by Hazel Parker
That bastard had been a thorn in DOM’s side for the better part of a decade now. For the first while, he was just a nuisance, setting up quick and easy rescues for us that took our time. There was almost an odd sort of respect, though I hesitated to actually say that about someone who committed crimes as heinous as stealing women.
But now, especially after Scott had really screwed Snake over, things had gotten worse. Much worse. Snake was seemingly losing his mind at losing every encounter with us. And if we didn’t stop him now, it would get far too ugly.
“I understand, Burke, but all of us are in this for the kill. This is too big for just one of us.”
“Understood. Send me the files. I’ll head there now, see you there.”
I hung up. Immediately, like a switch had been thrown in my mind, I went into action mode. I turned around, left the building, and made a beeline back for the hotel I was staying at. Within half an hour, I had all my bags packed, a private airplane waiting to take me to Mexico, and no more commitments here. Getting through Miami traffic was something of a pain in the ass, but it got done.
When I got to the plane, I got on board, told the pilot to make haste for Tlaxcala, and took my seat. I closed my eyes, visualizing the ensuing mission. There’d be a lot of bloodshed, death, and violence. There was no way we were going to do this mission without risking death.
But it was our chance to end Snake. He was out in person with the convoy, and that gave us an opportunity. We had to take it.
The plane lifted off.
And only then, only when it was probably a couple thousand feet in the air, did I realize I had never told Emily that I wouldn’t make it to lunch tomorrow. It was kind of a dick move, but it was too late to do anything about it. Besides, we had four weeks to figure shit out. Snake may very well disappear into hiding if we didn’t act in the next four days.
With that realization and understanding that Emily did not matter right now, I focused on the mission.
Or tried to, at least.
Chapter 9: Emily
Monday Afternoon
It was now twenty minutes past noon, at the restaurant I had texted Burke to meet me at, and he still had not shown up.
Perhaps I was the stupid one for thinking I didn’t need to confirm anything with him. Perhaps I was naive for believing just because he hadn’t responded to my text message didn’t mean he wouldn’t be here. No, there was no perhaps—I was definitely the idiot here.
Not only was Burke not here, the man, was actually impossible to reach.
The waiter came over to me, but I quickly grabbed my phone, pretending to be on a phone call so I wouldn’t get embarrassed by a third visit from him alone. When he left, I decided to try my luck at calling Burke anyway. Truthfully, I knew if he hadn’t answered by now, he wouldn’t answer at all, but maybe I was just naively clinging to some far-fetched hope that, I don’t know, his phone had died and it had just now come back to life.
But when I dialed it, I didn’t even get a ring tone. Just like the other…two times I’d called today, it had gone to voicemail.
What a bunch of shit. Had he no regard? No concern? No care at all for anything but himself? Couldn’t he have at least sent a text or something saying he couldn’t make it?
Fuck, it wasn’t so much that he hadn’t shown up. It’s that he’d just fucking…fucking disappeared entirely, ghosted me with no warning.
And not only that, if he really was gone, how were we supposed to sign the legalities of this arrangement. What was the point of all of this negotiating about parental rights and visitations if he was just going to fade into the wind, nothing more than an erotic memory I’d fucking masturbated to?
Boy, put like that, it was downright infuriating. And I had no idea…
I have no idea how to even pay him or send him his car.
It felt…now what did I do? I was already starting treatments and the process of priming my body to hopefully have a child. It wasn’t like that was something I could just shut down—maybe I could, but I wouldn’t having come this far. It felt unfair. I at least wanted to get him the car since that was worthless to me.
I could have fucked him, though. He hadn’t even signed the papers. He’d gone into a clinic, jacked it to some stupid porn, and walked out. Aside from meeting me twice, that was the extent of our connection. No contract, no bank transfer, no vehicle gifts, nothing.
I didn’t want to cheat him out of anything, but Christ almighty, how the fuck could I fulfill my end of the bargain if he wouldn’t let me?
“Ma’am?”
Ah, shit, I forgot to get my phone out when the waiter came by.
“Can I get you anything in the interim?”
I only had a glass of water in front of me. I knew the waiter was being polite, but what he was really saying was, “Order something already or we’ll ask you to leave so we can clear the table and make some cash.” Too bad my appetite had all but vanished under the stress of the moment.
“I’ll take a sparkling water, please.”
“And anything to eat?”
“Chicken and asparagus.”
I said it without really thinking. Maybe something good would happen and I’d get hungry between now and the time the food came out. Or maybe I’d just take the food to go and have myself an elegant dinner later that evening.
My phone rang.
I damn near dropped it on the ground, hurrying to answer it. Was it Burke?
No.
Not Burke.
But it was the doctor, which I supposed was the second-best call I could have gotten.
“Hello?” I said, nervousness evident in my voice.
“Hi, Emily, I just wanted to touch base with you about your embryos,” the doctor said.
I gulped. There was a part of me that feared the doctor was about to say I was somehow had bad ones. That was ridiculous, of course, but fears were usually that…and still able to overwhelm.
