by Meli Raine
Felt her.
And brought her out alive.
“Lily,” I say, squeezing her hand, hoping for some kind of sign back. I get nothing. She’s loose and limp, the hand I’m holding ice cold. The machines tell me she’s breathing, that her brain function is there. I know her cholesterol numbers. Her calcium results were fine this morning. She has slightly elevated inflammatory markers.
This is all data.
It’s information the doctors use to understand how to keep the machine of the body going. I’ve helped with that job. I got her here.
And now, protecting Lily has a whole new layer to it that I didn’t understand. She’ll always be the only client for whom this is true.
I brought back her body.
My job now is to bring back her heart.
“I know you’re in there,” I say to her, stroking her arm. “I know you’re in there and when you come out, Lily, when you come out, I’m here for you. I’m here with you. I love you. I’ve never said those words to anyone else in my life, Lily, and I—”
The door opens. The rest of my words sprint in formation back down my throat, tucking away under my heart. I drop Lily’s hand and turn away from the door, hand at my forehead, tucking it all back in.
Only Lily gets to see this.
“Duff,” Tom says, walking in holding a cardboard tray with coffees, a bakery bag tucked in the middle of three cups. “I figured you’d be here.” He motions to the tray. “I got you your regular.” A tiny espresso-to-go cup is sitting in one circular section of the tray, dwarfed by the other containers.
I smile. I look at him. “Thank you.”
“No, thank you,” Bee says, coming up to me, her motherly hand on my shoulder. “How’s your side?” Her eyes float to the spot where Romeo shot me. Luckily, it was an easy removal. Clean shot. I’m up and recovering.
“Fine.” The pain is nothing compared to watching Lily.
An earnest look meets mine as I stare down. “Duff, you’ve been here for hours every day. Thank you. I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”
“You were right to doubt me,” I correct her. “She’s your daughter. You’ve known her since the day she was born.”
“Since before that,” Bee jokes, patting her belly.
Tom comes over and puts his arm around his wife. The two of them are bonded. For a long time, I thought of them as Lily’s parents, as add-ons to a client I had to work with. Not that Lily was just a client.
That changed, and so did my view of Tom and Bee.
Now I see instead a sense of family that they’ve created between the two of them and for their three children.
When my mom and dad were alive we had that, but it was driven more by fear. What I see in Bee and Tom is driven by the same determination that made Lily stay alive through everything she went through two days ago.
Hell, two years ago.
“Here,” Tom says, handing me my coffee. He looks at Bee, and they turn to leave.
“You guys don’t have to leave,” I tell them. “I’m fine. I can get out of here.”
“No,” Tom says. “You look like you’re in the middle of an important conversation with her.”
“She’s not talking yet,” I point out.
Bee smiles. “She hears every word you say, Duff. Remember? And whether you think you’re having a conversation or not, you are. Lily's paying attention.”
“Are you?” I whisper in her ear, squeezing Lily's hand.
Nothing.
I get nothing back.
Letting go, I reach for the espresso cup and suck down the mediocre coffee. Tom looks at me with an expression that says he's trying to decide whether to speak.
My phone buzzes. I look. Silas.
You need to sleep. We've got a team in the hall. Go home, Duff.
I make a sound, like a choke. Like all the words in the world got stuck at the back of my tongue.
Go home, Duff.
I look at Lily.
I’m already there.
Chapter 11
Lily
“Sean?” His name comes to my lips so naturally. It’s a clean word. I don’t have to struggle to say it. He’s in a corner of the room, on a recliner that looks like it was designed to torture people.
Jumping to his feet, he sprints to my side, eyes full of an emotion I’ve never seen in him before.
Elation.
“Sean, where am I?” I ask, the words flowing like warm caramel, so easy.
“Oh, my God!” he says, voice shaking, his hand on my shoulder, then my elbow, then my neck, sliding up to cradle my cheek. “You’re awake! You’re talking!”
“I am,” I say, my throat dry. “Water?” The words come easy, his body moving in response to what I just said. He pours a cup half full and holds it up to me. I search for the button to make the bed rise.
Sean stares at me, completely dumbfounded, the cup of water held at a right angle by his elbow and his palm. “You’re fine,” he says, emotion making the last word come out like foam-covered wave at the beach.
“I will be,” I say. “My head hurts, and I need water.”
“Here,” he says, bending over. He holds the cup up to my lips. I sip, slurping, spilling down my chin.
The water feels refreshing and perfect as I swallow. “That’s good,” I say, pushing it away. He grabs tissues and starts to pat the top of my chest. I grab his wrist with my right hand. I can’t do it with my left. “Where am I?”
“You’re in the hospital.”
I look around. “I figured that out. Where?”
“Here in D.C.”
“How long?”
He understands what I’m asking. “Three days.”
“Not three months, or three years?”
“No, Lily, no. You weren’t out for that long.”
Relief pours through me, filling my lungs with a strange kind of mourning that doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense, I’ve learned. All that makes sense is him.
