by Evans, LJ
I smiled weakly, stepped out of the car, and she took off.
When I looked across the street, there was a plain, black sedan sitting there. It was empty. But I had a feeling it hadn’t been when we’d arrived. I let the anger I felt at Malik flow through me again. Anger at his stupidity. Anger at how he’d risked everything Raisa had worked for. Anger that turned to a tiny bit of fear because I wasn’t sure what Petya would do when he found out. Anger that turned into sorrow as I headed toward the doors of the apartment and wondered how to explain this all to Mac and Dani.
Mac
IF YOU’RE GONE
“I think you're already leaving,
Feels like your hand is on the door.”
Performed by Matchbox Twenty
Written by Thomas / Thomas
It was close to four in the morning, and I was going nuts for more than one reason. My heart was twisted up with anger and worry. Fury curled through me as I looked at Dani, curled up on the couch, sleeping.
I looked down at the ice on my knuckles and swore silently.
I went to the kitchen, putting the ice pack back in the freezer, shaking my hand. My knuckles were going to be bruised…that I could handle. I just hoped Dani’s face wouldn’t have the same color on it come morning. When I’d found Dani, hiding in the bathroom at The Oriental, I’d completely lost it. Her dress was torn, and her makeup was trailing down her face to where a red handprint emblazoned her cheek. It was a Dani that I’d never seen. Ever.
When she’d collapsed into my arms, tears flowing, I’d been terrified. Dani didn’t cry. She barely muttered Senator Fenway’s name and something about a meeting in the Roosevelt room before I’d torn off down the hall. When I flung open the conference room door, the asshole senator and his cronies were sitting around a table, laughing, smoking cigars. I launched myself at him, busting his nose and smashing him against the wall with my hand spread across his windpipe. Dani had watched from the doorway, not saying a word. Not stopping me. And that had only filled me with more rage, because the Dani I knew would never have let me go at it like that. I’d hit him yet again before his security was on me, pulling me away.
“If you ever, ever even look at my sister again, you’ll wish I’d killed you right here and now,” I thundered, shaking off the security.
His equally slimy aide handed him a cloth napkin that he put to his bleeding nose.
“Macauley, right?” Fenway sneered. “Guess what, Macauley, not only did you just end any political career you ever thought you wanted, but you just got yourself an arrest charge.”
“We’ll see what the press thinks about a married senator who thinks it’s his right to attack a female who's told him no,” I said, brushing off the security guys.
He laughed. “Did she, though? Did she say no, or did she just feel guilty after the fact?”
Dani launched herself into the room, and I caught her around the waist. “Ever hear of the Me Too movement, jackass?” I said as I walked Dani toward the door.
Once we’d cleared the room, I looked down at her and wished I hadn’t taken my suit jacket off and left it in the car. I wished I had it to cover Dani’s torn dress, but I sheltered her the best I could as we made our way through the hotel lobby to her Mini that I’d left waiting for me at the valet stand with a hundred-dollar tip.
I took off down the street. “Do I need to take you to a hospital?” I asked, worry screaming through me.
She shook her head. “He didn’t get that far.”
I pounded the steering wheel. “Goddamn it, Dani. Why the hell were you meeting with him tonight?”
“Oh good, blame the victim,” she snarked.
“For fuck’s sake, you know that’s not what I meant.”
“I wasn’t meeting with him. Remember, I was meeting with Russell.”
“Well, where the hell is Russell?” I asked, my anger suddenly directed at another male body.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. He never showed.”
My left hand was going to be as bruised as my right when I was done with Russell.
“How the hell did you get in Fenway’s company?”
“He stopped the elevator and got in before I even registered it was him.”
The goddamn audacity of him. To take advantage of her in a fucking elevator.
“Good. We’ll have it all on tape,” I said.
She snorted. “You really think that his flunkies haven’t already confiscated it?”
When we got back to the apartment, she went to her bathroom and closed the door, and I called Granddad first and then Dad. Asshole senator and his flunkies could fucking take a flying leap. They’d messed with the wrong goddamn family.
By the time I’d explained what had happened to Dad and Granddad, and they’d gone into kill-a-senator mode, Dani had emerged from her room in a layer of pajamas that made me want to scream again. She hadn’t asked for this shit. My whip-smart sister needed to be flaunting her kickass body and taking names, not hiding.
“What do you need?” I asked.
“Nothing. I just don’t want to be alone with my own thoughts. Are you going to ice that?” she asked, turning on the TV and mindlessly flipping through the channels.
I looked down at my raw knuckles, feeling them for the first time.
I grabbed an ice pack for me and another for her. I handed her one as I joined her on the couch, pulling her feet onto my lap. She hissed when she placed it on her face, and I wasn’t sure if the tears that coated her lashes were because of the pain or the entire night.
Once she’d fallen asleep, I continued to field texts from my family. It was after two before I started to worry about another woman in my life, my thoughts drifting back to Malik’s constant sniffs, and Georgie’s and Raisa’s bodies in dresses that showed more skin than they covered.
They shouldn’t have to cover anything. Goddamn men in this world needed to learn to keep their penises to themselves. To not eye every woman as if they were theirs. To just show some freaking respect.
