Unholy Promises

by Roxy Harte

  Her black leather jacket, positioned neatly over her shoulders and stopping short at her waist, hides at least three weapons. The black turtleneck beneath, lending a graceful elegance to her long neck and hugging around her generous curves with scant decency, is skintight body armor. Even her black slacks, cut to reveal long, slim legs and emphasize the glorious curve of her hips, are both cover for more weapons and weapons themselves in their disarming effect on the male mind.

  She turns, seeming to look straight at me. Reaction is automatic—my body stilling to the point that merely breathing is not noticeable. Eyes not blinking but lids softening to lessen the chance the whites of my eyes will be seen, thoughts silenced so even the energy ripple caused by my consciousness will be indistinguishable. She can’t see me, but her instincts are still on full alert from being on assignment. I have no doubt for a second she felt someone watching her—a requisite sixth sense that kept her alive when she was out in the field.

  Her internal antenna still on red alert is evidenced by her hand moving nervously to adjust and readjust the black plastic sunglasses propped on her head. She scans the crowd, seeking out who watches. Finding no one, she abruptly removes the glasses, folds them and tucks them into her jacket pocket. She is on edge. It is a feeling I understand well, having lived with constantly looking over my shoulder for almost two decades.

  I was wrong not to recommend her. Watching, it is obvious. Eva Lindquist is a woman in charge.

  I denied her the opportunity of her dream job for the sake of my lust but oh, how karma comes around. Within days I was running, hiding, planning never to look back.

  Now, face-to-face with my demons once more, is not the time to reflect backward.

  The office Christmas party, usually a boring affair, is suddenly a raucous celebratory event with her arrival, but not just hers, the entire task force with her, having returned from an assignment.

  How long has she been away this time?

  I don’t consider the danger, it is the backdrop of her career, her skill keeps her alive. By the celebratory mood, she has been away awhile, the odds high the team would not return at all. There is surprise the team is here for the holiday, meaning they hurried it along a bit. Translated—they killed quickly.

  How many bad guys did you take down this morning, Eva, in order to make time for the party this evening?

  Eva, Eva, Eva.

  The bright office lights dim, setting a mood for the evening’s affair, and I watch her search the deepening shadows nervously, her bright smile gone, replaced by an anxious scowl.

  Please smile, Eva, if only for the photograph in my mind.

  The man with copper hair returns, proffering a flute of champagne. For him, she smiles.

  The music cranks louder and my heart joins the wild bass beat. Desks and chairs swept toward the walls create an impromptu dance floor. She laughs, tilting the flute to her lips. With her other hand, she beckons her coworker to join her as she backs onto the dance floor. Already her hips sway, the feeling of unease all but tucked out of her mind for the moment. He pulls off his tie and tosses it to a laughing brunette, who catches it. Clapping, she shouts, “Go, Eva! Go, Eva! Go! Go! Go!”

  As he approaches Eva, he swivels his hips provocatively and smiles lewdly. I focus on the other woman to keep from bursting through the duct cover. She twirls the man’s tie high above her head, cheering, “Yeah, baby! Get down, Liam, get down!”

  Liam. A name to go with the fire in my mind. I want him dead, thinking how easy it would be to remove him from her life. My rational brain demands he is just a coworker. They have every right to their party. I realize just how greatly they deserve to dance, knowing tonight they celebrate surviving another day. Tomorrow some will live but some will die, because evil doesn’t take off for the holidays.

  Before doing something reckless, I back away, leave the duct, cursing myself the entire time.

  It should be harder, I think to myself as I slip free of the ductwork and silently enter the stairwell for a safe, easy exit. The stairwell ascends back into the public realm, and I leave the secret corridors and mystery agents to their party. Stepping into the night air, I am assailed by street noise—honking horns, cursing drivers, crying, tired infants wanting freedom from their car seats. It is a different sound than inside. The loud music was white noise, easily pushed into the background. Not so easy to push away is the din of humanity. I lift my face into the mist-filled night air, fading into the anonymity offered by the passing street crowd, everyone rushing to get in out of the chill. The night turned bitterly cold while I was inside, and the passersby duck deeper into their coat collars. I wish no such escape, embracing the bitterness as I head east toward the river.

