by Elodie Colt
What an exemplary son I am, fighting against Vincent behind his back while he’s trying his damnedest to make up for his mistakes.
Don’t feel sorry for him. He made his choices, and you have to carry the can for them.
One hour later, after Vincent and I have switched our suits for day-off wear, we slide into our rental and leave the strip behind us to meet Vincent’s guy.
I pull his business card from my jeans pocket to check his address. James Burke, licensed private investigator at JB Security, California. I’ve read his CV. Fuck, that guy is a different caliber. Degrees in criminal justice and computer science, background in the military, and spy for the US government. He’s one of those people you need to pull off a 150-million-worth-in-diamonds heist, I think when I peek at Vincent maneuvering the car through the early evening traffic.
I glance back at the guy’s name printed on the card, trying to ignore the pangs of remorse. He’s the last ace in my hole. The last line I’ve vowed never to cross.
‘How far are you willing to go?’
As far as I need to, if that’s what it takes to protect Ella. Luka Sokolov will stop at nothing to get back to her, and I will stop at nothing to snatch her away from under his nose. The end justifies the means, right? So, why does it feel as if I’m about to make a huge mistake?
I drag my lip through my teeth. As soon as I hand that guy Ella’s name, there’s no turning back. She would never forgive me for putting a spy on her, not after everything her stalker has put her through.
‘As if I need another shadow attached to my ass,’ she’d said when I offered to send her bodyguards.
Vincent slides the car to a halt in front of a dirty, double-story building. The withered plants jammed together underneath the burned-out neon sign doesn’t exactly invite you in to spend the night in this ramshackle motel, but from what Vincent told me, James Burke is as reclusive and private as they come. Staying off the grid is his job, so I guess he chose the right place to keep a low profile.
Vincent kills the engine, and we step out into the Las Vegas spring heat steaming off the asphalt in waves. We halt in front of the many identical, red doors. I frown. Not number six. Oddly, the white ‘9’ hanging on the chipped paint rubs me the wrong way.
Vincent lifts his hand to knock, but the door swings open before his knuckles hit the wood. A blond guy about my size appears in the doorway, a burning cigarette dangling from his lips. He sends Vincent a glassy stare before he jerks his head in a come-in motion, and retracts inside without sparing me a glance. Vincent, unperturbed by his reticent demeanor, gestures for me to follow him.
And just as I step over the threshold, the white number nine unhinges from its top screw to do a pendulum swing. I huff in relief. Here’s your lucky number six. Not a bad omen, then.
My shoes crunch on the stained carpet as I walk into the dim motel room. Light leaks through the sun-bleached curtains, the air thick with stale cigarette smoke and last night’s takeout. The air conditioning rattles on the low ceiling, blowing a cool breeze over my neck.
James perches his hip against the only table in the room, his expression dead-serious as he cuts his eyes toward Vincent.
“I have to say, I was surprised to hear from you again.” His tone is nonchalant, but the underlying contempt is hard to miss.
I fix a stare at Vincent who rolls his jaw.
“I would have checked in sooner but alas, I had fourteen years to serve,” is his eloquent comeback.
It’s clear as daylight that the two have a past, and it’s hovering in the air like gas ready to explode.
James scratches his stubble. “You’ve barely signed the release papers, and you’re already about to get yourself into trouble again.”
“Nothing crooked this time,” Vincent says. “We just need your observation skills.”
James utters a scornful chuckle, jamming his cigarette butt into an overloaded ashtray on the table.
“I won’t do shit for you, Crawford,” he deadpans. “Last time almost got me behind bars, too.”
“And yet you’re still a free man, just with a few more million dollars to cushion your bank account,” Vincent counters dryly.
“I don’t owe you anything.”
He jerks his head to me, and James casts me a bleak glance. “This is my son, Nathan. Hear him out, that’s all I’m asking.”
Crossing his arms, he pins me with a heavy, probing stare that seems to be his default setting. I keep my face devoid of any emotion, hoping to look as impervious as him.
