Heart in Wire

by R. L. Griffin

  “Ohhh. Yeah, I didn’t think about that,” Billy confirmed. “Is she still living with us?”

  “Yes. She doesn’t know. When I leave, I think it’d be great if you guys would kind of make sure she’s okay.” Jamie smiled, not answering Patrick’s question. “You know, show her around and stuff.”

  “Wait, what?” Billy was sitting up now, paying attention. “You’re leaving and your fiancé is going to be living with us? No way, dude. No fucking way. We only agreed to her living with us because you would be there to deal with her. We only allow select girls in our house and that usually includes one of us getting laid.” Patrick laughed and shook his head. Although Billy’s statement was true, he wasn’t sure he minded a girl moving in. His problem was that they didn’t know her at all.

  “I know this isn’t what we talked about, but I can’t help it,” Jamie said, nervously playing with his phone. “I didn’t know they’d put me under so early.”

  Examining his hands, Patrick noticed he still had dirt under his fingernails from washing his car earlier. “So, why are you going under so early? It’s not protocol.” He raised his eyes to meet Jamie’s.

  “I don’t know. Burns said it’s necessary for the mission. I haven’t even been through the entire training process. He told me for undercover work it’s more on-the-job learning anyway.”

  “So how long are you under?” Billy asked.

  “Six months,” Jamie confirmed in a confident tone that was lacking before.

  “SIX MONTHS? No way.” Billy’s eyes wide with panic. “Patrick, tell him. NO.”

  Chapter Two

  A HORRIFIC, WONDERFUL IDEA

  By the time Patrick got back from his run, he’d gone through all the scenarios in his mind and was resigned to the fact that El was working this angle without him. When she found out that he’d known Jamie was alive and hadn’t told her, he could feel her pulling away from him, slapping him with her words and stabbing him with her eyes. Because he’d lived with her for so long, he knew her as well as he knew himself. It was the ultimate betrayal for her and she was done. He’d begged her to let him explain, but he didn’t know how to begin to explain why he’d kept the secret from her. She’d walked out of their house with George in tow and it crushed him. Then she left, hating him, and wouldn’t return his calls. Then that fucker blew up her field office with her in it, but that wasn’t enough, so he shot her. When Patrick heard about what happened, he felt like he couldn’t breathe.

  Now Jamie had kidnapped her from Atlanta. It was unreal. He couldn’t believe the Jamie he knew would do that, but he rationalized that the Jamie he knew probably didn’t exist anymore. Last night, Millie showed Patrick a video of El, her face bruised and battered, in Key West with George. It’d gone viral through YouTube and Twitter. Even with what happened, she looked happy in the video. Millie was freaking out because of all the rumors and innuendos about George and El online and on Twitter and whatever. All Patrick cared about was that all this was going on and he hadn’t known anything. She’d kept it from him. He’d warned George a few weeks ago about what he thought was going on in Atlanta. Of course, he’d had his own selfish reasons for doing so, but still… Sitting on George’s back porch, Patrick had told him that El had requested he locate Jamie, and once he had, in Atlanta, El had taken off. His motives weren’t pure when he’d let George know that Patrick was helping El find Jamie and she was keeping things from him, again. Instead of fighting with El about it George had taken the information and done nothing. A week or so later, Jamie kidnapped her.

  Fucking George. Stupid. Just fucking stupid.

  In the video, George and El were drunk, looking happy and oblivious, dancing in a topless bar as if they hadn’t a care in the world. He hadn’t seen El that drunk since the first year she’d lived with them. Patrick still had mixed feelings when it came to George. He hated him because he had El every night, the way Patrick wanted her, but he liked him because he made El happy and that was important to him. He wanted them to run their course so that he could step in and save her, comfort her, and love her the way she needed to be loved. George didn’t know her the way Patrick did and it was just a matter of time before that would end their relationship and she would be his again. He knew they wouldn’t last, but he tried not to think about El in that way, like they could possibly be together. It was too hard.

