Erasing Faith

by Julie Johnson

  Senior year in Budapest.

  I still remember the giddy feeling I carried inside for weeks leading up to the trip, and the shit-eating grin I couldn’t quite keep off my face as I boarded my first ever plane, which would whisk me away from the only state I’d ever set foot in. I felt as though I was starring in a Hollywood movie version of my life — some glamorous jet-setter, heading off on a year-long European vacation with stars in my eyes.

  And the best part? The trip was mine.

  Just mine. It wasn’t a repurposed, out-of-fashion prom dress or a second-hand pair of shoes one of my older sisters was no longer interested in. It wasn’t the inherited, old bicycle Dylan had no use for anymore, or the beat-up, twenty-year-old SUV I finally got to drive after Lennon left for college.

  Budapest belonged solely to Faith Moon Morrissey, and no one else.

  I’d wonder later, after it all fell apart… if I’d known how it would turn out, would I have ripped that plane ticket into pieces? Would I have stayed in my quiet little life, married Conor, and chosen never to meet the man who’d splinter my world — and my heart — into fragments?

  I still didn’t know the answer to those questions.

  And, at the time, I had no idea that Budapest, that the fantasy I was living, wasn’t real.

  It was nothing more than a dream — the kind so perfect, so detailed, it feels more authentic than any reality. The kind you never want to wake up from.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t have a choice in the matter.

  Because while Wes Adams may’ve seemed like a dream come true…

  He was actually my own worst nightmare.

  Chapter Three: WESTON

  THE LITTLE PRINCESS

  Her smile was so white it could blind you, but that didn’t stop her from grinning at every stranger she passed on the street. She had a tiny crescent-shaped scar on her left temple, but you could only see it if the light hit her face just right. She walked with a near-giddy bounce in her step, like there was a fountain of energy and excitement welling within her, always threatening to spill over. She couldn’t wait to explore this faraway city she’d come to – greeting the world with enthusiasm, seeing promise in everything and everyone she met. Her existence was a series of blissful moments, with each day better than the one before.

  If she were anyone else, that exuberance for life would’ve driven me up a wall.

  As a general rule, I avoided happy people. They had a way of making everything in my world seem even bleaker. People were always spouting shit affirmations about the power of positivity and the influence of others. They’d smile and stitch throw-pillows with quotes by goddamn Oprah on them, and carry on with their carefree lives.

  Surround yourself only with people who are going to lift you higher.

  What a load of shit.

  First of all, Oprah Winfrey has more money than King Fucking Solomon, so perhaps her life lessons would be more accurate if they said, Surround yourself with giant piles of money until you forget how shitty life can be. Secondly, as any truly miserable human being knew, surrounding yourself with people who walk around with their heads in their asses, holding onto bullshit beliefs that life is unconditionally beautiful and that people are inherently good to one another — no matter how many shitty things have repeatedly proven otherwise — didn’t make you any happier. In fact, it usually served the opposite purpose: highlighting and increasing your own misery by comparison. Because you’d never be as happy as those delusional dumbasses — it was a waste of time to even try.

  But this girl…

  There was something about her that was different. Though I was almost positive she had an embroidered inspirational wall-mural somewhere in her apartment at this very moment, even that wasn’t enough to make me hate her. Maybe it was because she was beautiful.

  Not the makeup-heavy, airbrushed perfection most girls strived for. Her beauty was elemental. It radiated from beneath her skin, painted her in color against a grayscale world.

  It made me uncomfortable. Set me on edge. Put an unfamiliar ache in my chest and triggered an all too familiar tightness in my jeans.

  I dismissed both sensations as I rose from the small, outdoor table I’d been watching her from for the past hour, tossed down a few colorful forint bills to cover my fare, and slipped back onto the street. Not a single other patron looked up as I left.

  People were predictably self-absorbed. They walked through life like horses trussed in blinders, only looking ahead to their next meal, next screw, next satisfaction.

  It made my job so much easier.

