by Tara Brown
Sooky reached for the light, stopping short, "What about Helena?"
The older lady sighed, "I can't find her. She stopped answering her phone. Last time we tracked her, she was in California."
I scowled. Helena was my mom's middle name. Had Servario made it so her phone tracked in California? Or was she in California? Were my kids in danger? The dildo lady was scary. She ran her hands through her short salt and pepper hair, "We sent Steve. He should have reported from there. He put the shoes in the house and did the foot work for the fire. His last report was from Montana but we haven’t heard anything from him. I don’t know what to think. If Helena was onto him being mine, she might have killed him." My stomach dropped.
Sooky winced, "I liked Steve. He was so easy to be around."
The older lady sighed, "Turn the light off." It was dark in the room, and they were both sleeping soundly in no time. I sat there, trying to take it all in.
I had to kill James before they did. I wanted him to die at the hands of the evil dildo lady, but then like the time Servario apparently killed him, he would come back. He would find a way. I needed him to die by my hands, like my mom said. I needed to pull the fucking trigger myself.
That, and the fact Steve was bad, was all very alarming.
I wanted to wait until I knew they were both asleep, but I ended up falling asleep too. I woke to a sound that made me feel disappointed. It was James' voice.
"Mary, we need to leave Evie in Croatia with your friends."
M. M was for Mary. Mary was the name of the leader of MI6. It was just like Bond. Damn. But that made me the bad guy. I narrowed my gaze and wiped the drool from my chin. If I was the bad guy, then this was one Bond where the bad guy won.
Mary looked familiar to me. I watched her move about the room, through the slats and suddenly it hit. She looked like Jules. Or rather, Jules looked like her. I had always thought she looked like me, but the resemblance was uncanny.
Who was Mary?
James looked around, "Mary, I have to go. I can't live like this anymore. I'm tired, and I've done everything you've asked of me. You have to kill me off and let me live my life out. Servario isn’t going to give me my money back. I want Evie in Croatia, and I want the rest of the money you owe me."
She sighed and nodded, "I just don’t understand how you never got that money back from Evie. It was half of your father's inheritance, James." She said the sentence with motherly affection and I gagged a bit. She was James' mother. Oh, sweet fuck.
My mother-in-law liked to screw guards in the ass with dildos. Oh, dear God in heaven, that couldn’t be right. No.
James walked to her, "Look, Servario has it. He isn’t giving it up, because I, technically, still owe him the Burrow. So fuck it. Evie was useless, her father is a disappointment, and the real Master Key is never going to be discovered. I want money, I want freedom, and I want this bullshit to be over with. I'm out. I'm done. I am finished and that is that. I never wanted to be CI, and I never wanted to be a husband or a dad. I did everything MI6 asked me to. You and Servario, and the Burrow, and the whole world can sod off."
He said my father is, not was.
She pulled him into her embrace, "Go kill the guard, put your wedding ring on his hand, and let this be the end then, my son. You may go to Monaco and enjoy your life. I may need you here and there."
He sneered, "I'm out. You promised."
She gripped his head back, ripping at his hair and sliding a knife, I hadn’t even seen in her hand, across his throat, "Mommy says you are in, if I need you to be."
He coughed, "Yes, fine. Whatever." She kissed his cheek and patted his ass, "Go take care of the guard. Put your wallet and everything into his pockets, tie his feet with the spare anchor in the back and turn on your cell phone and leave it in his pocket too. They'll trace him by it."
He sauntered out of the room. Mary sat there for a moment, just taking it all in or plotting her next assassination. She smiled at herself and got up. When she left the room, I stayed right where I was.
I wasn’t about to roam the boat in broad daylight and get killed or worse, fucked in the ass. I cringed and sat there, waiting for a choice. I felt the boat stop moving. It was subtle because of the size but I felt it, nonetheless.
I pulled on some clean clothes from the closet, not really my style but better than underwear and less stinky than Michele's dirty shirt. I crawled from the porthole and looked out. I had to assume we were between Croatia and Italy in the Adriatic Sea. The colors were insane, and the beauty of the coastline was far more than I ever imagined for such a war-torn country. I lay there, wondering how it would all go down, and how I would escape when I heard it, a scream.
"SHE'S ESCAPED!"
That she was me and I was screwed. Michele might not have gotten the chance to screw me, but James and his evil mother would. I remembered the way the huge guard limped after getting big blacky in the ass and shook my head—hell no. I crawled to the railing and looked at the bright-blue seawater. We were only a few miles off of the coastline. I could jump, but then I would be a refugee in Croatia. I could also drown in the ocean. I looked back at the boat and grimaced; I could also get traumatized by Mary and then left in Croatia anyway. Just as I was about to jump, I heard something I hadn’t expected, a helicopter. It landed on the yacht, at the top. I could barely see the span of the top of it as people rushed up there. I took the chance to sneak along the wall to the closet I had hidden in before.
I pressed my back against the wall as another familiar voice started shouting, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU HAVE LOST HER? SHE WAS TO BE TRADED! WHY DID YOU EVEN BRING HER HERE? YOU WERE TO TAKE HER TO THE BROTHEL AND I WAS TO MEET YOU THERE! I GOT THERE AND YOU WERE NOT THERE!"
Servario angry was worse than any other sound. Well, except for the sounds in Mary's bedroom, those were way worse.
He hadn’t been on the boat all along?
I gripped my gun and waited for them to find me.
"Search the water. She jumped, trust me. I know her well."
He walked past the closet, slamming the door at the end of the hall.
