by Camilla Monk
She made no mystery of her real job, although she remained—intentionally?—vague about the details of her résumé, and trusted my adoptive father would fill me in; he never did. That wound between us eventually healed, but for a while after the Cullinan affair, I felt like my dad had stolen something from me by hiding my mother’s past and emptying our apartment in Tokyo. He had almost erased her in a way.
The letter also contained explicit warnings against Dries. For reasons even he himself couldn’t seem to fathom, my mother had grown scared of him, and by the time we had arrived in Japan, she believed he might kill her—kill us. Every word on the crumpled paper had spoken of this urgency, this race against time. She had known something was coming, had meant to warn me, to make sure I’d be safe . . . before the inevitable.
That letter had left me with more questions than answers, had broken my heart and patched it up in the same moment. Changed me. Even more so than March had. I looked down at the dark amber swirling in my cup, unable to meet his gaze now that my own secrets were bubbling to the surface. “Dries gave me her letter.”
I peeked up to see his Adam’s apple move in his throat, but no sound came out. I wasn’t sure I had ever seen March’s eyes so wide.
I soldiered on. “After you left Tokyo, the morning before I took my flight, he followed me into a combini. He bought me ice cream, and we went to a park so we could talk . . . like father and daughter.”
March slammed his palms on the stone counter, making me jump. “Do you even realize what kind of risks you took?”
God. I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I had heard him raise his voice like this. I took a swig of my tea, mostly to hide behind my cup. “It wasn’t so bad. We made peace.”
He ran his hand over his face. “Island, he’s the Lions’ vice commander; I don’t think that word bears the same meaning to him it does to you.”
“And he’s also my father,” I said in a warning tone.
“I’m sorry. I know how difficult this is for you.”
Upon hearing March say this, I thought of all the Kleenexes I had gone through after Tokyo, and a surge of anger rose inside me. “No, you don’t.” I breathed my temper out. “So, I2000009, what is it? I’m all ears.”
He sighed. “Island, I’m not allowed to tell you that. I have no idea how your mother learned about that number, but it could have been enough for her to lose her life.”
I inhaled sharply. “Is it related to the Lions? Are you saying that they killed her?”
Here came the two-billion-dollar question . . . After the Cullinan affair, I had spent quite a few sleepless nights shifting the pieces of the puzzle in my head over and over again. At first, the obvious explanation had been that my mother had been killed by her “employer”—the Board—as a punishment for having betrayed them and plotted to hand the diamond to Dries.
Problem was, those Board guys would have done anything to get their diamond back, and according to one of my mom’s accomplices, after changing her mind and making the decision to stay clear from Dries’s toxic influence, she had intended to return the stone to the Board. Except she had been killed before she could safely do so. So it wouldn’t have made any sense for them to eliminate her, at least not at the time; they still needed her.
Technically, the one to shoot her had been one of Dries’s men, a Lion, like him. But Dries had been adamant he hadn’t given the order, leading me to think that someone else had hired that sniper and made the guy circumvent his loyalty to his “brothers.” Until now, I hadn’t considered the possibility that this someone might have been another Lion, who would have engineered my mother’s assassination against Dries’s orders. I mean, March had called Dries a vice commander, which confirmed my suspicion that he was a bigwig—a bigmane, if you prefer—in the organization. Also, here again, same conundrum: no Léa Chaptal, no diamond.
So, Board or Lions, whoever had decided to eliminate my mom hadn’t cared that the Cullinan might be lost forever. None of this, however, told me why she had chosen to bail on Dries, too, and wanted to make so certain that the Lions would never get a hold of the stone. Furthermore, why had she been so utterly convinced that Dries would never betray his brotherhood to protect her, when he himself hadn’t seemed so sure of that?
March probably picked up on the frustration building inside me. He resumed speaking in a soft, coaxing tone. “Biscuit, listen to me, please. This is not your world. I understand how you feel about your mother’s death, and I—” He stopped, raking a hand in his hair. “I don’t have the answers you’re looking for. We’ll never know if our teammate truly shot her by error, or if someone engineered this. Dries had his doubts; that’s why he killed that man. And I had mine too. But you need to stay away from the Lions and Erwin. You have to let go, Island.”
“Says the man who’d rather destroy an entire tramway than let go,” I gritted out.
He finished his tea and treated me to a self-righteous snort. “Those were different circumstances and—”
“It was exactly the same! You put your life on the line because you wouldn’t let him get away. Well, allow me to decide what’s worth risking my own life for!”
March had started to move toward the sink to clean our dishes. I heard them hit the gray stone surface with a clang, and in a second he was against me, his hands gripping my shoulders with controlled strength. “Have you lost your mind? Do you hear yourself talking? How long do you think you’d last against a Lion?”
I shivered as much from his unexpected outburst as the close proximity of our bodies.
“I’ll answer that one for you: one second. That’s how long it’d take him to grab your neck”—his right hand wrapped around my nape, and goose bumps bloomed across my skin—“and snap it like a twig.”
