by Tara Oakes
You think of how easy it will be to just let go, even if you don’t know what’s below to fall into.
Beau told me to trust him, even if something were to happen to him and he weren’t here. I know there’s no way for him to have known, but the thing he asked of me is the thing that’s the hardest.
Trust.
After what happened with Aleksei, I swore to myself that I’d never trust another person for as long as I lived. Yet, here I am, sitting alone on a park bench, silently sobbing like a baffling fool and I find myself telling myself it’s okay to let go of the sill, to fall.
He’s not here, he may never be here again, but I trust him. I trust what he told me to do.
I let go, and I fall.
“Agent Gibson… I don’t know if he’s alright.” The tears create a strangling choking sound in my throat. “But, he told me to trust you like I should trust him. I’m calling you because I need your help…”
~*~
It’s done.
I’ve all but turned myself in to the FBI by contacting Beau’s old partner, Agent Chris Gibson, and asking for his help.
I don’t care about me, about my own freedom. None of that matters anymore. But, this means so much more than just sacrificing myself. I know that now, there’s almost no way I’ll be able to get my parents back.
I’m a strong person. I’ve lived through a lot. Bullets, backstabbing, heartbreak, upheaval. None of that compares to the pain I’m feeling now.
He’s gone. They’re all gone.
Beau would never have even been in this situation had it not been for me and my selfish need to always find a way to tempt fate. I never learn, do I?
Hasn’t it already cost me enough?
Hasn’t the collateral damage been great enough to wake me up at some point? You know that old saying “scared straight?”
Yeah, well, apparently it doesn’t work for me. Enough things have happened along the way to scare me plenty, yet I never once thought of going straight to prevent it from happening again.
That is, until now.
Now, I would give anything, anything, to be able to go back and do things differently, to find a way to shake some sense into myself and save the person I’m mourning for now.
Beau.
I don’t know why this is hitting me like nothing else has. I rationalize and remind myself that I don’t really know him that well. What’s it been? A week? Maybe more since I set eyes on him in person?
How can that possibly be enough time to care for someone this way?
I’m lying to myself.
I know him. I’ve known him for a long time. The months and months of endless messaging and covertly spying on him had given me a sense of who he really is. He was a good person, probably one of the purest I’d ever known.
Somehow, he could balance that goodness with the right amount of danger and attitude to make himself more than alluring. He was true to himself, not sacrificing his better qualities along the way to become jaded like I have.
What have I done?
My endless need to prove everyone wrong, to fight against the odds no matter how high they may be stacked… look where they’ve gotten me.
Look where they’ve gotten Beau…
I can’t do this anymore.
I can’t—
My mind races and swirls with images and memories of everyone I love, of everyone that’s gone, and I’ve never felt so alone.
Fresh warm tears begin to fall faster and faster until I’m in the middle of a full-on breakdown. I feel… broken.
“You actually listened to me. I’m shocked.”
My head snaps up immediately at the sound of the voice. Is my mind playing tricks on me? Is this what happens when someone finally loses a grip on reality? I use my sleeve to wipe at my tears.
I’m hearing voices now.
Not just any voice, either.
His voice.
I whip my head from side to side, scanning the lush green park around me.
“Over here,” it calls again.
Following the direction of the sound, I stand and lean to see around a large oak tree that’s casting its shade on me. There’s a shadowed figure hiding around the bend of the trunk.
When I step closer to see, it steps back to remain hidden.
I have no choice but to walk into the depths of cover to see for myself who it is, convinced that my mind is only playing tricks on me.
“B—Beau?” I’m cautious, not wanting to trust the gut feeling that the voice was actually his, but also not willing to give up the thread of hope that it actually could have been.
“Hey, babe,” he answers.
It’s him! It’s actually him! Not a figment of my imagination!
Relief like I’ve never felt before washes over me, and I rush to him, grabbing as much of his body as I can in my arms and holding it close. He feels real, although I keep checking to make sure.
“Ow. Easy, baby. I’m a little worse for the wear right now.” He stiffens as I squeeze around his torso.
“What?!” I pull back only to see evidence of what he means.
His face, his gorgeous face is scraped and red in places. His clothes are ripped at the hem and covered in what looks like fireplace soot and ash. I don’t see any blood, but I can’t risk not knowing how bad his injuries are.
Grabbing the white cotton of his shirt, I pull it up and aside, checking for any puncture or wound. Nothing, thank God. Nothing except for the sleek chiseled contours of his abdomen.
“Hey, I want to jump your bones, too, but I can at least wait until we’ve got some privacy,” he jokes.
Smart ass.
“What happened back there?! You disappeared and then there was an explosion, and I thought you were dead, and--”
His lips quiet me mid-ramble. Softy, reassuringly, he proves to me just how real he is. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you everything, but first we need to get out of here.”
“We could go back to Simon’s apartment,” I suggest.