“Alright,” he says. “Let’s hear it.”
I pull a wrinkled picture from the back pocket of my jeans. It’s a shot from one of the cameras in the gallery when Ella had attended the exhibition to do the Russian interpretation. I slap it onto the table next to him. Slowly turning his head, he drops his gaze to the picture.
“Ella Jenkins,” I say, knowing I have to cut to the chase with this guy before he loses interest. “Her life is in danger, and I need to find her.”
Hooking one ankle over the other, he grabs a crumpled cigarette packet from the table and leisurely fishes out a stem. “Clarify danger.”
“She’s been running from a stalker for years. We chased him out of the city, but we have reason to believe that he came back.”
James lights his cigarette and puffs out the smoke. “I don’t do hitman jobs for civilians.”
“I don’t want you to kill anyone,” I say with a frown, trying not to dwell on his words. No killing for civilians, but killing for the government? A comforting thought. “I just want to know where she is so I can see to her safety. She left her apartment, destroyed her phone, and erased all traces. I need help to track her down before her stalker makes his move. Maybe tail her for a few days, see what she’s up to…”
Taking another pull from his cigarette, his dull gaze travels back to me. He remains silent for a full minute.
“So, can you help me?” I ask when my patience comes to an end.
He puffs out the smoke in his lungs, hitting me with a cloud of tobacco stench. “Of course, I can. The question is, are you aware of the consequences?”
“Consequences?”
He exchanges an ominous look with Vincent before he swings his gaze back to me. “I won’t just be a shadow. I will be a ghost, pervasive as the air she breathes. Jobs like these are not just an invasion of privacy. I will see what she sees, hear what she hears, fuck who she fucks.”
My hands clench into fists, but unsurprisingly, he remains unfazed by my lethal glare.
“By the end, I will know more about her than you want me to know.”
The hell you will.
I prowl my way closer to him, my jaw locked in anger. If he thinks his I-can-kill-you-in-a-heartbeat attitude intimidates me, he’s dead wrong.
“You get as close as you need to but not one inch closer.” I breathe the words in a tone that issues a deadly warning. “You don’t talk to her, you don’t touch her, you don’t butt into her life, especially not her sex life. You don’t intervene in anything unless she’s in danger. Are we clear about that?”
This time, he blows the cigarette smoke directly into my face, but I don’t blink despite the sting in my eyes.
“Crystal.” He flings his cigarette butt into the ashtray, and it’s the first time a hint of a smile lifts the corner of his lips. “Six thousand, half upfront, exclusive of travel expenses, accommodations, etc. I’ll book a flight for the day after tomorrow. Got to finish another job first.”
A job that seems to require some heavy weaponry gathering from the rifle case in a corner with a dozen packages of ammunition stacked next to it. Seriously, it wouldn’t surprise me if I’d find a hidden shelf in the wall with an array of guns like in The Matrix.
He offers me his hand. “Deal?”
I look down at it and shake it. “Deal.”
And just like that, the last line I’ve drawn so carefully goes up in smoke.
8
Ella
If I can’t move to Sierra Leone, I can at least get out of the city for once. Have a change of scenery and take a break from everyday life, if only for a few hours.
I’ve already left the Pennsylvanian border behind me, now cruising through the wide-open country. My bike runs hot on the asphalt as I whiz past stunted trees and old shacks rotting in the fields. The smell of gasoline, road tar, and flowering weeds calms my senses, and I rev the engine after hitting the next curve, eager to feel the wind whipping through my hair.
I’ve avoided Zoya and Holly whenever I could, pretending to be asleep when they called me for breakfast and touring with my bike when they came home from work. I needed solitude. The freedom to cry when I break, to punch when I explode, and to do nothing when I just want to do fucking nothing. Putting on a happy face just for the sake of others contradicts my morals. And after weeks of feeling so hollow inside the emptiness has started to gnaw at me, plastering smiles on my face that don’t come naturally is just painfully exhausting.