From a purely rational point of view, he was right—as he often was. But rationality can only get you so far. I relaxed in his arms, stifling a sigh of disappointment when I felt his hands release me. I shook my head. “It’s too easy. You can’t expect me to just go on with my life knowing—”
“That men like us exist? Island, you led a happy life before all this happened, and all I want is for that life to resume. You have your friends, a wonderful job . . .”
One of my eyebrows rose at his evocation of my so-called wonderful job; he seemed to realize how unfortunate a choice of words that was. “We’ll solve that case, and once it’s done, you’ll be able to live your life.”
“Under whose surveillance? Yours or Erwin’s?” I asked with a derisive smile.
March stepped back to lean against the island, arms crossed. The mere mention of the Caterpillar’s name had morphed his gentle expression into a harsh and guarded one. “I did not expect him to use the Ruby incident as an excuse to recruit you.”
“So you came back to help us find that money and force Erwin to leave me alone?”
“Yes. Hadrian Ellingham’s late father was a friend of the Queen. She recommended me to his son.”
The Queen, aka Guita. A really nice woman who read Elle, liked cats . . . and ruled over the Board. Needless to say, nice Guita had been pretty pissed when my mom had vanished with the diamond, and I could testify that when the Queen really wanted something, shit could get real fast. She had spent a decade obstinately looking for “her” stone, allowing her goons to kill and torture without hesitation to this end. Until one of my mother’s old accomplices had been caught and revealed that I was the key to finding the Cullinan. I didn’t want to think about what would have happened to me if March hadn’t stepped in . . . Anyway, as far as I knew, Guita was now primarily concerned with pureeing Dries for betraying the Board.
Ellingham’s words replayed in my mind: our mutual friend. So, March had requested a favor from the Queen for me. Again. At what cost? Much like Erwin, Guita didn’t always play fair—if she ever did at all—and I didn’t dare to imagine what March would have to do to repay her.
“I see. That favor is gonna cost you, right? An
d your plan isn’t working so well,” I said grimly.
“I’d say we’ve made some good progress.”
“March, you know I’m not talking about Ruby. Alex said you didn’t have the power to get rid of him.”
His nostrils flared. “A highly debatable statement. I registered for a Twitter account.” A malevolent flame lit up in his eyes. “And I won’t hesitate to use it . . .”
Sweet Jesus. Not the Ukrainian Twitter bazooka. State-of-the-art villain technology. March had bought it in Paris to use on Dries—yeah, he had been pretty pissed at the time—and if properly configured, the weapon allowed for its user to post a tweet that said “Boom” every time you fired it. Antonio loved that thing.
“Please don’t shoot Alex with a bazooka.”
“I won’t. Unless there’s a pressing need to.”
A pressing need?
“As for you—” His gaze slanted. “You must stay away from Erwin.”
I took a wary step back. “I didn’t exactly ask to meet him.”
“You know what I mean, Island,” March said, his tone suddenly cutting. “He baited you, didn’t he? He told you about your mother?”
It took me a second to process his words. March knew? No, I realized. He had guessed. Because he knew Erwin’s tricks already. “Well, he—”
“And it worked,” March went on, his voice deepening with anger. “Erwin knows what he’s doing, Island. If you let him, he’ll tell you everything you want to hear, and—” He paused and shook his head, almost as if talking to himself. “No. I won’t allow that. Just keep your distance, and if he ever tries to contact you again, tell me immediately.”
Wouldn’t allow what? For the Caterpillar to recruit me . . . Like Charlotte? My skin prickled at the idea. I could tell that guy was playing me, but I had no idea to what end. Was he looking to pierce my mother’s secrets? Or was it just about March? About making sure that he would never leave that same pool I had been dragged into.
As for Alex . . . he was perhaps the biggest mystery. Even now that his mask was off, I still couldn’t tell what he really wanted from me. Had it all been just a job for him? No. Whenever he looked at me, I had this intuition that his interest stemmed from something deeper. There was a glint in his eyes sometimes. Not just a lustful or even a loving one. The best way I could describe it is that Alex looked at me the same way Dries had looked at the Ghost Cullinan.
March had calmed down, but he now seemed distant. I bit one of my nails absently, searching his shuttered expression for a sign that this wasn’t it, that he wasn’t just here with me to win a chess game against Erwin. A thick silence stretched between us. It’s hard to explain, but I could physically feel us drifting apart from each other. I wrapped my arms around my body; I realized I was cold. “I want to go home. I need a shower, and I have to pack before we leave for Zürich.”
His gaze avoided mine. “Mr. Morgan is waiting for you. I understand he recovered his car early this morning.”
“Good.”
He was telling me to leave him—leave him and return to Alex. Each word felt like a slap. I gritted my teeth and went back upstairs to get my shoes. There, I stood for a few seconds in front of March’s bed. My fingertips lingered on the lone pillow, still wrinkled from my night’s sleep. I closed my eyes and thought of his body against mine in that bed in Tokyo, of how warm, how right it had felt. Until he had rejected me. There was this ache in my chest, and I felt completely empty, almost seasick. I swallowed the tears I could feel coming.
Back in the living room, March was done cleaning our cups. The counter had been wiped, as had the sink. Once the bed was done, there’d be no trace that I had ever been there. We headed together toward a set of double doors I assumed was the apartment’s entrance.