  What on earth was I thinking to seek her out?

  I am a fool. I cannot have her, can never again hold her, and if I could then what? Would she leave the WODC, become traitor? Would she hide with me, seeking amnesty from whichever country needs our services more? If she refuses to come with me, could I be the one to kill her before she killed me? Because she would be the deadly force they send to retrieve me—that is once she informs them I live still. That leaves the question, would she tell them? Could she kill me? Is it worth the risk to find out the answers?

  The weight in my chest returns. Reaching the bridge, I lean over the rail, heaving, trying to breathe, wanting to forget the image of her in the arms of the red-haired man.

  Clinging to the icy rail, I tip my face back to clear my head and notice, for the first time since returning to Paris, the sky. Paris has a lovely night sky, not the ebony black of the United States, or even the blue-black of my homeland, but a deep purple-black that is distinctly Parisian. Just the sight of it calms me. I think that if I do seek Eva out, it will be under a night sky like this. Beneath such a magical sky, I imagine miracles can happen. And if I should die as a result of my recklessness, the darkness of it would be a fine sight as I lie dying.

  I am immediately filled with guilt. I am here to do a job for Glorianna, nothing more—get Nikos, get out, get home alive. Garrett and Sophia are waiting for me. Sophia especially won’t be understanding if I get killed during this mission.

  Watching the gray water swirl below, my heart swells to the point of exploding. I am so torn, so filled with gratitude for Sophia, and of course for Garrett, allowing our ménage to form when he could have as easily denied us. I do not want to consider what might have happened had he said no to us. By all rights, Sophia, his Kitten, was his first. Only for his stupidity and stubbornness was she ever mine at all.

  God, I love them both.

  They saved me. With Lattie and my children far from me, not knowing if or when I will ever see them again, not knowing if they are safe or threatened, what would I have done without Garrett’s calming influence and Sophia’s reckless abandon to keep me from doing something suicidal? A return trip to Africa would be just that.

  And now I am here, tempting fate. Irresponsibly chasing a ghost from my past when love and contentment wait for me at home. I am an idiot.

  “You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought.”

  Sir Author Conan Doyle

  Chapter Five

  Eva

  December 24, 11:57:42 p.m.

  Le Cimetière du Père-Lachaise

  The cemetery is a cold lonely place on Christmas Eve, but I can find peace nowhere else. And so I come here to be with him. Even though I promised myself last Christmas Eve it was the last time I would visit his grave after facing my own insanity upon awakening on the frozen bank of earth that covered his grave, not able to remember how I’d gotten there. I would move on, force myself to forget his insanity and the pain he’d taught me to love.

  It appears insane, I know it must, as I lower myself onto his snow-covered grave, spreading my body out over him, knowing he is below me, so close, so far away. This time, I promise myself, I will remember I chose to come here, to be with him. I close my eyes, wanting to sleep, but my mind has no intentio
n of sleeping. God, I want him still, so much so I awake each night burning, my body craving his touch. The touch none other can provide, though I’ve let many try.

  “Please erase the memory of him!” I pray the words with desperation each time I willingly join with another.

  Eyes tightly closed, I remember him, calling him to my mind so the power of him will force out all the other junk I hold on to—the guilt, the screams, the tears, the curses…the blood. Especially the blood…so much spilled blood over the years. I allow him to stretch in my mind, pushing thoughts out of the way until only he remains.

  “Master?”

  “I am here, Eva.”

  “Don’t leave me, Master.”

  I see him in my mind as I saw him the first time, his shoulder-length brown, almost black, hair framing his face. His beard and mustache accentuated rather than detracted from his mouth, his smirking lips. He had an unholy countenance. I should have feared him, I didn’t. I am six feet, he was taller than me by several inches. I didn’t mind, his height put me eye level with his perfect mouth. His tan upper body was covered only by a black leather vest, revealing a thickly matted, heavily muscled chest, however, it was the black leather pants that made a true statement—tight as skin, each defined muscle stood out in stark relief beneath the well-oiled, shiny material. Hung like a stallion came to mind and I immediately wanted to see him exposed, wanted to hold him in my hands and slide my fingers down the length of him. I wanted him in my mouth, just to see if he would fit down my throat.

