by Angel Payne
A lot.
And moments like this, in which I feel like I will never breathe normally again, will eventually pass. I battle to find extra room in my chest while turning to pace in front of the huge picture windows again. Far below, tourists in flip-flops and baseball caps stream along the sidewalks, gaping at the building-size ads for cologne, watches, diamonds, and plays about witches, wizards, sorcerers, and lions. Fantasy images for them…the realities of my world now. Yes, even the noble lions. A wildcat I am desperately trying to save now…even if it means having to lie to him.
Only for a little while longer…
The juxtaposition strikes me hard. The fantasy outside…the reality in here. The contradiction gives rise to a question.
“Damon?”
“Hmmm?”
“How do you do it?”
He continues peering at the boards, though he is far from distracted. The crackle of his attention fills the ten steps between us. “Do what?”
“Make sneaking around sound heroic.”
More crackles, though they are indulged within a long silence. Just as quietly, he murmurs, “How do you think I’ve kept sane for the last fourteen years?”
“A dozen of which were after you answered your debt to the government,” I point out. “So why did you stay on? Make the CIA your life?”
He tilts his head. For a moment, almost appears like I have asked if he has a pulse. “Because it is my life.” The jut of his lower lip is synched to his simple shrug. “Yeah, it was shitty to have to ‘die’—but in a lot of ways, it was a gift. I received a chance most people only dream of.”
The answer in that blank space is clear. “A completely clean slate.”
“Damn straight,” he confirms. “But more than that. A clean slate—with the custom-built opportunity to make it count for good. To turn Damon Court into Bourne Jackson—the person I always wanted to be.”
“A hero.”
His lips spread. His stare glitters brightly. With just two words, I have given his spirit bars of solid gold. “Yeah. A hero.”
Praying he does not throttle me for ruining the moment, my mouth twitches. “All right, but…”
“But what?”
“Bourne…Jackson?” I challenge.
Fortunately, he chuckles. “Hey, it’s a kick-ass name!”
Snort. “For super spies who can accomplish miracles with the help of a great computer animation department.” Says the woman who has taken the art of “super girlfriend” into a new cosmos this week, including viewing way too many super spy movies.
“And your point would be?”
“That we do not have the luxury of special effects.”
It is a little harsher than I first intended—perhaps because I realize the words are for me as much as him. I act on them too, turning from the windows, leaving behind the world of fantasy for the reality of the task still before us—
And, dear Creator please, the finish line he has promised is in sight.
Damon, seeming to see the symbolism of my move, nods as I rejoin him—though his next drag on the energy drink appears more like a fortifying gulp from a cocktail. The impression is heightened when he sets the thing down on a nearby table with a decisive thwong.
“Mishella.” He approaches. Plants his stance in front of me with equal verdict. “You need to know…when we’re done with this and taken care of Kavill for good, I promise to disappear as fast as I came. It’s not my intent to fuck with Cas’s life, or the good thing he’s found with you. I’ll be gone—for good.”
For many seconds, I just shift from foot to foot. Fall back on the safety of some Vylet-style snark, in hopes of masking my discomfort. “Are you looking for a medal, James Bond? Because I do not have one.”
He backs away. Huffs awkwardly. “Of course not. And I know that asking you to carry my secret is suckage to the nth.”
“It is…all right, Damon.” I wave a dismissive hand, flashing flecks from my bracelet across the room, and raining similar sparks across my heart. Yes, the thing is flashy—and yes, completely inappropriate for any time of the day before cocktail hour—but I refuse to remove it outside the shower or bedroom. Especially now, when I need the reminder of Cassian’s love too damn much. The reminder of everything he means to me…of why I am deliberately deceiving him, and will continue to do so, until his life is safe. “What other choice do we have?” I need to say it aloud too. “To tell Cassian about all this? Then…what…we would have to kill him, right?”
My deepest hope is that Damon laughs that off. My darkest dread is that he confirms it.