Beau shakes his head, not liking my suggestion and looking as if he’s uncomfortable with it. “No, we can’t.”
A very uneasy feeling begins to take hold. “Why? What’s happened to Simon?”
My knees weaken. I’d been so busy worrying about Beau that I hadn’t spent much time even thinking about the very real possibility that something serious could have happened to Simon.
I haven’t seen him since last night and although Beau was the one worried this morning after he’d found Simon’s note, it had been me who was the one to calm him. I should have listened to him, should have taken it much more seriously, instead of being too preoccupied with my own agenda.
“He was the man waiting for me at the café table. With a vest of explosives on.” Beau holds on to my shoulders to hold me and keep me from falling at the news.
I can feel the color drain from my face. “What? Why would he do that?” And then another thought begins to infiltrate. “The explosion! He’s dead?”
I didn’t ask if he was hurt. I simply asked if he was dead. I saw the explosion first hand, well at least the effects of it. There’s no way a person could have survived being in the epicenter of it.
“No, no. He’s fine now. I managed to get the vest off him in time. But, he’s going to lie low. The men who captured him and forced him into the vest think he’s dead and I want it stay that way. It’s the only way to keep him safe right now.”
My head is spinning, trying to catch up to his words. “What men? Who captured him?”
It’s not overly cold out, yet I feel an instant drop in temperature. Every single baby fine hair on my body perks up as if someone has just walked over my grave. I can’t explain it, but I have a very real sudden need to protect myself. I don’t know whether it’s from the cold, the ominous feeling beginning to brood, or the inkling that I’m about to be hit with some very bad news.
“Maybe we should finish this when we get someplace more private.” Beau wra
ps his arm around my waist to settle it on the lowest point of my back. I know what he’s doing. He’s trying to get me moving.
It won’t work. I won’t let this story be put on hold.
“Tell me. Tell me now. Who tried to kill Simon?” I demand.
Beau blinks his eyes closed hard. “I don’t want to tell you. Not like this. Not here.”
I shake free of him, now even more positive that the news will be dire. “Tell me.”
He doesn’t volunteer the information quickly and he positions his body in a way that I know he doesn’t volunteer it willingly, either.
“Aleksei. It was Aleksei.”
It’s as if the earth has stopped moving and everything begins to play in slow motion. I heard the words. I even saw his lips move to make the sounds. In the split second it takes for my brain to register the meaning behind them, the worst possibility doesn’t even compare to what is very soon going to be a reality.
Once my mind catches up and digests the statement, I hear a blood curdling scream. Someone else in this very same park must have just received as terrible news as I have. What are the chances of that?
That poor woman’s emotion-filled scream is haunting, terrified even.
But, then, I realize… that woman is me.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BEAU
She’s in shock.
Still.
It’s been a few hours since I told her her the news, and although I knew it would be hard for her to hear, I had expected a little something different.
Her initial reaction, a loud ear piercing scream, was about where I thought her emotions would fall. But, after that… silence.
No more than a few combined words from her while I told her the details about Simon’s capture.
He had left the apartment early this morning to check on a hunch. After analyzing some data from the job posting, he was able to find some subscript imprinted in it. Something we had missed earlier. I’ll never understand what possessed him to think he should investigate it on his own.
We had this whole “big bro/little bro” vibe going on. I would have gladly gone with him, and if I had, this situation would probably have ended very differently then it did. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, and I’m sure he regrets the choice he made. It nearly cost him his life… and mine.
But, it didn’t. Thank God. Instead, it’ll just cost the city of London a shit load of anxiety and panic.
Everyone’s on high alert.
Everyone.
That can be used to our advantage, too. It’s just like they taught us in the Academy. Never squander an opportunity. That’s how I have to look at this whole situation, as nothing more than an opportunity to turn the tables on Aleksei and find a way to walk out of this in one piece.
I’m still working on how to get Raven and I out of this unscathed, not to mention her parents, but at least I’ve already managed to get one person out of this.
Simon.
He objected at first, of course, but in the end I got his scrawny little ass to agree to what I needed from him. He wouldn’t do it for himself, and I admire him for that, but he did agree to do it for the one person who I knew he wouldn’t be able to risk.
He did it for Raven.
Simon is too big of a liability. He was used as a pawn once already, and I can’t risk having him being used again.
I’m not entirely heartless, though. I made special arrangements to make sure that Simon enjoys his stay in computer quarantine.
Let’s just say that Sexy Simon will be thoroughly entertained while I try and clean all this shit up. He’ll be holed up in a hotel suite with three beautiful women who I paid handsomely to entertain him enough where he wouldn’t dream of leaving until all of this is said and done.
“You need to eat something,” I push forward a carton of untouched curried chicken.
I can see her left nostril flare as the paper container approaches, only to then shrug my offer away. “Not hungry.”
“Fine. Then drink something,” I hand over a large bottle of water.
She tilts her chin away from me. “Not thirsty.”
