by K. Bromberg
This guy is a creep. He’s stalking me. Watching me, taking note of what I’m wearing, what I’m eating. My phone vibrates behind me and I jump.
I’m going to have to go to the police. There’s no way this can be anything but bad. No way. I will have to go to the police. What if he’s not one of them? What if he’s just some crazy rapist?
Another vibration.
I pick up the phone and turn it over to read the messages.
‘What day is it?’
What?
‘Do you even know?’
I huff out some air. ‘Wednesday,’ I text back.
‘Better check that calendar again, Harper.’
No nickname this time. Why? He saw my reaction out there on the beach? How? How could he know the name was what made me react?
‘Day, Harper. I hate having to ask you to do everything twice.’
I check the date on my phone, but that’s no help. I never keep track of the date. So I go into my calendar app and my eyes almost bug out of my head.
Friday.
Well, that explains the line at the Mexican place. And my hunger. I was asleep for three days.
‘I’m waiting.’
He can wait all he wants. He’s playing a game with me and I just quit.
‘Do you remember the bath I gave you after you took the pills?’
I can’t remember shit, a common side-effect with Ativan when you take too much. And someone had to stitch my head, change me out of my clothes, clean me up, wash my saltwater-soaked garments, and put me to bed.
That someone really was him.
‘I enjoyed it. Every second.’
The tears fall down my cheeks as I consider the implications of what he’s telling me. I message back. ‘I’m reporting you to the police for rape, asshole!’
Chapter Six
JAMES
Rape.
She has got to be fucking with me. It makes me laugh, but seriously, this girl, after everything that’s happened, thinks I’m a rapist?
I’m two yards away from her building door, but I take a little detour out to the alley to think this through.
Rapist. I roll the possibilities over and over in my mind and only come up with one explanation.
She has no idea who I am.
I run my hands through my hair, pulling a little. She’s driving me crazy and all these months of watching her, all that pent-up want and desire, is clouding my thinking.
If she has no idea who I am, then…
Chapter Seven
HARPER
A pounding on the door makes me jump up from the floor.
“Harper?” the beautiful voice says softly through the door. “Open up, Harp.”
“Don’t call me that,” I say back. “You have no right to call me that.”
“Open the door, or I swear to fucking God, I will kick it in and break the locks.”
“I’m dialing the police.”
“No, you’re not. You’re on the run. It doesn't take a guy like me to see that. Open. The. Door. I need to set you straight. Right now.”
I pause, thinking.
He kicks the door and the wood around the lock begins to splinter.
“Stop!”
“Open,” he commands.
I reach over and flip the deadbolt. As soon as it clicks, the door flies open and he’s in front of me, breathing hard, his chest rising and falling like it was that day under the pier. Only now, he looks furious.
And it scares the fuck out of me. I back up, my hands out to ward him off. But he continues forward, kicking the door closed with his foot, forcing me against the wall.
“You think I raped you?” His eyes are blazing with anger as he stares down at me. They dart back and forth, looking me straight on, but not able to settle on one eye or the other. “Answer me!” he bellows.
I jump a little and immediately I lose control and the tears start to well up. I cover my face. “Go away! Just leave me alone!”
He yanks on both wrists, flinging my hands down, and then he cups my face and leans in closer. As close as he was the other day under the pier. My whole body begins to tremble. “You think,” he says, softer now, “that I raped you, Harp?”
“Please don’t call me that. Please, please, please don’t call me that.”
He lets out a long breath of air and removes his hands, turns, and walks away. I cover my face again and peek through my fingers like a child, watching him struggle with me, running his hands back and forth through his thick, wavy hair. He’s wearing a light blue t-shirt that hugs all the thick muscles of his back. The faded jeans look very old and there’s a hole in the ass that lets his checkered boxers peek through. On his feet are a pair of classic Vans that look like they were born sometime in the eighties.
He’s clearly dangerous, so this fashion contradiction makes me laugh at his implied harmlessness.
He whirls around, puzzled. “Funny?” he asks me, his eyebrows up into his forehead with suspicion. “This is funny?” It’s his turn to laugh, but it’s clear he does not think it’s funny. “You have a strange sense of humor, Har… per.” He adds in the last syllable and tilts his head a little to see if I’ll react to the name again.
I lower my hands and press myself back against the wall as he makes another approach. This time he does not touch me, simply presses his palms against the wall on either side of my head.
I take a breath and look around, trying to avoid his stare.
“Now, answer. Do you think I came in. Found you drugged and unconscious. Bleeding from your head.” He flicks his fingertips along my stitched wound, and I wince. “Cared for you.” His voice lowers at this. It’s barely a whisper. “Cleaned you up. Sewed you back together. Dressed you in the sweetest things I could find in your meager assortment of clothing.”
I swallow hard as I picture this in my head. His hands on my body. His eyes on my body. Choosing my clothing and dressing me.