A gurgle coming from underneath me makes me look down at the gas gauge. The red needle is trembling a fraction of an inch above zero.
“No, no, no,” I mumble as my bike loses speed.
The engine chokes before it gives out completely, and my bike rolls to a stand-still on the pebbled curb.
“Great. Just freaking great…”
I push myself off the seat, kick the stand, and yank the helmet over my head, hanging it onto the handlebar. Jamming my fists into my hips, I scowl down at my scratched vehicle. I’d checked the gas earlier when I hit the interstate, but it seems I lost track of time. And track of my gas tank, unfortunately.
Huffing, I spin my head up and down the desolated road. There are no road signs, but I know I’ve landed on some country road before Red Rock.
“Why don’t you ask your phone?” I mutter to myself and pull out said object. I wipe a finger over the screen to unlock it, but the display stays black. Frowning, I try again, randomly hitting all buttons, but not one single light flashes. “No fucking way…”
My phone died. That damn new, fancy thing sucks battery like a Tesla. I’m not used to charging it every night and probably forgot to turn off the hundreds of apps always running in the background.
No gas. No battery. No idea where I am. Jesus Christ, this is like a scene in one of those cheesy Sunday rom-com movies. Or a horror flick, I think with a grimace as the sun sets behind the horizon, dropping the temperature a few degrees.
Biting my lip, I swerve my gaze over the landscape. Funny, if Luka was here now, he could give me a ride. Or I could shoot him with my gun and take his car to drive back myself. But there’s no soul in sight, not even an animal save for the crickets whirring in the grass.
Throwing my hands up in the air, I trudge off and start my hike down the seemingly endless country road. Without my phone, I can’t even check how far I am from the next gas station or motel or any kind of human civilization. My only hope is to find something before nightfall because I’m not hot on having an encounter with a coyote—or worse, a black bear.
I shove my hands into the pockets of my jacket, my biker boots scuffing on the gravel the only sound as I wander through the fallow land of Pennsylvania. The last thing I wanted was time to think. When I’m on my bike and speeding over the ground, it reboots my brain, making me forget about all problems and bad decisions. I don’t worry about my past or my future or anything in between.
But force me to take a walk, and everything comes boomeranging into me. Like the fact that Zoya is losing hope. I’ve seen it in her eyes. She’s giving up on me. She knows I’m a lost cause. I can’t blame her, and I’m not particularly crushed, either. She’s been trying so hard to glue my shattered parts together, they’ve started to cut her. There was only ever one person who could handle my shards, who picked them up with care and endured thousands of stings and pricks to fix me…
Ross.
Thinking of him is pure misery. As soon as a memory of him pops up in my mind—something he said to me in his alluring voice, or something he did to me with his skilled hands—a heavy lump sinks into my stomach, overtaking me to the point I almost throw up. Holly said it would get better with time, but for what it’s worth, things are only getting worse. These memories of him, bitter-sweet in the beginning, have become sour and harsh and astringent like sulfuric acid. Whenever I swallow, my throat closes up with a big, poisonous chunk worming its way down my esophagus, and when it hits my belly, it stays there, wobbling inside me for the next couple of hours.
Until the next memory hits me, and it starts all over again.
I stomp my boots into the gravel, swiping at a tear that is too thick for the wind to dry. Red Rock looks like I feel inside. Scruffy bush growing along the curb, stunted trees swallowed by the dry grass, and faded mileage posts lost in the weeds. Pretty but lackluster and dreary. Lifeless, almost.
It’s my fault, really. I killed any love that could have bloomed inside me. Ross, Zoya, Bex, even Kate… I shut them out of my heart, grew apart from everyone, and cut off all the roots until my soul started to decompose.
I look up at the sky, letting my head wobble on my neck as I drag my feet over the ground. The sun has completely set now, making thousands of stars glow in the distance. The wind has turned into a soft breeze, feathering through my hair. No idea how much time has passed since I’ve started my hike, but I’m more swaying than walking, and my eyelids are getting heavy.
