by Meli Raine
“No kidding. Kelly’s whining for you to come back. You need to keep whatever fight you two are having under wraps. You’re here for her. Not to do... this.” Linda waves her hands in our general direction, as if we’re having a lover’s spat.
If only she knew.
“Sorry,” Silas says, clearly trying to get her to drop it.
“El Brujo is dead,” she says, confused. “He was that big drug kingpin. So why are you talking about him?”
“It’s confidential, Mom.”
“You always say that when you’re being protective.”
“Because it’s true.”
“Don’t let him get away with that, Jane.”
“Now you’re telling my client to willfully defy me when I’m using protective measures to keep her alive?”
“No. I’m telling your girlfriend that you have a stubborn streak a mile wide, Silas, that she needs to know about.”
I raise my hand. “Kinda figured that part out already, Linda.” And I’m not his client or his girlfriend anymore, I want to add.
But she used the word girlfriend.
Hmm.
“You two are double teaming me,” Silas grunts.
“Welcome to adulthood, kiddo,” Linda says to him, patting my hand. “I never met Rebecca, so I never got to bond with her over his finer attributes.”
Silas’s shoulders tighten at the mention of Rebecca. Judging from the way Linda’s tone is still joking, she has no idea what Rebecca really did.
Or how she actually died.
Linda’s smile falters, as if she realizes it might be a social faux pas to bring up Silas’s ex. She has no idea.
Really. She literally has no idea.
My sympathy for Silas goes up a notch, making my squishy feelings even squishier. I want time with him. To be alone with him. Not sex. Time. Intimacy. Connection.
Touch.
I need to touch him. To be touched. To breathe in his air and for him to breathe in mine. We’ve been apart for too long, apart even when we were together, because lingering tendrils from the past were choking us both. We didn’t know it.
We just thought that was life.
And yet.
And yet, I’m at war with myself. One part is so hurt, so flamingly angry that he would do what he did to me this morning. I feel like I need to wall myself off. That if I let him back in, I’m weak. What if there are more tests? What if I’m still not good enough?
What if?
Another part inside me, a more mature, adult piece of my soul, just keeps thinking about how hard this all must be for Silas. How that test came from a place of pain. Of damage. Of trusting and loving someone enough to want to marry her – only to watch her assassinate people in cold blood before being forced to kill.
To kill his love.
“I didn’t mean to bring up the awkward past,” Linda says, interrupting my thoughts. Silence has dominated for a few seconds. I understand why she thinks this is awkward.
Because it is.
She’s wrong about why, but that’s better than the alternative. If Silas hasn’t told her the truth, it’s for a reason. His reason. And whatever that is, I respect it.
“It’s all awkward,” Silas says. “But let’s get back to Kelly.” He adjusts his tiara. “Princess Tea needs to be over by eight-thirty.” His eyes meet mine. “We have a nine o’clock appointment with Mark.”
“We do?”
“You don’t have to come.”
“Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.” I take back my phone. “But first, I need to schedule a meeting of my own.”
“Not with Jenna.”
I type back, Where?
“Damn it,” he hisses as he holds up one finger to his mom and looks at me. “You’re crazy.”
“I’m determined.”
He lets out a huff of simmering disbelief. “I’ll assemble a team. When? Where?” and then his phone gets a text.
Silas looks at it. “Huh. Mark wants to change the meeting to tomorrow night.” A deep frown follows.
My phone buzzes. The text says, My parents’ house. Two tomorrow.
I show him the text.
He sighs.
And starts in on his own phone, double thumbing his way across a few feet of that chasm between us.
“We have a princess waiting for us,” I remind him.
His thumbs continue. “Almost done.”
“Do you ever not work?” I ask.
“No.”
“No time off?”
“You’ve seen how much time off I get. I live my job.”
“Is this your plan forever?”
That makes his thumbs pause. The half grin I get in response makes me feel like I’m being swallowed whole. “You’re asking me about the future?”
“About your future,” I emphasize.
“Good enough,” he says, finishing on the phone. Our eyes meet and oh. Oh, I forgot what it’s like to look at him without feeling blocked. Stuck. Angry.
I forgot until now.
“You didn’t answer the question,” I point out.
“No. I don’t plan to live the job forever. When my life gives me a reason not to, I’ll stop.”
“Kelly isn’t a reason?”
“So far, Mom insists that she’ll care for Kelly. I don’t need to quit. I would if I had to.”
“Why do you live the job, Silas? What demons are you chasing? Or avoiding?”
“I told you all my demons, Jane.”
“And you’ve known mine all along.”
We’re at an impasse.
And then:
“Uncle Silas! Aunt Jane! Where are you?”
Aunt Jane.
My heart just melted.
And when Silas looks at me with a wide, knowing grin, the rest of me melts, too.
Chapter 9
Silas
“This makes no sense,” I say to Drew, seething. It’s the morning after Kelly and her crazy Princess Tea, and I’ve been up since five a.m. Heat rolls off me like we’re back in Afghanistan, in the blinding summer heat, the ripples and undulation of air rising up to escape coming off my skin instead of hot sand and dirt.
