“Well, it’s obviously not just about that. He must have screwed up some major shit. All I’m saying is, she spends a lot of time alone in here. She’s got something personal with this one.”
“No way. Not a chance.”
“Want to make it official?”
“A bet? For real?”
“Yes, exactly. I’ll bet you twenty that Emery has her way with him before she kills him.”
“How would we even know? She kicks us out every time she comes in.”
“Exactly. That’s my point.”
“Fine. Ten.”
“Ten? That’s it? Hardly even worth it.”
“You taking it or not?”
“Shit, okay. Ten. But only because it’s an easy win.”
“Not even close. Get ready to pay up.”
“How are you feeling?” Emery asks, settling into her chair by my bed.
I’m still raw from my earlier eavesdropping. She might stare, touch, and steal seconds of my consciousness, but I’ve never gotten the sense there’s anything except a fascination with her masterpiece. I am evidence, a horrific sculpture she’s carved as a monument to her revenge.
I try to respond, but the words catch in my throat. The meds wore off hours ago because she wants me sober for the celebrated “negotiation.”
“He’s not going to turn himself over to you,” I force out. We’ve been over this a dozen times, but she seems immune to reason on the subject. It amazes me that they killed my faith in one day, and I can’t shake hers after a year.
“Were you not lucid enough to hear me before? They’re sending someone, Kaleb.”
“To negotiate. To…” I suck in a sharp breath and wait for the wave of pain to ease. “To talk. Talking means nothing.”
“Why are you so eager to die? You know that’s the end once we give up.”
I close my eyes, shocked she can even ask that question. She’s staring at the horror of what “life” means to me. As if understanding my silence, she shifts in her seat, and I dare another look. Her gaze meets mine. I don’t know what unspoken conversation we’re having but we’re more than captive and abuser at the moment. Stacy and Roy’s conversation blasts into my nauseous stomach, but I don’t think it’s that either. It’s something else. Something terrifying and hopeless and beyond both of us.
Tears shine in her eyes as she stares at me. For a brief moment she’s a victim too. My sympathy is misplaced, but I know why she’s crying. I know that kind of anguish.
“He was four, Kaleb. Fucking four years old!” she shouts suddenly. “Explain to me why a four-year-old has to pay for this?”
I feel the sting in my own eyes. I have no answers for questions that shouldn’t have to be asked.
“They were having snack time when the bomb hit. And you know why? Why seventeen children were slaughtered?”
I shake my head. I can’t.
“Look at me!”
I groan as her hand slams into the side of my face. Needles spread from my cheek through every nerve in my body. But she doesn’t stop, striking over and over until I manage to confront her agony with a dazed acknowledgment.
“Because your father didn’t give a shit that his target was next to a preschool. That’s why. That’s the answer I have to cling to as I live my life without my baby. As sixteen other mothers try to comfort themselves with the same impossibility.”
She breaks down, stifling the room with the echo of her sobs. A concrete woman broken by the same reality that eventually shatters all of us.
“You understand. I know you do,” she continues. “Why Roberto has to pay?”
“But he’s not paying.”
My words come out like a dagger, an accusation. A plea. The palm that just attacked my face cups the bruises with compassion. Stroking, waiting for an explanation.
My tears are back. They blur the view of my tormentor, reveal the extent to which she has broken me. My brain is too twisted with this mix of violence and tenderness to stop them.
“He let me believe he was dead.” I jerk the chain for emphasis. “He did nothing when you took me at seventeen. He did nothing when you forced me to fight against his Cause. He did nothing when you tore me limb from limb, and now you think he suddenly cares? That suddenly he’s going to trade his life for mine? Look at me. This is the value he’s placed on his son.”
She shakes her head, streams of liquid searing paths on her own cheeks. “No! He’s sending someone to negotiate.”
“Fuck, Emery. Really? You actually think this agent is going to have anything to offer other than a hostage swap or territory concession? You’re smarter than that. You have to wake up. Your entire game hinges on the assumption that his existence is formed around me the same way yours was around Liam. But I am not Liam, and my father sure as hell isn’t you.”
She’s frozen now, paralyzed by my explosion of truth. There’s nothing I can do but watch from my coffin, and yes, my insides constrict as my gaze flickers to the gun at her hip. God, I want her to use it so badly.
“Please. If I’m Liam, have mercy and end this. Just end it.” I’m disgusted by the sobs filtering through my voice, but I’m beyond the game now. I’m not even a man. I’m just a breathing corpse who no longer has a claim to life.
She follows my stare to her weapon. Back to me, and my heart fills with so much hope it must pour onto my swollen face. Then, as quickly as the promise blossomed, it fades into quiet rage.
“You don’t mean that,” she says. “No. You don’t mean that.”
She grips my shirt and yanks me beyond what my body can tolerate. Crystalized vision shadows the room as she shoves me back into the bed.
“No. You will live. You will live until he is dead. Then you can do whatever you want with your pathetic existence.”
The negotiation is happening because I’m alone again in this new room. I almost feel the tension on the other side of the one-way glass in front of me. I’ve been alone since they wheeled my bed in here, sometimes staring at my miserable reflection in the mirror, but mostly preferring the backs of my eyelids.
