Murder

by Ella James

  “Sixty-nine,” I rasp.

  He laughs. “Enjoy this,” he breathes, and lavishes my clit with smooth, soft pressure, his fingers gliding in and pulling slowly out of me. I can’t hold off another moment. I cry out and pulse around him as the world goes brilliant gold; sounds fade. Only the weight of him on me remains.

  I feel my eyes roll back into my head, but still, I pull him down on top of me. The last thought I have before I drift away is I’m not sure what I like the best: the weight of him atop me, or the way his tongue felt lapping in between my legs.

  EIGHTEEN

  BARRETT

  2010

  The door opens, and one of the cadre members, Bobby, nods toward the room behind him. As usual, his face is blank. As are the faces of Colonel Wentworth, Sergeant Major Luthe, and Sergeant Hamm, sitting in three chairs in the center of the room.

  Wentworth, the commander of the unit, is husky and freckled, with a thick, reddish beard and pale blue eyes that narrow on me as I kick off my appearance with a sharp salute.

  “Sir! Sergeant Drake reports to the commander!”

  Wentworth has me hold my position while he runs those keen eyes up and down me. Finally he returns my salute and tells me to sit down.

  Then he lumbers up and shuffles over to me. With his limp and his big frame, he reminds me slightly of a wounded bear. He scowls down at me as the other men watch impassively.

  I can see his nostrils flaring with his exhalations, see his belly move under his uniform. When he speaks, his voice is a low boom, like a sports announcer’s.

  “I was gonna call you in here and tell you you’re in.” His bushy brows wiggle as he sinks a hand into his pocket. “We want you.” He blinks down at me. “Seems like you’ve got what it takes to be an Operator. To be a sniper. In the Unit, we want the best. Seemed you were the best.”

  My head hammers. My mouth feels dry as I look up at him, just waiting for the catch.

  “Then we found out you’re a liar.” He jerks something from his pocket. It’s a Polaroid picture—one that shows me stopped beside a man who’s lying on a winding mountain road beside a banged up motorcycle.

  “Do you know this man?”

  I blink, my blood rushing in my ears.

  “Is this fellow a friend of yours? Someone you had to try and come and help you?” My mouth opens. He grits his teeth and glares down at me, glaring me to interrupt in self-defense.

  “You deviated from your assignment on the field navigation test to help this man and even wandered down the way to one of the road’s emergency phone booths. You made a call to local law enforcement. A Good Samaritan.” Wentworth laughs derisively and shakes his head. The look on his face tells me I’m an idiot, and I don’t even know why.

  “You didn’t do the humane thing, Drake. You didn’t stay with him, even though he called behind you as you walked away.”

  My face must show some quiver of surprise, because his tightens as his neck and cheeks flush deeper red.

  “Did you think we weren’t watching? You think you can do whatever you want? You were not to deviate from the mission!” Spittle flies down at me. “You think you can jeopardize what you do as an Operator for a stranger? Play Good Samaritan and call for help for the guy? You didn’t stay the course! You didn’t even stay with him. He was bleeding, and you left him.” Shame flares through me. “That motorcyclist you came across—the one you threw the nav test away for—he died. You could have saved him, but you half-assed that, too.”

  My stomach rolls as he holds his hand up, ticking my sins off on his fingers. “First you leave your course. You use a phone and call police. And then you lack the balls to even follow through and stay with this man as he suffers. He was an innocent civilian, not a war criminal. You have the conscience to help him but you’re too big of a pussy to abandon your mission and stay to comfort this man in his time of need.” He shakes his head. The guilt I’m feeling lessens as I realize he’s rambling. “You have no morals. You’re worthless!”

  The insult makes my head feel hot, my fists clench up. Instead of jumping up and throttling the asshole, I hold still, the wheels in my head spinning.

  “I wouldn’t have thought a Ranger would be worthless, but that’s what you are, sergeant.”

  I take a slow breath. Exhale as he scowls down at me.