Nowhere in those visceral fears have I accounted for his actual reaction.
“We won’t kill him, Mishella.” He grates it out from a jaw turned to stone—shadowed by a gaze turned dark and ruthless as a dragon’s. “The bad guys will. Without mercy. And without hesitation.”
*
Cassian
“I’m not the goddamn bad guy here.”
Doyle lifts a brow at me. Keeps it hiked while glancing back down at my phone—and the text screen it’s open to. “Did I say that?”
I rock back in my big home office chair, drumming both thumbs against the screen—battling to be casual about it. “You’re very good about not saying anything.”
D angles back in his own chair. Hikes his legs up, crossing them at the ankles atop the small conference table. “You’re also very good about not needing lip gloss to get through your day, honey.”
“What the hell is that supposed to—”
He smirks as my phone dings. Stabs a finger down at the thing. “Lip gloss.”
“Shut up.” I bite it with extra vehemence after reading Ella’s newest reply to me.
:: Thanks for checking in! Intermission right now. Show is very good. Be home soon. I love you. Toodles. ::
“Toodles?” I glare at the screen, feeling like goddamn Mr. Magoo, too blind and stupid to see the Mack truck about to flatten me. Blind because I can’t see straight from loving her. Stupid because it’s turned me into a paranoid sonofabitch merely existing between texts from the woman who is doing exactly what I exhorted her to do since the second she got to New York: getting out and enjoying the city. And how have I reacted about it? Tethered her to me with these nonstop, needy texts—even though every night, she has been a lover like none I’ve ever known, open and generous, nearly desperate in her desire…
And there it is.
The one cog that won’t fit in the machine.
The fissure in the castle walls.
The smear of the goddamn lip gloss.
Her desperate, constant, need to keep pleasing me.
Lip gloss—across the demeanor of a woman who has never wanted or needed that kind of pretense before. Suddenly, everything about Ella is slicked in this weird version of the stuff—from the princess-perky way she greets each day, to the toe-curling passion with which she ends my nights, to all the strange, Stepford wife moments in between. Constant back and foot rubs. Agreeing to a week’s worth of spy movies without a concession from me to a musical. My favorite sandwiches at lunch, joined by plates of nonstop lemon bars…
Followed by all the afternoons away from the house.
In damn near the same part of town.
Always, always, somewhere near or in the theater district.
Most times, she just wants to see a matinee, or get some shopping done. Two days ago, it was a nail appointment. Four days ago, a hair trim.
Only who goes to the theater district for shit like that?
Doyle snorts—hard enough to ensure he has read those thoughts just by looking at me. “You know you’re beyond pussy-whipped, don’t you?”
I push up from the chair. “You know I told you to shut up, don’t you?” I jam a hand through my hair. I’m in home office attire, tailored but casual pants and a V-neck tee, but everything still feels too tight and hot. “And get your feet off the fucking furniture.”
He answers by re-crossing his ankles. “Scott�
�s already texted too, hasn’t he? Assured you she texted him too, and he’s already waiting outside the theater? Ahhhh,”—he finger-guns me with both forefingers—“I’m right!”
“Big fucking deal.” I descend back into my chair. “So am I.”
“Says what fucking judge and jury?”
“Says this one.”
The declaration is menacing as a grizzly—fitting, since Hodge resembles a new breed of the animal from where he hulks in the doorway, hair semi-wild and eyes black with vengeance.
And making every hair on my neck seize as if I were sitting here with a packed picnic basket.
While every instinct in my body screams from the truth stamped across his face.
The contents on the data stick in his hand won’t divulge a goddamn picnic.
I push back to my feet. Suddenly, my legs are blocks of ice, fed by the glacier already dominating my chest, sluicing ice water through my veins. Not even my hard swallow redistributes the heat from the only thing on fire inside: the pain burning in my eye sockets, already dreading the images that stick will ignite to life on my desk monitor.
