V-Day

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  You and no one else. Thank god you’re there. Thank you.

  Beneath, he signed, simply,

  Cristián.

  She had stared at the simple email, her heart pounding, knowing something had shifted. Changed.

  Chloe spent the next twelve hours in front of her laptop, drinking energy drinks, ordering takeout, like the nerdiest game-playing teenager in the world, unable to break away from the intense tsunami of emails churning between them.

  They spoke of everything and anything. Details they had never shared before now held a significance which overwhelmed them. Duardo’s death. Their mother’s mourning. Cristián running the family, trying to stop the triplets, Téra, Pia and Trini, from tearing each other to pieces as they vented their grief. The war. The threat of the Insurrectos taking over his town.

  Chloe shared her life, too. All of it. The warts, the scars and the shameful secrets she had told no one else.

  Their conversation was never again as intense as those first twelve hours. Instead, talking to Cristián became a part of her day, weaving through the fabric of it. Cristián was in her life more thoroughly than a live-in lover would have been.

  Neither of them would risk anything more than the text-based emails, though. Images, conversations, live chats would all use third-party channels she couldn’t control and leave even bigger electronic footprints. She was working on developing her app so the masking was complete and impenetrable. For now, though, they dared use nothing but email.

  For now, it was enough.

  She whispered good night to him as she rolled over to sleep, tapping out the message with her finger, before tucking the phone beneath her pillow. His email asking about her night waited for her in the morning.

  And always, they checked in at eight p.m., when she could relax for a day longer because Cristián was safe.

  For now.

  The sum total of what she knew about the man who she had first known as Shadow and now knew as Cristián passed through her mind as she kissed him. He felt right. He matched the strong persona who had dominated the Group for years, the man who had saved her life in more than just one way.

  She had never doubted she would do this, sooner or later. She just couldn’t wait any longer. She had to touch him or go mad.

  After weeks of imagining what it might feel like to press her lips to his, Chloe had reached the moment and it was good. Cristián’s hands settled on her shoulders, holding her steady. That made it even better.

  It was as if she had kissed him a thousand times before, yet it had the same, breathless and terrifying delight of any first kiss, too.

  Chloe moaned against his lips.

  Cristián almost shoved her from him. He held his grip on her shoulder, though, or she would have tripped and fallen backward onto the open campfire behind her. He kept her on her feet, his chest rising and falling fast.

  Chloe reached for him again, unwilling to let go of such pleasure. He shook his head, his dark gray eyes steady upon her face.

  Chloe studied him, trying to understand. She rested her hand on his chest, feeling heat and the shift of muscles beneath the tee shirt. “What is stopping you?” she breathed.

  “This, for a start,” he replied, his voice low and harsh with control. He turned his head, to take in the camp.

  “Liar,” she whispered.

  “She’s coming back,” Christian warned her, his gaze moving over her shoulder, to something behind her.

  Chloe dropped her hand from his chest.

  He let her go.

  “You always shred anyone else for retreating behind prevarications,” Chloe said. “I didn’t think you, of any of us, would deny the truth.”

  His eyes widened in surprised.

  “I know you,” Chloe reminded him.

  Parris Graves stepped up beside them. “That made them pause,” she said, speaking to Cristián. She glanced around once more, to assess anyone within hearing distance. No one was nearby. Most of the camp was concentrated around the two big cooking pots where breakfast was being ladled into bowls.

  “Military intelligence has been providing them with updates about Vistaria for weeks,” Parris said, dropping her voice. “They understand as well as you the Palace is an administrative center, only…” She grimaced. “It’s a political thing.”

  “They need a symbolic victory. A gesture,” Cristián said. “For the hospital.”

  Parris smiled. “Yes, exactly. I talked them out of it. I may have mentioned the former President’s wife was in the building and it wouldn’t look good if they took her out.” Her smile was impish. “They decided the military base would look just as good wreathed in flames as the Palace.”