  I get this. They’re trying to rattle me. Why else would Wentworth chastise me for not staying with the injured biker I came up on during the nav course? My actual orders were not to deviate for anything, so it makes no sense that I’m being chastised for not sitting with the injured stranger long enough.

  I take another deep breath. Ride it out. This is a test.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” His voice booms, echoing faintly in the near-to-empty meeting room. “You let a stranger die when you have medical training as an Army Ranger. You lied to us—to the cadre members who assumed you had done nothing but chart and travel your route. On top of that, you barely met your check-in time!”

  I grit my teeth to keep from barking back. I arrived at the RV in time for check-in, despite having wandered miles out of my way to reach the pay phone that I used to call for help. I made the time cut even though I’ve got a hairline fracture in my ankle.

  I inhale again, then exhale and peer up at him.

  “What do you have to say, Drake?” His jaw is tight; his cheeks are ruddy; forehead shining. “You think you’re too good to give an answer? Too good to be accountable? You think because you’re a sniper for the Rangers you’re big shit? Do you?”

  “No sir.”

  “No sir,” he sneers. “You sound like such a brownnoser, such a little pansy-ass. I heard you’re a real do-gooder, Drake. I heard that about you. Stuck-up brownnoser. Son of a doctor. Little kiss-ass. I heard from your boys in Benning that you’re good with a gun but not much else.”

  I feel my head throb.

  “You think because you’re a Sergeant, because you’ve got the best record for a Ranger sniper at this moment in time, that you’re better than me? That’s what you’re thinking right now, isn’t it? Look at that fat-ass Wentworth, I’m better than him! You think you should be able to determine people’s fates yourself, don’t you? I heard your mother died when you were just a boy. What happened?”

  My mind blanks. I have to struggle to work past my shock at the abrupt change of subject and draw in another breath.

  “C’mon, tell me, pussy. You want to be an Operator, you want a spot on one of my teams, you will tell me anything I ask.”

  I’m shaking my head before I realize what I’m doing. “I don’t have to talk about that.”

  “No?” His folds his arms. His upper lip curls. “You do if it’s an order.”

  I look up at him, gritting my teeth. Who the fuck does he think he is, bringing my mom into a fucking test?

  “Tell me about your mother, Sergeant Drake. Tell me how she died.”

  My chest aches, so sharp and deep I have to struggle not to bring a hand up to it. “Cancer,” I rasp.

  “What kind of cancer?” he sneers.

  I shut my eyes. Even though I know I’m being fucked with, it still hurts to say it. “Breast cancer.” I force myself to look back up at him, trying to detach my feelings from this moment and place.

  “Your dad’s a surgeon. What kind of piece of shit doctor can’t save his own wife? Tell me about your old man. He a fan of you?”

  My stomach twists. My throat tightens.

  “Does he like you? Your father. Does your father like you, Drake? It’s yes or no.”

  I blow my breath out. Glare up at him. “No.”

  “Were you a mama’s boy?”

  I swallow. My throat actually aches, even though my heart is pounding and I’m getting more and more pissed off.

  I grit my teeth. Test or not, this fucker needs to shut up.

  “Oh, so a little mama’s boy. Mama died, so we want her to be proud, is that it?” I press my lips together. “The way you abo
rted your mission, got off-track and didn’t tell us. Mr. Good Samaritan, wanting to save everybody that he can save.”

  I clamp my molars on the inside of my cheek. I didn’t abort my mission! I stopped for half an hour to help a guy who had a wreck. I grit my teeth again, and Wentworth again jumps subjects.

  “We’ve seen you use restraint as a sniper. You’d never go on a rampage, that’s what our white coats tell us. But are you one who might get over-sympathetic? Say, if you were assigned a female target. Could you take a woman out?”

  I frown, confused. “I have.”

  “But she was old, probably toothless,” he crows. “She had also thrown a bomb that got someone you knew. What if she’d been hot? Someone who looked like Mama. And you watched her for a long time, a little Munich Olympics situation. You watched her shave her legs and watched her cry. You never saw her do anything bad.” He sneers. “Could you eliminate a target like that?” He shakes his head, continuing the theatrics. “We don’t know about you, Drake. Where your sympathies lie.”