Hodge lumbers across to the desk, but balks once he’s standing in front of me. The edges of his gaze tighten, making my gut do the same thing. He’s only ten years older than me, but at times like this, the paternal vibes are undeniable—
And never more appreciated.
Despite what I spit the next second.
“Shit.”
“What?” Doyle charges. “What the hell is—”
“How bad, Hodge?” I grate.
His mouth twists. “She hasn’t been going to the theater, Cas. Or to the salon.”
“What?” It snarls from Doyle as I stab the stick into the port on my laptop. I add nothing to it—verbally. The cloud of my fury on the air is likely enough to blow the building, even without a match.
“Fuuuuck.” Again, Doyle supplies the soundtrack for our shock. He repeats the word in several forms as image after image blares to life on the screen.
Ella, getting out of the Jag in front of the Majestic theater. The iconic phantom mask posters beneath the wooden balconies.
Ella, leaving the theater’s back entrance.
Ella, crossing 45th Street—
And running into the Marriott Marquis.
On a different day, Hodge has caught a full video of her—
Entering the same hotel, through the front entrance.
Still images return—with shots of her inside one of the hotel’s clear glass elevators. Then a video of the same thing, on a clearly different day.
I tear the stick out of the drive. Clench fingers around it so hard, the plastic casing cracks beneath my thumb. Hodge and Doyle are still and silent—poised as if ready for anything. But I have no fucking idea what that “anything” is. I spin away from them, elbow propped on the arm of my chair, thumb digging at the two inches’ worth of data that have imploded my soul, wondering how the hell I’m going to take my next breath let alone move my body or form coherent words.
“Christ.” Doyle finally slices it into the silence like a dagger on silk. “Jesus Christ, I thought she was,”—he clears his throat—“different.”
“Me too, lad,” Hodge murmurs. “Me too.”
I yearn to wheel back around and punch them both. Strain the astonishment from their statements, and there’s one thing left. Their pity.
Goddammit, not for me. Not now.
My lips finally part. And shockingly, a word stammers out.
“Name.”
When neither of them answer, I bark it.
“Name, Hodge.” I spin back around. Slam the drive to the desk. “She’s going to the same goddamn room, isn’t she?”
“Y-yeah,” he stammers.
“So what is the fucker’s name?”
Hodge straightens. Jerks up his chin, grimly accepting exactly where I’m going with the interrogation. “He’s in a suite on the high floor.”
“Of course he is,” Doyle spits.
“His name is Bourne Jackson.”
At once, the wrath drops out Doyle’s composure.
As the bottom drops out of my damn soul.
No.
Shit. Fuck.
No.
The room lurches, even as it’s filled with a fresh sound: Doyle’s howl of a disbelieving laugh. “Bourne…what?”
“Jackson.” Hodge glances from D to me, confused. But his perplexity comes nowhere close to mine, still hanging on for its fucking life as the room keeps cavorting like a seaside funhouse—
The kind Damon and I used to spend hours in…
“That is not the asshole’s name.” Doyle’s protest pings through my conscious, disembodied and fuzzy, like someone trying to communicate over the funhouse’s PA.
“That’s the name on the room.” Hodge’s voice isn’t much clearer, still replete with bewilderment.
“Dude,” Doyle asserts. “I’m telling you—”
“He’s right.” I bite it out while yanking open the top drawer of my desk. “Hodge,” I clarify, while sliding out a piece of paper that’s folded into fourths, “Hodge…is right, D…”
“What the fuck?”
I don’t answer him. I can’t, propelled backward by over fifteen years as I stare at the paper, printed on one side with algebra equations. The answers, all in pencil, have faded with time. On the other side of the paper, in pen, is a page full of adolescent scribbles, topped by a headline in careful block lettering.
