"What are you doing?" I hissed when she moved next door, reaching for the door to Finch's apartment, and throwing the door open, moving inside without a word.
"Jesus," I gasped, moving inside, already reaching for my knife.
Inside, we found Chris standing there, smiling, victorious. While Finch leaned back in his chair, a gun pointed at her.
And every square fucking inch of his apartment was stacked with money.
"Holy shit," I said, mouth gaping, not quite ready to accept what I was seeing as reality.
Sure, Finch was a criminal.
Clearly.
He had the prison tats to prove it.
But I hadn't exactly pegged him as someone who was rolling in it.
"Ferryn. Ferryn's fuck buddy," Finch greeted us, more curious than concerned, despite what looked like millions of dollars surrounding him. "And this ravishing creature I don't believe I've met," he said, giving Chris a smoldering look.
"Yeah, no," Chris said, rolling her eyes.
"You're breaking my heart, beautiful," he declared, putting his gun hand over his heart.
"Something tells me you'll survive. Anyway," she said, looking over at us, waving her arms out. "Meet the mission's bank."
"Alright, sweetheart, you might have the face of a fucking angel, but I'm not giving you money."
"It's not money!" Chris declared to us, face triumphant, positively beaming.
"Alright, Chris, um, you kind of have crazy eyes right now," I said, looking between the parties in the room, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. "What do you mean it's not money?"
"Oh, right," she said, shaking her head. "I forgot you guys are a couple steps behind me."
"I'm pretty sure the whole world is a couple steps behind you," I told her. "But go on."
"Right, so. This is Finch McAwley. And he is possibly the world's best counterfeiter."
"Not going to complain about you knowing my name, dollface, but I can't be having you spread my business around like that."
Suddenly, things I had missed when we'd first walked in were clearer to me now.
Like the fact that he had covered the kitchen surfaces in computers and scanners and printers. The massive piles of some sort of specialty paper. The ink. The dryer that the units didn't come with, plugged into an outlet.
"Anyway," Chris went on as though Finch hadn't spoken. "Let's just say that Finch's counterfeit money can pretty much fool anyone."
"Then how do you know who he is?"
"Oh, please. I know who everyone is," she said, shaking her head. And, well, there was probably a lot of truth in that. "Anyway. Finchy here has absolutely perfected five and ten dollar bills. He sells them for two and five dollars respectively, leaving him with a nice little profit. I mean the ink and paper and such cost very little."
"The paper is linen, and imported from Poland. It's not that cheap."
"In the grand scheme of things, it's cheap," Chris told us, ignoring him. "Don't let his shabby little office fool you, he's rolling in it. And he is going to help fund us."
"See now, here is the part where I need to interject. Dollface, I never said I was going to fund shit," Finch insisted, placing the gun down on the table.
"Oh, but you will say it,"Chris insisted, smirking. "And do you want to know why you will say it?"
"Is it just me, or is she terrifyingly creepy when she makes veiled threats like that?" Vance whispered to me. And, well, I couldn't disagree. Her intensity, her knowledge, and her utter self-assurance mixed with the fact that she clearly had a lot of power in this town, well, it was scary and impressive and hard to look away from.
"Yeah, angel, I'd like to know why I would say something like that," Finch agreed, not as intimidated as Vance and I seemed to be.
"Because if you don't agree to fund our little mission, then I am going to have to make a little call," she said, leaning forward slightly like a mother about to tell a child the repercussions of their bad behavior. "Do you know who I have the number for, Finchy?"
"No, doll, can't say that I do."
"Does the name Ewan O'Neil ring a bell?"
Finch was pale in general.
He went ghostly right about then.
"I thought that it might," she said, nodding. "Anywho. You've done a pretty good job of avoiding him thus far. It would be a real shame if he learned where you are hanging up your cap these days."
"That would be a shame," Finch agreed, giving Chris some unnerving eye-contact that didn't dull her almost bubbly mood. In the end, he was the one to break it, looking over at me and Vance before glancing back at Chris. "And what mission do you want help funding?"
"How do you feel about human trafficking, Finchy?"
"Look," Finch said, holding up a hand. "I might not be the most moral of men, but I draw the line at that fucking shit. I'm not getting involved with trafficking. Not even for you, dollface."
"We don't traffick people," Chris snapped. "We take down traffickers."
To that, Finch let out a low chuckle, his gaze moving to me, piercing, penetrating. "That makes a lot of sense. Well," he said, taking a breath as he got to his feet, unfolding much like a cat. "It is important to be altruistic. Think we have a deal, Chris, was it?" he asked, extending his hand.
Chris's gaze moved downward, looking at the tattooed hand like it might jump out and bite her.
It was right then that I saw the girl I had shared a basement with. She'd come so far, she'd healed so much, but there was still some damage there, some remnants of the abuse she had endured.
Maybe she managed it in part by the fact that all the men at Hailstorm were technically beneath her in terms of power and that all the men in our very extended family would never hurt her, could be trusted wholly.