  He shook those thoughts from his head. He couldn’t think that way. Patrick tried to limit his thoughts to protecting his friend and right now she wasn’t allowing him to do that. She was keeping herself away from him. She’d put up walls and not let him in, but she’d be back. He knew it. For now, Patrick would just have to wait, to bide his time until she saw that George wasn’t as perfect for her as she thought. He needed to focus on the task at hand.

  Jamie.

  The Jamie that kidnapped El couldn’t be anything like his friend who’d left on a flight to get his truck and drive back to Virginia. Patrick knew that Jamie loved El, but he wanted adventure and to experience an undercover operation. He wanted his cake and to eat it too.

  Everyone knows how well that turns out.

  “Kevin, are you fucking shitting me?” Patrick sat at the conference table, stunned and shocked at what his supervisor just told him.

  “’Fraid not. Now you know that Burns doesn’t do things by the book and we’re scrambling around now that this plan is already in motion. It’s a big mission, but it certainly didn’t have to start like this.”

  “Jamie told me he was going under for six months.”

  His supervisor, Kevin Spring, laughed. “He was mistaken. This will be more like a six year operation.” He clapped his hands once to signal the meeting was over.

  “Kevin. I have to live with this girl. Is there any way around this?” He was calm, but really didn’t want to move in with Jamie’s fiancé and this situation just made it worse. She’d be grieving and he’d have to face her every day. He hoped she would just go home.

  “Nope. Story is the following: Jamie got hit by the tractor trailer, neither survived. Cleanest way.”

  “Does his family know?”

  “Not that I know of... Burns likes a blank slate, making it so there’s really nothing for his agents to go home to. Aren’t you glad you were smarter than that?”

  Patrick nodded, playing with his phone.

  “Okay. So you understand your directive?”

  “I got it,” Patrick responded in a low voice. This was complete bullshit.

  Kevin, clad in his black ATF shirt and black cargo pants, backed away from the table and out the door, leaving Patrick fuming. Patrick was seething; Jamie was so fucking stupid and he was going to have to clean up the mess himself.

  He continued to play with his phone. Fuck! Picking it up, he called Billy. “Meet me at The Irish Times in 30 minutes.”

  “What? Why?” Billy asked from his office on the other side of DC, just inside Virginia.

  “Just do it,” Patrick said and disconnected.

  He stalked out to his desk, which was just a cubicle in the middle of an open room. He was in the training facility most of the day anyway, so it wasn’t like he ever needed a lot of space. He shut down his computer and closed his eyes, unable to figure out how he ended up with this pile of shit to deal with. He took a deep breath and then left. He walked to the Metro and took the red line to Judiciary Square. It was three o’clock when he reached The Irish Times and saw Billy already sitting at the bar. He waved him over to a table in the back. Billy walked back to the booth with two whiskeys and sat down.

  “What’s up, Deep Throat?” Billy set down a whiskey in front of Patrick.

  “Oh, you’re fucking funny. You won’t be smiling like that after we have this chat.”

  Patrick took a gulp of the whiskey in front of him and stared into the brown liquor.

  “So spill it, what’s with all the cloak and dagger bullshit?”

  “I got orders today.”

  Billy took a sip of beer. �
�So?”

  “They’re to tell our new roommate, who moved in last night, that her fiancé died.”

  Billy blinked.

  Silence.

  Patrick took another sip of his whiskey, staring at Billy over the rim of the glass.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Yeah, join the fucking club,” Patrick said.

  “I mean, why say he’s dead?” Billy took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes with the palm of his hand. “Isn’t his assignment just for six months?”

  “That’s what Jamie said, but Kevin confirmed that it was a long term assignment. Honestly, dude, he’s not ready for that shit.” Patrick took a sip. “I think Burns tricked him into doing this undercover mission and now he’ll be stuck.”

  “So now we have to live with some chick for a year, or until she moves home after she finds out that her fiancé, the only reason she moved up here, is dead?” Billy shook his head. “This is bullshit.”

  “I know. I’m supposed to drive her down to the service in Savannah.”

  “What?!” Billy was incredulous. “Fuck.”