  They didn’t see me, but I saw them — every facial structure, every move they made.

  Having a photographic memory was helpful, but I didn’t need it. Recall, attention to detail… they were learned skills. Like disappearing in plain sight — with enough practice, anyone could make themselves invisible.

  I’d been doing it for so long, I wasn’t sure I could stop if I wanted to. It was second nature.

  The girl had finally closed her sketchbook, finished with her drawing of the popular Kiskiralylany statue — better known to tourists as “The Little Princess” — and was moving down the promenade at an unhurried pace, taking in the sight of the Danube and the immense, imperial Buda Castle which dominated the opposite bank. The sun was setting fully now, and the bronze-sculpted statue, perched on a railing overlooking the river, gleamed dully in the weak evening light.

  I left a healthy distance as I trailed the girl back toward her apartment. A twenty-minute walk would bring her back to Corvintas University, where she’d enrolled for summer classes three weeks ago. I knew from last night’s surveillance run that her apartment was only a handful of steps from campus.

  Totally unaware of the eyes on her, the girl smiled to herself as the wind blew a lock of dark hair across her face. It was the color of rich mahogany — deep brown with the faintest touch of auburn. Thick, shiny — the kind of hair you wanted to run your fingers through, because you had to know what it would feel like.

  I watched her push a strand behind one ear and that tight feeling was abruptly back in my chest. A jab to the ribs, a voice in my head — pushing into my thoughts, questioning my decisions for the first time in as long as I could remember.

  Not her. Anyone but her.

  The voice pissed me off.

  Pick someone else.

  What was this shit?

  Was I finally developing a conscience?

  Honestly, it was little late, at this point.

  I shoved the voice away, determined to remain unaffected by this girl I hadn’t even met yet. Any attraction I felt now would fade. Beauty like that was never matched by what was on the inside — once she opened that perfect, pink-bowed mouth, she’d reveal herself as a vain, vapid little girl. Which was fine — better, actually — for my line of work.

  Having a totally egocentric mark always made things easier. No questions, no feelings, no strings.

  It doesn’t have to be her.

  The voice was back, nagging, as if I didn’t already know I could target someone else. Any of the girls who worked at the courier service would do. The agency didn’t care who I chose, so long as I got the intel. Which I would, without question.

  No — it didn’t have to be her.

  But it was.

  As soon as I’d locked eyes on Faith Morrissey, I knew she was my mark.

  The only option for me.

  I didn’t allow myself to question why as I followed her home, keeping to the shadows and ignoring the fact that my eyes were a little too intent as they memorized the way her hair fell in a lush reddish wave over her shoulders and midway down her back.

  Chapter Four: FAITH

  SIXTY STRANGE SECONDS

  Wes Adams and I didn’t meet. We collided.

  Hard.

  On the day I turned twenty-one, amidst the throngs of Hungarian locals and fellow tourists crowding Heroes’ Square in hopes of snapping a few photos of Budapest’s most popu
lar statues, my flimsy sandal caught on a loose cobblestone and I landed in the strong, waiting arms of a man who, unbeknownst to me, was about to flip my world on its head.

  It wasn’t a graceful collision. This was no corny, cliché, out-of-a-movie encounter between star-crossed strangers. No iconic, elegant, swept-off-your-feet embrace, like that famous photo of the V-J Day Kiss in Times Square.

  We hit like opposing air fronts. Clashed like hot and cold. Two total contradictions — a high-pressure system and its low-pressure polar opposite — converged and created a massive atmospheric disturbance.

  A lightning strike.

  My head bonked ungracefully against his, setting off an explosion of sharp pain inside my temple. Stars swam in my eyes and I surely would’ve collapsed to the ground if not for the muscular, well-tanned forearms that banded around my midsection and hauled me upright.

  Without even realizing it, that one, tiny, insignificant action — tripping over my own feet, crashing into a stranger — set off a chain of events that forever altered the course of my life. One freak accident changed everything.

