by Fiona Quinn
Spyder tapped my wrist. “Your body feels comfortable and safe,” he began. A few more taps on my pulse point, a few more suggestions about how good I felt, how sleepy and relaxed, floating comfortably, and I was deep enough for us to begin.
“Lexicon, if at any point you wish to come back to the present, you do not need me. You will simply open your eyes, and you will be awake, refreshed, and remember everything that was said during our session. Today, you looked at the picture of a necklace on the computer screen. Was this the exact same necklace that you have seen before, or was it a lookalike?”
“Exact.”
“Good. Now I want you to move in your mind back in time, back, back to the point where you saw this necklace. Tell me when you are there.”
“There.”
“Where are you? What do you see?”
“I am at the Iniquus safe house. I am sitting on the couch next to Striker Rheas. I see his dimples and his beautiful smile. He has a five o’clock shadow, and I want to run my hand over the sharpness. He’s—”
“Okay, good. You are sitting on the couch with Striker. Is he showing you the necklace?”
“No. We are looking at a photo album.”
“Tell me about this album.”
“It is a picture puzzle that I worked to uncover today. I am explaining the pictures to him. There is a picture taken on a boat. There are cocktails. I am trying to figure out the names of the players and where they might be hiding in the present moment from the pictures that I see in the album.”
“Are you successful?”
“Yes.”
“What were the names?”
“Catherine and Jason Clemmons. Their river house was 3564 North Shore Drive.”
“Very good. Now you are looking at all of the photographs available to you in this album. One of them also has a picture of the necklace. Is this correct?”
“Correct.”
“I want you to go to that image now. Squeeze my hand when you get there.”
I squeezed his hand.
“What do you see?”
“There is a woman in a green dress. Her nametag reads Catherine Clemmons. Next to her is a woman in a white dress. Her name tag reads Lynda.”
“Who is wearing the necklace?”
“Lynda.”
“Look at her face. Do you recognize this woman? Do you know her last name or where we could find her?”
“Lynda Rheas. She lives in Miami. She just moved to 5561 Ocean Breeze Street.”
“You may come back now. I will count you back up to here and now. Ten, with each number, you rise up in your conscious state. Nine, you are aware of your body. Eight…”
***
I stared at Spyder. “Striker’s sister. She has no idea that she has this and that she’s in danger.”
“Nobody knows about these necklaces other than Brody. The danger is minuscule.”
“Somebody could hypnotize him or torture him.” I sat at the very edge of my seat, my legs glued together, my hands on my knees.
“They would have to know the data existed for them to take that line of questioning. And he would probably make up random names because he doesn’t remember any of them except Mary’s. Once he put them in the group on FB, he left them there and thought that the information was safe. That was three years ago.”
“We have to tell Striker.”
Spyder raised an eyebrow.
“I’m serious, Spyder. I have to tell Striker. I can’t keep something like this from him.”
“Lexicon, you have been involved in many cases, many with me and many with Striker. Are you ever apprised of the danger? Or is it held back as need-to-know, and it is very rare that you need to know?”
“Held back. But in a case like this—”
“You have been in danger’s way. You might have been safer knowing the information. Did Striker give it to you, or did he simply believe that you should trust your team to handle it?”
My mind went to a particular night at the Halston Ball when I played the role of Babcock’s date, all dressed up like an Italian woman named Gabriella Ricci. My sixth-sense warning system went off, and I had a “knowing” that said, “Hydra Marionette.” I had waited, fuming, through the entire car ride to the mansion where Babcock would pick me up. Striker told me nothing. Just before I popped my door open, I specifically asked if he had anything he needed to tell me, and Striker looked confused. No. In fact, Striker never ever, ever shared even a droplet of information that I absolutely didn’t need to know. He wanted me to trust the team to keep me safe.
I flopped back in the chair, completely deflated.
I felt like a traitor.