But men like Finch, strange men, men who didn't have to answer to her per se, there was still hesitation there, fear there.
It felt like forever that her gaze stayed there. Eventually, it seemed like Finch picked up on something being wrong, curling his hand into a fist, and bumping it into hers.
"We got a deal."
Chris shook her head, knocking the lingering thoughts loose. "Perfect. I am going to need a number to reach you at."
"You want my number, angel?" Finch asked, eyes dancing.
Again, Chris ignored this obvious attempt at charm. "We are going to need to do something about your security here. I mean, I don't want our money just walking off if the local delivery guy spots all this cash lying around. And, really, smoking?" she asked, picking up a pack of cigarettes on the table. "Are you literally trying to burn up all this money? I will write you up a PDF about all the changes that need to be made," Chris prattled on, picking up Finch's phone, swiping through it, seeming to find the number, typing it into her phone. "And I expect the changes to be implemented immediately upon receipt of said PDF."
"Yes, ma'am," Finch said to Chris's retreating form. Her hands were already typing away at her phone, likely working on that form she promised him.
"Told you I had it all worked out," she said on her way out.
"Like your friends there, babe," Finch said, looking a little whiplashed by the whole ordeal. And I couldn't exactly blame him.
"She's my cousin," I corrected.
"Think I might like getting bossed around by your cousin, babe," he said, smirking.
"Well, that works out. Because she's really good at bossing people around."
"Oh, little hint," Finch said as we inched closer to the door. "If you guys don't want me to hear you fucking, you might want to do it in the shower for a change."
With that, we went back to our shitty apartment.
Had some shower sex that still likely managed to be overheard by all the neighbors.
Then we sat on the couch eating leftover Chinese while looking over the apartment options Chris had sent over with records playing in the background.
It was simple.
And sweet.
And completely freaking pe
rfect.
"Hey, Ace?"
"Yeah?" I asked, finding it hard to keep my eyes open.
"I'm really fucking glad you decided to come home."
And, well, so was I.
Fifteen
- Journal Entry - 24th Birthday -
I had a dream last night.
I don't dream often.
At least, I don't have pleasant dreams often.
Nightmares and me, we have become fast and steady friends over the years.
But actual dreams?
I thought they were something I had left in my old life.
I was standing in a flower-blanketed yard. Irises and peonies and snapdragons and amaranth and zinnias were in full bloom, their happy faces reaching up toward the beaming yellow sun, just warm enough for the comfort of bare arms without too much heat.
I looked downward, seeing my arm there, fingers tracing silky petals as I walked through the seemingly endless paths of beds.
To what destination, I had no idea until I found myself there. Standing in front of a massive gilded mirror propped up between two swaying weeping willows.
My reflection was shaded until I got right up to it, the sun beaming through the branches to show me myself.
And there I was, my hair a little longer on top, my face a little fuller, my eyes not quite so haunted.
In a flowing white dress, lace-trimmed, impossibly elegant. The kind of dress that spoke of special days and special words and promises you wanted to keep. Until death do you part.
Just as my mind was reconciling the meaning of the dress, another figure moved in behind me. Dressed in black. The fancy kind of dressed.
His head pressed to the side of mine, his hands sliding around me, one hand reaching down to grab my left one, the sun catching the flat face of my diamond ring. There was another one settled before it, too. Plain, but solid, full of meaning.
Confused, my gaze lifted from our linked hands, searching for the man who had slid those rings there in the first place.
Vance.
I woke up gasping, heart hammering in my chest, eyes stinging.
Never before had I wanted a dream to be reality so badly.
Epilogue
Vance - 3 weeks later
He was gone.
After working out the minute details with Ferryn, Chris, Lo, and the small team of Hailstorm men and women who decided this was a cause they were happy to pursue, Chris approached Ferryn with an idea.
Approach 34691.
See if Holden would be interested in being in charge of re-training the new team members. He'd done such a good job of working with Ferryn. And these Hailstorm men and women had made their lives of martial arts training, of working in the military, so they didn't need to be worked on like Ferryn had needed to be worked on, hardening her, making sure she was capable of taking lives.
Ferryn had been pretty sure that he wouldn't be interested, not even if he got to train these people at his place without any pressure. But Chris had been just insistent about asking him.
I was a little surprised to hear that Ferryn had no way to get in contact with Holden, that in all the years they had been working side-by-side that they never so much as exchanged cell phone numbers.
I couldn't begin, in fact, to understand the strange disconnect the two seemed to share. Almost nine years together and she didn't have any stories about him to share outside of training stories and war stories.
I'd asked Ferryn about it, and she'd seemed confused by what I meant. Like they were just distant work colleagues, not people who shared a life for the better part of a decade.
I'd suggested going to see him mainly out of curiosity. I mean how could you not feel almost fatherly toward a young runaway girl who depended on you to keep her alive? I wanted to see how they interacted so I could better understand the kind of relationship they shared.
So we had borrowed one of Hailstorm's SUVs, packed it down, and hit the road.