The pieces click inside my mind, banging against each other as I frantically try to make the full picture emerge. All I have, instead, is the not-so-gentle clash of edge against edge, cutting hard until it’s all a bloodbath inside me.
“I know it makes no sense, but Jesus, Gentian. This is what we have. This is hard truth.” It’s not quite seven a.m. now, and Drew and I just finished the first half of our run, a ten-mile stretcher neither one of us wants to do, but at the five-mile mark we’re far enough away from surveillance to be able to talk freely.
Staying in shape is a must in this field. Being able to talk freely is a luxury you have to pay for.
With sheer endurance.
“The senator told Jane there is no such thing. No truth. Just truths.” I let the S slither in my mouth. It tastes evil. Not bitter. Surprisingly savory. I see why it’s appealing. A man could get used to it.
I am not that man.
“One of those truths is this: his own wife is involved in the conspiracy that led to Lindsay’s rape and torture.” Drew’s voice is death. I know that voice. It’s cried out to me in battle. It’s commanded me through IEDs. It’s been a beacon through odds so stacked against us, we should be dead seven times over.
It’s the voice of survival.
It’s also the voice of other. When I hear that voice, I know someone’s about to die. Intentionally. Strategically.
Inevitably.
Because the alternative is to be killed. Drew Foster doesn’t just let that happen.
I don’t either.
Especially not now.
“Paulson told you this?”
“It’s part of what he wants to talk about tonight. Not all of it. We couldn’t get secure enough.” Drew’s barely sweating.
“If she’s that close to the center of it all, then what the he
ll do we do?” The middle of the grassy field is the safest place to talk, the narrow, worn dirt path down the center the only sign other people ever come here. This is for long-distance runners. Not hikers, not casual picnickers.
We’re completely disconnected. No cell phones. No wires. No walkie-talkies. Nothing. Our biggest threat is twofold: a nearby drone surveilling us, and our lack of information.
The few minutes we’re stealing out here to plan and talk openly could be the same stretch of time where the world ends.
Life is risk.
And we’re working hard to mitigate that risk. But we can’t eliminate it.
The rolling green is punctuated by flashes of color, bright wildflowers defying the odds to bloom and thrive.
“Jenna wants to meet with Jane. Mark’s got proof Monica was part of the attack on her own daughter. This is a cluster –” Something stings my thigh. I smack it, getting a slimy palm in return. Whatever the hell that bug was, it’s dead now.
“No shit. How do you get enough proof on Monica to shut her down? We can’t do this partway. There’s no alarm bell you sound. Our case has to be so airtight, it’s impossible for her to retaliate.”
“At the same time, we can’t let her continue unchecked. Look at what she’s done to Jane.”
“And Lindsay.”
“You’re sure, Drew? Has anyone talked to the senator about this?”
“I’m increasingly sure, but who the hell knows? I was more sure than not that Jane was lying. Instincts matter in this business, Silas. You of all people know that.”
“No shit.”
“But I’m not talking about just instincts now. Paulson’s got proof. Calls and meetings going back to the 1990s between Ignatio Landau and Monica.”
“Meetings?”
“Pictures of them together at a big art event.”
“Art?”
“Yeah. Alice Mogrett.”
“Whoa. Slow down. Break it down for me. What the hell does Alice have to do with El Brujo?”
“Back in ‘93, Alice Mogrett was at Yates, where she taught studio art. Had a big show. Landau was still a professor in Mexico at a big tech university. He was ambitious, though. Gunning for a spot in the chem department, and came to events. Alice had a big gallery showing. Monica was there.”
“Bosworth wasn’t even a senator then.”
“Not even a California congressman. Just an assistant DA. But he had ambitions.”
“You mean she had ambitions. Monica’s always driven the presidential train.”
“That’s becoming obvious.” We start to jog down the trail, a light pace making it easy to talk. “A simple picture isn’t enough. If you implicate people based on who they’ve rubbed elbows with, we’d all be tainted.”
“No, it’s not enough. Think about it, though.”
“Think about what?”
“1993.”
“What about – oh, shit.” The sweltering heat takes a backseat to the ice water that suddenly runs through my heart, pumping out a wave of frozen blood that make it hard to move. I force myself to keep his pace, knowing that the less we remain in one place, the better. “That was twenty-five years ago.”
“Right. Just about the same time my wife would have been conceived,” Drew says, his lips curling with distaste.
“You think Lindsay’s father is El Brujo?”
“No. Paulson got his hands on Landau’s DNA and ran tests. Not a match. But I think her biological father had something to do with that event.”
“Why?”
“Because Paulson has pictures of Nolan Corning there, too.”
“You really think Monica slept with Corning?”
“Dunno.”
“Can you get your hands on his DNA?”
“That’s the weird part.”
“There isn’t a weird part in any of this, Drew. It’s all weird. Every damn bit of it.”
