Instead, I dropped into a chair next to her and crossed my legs. “Only you would show up in the middle of a war dressed like this.”
Morgan arched a perfect brow, crossing her legs to match mine. “I’m here on business actually. Well, and I wanted to see you.”
But the way her foot traced anxious circles in the air betrayed her. She wouldn’t be anxious if this were about business—hell, she wouldn’t be anxious if I dragged her out on a patrol right this minute, armed only with her Burberry trench coat and a slingshot.
No. She was here for Colchester. I was certain of it.
The captain interjected then, explaining how Morgan’s surprise visit came to be, that her father’s—my stepfather’s—lobbying firm represented one of the largest suppliers of Army munitions, and the supplier wanted a liaison to make sure that field use was going smoothly now that hostilities had escalated. It was bullshit, and what the captain didn’t say was that everyone up and down the ladder had greased the wheels because they knew Morgan’s stepmother was Vivienne Moore, and if Vivienne Moore’s children wanted to do anything at all, then by God, you let them, unless you wanted her to rain hell down on your head.
Vivienne Moore scared everyone. Even me, and I was her son.
The captain stood. “And now I’ll leave you two alone for a moment. While she has a visitor’s pass for the daylight hours during her stay, Ms. Leffey is sleeping down in the village, and I’ve arranged for us to give her a ride back this evening, for safety reasons.”
“I’ll do it,” I offered. I gave Morgan the sweetest, biggest, fakest smile I could. “Anything to spend more time with my sissy.”
The captain smiled, not seeing the way Morgan wrinkled her nose at me, and then he left us alone.
The moment the door closed, I leaned back and examined my nails, ragged and dry from all the fighting and patrolling. “You won’t be able to have another fuck-fest with Colchester, you know. Did you hear those booms twenty minutes ago? Those are mortars. Not ours. Word is that this is the week the separatists are going to move into the valley in full force.”
Her nose wrinkle didn’t go away. “Then just bomb them.”
I stared at her. “Did you not see all those fucking farms and cottages and tiny little hamlets with their tiny little churches? That’s where the separatists do most of their hiding. Hell, half of them live here. We can’t bomb them without bombing the innocent people too.”
“They’re not innocent if they’re sheltering rebels,” Morgan said indifferently. “We agreed to help these countries suffering from the Carpathian problem, so let’s help them and get out of here.”
“I didn’t realize you were so hawkish.”
She turned her pretty head away from me, as if bored, and I observed the delicate line of her jaw, the way muscles tensed in her cheeks.
“Or maybe you’re not that hawkish,” I said slowly. “Maybe you’re just upset that you can’t run away with Colchester and have lots of little Colchester babies with him while he’s fighting a war?”
Her eyes flashed. “Fuck you. And for your information, I didn’t come here for a fuck-fest. I came because I wanted to talk to Maxen, that’s all. He hasn’t answered any of my emails.”
I laughed at that. “Did you really just listen to all that I said about mortars and rebels and feel like we have lots of extra time for answering emails?”
“Everyone has time to answer emails, Embry. If the Pope has time to write blog posts, then soldiers have time to email.”
“As always, Morgan, you’ve found a way to dredge up the most selfish possible lens for any situation. Have you considered that maybe he doesn’t want to talk to you?”
I didn’t know why I said it. I didn’t have any proof that Colchester regretted anything that had happened with Morgan in Prague; in fact, the few times we’d spent more than a few minutes in each other’s presence, he seemed to have nothing but a fond nostalgia for their liaison.
“Remember Prague?” he’d say when we were waiting in line at the canteen. “Remember how the fog moved over the river?”
I remember how the fog moved over you, I’d want to say, but I wouldn’t. I’d just nod. “It was a good trip.”
“It was,” he’d say, staring at his tray. “Lots of beautiful nights.”
Or, when we were unpacking a week’s worth of dirty clothes in the laundry room, he’d say, “I need another dance lesson, Lieutenant Moore. Think someone has a Viennese waltz CD around here?”