“As discussed before, we have one very high-quality embryo and two good ones,” she said. “The appointment is tomorrow, as you know. You can choose to implant two; we usually don’t recommend doing so, but in your case, because you’re in top shape with limited time, it might make sense to do both. It’s unlikely both will take, but they could.”
Two? Like, twins?
I had so many emotions running through me right then, I had trouble distinguishing them and separating them out. Excitement, anxiety, hope, fear, nervousness, trepidation, fulfillment…those were just some of the ones that came to mind, even if some of them seemed to overlap with the other. But one was definitely at the forefront of my mind and overwhelming all the others.
Finality.
Tomorrow was the implantation. Not next week. Not in a month. Not at some undefinable, unclear point in the future. But tomorrow.
And Burke was still nowhere to be fucking seen to finalize this. Whatever, its just me anyway. My life. My body. My future.
It raised some serious ethical questions in my head as to whether or not this was a good idea. Did I need to postpone the implantation to get his signature on all this Was his verbal agreement enough? On a personal level, perhaps, but if this ever got to court, it could get ugly.
And besides, he’d only said I could have one child with him. But did that mean one child, full stop, or did that mean one round of kids? Like if I had twins…would that count as one?
“Miss Lorne?”
“Sorry, let me get back to you in an hour. I’ll let you know,” I said, hanging up.
I felt dumbfounded and a little sheepish. I had a chance. But Burke’s absence was making it damn near impossible to commit or decide on anything. Part of me wanted to say if the asshole wanted to toss aside his chance to have a say, that was his problem. He knew where to find me.
But I couldn’t sink so low as to be that crass. I had to be better.
I looked at my phone and decided to call Kelly. I didn’t want to depend on her for all the answers, but with the stakes o
f this case, I couldn’t let it go. I needed to bounce this off someone else.
I called.
“Em?” Kelly said on the other end. She sounded a little more alert—and also a little more frazzled. Cognizant that Charlotte and Cody might have given her hell this morning—perhaps all weekend—I told myself to remain calm and not overwhelm her with information. “Is everything all right?”
“No, it’s not. Fucking Burke ghosted me and now the doc is asking if I want to implant more than one embryo which could result in twins.”
Well, so much for remaining calm and not overwhelming her. I guess now that I’d gotten the chance to get it off my chest, the unloading was going to be fucking intense.
“He agreed to do everything over the weekend, and I even saw him at the fucking clinic on Sunday when he dropped everything off. I asked him to do dinner with me, he said lunch today, and well, here I am, at the restaurant, waiting for Burke to show up, and the bastard is nowhere to be seen.”
I was partially aware that being in a public restaurant was probably not the place to say a lot of what was on the tip of my tongue, but it was much too late to reign myself in.
“I’ve been giving myself injections every day and doing an unbelievable amount of ultrasounds and blood tests just to get this shit set up, Kelly,” I said, my voice starting to crack a bit. “And that’s on top of my regular daily life. What should I do?”
“OK,” Kelly said, taking a breath. “First, breathe.”
I did as commanded. It gave me the chance to look around and see that people were giving me side glances. Fuck ‘em, though at least I was calming down some because of Kelly’s words.
“You need to remember that this is how these guys roll. It is not personal. He didn’t ghost you.”
I nodded.
“Emily?”
“Sorry, I was just…I think I know where you’re going with this.”
“It’s all good,” Kelly said sweetly, though there was still something somewhat frazzled about her voice. I made a note to ask her about it at the end of the call, but not right now. “These guys aren’t very good at being open and expressive about what they want. Commitment isn’t just something they’re afraid of; they literally actively avoid it. So give it time. Burke may come back.”
“And if he doesn’t?” I said.
Those four words stung me more than I thought they would. Saying them out loud seemed to somehow make them more possible. Like I’d made the ultimate deal with the devil, and for the first time, I was realizing what the catch might be.
“Remember why you’re doing this,” Kelly said. “You’re doing this so you can have a kid, right? I know you are crushing on him and were hoping he felt the same but you’re still in a spot where you can have a kid, yeah?”
Possibly even two, actually. Haven’t decided yet, but…
“True,” I said, feeling a little more uplifted.
“So I’m not saying settle for it, but just remember, these things are complicated. You’re in a great spot compared to before. You just…need to give it some time, I guess.”
And then Kelly said something, perhaps without even realizing it, that utterly cemented my desire to press forward, Burke or no Burke.
“You can back out, right? Just throw away the sperm and move on?”
The very thought was atrocious to me. Perhaps a couple years ago, I could have easily dismissed it. But now, being so close to the “finish line,” there was no way.
“Hell no,” I said emphatically. “I want this kid more than anything, Kelly, and I’m not backing down on that.”
I took a breath.
“Sorry. I should have really called you somewhere private.”
“It’s OK,” Kelly said with a laugh. “I’m here to talk to you anytime, you know.”
“I know, you’re the best.”
It was easy to conclude—or at least, easy for me to decide—that Burke had agreed to this by the very act of entering the center and providing sperm. I did want to proceed. I would not stop.