THE ARTICLES OF THE SUPER SECRET BROTHERHOOD
Bourne Jackson, President and CEO and Secretary (better at cursive)
Bond Connery, Vice-President and COO and Treasurer (better at math)
My psyche is a windstorm. A turbulent, flailing mess, whirling rage and confusion and anguish through the glass of my soul and the boundaries of my heart, until I am decimated past all else but one certain plan of action—which I begin by jolting to my feet, and impaling Hodge and Doyle with a pair of take-no-prisoners stares.
“Call Scott,” I charge to Hodge. “And tell him if Ella ‘gets out of her show’ before I arrive, he is to tell her to walk her ass back into the Marquis and wait for me there.”
I flip my attention to Doyle—but he is already on his feet, truck keys in hand. “I’ll drive. You’re not seeing anything straight at all right now.”
I nod and follow him out the door.
I don’t argue with the man when he’s right.
FOURTEEN
*
Mishella
“Please tell me we are done.”
I punctuate it with a long groan, a longer stretch and a tired glance over at Damon. We have been, in his words, “hitting it hard” for the last two and a half hours, attempting to connect the final name on Cassian’s Arcadian contractor list to any known entities associated with Rune Kavill. So far, it looks like this sole company might be a legitimate resource: a steel company who will make custom girders for several bridges to be rebuilt within the next five to ten years.
Damon rises too. Rolls his head, making his neck crack several times, while making another pass in front of the billboards. “For today, we are,” he answers to my question. “Overall, I’d say we’re damn close.” He scrubs both hands down his face. “At least I fucking hope we are.”
A breeze of concern blows nettles through my belly. “Because…?”
“Because I was only given clearance to chase this shit for two weeks.” He lets his arms fall, stretching his hands and wiggling his fingers. Everything we have mapped out on the boards, he has also carefully recorded on his smart pad—meaning all ten of his digits have had no rest for the last week and a half. “We don’t have it all buttoned down, but it’s enough to make the higher-ups listen, and hopefully start on some action against all these fuckers.”
“When?”
“End of the week, likely,” he responds. “If not, first thing next week.”
It is not the answer I’d expected—but so much better. Relief
hits me in a rush, making me drop back down to the couch. “Thank the Creator,” I blurt, also in a rush—but hurry to fix the fallout, as the man’s shoulders visibly slump. “Damon…hey…” Ugh. Why am I actually stumped here? He is a grown man. A spy, for the love of the powers. “It has…been real,” I stammer, going for one of Vy’s favorite trite-isms. “And it has been fun. Just cannot say it has been real fun, okay?”
He groans. Chuckles. Shakes his head. “Where the hell did you scrape that one up, Sancti girl?”
I grin. “Somewhere in Sancti, I think.”
“Right.”
He rocks back on his heels. A long moment stretches by, thick with us both scuffing toes into the carpet, awkward as a pair of tortoises on a dance floor.
Finally, I query softly, “There is no spy movie precedent for this, is there?”
“Not a damn one,” Damon mutters.
“Or any obscure CIA handbook thing?”
“Only if one of us was getting ready to diffuse a bomb first.”
Tick…
Tock…
The pounds at the door, three demanding blows in a row, lurch me to my feet, heartbeat surging to my throat. Though Damon’s reaction is not so skittish, his face creases and his body tenses. In seconds, His Court lion takes over. He prowls across the room, silencing me with a finger at his lips—stunning me by brandishing a revolver that seems to appear from nowhere.
Three seconds. Three knocks. And everything has changed. Less than a minute ago, we were sitting here laughing about spy movies. Rune Kavill was just a black and white name up on a board. Now, there is a gun in Damon’s hand and Kavill could be the furious fiend on the other side of that door…
This is dangerous.
The awareness stabs deep and hard, gushing raw terror to my throat as Damon motions for me to duck behind the couch.
This is real.
I cower, trembling and cold, as he creeps coolly to the door. I am almost angry at him. Spy or not, how can he be so calm?
This is truly insane.
Every cell in my body freezes as he yells out, “Who is it?”—
I could truly die.
And am now certain that I will, as the intruding assholes do not wait to knock again.