  “Sir, I’m a sniper for the Rangers.” It comes out before I realize I’ve spoken.

  “Aww, so got a kill list. I hear that. I’ve seen it. Im-press-ive,” he says in his Southern drawl. “But only one woman scribbled down there. Not American—and not a sympathetic character. What if she was even hurt or…sick? Then what?”

  Part II

  “There are a thousand things I want.

  Each begins with going back in time.”

  —Jill Alexander Essbaum, from The Devastation

  ONE

  BARRETT

  NOVEMBER 3, 2015

  I do push-ups in the living room until I can’t feel my arms, and the fingers I can feel on my left hand are aching.

  I’m interrupted by my phone flashing on the couch’s arm. Dove. I answer out of masochism.

  “What the hell, dude? Haven’t heard from you in two days.”

  “And?” My voice is tight with fury.

  “And…you know. How are things?”

  I grit my molars. Fucking Dove in his fucking compound out in nowhere Montana. Probably chopping wood and welding shit all day. Dancing on that peg leg like the happy fucker he’s always been.

  “Don’t you have a wife to nag?” His wife’s an author. Thrillers.

  “You know I’d rather get at you,” he says. “Anyway, Melinda’s in Cali. Had to go talk to someone about a script.”

  I pace around and end up in the kitchen with my back against the refrigerator. I cast my eyes into the living room and lower my voice. “Quit calling every damn day.”

  “I’m just standing in for my brother. He’d be doing the same thing.”

  It’s true. Breck would. He might even be here with me. I sigh. “Well, you’re not him.”

  “I know, man. But really, what the fuck is going on down there?”

  I exhale—away from the phone, so Mr. Happy can’t hear it. “I wanted to tie up some loose ends. Do things right so it comes off clean and I have options. Like you claim to want.”

  I glance down at my pants, where I’m still throbbing and half hard, then squeeze my eyes shut.

  I hear Dove sigh. “You know, man… Did I tell you Bluebell’s been stateside?”

  “No.”

  “He went to Breck’s parents’ place, right? I talked to him, happened to mention where you were. That was two days ago. Since then, he just disappeared. I don’t know where the fuck he went.”

  “Except you do.” I roll my eyes.

  “It’s just a guess,” Dove says. He doesn’t even have to tell me what the guess is: that Bluebell’s coming here to interfere with my shit. Working together as long as we all did, I can read his mind, and he mine.

  “How long’s his leave?” I rub my brow.

  “Don’t know. But I can’t see how any good will come of this. You drawing that shit out with her.”

  “You don’t have to, do you? It’s my shit.”

  He doesn’t have the balls to argue—even though he could. Because it’s not just mine. Because of what I did, it’s all of ours.

  But Dove feels guilty. He was covering for Breck and me when everything went down in Syria that day. It’s probably the only reason he still talks to me. Dove won’t blame me for Breck because he blames himself. For Breck, and me as well.

  Finally I get him off the phone and walk across the living room. I lean against the slider door that leads onto the back deck, and I look out at the darkness.

  I can smell her on me. If I swallow, I can taste her sweetness. I look through the glass, out at the nothing of the night, and I can see her satiated smile. I like her smile. The way the one cheek curves. It doesn’t look messed up to me. It looks funny, kind, and sometimes sly.

  I bring my hand up near my face and inhale deeply, hoping to imprint the scent of her in my brain.

  I’m such a sick fuck. A pathetic fuck.

  I pull my right fist back, then punch the glass door. The fucking glass sheet actually cracks. The outer side of my right hand lights up like a blowtorch.

  “Fuck me! FUCK!”

  I walk over to the couch and sink down onto the rug in front of it. With a quick glance back over my shoulder—stairs are empty, thank fuck—I grab my hair and pull until my breaths are coming slower.

  I can do this.

  I can do this.

