V-Day

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  “I wasn’t that smart, it turns out,” Chloe said. “Not when it came to the things they considered important. Guns and formations, military history. It was a shock, having to actually buckle down and learn things. I rebelled in the worst way, only they’re set up for kids like me, so eventually, they won.”

  Cristián’s smile faded. “I remember what you told me. Isolation. Drills.”

  “They were hugely into sports. I picked the easiest I could find just to hit bare minimal levels.”

  “Track and field,” Cristián added, for this part she had been able to share.

  “Long distance running. And Marksmanship, because there’s not a lot of effort in holding still and shooting a pistol. I still got in trouble all the time. My bed not straight or the toothpaste out of line in the cupboard. I got KP every second day, I think.”

  Cristián shook his head. “No wonder you ran away.”

  “It took three years for me to figure out how, but yeah.” She gave him a huge smile. “It’s all done with, anyway,” she said, making her tone light. “I’m not that person anymore. She was arrogant and precocious, and she got what she deserved. I don’t even have her name, now.” Chloe settled more properly on the chair. “Tell me about you. Everything you never could say before.”

  Cristián lifted a single brow. “Like you haven’t already figured it all out.”

  “That’s just facts. I want you to tell me.”

  And he had. Like the first time they had spoken via text, still hiding behind the Group names and avoiding personal details, this time they also spoke long into the night. Now there was no detail they couldn’t give.

  It all came pouring out of them. Twelve years of knowing each other as Shadow and Babylon and they still had holes to fill. That night, they filled many of them.

  Chloe recalled that first marathon conversation as she walked beside Cristián, following Parris’ team and the three trailing women to where the slope down the mountain toward Pascuallita began. “I never did thank you for convincing me to go legit, did I?”

  Cristián glanced at her, startled. Then he smiled, for he had tracked where her mind had wandered from his mention of the Place, to the years in the Group when he had worked to make her understand how hacking for money, no matter how good the money, would eventually suck out her soul.

  “You did, just not in words,” he replied.

  “I did?” She was startled.

  He nodded. “Harry’s Cloak. You’ve single-handedly given the Loyalists a major advantage in this war.”

  “Oh, that.” She realized that the little sinking sensation in her chest was disappointment.

  Cristián didn’t follow up, even though he was as smart as her and would have heard her disappointment for himself.

  Had she made a wrong call?

  The question roiled in her belly all the way to Pascuallita.

  *

  ONE OF THE INSURRECTOS SHOVED Terra across the gravel, making her trip and fall. She shredded the skin on her palms. Until Zapatero arrived, she thought it was the worst of her problems.

  She stayed by Minnie’s side as the entire household were brought out into the big front yard one by one. They were rounded up by the Insurrectos moving through the house, cleaning out every room, their machine guns at the ready.

  Adán was carried over to the bench in front of the fountain and dumped on it, his hand dropping to the gravel, to curl lifelessly there.

  As the Insurrectos were taking bodies away, Téra figured Adán was not dead. Blood trickled from a cut on his head.

  When two of the Insurrectos dragged Rubén around the side of the house, Téra’s heart leapt. He wasn’t struggling, for they were carrying him by both arms and he only had one useful leg. He looked pissed as hell. They’d knocked off his glasses. His clear eyes were radiating fury.

  The pair propped him against the front of one of the Escalade rentals, which wore a new set of bullet holes on the side Téra could see. She wondered how the Insurrectos would deal with that when they returned the cars to Hertz.

  Rubén hissed in pain. He steadied himself, then held out his hand. “My crutches.”

  “So you can run away again?” The Insurrecto spat and turned away. The other grinned as they moved back to the house.

  “You always were stupid, Gallego!” Rubén called after them.

  They ignored him.

  Téra looked around. Everyone she knew who lived in the house was huddled in a ragged group on the gravel in front of the house. They were surrounded by armed Insurrectos.

  Rubén was the only Loyalist soldier among them and he wasn’t wearing his uniform.

