Holly Lin Box Set | Books 1-3

by Swartwood, Robert

  In a very quiet voice, I say, “I don’t know.”

  “Okay,” Walter nods slowly, taking his hands away from my shoulders. He moves back to his desk and leans against it, crossing his arms. “So what you’re telling me now is that Scooter’s death was in vain. There was no ultimate purpose for what you were doing, so in his coming to give you backup, he essentially died for nothing. Now tell me—is my logic wrong?”

  “Those girls were slaves.”

  “I know they were, Holly. But so are a million other girls all over the world. And guess what—you can’t save all of them.”

  “But—”

  “Besides, you couldn’t even save the ones you tried to save Saturday night.”

  I look at him again. “What?”

  “Almost every single girl there was an illegal. When the police arrived, so did ICE. Those girls were sent back to Mexico.”

  I don’t say anything, letting this sink in. I’d figured as much but actually hearing the truth is still like a knife being inserted slowly into my heart. After Scooter had been shot, the thought of those girls had left my mind. Even Rosalina, left by herself in the Town Car on the other side of that rocky hill, had vanished, and all I could think or care about was Scooter, dying in my arms.

  “What about his parents?”

  “What about them?”

  “Do they know?”

  “Of course they know. They know that early Saturday morning their son was driving home from a very late night at work. He must have dozed off behind the wheel and swerved off the road and struck a tree. Completely demolished the car, as well as the body inside.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “What then would you consider fair? Should we tell them the truth? Should we tell them how their son was secretly working for a top secret government unit? That for the past seven years he has helped keep our country safe from terrorists? That he was in fact a hero?”

  Walter takes a breath, slowly shakes his head.

  “Those are all truths, Holly, something his parents would be very proud to hear, but something they will never know. As far as they’re concerned, their son was just an ordinary citizen who did freelance web design. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  “When’s his funeral?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You were never part of his life. You have no reason to go to his funeral. You have no reason to mourn with his family.” He raises a finger at me. “And don’t get any stupid ideas, either. I will have surveillance there and if any of them even catches a whiff of your perfume you will be taken away in a matter of seconds.”

  I cross my arms, glare back at him.

  “You can’t blame yourself for this,” Walter says, his voice slow and deliberate. “Scooter made the decision to go out there just like Nova did.”

  I glance down at the floor, glance back up at Walter. “So what happens now?”

  “Regarding?”

  “Regarding me and Nova.”

  “Nova is on indefinite hiatus. At least until a new team is formed.”

  “What about me?”

  “What about you?”

  “Is the new team going to include me?”

  “Give me one good reason why it should.”

  I say nothing, look away from him.

  “Just as I thought.” He stands up straight and walks back around his desk, lowers himself down in his seat. He seems to think a moment, his mouth half-open, and then sighs. “Holly, what I’m going to say to you now comes from a friend and not from your superior.”

  “And that is?”

  “What happened two years ago was terrible. It shocked us all. And unfortunately you were the most impacted and apparently still are. And ever since then you’ve had this stubbornness that makes you believe you can save the world. But the problem is you will never be able to do so. Why? Because when it comes right down to it, you can’t even save yourself.”

  Seventeen

  Blondie got engaged over the weekend.

  She has been with her boyfriend now for three years, they’ve been living together for two, and over the weekend he finally popped the question—she has already told us about the dinner, the flowers and the wine—and for the fiftieth time in the past hour she extends her hand to us, letting the diamond sparkle in the sunlight.

  “Oh my God,” Brunette says. “I just love it.”

  “Really,” Redhead says, “it’s beautiful.”

  Blondie smiles, says thank you, then looks at me.

  I’ve been smiling for the past hour and am getting pretty sick and tired of it. But still I keep smiling when I say, “Absolutely gorgeous.”

  We’re out at a public pool, these three girls and myself, all who put down on their W-2s the profession of nanny (only theirs is true and mine is just a cover). Blondie, Brunette, and Redhead are not their names, of course, but that’s how I think of them. I’ve known them now for two years and we’re friends to an extent, always seeing each other during the week while we drag our charges around D.C., and there have even been a few times when one or the other invited me to go out with them partying. I’d gone, just to show face, but had mostly stood in the corner, nursing a drink, declining invitations to dance.

  I decided to come up with a cover story from the start that I was already involved with someone, a longtime boyfriend who lives out of state. This way none of the girls would try to fix me up with one of their friends. The only problem was I needed a picture. And, well, I had a picture of Scooter on my phone one day, a pretty cute one, actually, and this was what I had shown the girls.

  Scooter, my fake boyfriend, not even dead forty-eight hours.

  “So,” Redhead says, “have you guys decided on a date yet?”

  While the girls talk—Brunette and Redhead already confirmed as bridesmaids—I glance out toward the shallow pool the toddlers now splash around in. In this kind of community, even a pool this size has a professional lifeguard on duty, so we tireless nannies can take an hour break and lounge in the shade of oak trees while one of those nannies works out her wedding plans with her nanny friends.