It was almost jarring as I rode passenger to realize that she had been so damn close the whole time she was away. I guess, in my mind, I had pictured her on the other side of the country, up in Canada, or somewhere else that was not so easily reached by just a simple road trip.
I wondered if her parents felt a swelling of resentment at that when they'd found out. To know that, had she been in the right headspace, she could have visited from time to time, could have let them see her face, let them know she was alright.
I knew that, as time was going on and they knew Ferryn was planning on sticking around, Summer was losing that fear she'd been carrying around that made her hesitant to be anything other than Mom Of The Year toward Ferryn. I'd even overheard her make a few cutting comments about selfishness and the importance of family that Ferryn took in stride because she was starting to understand what had happened to her after the basement ordeal.
Chris had started making her do therapy with one of Hailstorm's former shrinks. Because Chris was convinced—rightly so, we were all beginning to realize—that there was more trauma in Ferryn than we all realized. That she got away with it because she covered her hurt with hard, and that shell was hard to break through. But it was there. The more time any of us spent with her, the more we saw it.
The way she struggled with being grabbed, even when it was just one of the little kids.
The way she couldn't make herself go into the laundry room at her parents' house because it was in the basement.
The way she tossed and turned, cried out in her sleep.
It was there. And it was buried under years and years of trying to deny it, or trying to use it to fuel her to complete her missions.
The missions themselves had left damage she wasn't ready to admit to. The way she scrubbed at her skin until it was raw. The way she sat out in the rain for hours on end.
I was secretly glad that Chris had come up with the solution she had. I was sure it would do Ferryn some good not having to do everything on her own, to not have to be completely alone in the world.
I had no doubt she would continue to go on missions, that it would still be important to her. I would have to learn to not let that worry me. Or convince Reign to let me follow her whenever she went on one, so someone would always have her back.
"What?" Ferryn asked, turning back to me with drawn-together brows.
"Nothing. Just trying to picture you here," I said as we stood in the living room of Holden's house.
It was very masculine. All dark woods, dark old leather sofas, no curtains, no pictures on the walls, no carpets or toss pillows on the couches.
There was, however, an insane collection of hand-carved figurines. Scattered across the coffee table, over the mantle, on the windowsills, stacked five-deep on shelves.
"I didn't live here," Ferryn told me, making me turn back from where I had been examining an amazing goldfish carving.
"What do you mean you didn't live here?"
"I have never stepped foot in here before," she told me, running a finger over the shell of a carved turtle.
"You lived with Holden for almost nine years and you were never in this house?"
"We had separate spaces."
"Will you show me where your space is?" I asked, watching as she slipped the turtle into her pocket.
"Yeah."
"We should package them up," I suggested when she looked enviously at an intricately carved sunflower. "If you don't think he is coming back. It would be a crime to leave all this here."
"Maybe," she agreed, torn. She wanted the collection, but wasn't sure if she would be overstepping by taking them. Especially seeing as they had such a distant relationship. "Come on," she said, leading me back outside into the gloomy woods.
It was strange. The area in general they lived in was a bit overcast, a bit moody. But as soon as we got closer to Holden's place, it seemed to get darker, gloomier, the rain spitting even though the main town just a few minutes away didn't have even a hint of rain.
"You lived in a garage?
" I asked as Ferryn led me there, plugging in a code, making the door chug up, the sound almost off-putting in such a quiet place.
"I trained in the garage. I lived in a room behind it," she clarified.
And, sure enough, we stepped into a gym/ training center. Still fully loaded despite Holden's absence.
"Training facility, obviously. I can't tell you how much blood I have lost here. Or how many bones I broke," she said, eyes a little far away, lost in those memories. "My room is back here," she said, and I chose not to mention that she said it in the present tense.
With that, she opened the door.
I tried not to judge people on the conditions they lived in. Sometimes, it was all they knew. Sometimes, it was all they could have. And no one deserved to feel shame about that.
But this?
This was fucking depressing.
Because she'd been raised with so much more. Because she could have so much more.
Then again, most people could. More than a mattress on the ground and a toilet and sink combination.
She'd spent nearly nine years in this room. With no creature comforts.
Christ, there wasn't even air or a way to get heat. She must have sweated and froze every summer and winter.
"What's that?" I asked as she moved inward, going over toward a moving box in the corner.
"I have no idea. It's not mine," she said, going over to it, ripping the clear packing tape off the seam, pulling the flaps open.
"What is it?" I asked as she sifted through what almost seemed to be paperwork.
"He left me the house," she said, voice far away, disbelieving.
"He left you this whole property?"
"I... ah... yeah."
"Where did he go?"
"He didn't say. He just has all the paperwork here. And a note to 'sign this shit.'"
"You alright?" I asked when she just continued to kneel there.
"I... I guess I always thought I would see him again."
"Maybe you will, Ace. You have the powers of Hailstorm behind you now. And I am convinced that there isn't a fucking thing in this world that Chris can't figure out if she sets her mind to it."
The Rise of Ferryn Page 22