  What had they done with the other Loyalists? They had all been injured in some way, too.

  Minnie gripped Téra’s arm. “This isn’t good…” she breathed.

  Téra swallowed. The sun was too hot for mid-morning. She could feel sweat breaking out under her arms and the back of her neck and it felt cold.

  From the big teak front doors, an Insurrecto officer stepped out. His boots were polished, his uniform fit him properly. The holster on his belt matched the boots, the belt and the colonel’s epaulets on his shoulders.

  He was clean shaven and tall. His hair had slivers of gray in it. Téra didn’t know him. She thought she knew all the former officers of the Loyalist army, when it had been the only army of Vistaria.

  As the colonel moved toward the group on the gravel, he spoke, lifting his voice so everyone could hear him without effort. “And who let the Insurrectos just walk in the door and failed to raise the alert, hmm?”

  Téra stiffened. Is that what had happened? The first she had known of the Insurrecto attack was when the fire alarm had been tripped. She had collected Minnie and run out of the house…and straight into the arms of the Insurrectos climbing out of the three black Escalades.

  Had someone betrayed them?

  The officer moved through the line of Insurrectos and into the cowering group of Loyalists. Everyone made way for him, which irritated Téra. She ground her teeth together. They were all just folding. Cooperating. It was pathetic.

  Only, she had no idea what else they could do. They were women and injured men and few of them at that. The house had been emptied of any able-bodied people when Duardo started his push north toward la Colinas.

  The officer turned on one heel to face Rubén where he leaned against the Escalade. “Captain Rey,” he said slowly, as if he was relishing the sound of Rubén’s name.

  “Zapatero,” Rubén said shortly, not using Zapatero’s rank. “I see they let you out of your kennel.”

  Zapatero just smiled. “There’s no need to play the game anymore, Rubén. We’ve got what we came for.” He rested his hand on Rubén’s shoulder. “You have been of great assistance. General Serrano will hear of your efforts on our behalf.”

  Téra froze. Minnie gasped, but the sound came from far away.

  Rubén’s eyes widened. Then he knocked Zapatero’s hand away. “No!” He tried to shove Zapatero out of the way, his other hand splayed across the hood of the car for leverage. His gaze sought at Téra. “He’s lying. Don’t believe him!”

  Zapatero spun on his heel again, to face Téra. “Ah! A romantic interest. How sweet.” His black eyes were dancing with amusement. “You appear to be a sensible woman. Clearly, Captain Rey is good at his work. He fooled you, too.”

  Téra tried to breathe. Her throat was too tight. She was growing dizzy.

  “Téra, no!” Rubén cried, behind Zapatero. “Don’t listen to him. Don’t trust him!”

  I can’t trust anyone. She couldn’t speak the words aloud. She didn’t have the breath for it.

  “I think you’ve earned a bench to stretch out upon, Captain Rey,” Zapatero added. Téra realized she had stopped looking at him. She was staring at the gravel, which danced with black spots. “Take him into the room with the sofa, please.”

  The crunch of boots on the gravel. Rubén struggling and swearing.

  �
��Breathe, Téra,” Minnie whispered, her hand on Téra’s back, soothing. That was when Téra realized she had sunk to the gravel and was holding herself up.

  Still, she couldn’t make herself take a breath. She knew when she did the pain would hit.

  10.

  PARRIS WAS GOOD AT HER job. She and one of her unit, called Ramirez, eased Chloe and Cristián through the woods at the back of the silent and still Peña house, down to the yard. The back wing of the house thrust out nearly to the vertical wall of calcium rock which had been carved when the house was first built.

  They jimmied a window, put the pane aside and eased the window open, all without a sound.

  Isabela had been forceful about coming with them. Parris refused to let the older woman move out of the tree line behind the house, where the rest of Parris’ unit would guard them. “Tell me what you want from the house so badly, and I’ll get it myself,” Parris told Isabela, looking her in the eye.