I knew I wasn’t going to tell Striker anything about his sister. “This is another relationship test, isn’t it? I will have to split my loyalties and prioritize them, right? Striker is my priority, and I truly believe I am his. Loyalty to my code of ethics, loyalty to my job and country, they have to stand first when it comes time to make decisions that belong in a workbox.” I flexed my neck to the left and right and listened to the vertebrae pop.
Boxes make life simpler. My life was anything but simple. This conversation seemed so familiar. I remembered back to the night I went to the Halston Ball to put the listening device in Babcock’s pocket. Angry, ready for a fight, I walked into Striker’s apartment, and there he was, his warm eyes drinking me in. I loved him so much, and I was trying so hard to understand him and who we were to each other. Boxes. He wanted two of me: Lexi for his Lexi box — a girl to date and enjoy. And Lynx for his Lynx box — a colleague that got the job done. So naïve. So incredibly naïve. I didn’t understand all of the angles and complexities. Could we do this? Could we marry and make a life together? Even with all the secrets?
“What’s the plan?” I asked. My throat was dry and raspy.
“I’ll fly to Miami tonight. I should be home in the morning. And you? Do you have a direction you wish to explore?”
“Yes. There is an artist named Dyozo Tsukamoto. There were three people in all of the United States who owned his works. All of them live in the DC area. One is Babcock. One is Iniquus. And one is unknown. It’s made me curious.”
Chapter Thirteen
The front door shut.
Striker entered and trekked to the fridge.
The sighing hiss of a cap twisting off a cold bottle of beer told me today had probably been as frustrating for him as mine had been for me.
I lay on the floor with my hips tucked up against the wall, legs and feet stretched straight up toward the ceiling in a yoga pose. My Kitchen Grandmother from Punjab, Biji, told me to do this viparita karani when I needed to think clearly. Right now, I could really use a bit of clarity.
Striker sauntered over and pushed his back against the wall that I had staked claim to. He smiled down at me. “Comfortable?” He took a swig.
“Very.” I swung my legs down and slowly sat up.
Striker turned his head back and forth to loosen his shoulders and neck, then slid down the wall, so we were eye to eye. He brushed my hair out of my face and smiled. “I’m glad you’re a blonde again. You were beautiful last night, but this is how I like you best.”
“You recognized me? Hmm. Maybe I need to work on my disguise abilities.”
“Your disguise was fine. I would recognize you anywhere.”
“Really? Anywhere?”
“Yes. By your aura, your walk, your gestures.” He leaned in and kissed my neck. “You smell nice. I like that perfume.”
“Aura?” I laughed. “Are you taking psychic lessons from Miriam that I don’t know about?”
“That’s Gator’s gig. Mine is to observe, and I don’t mean aura like glowing rainbows.” He tilted his head. His eyes were soft and warm like moss in sunlight. “I mean it more like that Byron poem. She walks in beauty like the night, of cloudless climes and starry skies. Like a lady — graceful and pure of heart.”
“Awww.” I reached out to squeeze his hand. “That was
a sweet thing to say. And poetry to boot. What turned on your romantic switch?” I released his hand to rub my thumb over the stress lines between his eyes where normally he had none, trying to ease the headache I could see beating there.
“Stream of consciousness.” He pulled his legs in and rested his elbows on his knees. “So, are you going to tell me why you were at the art ball?”
“I wonder what you would tell me if I asked you the same?”
“Classified,” he said.
“Yup. Me too. And if you think I went to spy on you and Vine, I was surprised that you were there. Once I saw you, I tried to stay out of your way.”
“But you did see us.” He tipped his head back for a longer drink, then used the back of his hand to catch the droplets on his lips. “This part I have been cleared to go over with you — Vine and I are working undercover as husband and wife. I was playing the role of her husband, so we had physical contact.”
“Yes, I saw that. And what I witnessed was that even before you could have known I was there, it was Vine who instigated the kisses and canoodling. I understood. I was cool with it,” I said. “I’ve had to kiss our team members from time to time to sell a scheme, myself.”
