MARRIED TO MY MASTER

by Nicole Fox

  I get him to his feet and then walk him slowly out to the sedan. Bryan is pacing up and down like a man in a waiting room, smoking a cigarette. When he goes for his gun, I scream, “Take one more step and I’ll cover you in his fucking brains!” He stops, dropping his cigarette. “Back up, all the way over there.” I nod toward the barn. “Back the fuck up.” He doesn’t have any choice but to do what I say, so he goes and stands at the entrance to the barn.

  I lead Harold to the car, to Cormac’s side, all the while keeping one eye on Bryan. “Now unlock my friend.”

  When I take the barrel of the gun out of his mouth so he can turn around, he coughs and splutters, dribbling down his chin. But then he reaches into his pocket, takes out the handcuff keys, opens the door, and unlocks Cormac. Cormac was right; he is a rat. All through this, he scurries through his movements, eager to get them done, eager to be of help. A perverted, dirty rat. Cormac jumps from his seat, goes into the front, and takes Bryan’s shotgun. Half a minute later Bryan and Harold are backed against the barn door, huddled together, their hands over their heads and kneeling in the dust.

  “You thought you’d fuck her, is that it?” Cormac steps forward and presses the gun against Harold’s head. “You thought you’d take her, lad? Aye?” His voice sounds more like a mobster’s when he gets angry. I see the man he must be when he’s on a job. “Are you deranged in the fucking head? I ought to cover this barn with your guts.”

  “Cormac,” I say. “We can’t kill them. That’s just not—we can’t kill them, okay?”

  Cormac sighs. “Okay.” He knocks out Harold with two vicious smacks across the jaw with the barrel of the shotgun, holding it like a baseball bat, and then drops the shotgun and knocks out Bryan with four, five, six brutal punches to the face. When he stands up, his face is flecked with blood and he’s shaking with rage. I go to him, putting my hand on his shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” I tell him. “It’s done now. We’re safe.”

  “Just couldn’t stand the way they were talking about you,” Cormac says, still trembling. “And I know it was for an act, all for an act, but when you started to ... I wanted that car to burst into flames. I mean that.”

  “It was all for show.”

  We drag them into the barn and handcuff them together around a weak bannister. They’ll be able to get free, but not before we’re long gone.

  “I wonder who they work for,” I say.

  “You know I have my theory. Let’s see if they’ve got some clothes in the trunk. We can’t have you walking around like that all damn day.”

  Cormac busts open the trunk with the shotgun, and then my world begins to fall apart. Hearing about something, suspecting it, and having it happen are two completely different things. This isn’t a shortened name now. This isn’t Cor. The jackets in the back of the car are blue with yellow letters on the back—three letters: F, B, and I. And the trousers are the same kind I’ve worn to crime scenes before, and the holsters, and the ... Everything in here is FBI-issued.

  I’m on my knees, hunched over, vomiting violently into the dust.

  “No, no, no,” I whisper. “No, it can’t be true. It can’t be true. Not the FBI. Not my FBI.”

  Cormac kneels beside me, rubbing my shoulder. “Shit, Scar, shit. I know. This is—shit.”

  “I thought ...” I rise to my feet, wobbling, but managing to stay upright. “I thought it would just be Max Smithson if it was anybody, you know. I didn’t think it’d go so deep. This is—this is too much, Cormac. This is just too much. This is my life.” I walk toward the car. “Anyway, it’s a good job I left my gun back in that motel room.”

  “How’s that?” he asks, looking at me with a funny expression. It’s like he expects me to start crying at any moment. But I can’t cry. Tears will lead to more tears, on and on, and soon I’ll be stuck in an endless cycle of tears and regret and anxiety. You have to keep going, that’s what I’ve learned. No matter what, just keep moving forward.

  “Because there’s a tracker in my gun, probably.” I climb into the driver’s seat. “Most likely how they found us.”

  Cormac looks at me from the passenger seat, eyeing me up and down. “Sure you can drive like that?”

  “In my underwear, with no shoes?” I force out a laugh. “I’m professional, remember? Of course I can.”

  Chapter Seven Scarlet

  I drive until we hit a town, then I bring us to a stop on the outskirts. We go to the back of the car, take out the jackets and trousers, scrape off the FBI letters, and put them on. Now we just look like two mad people, dressed in heavy jackets in the middle of summer. Cormac looks handsome as hell in an FBI-issued jacket, and I’m reminded of my fantasy back in the motel room, imagining him as an agent. It doesn’t seem so absurd with him standing there with his eyes narrowed and his hands at his sides, as though ready to go for his gun.

  “We need shoes,” Cormac says. “And clothes that aren’t going to cook us.”

  “But we have no money.” I nod. “So how, exactly, are we going to go about this?”

  Cormac looks at me like I’m a naïve child.

  “We’re not robbing a liquor store, if that’s what you have in mind.”

  “You really think I’m the sort of man to rob a liquor store?”

  I roll my eyes. “I’m not in the mood for this speech, Cormac.”

  “What speech?”

