by JA Huss
We recognize, collectively, that there’s no time to assess the situation further, although my eyes do pass over the carnage that surrounds us. It’s really quite something. Even in our most daring and active moments in our shared past, we never left behind a scene like this. A wave of worry rumbles through me. A feeling that I do not care for and to which I am generally unaccustomed.
“Do you think there’s any more?” Christine shouts.
Danny looks around. “Outside?” he yells.
She nods.
He shrugs.
His workshop-cum-apartment is in the middle of nowhere-industrial-no-place. You could park half an army on the street outside and virtually nobody would know or care.
I reckon we’ll find out shortly who else is waiting for us.
“Do you have a car, man?” I holler to be heard.
Danny points at a poor-looking example of what was once likely a very handsome Jeep, now undermaintained and, to coin a phrase, beat to all fokken Christ. My gaze passes over several beautiful custom-built motorcycles, each one worth probably almost a hundred thousand U.S. dollars, and I shake my head ever so slightly at the irony. Danny, Danny, Danny. You are the only one of you on the planet.
I make my way to the car and through the window see the keys sitting on the driver’s seat. I swing the door open, grab them, and hop inside. Danny comes flying to me, putting his hand on the door before I can pull it shut.
“Fuck do you think you’re doing?” he shouts.
“I’m fokken out of here, man!”
“Get out of my fuckin’ Jeep!”
“Fok jou, man! You think this is a fine place to stay at the moment?”
“Get out of my fuckin’ Jeep!”
I hear him scream extra loud. Both because he screams extra loud, and because Christine, it seems, has managed to turn off the alarm. She marches over to where we are, comes around the side of the car, and hops into the passenger seat.
“What are you doing?” Danny asks.
“We can’t stay here. Clearly.”
“Where do you wanna go? What do you think we’ll do?”
“I have a place, bru. Get in the car,” I say.
“Fuck you.”
I turn the key in the ignition and he levels one of the pistols he’s still carrying at my head. I smile, turn to look at him, and say, “Fine. Kill me then.”
There’s a hint of a beat where I think he just might do it. But then, as quickly as the murder flashed into his eyes, it skitters away.
“Fuck!” he shouts. Then he moves around to the passenger side, pushes Christine over to sit between us, and slams the door.
I smile again. To myself. I don’t dare let it alight on my lips, but inside, I’m beaming.
Danny says, “We don’t know what the fuck is waiting for us out there.”
I look over at him. He stares out the window ahead. Christine looks over at me and shivers, either because she’s only wearing a t-shirt or because of something else. Regardless, the shiver goes direct to my heart and I reach up and stroke her cheek. The sound of Danny breathing heavily through his nose is the only noise now. It’s strange how loud it seems, especially compared to the cacophony of before. But it does. It sounds like the loudest thing I’ve ever heard.
I stroke her cheek, listen to him breathe, watch the rising and falling of his bare chest under his leather jacket, and then put the car into drive and head out of the garage to discover what the fuck is, indeed, waiting for us out there.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - CHRISTINE
Streams of bullets are waiting for us. And I register that. I understand it. But my head is a swirling cloud of… something that is not fear. Because as the bullets cut across the windshield in an eerily straight-line about eye-level—blat-blat-blat-blat-blat—the shots don’t blow our brains out. They’re captured by some pretty kick-ass, military-grade bullet-resistant glass. Which of course immediately becomes a sheet of white as the rounds embed inside it.
So none of us die. We’re not even injured. Maybe a cut or a scrape from some hot shrapnel, but that’s it.
Alec’s hand is between my legs, shifting into the next gear. We don’t even stop. We don’t even look back. Just take the corners of the maze-like alleyways inside the industrial complex and leave the whole mess behind us with three turns.
No one even tries to follow.
And a moment later, when the Jeep jerks our bodies so hard as Alec jumps a curb and gets us onto something that resembles a main road, jostling us together back and forth, I have to wonder with equal parts fascination and sickness why the only thing I really cared about in the five-second firefight was Alec’s hand shifting gears between my legs and Danny’s hand on my thigh, trying to keep me from hitting my head on the roll bar directly above us.
Alec rolls down the window and leans his head out, no longer able to see through the windshield. Miraculously, the side windows never even got hit. They are clear as day. Well, with a blue-green tint that reminds me of shallow waters in the Mediterranean Sea near Greece.
“Fortnight,” Alec yells, the adrenaline catching up with him. “I fokken love you right now, Fortnight.”
“Me too,” I breathe. Staring straight ahead. Unable to chance a look at these two men who fill me up like nothing else in the world ever could.
Exhilarating. All of it. Every fucking second. And I’m not talking about the firefight. Or the way we just slipped past like a trio of charmed gods. Or the fact that we’re back doing what we do best. Shooting and being shot at.
I’m talking about the kissing, and the touching, and the fast-beating hearts of three people who fit together the way they’re supposed to. I’m talking about the yearning, and the deprivation, and the energy it took to convince Danny that this is right. That love comes in many shapes and no one gets to define it for anyone else. That a triangle of lovers is no more or less legitimate than a couple of them.