I’m trying to be understanding, trying to be patient. She’s testing me though. “You won’t talk. You won’t eat. You won’t drink. You won’t sleep. What the hell?! Fine. You want to wallow, then fucking wallow. I’m not going to do it with you.”
“Who the fuck do you think you are, judging me like this?” She’s angry. Whatever. I’ll take it. Angry is better than defeated. “You have no idea what’s—”
I’m not playing into her pity party. “No, I don’t have any idea. Because you won’t fucking tell me. So why don’t you stop the damsel in distress act, because, babe, you and I both know you’re no damsel.”
Her eye twitches.
She’s going to hit me, I can feel it.
“You--! You— you don’t understand! It’s my fault! I’m the one who led him right to my parents! He’s doing this to get back at me for—” she cuts herself off.
It’s like trying to recork a bottle of champagne… once it starts to flow you can’t control the spray, although she’s trying like hell to. Her lips are held tight, physically holding back the words.
“What is he trying to get you back for, Raven? For trying to kill him?” I mean, it is to be expected that if you try and take someone’s life, regardless of the circumstances, and don’t actually manage to do it, that it would kind of piss them off.
Her eyebrows are furrowing. She’s in physical distress trying to stomp down and suppress what she’s trying to.
Like a helium balloon bursting, she lets it go. “Aleksei is just finishing what he started before. When we were together, it was him that talked me into hacking into certain countries’ intelligence departments. It was going to set us up for life. We’d never have to worry about money again and we’d be able to live like kings. He was a double agent that was really just out for himself.
“At first, I thought he was like me, just looking to get out from under the thumb of some bureaucracy and live his own life without being told what to do and when to do it.” She rubs her temple. “Then, a few months into seeing him, he confided something to me. He was still on the FSB payroll, sent to keep watch over me, to lure me back into the fold any way he could. But, he had other ideas.”
The little bits and pieces I’ve gotten along the way, the tiny scraps of information about Raven and Aleksei’s past is now being stitched together.
“He wanted more than to just be some puppet. He wanted to be the puppet master, the one holding the strings. He made it sound as if he wanted us to have the control together, to basically screw them all over the way they would no doubtedly screw us over one day. So, we played them all. The FSB kept paying him handsomely to be my keeper and report back to them. We just altered the information he was feeding them in our favor. On the side, Aleksei has started to build up a network, one so clandestine that no one had a clue how it really operated. We hacked into every single world power we could and stole every bit of classified information we could get our hands on. Once our stockpile was large enough, we would make the demands and the ransoms. Pit country against country and have a bidding war. The information would be sold to the highest price.
“We were a team, a couple, him and I, but things started to change. He lured me in with promises that what we were doing was nothing more than a means to an end. It would be over at some point and then we would live our lives in peace and leave all the danger and espionage behind. I soon found out that would never happen. He became obsessed, power hungry, even more morally bankrupt than before. I knew it would never be over, that in his eyes our work would never be done. He wanted more, and more… and more.”
There’s a tear in her eye, but she blinks it back. “I didn’t see it at first. I convinced myself he was something he wasn’t. I led him right to my parents, pretending we were one big happy family. The whole time, he was playing me, using me. When I finally realized what he wa
s, I tried to leave. But I think I knew deep down that he would never let me. I tried anyway, though. The second he found out my plans, he threatened my parents, knowing they could be used to keep me right where he wanted me… under his thumb.
“I’ve lived my entire life playing by someone else’s rules. A puppet. A tool. A weapon. Whatever they ordered me to be. I thought Aleksei was different, but he was just like them, looking to control me. To use me. But he was willing to take it to a level that no one else had. He was willing to use my parents as pawns to do it.”
I vividly remember the bullet wound on her skin. It was on her back. She was shot from behind. “He didn’t try and kill you, did he? He shot you in self-defense.”
Raven’s face loses color. “He was going to hurt my parents. He was going to start what very well could have turned into World War Three. I had no choice.”
My eyes close as I try and picture what happened. She shoots him, turns, thinking he’s dead, but he’s not. He gets one shot in, one bullet that takes her down, but isn’t enough to finish the job… “He tried to defend himself.”
“No,” she’s quick to argue. “He wasn’t trying to defend himself. He was trying to take me down with him. If he couldn’t reap the benefits of what we’d stolen, he didn’t want anyone else to.” She shakes her head. “I would never have sold those secrets. That’s why to this very day, I still have every single one, never accepted a penny for them. They were already earned with enough blood money. Aleksei’s and mine.
“I left him there for dead and left the secrets buried there with him.” Her voice grows faint. “But, I guess he wasn’t really dead, now was he? And I was too stupid to even think that was a possibility. I checked his pulse. I felt his skin. I looked into his empty eyes.”
I can see that she’s remembering every morbid detail of that night. Her body is physically reacting to it.
“But now I have to finish what I started, Beau. He’ll never stop coming for those secrets. Never. No matter what he has to do to get them.”