by JA Huss
“What happened to me?” I ask.
“You were shot in the chest. Bullet passed right through your upper right quadrant, luckily. There was a lot of blood loss, but the internal damage, while bad, could’ve been a lot worse. You got really, really lucky, Miss Grey.”
I sigh and sink back into the pillows, wincing at the pain leaking past the drugs. “Do I still have a phone?”
“Sorry,” she says. “Everything you came in with has already been confiscated as evidence. The FBI is still here. They’ve been waiting for you to be well enough to talk to them.” She eyes me for a moment. “Do you want to talk to them?”
“Do I have a choice?” I ask.
“I can probably buy you another few hours, but after the shift change everyone will know you’re awake and they have a court order, so…” She shrugs.
I don’t like the sound of this. But I’ve spent a lot of years hiding from my past and all I want now is the truth. No matter what it is.
So I say, “Yes. Send them in.”
There’s more to Finn Murphy than he let on. That second phone just confirms the nagging thought in the back of my head the whole time we were together.
The throes of chaos might bring two people closer—the pleasure of panic is real when you’re forced to live through something life-altering with a stranger.
But that doesn’t mean you know each other.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE - FINN
“She’s awake,” the man says as I walk into the small room deep underground at FBI headquarters in DC. He’s sitting casually at the solitary table, one foot propped up on one knee, staring at a tablet.
I’m wearing black scrubs, handcuffs, slip-on shoes, and shackles. Before I have a chance to ask anything in return, the man points to the guard—who is built like a tank and towers over my six-foot-three frame by what feels like miles—and says, “Take those off.”
The guard complies and I rub my wrists as he deals with the shackles.
“Issy?” I say.
“Take a seat, Murphy.” The man eyes me as he points to the only other chair in the room. I know he’s FBI, not a lawyer, because he just looks FBI. Dark suit, white shirt, dark tie, dark shoes. He’s maybe a little older than me. Dark hair, eye color indistinguishable from this distance, nice haircut if you like the messy look, and stubble casting a shadow across his jawline.
I walk forward and take a seat. “You said she’s awake. Does that mean she’s out of danger now?” They’ve given me few updates since I was taken into custody back in Colorado. Issy was put into an ambulance, then Life Flighted down to Denver, and I was put into an unmarked federal car and driven to a private airstrip.
I haven’t seen her since. And the last thing I heard she was out of surgery, but that was days ago now.
“Do you know who I am?” the man asks.
“No,” I say. “No fuckin’ clue.”
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“Here, as in in custody?” I snort. “Well, I can take a good guess.”
“Take a guess,” the guy says.
I draw in a deep breath, searching for the words, then let it out and begin. “I shot and killed someone out in Colorado. An exonerated felon who, it turns out, shouldn’t have been exonerated.”
“Close,” the guy says.
He looks familiar but I have no idea why. My head is a cloud of confusion right now. I keep replaying that moment back in my head. When she was shot. The look on her face. The blood, the ambulance… Issy says you don’t get a rewind, but that’s only in real life. Your brain does rewinds quite well, it turns out. “Why don’t you tell me which part I got wrong? And while you’re at it, how about a name?”
He reaches into his suit coat pocket, pulls out a badge holder, much like the one I have—had, since they took it away—and flips it open.
“Special Agent Darrel Jameson,” I say, squinting as I read his ID.
“That’s me. But I’m retired. This,” he says, flipping his wallet closed, “is just the one they let me carry when I’m on special assignment. You were my special assignment.”
“Me?”
“We’re not gonna charge you. In fact, the whole report has been rewritten and your name has now been excluded. You were never there, Agent Murphy. Do you understand?”
“Uh… I mean, I get it. But no. I don’t understand any of this. I thought I killed my father last fall. I saw him take that bullet. And he didn’t have a fuckin’ vest on, I checked. I was hoping. And—”
“You’re getting waaaaay ahead of yourself here, Murphy. So just take a breath, sit back, get comfortable, and let me start from the beginning.”
So I do.
I listen as he tells his story.
My story, actually.
Except I’m not the one who wrote it.
CHAPTER FORTY - ISSY
Go F*ck Yourself is where I find myself over the next few weeks. The online class was a hit, but the phone was ringing off the hook looking for the classes. “People want you,” Suzanne said. “Not just the information you have.”
The FBI interview was as mysterious as the game that precluded it.
Was it a game?
And more importantly, did I win? Or lose?
I can’t tell. I have no idea. All I know is that Finn is coming back today. It’s been almost five weeks since that night up in the mountains.
Caleb is dead. Sometimes a gunshot wound to the chest kills you, I guess.
Apparently Finn is just a better shot than Senator Walcott.
Speaking of the senator, his name never came up in my interview. Even when I brought it up, it didn’t come up. They just moved past it like they had no clue what I was talking about.
Normally I’d be feeling pretty cynical about that, but apparently Senator Walcott is missing. Presumed dead after he went on a hunting trip up in the mountains almost five weeks ago. They think he was either eaten by a mountain lion or mauled by a bear. They’re hoping they’ll find his body in the spring when the snow melts.