“Members?” Striker stood and reached for my hand, pulling me up beside him.
Standing toe to toe, I tilted my head up so I could watch his eyes. Striker had mastered the art of stoicism. If I was going to find any body language “tells,” it would be in his eyes. “I told you Deep kissed me the day of the bank robbery to hide our faces from the V.P., and we had to be convincing and make the guy uncomfortable, so Deep also glad-handed me a bit.”
Striker scrunched his brows together. “Glad-handed you?”
“Yeah, you know, he was glad his hand was rubbing over my fanny.”
“Hmm. So the plural was Deep and me?”
“And Gator.”
Striker’s chin inched up a centimeter, the tiniest show of pugnaciousness. “When did you have to kiss Gator to ‘sell a scheme’?”
“Remember, when I passed out in your kitchen, and the team had to take me to the hospital? Gator was the pretend boyfriend. When he came in the room and found me awake, he did what every concerned boyfriend would do — he gave me a loud smacking kiss for the benefit of the nurse.”
“All right,” he said. “Same kind of thing, I guess.” He reached for my hand, and we walked toward the living room. “I liken this sort of thing to actors who perform on stage during their workday and then go home to their wives and children. Just part of the job.” He sat down on the couch and pulled me down beside him.
“And some days the job is more pleasant than others.” I laughed.
“So you enjoyed kissing Deep and Gator?”
“Did you enjoy kissing Vine?”
“Point taken.”
“Here’s another point.” I swiveled around on the cushion until I was sitting sideways, facing Striker. “If your acting job went beyond a PG-13 rating, I would not be all right with it.” I paused for emphasis. “When you say you’re a husband and wife team, does that involve traveling out of town? That would mean you’d have to sleep in the same bed with her.”
“Same room. I wouldn’t sleep in the same bed as Vine. I’d sleep on the floor or in the tub.”
“Seems an uncomfortable choice.”
“I think I’d probably be more uncomfortable in bed with her.”
Huh. Interesting. “When you were protecting me in the safe house, and I was frightened, I slept with you, and you didn’t make any moves on me.”
“Right, but you were married, and I was on the job, so neither one of us would allow anything to happen. We were both committed to being platonic.”
“What you’re saying is that Vine might make a play for you?” I sat with that thought for a moment, then nodded. “I can see that. I could also see how being partnered with her might be incredibly uncomfortable. You dated her. You cut it off when you realized that you and Vine had different feelings and relationship goals. You thought you had ended it. Now here she has a free pass to make a play for you. And you have to put up with it.”
Striker nodded. I could see a little wariness in his eyes.
“Why didn’t you ask Mr. Spencer to give this file to one of our other team members?”
“I did, actually. Vine offered the contract, the contingency being that I work as her partner. And I told you how desperate things are getting at Iniquus. Spencer knew what he was doing when he signed the contract. He trusted that you and I could work through any problems. Iniquus needs to succeed here for its reputation’s sake, and Iniquus needs the money.” He took a drink from his bottle. “If this mission is successful, you’ll be pleased with the data we’re producing.”
“Shoot, now I want to ask why I’ll be pleased.” I scratched frustrated fingers through my hair. I understood need-to-know intellectually. Didn’t mean I enjoyed it. “I won’t pester you. But I am going to go back to this whole Scarlet Vine thing. I want you to know that I love you. I trust you. And I also believe in evolution and science.”
Striker’s lips quirked up into a lopsided smile, his “this is going to be good” expression. “I’m not following you, Chica.”
“Your ancestors were once cavemen, and though you’ve evolved into a less hairy — thank goodness — specimen with better posture, you still owe much of your survival to the biology of your distant forefathers.”
“I think I’m going to need another beer for this one.” He looked at his empty bottle, tucked it behind the sofa leg, then slunk down into the comfort of the cushions with his knees wide, and his arms crossed over his chest.
For just a moment, I pictured him sitting like that in a Fred Flintstone-designed getup, and I giggled. That got me a raised eyebrow.