I did the worst thing possible by triggering Emery’s fury right before the talks. Still, my error changes nothing. No matter her frame of mind on the other side of the glass, she’ll never get what she wants. My best hope for relief is angering someone to the point of receiving a well-placed bullet.
I force my eyes open at the click of the door and don’t even get a chance to draw in a breath before the terror sets in.
“No… No!” Instinct twists my body as far as the restraints allow, but they ignore me. Stacy. Roy. Isaac. My screams are irrelevant. Isaac especially avoids my eyes as they approach. Fuck, not again. The negotiations aren’t going well. They’re…
My chest jerks from the ionizer. Right in the soft flesh of my side this time. Fire radiates through my skin, burning every cell on its way to my brain. Another and another. I can’t even hear my own screams. I’m too weak for senses other than touch. And then they stop. Step back like they’ve just delivered my breakfast.
I gasp for air, straining to give assistance to my lungs and relieve the pressure on my volcanic torso. Sweat drips down my temples as I close my eyes and try to focus on something to claim my mind from the pain.
“Your handwriting is terrible, you know that?”
I glance up at Andie who hangs over my shoulder, watching me scribble a note to myself. It’s adorable the way she blurts whatever pops into her head. I never know if she’s flirting or just tossing her thoughts into the air. I look for some clue in her expression, but her eyes only shine like they do every time she knows she’s right.
“A lot of lefties have terrible handwriting.”
“A lot of righties also.”
“You think you can do better?”
“Give me that.”
She grabs the pen from my h
and and shifts the notepad within reach. “What are you trying to write?”
Trying to write. Somehow I manage to keep my humor within the normal range of human interaction because no one understands how magnified it becomes on the rare moments I encounter it. I crave laughter, and this girl is a constant stream of opportunity. She’s dangerous. Shit, I don’t know how to switch off this ray of light in my universe. I’ll just have to be strong. I’m good at that.
“I was writing, ‘Remember to tell that annoying assistant of mine to mind her own business,’” I say.
She snorts and writes: “Remember to tell that awesome assistant of mine how amazing she is,” and shoves it back to me.
This time laughter rings from my chest, and I’m rewarded with a breathtaking grin.
“Don’t you have filing to do?” I say before I get lost.
“I’m waiting for you to tell me if the RP-7s should be combined with the corresponding RP-38Cs or kept together.”
I curse and massage my temples. “Isn’t it your job to figure that out for me?”
“Is it?”
I match her smile. “Yes,” I decide. “Go figure that out.”
She claps her hands in excitement, and I’ll admit I’m not nearly as engaged with my screen as I make it seem.
“Dammit! Wake him up! Wake him… there he is.”
I squint into the light, disappointed it’s different than what it should be in my office with Andie. I must have zoned out again. The pain. Does things like make you think you’re awake when you’re not. Makes you want to die when you’re an expert at surviving.
“Someone to see you,” Emery says to me. “You have two minutes,” she directs to the visitor. Her words barely register as I close my eyes again. “Hey. Wake up!” That slap. I’m so sick of them using my face to get my attention, but it’s the other female gasp that affects me more.
I force my eyes open and almost pass out again. I’m full of narcotics. It’s the only explanation.
“Kaleb!”
Andie rushes forward for no reason I can comprehend and reaches for my hand. She grasps it like we’ve never touched before, clings to it, pulls it to her lips, cradles it against her forehead.
“Two minutes,” Emery repeats before leaving us alone.
Andie’s eyes meet mine, and I can’t stand the horror in her expression, the excruciating ache of understanding my fate. My brain is all questions. Thankfully, she reads it.
“We don’t have time to explain, okay? I just…” She starts crying. My strong, determined warrior-assistant breaks into sobs because I broke my promise to remove myself from her life. “God, Kaleb, I love you so much. So much.” Warm fingers run over my face. Then it’s her lips making contact with mine, sending a wave of heat through my dead body. Life. Inspiration. Dammit, hope, even.
“They’re going to kill me, Andie. It doesn’t matter what you do. They’re going to kill me,” I mutter against her soft, perfect mouth. Because I’m not lying to her anymore. I’m not going to offer hope when all I have to give is a memory.
“No! No.” Stern Andie, damn stubborn is what she is, looks for something in my face. She must not find it because her eyes fill again. “You’ve given up.” She blinks tears down her cheeks.
“What choice do I have?”
“What about me? What am I supposed to do without you?”
I can’t. Not ever because there is no forever with her. “You need to figure that out. I have to know you’re going to be okay.”
“But I’m not! Not without you.”
I shake my head. She stills it in her grip, another kiss, this one saturated with glimpses of that forever we won’t have.
“Just survive. Please,” she whispers. Her eyes are different now, piercing, sending me a message I don’t fully understand, but accept anyway. She’s not giving me a choice either. I will survive. I have to because I will not betray her.
“I’ll keep fighting.”
She shakes her head. “No, just survive. That’s all I’m asking.”