If Chella knows anything about her father’s disappearance, she doesn’t let on. If she knows it was part of my game, she doesn’t say anything. She did look appropriately sad when all the local TV stations were camped outside her tea shop the day after his disappearance. She cried in the interview. Asked people—like hunters and outdoor people and shit—to please be on the lookout for him so she could get closure. If he was dead, she just wanted to know for sure.
But after that… she was just Chella. I don’t know her story and I’m not going to ask, because she doesn’t know my story and she never asked me either.
Secrets, right? Sometimes you just wanna keep that shit to yourself.
She came over to my hospital room the day I was released, helped me carry all the flowers and stuffed animals out to her car, and then she drove me home, made me tea, and said to call her if I needed anything.
Jordan showed up next. He knocked on my door, then let himself in my house like he belongs there. I think he just came over to feel me out because the conversation went something like this:
ME: Did you fuckin’ plan all this?
HIM: Plan all what?
ME: The game.
HIM: What game?
ME: Fuckin’ forget it.
HIM: Cool, forgotten.
And then he told me that Finn was fine and handed me a cheap phone. The kind you can buy in the checkout line at Walmart. Told me to keep it charged and someone would be in touch.
Someone was Finn. And that first conversation went like this:
ME: Were you in on it from the beginning?
HIM: In on what?
ME: The game.
HIM: What game?
ME: Fuckin’ forget it.
HIM: Cool. I’m gonna be home next week. I’ll see ya then.
So I really have no clue what happened last month. The only things I do know are this:
Caleb Kelly might have been unjustly exonerated, but no one in Hell cares.
I met
a new man, whom I might be in love with and one day we still might run away to Kansas together.
Izett Gery is gone and Issy Grey isn’t.
Was all this my game?
No, I decide.
This was definitely a game, it just wasn’t my game.
Did Jordan Wells set all this up? Does he have that kind of power?
And what the fuck happened to Senator Walcott? Did Chella know what kind of man he was? Did she set all this up?
And why was Finn taken back to DC, only to be let go five weeks later, his name scrubbed clean from all reports? Did he set all this up?
I have decided to walk away from it. All of it. Zig says, “Regardless of your past, your tomorrow is a clean slate.”
So… bygones, I guess.
Letting it go, I guess.
Oh, no. Not them. Not these people who played the game right along with me.
Not Jordan. Not Chella. Not Finn.
These people are dark.
These people are diabolical.
These people are keepers.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE - FINN
“You look good, man.”
That’s Darrel. He glances over at me from behind his sunglasses when I slip into the passenger seat of his BMW in the arrivals lane at Denver International Airport.
“Thanks,” I say, shutting the door, and look around at the wide-open sky of Colorado as we pull away and head to the airport exit. “So you’re what? Retired again?”
Darrel just nods his head. He’s not wearing a suit today. Dark slacks, white button-down—untucked and sleeves rolled up to his elbows—and more than a few days’ growth on his face. But the guy still looks official somehow. Like you can just tell you don’t fuck with him.
And after the story he told me back in DC… I have to admit, I’m glad we’re on the same side.
But all that’s yesterday’s news. Today is new. A fresh start. I’m not an FBI agent anymore, but let’s face it. I fucked that shit up a long time ago.
“You decide what to do next?” Darrel asks me. Fuckin’ mind-reader too, I guess.
“Maybe,” I say. “Sorta? Nah,” I finally admit. “I’m just gonna patch things up with Issy and worry about all that other stuff tomorrow.”
He doesn’t ask any questions about that. He was just feeling me out to see if I was on board with keeping my mouth shut. And it’s funny, ya know? How OK I am with keeping my mouth shut.
I shot my father last fall. They told me he died, but they lied. Motherfuckers are always lying. That whole time I was on paid leave for firing my weapon on duty, they were shaking down my old man. Coming up with a plan to weed out the bad seeds and bring some integrity back to this job.
Which is where I come in. They told me, Just go to Denver. Meet up with your contacts. Feel them out and turn them in. That’s all you gotta do and we’ll let you go.
So I did that. Well, I sorta did that. OK, if I’m being honest, I wasn’t doing shit until Issy came along. Until she got me involved in her game. Until I woke the fuck up and realized there were things in this world I wanted to be a part of. People I wanted to get to know. Things I wanted to do.
What I didn’t know, both back then and the night I began playing the game with Issy, was that my father made a deal with them too. To save me, not himself.
He would hand over all his information—all the dirt he knew and who he knew it on—and in exchange, they’d get me out of the life he forced me into.
Yesterday I escorted him to the minimum-security federal prison camp as my last assignment with the FBI.
He made good, turning in both Declan and Senator Walcott. Caleb Kelly was just a bonus, it turns out. No one’s really sure how all that went down.
But that’s because none of those assholes know about Jordan Wells. They think Darrel Jameson was running this play.
He’s good. I’ll give him that. But he’s no Jordan. That motherfucker is brutally twisted.
I like him. I like them both, I decide.
Darrel and I don’t talk the rest of the way into downtown. Just kinda sit there, satisfied with things.