“It’s 2004, Colchester. Who still has CDs? Haven’t you heard of iPods?”
“Or I could hum the music,” he’d suggest and I’d snort.
“You can’t hum shit.”
And then he’d try to hum something, the theme song from Friends or the chorus to Usher’s “Yeah!” which had been playing non-stop from the rec room for weeks, and I’d start throwing my balled up socks at him to get him to stop. And then he’d say again, quieter, “I still want to learn how to dance.”
“Sounds like an excellent chapter title for your memoir.”
Colchester had wrinkled up that sweet forehead. “Why would I write a memoir?”
“For when you run for President. You can’t be a President without a book first.”
And those wrinkles would get deeper, and he’d look so puzzled and handsome at my joke that my ribs would fracture from the pressure of it. And then to make that fracturing stop, I’d change the subject and say, “Bet you miss those nights in Prague.”
And his look would grow thoughtful and soft. “Yes,” he’d say. “There are things I miss about Prague for sure.”
All this is to say, I was certain that Colchester enjoyed every moment he spent with Morgan, but I didn’t want to tell Morgan that. It was petty of me, especially because she looked so downcast after I said it, and then I felt a resurgence of the guilt that chewed at me every night, the guilt that said, you’re selfish, you’re evil, you shoot guns at people and you don’t care if they live or die. And now it said, you can’t have Colchester, he doesn’t want you. Are you really going to deny Morgan and him a chance to be happy?
“I don’t know why I said that,” I said quickly. “I’m sure he does. If I see him before you do, I’ll make sure that he knows you’re here.”
“Good.” She breathed out a long breath and looked at me with an uncharacteristically vulnerable look. “I just need to talk to him is all. Not even long, if he doesn’t have long. But I just…” She looked down at her lap and twisted the belt of her trench coat around her fingers. “Please, Embry. I know it was just a week, but I can’t stop thinking about him. About us—how I want there to be an us. And he needs to know…”
How could life get any worse in the middle of a war?
Why, having to match-make for Colchester and Morgan again, that’s how.
“Okay,” I said, scrubbing at my face. “I’ll take care of it.”
But it ended up being harder to take care of than I thought. Colchester was on patrol in the next valley over, and I couldn’t exactly radio in to tell him my sister was here and wanted to fuck him. I finally managed to convey it, awkwardly enough, by radioing him and telling him he had a visitor from Prague.
“A visitor from Prague?” Even through the static, he sounded doubtful.
Sigh. “You know, man. An old friend from Prague. She’s here on base to see you. She misses you.”
“Oh.” Even though the response was short, I could hear Colchester’s men laughing at him over the radio. “Tell her I’ll see her soon.”
But soon took a while, and after two days, Morgan was downright fretful, pacing in my room as I packed up my bag for my own patrol in a few days.
“Why won’t he come back? What are they doing out there?”
I had folded the same blanket five or six times, just so I didn’t have to look at her flushed face and be reminded of how powerful her feelings were, which only reminded me of how conflicted I was about all this. “Morgan, please. He has a job to do. I
have a job to do. You, on the other hand, are only pretending to work. Why don’t you go to Kiev for a few days? Go to a museum, see some old Soviet shit.”
She sat on my bed, chewing on her lip, seeming to turn over this idea. There had been a time when she’d been an architectural studies major, before the redoubtable Vivienne had pressured her to switch to poli-sci. Deep inside this baby lobbyist was still a girl who dragged me to every museum in every place we ever visited.
“The guidebook in my hotel room says there’s a medieval church in Glein. Maybe I’ll go see that tomorrow.” She sighed, closing her eyes. “I just need to talk to him. Is that so much for the universe to give me?”
I grew up in Seattle. Whenever white girls in their twenties started talking about “the universe,” I knew the conversation had reached the end of reason.
“Go to the church, Morgan. Take some pictures for Mom and your dad. I bet by the time you get back Colchester will be done with his patrol and you can talk to him, and sneak him back to your hotel for more spanking sessions.”