  Cristián shook his head. “That won’t work, either.”

  7.

  AS DANIEL REACHED OUT TO take Rosa Bergen’s hand and shake it, Olivia felt another small wave of disorientation.

  Back at the hotel, she had watched Daniel do nothing more elaborate than remove a new suit from the suit bag which had been delivered to the hotel room late the day before. As he put on the suit, he seemed to change right in front of her eyes.

  The blue-eyed man in the tailored suiting was an echo of the British businessman Olivia had first thought Daniel to be. A shudder ran through her at the reminder.

  Daniel tied his tie the way Olivia had seen her father do it every morning as she was growing up, instead of the smaller and tighter knot Daniel had used while the diplomatic junket had been touring Vistaria.

  Even his walk was different, with an easy swing from the hips, instead of the stiffly upright carriage of a typical Englishman.

  The Secret Service had been waiting for them in the lobby and Daniel nodded at them in the same short way they had of acknowledging people. Despite the lack of an ear piece, he might have been one of them.

  When he spoke, it was with an even broader American accent than he had used with the President during the dawn meeting. Everything about Daniel was him—he wore no prosthetics or wigs or any disguising elements. Only, he was a stranger to Olivia. He was American down to his shiny leather shoes. She would overlook him in a crowd.

  Olivia supposed it was the point. It was unnerving, all the same. She was seeing yet another side of the convoluted work of his profession, the work he was good at.

  They were escorted through the security barrier into the West Wing without complications and hurried through the busy offices, past the Roosevelt room and into a smaller meeting room.

  Olivia had read Rosa Bergen’s profile and knew the woman waiting in the room was her. Bergen wore a pants suit as bland as any of the on duty Secret Service agents. Her arm was in a sling. She shook Daniel’s hand awkwardly with her left, as the President glanced at his watch.

  “We have a general meeting of senior staff in ten minutes,” President Collins said. “We’ll be bringing everyone up to speed. You should be in the room for that.”

  “Will strange faces raise questions?” Daniel asked.

  Collins smiled. “Clearly, you’ve never been in a general senior staff meeting in the White House. I’ll give you five minutes. Bergen, he doesn’t go anywhere without you attached to his hip, understood?”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Rosa Bergen replied. She sized Daniel up. “They won’t even see you,” she told him. “We’ll be part of the wallpaper.”

  Daniel nodded. “Good.”

  The President glanced at his watch once more. “I hope you’re right about your ability to spot asshats, Daniel. I’m risking too much for this to backfire.”

  He hurried away before Daniel could answer.

  *

  PARRIS ROLLED HER EYES. “REMIND me, who is wearing the uniform, here?”

  Chloe could hear the irritation in her voice. Cristián was pushing her too hard. He knew better than that. She rested her fingertips against his wrist in warning.

  Parris saw it, too.

  Cristián shook his head. “Does your military intelligence tell you how big the base is?
No drone has a payload big enough to bomb it all. There are hectares of buildings and fields and runways and that’s just in the main valley.”

  “Our people are pretty good,” Parris said, her tone mild. “We’ll take out the most likely places.”

  “They won’t put the control center in the most likely place,” Cristián retorted. “The Insurrectos are stupid, but they have a survival instinct the size of a rhinoceros. They’ll anticipate you will try to take out the control center for the drone. They won’t put it where you think they might.”

  “That’s why we’re going down there,” Parris told him. “We’ll scout and see if we can spot it, first.”

  “Then I have to come with you,” Cristián said firmly.

  “Oh no, you don’t.” Parris shook her head. “The last civilian I took with me got shot despite everything I could do to prevent it. You Vistarians are too damn honorable for your own safety.”

  Cristián scowled.

  “We will float down this mountain like otters in a stream, then sit on the edge of their active radar field and watch. They won’t have a clue we’re there,” Parris added. “You would just trip me up. No offense.”