The only question I needed to figure out was if I wanted two embryos or just one. But I’d need the full hour to figure it out. And there was something else I needed to ask right now.
“Everything all right with you?” I asked. “You sound like you’re in a more chaotic situation than Saturday.”
“Yeah, a bit.”
I waited for Kelly to fill the gaps and explain why. Strangely, though, the other end of the line was silent. I almost wondered if we’d gotten disconnected.
“Kelly?”
“I’m here.”
How odd.
“What’s going on with you?”
“Oh, the kids have just been fussy. Charlotte’s hitting the terrible twos, and Cody didn’t sleep well last night. Liam’s been out, but…yeah, mostly just the kids.”
“Liam’s been out?”
“Yeah.”
I was getting the sense that Kelly was getting more and more uncomfortable with the conversation. The more I asked about how things were, the more cliche the answers were getting. I was willing to bet that if I pressed too hard, Kelly would make up some excuse about how she needed to take care of the kids and disconnect.
Maybe there was a connection with Liam and Burke? If Liam was out, maybe Burke had had to follow him? That would have given credence to the idea that he would just take off.
But it was really damn hard for me to give any credence to any idea when no one was saying a damn word. I could understand Kelly’s spot, actually—if Liam had told her not to say anything, or if she genuinely had no idea, perhaps she was going through a spell of confusion. But that Burke couldn’t say anything…
That hurt.
“All good, Em?”
“Huh? Yeah, sorry. Hey, I’ll let you go. But thanks for the advice, it’s really appreciated.”
“Of course, Em. Let me know if you need anything else.”
We hung up somewhat awkwardly right there. I think both of us knew that the other was not saying everything that they could have, but for now, at least I knew I’d go through with the implantation. I just didn’t know if I’d be doing double or single.
The waiter came by with the food a second later. My appetite had, actually, returned somewhat, now that I had the clarity of the situation. I dug into as much of my food as my appetite would allow before I got the food boxed up to go. It was awkward eating alone, and I told myself if I saw Burke again I would let him have it.
I left cash on the table as soon as the boxed food came, not bothering to wait for a final amount on the receipt. There was probably a good fifty, maybe even sixty percent tip there, but fortunately, one of the perks to being able to pay someone five million for their sperm was you could leave the occasional large tip.
I started heading back to my office. Slowly, the decision of what I would do with the final question came to mind. And by the time I got to the front door, I made my final call of the afternoon.
“Hey, doc,” I said. “I’ve decided.”
Chapter 10: Burke
When I had landed in Tlaxcala the night before, the entire place just reeked of something disturbing.
It wasn’t anything to do with the actual scent. It had more to do with the fact that there was a feeling of finality to this mission, that this is where things would come to a head. A decade felt like a century when it came to dealing with Snake—every time it felt like we had him just on the ropes, just inches away from the final defeat and the takedown, he managed to wiggle out like his reptilian namesake.
But now, Scott had full confidence he was with the van. Maybe part of his growing bolder extended to him taking stupid risks in the field. We had our chance. We just had to strike right.
And boy, I had to say, having Scott and Liam tagging along in the coming hours would make life a hell of a lot easier. Things would get ugly as hell really fast. But I thrived off this.
If I’d wanted a peaceful life, I would have just gone back to the sperm d
onor clinic and jerked off for a couple hundred bucks a day. But then again, if I was that dude, my sperm wouldn’t be worth jack shit. So I suppose I was happy to be in this spot, although “happy” felt like an odd fucking way to describe it.
As soon as I got off the plane, Scott had an arranged vehicle waiting for me. I already knew by heart the city from having visited it on previous missions and knew where our DOM bunker was, on the southeastern side of the city. I drove about half an hour out, down some supposedly abandoned roads, before I pulled in to gather myself. The night had now fully settled in; there were plenty of beautiful stars up above, but a shitload of darkness and nightmare on the road ahead.
The truck was stopped for the moment about thirty miles north of me. By our recon, it was not moving particularly fast, no faster than a vehicle just barely going over the speed limit on a U.S. highway. Scott hadn’t given a reason for this, but that was only because years of experience had already told me why; a vehicle that did move quickly did so because it was so well protected it didn’t need to move quickly. The cartels, Snake’s own security defenses, and whoever was driving and riding in that truck would have its back.
“Nothing like a goddamn warzone,” I muttered to myself as I unlocked the armory in the bunker.
Powerful, ruthless people. Those were our enemies.
And with Scott and Liam now having families, it was very obvious who was going to be the one putting himself in the line of fire the most. It was me. I had no family, and thus the lowest amount of risk going in. I was going to be their body armor of sorts; I was going to be the one most likely to die.
But you might have a kid one day…
I had just opened the door when that thought popped to mind. It made me freeze where I stood. I actually even fucking gulped at the thought.
Death had always felt like a part of the job, perhaps almost an inevitable outcome to a certain extent. That we had avoided it to date was less a function of skill and more a function of circumstance. The wrong environment could have killed us at any moment. And honestly, it was what kept me going. Only when I knew the risk of death was so high did I feel so alive.