  I manipulated the moment in order to meet him and manipulated the man to ensure we ended up naked by night’s end. That is where my control of the situation ended. I became naked, he remained clothed.

  Funny how a memory can make a person’s heart pound in the exact staccato rhythm as was true when experienced. Sliding his arm around my waist, he encouraged me to watch a spanking scene already in progress, whispering against my forehead, “What will you let me do to you, little one?”

  I was his in that moment, having not been little by any description of the word since I was twelve. For him to use “little” as an endearment made my heart race and my pussy all the damper. He slid my wrists into handcuffs that night, just for fun. So long ago, but when I think about it, I still feel that first cold bite of steel tightening around my wrists. Because in that moment, in that steel, I found answer to unrequited need.

  I should be frozen solid, lying in the snow as I am, but I am so hot, so very hot. In my mind, I see his smiling nod of encouragement as I unzip my leather jacket and lift my Kevlar turtleneck and bra above my breasts in one smooth swipe. Memory remembers the taste of the steel nipple clamp, in reality I cause the pain, pinching my nipples cruelly until I draw a cry to my own lips. It is not enough to chase away the demons from my mind, as Carrie suddenly appears, pushing Lord Fyre out. She will be dead the day after tomorrow.

  “Lord Fyre!” my mind screams out in frustration and desperation. My French-manicured artificial nails dig a deep trail over the peaks and valleys of my rib cage, lifting the level of pain enough to draw his face back into my mind, scratching raised, bloody welts over my stomach keeps him there, front and center. I pinch one of the welts, just as he would have, and feel his smile spread through me, warming me, a slow-kindled blaze ready to unfold.

  Unzipping my pants, I wriggle my hips free, the feel of wet snow a welcome new sensation against my bare ass as my palm cups around my shaved mons. My clit is a damp, radiating heat in the center of my palm. My fingers lightly test my folds and, finding dampness, refuse restraint. Two fingers slide into my vagina, as deep as I can push them. The heel of my palm presses into my clit, rubbing hard, creating a rhythm as my fingers slide in and out, fast, hard, harder, my palm now slapping into my clit with each stroke. Pounding, slapping noise, wet sloshy noises as my orgasm flares. I pinch a welt cruelly with my free hand.

  In my head, I hear his command to wait.

  I pinch another welt, pounding my pussy harder, thinking, Oh God, I can’t wait!

  “Come for me now, little one,” the voice in my head whispers, “come for me now.”

  Replete, I lay huddled against his tombstone, so far past cold I cannot feel the fingers tracing his name, the dates etched in cold white stone. I force myself to remember he is gone.It shouldn’t be so hard to believe, after all, he died in my arms, the victim of a sniper’s bullet. It was a bullet meant for me. Why else? Not many terrorists along the waterfront, fewer still on the back alley of our secret warehouse.

  He’d died immediately, a single bullet.

  It shouldn’t have hurt so much, I’d known him such a fleeting time—months. It shouldn’t hurt so much still, and yet each day without him, I feel myself dying a little more. I hope the end comes soon.

  I had hoped on the last assignment my luck would come to an end. Death would be such a blessing, it just wasn’t meant to be. He was too freaking slow with his trigger finger. Maybe I was too fast. Hell, numerous agents have died working alongside me, an inch this way or that way and I could have been dead already, so many times, too many to count.

  Why do I keep living? Why did he have to die?

  I knew so little about him—Greek, philanthropist, sadist.

  God, please, bring him back to me, just give him back.

  How many times have I begged, knowing how impossible this miracle would be for God to perform? And God still hasn’t sent him back. Crueler still his refusal to let me join him on the other side…no matter how hard I try.

  I refuse to believe in a God who is so cruel.