  “Yep, they’re having a funeral for him and everything.”

  Billy drained his glass and motioned at the bartender to get him another. “This is why people don’t trust the government. Shit like this.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Holy shit. I’m staying at Samantha’s again tonight. I don’t want to deal with that shit. You guys leaving to drive down tomorrow?”

  Patrick nodded. “I think so. I’m going to call my mom and let her know I’m headed that way, but I think we’ll stay at my friend’s house on Tybee Island. I mean, who knows how she’s going to react to this. I don’t want to deal with family shit on top of this chick.”

  “Damn, dude. Are you getting hazard pay for this shit?”

  “Not a fucking dime, dude.”

  “Bullshit,” Billy muttered as he took a sip of his fresh whiskey.

  Billy was playing Madden when Patrick came in from his run. At some point during the run, he’d taken his fleece off and tucked it in the back of his sweatpants. Patrick walked to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water before he sat down in the den and took his shoes off. He texted George.

  You guys have fun in Key West?

  George responded within a few seconds.

  What

  Patrick replied immediately.

  You and El are all over the TV and internet dude

  He added another quick text.

  Nice dance moves

  As soon as Patrick leaned back to watch Billy play Madden, his phone rang. It was George.

  “What’s going on?” George asked.

  “Dude, y’all are so busted.” Patrick forced a laugh.

  “What do you mean?”

  “El and you on video, partially clothed, dancing, and El looks like you beat the shit out of her. Millie is freaking out because of all the twitters out there.”

  “The tweets?”

  “So...” Patrick prodded; he wanted to get the story from George. Frank, Stella’s father, had already called him, livid, with what Jesse had told him last night.

  George sighed through the phone. “It’s a long story.”

  “One that includes El getting drunk and dragged out of a bar in Atlanta and then being seen with a broken nose and black eyes, drunk with you in Key West?” Patrick asked, not letting on that he knew everything.

  “I’m sure she was planning on telling you about this, but Jamie kidnapped her from the bar in Atlanta and took her to a house in the middle of the water in the fucking Keys. Her attorney, Greg, Jesse, and I came here to find her.”

  Patrick couldn’t believe George told him that quickly.

  “Um, so she had a locator on and we found her, but only after she was able to get away and steal his boat. We stayed in Key West to recuperate and relax a little.”

  “Fuck. El…” Although Patrick knew this part, it was hard to allow the worry into his voice. “She’s okay, though… He dead?” This part he didn’t know.

  “No.”

  “Why the fuck not?”

  “We’ll fill you in when we get home. We’re leaving here today and will go through Atlanta first. We’ve got to smooth some things over with her parents and pick up Cooper. Then we’re headed back to Virginia.”

  “Y’all need anything?” Patrick asked genuinely. He wanted to get back into El’s good graces, he just hadn’t figured out how yet. His foot was in the door, so he might as well just bust through it.

  “Not right now, but I’m assuming the media is going to be all over us again?”

  Patrick could hear the tension in George’s voice and he felt a little bad. They’d finally started to get a reprieve from the media circus that started after the Montana bombing/shooting shit. “Oh yeah, I mean, it’s insane. #georgebeatsstellasass. If I didn’t know y’all had been drunk for the past 15 hours, I’d wonder how you missed it.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” George answered.

  “She okay?” Patrick asked again.

  “Surprisingly, yes. I mean, she’s still fucked up, but I don’t think she’s any more fucked up than she was.”

  This was news, too. Jesse had told Frank that El had passed out before she told them anything other than she had been drugged and that Jamie had taken her to a house in the middle of the ocean, but she’d escaped. He wondered how she escaped without killing Jamie.

  Patrick chuckled. “The video is hilarious, man.”

  “Great,” George muttered.

  “I’ll send it to you so you can see it.” Patrick laughed again. “I mean, you need help.”

  “Fuck you, Patrick.” George laughed and hung up.

  Patrick looked at Billy and nodded. “She’s okay.”