“The last thing I remember, we were in that room and there was the dead man. Oh, God, and his brains. And… and Romeo and he—you—suddenly Romeo fell, and you bashed into the room and—what did you do? What did you do?”
Pain fills his eyes as my words tumble out on top of each other. “Silas showed us a special spot in the room next door, where I could get a sight on him, but it didn’t line up, so I broke in the door. I blew out his knee to keep you alive. To keep him alive.”
“Is he alive?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I don’t remember much after he fell.”
“Do you remember anything?”
“I remember you. Your warmth. You pulled me into your chest, and then I don’t remember anything else.”
“Good,” he says. “I’m glad the last thing you remember is me. Are you hurt?” he asks, reaching for the nurse-call button, pressing it. He does it so quietly, but he does it for me.
“Sean. Is Romeo dead?”
“Yes.”
I exhale. I know we have just seconds before everyone shows up. I want to say this quickly.
“Sean,” I say. His lips twitch with a smile at the use of his real name. I know it’s important to him. That’s why I do it. “Sean, you need to know.”
“Need to know what?” he asks.
“Need to know…”
A waterfall fills the left side of my skull. It happens so suddenly, as if washing away the words. “Need to know…” I say again. Eyes that were filled with elation suddenly fill with something so much worse.
The door flies open. People in scrubs rush in, and then he moves, pulling me to his chest. The warmth is so familiar.
It’s so easy to let everything just fade away.
Duff
“Here we go, boss,” I say to Drew as the SUV pulls into the secured parking garage at President Bosworth’s home. Lily's still in the hospital, stable after yesterday's episode. Her blood sugar plummeted, a sign that her nervous system still can't regulate prop
erly. She's aware, language is there one hundred percent, and she's even a little irritated by her mother.
Which means we're getting her back to normal.
“Showtime,” Drew says with a cynical grin. The Grove looks exactly like it did the last time I saw it. Nothing’s changed, and yet everything’s changed.
I know more about President Harwell Bosworth than I ever imagined.
More than I wanted to know.
For the first time in this whole mess, I wish Alice were alive. The pleasure she would derive from knowing that she was right, and right in more ways than she ever fathomed, would have been good to share with her. She was my last connection to Gran, my last connection to anyone related to my childhood. My last connection, in fact, to anyone at all.
Until I met Lily.
And that’s why we’re here. We’re here to find out what exactly happened to Lily.
“Most guys only have to deal with their father-in-law during holidays or the occasional birthday party,” Drew grouses. “Me, my father-in-law’s the president of the United States,” he spits out, shaking his head. “This isn’t fair.”
“Maybe it’s karma, boss,” I needle him.
“If this is karma, I did some bad shit in my last lifetime.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Shut up, Duff.”
The car stops. We file out. Drew knows exactly where he’s going, and even if he didn’t, I do. We make our way up to the secure conference room, where Harry Bosworth holds all of his unofficial meetings.
Make no mistake–while what happened to Lily, two years ago and just last week, most certainly involved his role as president, it also involved other activities that are definitely off the record. So off the record, in fact, there’s no proof they even happened.
Designing a system where there’s no trace of your history is a dream come true for people who seek unlimited power. The president of the United States may be the leader of the free world, but he has checks and balances on him.
Imagine a stateless leader with unchecked power.
But you don’t have to imagine it.
It’s coming.
As we make a right turn, then a left, into the conference room, I watch Drew grab a coffee and a pastry. I do the same, then sit down. The question that now occupies my waking thoughts is this:
How close are we? How close is the world to the rise of the Stateless Project? And more important, what is their ultimate goal?
Marshall Josephs comes in, tall and imposing, wearing a tailored grey suit and a paunch that suggests he indulges in more alcohol than the average guy. Just behind him is Jane, who is chattering with Lindsay Bosworth. I haven’t seen her in a while. She gives me a brief nod and polite smile. Her blonde hair is shorter and she has circles under her eyes, a hat tip to parenting an infant. She's fuller, more present.
More mature in holding her anger, which is evident in the curves and motion of her limbs.
In Lindsay Bosworth's world, I’m mostly her friend’s bodyguard–maybe a little more–and someone who knew Alice. Someone who works with Silas. But she doesn’t really know me. That’s fine. That’s all I want to be.
That’s all I want to be to anyone except Lily.
By the time the meeting convenes, we’ve got me, Drew, Jane, Marshall, Silas, Lindsay, and then finally the president himself shows up. We all stand reflexively, including the women.
Even off-the-record power triggers our reflexes.
Marshall hands out the folders. I’m surprised it’s not Drew. This must mean that Harry’s controlling the flow of information, which is what you do when you have power, right? You control what people know, how they know it, when they know it.
And most important, you track.
You track how people respond to it.
“You know why you’re all here,” Marshall says, standing next to President Bosworth, giving each of us a quick look. “I don’t need to go into the specifics. Let’s just dive right in. Harry hired Romeo Czaky to be his head of personal security on the basis of his exemplary record in the army and in other private security initiatives. There was no reason to suspect that Romeo Czaky was the one who shot Lily Thornton, thinking she was Jane Borokov. Had Lily told authorities the truth of what she knew when she woke up from the coma, much of this would not have needed to happen, but it did.”