  We’re standing inches apart, staring at each other. It’s strange to think that only last night he had his fingers between my legs, playing with me. It’s strange to think that I’m standing with Cormac MacKay instead of in my office talking about how to capture Cormac MacKay. And all for Tess—all because Moira could be Tess’ doppelganger. But it’s more than that, I know. It’s Cormac, too. Maybe even mostly Cormac.

  I scoff. “You know what speech. The ‘I’m a criminal, but I’m not like all the others’ speech. The speech where you try and convince me that, sure, you’ve murdered, stolen, and beaten, but you’re not like all the other criminals out there because you have a heart of gold.”

  “Well, is that so ridiculous?” He steps forward, our jackets brushing each other. “Maybe I go home at night after a job and cry into my pillow. Maybe all this is too much for me and I wish I could get away. Maybe sometimes I think about going to England and living on a farm. You don’t know, Scar. You’ve got no idea.”

  “Do you really think about going to England and living on a farm?” I ask, with a note of disbelief in my voice. It’s difficult to imagine Cormac on his knees pulling carrots from the mud or sitting behind the wheel of a tractor.

  “No.” He grins. “But, still, my point is the same. You don’t know.”

  “Right.” I turn away, afraid that if I don’t he’ll step forward again and we’ll end up kissing. And if we end up kissing, I know we’ll end up doing other things too. I can’t cross that line—I won’t—because if I do, it’s not just the FBI who have betrayed me; it’s me who has betrayed the FBI. I need to remember Agent O’Bannon. I need to remember everything she’s done. I need to remember Cormac MacKay; I need to remember everything he’s done. “I’m the law and you’re the lawbreaker,” I say in a matter-of-fact tone, hoping to conclude the discussion. “That’s that. There are no grey areas here, I’m afraid.”

  “I don’t believe that you believe that,” Cormac says. “If you do, what the fuck was last night about? Why take off your clothes right in front of me? What the fuck did you do that for if I’m just a lawbreaker?” Anger rises in his voice. He’s behind me again, close enough that I can hear the rumbling of his chest.

  “I didn’t take off my clothes,” I say, walking back toward the driver’s seat.

  “What?” He laughs, following me. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I counter. “I didn’t take off my clothes. I don’t know what you mean.”

  When I try and close the door, he holds it open with ease. He’s so strong , I think as
I watch his fingers curl around the edge of the door. He could tear that door right off its hinges. “You undressed, practically begging for me to come onto you, and then you went all weird and pulled a gun on me. I’m not an idiot.”

  I look at him innocently. “I never said you were an idiot. But I also have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  He mutters something I don’t hear and then stomps around to the passenger seat. “What’re we going to do about clothes?” he says.

  “Maybe we should just wear these until we’re back in New York.”

  “Yeah.” Cormac shrugs. “But I’m sweating like a pig.” He unzips the jacket and tosses it onto the backseat.

  “Me too,” I say.

  “Take the jacket off then. You’ve been driving without it anyway.”

  “We’ll be hitting the highway soon. I don’t want to be pulled over for indecent exposure or something stupid like that. The FBI, or at least Mickey’s men—” It pains me to use FBI and Mickey’s men in the same sentence, but I force myself to go on. “—they might have their feelers out. We get pulled over, bam, they have us. It might sound dumb, but not wearing clothes could actually get us into really deep trouble.”

  “Then put on the jacket.” I can tell he’s tired of speaking of this. Maybe my whole amnesia routine has gotten to him. “Crank up the AC. I’m sure you’ll make it.”

  When I start the car again, I turn the AC down as cold as it goes, but when we’re about halfway to the town it coughs, splutters, and then dies. After a minute or so the car is boiling hot. Cormac opens the window and leans his head out.

  “It must be the hottest day of the year,” he says when I bring the car to a stop outside a giant supermarket. It’s one of those huge, industrial-sized things, where countless people walk in and out, a place so big it makes me wonder how they ever built it in the first place. “This is like an airport,” I mutter.

  “Yeah. So many people around I doubt anyone’ll notice a little shoplifting.” He grins at me. “Come on, Scar. Let me corrupt you.”

  “We can’t steal. We can’t.”

  “So why did you stop here?” He leans across the gearstick and stares at me with those wicked, laughing blue eyes. “You know we don’t have any money, so why stop, if you didn’t mean for us to steal? Do you know what I reckon? I reckon you get off on this. Maybe just a little bit, but you definitely get off on it. The thrill of it. I reckon you’ll touch yourself one day thinking about the time you stole clothes with a mobster—”

  I slap him firmly across the face. “All my adult life I’ve trusted the FBI! All my adult life I’ve believed in them! All those slogans and catchphrases and all that patriotism and—and all of it, Cormac, the whole big mess of bureaucracy and procedure ... I’ve trusted it. When other people were sniggering at the academy, I was taking notes. When other people were partying, I was studying. When it came time to throw on a vest and get into the thick of it, I didn’t flinch. Because I knew, deep down, that the FBI was a force for good in America. I knew that we really accomplished something. I knew that I had a family. And now I’ve found out—” I stop, choking back tears. “And now I’ve found out that all of that was a lie. Or at least part of it. Enough of it to leave a hole in my chest. So can you please just stop your bullshit for once?”