  “How does she get in all this fucked up shit? I mean bombings, shootings, and fake deaths? It’s like we’re on Dallas or something. Are we going to wake up and all of this has been a dream?”

  “I wish, dude.” Patrick grabbed Billy’s water off the table and drank the entire bottle. He let out a loud burp in Billy’s direction.

  “That was an asshole move, man,” Billy commented, waving his hands at Patrick’s torso.

  “You know, you just keep asking for shit to show up on YouTube or Twitter with all that.”

  “With all what?” Patrick asked, amused.

  “Taking your shirt off and running with your muscles.” He motioned again at Patrick’s torso, clad in skintight black Under Armor.

  “You’re jealous.” Patrick flexed his abdominals and then just laughed at Billy, who was referencing a YouTube video that’d gone viral after El was in the hospital. Someone had videotaped him cutting the grass without a shirt on and it’d garnered over two million hits. It was hysterical, but irritating. Both his and Billy’s lives had changed multiple times since the enigma that was El had entered into their lives. Even their first meeting didn’t go exactly like Patrick had expected.

  Fuck. This is going to be great; he’s on his way to tell his new roommate that her fiancé died. This isn’t what he’d signed up for when he’d started training young ATF agents. Fucking Jamie had agreed to go undercover without even talking to him about it. Having her as Patrick’s roommate complicated things, now he’d have to live this lie every day.

  Opening the door to the house, he was met with a wet nose on his crotch. A lab-golden mix dog that was at least three feet tall was circling Patrick’s feet, the dog’s tail going a mile a minute. He smiled to himself and patted the dog on his head. As he went further into the house he was met with the smell of something fantastic. He sniffed the air—it was oregano and thyme; it reminded him of his mother’s homemade spaghetti.

  Rounding the corner of the kitchen, he almost collided with a fresh-faced girl, her wet hair, braided down her back, making her shirt stick to her body. She smelled tropical. Her smile lit up the room and reached her eyes. Her green eyes glimmered with something…

  “Hi!” She beamed and stuck out her hand. �
��You must be Patrick.”

  Patrick blinked. He’d seen pictures of her, but she was...stunning. “Stella?”

  When she saw his expression, the smile melted off her face. “Are you okay?” she asked sincerely, her hand warm in his palm. He didn’t remember even putting his hand out.

  “Um, I don’t know how to tell you this…” he began. He looked away from her innocent face.

  “Tell me what?” she asked.

  “There was an accident,” he started, and looked back into her eyes, which were now clouding over.

  She blinked. She was blinding him. He couldn’t concentrate.

  “Okay...” she coaxed.

  “Jamie.” Jamie’s name felt foreign on his tongue; this wasn’t going the way he’d frantically planned on his way home from the bar.

  Her face disintegrated before him. He didn’t have to say anything else. She knew. She crumpled at his feet. Shocked for a moment, he just stood there, staring at the wet spot on her blue shirt under her braid. Getting his wits about him, he pulled her up and braced her body against his before he was able to carry her down to her room. She sobbed into his chest and he kept talking to her; he didn’t know what else to do.

  “He was in an accident. A tractor trailer hit him. He didn’t survive.” These were the exact words he was supposed to say to her. He was supposed to tell her that her fiancé died. He wasn’t supposed to say anything else.

  The front of his black ATF shirt was soaked in her tears. His heart ached for this girl he didn’t know. She didn’t deserve this. Hell, no one deserved this.

  “You’re going to be okay,” he said as he laid her down on the bed. “I’ll arrange everything and we’ll head down to the service tomorrow. Try to get some sleep.” He turned to go back upstairs, he really needed a drink, but he felt a wet, warm hand on his wrist.

  “Please stay with me.”

  He sat and patted her head and shoulder and told her it’d be okay until she passed out from exhaustion. He walked upstairs and her dog followed him. He poured himself a whiskey. “Please stay with me,” she’d begged him. Fuck. The dinner that smelled like heaven was currently burning in the oven. He turned off the oven and pulled out a salvageable casserole of some sort. He sighed and left it on the counter, his appetite gone.