“And then wrapped you up in a blanket and slept next to you for forty-eight hours as you came out of your pathetic overdose of benzodiazapams—”
“I didn’t overdose, I’m just not used to taking them anymore!”
He places a hand over my mouth. “Shush! That was the second crazy thing you did that day,” he stresses. “So you think I came and did all that, and then raped you?”
I look away, embarrassed.
“Is your cunt sore?”
I snap my attention back at the vulgar language.
“Is it?”
I shake my head no.
“Well, then you can be sure, Harper. I did not fuck you. Because I don’t do anything half-ass. And if I was gonna fuck you, believe me, you’d feel the effect of my cock in your pussy for a week and the only thing on your mind would be when I’d come back and do it again.”
Oh God! I’m throbbing from his words. I turn my head to hide the blush but his fingers slip under my chin and force my attention back to him.
“Look at me.”
I raise my eyelids and take a hitched breath from the crying. He stares back at me for a moment and then he leans down. Slow this time, not the crushing madness of heat we had under the pier the other day. His lips graze against mine, just a soft flutter of a kiss, and then he pulls back before I can react. “Did you think about our kiss under the pier afterward?” I blush and try to look away, but his fingertips are back on my chin, urging me to look him in the eyes. “Answer me, Harper.”
“Yes.”
“Was it good?”
I can’t help myself, I laugh. This makes him smile and those dimples appear.
“Was it everything you dreamed? Because I can do better. I can do so much better if I disappointed you, Harper.”
I blush again. “No, it was fine.”
“Fine? Kissing you should be so much more than fine.”
I look him in the eyes this time and tell the truth. “It was… spectacular.” I get more dimples at that admission. When I look up at his eyes, I’m entranced. He�
��s… hypnotic. “I’d like another,” I whisper, not even sure where that just came from. It’s true though, so I don’t take it back. I just stare at him.
He leans down into my neck and nips my earlobe. “Would you?” he breathes into me.
I can only nod this time. My capacity for speech has left. My whole body erupts in chills, and not the creepy kind. The kind I’ve never experienced before.
“Right now?” he whispers.
“Yes,” I answer back, just as soft.
“Well,” he says in his regular voice as he pulls away, “I think you have an appointment at the beach, maybe we can reconvene this”—he laughs—“whatever this is, afterward?”
“What?”
He takes my hand and leads me towards the door. I grab my key off the floor where I dropped it when I came in, and stuff it in my pocket. I’ve never left the apartment with another person before. It throws me off my safety routine.
He holds my hand all the way to the wooden gate and then guides me through with a pat on my ass. I close my eyes and gasp at that move, but I don’t say anything because his unauthorized touch is gone a moment later. He resumes holding my hand. Like we are boyfriend and girlfriend just out for a Friday night walk.
“This is weird,” I say under my breath.
“What’s weird?” he asks back.
I look up at him as we walk and he absently grabs the dark shades hanging off the collar of his t-shirt and slips them over his eyes. I miss his eyes immediately, but it’s almost sunset and we’re heading west, so the orange glare of the sun blasts down on his face, illuminating his skin like some bronzed god in a muscle-hugging t-shirt and holey jeans.
He raises our clasped hands. “Holding hands is weird?”
“Yes, but…” I trail off and he lets it go because we’re at the light at PCH and Main now. We wait with a crowd of people heading to the steps for the sunset and it dawns on me. “My appointment is with the sun?”
He looks down at me and smiles. “Is it? I always figured it was with the dusk. And the one in the morning is with the dawn. But it’s the sun, huh?”
“You’ve been watching me.”
He nods as the light changes and the crowd of people shuffle forward together, taking us up in a wave of momentum.
When we reach the steps in Pier Plaza, there’s almost nowhere to sit. Friday night sunset-watching is very popular in the summer. I usually get here at least a half hour early on the weekends.
“We’re late,” my new partner says as we approach. He bolts off to the right, tugging me behind him as he goes. And then he finds a seat for us, squished up against a pillar. He sits down first and I look dubiously at the small space left for me. He pats his knee. “Sit, Harper.”
He draws me towards him until I plop down in his lap.
As if I had a choice?
When he wraps his arms around me and leans against the concrete pillar, I tense up immediately. I’m just not sure how I’m supposed to act right now.
He leans into my neck. “Relax,” he says softly.
“I can’t help it,” I say back. “I don’t even know your name and you’re hugging me in public like we’re engaged or something.”
“Later, Harper. Just enjoy the show. It’s about to start.”
I give in. He makes me want to give in. And the inner independent and strong-willed girl inside me wants to object.
But I don’t. Because I like it. He feels so familiar. He feels like an old friend instead of a stranger. For the first time in over a year, I feel safe. And since the one lesson I learned early was that safety was a gift, I decide to accept it.
I lean back against his chest and I feel our heartbeats. Mine, then his. Then mine, then his. And after a while of this, they beat together. Everyone around us is talking and joking. Babies cry. Skaters do tricks off the wall on the other side of the bike path. But we remain quiet. Our world is slow and satisfying.