  When she wakes up, I’ll take her home, and after that, no more.

  I look down at my throbbing hand. At least it’s not my fucking cock.

  It’s over.

  I’m a fucking Operator. I am not a coward.

  Something in me tightens—feels like tugging. When I think about those little squirrel salt and pepper shakers. I can hear her voice say “BFF.” Her smile is in my head. It’s everywhere.

  I tell myself to hate it. Hate her. Because there’s not a different outcome. Not for us. There never was.

  In the end, I hurt her. That’s our fucking fate. This sweet girl with her bears and her little cabin. She’s not mine. Not even for a night. Not even for a minute.

  I walk upstairs again, and climb the ladder to the attic room. The little library is filled with amber light. There on the window seat, Gwen lies curled on her side, covered by a quilt. I stand there with my feet on the top step of the ladder, longing to go over to her.

  I don’t even need to touch her. I just want to see her. Not through a windowpane or through a fucking scope.

  Of course, I don’t go over to her. I head downstairs and pull my phone out of my pocket. Pull up Netflix, brew some coffee, get my .338. I step out onto the deck, leaving the door cracked so I hear her if she walks downstairs.

  In the meantime, I can’t let this—I can’t let Gwenna—die so easy.

  I sit on the deck for hours, scouring the internet. Licking her crumbs.

  Gwenna White signs with Superior Model Management.

  Gwenna White signs on for indie film End of Day.

  Gwenna White signs with Forward Momentum Records.

  “Gwenna White. Gwenna White. Gwenna White.” My breaths are clouds that linger longer than I would have thought.

  When the cold has set in, when there’s nothing that I haven’t read and memorized and weaponized, I click on the link from the Breckenridge County Gazette, a small news brief dated January 1, 2012.

  GWENNA

  When I open my eyes, the first thing I think is that I’m obviously still dreaming. I seem to be floating, blinking out over the dark forest. Then I look down at the soft cushion I feel under me, and I remember everything. The window seat. Barrett. Barrett’s mouth.

  I push myself up on one elbow as my eyes dart about the little attic room. He isn’t here. What time is it? I turn back to the window, but the night gives nothing. I guess I fell asleep. Guilt wars with glee inside me. After a long moment, I decide to let glee win.

  That happened.

  Yeah…it happened. I didn’t return the favor—damn me! But it happened. Barrett wrapped his arm around me when we
were talking about his brothers. He said we were friends, and then I gave him that little kiss—a friendly kiss—and it made him go crazy.

  Not just me.

  Barrett, too.

  I remember his big body stretched over mine. The way he shook. How tight his face was, and him saying it had been a long time.

  Glee loses ground to guilt.

  I need to find him and return the favor! I can’t let this stand.

  I toss the quilt off and discover I’m naked from the waist down.

  “Damn.” I can’t stop a grin from spreading across my face as I hop down off the window seat. I shimmy into my leggings, do a little walk around the room, and feel my stomach flip as I look at the ladder.

  Go get him!

  I start down the ladder, then turn back around for my phone, which I find on the window seat. I check the time and am stunned to find it’s almost 1 a.m.

  Oh God. I’m a taker. Shame heats up my neck and face.

  I wasn’t even tired. Barrett was. I could see and feel how tired he was. I can’t freaking believe I let him get me off and then I fell asleep. I start down the ladder, praying I’ll find him asleep in his room. Preferably with his dick in hand.

  His room is empty.

  My chest feels tight as I descend the stairs. My feet feel heavy. This is so like me. Falling all over myself around him since we met, and then we get together and I screw it up.

  I swallow hard as tears well in my eyes.

  It’s not as if I’m such a catch, either.

  That evil part of me… She’s hard to argue with.

  I step into the den and find dying embers winking in the fireplace. He wanted me. He wanted me. I almost say it aloud, but then I notice the dark curtains over to my left. They’re drawn over the slider door, the one that leads onto the stilted deck. I’ve never seen them shut before. I step closer and I feel a rush of cool air.

  Because the door is slightly open.