  These girls, they’re serious about the work. They’ve taken classes, have attended seminars, and Redhead has ambitions of one day opening her own agency. I mean, they’re nice and everything, they have a lot going for them, but I can’t imagine what happened when they were growing up that made them one day decide they wanted to watch other people’s children for a living. Then again, I can’t imagine what makes other people want to sit behind a desk for eight hours a day, or stand behind a fast-food counter, or wash dishes, or whatever else.

  The girls talk and talk and I keep watching the toddler pool. Less than fifty feet away, I can see Casey standing in her bright pink bathing suit, the water wings on her arms. She’s in the shallowest part, just a foot. David is with his friends on the other end, what is maybe three feet deep. They’re laughing as they throw a beach ball back and forth.

  Farther past the shallow pool is the real pool. Nearly one hundred people are either in it or walking around it, kids and adults sharing a leisurely afternoon. The male lifeguards are tan and well built, and even though they’re not as hot as the ones you’d find at the beach, the girls still like to ogle them. Normally that’s how we pass the time in the shade of this oak tree, picking out which lifeguard is the cutest and daring each other to go talk to him, while the kids we watch tire themselves out in the water.

  Earlier today I took the kids to the Smithsonian. For some reason they absolutely love the place. David especially loves the dinosaur display, while Casey likes walking through the butterfly exhibit. So that was our morning, amid hundreds of other children, me trying to keep an eye on both of them while also keeping my eye out for any danger.

  “What do you think, Holly?” Brunette asks.

  I look back at them. “About what?”

  Redhead sighs. “What’s with you today?” She asks this in a genuine
way, yet I sense a hint of exasperation behind it.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You just seem”—Redhead shrugs—“distracted.”

  “My boyfriend and I had a fight over the weekend.”

  “Is that how you got … you know?” Brunette asks in a low voice, touching her cheek.

  I shake my head. “Like I told you, that was just an accident.”

  “Still”—Blondie reaches out, pats me on the knee—“why didn’t you say something before?”

  “I didn’t want to spoil the mood.”

  The girls delicately back away from my suffering and return to Blondie’s wedding plans. I hear a shout amid the rest of the shouts and recognize it as Casey’s. I glance over to see her holding her hands up in front of her face while two kids maybe a year older than her splash her with water. There’s no splashing allowed in the toddler pool, but the lifeguard’s distracted by a large-breasted woman flirting with him.

  I stand up, excuse myself from the girls, and hurry over to the pool.

  By the time I get there David has already intervened. Despite the fact he can be a brat sometimes, he always stands up for his little sister when kids are picking on her.

  “Knock it off,” he says, stepping between the two kids and Casey.

  The kids just laugh, start splashing him.

  “Knock it off!” he shouts, and this catches the attention of the lifeguard, who has to take his eyes off those massive (and fake, I’m sure) breasts.

  “No splashing!” he calls, his voice automatic like a robot’s, and the two brats look at him, look back at each other, before stomping away through the water.

  David waits a moment to makes sure the threat is gone before turning back to his sister. “Are you okay?”

  Casey pouts her bottom lip. She nods.

  I’m wearing sandals for the occasion and I slip them off so I can dip my feet into the cool water. I bend down, place a hand on David’s shoulder, and say, “Good job.”

  He looks at me, sort of blushes, then turns and hurries back to his friends.

  “I hate the water,” Casey says. Her bottom lip is still pouted and it looks like she might cry.

  “Do you want to come hang out with me?”

  She nods and so I pick her up out of the water and carry her back to the shade of the oak tree where I left my bag and the towels. I give Casey her Hanna Montana towel and dry her off while kids shout around us, music plays from those massive speakers, and the girls keep going on and on about how Blondie’s life is going to change now because she’s getting married.

  Redhead says, “I mean, once you get married, you guys are going to stop having sex regularly. You know that’s a fact, don’t you?”

  I clear my throat, just loud enough so the girls glance in my direction and see we have virgin ears in our midst.

  They lower their voices.

  “Holly?” Casey says. We’re sitting on the grass now, Casey leaning back on my stomach.

  “Yeah, babe?”

  “Why do they have to be so mean all the time?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The girls start laughing at something and then Brunette says, “Might as well keep your vibrator,” and I clear my throat again, really loud this time, but the damage has already been done.

  Casey tilts her head back to look up at me.

  “Holly, what’s a vibrator?”

  Eighteen

  After my sister takes a sip of her coffee, she says, “So tell me again what happened to your cheek.”

  One thing about Tina is she always tries to get information out of someone by acting like they’ve already talked about it. We’ve only been here at Java the Hut for five minutes now, Matthew and Max at the table next to us, playing their video games, and not once did I tell her about the cut.

  “I had an accident over the weekend, that’s all.”

  “What kind of accident?”

  “Look, I didn’t ask you to meet me here because I wanted to talk about a little cut on my cheek.”

  “Then what did you want to talk to me about?”