  Well, at least at the time, I believed it was an accident. Months later, when I finally learned the truth, I’d realize that our meeting had been carefully planned, that each word he spoke and gesture he made had been orchestrated with meticulous precision.

  But, in that moment — face to face with a beautiful stranger, his calloused hands gently gripping my forearms and steadying me in the sea of camera-toting globetrotters — the only thought in my head was that the archangel Gabriel’s handsome sculpted profile, captured for eternity in the statue I’d come to photograph at the square that afternoon, was a dull visage of beauty compared to the man before me. He was so appealing, it was almost aggressive. A visual assault that stopped my breath and made my heart skip a beat.

  Not classically handsome — something more than that. Handsome was too refined a word for him. He held a more primitive, more savage beauty — all sharp edges and angles. High, prominent cheekbones and a chiseled jawline framed a nose that looked like it had been broken at least once. Stark raven eyebrows slashed across a broad forehead, over a set of deep, dusky eyes. Rimmed with a fan of long, inky lashes, his irises were so dark they seemed entirely black at first glance. A second look revealed a thin ring of brown around ebony pupils — darker than the super-expensive, bittersweet chocolate the vendors sold at the upscale candy shops on Váci Street.

  Unusual eyes. Unconventional eyes.

  They seemed to pierce my skin with the sheer intensity of their gaze, lingering on my features like a physical weight. Memorizing my every feature. Taking the measure of my soul.

  His gaze was personal… Intimate even. Five tiny seconds under his gaze and I felt stripped bare, reduced to my most basic elements.

  I shivered, despite the intense summer heat.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled like an idiot, feeling the blush rise to my cheeks. “I tripped.”

  Thank you, Captain Obvious.

  As soon as the words escaped my lips, I wanted to smack an open palm against my forehead.

  The stranger’s mouth lifted at one corner in the sexiest, crookedest half-grin I’d ever seen in my life. Despite my best intentions, I found myself watching his lips, mesmerized by their movement like some lovesick preteen meeting her celebrity crush.

  People moved around us in a constant stream, their cameras held aloft. Ceaseless chatter in many different languages filled the air. Seconds ticked by on the small silver watch cuffing my wrist. High overhead, a cloud meandered across the sky and drifted in front of the bright summer sun. Generally speaking, the rest of the world carried on.

  But we didn’t move.

  The stranger still held me in the circle of his arms and, for some reason I could never fathom when I looked back on it later, I let him. We didn’t shift or breathe or speak. We just stood face to face, the only point of stillness in an ocean of moving chaos, taking each other in with an intensity typically reserved for longtime friends and lovers.

  Finally, after nearly a minute, belated clangs of warning began to sound in my head and I took a hasty step back. I’d seen all the PSAs and read all the pamphlets cautioning naive young tourists against all manner of less-than-law-abiding citizens before I set off on my study abroad trip. This guy could be anyone — a pickpocket, a con artist, a serial killer.

  As soon as I pulled against his grip, the stranger’s arms dropped to his sides, immediately releasing me. I didn’t even know if he spoke English, but when he opened his mouth to say something, I cut him off and launched into a tirade of mortifying, nerve-fueled babble that made me want to hurl myself off the top of the nearest building rather than risk ever bumping into this man again.

  “I’m—”

  “No, don’t!” I interjected with enough force to convince him I was certifiably nuts if by some slim chance he hadn’t already figured that out. “Don’t tell me your name.”

  His eyebrows rose and his smile faded a bit as I continued to speak.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t do this. You probably think I’m a lunatic but, for all I know, you’re a lunatic too, so I’m not going to worry about it right now.” I watched his dark eyes widen just the slightest bit around the corners, that tiny show of emotion the only indication that he understood any of what I was saying. I swallowed around the growing lump in my throat and prattled on. “Anyway, thanks for saving me from falling on my face, those cobblestones look pretty unforgiving. I appreciate it, really. But I can’t do that afterwards-thing where we talk and trade life stories because, well, even though you’re probably harmless, I’m sure Ted Bundy’s victims thought the same thing about him, and look where they ended up.”