  Cristián rubbed his chin. Chloe heard the whiskers rasp under his long fingers. “Then you know how to ease through Pascuallita, where all the perimeter guards are around the town? Their rotations? The scheduled staff changes?”

  Parris wet her lips. She looked amused and more than a little pissed and was controlling both.

  “Once you get past the town, if you move right up to the edge of the active radar range around the base, you’ll be spotted instantly,” Cristián said.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “Electronic spot surveillance,” he said. He smiled His smile lacked amusement, too. “I’ve been studying them for weeks, Captain Graves. I know their movements and their habits. I know where the holes are.”

  Parris scowled. “Fine, you can tell me.”

  He shook his head. “I can find the control room location for you.”

  “How? By studying them?” Parris replied, her irritation flaring.

  “Yes, from watching them,” Chloe blurted, before she realized she would speak. “He can do it. I’ve seen him. Cristián sees patterns—” She felt a soft touch on her wrist and hauled back the rest of her sentence.

  Parris’ frown was deep. Her gaze moved from Chloe to Cristián and back. “Okay, fine,” she snapped.

  “You’ll need me, too,” Chloe said.

  “No. Absolutely not!” Parris said, her voice rising.

  Heads turned.

  Cristián shook his head. “You must take her,” he told Parris. “Chloe can make you invisible.”

  *

  CHLOE RETRIEVED HER BACKPACK FROM the Vistarian who had taken it from her. She made her way back to the tarp covering Cristián’s sleeping spot and ducked beneath it. He sat cross-legged, stuffing a battered backpack with a change of clothes and weather gear. A tall woman with gray-streaked hair pulled back into a loose braid was tying food into hanks of cloth. She wore a washed-out military fatigue shirt that was thin with age.

  The woman looked up as Chloe entered. She smiled with the neutral expression of a stranger.

  Cristián cleared his throat. “Mamá, this is Chloe Masters, a friend of mine from New York. Chloe, my mother, Isabela Santos y Narvaez.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mrs…” Chloe paused. For the first time, she was at a loss. In all their conversations, Cristián had never talked about Vistarian naming practices. His last name was Peña, which had not been among the names he had given his mother, so she couldn’t call her Mrs. Peña, and she couldn’t use “Mrs.” either…

  “You had better call me Isabela,” the older woman said, tugging a knot tighter around the dried fruit she had just put inside the rag. She tossed the bundle to Cristián. “You are going on this mad venture, too?”

  “Mad?” Chloe iterated, wondering what she meant.

  “Cristián is not a soldier,” his mother replied, getting to her feet. She was tall and lean and tanned. She looked sturdy, as if she would outlast a thousand storms. She probably had already. The Peña family had not had a peaceful history. “Yet he insists on behaving like one.”

  “They need me, Mamá,” Cristián said, his tone mild. He pushed a laptop into his backpack.

  The laptop reminded Chloe of hers, sitting in the padded pocket of her backpack. “I’ll need to recharge my laptop before we get to the base,” she told him. “My phone, too.”

  Cristián zipped the backpack closed, unfolded his legs and got to his feet. “I’ve got it covered. That’s why we will swing through Pascuallita. Pia left all her gadgets behind at the house. One of them is a solar recharger which clings to your backpack and recharges devices as you go. There are a couple other things we might need which I want to pick up, too.”

  “It is insane, heading back there,” Isabela added, her hands about each elbow. Worry leached from her.

  Cristián kissed her forehead. “We’ll be fine. We’re with US Army Rangers.”

  “The Insurrectos don’t shoot civilians on sight,” Isabela replied, her voice tight. “They’ll shoot the Army Rangers you’re standing beside, though!”

  “Does Captain Graves know why you’re taking us back through Pascuallita instead of straight down this mountain and around to the south side of the base?” Chloe asked Cristián.

  He smiled. It was a cold expression, the wise expression of a much older man. “Are you planning on telling her?”

  Chloe considered. She was conscious of Cristián’s mother watching her with close scrutiny. “It may slip my mind,” Chloe admitted.