“Okay, seriously,” I said, to correct my course. “We can both agree that the main forces in a human are the need to stay alive and to protect the human DNA chain. In order to protect the human DNA chain, we have to make babies. In order to make babies, we have to copulate.”
Striker smiled. “We have to copulate? I’m beginning to like this conversation.”
I ignored him. “Imagine, if you will, an ancient cave of people getting ready for the men to go on a hunt. All these guys had in the way of weaponry were the spears in their hands, and yet they must find enough meat and animal parts to keep the cave healthy. As the men were preparing their travel gear, their bodies were preparing, too, by secreting survival hormones. What are those hormones? Cortisol, testosterone, and adrenaline.”
I pushed farther back on the couch and hugged one of my knees to my chest. “Now, the caveman brain says, ‘Heeeeey, I’m about to go fight a saber-toothed tiger with a stick in my hand. It’s very likely this isn’t gonna go well for me. I very well might die and never come back to this cave, so it would probably be a great idea if I left some semen behind with some willing woman, so that way, my DNA can continue even if I don’t.’”
The light in Striker’s eyes was dancing; he tried to tamp down his smile by rubbing a hand back and forth over his mouth.
“Now, here’s the thing. What if the caveman didn’t have a mate? What if he did have a mate, but she wasn’t handy at that particular moment? Do you know what the caveman’s hormones would insist he do?”
“Find a willing fertile ground to plant his seeds?”
“Exactly. Survival hormones give us an incredible sexual drive. There was a war correspondent who wrote articles from different countries about people in combat zones. He described a ‘frenetic lust’ that permeated the conditions. He said that even normally very conservative people were out there desperately screwing around. ‘Frenetic lust,’ Striker, those are the words he used. And there’s more.”
“Of course,” he deadpanned.
“It’s not just survival of the fittest. It’s also survival by community. In ancient days, one of the worst punishments available was ostracizing someone from the group. There was little chance of survival on
one’s own. So imagine a life or death situation. It’s imperative that the cavemen and women came to each other’s rescue and find solutions in community. We wouldn’t be here today had the cavepeople believed in every caveperson for himself and had they not received a huge charge of dopamine hormones, making it pleasurable to help each other.”
“This is more about fun with human chemistry?” Striker’s chest vibrated with his attempt to compress his laughter.
“Yes. Hush.” I held up a hand and sighed out some of my mounting frustration. “I don’t want you just listening to me right now. I need you to hear me. This is serious.”
Striker affected his best combat face, but he couldn’t mask the twinkle in his eye.
“So anyway, they’ve done these psychological tests to see if this is true, if people, who already find each other attractive, are in a situation where they could replicate a sudden secretion of these specific survival hormones, would the two increase the attraction and the likelihood of them becoming a couple?”
“And they did this how?” Striker asked.
“The psychologists sent the subjects out over a visibly swaying pedestrian suspension bridge, which crossed over a two-hundred-thirty foot drop to the base of the river canyon, and asked them to hang out in the middle.”
“That could do it.” He nodded.
“Could and did. The experiment showed that secreting these hormones make people horny and mate-able.”
“Mate-able?”
“You know what I mean. Wanting to form a pair bond, become a couple…”
Laughter bubbled out between his words as he said, “And you’re telling me this because you think that if I’m in the field with Vine, that someone might shoot at me, and I’ll lose control and have wild monkey sex with her right there and then, and afterward we’d dance off into the sunset hand in hand?”
“When you say it like that, it sounds ridiculous.” I frowned. “This isn’t ridiculous, Striker. It’s science.” And honestly, not all about Scarlet Vine or any other female operator with whom he might be in close contact situations. This all kind of blended and mixed with my own personal insecurities about why Striker was with me. Might as well lay it out on the table. This wasn’t going to fix itself. “To tell the truth, sometimes when I think about us, it even makes me wonder…” I stopped, pressed my lips together, and shook my head.