“This is weirder than most. Corning in a U.S. senator. One of the most studied, thoroughly vetted, investigated categories of human beings on the planet. If there is any basic piece of Corning that should be available to access, it’s DNA. And there isn’t any. Not one bit of it. Can’t run a damn thing against records on him.”
“I assume you’ve tried everything.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about sticking to legalities on this, Silas, so yes. I’ve tried everything, legal or not. And nothing comes up.”
“That’s suspicious.”
“No kidding.”
“How can someone be that clean? There are too many databases and competing agencies to be able to keep your DNA out of it all. Especially at that level.”
“Only way to do it is to do it on purpose.”
“Huh. You’d have to have a lot of protection to accomplish that, too. He’s being protected by someone very high up.”
“How high?”
“No idea. I don’t know what this means, but I know whatever it means, it’s big.”
“And that is why all the ducks have to be in a row on Monica Bosworth.”
“Those ducks can’t be a single hair off. Not one millimeter out of line.”
“There’s no way she’s clean, is there?”
“Nope. The fact that she won’t tell Lindsay who her bio dad is means Monica’s hiding something big.”
“Nolan Corning? You think the guy who orchestrated the attacks on you, Lindsay, and Jane is Lindsay’s father?”
“I think I have no choice but to assume that’s a possibility and to do everything I can to get his DNA.”
“Define ‘everything.’”
“You know damn well what I mean.”
The rest of the run is a blow out. It has to be. When you carry secrets like we do, you can’t carry anything else in your body.
We all have limits.
Like it or not.
Jane
“You look calm,” I tell Silas as Duff drives us to Jenna’s waterfront house.
“I am calm.” He holds out his hands. No shaking.
“How do you do that?”
“Stay calm?”
I nod.
He shrugs. “I train myself to stop fighting with the parts of my mind that aren’t useful.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“It’s not.”
“But how do you do it? Meditation? Medication? Personality disorder?”
He laughs at the last one. “A little bit of everything.”
I know he’s being opaque on purpose. “I think I’m looking for a quick fix,” I confess.
“There isn’t one. Death is the only way to be permanently calm.”
“You have a way with words, Silas. Is this how you are on every assignment?”
“You’re more than just an assignment.”
“How would I know? What other assignments have you worked on?”
“You know I can’t talk about it.”
“I don’t mean details. I mean generalities. Did you work for an African president? Protect a Cabinet member? Act as head bodyguard for some famous actress? Were you caught up in a sex scandal with a dominatrix?” I half joke, the last comment making him tense up.
“Uh, no.”
He goes quiet again and buries himself in his phone.
Being with him, just sitting here talking, feels nice. Grounding and real. My mind is in my body at the same time. I’m not fleeing – mind or body. Being present feels safe.
Silas feels just right.
Too bad there’s still this gaping chasm between us.
Space has a feeling. It’s warm between us, as if my skin and his send out heated particles designed to bounce off each other. Emotion fills the air, too, but it’s not threatening. Not even awkward. The yearning inside me isn’t obvious. It’s muted, soft but there.
And unless I’m mistaken, he’s sending that same yearning out into the air, hoping it will land somewhere on me.
Somewhere good.
This is new. I’ve shared my body with him. And ri
ght now, that body he’s shared with me is out of bounds. How can I have been naked with him, our mouths wet and hungry for each other just a short time ago, but now we’re behind fences?
How can two people join in friction and heat, in the sublime passion of being wild together, then close off like icebergs, sheets of frozen land no explorer can ever traverse?
It’s cruel.
It may be reality, but it’s also a kind of cruelty that feels like an animal digging its fangs in me and never letting go.
I want to touch his hand.
I want to cross the space between us.
I want to look him in the eye and tell him – what do I want to tell him?
Tell him I understand about Rebecca.
Tell him I would have tested him under the same circumstances.
Tell him that we can talk our way through this and find our way back to each other.
But I can’t.
I can’t tell him anything until I can tell it to myself first.
And right now, I’m not listening.
The important parts of me are playing deaf and mute.
As we pull into a private, gated driveway that looks unkempt, I remember suddenly how Jenna’s family lives. The overgrown bushes and trees around the gate are not a result of neglect or finances.
They’re intentional.
The Marquezes do it as a form of camouflage.
Duff pushes some intercom and an armed guard comes forward, ushering us through an electronic gate. The long, dirt driveway becomes more sand than dirt by the end, the grass increasingly patchy as we turn to the left. A curved driveway hugs the house, which is built into a hill.
Jenna’s family comes very close to Mandy’s in terms of wealth.
Before I can even reach for my door handle, Silas’s hand is on mine. I halt. His touch sends shockwaves through me. I’m hyperaware of his breath, his eyes, his arm.
Him.
“We have security everywhere. Don’t go anywhere near that cliff.” He looks out his window. The house is built into the hill, but there’s a sharp dropoff down to the water. To the right is a long, winding staircase down to a dockhouse.
A four-bedroom, five-bath dockhouse with a DJ system and a thousand-square-foot entertainment room.
Jenna’s dad is a partier.