  Isabela shifted her gaze away self-consciously and rubbed at her throat. “There are medicines in the kitchen we need…”

  “No, tell me what you really want,” Parris insisted.

  Isabela blushed. “The photos on the shelf over the sink…” she said softly.

  Cristián drew in a soft breath, startled. Chloe didn’t think anyone heard him.

  Parris nodded. “I’ll get them. Pia and Cristián come with me because they know where the gear is. That’s it.”

  “Chloe, too,” Cristián said flatly.

  “She has no purpose in the house,” Parris said dismissively.

  “She comes because I don’t move from this spot if she doesn’t,” Cristián replied.

  Parris rounded on him, her chest lifting. Then she let out her breath and glanced at her watch. “Fine. Let’s go before I start caving in heads.” She glanced at the one called Ramirez and jerked her head.

  He slung his rifle and unholstered his hand gun, with a short nod. He slid through the trees beside the three of them—Cristián, Pia and Chloe—his head moving as he searched the trees for the enemy. Parris led the way, also moving with cat-like silence.

  Now they were climbing through the window into the back wing of the house. Chloe didn’t think any of them had made a single sound, even on pebbly dirt at the back of the house. There were houses on either side. Chloe heard music from one and a woman talking loudly in the other. A slammed door. Domestic, suburban sounds. All while the five of them sneaked into a house in broad daylight.

  No wonder burglars found their trade so easy. Everyone went on with their lives, oblivious to what was happening right beside them.

  The window Ramirez boosted Chloe through was a bedroom window. She passed a made bed and a dressing table with makeup on it. One of the triplets’ rooms, Chloe guessed, although it was not Pia’s for she moved through the room without lingering.

  There was a short corridor outside the room, running past a second door and down five steps, to run for another few yards before it moved out of sight.

  Chloe remembered that about Cristián’s house. “It’s full of stairs and levels,” he’d told her, when they had still been using only text. “It’s the only way houses can be built in Pascuallita. Horizontal surfaces are in short supply.”

  There were another two doors on the lower level of the corridor. Pia opened one of them and moved inside. Her room, clearly.

  “Which way?” Parris asked.

  Cristián pointed along the corridor. “Down the stairs, through the kitchen, then up to the north wing. My room is there. That’s where the stuff is.”

  “Let me go first,” Parris said. She was carrying a handgun now, too. Hers was a Glock 19 Gen4 9mm. Chloe approved of her choice. It was a good weapon for a woman. It had real stopping power, yet it was small enough for the average woman’s hands. Parris was petite, although it was hard to remember that most of the time.

  Parris padded ahead silently, her gun moving from side to side as she checked corners and nooks and angles.

  Eight more steps down to the kitchen. From Cristián’s descriptions, Chloe knew this was the heart of the house. A huge cast iron range sat under a big brick chimney and a well-scrubbed wooden table was in the middle of the room. The benches on either side had gaily colored cushions. The two chairs, one on either end of the table, had curved backs and spindles.

  As they passed the chair at the far end of the table, Cristián laid his hand on it, letting it rest there.

  Chloe wondered who usually sat there.

  Five more steps up into a stunted corridor with only two rooms coming off it. Cristián pointed to the door facing the kitchen and Parris pushed it open and stepped inside, looked around and came out.

  “Make it snappy,” she breathed.

  Cristián nodded and stepped in.

  Parris jerked her head after him. “Help him go fast,” she told Chloe.

  Chloe stepped through the door and looked around. Cristián was already sorting through a big cupboard which stood open in the far corner of the room, opposite a huge window letting in the eastern daylight. The view of Pascuallita through that window was stunning. Cristián had spent weeks looking through the window, noting guard rotations, the movement of Insurrectos through the town, locations of officers, including which houses they were lodged in.

  Opposite the window was a weight training bench, a barbell stand with a barbell and two big plates on it. Beside it was a rack of free weights. The smallest on the rack was thirty pounds.