She glanced up at me with a sharp look, but she didn’t respond.
And when I kissed her goodbye, I had no idea that the next time I saw her she’d be bleeding from a Carpathian bullet and surrounded by flames.
7
Embry
after
I wanted to go alone, but when I get to the small airport, I’m met by a young Latinx woman with an efficient-looking haircut and someone so dear and familiar to me that I run right to him and pull him into a hug.
“Percival Wu,” I say, pulling pack and squeezing his shoulder.
“Mr. Vice President,” he says, his grin genuine and only a little bit teasing.
“Last I heard, you were in Jordan doing mysterious things,” I say. Wu had joined the CIA after the war ended, becoming one of those agents that were only identified by numbers and code names in the briefing bulletins I got every morning.
“Just got home to Chicago two days ago. When I heard Mrs. Colchester had been taken, I volunteered right away.”
I swallow at this. I don’t know why Wu of all people should be the one to make me emotional after the night I’ve had, but he does. I feel safe with him at my back, warmed by his loyalty. “Just like old times, right?”
He smiles. “Let’s hope a little easier than that. And can I introduce Agent Gareth to you? She’s newer with the agency, but quite distinguished and specializes in the kind of hostage situation we’re facing.”
“And how would you define that?” I ask them both as I briefly shake Gareth’s hand. The image of Greer at Melwas’s mercy flashes through my mind, and I shove my shaking hand into my pocket. I want to kill him. I want to kill him so badly that I can almost taste it.
“This is the kind of hostage situation that nobody but a few people know about,” she says smoothly, cutting into my thoughts. We start walking to the small plane waiting for us. “This is classified in the highest order, which means we have limited tools, but greater opportunities. I’ll explain more as we get airborne.”
“And where are we going?”
“Newport. Specifically a boathouse there.”
I look at her, and she adds, “Trust me. It will all make sense once we’re on the plane and able to talk at length.”
We got to the boathouse too late. I knew it the minute I stepped foot on the path, having crept up from the woods beside the house. We searched the boathouse, the dock, and the dark house itself, grandly imposing even in the dim evening. There’s no Greer, and no sinister Carpathians lurking about. There’s also no boat but there is clear evidence of a disturbance on the dock. Knocked over paddles, scuffs that still shone on the rain-wet wood. Like someone fought not to get on the boat.
I’m fucking furious. Furious at the thought of anyone laying hands on my Greer, Ash’s little princess, my queen. Shaking with rage at the thought of rope on her skin, tape on her mouth, and even worse…
I stare at those scuffs, willing my heart rate to go down. For the first time in years, I miss my M4. I miss my Glock. I haven’t felt so much like a soldier in years, but now, with this righteous anger, this real fear, my brain dumping adrenaline into my bloodstream by the gallon, I could almost be back in Carpathia charging through the trees.
“We prepared for this,” Gareth says, interrupting my thoughts and taking a moment to holster her gun and button her jacket back up. “There was always a possibility we’d miss them.”
I look back at the Corbenics’s mansion, the one that belongs to Abilene Corbenic’s parents, to Greer’s aunt and uncle. I think of the phone records Gareth and Wu showed me on the plane; it had been Abilene who texted Greer in the middle of the night and beckoned her down to the lobby. I think of the quick actions Merlin had taken as we were in the air, finding all the properties Abilene would have had access to, narrowing it down to this one.
Finally, I think of Abilene’s arm laced through my own yesterday afternoon as we walked down the aisle to Ash. I don’t know her very well, but I would never have guessed her capable of this.
Greer would have recognized the house, I think bleakly. She was being stolen away, using a house owned by her own family…
“Abilene told Merlin and the Secret Service that her phone was stolen two nights ago,” Wu says. “We can’t discount the possibility that she’s telling the truth, and that Melwas’s people took advantage of Abilene’s connection to Greer.”