The fiery orange ball of flames dips to the horizon and everything darkens. And then, like the sun was taking its time crossing the sky the entire day but is suddenly in the biggest hurry, it disappears.
People clap and kids cheer. They do this every night. Some of them I even recognize, that’s how regular they are at the sunsets.
I spy an older woman I see all the time, looking at me. She shoots me an approving wink and I blush. She thinks this stranger and I are together. And why wouldn’t she? I’m sitting in his lap, his arms are hugging my waist, my head is resting against his chest. Our hearts beating in synchronicity.
We remain like this until everyone around us drifts away. “Now?” I ask.
“Do you want my real name? My associate name? Or my fake name?”
“All of them,” I say through a long yawn.
“Just one tonight. Pick.”
I have a very bad feeling about this. “And the associate name is…?”
“A code.”
Oh. This is great. “What kind of code?” I already know, but I ask anyway because I need to be absolutely sure.
“For what I do. A calling card, so they know it’s me.”
“I have one of those too.”
His chest rumbles with a laugh. “I bet you do.”
“Do you want to know what it is?”
“First mine, then yours. Pick.”
“Real name.”
“James Fenici.”
“James,” I repeat in a whisper. “I like James.”
“I like Harper.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“I’m only eighteen.”
“I know.”
He knows. Hmmm. But the look on his face as my age hangs between us captures my full attention. “Does it bother you?” He waits a few heartbeats before answering and this is my clue that yes, it does bother him. “It doesn’t bother me,” I add.
Fingertips guide my chin so my head turns towards him and then his mouth is on mine, his tongue probing, asking me to open, I do open. And this time I touch my tongue to his. He flicks against it and it feels… so good.
He ends the kiss and stands up, holding me in his arms for a moment before setting me down. “It doesn’t bother me either, but you’re tired. So I’ll walk you home.”
He holds my hand again, changing sides when we get to the highway, putting himself between me and the traffic like a gentleman. But we finish our walk to my building in silence. When we get to the wooden gate we stop so he can pull the rope and open the latch. “What’s your code name, Harper?” He looks over his shoulder at me, like he feels guilty for asking.
I stare at him, suddenly uneasy. Is this a trap? “You want to know this because you have a target?” It’s a bold question, but justified. If he’s here to kill me, I’d like to know. Even if he is wavering on whether or not to fulfill his contract.
“You’re not my target, OK?” But he doesn’t look me in the face when he says it.
“You first then.”
He smiles and holds the gate open for me and we walk down the path to the building, then head downstairs. I get my key out and I’m about to push it inside the lock when his hand rests on mine.
“Tet,” he says. “My code name is Tet.”
I look up at his face to try and figure out what he’s thinking. “Why did you tell me that?”
“What’s yours?” he asks, ignoring my question.
“You’re here for me, aren’t you?”
He shakes his head. “No, I swear it. I’m not here for you. But I need to know where you fit in. Code name?”
“I’m no one. Someone’s daughter, that’s all.”
“Code name, Harper.” His eyes are still soft, like he hates to ask, but he has no choice.
I swallow hard and bow my head. “Come. My code is Come.”
He lets out a long audible breath of relief. A small chuckle follows. “That’s a dirty little name for such a sweet little girl.”
I ignore his innuendo. “I could’ve been your targe
t.” It unnerves me. The reality of what that means.
“You’re not,” he says sternly. “You’re not and that’s all that matters.”
“But I’m someone’s target.” He takes the key from my hand, but this time I put my hand on his and it’s me who stops it from entering the lock. “Where do you fit in?” I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. It’s so taboo. We could both be killed for these few words. But just like he needs to know where I fit in, I need to know his place too. Come is a verb. A verb code name means I’m a nobody. But Tet, I’m not sure what that stands for. I know all the ranks, but I’ve never heard of a Tet.
He lets out a long breath and looks down at his feet, like he doesn’t want to tell me. “Number Six.” I shake my head and turn away, but he catches me by the waist and pulls me back. “Please don’t turn away.”
“Six?” I cannot even comprehend it. “Six,” I say again.
The organization my father is married to, indebted to for life—the same one he sold his children into when he joined, the same one that will take my children as well, should I live long enough to have any—is deeply compartmentalized. Everyone has a place. Everyone has a code. There are thousands of members all over the world. Most are innocuous. Verbs like mine. Come. Dance. Ride. Skip. They’re endless.
The higher-ups have nouns. There are hundreds of them. Bear. Desk. Claw. Grass. The names are meaningless, just a label to put you in perspective.
My father has a rank. The Admiral. There are twelve members with ranks.
But only ten people have a number.
The assassins.
Chapter Eight
JAMES
“Why do you look so familiar?” she asks. “No, wait, that’s not the right question. Why do you feel so familiar? Is it because you’ve been watching me?” Her eyes scan mine, searching for the truth, but at the same time second-guessing whether or not she actually wants to know it.
“What’s your brother’s code?”