  An old kitchen table crouched beneath the window. On it was Cristián’s computer and monitors—the big monitor in the middle and the smaller one to the left, turned side on so his music list would display more titles at once. He used that monitor for lists of all kinds. The monitor on the right was the second screen—the one used to park reference material as he was working.

  Chloe was familiar with the setup because she had taught Cristián this process. Most of the Group had adopted her three-screen system once she had explained it. The feedback she received said it worked as well for them as it did her.

  The most jarring aspect of seeing the table with its scratched wooden top was that she had seen this view before, only on the reverse angle. She had seen the room behind Cristián a hundred times since they had started using video to talk to each other.

  In the two weeks since she had arrived in Acapulco and everyone critical to the Loyalist side of the war had received Harry’s Cloak, Chloe had seen this room from the perspective of the middle monitor, sometimes a dozen times a day.

  She had seen Cristián sitting in the kitchen chair in front of it.

  The chair was set back from the table, now. It looked as though Cristián had shoved it back when he got to his feet and had not put the chair back under the table after.

  Only, the position of the chair was highly suggestive.

  As Cristián pulled a nylon zippered bag down from the top of the cupboard he was standing in front of, and shoved items from the cupboard into it, Chloe let her gaze moved over his long body. She glanced at his arms. They were olive and tanned, and rounded with muscle, which flexed as he worked. He didn’t have huge body-builder arms, because he hated spending time working out when he could be doing more interesting things. His life beyond his computer and his clients was physical, though. Hell, just walking around Pascuallita was a high intensity interval training workout because of the hills and stairs everywhere.

  This house was old enough to use a wood-burning stove for extra warmth in winter. Wood was easy to get if one was prepared to walk into the forest and haul the wood back out afterwards. The stove was needed, for central heating was not a feature of life on Vistaria, and at this altitude, the winters could be bitter. Even summer nights could bite.

  The responsibility for keeping the woodpile stocked had fallen to Cristián when Duardo had joined the army at eighteen, for Duardo could not reliably say when he would be home. Cristián had been chopping and hauling wood since he was fourteen.

  She
glanced at the weights once more. She imagined him doing bicep curls with one hand, while using the mouse to surf with the other. Brain and body at once.

  Chloe couldn’t pull her gaze away from his arms. Cristián’s proximity to the desk, the backed-off chair, and his arms… She recalled another occasion when she had watched his arms working. She had been on the other side of the screen, of course, only her view had been unobstructed, for he had pushed the chair back so she could see.

  Chloe’s heart leapt and hurried and her body throbbed in remembrance.

  Cristián closed the cupboard and turned back to the table. He paused, studying her, the bag hanging from one hand. His eyes narrowed. “Your face…”

  It wasn’t just her face which gave her away. Her entire body was inflamed. She rubbed at her neck. The need to tear off her jacket and breathe was powerful. Her breasts ached.

  “I’m looking at the table, at your computers, and remembering that night when it was too hot,” she said.

  Cristián glanced at the table. His grip on the bag grew firmer, his knuckles turning white.

  “You know the night I mean,” Chloe said.

  It had been a sweltering night, not long after the hurricane had gone through. Every window and shutter in the big house stood open. Despite the house being built almost upon the beach itself, the air in the house didn’t move. It was always windy by the beach, just not that night.

  It had been warm upon Vistaria, too, for Chloe saw Cristián’s tee shirt was sticking to him, agreeably outlining his upper chest, which wasn’t weak at all. His throat gleamed in the light from the monitor and she watched his Adam’s apple shift as he spoke.

  “Are you even listening to me?” he had demanded, making her jump.

  Chloe shifted her gaze to his face on the screen. “Um…no.”

  He tilted his head. “What has the power to distract you? You’re usually hyper focused.”

  “You, Shadow. You’re distracting me.”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t move.

  Chloe plucked her tank top away from her chest and flapped it. “I can see it is hot there, too.”