you supposedly have a job to do. How can you do that job if you don’t have a home base to do it at?”
“Why did you come to town again?”
“To check up on you, Graham. You have a nasty habit of falling off the face of the planet. I see you still have that truck.”
“Had the tags changed and replaced. Not a problem,” I said.
“And if you can track me, so can they.”
“Hardly. I haven’t worked for the CIA for three months now.”
“What?” I asked.
“Yeah. Got tired of their shit too. Too many missions failing for no reason and with no one giving any straight answers,” he said.
“Well, damn.”
“Went through their whole ‘we gotta debrief you so you don’t say shit’ thing and then got the hell outta dodge.”
“Where you set up now?” I asked.
“I’m working on it. DC isn’t my kind of area for long-term shit, but it’s got some nice wooded areas around it.”
“Forever the mountain man.”
“Says the man with a beard four inches long.”
“Don’t like it, don’t look at it,” I said.
“Kind of hard not to. I mean, it’s impressive.”
Our food came, and we shot the shit, updating each other on our lives. I didn’t have much to talk about, and Daniel was a motor-mouth. That’s how I preferred it.
“Sounds like you got a mission of your own,” I said when he finished telling all the reasons he’d stopped trusting the Agency.
“I’m working on it,” Daniel said. “But not like you are.”
“Still got your old contacts?”
“Always,” he said.
“When I get myself … immersed, think you could do me a few favors?”
I watched a mischievous grin spread across Daniel’s cheek as he picked up a french fry.
“Thought you’d never ask.”
CHAPTER 3
CINDY
Lillian’s first day of kindergarten arrived, and she kept trying on all her new outfits. She came running out and twirled around in them like she did when we went shopping the day before. Every time she smiled at me, her eyes would sparkle, and I’d be reminded that her father wasn’t here to witness how excited his princess was to go to school like a ‘big girl’.
He would’ve been so proud of her, of how grown up she looked in all her dresses. He would’ve praised her for putting her shoes on the right feet and getting her legs in the right pant holes. That had always been his task, getting her to dress herself. He’d been adamant about it because of how it helped her coordination.