When I saw his hand on the doorknob, something squeezed my heart; I stopped and looked up at him. “If none of that stuff with Ruby had happened, would you have come back?”
I didn’t give him the time to answer. I went on, my voice brittle, desperate. “Would you have, like, called and said, ‘Hey, it’s me. I was trying to sneak this cleaning lady into your apartment because it’s a mess, and I thought we could go for a drink and, you know, catch up.’”
“Island, it was a little more complicated than that.”
I stared down at the tip of my shoes. Spit-shined. “I thought so.”
“Biscuit—”
“Don’t call me that,” I snapped.
Above me, I felt the faint breeze of a huff of aggravation. “Is this what you’re making me pay for? Not coming to you sooner?”
I pushed him away to walk through the door and looked back one last time. “I’m not making you pay for anything, March. Comme on fait son lit on se couche.” As you make your bed, so you must lie on it.
NINETEEN
The Bagel
“His finger traced the hole slowly. ‘I like my bagels with lots of cream cheese, Diana.’”
—Terry Robs, Glazed by the Cook #2: Catering to Her Needs
March had been right: earlier, Stiles—whom I now understood to be some sort of fairy godmother for the rest of Alex’s division—had delivered the Corvette, obviously fresh out of the car wash, and with four brand-new tires. Alex seemed pleased as we sat together in the car—that is, until he turned on the MP3 player and was greeted by Céline Dion instead of Metallica.
“Stiles . . .” He sighed as under my butt, the engine’s powerful vibrations rose.
I didn’t mind. Honestly, who doesn’t like “My Heart Will Go On”?
The ride from Struthio to West Eighty-First Street was a short one, and we flew more than we drove through New York’s streets. Probably in part because Alex was happy to be reunited with his baby and abused the hell out of the gas pedal whenever traffic allowed it. Boys and their toys . . . He seemed relaxed enough, but every time we stopped at a red light, he’d turn his head and stare at me with that tranquil smile of his, wordlessly hammering at the same question over and over again.
When we reached the front of my building and the Corvette slowed down, I finally snapped. He was still giving me that gentle, inquisitive look as I undid my seat belt. I took a deep breath and looked him in the eyes. “I just had a migraine, and I slept it off. Nothing happened up there, okay?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Yes, you did. You did that . . . thing, with your face.” I made a wide-eyed grimace, attempting to imitate the mysterious good-guy smile that forced people to spill their guts.
He laughed. “I had no idea I was so terrifying.”
“You are.” I sighed as I got out of the car.
Alex seemed to sober, tilting his head as if to better read me. “Phyllis arranged a flight with ‘Paulie Airlines.’ We’ll take off at three from Teterboro. It’s already one, which means you have”—he shot a glance at the dashboard clock—“a maximum of thirty minutes to pack and refresh. Any questions?”
“No, I’m good. Are you—” Here came the awkward part. “Are you going to wait down the street while I do that?”
He pointed at Broadway with his chin. “Actually, I was thinking of going to Starbucks. I need a coffee, and I could do with something to eat.”
I debated with myself whether I should offer this. I did want to end things with Alex. I knew I had to. But at the same time, it sounded callous to just act like we were strangers until either he got the hint or I mustered the courage to talk to him. I took a deep breath and managed a confident smile. “Can I interest you in stale bagels and an espresso instead?”
“I’m sold.”
We climbed up the stairs; that sign on the building’s broken elevator had been there for so long it was starting to look like an old friend. Alex followed me to the door, and as my key turned in the lock, a strange nervousness crawled up my spine, making my body tingle. He had been here before, a couple of times, when picking me up for a date. But back then, he had been Alex the insurance guy, the Yaycupid guy. For some reason, being here with CIA Alex fel
t like that time when I had come home to find March searching my tax returns. Just like him at the time, Alex was now somewhere he didn’t belong, a wolf trying to casually fit into a sheepfold.
Upon pushing the door open, I realized I had forgotten a minor detail when inviting him up: today was a Tuesday, and therefore a West Eighty-First Street and Broadway Neighborhood Committee day—WEFBNC, for short.
And Joy stood in the doorway.
Because she was home, hanging around the apartment in yoga pants, and making phone calls to the mayor’s office regarding the organization of a sack race down the street on the Fourth of July.
Well, not anymore.
She stared past me at Alex. Then her eyes settled back on me, a smirk forming on her lips. “Hey, hey, someone’s in need of fresh clothes.”
“How have you been, Joy?” Alex asked with a congenial smile.
“Pretty good, lover boy.”
I cleared my throat several times. The lump wouldn’t go down. “Um, yeah. I needed to pick up some stuff. I had forgotten that you—”
“No problem. I’ll make Alex some coffee meanwhile. That way we can talk, right?” she asked him. Dammit, I knew that face, when her cheeks would get round and pink from the effort not to laugh. Oh no . . . At least she wasn’t calling him Jesus to his face and cracking that horrible joke about him parting the Red Sea—I kept telling her it was Moses anyway.
Alex welcomed the offer with a good-natured shrug. “Sounds good.” He then looked at me. “Will you need any help packing, baby?”