But he gave in. I felt it. Something changed in him today. I’m just afraid that he got lost while giving in. That the moment overtook him and he accepted what Alec and I have wanted all along, not because he loves us both equally, but because we were just there. That he was a victim of circumstance.
But, the inner optimist inside me counters, he did give in. And if he gives in once, he can do it again.
And anyway, Danny Fortnight has never been a victim of anything.
I know I should be thinking about what just happened. About the bullets and the diamond and—
“Holy shit! The diamond! Does one of you have the diamond?”
Alec’s eyes meet mine without him turning his head. “Please, nunu. Give me some credit.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the metal case, then tosses it up in the air. “I believe this belongs to…” He stops to huff out a laugh. “All of us.”
Finely honed reflexes snatch it before I can blink. Danny, sitting in the passenger seat, gives me his trademark sidelong smile as he leans into the door, shifting his body slightly away from me.
I know that smile. I remember that smile. And all thoughts about the danger and the risk float away again, leaving behind the doubts I was previously musing about. Did he move away from me because he’s still thinking I’m off limits? Or maybe he wanted to see me, and this gives him a better view?
God, this man. I’ve known him most of my life. As my memories keep coming back, I recognize that I probably still know him better than any other person on the planet, Alec included. He’s been there for me every single time without fail. And still he makes me doubt everything between us.
Because he walked out, Christine. And the whole reason he walked out was because you and Alec were pushing him in a direction he didn’t want to go. Why can’t you be satisfied with what he’s offering? Why must you ask for more?
It’s a fair question, but wholly unfair at the same time.
A girl is allowed to dream and this—these two men sitting on either side of me basking in the afterglow of death and destruction—
they are my dream.
“We need a new vehicle,” Danny says. “Take the next right.”
“Why?” Alec counters, still leaning out the window.
“Why? Because this one is shot to shit.”
“I know why we need a new vehicle,” Alec growls. “Why take a right?”
But he takes the right and we enter another abandoned industrial complex. “This left right here,” Danny says. Alec takes the left. “Second garage on the left right there. Stop.”
Danny is out of the Jeep before we can ask him anything else, punching in a series of numbers on a security system.
“Are you OK?” Alec asks me as we wait.
“Cold,” I say, rubbing my hands on my bare thighs to create the heat of friction. “But fine.” I look over at him and he’s staring at me. “What?”
His hand covers mine on my leg and chills run up my spine. “I—”
Danny whistles to get Alec’s attention as the garage door lifts up. “Hey, pull the fuckin’ Jeep in.”
Alec doesn’t finish whatever he was gonna say, just nods at Danny and eases the Jeep forward into darkness, stops when the front bumper is inches away from another car, and the garage door closes behind us.
Lights flick on and then Danny is in motion. Over in another bay of the garage, pulling a cover off a brand-spanking-new Range Rover. “Give me a second to grab some things. Christine. Come with me. I’ll find you some clothes.”
Putting clothes back on isn’t where my mind is right now, but that’s stupid. We just lucked our way through a spectacular firefight and we’re on the run from someone, so this is no time to be yearning for sex.
“What were you gonna say?” I ask Alec.
“Never mind,” he says. “It can wait. Go get dressed. We need to get out of here.”
I get out and follow Danny up another metal staircase that looks a lot like the one we just shot our way down less than fifteen minutes ago.
Inside he’s already gathering up weapons.
“I left the sniper rifle behind.” I say, walking up behind him.
He looks over his shoulder as he hauls guns out of a hidey-hole in the floor. “I got a spare.” And then he grins. “It was a birthday gift that year we… you know. I never got a chance to give it to you. But I cleaned it regularly. Just in case.”
He offers me one of those smiles. The ones that have melted my heart for years. The ones I looked forward to every day and then longed to see again after he was gone. The ones I remember.
But it feels sad for some reason.
And then he turns back to the job and starts handing me weapons and says, “There’s a bag in that closet over there. Get it out and put them inside while I go look for something to cover you up.”
Cover me up. I huff at that. Why can’t he just accept what I’m offering?
Not the time, Christine.
I know that.
By the time I’ve got the guns stored in the bag, Alec is coming up the stairs and Danny is coming back with a t-shirt for himself, and a pair of sweats, two pairs of thick socks, a pair of boots, and a navy-blue pea coat for me.
“Sorry,” he says, draping the coat over a chair and dropping the socks and boots onto the floor. “This is all I really have.”
I recognize the coat. It was the one he used to wear when we first met. And back then I’d be swimming in it, but when I slip it on it fits me perfectly. He’s smiling at me when I turn to face him. “Looks better on you than it ever did on me,” he says as I hug it close, breathing in his familiar scent.
It’s the smell of old days. Of the struggle we went through. Of the love we felt for each other.
“It’s perfect,” I say, taking the sweats from him and pulling them up my legs. Then I prop my back against the wall and start putting on the socks and boots.
He takes off his leather jacket and I can’t help myself. My eyes trace all the finely chiseled muscles of his chest. He sighs, shakes his head, pulls on the t-shirt, and puts his leather back on.
Buttoned up tight again.
That’s when we both turn to find Alec looking at us.
“What?” we ask simultaneously.