Drew cuts his eyes to me as if to say, Don't make a fuss.
Can he see my hands balling into tense fists under the table? Marshall's words make it sound like he's blaming Lily for the mess with Romeo. Fuck that guy.
“We have an information-management issue on our hands,” Marshall continues as a young woman with long hair and a tailored pantsuit breezes into the room like she owns the place, speaking quietly into the president's ear. From what I can hear, her voice is low, sophisticated, with a cadence that isn't foreign.
But it's damn near regal.
Glen. Glenna Carantini. That's her name. The president’s assistant, the replacement for Anya Borokov. As if she reads my mind, she looks up and catches my eye. She does not look away. Doesn't flinch. Doesn't give a millimeter.
Just stares.
Until the president taps her hand.
“Who gave him the orders?” Drew interrupts. “Who was the head of Romeo’s mission?”
“We don’t know,” Marshall admits, with a too-casual shrug that makes me instantly assume he's lying.
I look at the president for any hint of a give. There is none. Glenna leaves, taking one of Marshall's folders with her.
“How is Stateless involved in all of this?” Silas asks after the door clicks shut. Jane shifts in her seat, while Lindsay glares at the president like she's trying to kill him with her corneas.
Drew finally told Silas and Jane the truth about Jane’s original intended enrollment in the program. Silas and Jane also know about John, Blaine, and Stellan’s involvement. I don’t know about Lindsay, because Drew’s not the type to talk about his wife, but I suspect she’s well aware, too.
The tension in the room is all about drawing a straight line between information and people. Who knows what? Who doesn’t know what? Who knows who knows what and who knows who doesn’t know what?
Those straight lines start to look like a Spirograph after a while. They create their own patterns, intricate and beautiful in the seamless, calculated way that they take down human lives.
Yet they preserve some, too.
Any means can be used to justify a good end, but how do you define good?
“The Stateless Project,” Marshall says, “is a self-contained, quiet program that the military has been working on for years. It’s one of those pilot projects that gets passed through appropriations bills time and again, but never really gets off the ground.”
He’s dismissive. He expects us all to play along with the dismissiveness. He doesn’t understand that trying to minimize this is the very reason that we’re all suddenly on alert.
“We're aware of what Stateless is,” I say, breaking protocol. Drew and Silas are way above me on the power food chain. Hell, Jane and Lindsay are, too.
I don't care.
Marshall cuts me a look like a razor.
“How about you explain why two different men who were Stateless managed to infiltrate my company and put my clients and at least one of my men in mortal danger?” Drew asks pointedly.
Mortal danger. That's a really sterile way of saying tried to kill them, but I'll go with Drew's diplomacy for a little while here.
Before Marshall can start his answer, Jane holds up the palm of her hand to him. “And don't even try to say they're unrelated. Don't you dare.”
Harry gives her a cold stare. “You don't want to hear that, even if it's the truth?”
“You know it isn't true, Daddy,” Lindsay interrupts. In the past, she's been acidic and emotional, but right now, she's controlled in a way that makes her seem more vicious.
“We can't answer that question,” Marshall says t
o Drew. “Classified.”
“Bullshit,” Silas says under his breath.
“What's that, Gentian?” the president snaps at Silas.
“I said 'bullshit,' sir.”
President Bosworth stands, eyes landing on each of us in a counter-clockwise motion. “This meeting is over.”
“I still have questions, Daddy,” Lindsay demands as Drew puts his hand on her wrist.
“I don't have answers, Lindsay,” he says. “Not for you. Not for anyone in this room.”
“Is it true?” Jane challenges him, standing and blocking his exit out of the room. Two Secret Service guys move closer until the president holds them off.
“Is what true?”
“Don't make me say it, Harry. Just don't.”
“How can I answer a question you won't ask, Jane?”
One corner of her mouth goes up, hazel eyes turning sad and furious at the same time. Lindsay moves fast, backing up her not-sister, hand on her shoulder.
Jane blinks, holding the president's gaze, his look unwavering.
“You just did, Daddy,” Jane says. “You just did.”
Lily isn't here, but if she were, she'd be standing arm in arm with these two women.
I stand suddenly, all eyes turning to me. The president breaks eye contact with Jane, who blinks rapidly, tears spilling over, shoulders as tense as a high wire.
He exits, Marshall at his heels. Secret Service empties the room, leaving the five of us in varying stages of anger.
But Jane's the angriest of all.
She turns to me, ready to lash out. I brace myself for it, knowing I deserve it.
It's Lindsay who speaks first, though.
“All that time I was at the Island, you were feeding Jane information to send me... because Alice told you to?”
“Yes.” Startled by the question, I answer it honestly.
“And Alice learned what they were about to do to me, but not in time to stop them?”
“Right. She told one of her security guys, who tried to get through to then-Senator Bosworth’s security team, but by the time the message was relayed, it was too late.”
Her eyes drift to the door.