  “As if anything does,” Cristian said to himself.

  Isabela threw her hands up in the air in a grandiose Hispanic gesture. “You are as bad as each other!” She lifted her finger toward Cristián. “If you get yourself killed, I will never speak to you again!” She stalked back out from under the tarpaulin.

  “I love you, too, Mamá!” Cristián replied, smiling.

  She waved away his sentiment, not looking back.

  Cristián sighed.

  “She’s still adjusting to the fact that Duardo is alive,” Chloe reminded him. “She’ll relax her grip on you, eventually.”

  His scowl didn’t disappear. It grew deeper.

  Chloe put down her backpack and moved closer. Not close enough to startle him or make him edge away—although to even worry about startling him gave her a measure of the degree of disconnect between the Cristián she knew, and the man who stood before her.

  She looked up at him. “We’re alone and there’s seven minutes before we have to meet Parris at the canyon entrance. Do you want to tell me now what you wouldn’t say before?”

  Cristián crossed his arms. Chloe wondered if he was aware that he had done exactly what his mother did, a few moments ago. “You will hound me into this, won’t you?” His voice was strained.

  “I shouldn’t have to!” she shot back. “You’re usually so ruthlessly honest, Cristián. How can you be honest with the Group, then stand here and be so…so…obtuse!”

  “Because I don’t know!” he ground out.

  Chloe rolled her eyes. “You’re a master of self-knowledge. Of course you know. I need to figure out if I made a mistake, coming here. I have to correct my course if I did. You must tell me, Cristián.”

  He threw out his hands—it wasn’t quite the same grand gesture as his mother, yet it was getting there. “You want to know what is stopping me?”

  “Yes!”

  “You’re stopping me!” he cried.

  Chloe stared at him. “What?” Yet her heart was fluttering with unease…and hope.

  He lowered his voice. “You, Babylon,” he said roughly. “You’re…perfect!”

  “I don’t understand,” Chloe admitted. She wondered how long it was since she had said that, especially to Cristián. They had always understood each other, barely having to explain anything. />
  “It was different before,” he muttered. “When you weren’t here. When we were talking online.”

  “Because there was a screen between us,” Chloe said.

  “Two screens,” he amended.

  “Whatever. Six screens, one screen. That made it nice and safe, didn’t it?” She could feel her mouth curling up in disgust.

  “No, that’s not it!”

  “Then explain it to me!”

  Cristián made a growling sound in the back of his throat. “What have I ever done to deserve you? Nothing! I’m not a general, for fuck’s sake!”

  Chloe’s heart ran hard. It had nothing to do with his proximity. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from him. “Oh my dear sweet lord…” she whispered. “This is about Duardo, isn’t it?”

  Cristián’s mouth parted. Then he shut it and scowled. “Not even for a heartbeat.”

  “You don’t think you’re good enough for me because you’re not your big fucking brother!”

  “No!” he cried.

  “Yes,” she breathed, watching the pulse jump in his throat and temple. “Jesus, Cristián. When have you ever been modest? You’re letting your brother dominate your life. Still.”

  Cristián’s face hardened. “You’re wrong.”

  Chloe swallowed. “For a genius, Cristián, you’re fucking stupid.” She whirled and walked away, her heart running way too hard, her gut swirling and her head beating with a thundering echo of her heart.

  Cristián didn’t call her back. That made it worse.

  Perhaps it had been a mistake to come here. Only, she had been so sure about him…

  She had put so much on the line just to get here, to see him. When she had arrived at the big house at Acapulco, she had known the people there would treat her with suspicion. She had given them Harry’s Cloak, which she had spent three days putting on the final touches, to offset their natural suspicion.

  What had isolated her was the sense of camaraderie which infused the big house. Everyone understood why they were there and that they were wanted. They were intense, passionate, working together and helping each other face every crisis in a way which gave Chloe a glimpse of what Cristián meant when he spoke about a close family.