It was hard to watch my dad go. Real hard. But he kept his head up, told me maybe we’d see each other when he got out, and then turned away and walked into the administration building without looking back.
I have a feeling I’ll probably see him again. But I’m gonna let him go for now. Let him find his demons, fight them on his own terms, and figure out his own way forward. A real Zig Ziglar kinda peace washes over me with that thought.
When we get to Issy’s office, Darrel pulls into a no-parking zone a few shops up and says, “Good luck, man,” as he stares straight ahead.
I might never go out and have a beer with good old Darrel here. But if I ever need a hitman, he’s the first guy on my list.
“You too,” I say back.
I get out, close the door, but just as I’m about to walk off, I hear a window slide down and look back at him.
“Hey,” he says.
“Yeah?” I ask back, leaning down into the window.
“I could use some help. If you need a job and shit.”
“What kind of job?” I ask.
“The kind you do.”
I smile. The kind of job I do… well, if I wanted to, I could read a lot into that little offer. But I don’t feel like reading between the lines today. So I say, “Sure. I’m in.”
“Cool,” he says. “I’ll be in touch.” The window starts sliding up, forcing me to step back, and then he pulls away like it never happened.
Go F*ck Yourself has a new sign on the door that says, “Don’t count the things you do, do the things that count.” And when I peek through the glass I see a room of women sitting at the various tables in small groups. Suzanne is talking to a few of them. All the tables are filled with black and yellow take-out containers from the Tea Room across the street, and when I go inside, the mood is quiet, but not sad.
Not sad.
Issy is on the other side of the large open area, moderating a class on kickboxing. She looks pretty fuckin’ hot in her tight workout pants and halter-top sports bra. I can see her scar. It scares me just to look at it, but I let that feeling go. Because she’s still here and that’s all that matters.
She doesn’t see me at first, but then she’s in the middle of explaining some kind spinning jujitsu move thing in slow motion when her eyes meet mine. And when she comes out of the pretend kick and lands on her feet, she’s facing me. Like she planned that.
Maybe she planned that? Which makes me smile.
And then she smiles. And says, “OK, ladies. Practice that one until I get back.”
We walk toward each other. A million questions between us. Serious things to discuss. Major shit to resolve. Demons that should be laid to rest.
But when we finally meet up I say, “You should be resting.”
She says, “Go fuck yourself.”
And then we laugh.
Like this is funny… when it’s not.
It’s not funny, it’s just… easy. That’s all. To let it go. To move on. To start fresh.
She says, “You know, I’ve done a lot of thinking and I’ve decided…”
Shit, here it comes. Judgment Day.
“It wasn’t the pleasure of panic.”
“What?” I ask, confused.
“That brought us together.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“No,” she says, walking towards me. She reaches up to my neck and then she’s pulling her legs up to wrap around my middle, and I’m hiking her up, hands under her ass, holding her tight. “It was the serenity of satisfaction.”
The kiss that comes after feels like the first kiss. Feels like everything I’ve ever wanted but was too afraid to ask for. Feels like…
“Yeah,” I whisper. “That’s exactly right.” Satisfaction. “Because pleasure is what you want in the beginning, but satisfaction is what you get at the end.”
And then Issy smiles and w
hispers back in my mouth, “I’m gonna put that on a poster.”
EPILOGUE - JORDAN
“So you’re probably wondering where the fuck I fit in to all this.”
Ixion just looks at me, blank. “Uh… nope.”
“I get it, you’re confused.”
“Why the fuck am I here?” he asks.
“Like I said, confused.”
“Jordan,” Ix says, looking at his watch. “I got shit to do, OK? So can you get to the fuckin’ point already?”
“You remember that day?”
“Nope,” he says again. He’s pissed. But then again, when isn’t Ixion pissed off at me?
We’re sitting in my office. Darrel Jameson is in the chair off to my left, Ixion is sitting in front of me, and the new guy, Finn Murphy, is standing at the door, looking out the window, keeping watch in case Wells Senior decides to see what I’m up to.
It’s not like I’m hiding this little side business from my father. I’m not. He’s well aware of the whole Your Game business.
But he’s not aware of this game. The one I just played with the FBI.
He has his suspicions though, and I’d like to keep him out of it. Consequently… Finn Murphy takes point at the door.
My phone buzzes and Eileen’s voice comes through the speaker. “Jordan? Sorry to bother you, but you have a call on line—”
“Not now, Eileen. Tell whoever it is I’ll call them back.”
“Sure,” Eileen says. “OK.”
“That day,” I say to Ix. “That day you came in accusing me of playing a game? I’m assuming you were talking about this.” I throw my hands wide. “Right?”
“Dude, I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
“The game, man,” I say, leaning forward over my desk like this will make him understand me better. “The FBI, Finn Murphy over there. Issy Grey, and Chella, and Senator”—I whisper the last part—“Walcott.”
Now Ixion is squinting at me. “Did you kill that guy?”
“Kill him? Jesus fuck! I’m a goddamned lawyer! Why do people think I’m a criminal?”
Ix kinda laughs at that. And that laugh says, Where should I start?