I texted Georgie first, and when I didn’t get a response, I called. It went directly to voicemail, and I gave up being calm. I paced the apartment. Calling the cops was out of the question. They’d laugh at me. I was tempted to call in some more favors with Dad and the DoD, but I also tried not to overreact. There were multiple reasons why she might not be picking up.
It was a little after four before the door clicked open, and I turned, irritation ready to fly from me, and then I saw her face. She was full of her own emotions. Anger and tears and sadness. And for a moment, I thought maybe she’d already heard about Dani, but then I realized there was no possible way for her to know.
Georgie’s emotions were from something entirely different.
I crossed the room and swept her into my arms and held on tight with my face pressed against her hair. “God, I’ve been worried sick.”
She squeezed me back, hugging me as tightly as I was holding her. And then, she was crying. The second woman in my life to be in tears that night. Georgie’s tears were quiet, wracking her body, and I had to swallow hard because I was so close to losing it myself. To shedding tears that I hadn’t shed in a very long time.
I held on to her. Swimming in her emotions. Swimming in mine. Unable to soothe either of us.
“Are you hurt?” I finally asked.
“I’m not hurt,” she said quietly.
I loosened my grip on her and pulled her chin so I could see her eyes and read the truth there. “I’m not hurt,” she repeated, and she took in my own face and seemed to read the concern that lingered there.
“I’m so sorry I worried you. I…I couldn’t call.”
I went to drag her down the hall, but she resisted. “Can we step outside?” She nodded her head toward the balcony.
I looked at her, confused, and it seemed to make her sadder somehow.
She pulled me onto the deck, and the wind hit us. We both shivered. She
was in her black slip dress still. I was in the T-shirt and shorts I’d changed into once Dani had fallen asleep.
I pulled her to me. “Tell me,” I said. “What happened?”
“One of the agencies took Raisa and me tonight. They found a brick of cocaine in my purse.”
“What the fuck?” I couldn’t filter my words. I didn’t have it in me after everything I’d already been through that night, and I knew it was a mistake as soon as it was out, because she stiffened in my arms.
“It was Malik’s.”
“What the hell was it doing in your purse?”
She pulled away from me, and even though I tried to stop her, she kept pulling until I had to let go. She stood away from me, looking down at me, tears pouring down her face.
“I told Raisa to put it there when we saw the cops coming.”
I stared at her. Was she telling me she was a drug dealer? That she sold drugs for her stepdad? It didn’t make any sense. I was too punchy to keep up.
“It’s not mine. It wasn’t Raisa’s either. It was Malik’s.”
“Then why didn’t Malik have it?”
She looked away. “He left when he saw the cops coming. He left knowing it was in Raisa’s bag.”
“Fucker.” I turned toward the door, unable to deal with another shitty male tonight. Georgie caught me, pulling my arm and tugging me back toward her. “Stop.”
“Why? Why should I stop? He let you take the fall for him.”
“There was no fall. They can’t even press charges.”
I stilled and just stared at her.
“Fourth Amendment. Illegal search and seizure. They didn’t have a warrant or cause to search my bag, and I specifically told them I didn’t consent to a search.”
“That just makes you look guilty.”
“Yes,” she said and glanced away as if it was too hard to look at me. “But it also makes anything they find pretty much inadmissible in court.”
I looked at the beautiful, smart woman in front of me and saw her pain as well as her courage. But the truth was, taking it for her sister had been the worst thing she could have done for herself. And then it hit me. She knew all that, and yet, she’d done it anyway. She’d sacrificed herself for her sister. She’d sacrificed her entire future for her family.
Dani and Georgie had both been braver than I’d ever had to be. They’d handled, with grace and fortitude, the shitty hands that had been handed to them by stupid-ass males. The disappointment in my species curled through my body, even as I knew we weren’t all to be lumped together. There were good men. Men I grew up with. Men I served with.
It took me quite a few moments to gather myself, and when I looked down again, Georgie’s expression was pained. As if my disappointment in my male gender was disappointment in her. I wasn’t disappointed in her at all. I was in awe of what she had done. But I was still angry that it could ruin her. I didn’t want anything to come between her and the future she wanted.
This just made me furious with Malik all over again. But what I said continued to come out all wrong. “But now they think you’re a drug dealer.”
“Possibly. I think they know it was Malik’s.”
“Who are they?”
“They never gave me their agency credentials. I’d guess NSA or CIA.”
“Not on U.S. soil. FBI maybe.”
“Does it matter?”
I stood there, staring at her. “Why are we out here?”
“They’ll bug everything, Mac—the apartment, my school, everything. My phone is already bugged, I’m sure. It was in their possession.”
Realization started to hit me. This wasn’t really about Georgie, or Raisa, or even Malik. This was about her stepdad. “They want Petya.”
She nodded. “I’m sure they do. But I don’t know anything that they could use. I’m not sure what Raisa knows. I’m sure Malik knows more than his share because Petya has been grooming him for a while, but now, with the drugs… He’s going to be so pissed.”
“Like pissed enough to kill his own son?”