“I’m tired, Mom,” I mumble into the night sky. “So, so tired…”
Letting my head roll forward again, I pull my Glock from my waistband to spin it around my finger. I could end it right here. Send a bullet up my head and join Mom in Heaven. Call me theatrical, but I’m sick of pushing everyone away just because Luka is always too close. It’s an endless battle I can’t win.
Unless I remove myself from the equation.
I weigh the gun in my hand. My eyes have adjusted to the darkness enough for me to make out its contour. Slowly, I move my finger to unlock the safety. Right at that moment, something buzzes around my head only to land on my hand.
I halt, stunned. Thin body, long tail, four wings—a dragonfly.
I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’s a prince baskettail judging from the dark spots dotting its wings. Dragonflies are usually diurnal. When they are active at night, they mostly follow the lights, but I’ve never seen one around this time of day, let alone in complete darkness.
I glance up at the sky. “You don’t want me to give up, huh?” I say to Mom, vainly waiting for her response. “Fine…”
Grumbling, I shove the gun back into my waistband just as the rumble of an engine reaches my ears. I whirl around as a pair of headlights appear in the distance, and my heart makes an erratic jump. By the time I’ve concluded that flagging down a stranger goes completely against my nature, a Ford truck with heavy bumpers skates to a halt next to me, throwing up plumes of dust.
The passenger side window slides down, and the dome light goes on, illuminating a forty-something guy behind the wheel. A sandy-brown cowboy hat sits on top of his long, dirty-blond hair hanging in shaggy strands down to his shoulders. His short, boxed beard moves as he munches on a piece of chewing gum. He props his right arm onto the backrest of the passenger seat, quickly giving me the once over with narrowed eyes.
“That bike I saw a few miles down there yours?”
His heavy but smooth Pennsylvanian drawl is hard to miss—the complete opposite of my serrated Russian accent when I reply, “Yeah. I ran out of gas. Can I bum a ride to the next gas station?”
He tilts his head a little, scrutinizing me with steel-blue eyes. The guy is hard to assess. He’s got that air around him that makes me wary, but he doesn’t scream serial killer, either.
“I could,” he says cryptically when he’s done checking me out. “What do I get in return?”
I narrow my eyes at him, sizing him up just the same. His suggestive question should trigger my fight
-or-flight reflex, but for some reason, I counter with a sassy, “Are we talking about money or sex?”
Uttering a throaty chuckle that doesn’t sound particularly unsexy, he looks out the windshield as he shakes his head. I keep my face blank as his eyes flicker back to mine, glinting with humor.
“Wouldn’t say no to a blowie.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. A jolt of adrenaline shoots through my system, flushing my skin. It’s the thrill of the unknown, the itch to take a leap in the dark I haven’t felt since I’d last stepped into the Room. Do I dare?
My stare is challenging as I prop my elbows onto the window. “Deal. But first, you’ll get me to the gas station.”
A crooked smile builds on his tanned face. “Get in, stranded girl.”
I open the door and plop down in the scuffed seat, sighing in contentment when I roll my sore ankles. The biting scent of hay, dog, smoke, and too many quickies wafts up my nose, but fresh air steams inside from the open windows when we hit the road.
I pull out my phone, bouncing my knee to the country song blaring from the radio. “Do you have a charging cable? My phone died.”
He chuckles. “Sorry, no mobile.”
I flash him a glance. “You don’t have a phone?”
“Good, old landline at home does the job.”
His voice is creamy like soft butter with lots of nasal consonants for extra sex appeal. I peer at him from under my lashes. He’s quite attractive. Not like a Calvin Klein model, but more in a sinister, bad-boy kind of way. Maybe a little old for my taste, but he’s got that lazy-crazy Jack Sparrow allure with bleached, ripped jeans, a faded black shirt, and eyes with such thick lashes at the bottom, they look like a stripe of black eyeliner. Pirate meets country style, I think with a smirk.
“You got a name?” he asks after a few minutes of cruising through the pitch-black landscape.
I level a glance at him. “Mary.”