Alec just smiles. Like he’s got a secret. “Nothin’. Let’s go.” And then he leans down, zips the bag of weapons closed, and hoists the strap up to his shoulder as I finish lacing the boots and take a moment to revel in the newly acquired feeling of warmth.
“Go where?” Danny asks. “And why should we trust you?”
Aw, shit. We’re back to that.
“I’ve got a place, and it’s stocked for every eventuality. An impenetrable fortress. So unless you’ve got one just like it, something with multiple escape routes and—”
“Why would you have a place here?” Danny interrupts, not taking the bait for his implied lack of preparedness.
Alec’s gaze falls on me, then tracks back to Danny. “Where don’t I have a place, bru? I’m a planner, am I not?”
“Doesn’t answer my second question,” Danny deadpans.
Alec smiles. Laughs the way he does when he finds something incredible. “Because you know I’d never hurt you two.”
“Funny,” Danny says. “You’d think that. Because from where I stand that’s all you ever did.”
“OK, you guys. Can we just get the fuck out of here now? I mean, we’re like two blocks away from a bunch of dead bodies that have the name Danny Fortnight written all over them. We can work it out later.”
They stare at each other for a few heated seconds. Then Danny looks at me and nods. “She’s the reason I’m going along, van den Berg. Not you.”
“Noted,” Alec says. “Come on, Christine, luv. You’re gonna like this place, I promise.”
I don’t wait for Danny’s inevitable huff of frustration and anger. He’s protective of me. To the point where it feels a little like ownership.
And I don’t mind that one bit.
So I smile as I trek down the metal stairs behind Alec, the cache of weapons in the black bag bouncing against his broad back, and think about everything that just happened.
And figure… I’m right where I want to be. Doing the thing I do with the two men I do it best with.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - DANNY
“So how much do you remember now?” I ask Christine, once we’re back on the road heading into the dark woods that lead up into the rolling mountains.
Christine just stares out the window. She took shotgun and I’m in the back seat, hand in pocket, finger lying patiently against the barrel of my Sig Sauer. Aiming it at the driver’s seat in front of me just in case…
Alec is still the liar I once knew.
Still the weak link in the chain.
Still the asshole he was bred to be.
I’m having a hard time believing… well, pretty much everything that’s come out of his mouth since that phone call from out of nowhere.
“Remember?” Alec says, eyes darting to mine in the rearview. “What are you on about?”
Christine looks over her shoulder at me. “I’m fine. Just drop it.” Then she turns back to staring out the passenger window.
“She lost her memory, bru.” I sneer that stupid word. A brew is something you drink. Bro is the word he’s looking for and never seems to find. “After that job you sent her on went horribly wrong and she got hit on the head with a blunt object.”
“She didn’t get hit on the head. And there’s nothing wrong with her memory. Seems all in order to me, yeah, Christine?”
Christine’s fingers slide up to the back of her head, feeling for the stitched-up gash. “If I didn’t get hit on the head, then what did happen?”
“What?” Alec says, taking his eyes off the winding wooded road to stare at her for a second, before returning them to navigate a hairpin switchback turn up the side of the mountain.
I smile. Because the moments when Alec has to admit to himself that he’s not some all-knowing, all-seeing god give me pleasure.
“I did lose my mem
ory. Just for a few hours yesterday when I woke up. It’s back now, so don’t worry,” she adds quickly. “But how did I get the gash on my head?”
Alec’s eyes dart to mine in the rearview again. “We can talk about that later.”
“Of course we can,” I say. “Later is your favorite time to deal with everything.”
“Why are you so hostile, Danny? I saved your ass back there in your quaint little garage.”
“Saved my ass?” I laugh. “My ass would’ve been fine without your help, trust me. And we wouldn’t even be in this mess if it wasn’t for you. What did you do? Why is Christine fucked right now?”
“I’m fine,” Christine insists again.
“You’re not fine, Christine.” It comes out harsher than it should, but I don’t care. We’ve been out of danger and stuck in this car for almost an hour and the way the two of them just accept that mowing down a half-dozen people in my place of business is part of our normal everyday routine is starting to piss me off. “You’ve got a pretty spectacular gash on your head, you lost your memory, and just had to shoot your way out of a building wearing nothing but a t-shirt. None of this is fine. And all of this is linked directly back to Alec van den Berg. So I want a fuckin’ explanation. And I’m not gonna just sit back here like a good little van den Berg minion and pretend it’s all cool. It’s not cool. He did this to us. And you always give him a pass. Even though the whole reason we haven’t talked in almost four years was all his fault. Everything bad that happened when we were younger is all tied to him. Why can’t you see that?”
Alec huffs out a laugh. “I don’t recall you complaining when we lived on a yacht off the coast of the Cook Islands.”
“See? This is what I’m talking about. You think money fixes everything.”
“It does.” He laughs again. “That’s why they make it. What can’t money buy?”
“Me,” I snarl.
“Well, that’s a new look for you. The Danny Fortnight I knew was a bargain.”
Christine sighs. “Do we have to do this now? I have a headache.”
“Uh, yeah,” I say. “Because he’s the whole reason you have a headache.”