  I refuse to believe in a God who will let Carrie die the day after tomorrow.

  Midnight bells toll from atop the hill, Mass starting. He’d promised me a Christmas in Greece. So many promises unfulfilled. I can’t stop the flow of tears that decide to fall onto my cheeks. I’m not a crier.

  “Merry Christmas, baby.”

  “Hello, Eva.” A gentle breeze, passing through the tops of some barren ancient oaks, seems to bring his whispered response back to me and I close my eyes, listening harder for the longed-for conversation.

  “I fell in love with you, you know.”

  “I know, Evie, I know. God, I’ve missed you.”

  “It makes it hard now.” I sigh. “No man ever measures up to the memory of you.”

  “And no woman to the memory of you, Eva.”

  A flock of startled nightingales flee en masse from their barren post in the tops of the ancient oak. I jump, more from the sudden hair-raising on the back of my neck than the startled birds. Someone watches.

  I felt it earlier, at the party, someone was there watching…and now here. It stands to reason if they wanted me dead, I would be so already. I look in the direction of the watcher, lifting my chin in silent challenge.

  “Come out, asshole,” I scream into the night, pulling my 9mm from its holster beneath my arm and, holding it out for him to see, toss it into a snowbank far enough away I wouldn’t have a chance of retrieving it.

  “Kill me already!” I wish it, body ready, waiting hopefully for the attack, but no feeling of animosity or threat comes from the watcher’s hiding place. I shiver, knowing I will not die today. Shivering long after the thought, the heat from my daydream spent.

  I turn back to my mental conversation with Luka, our annual Christmas Eve tradition…a friendship borne post death.

  The first year I came filled with rage, so much rage. I cursed and kicked the new tombstone, breaking two toes. At that time it was marked solely with name and dates.

  The second year, I made snow angels on top of his grave in celebration of my Christmas present to him—the new etching, Beloved of Eva.

  Over the years, snowmen and snow forts, complete with an arsenal of snowballs at the ready, have been built. Flowers have been abandoned along with tears on top of the aging carved granite. Each year, I promise myself it will be the last time I come. I always fail miserably. Ditto on trying not to remember our last night together…
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br />   “Merry Christmas, sweetheart,” he’d announced.

  Smiling, his eyes held all the joy and mischief of a young boy as he pulled open the heavy door. He’d wrapped it in red foil topped with a gold metallic bow, a grave contrast to the paint-chipped exterior of the warehouse. Before leading me into the building, he kissed my hand, lingering appreciatively over my wrist, inhaling my scent as he pressed his lips to my pulse. “I want to remember this scent forever.”

  “I’m not wearing perfume tonight.”

  “I know, I want to remember the scent of you,” he’d answered, then placed a blindfold over my eyes.

  An eternity passed as I stood on trembling legs, robbed of sight, only an occasional whisper-soft step a clue he remained in the room. He walked around me in a slow, steady circle. I imagined he was assessing me, checking for flaws. A shiver ran down my spine with that thought.

  Then he was close and I felt his body heat even before his hand closed over my shoulder and he turned me ever so slightly, whispering, “Take off your clothes, Eva.”

  I quaked from head to toe.

  In the few months I’d known him, he rarely whispered. It was always a firm command, not shouted, but loud enough to make me jump. His whisper put me more on edge than if he’d bellowed. I complied, shrugging out of my jacket and boots before pulling my jeans over my hips. As I stood, his hand slid up my bare thigh, stalling all cognitive thought, including that I still wore a t-shirt, bra and panties, remembering only after gentle fingertips slid beneath the hem of my shirt, playing over the sensitive skin covering my ribs. I fought to hold still, feeling his body so near but not touching, those fingers making me forget time and place and what I was supposed to be doing.

  “Take this off.” He sighed, his breath a soft whisper over my collarbone.

  I hurried to comply, his fingers not ceasing their movement, tracing the length of each rib. Fingers trailed higher, tickling, but I refused to move. Something inside me demanded I remain still. Fingertips slid under the tight edge of my bra, stroking the full round curve of my breast.