  I took a deep breath and shuffled a few steps backward, a smile twitching at my mouth when I saw the utterly dumbfounded look on his face.

  “See, I made a promise to my family that if they let me go halfway around the world to study in a place they knew nothing about, I wouldn’t get murdered or abducted while I was there.”

  His mouth gaped a little. I couldn’t quite contain my giggle, but I kept talking anyway.

  “So, thank you, dashing stranger, for saving me and my favorite pair of sandals from undue harm. Sorry about your head.” My eyes flickered up to the red bump on his temple where I’d so graciously smacked into him with my own. “Unless you’re actually a serial killer. In that case, I’m not sorry at all.”

  Grinning fully now, I watched as his crooked smile slowly returned.

  “Don’t worry, I only kill people on Thursdays,” he said, the sound of his voice sending a chill up my spine. It was throaty, deep. Extremely masculine. The kind of voice made for phone-sex lines and erotic audio books.

  His English was perfect, unaccented. For a split second, I wondered if he was American, before reminding myself that it didn’t matter because I wasn’t interested in getting to know this guy, even if he happened to be the hottest human being I’d ever seen up close.

  Nope, totally not interested. Not a friggen bit.

  My assurances were pathetically unconvincing.

  “It is Thursday, you know,” I pointed out, laughing. “And you really shouldn’t give your victims advanced warning. Jeeze, that’s like Murder 101. Don’t you know anything?”

  “Oh, and I suppose you’re a murder expert?” His eyebrows quirked in amusement as his gaze scanned me from head to toe. “You sure look like a hardened criminal.”

  That voice, coupled that grin and that face… it was a killer combination. Pun intended. I practically melted on the spot.

  “Hey, don’t doubt my criminal tendencies.” My insides may’ve been liquid, but I forced my features into a haughty mask, broadcasting a confidence I didn’t feel. I dropped my voice into a low, conspiratorial whisper. “Once, I stole a lollypop from a convenience store.”

  He grinned, his eyes locked on my face. “And how old were you when this outrageous crime was committed?”

  “Five,” I
admitted, blushing a little.

  “Ah, yes, a bad seed right from the start.” He shook his head, trying to conceal his laughter with a stern look. “It’s no wonder you’ve graduated to killing by this point.”

  I laughed. “From Hershey’s to homicide — a natural progression, obviously.”

  “Did you do hard time?” he asked. “I’ve heard the penalties for lollypop thievery can be pretty harsh.”

  My cheeks reddened further. “I felt so bad afterwards, I made my parents bring me back to the store so I could return it.”

  His eyes went soft around the edges, making him look — if possible — even more attractive. I made a concerted effort not to squirm, but it was difficult given the fact that roughly ten thousand butterflies were fluttering in my stomach.

  “Of course you did,” he murmured, staring at me as though I was a fascinating puzzle he wanted very much to solve.

  We fell into silence, two strangers grinning at each other in the middle of a crowded square, prolonging the strange, unexpected moment we’d just shared. We both knew it was coming — that inevitable point when we’d go our separate directions and never see one another again — so we just stood there, staring and smiling. Enjoying the inexplicable familiarity, the confusing chemistry, that bubbled in the air between us.

  That kind of banter, that feeling that your personalities were entirely complementary… it didn’t come around every day. Hell, it barely came around once a decade. To find someone who just got you, on a fundamental level… someone who you just clicked with, like two puzzle pieces snapping into place… Well, it was rarer than it should be.

  When the seconds dragged on into minutes, I knew it was time to walk away — even if I didn’t want to.

  “I have to go, now,” I murmured, my gaze steady on his. “Things to do, people to kill. You know the drill.”

  Something flashed in his eyes. “I do, actually.”

  I smiled, taking a few steps backward until nearly ten feet separated us. Several tourists filtered through the gap between our bodies, but our gazes still held.