“No…” Georgie said, but I could see the doubt in her eyes. “I don’t think so.”
I’d been saying all along that her family didn’t matter. That it wasn’t a big deal, but her words settled on me like gravity hitting you after you’d been on the moon. Her stepdad was a Russian oligarch dealing in who knew what. If not drugs, probably guns. Maybe other things. There might never be a happy ending to this…to us. And the thought of that tore at me.
I rubbed my hands over my face, trying to hold myself together.
“I’m so sorry,” she said quietly, her voice full of anguish. Pain that echoed across my own like a shot in an empty garage. “I’m sorry you’re angry and disappointed and…”
She trailed off. I pulled her to me. She rested her head on my chest, arms wrapped around my waist.
I told her, “It’s been one hell of a shitty night. But I’m not disappointed in you. You… You’re incredible. Brave and smart and―”
“Wanted by every enforcement agency that exists.”
We stayed there, holding each other.
“What happened with Dani? Is she okay?” Georgie asked.
“She’s okay. That asshole, Fenway, attacked her in an elevator.” My voice cracked, and Georgie looked up at me, eyes wide.
“Oh, no, Mac…” She looked in the glass doors to where my sister was sleeping on the couch. “Did he… Is she…” Her voice trailed away.
“No. He didn’t. But he’s going to regret ever having touched her,” I said, my tone ominous.
She looked at my hand and saw the cuts and bruising. She pulled it to her and kissed it gently, the heat from her lips making me wince.
♫ ♫ ♫
My eyes were heavy as they drifted open. I wasn’t sure what had woken me as I lay there with Georgie wrapped in my arms. We were both in the clothes we’d been in the night before. We’d lain down on the bed, holding each other, trying to breathe comfort into one another.
I heard Dani’s soft voice from the door. “Mac?”
I slowly moved away, trying not to wake Georgie. I ran a hand through my hair and over my face, trying to circulate blood, trying to shake off the grogginess. I went to the door and opened it. “What can I do?”
“Mom and Dad are here,” she said quietly.
I shut the door behind me and went down the hall. Dad was in his uniform, hat on the counter. Mom was in the kitchen, searching the refrigerator and coming up with eggs and bread. Leave it to Mom to want to feed us in the middle of a crisis.
Dani looked better than she had the night before. She had her game face back on. The one I’d seen on her every day on the Hill. While my hand was purple, Dani’s face just bore a red mark, and I was glad that, for whatever reason, the hit Fenway had given her hadn’t been a hard one.
“What’s the plan?” I asked, pouring a cup of coffee and joining my sister at the counter.
“Your grandfather has a copy of the tape they tried—unsuccessfully, might I add—to confiscate. Seems like somebody at The Oriental knows better than to listen to some shitty security team,” Dad said. “I’ve got some folks editing it, and then he’s going to send it to every news station who’ll take it.”
I glanced at Dani. “You okay with this?”
“They’re editing her face out,” Mom said for her, but I just continued to stare at my sister, waiting for her to say she was all-in or not.
“I told them not to even bother editing it. I’m not going to be quiet about this.”
“Daniella, we know you want to go at this head-on, but we want to give you the chance at anonymity if you choose it,” Dad said.
She didn’t respond. I wondered how long her silence would last.
“Meanwhile, Mac and I are going to head down to the police station. See if anyone pressed any charges against him.”
“I was going to make breakfast,” Mom said, her hand
halting as she was just about to crack an egg in a bowl.
“I don’t think anyone is ready for food, Clare,” Dad said with a weak smile.
“Robbie?” Mom looked at me.
I gave her a wry smile. “Sorry, Mom.” I looked at Dad and said, “Let me throw some clothes on.”
I wasn’t sure if we were really going to a police station, or if we were going back to the DoD to put out a hit on one goddamn senator from Alabama.
I went back to my room and quietly dressed without waking Georgie up before returning to the kitchen.
Mom handed me a travel mug full of coffee. “Thanks,” I muttered. I turned to Dani. “I need you to do me a favor.”
She nodded.
“Georgie… She had a pretty shitty night, too. Make sure she’s okay?”
“What happened?”
I shook my head. “Not here.”
Her eyed widened, but she nodded. She knew the drill. You didn’t talk about certain things in certain places. It was a well-known fact that we’d lived with not only on the Hill but our entire lives. I didn’t need to say more, but it had her looking around the apartment as if she could see a bug hanging from the ceiling on a web like a real spider. I had a feeling she’d be calling for a sweep of our apartment. If she didn’t, I would.
Our eyes met one more time before I followed Dad out of the apartment.
Georgie
TRYING NOT TO LOVE YOU
“And this kind of pain, only time takes away,
That's why it's harder to let you go.”
Performed by Nickelback
Written by Warren / Warren / Turton / Peake
I woke up in Mac’s bed without him. The apartment was quiet. I looked down at my crumpled black dress and wiped at the makeup that was sticking to my face―a mess. It was a mess. Everything was a fucking mess.
I got up, planning to head directly to the shower, and was surprised to see Dani and her Mom on the couch, the three TVs on, volume low.
“You’re awake,” Dani said, stating the obvious.