  I open my mouth but shut it, not sure yet how I want to continue. I’ve been thinking about it all morning, ever since leaving Walter’s study, but then again maybe that’s not true. Maybe I’ve been thinking about it for a while now. The only problem is I’ve never had a real job a day in my life and there is a part of me that thinks a nine-to-five will forever be beyond my grasp.

  “You said before that Ryan could get me a job at his firm, right?”

  Java the Hut is a small coffee shop located in Georgetown. Very bohemian, it has artwork by local artists dotting the walls. My sister has a piece hanging here she made over a year ago, an abstract with a crow standing in the middle of a deserted Times Square. I have to admit it’s not bad, but it’s not great either, and the price tag on the thing has forced it to keep its place on the wall. I know Ryan tried buying it one time, just to cheer Tina up, but Tina had found out about it and forced him to take it back. Now here it hangs, looking right over our table, where Tina has lifted her large cup of coffee to her mouth to take a sip but now pauses, staring back at me over the brim.

  She sets the cup down, slowly, and says, “Are you being serious?”

  I nod.

  She keeps staring at me, her eyes narrowed. “This isn’t one of your lame jokes?”

  “I don’t know how much longer I can keep working for the Haddens. I mean, the only reason they hired me in the first place was because Walter and Dad worked together. I’m getting, I don’t know, just tired of the whole thing.”

  My sister smiles a small smile. “Not ready for kids yet, huh?”

  “Look, you said before he could get me something. An entry-level position or whatever. At this point I don’t care what it is.”

  “McDonald’s is always hiring.”

  Truth is, I’d probably prefer working at a fast-food chain making fries and burgers more than sitting behind a desk for eight hours a day.

  I say, smiling, “Quit being a bitch, Tina.”

  The boys pause in their video games to give their Aunt Holly a wide-eyed look.

  “Don’t swear in front of the boys,” Tina says, her teeth gritted but smiling nonetheless.

  “Okay, but first don’t be a bitch.”

  Tina turns to Matthew and Max, tells them to go back to their video games. Then she turns back to me, leans forward, and says, “What’s gotten into you?”

  “You know what? Never mind.” I push my coffee away, start to stand. “Sorry I asked you to meet me here in the first place.”

  Tina reaches out, grabs my arm.

  “If you’re being one hundred percent serious,” she says, “then yes, of course I’ll talk to Ryan and of course he’ll set something up. If this is, you know, what you really want.”

  It’s not what I really want, but then again I don’t know what it is I really want.

  “It is.”

  “Then I’ll talk to him tonight.”

  She lets go of my arm and I reach into my purse, find a couple dollars, toss them down on the table.

  “You’re leaving already?” Tina asks.

  “Yeah, I have to run.” I walk over and kiss both boys on the forehead, tell them goodbye, and then I turn to say goodbye to my sister but pause when I think of something else. “Also … I’m sorry for not being the greatest sister in the world. I’m sorry for, you know, being difficult all the time.”

  Tina frowns at me. “Okay, who are you and what have you done with my sister?”

  “Anyway, I just wanted to say that. I’ll talk to you later.”

  I start walking again, past my sister. I reach the door when Tina catches up with me.

  “Holly, what’s gotten into you?”

  What’s gotten into me is my life is falling apart. I got one of my team members killed and now it looks like I won’t be doing the only thing in the world I know and am good at. And the one person in the world who I could somewhat trust, t
he only person I’ve slept with for the past two years, is dating someone he’s in love with and I have nobody right now, absolutely nobody except my family, and even they don’t know the real me.

  “I’ve just been thinking a lot lately.”

  “About what?”

  “I have to go, Tina.”

  My sister stares at me, biting her lower lip like she’s thinking of saying something. Then she nods and says, “It was good seeing you. We should do this more often.”

  “Yeah, we should.”

  We stand there then, neither one of us saying anything. Finally my sister forces a smile and heads back to the table. I turn away and push open the door. I step out onto the sidewalk and just stand there for a moment and watch the cars and the people going by, and even though I know they’re there, I feel like that crow in my sister’s painting, trapped in colors on a canvas that nobody wants to buy.

  Nineteen

  My apartment complex is located in Fairland, a good fifteen miles southwest of D.C. It’s a little one-bedroom on the third floor. The elevator is almost always being “serviced,” which forces me to take the stairs.

  It’s no exception today.

  I trudge up the steps to the third floor. I already have my keys in my hand. I’m thinking about my meeting with Tina, whether I should have gone through with it, and for an instant my mind isn’t concentrating on what it needs to be concentrating on.

  If it were concentrating on the right thing, it would notice right away that my door is slightly ajar.

  By touch I find my apartment key, start to extend it to the lock, but freeze.

  Just stand there a moment. Not breathing, not moving at all.

  The world suddenly takes on a fourth dimension, warbling in and out of focus, and I’m backtracking through my mind the past ten minutes—driving down Interstate 395, glancing every thirty seconds in the rearview mirror in case of a tail—and then I’m thinking about parking in the apartment complex lot, walking toward the stairs, and I can’t believe that my mind wasn’t focused like it usually is, that instead of worrying about covering my back I was worrying about what I should wear to my eventual job interview.