  Cormac smiles, leaning his face close to mine. Soon his lips are less than an inch from mine. His breath whispers over my face, down my chin, and across my upper lip. “It’s okay,” he says. “It’ll all be okay. You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met.”

  “What difference does that make, even if it’s true?”

  “It is true and it makes a damn big difference. You’ll get through this. You’ll sort this out. You’ll root out the corruption. I know you will.”

  “Yeah, if the people I’ve been talking to aren’t working for Mickey. I was making those calls based on the assumption that—”

  For the first few moments of the kiss, the world melts away. I forget about the FBI, I forget about corruption, and I forget about Agent O’Bannon. I lean into the kiss, losing myself in his beard, my hands somehow finding their way to his shoulders. Our tongues touch, once, twice, and then come away, as though reeling from the encounter. I think of how angry he was at the barn, how he beat those men, and even if I know it’s wrong, I’m excited by it. I throw myself into him. He wraps his arms around me, and I wrap mine around him. I hate him. He’s a jerk and he’s a criminal; I want him. He’s my man and he understands. The two viewpoints burn within me, neither gaining a stronger footing. But then I push it aside and focus on the kiss.

  It’s only when his hand strays to my leg that reality re-enters my mind.

  I lean back, panting. Panting, I reflect ruefully. That’s how he got me in the first place.

  “I can’t,” I say.

  Cormac’s hand lingers on my thigh for a moment longer, then he returns to his side of the car. “We will,” he says. “And we both know we will. So I guess there’s no point in rushing you.”

  “How can you be so confident after everything that’s happened?”

  “My dad being dead and Mickey being Don, you mean?” He shrugs. “I’ve always been confident. Maybe I’m just too stupid to know when to be scared.”

  “No,” I say, touching his hand. “You’re not stupid.”

  He half-groans, half-laughs. “You’re too much to handle. One minute you’re lying about what happened last night, then you’re slapping me, then we’re kissing, and now this ... I’m starting to think even you don’t know how you feel about me.”

  “I think,” I say, opening the car door, “you may be onto something there.”

  “Where are you going?” he calls after me as I pace barefoot across the parking lot.

  “I’m not sitting in a boiling car all the way to New York. Let’s be quick about this.”

  Cormac grins and hooks his arm through mine. “Of course, ma’am. I’ll take you on a criminal’s tour of a supermarket.”

  “I was thinking,” I say as we walk through the aisles toward the clothes section.

  “Yeah?”

  “I was thinking, wouldn’t this be a perfect opportunity for you and Moira to—”

  “No,” he interrupts. “I know what you’re going to say, and no.”

  I swallow, annoyed, but then we’re in the clothes section, walking up and down, trying not to look conspicuous as he slides around on bare feet.

  Soon we’re standing in the women’s section. Cormac looks up and down the aisle, then talks in the clichéd voice of a clichéd husband. “Why don’t you pick some clothes to try on, darling?” He lowers his voice, grinning. “Get changed. I’ll do the same, and then we’ll just leave.”

  “Won’t the alarm go off?”

  Cormac shrugs. “I’m pretty sure it only goes off for big things. But if it does, we’ll just make a run for it.”

  “I’m an FBI agent,” I say. “And I’m shoplifting.”

  “Okay ...”

  “I was just voicing it to see if that made it seem realer.”

  “Have fun.” Cormac pecks me on the forehead. For a second or two it’s like this isn’t complicated at all. It’s like he’s my boyfriend, and we’re just having wild fun.

  I pick a T-shirt, jeans, and some boots, then take them to the changing room. There’s only one member of staff on duty in this section, and right now she’s busy with a toddler and his mother. “I’m very sorry, miss, but your son simply cannot fit into this size. Now, we have clothes for older children which should fit him just fine ...”

  “Are you calling my kid fat? Huh, let me speak to your manager. I want to see your manager!”

  I get changed quickly, leaving the jacket and the heavy pants on the floor, then walk from the room. I keep expecting somebody to stop me. It’s strange. I’ve been on drug busts. I’ve arrested murderers. I’ve been shot at and I’ve shot back, yet walking through the aisles wearing stolen clothes, searching for Cormac, is setting my heartbeat
at a rate none of those experiences came close to. Finally, I spot Cormac, leaning casually against the wall wearing a short-sleeved shirt and jeans.

  “Let’s go,” I say, my voice tight.

  Back in the car, Cormac breaks into peals of laughter. He laughs like a kid, holding his sides. For a second I feel like an indulgent wife, waiting for her boyish husband to stop laughing.

  “Your face, Scar. Your face. You’re not cut out for the life of a hardened shoplifter, are you?”

  “We just broke the law,” I say. “I don't see anything funny about that.”

  But as I start the engine, the laughter erupts from me too. Both of us are laughing like kids right up until we join the flow of traffic on the highway, heading back toward New York.