“Time’s up,” the dreaded voice interrupts, and I choke at Andie’s tears, the desperate grip on my fingers. Our time wasn’t right. Too much and too little. It was better when she was just a memory.
“Andie.” I can’t even get the words out.
“I know.” She kisses me again, frantic, as they take her arms and drag her away.
“Let’s go.”
I love you, she mouths, her wet face so beautiful and tragic it crushes what’s left of my soul.
“I love you too.” My response is automatic because it’s a truth I’ve harbored since the day she walked into my office. But I regret my confession when hope lights her eyes. Hope is a terrible thing. I want to scream for her to stop, that I take it back. Repeat all the lies I threw at her in the lounge after my arrest, but I’m too late. She’s gone, and I’ve betrayed the woman I love.
I gave her hope.
“That must have been quite a shock for you.”
We “talked analgesics” again after the negotiation, so now I’m able to participate in Emery’s debriefing. She’s studying me, not just admiring, so I know something has changed.
“I’m assuming the conversation went well if you let Andie see me.”
“Actually, it went terribly,” she says, crossing her arms.
My heart sinks. Fucking hope, that’s why.
I stare. She hasn’t explained why Andie is involved in this.
“Your father has balls. Sending your girlfriend along for the negotiations?”
“Sending her along? What are you talking about?” My stomach is in knots again.
“Oh right. We sent her away after your arrest. She wouldn’t leave us alone about you and was too much of a security risk. But it would have been a shame to waste that unshakeable motivation, so we aimed her at your father. Of course, we didn’t expect her to actually find him, and the fact that she did so quickly... then came back? That says a lot.”
“You sent her away?” Fire. For the first time in days: life. “You promised.”
“We promised not to kill her, and we didn’t.”
“You tried. Sending her into a war zone by herself is a death sentence.”
“She’s not dead as you saw. Neither is her roommate.”
“What? Vi?”
“Viktoria Callahan, yes. She went with her.”
My eyes narrow. “That’s bullshit. You sent Vi after her brother.”
“Why wouldn’t we? Valentin Callahan is almost as valuable as Roberto Novelli. It’s war, Kaleb. You of all people understand how that changes the rules.”
“Yes, but you’re playing as though there are no rules. We made a deal when I turned myself in.”
“And I’ve kept it. Andie is alive and free. Although she will have to tell us how to get to Novelli.”
“Free? She’s not free and you know it.”
“By no action on my part.” Her face softens into the maternal compassion I fear more than the rage. “I can’t help it if she won’t give up on you. I promised we wouldn’t hurt her, and we haven’t. What she does now is her decision, but we’re not going to stand down if she makes a choice that’s a threat or if she refuses to cooperate. After witnessing your reunion, I have a feeling she’ll help us.”
I hear every word, every syllable. Every damn warning.
“You made a mistake letting her see me,” I mutter.
“She insisted. I wish you could have seen her while we tested their stance with the ionizer. I was expecting a break down, but the girl just stood like granite, silent tears in her eyes as you jerked and screamed.”
“You’re impressed.”
“I am. Too bad you were right. Your father wasted our time with an offer of Region 9, Zones 113-126. As if we’d trade you for a bunch of corn fields.”
&n
bsp; I expected nothing different; it still hurts to know I’m worth so little to him. But then there’s Andie. Her kisses have a value that can’t be calculated. I still taste her on my lips, the memory rocking hard against my will to die. Emery is a genius, and I’m a liar. She didn’t make a mistake. She knew exactly what she was doing when she shoved Andie back into my essence. I will force down pudding and orange mush for Andie. I will bear the pain of broken bones, burns, and blows. Sadistic bets, naked obedience, because corpses don’t love and I love with a power I can’t defeat.
I’m captivated by Isaac’s hands. The way his fingers twist around each other in an infinite ball of nails and knuckles. His eyes shift toward the door with each completed cycle of palm-wringing, and he actually thinks his silence is better than just telling me why he’s rubbing his skin raw.
“What’s going on, Isaac?” I ask, drawing a sharp hiss.
“I can’t… You don’t want to know.”
“The negotiations aren’t going well?”
His eyes shoot to mine as the hands still.
“They’re over.”
I swallow and force a steady expression. “And?”
He just bites his lip and shakes his head. I almost pity him for his task of delivering my death sentence.
I break eye contact for his sake and allow my head to drop back to the pillow. So this is it. The game is over. It’s just a matter of minutes now until this whole mess becomes another X on the strategy board. And just as I predicted, everyone lost.
“They’ll be coming for you soon,” Isaac says, his voice sounding exactly like his hands looked.
“I figured.”
“I’m sorry,” he offers after a long pause. “It’s not right. It’s not even about you, is it? This whole time, they just wanted your father.”
I nod without opening my eyes.
“I don’t think he’s coming, Kaleb.”
“No. Doesn’t appear so.”
More silence.
“You know they killed Emery’s kid, right?”
“I know.”
“They’ve done worse than that since this war started. Remember when they went after that school bus in Region 1? They have shoot-to-kill orders on anyone from Region 1 or 4. Doesn’t even matter if they’re soldiers.”
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