“We can’t discount the possibility that she’s lying, either,” Gareth says, and there’s something so factual about the way she says it that it doesn’t sound cynical, merely honest. “After all, we have had several people tell us that she seemed to make an amorous connection with one of Melwas’s men in Geneva this winter. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility.”
I tear my eyes away from the wet, scuffed wood. I need a gun in my hand. Or a knife. And I need to be moving.
“Where to next?” I ask, even though I already know. They showed me the pictures on the plane, the mountain resort that Melwas had purchased under a different name, the resort that satellite photography showed being fortified like a castle. It would be a perfect place to keep a secret captive. On paper it belonged to someone else, it’s so far out of the way that no one would find it by accident, and judging from the intelligence, he’s gathered a small army around it.
“Next we go to Carpathia,” Gareth says, and there’s a gleam in her eye she can’t quite hide. I’m glad. It means she’s as bloodthirsty as me.
8
Greer
after
I don’t know how long I’m on the boat. I struggle and fight as they put me on it, kicking and biting and screaming, even though I know the nearest house is half a mile away and there’s no way I’ll be heard over the crashing waves. And then my shoulder stings, a pricking needle followed by a deep burn, and the world fades away.
When I come to, I’m being carried in Not-Daryl’s arms on another dock. The sun is bright and hot, and birds cry nearby. I’m so thirsty, so terribly thirsty, and I feel so weak, like my muscles are made of seaweed. I try to stir, try to fight, or at least speak, but there’s nothing for it. The darkness takes me again.
When I finally wake for good, I’m thankfully unbound and un-gagged, sitting by myself on a plane. It’s small and the interior is well worn and spare, populated only by Not-Daryl, three other men, and myself. No flight attendants on the Air Kidnapping flight but quite clean, I think tiredly. Two stars.
I roll my head against the back of the seat and look out the window. Mountains roll underneath us, mostly low and green, with the occasional spur of rock here and there. Off in the distance, I see the mountains grow taller, darker. I know these mountains from the war, from all the pictures and documentaries and shaky helmet-camera footage captured by soldiers.
Carpathia.
For just a moment, I let the fight leave me. I let the fear leave me. And I only think of my wedding. It was my last free day and I didn’t know it, and how fi
tting that my last free day would be the day I willingly surrendered my freedom to Ash.
Just the thought of his name brings heat to my eyelids and I shut them fast, afraid to cry around these men. Ash in his tuxedo, sliding his ring on my finger. Ash holding me in his arms as we danced to Etta James’s “At Last,” a song he and Embry danced to, he told me. Ash whispering to Embry as he caressed him, whispering to me as he and Embry both fucked me. Us, holding hands and promising…promising something. Love. An attempt. A surrender to the helpless feelings we all had for each other.
For just one selfish moment, I allow myself to be a damsel. I allow myself to be in pointless, nearly weepy distress. I ache for my life before, for yesterday—or two days ago, however long it’s been. I ache for my wedding dress and veil, for the church decked with flowers, for my groom and his best man. I ache for our wedding night, that wedding night I can feel even now with biting soreness. I ache for the feeling of being cradled between the two bodies I love best in this world, the feel of their sweat-slicked skin and hard muscles, and the biting teeth they used when they couldn’t find the right words to whisper to me.
I allow myself to indulge, just for a single moment, the thought that they will come for me. That the instant this plane lands, my king and my prince will be there, ready to sweep me away from this strange place and the people who would do me harm. I allow myself to hope for it like it’s the only thing I know how to hope for, that at this very moment, Embry and my husband are on their way to me. That they will find me at all costs and that everything will be okay.
I use my thumb to rub the slender band of metal on my ring finger, the one that sits below the dazzling engagement ring Ash gave me. For a brief instant, I’m grateful it hasn’t been stolen from me, that I’ve been allowed to keep at least one thing to myself, if I can’t keep my nakedness or my freedom or my dignity. But the gratitude fades the more I rub at the ring, as I remember what it represents.
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