Mary shouted, "THAT MEANS YOU!"
She stormed down the hallway, and opened and slammed the same door as Servario. That was weird.
Fuck.
Was she his mom too?
That would actually just MAKE my day.
Granted, it would never top the near rape, BO-laden clothing, running about a boat in my underwear, watching fetish porn live like it was the BBC's Masterpiece Theatre but more aptly called Master My Piece, and discovering the dildo-wielding Brit was actually related to my children.
No, Servario and James being half-brothers was far less likely to send me over the edge, than analyzing any of the previous hours spent on the SS Twisted Sister.
I sat on a mop bucket that was turned over and waited to be discovered. There really was nothing else to do.
I could hear Servario and Mary fighting in the back room, but I couldn't hear what it was about. A pee shiver hit me. I had to go bad, bad enough that I looked at the bucket and contemplated it. Finally, in a moment of desperation for a bathroom, I opened the door to the closet and slipped out into the hallway. There was no one there. I ducked low and walked to the front room with the lounge and the kitchen. No one was there either. I could see James on the front of the boat through the window. I left the doorway, fingering the gun in the back of my pants. I needed to pee and I needed it all over with. I was done. I was never going to recover from any of it.
"James!" I called out.
He looked over at me through the window, "Where were you? You have Servario all worked up."
I nodded at the back of the boat, "Watching your mom fuck people in the ass."
He looked confused for a moment and then burst into laughter. He pointed a gun on me but kept laughing, "You saw that? That’s horrifying. Evie, of all the things you have endured in your life, I actually feel sorry for you for that one." He shook his head like we we
re talking like it was old times, "Mom and Sooky have always been a bit weird." He sighed, "Come out on the deck so I can strap you into a chair for Mary. She's been a real freak about you being missing." He winked at me, "Maybe you and I can die today together. ‘Course my death will be faked. After all of this nonsense, I can't imagine Mary is still going to let you go to Croatia. Not sure how Mary will convince Servario of that though, he was dead set on you ending up there."
I walked out to the front with my hands on my hips, ignoring his rambling. He really needed to do less drugs. I gave him a confused face and distracted him, "Your mom is an agent?"
He shrugged, "So is your mom, Evie. How do you think we met? When I was a boy, my parents always pushed me to join cadets. I never knew they were being pressured into doing it. Our parents are far more than you or I ever knew." He held his gun on me, "Your mom was the best of the best, but when she had kids she went quiet and my mom took her place. They were friends once, a very long time ago." He sat down with a bit of difficulty without his cane. He took a breath, motioning toward the chair, holding the gun on me, "You killed Michele?"
I nodded. He gave me a look of approval, "Nice work. I always hated him. His face was too fat, it made his accent slur almost."
I looked around at the ocean and the small boats and jet skis searching for me out on the water. I licked my lips and sat in the seat across from him.
He tapped his fingers, "This is getting weird… awkward."
"Yeah." That was an understatement.
He tapped his gun against the chair. I could see the red rim of his stoned eyes, and the way he moved as if he wasn’t in control of himself. He smiled and looked just like the boy I had met once, "I don’t hate you, you should know. I never hated you or the kids or anything. I just never saw it as my life. I always saw it as the job. You know? They asked me to join the military and CI and settle down with you, and I always saw it as a job."
I nodded, even though I didn’t know. I didn’t know how he was able to turn his love of our kids off and on. Our kids adored him. They had felt loved. I had too. And yet, there he was in front of me, no qualms about not being in love with our family in any way. It made no sense. I scowled, "I get that it has always been a job to you, but you were different before. What changed you?"
He narrowed his eyes, "What do you mean?"
"Six months before you 'died', we changed. We went from sort of happy to not at all. Not even for the kids. What changed? Did the job change?"
He licked his lips nervously, "Evie, nothing chang…"
I cut him off, "STOP LYING TO ME! YOU OWE ME THE TRUTH! I'M ABOUT TO DIE, YOU OWE ME THE TRUTH! YOU'VE TOLD ME EVERYTHING ELSE, YOU MIGHT AS WELL TELL ME THIS!"
He jerked back, "Freedom. I was finally going to be free of you all. I thought being your husband and in the CI was the job. It wasn't. I had made the best of it with you and the kids, and I assumed it was how things would always be. But when Servario was recorded going after the weapons and the Americans asked me to work for Servario, I was brought in from the cold. All this time I had no idea who I worked for, besides CI. I found out I was secretly an agent for MI6. Had been all along. I knew I was a double agent, but I never knew who for. Not until it was time to get Servario to show us where the Burrow was."
"You didn’t know any of this stuff? Really?"
He shook his head, "No. I didn’t even know I was adopted at first. When I was a kid, money always came to our family in the form of random deposits to our safe-deposit box. Someone had paid for my life, someone was always helping my parents out. I was told I had a benefactor, a rich uncle. He paid for things and made it easier for me, but he wanted things out of me. Turned out that was my father."
"You had money all this time, and you acted like we were broke, paycheck to paycheck?"
He laughed, "You would have wanted to spend my money on the kids. I knew it would go to the kids and not me. I saw the way I worked hard and everything went to sports gear, and birthday presents for kids that our kids didn’t even like, and new couches, and shit I didn’t ever want. I couldn’t even imagine how it might have been if you had had my millions."
I gasped, "But you wanted to work as much overtime as you could so you bought that fucking house?" His eyes flashed something and I smiled bitterly, "Oh shit. Silly Evie, the work wasn’t about the money, was it?"
He truly looked upset for a moment as he gave me a headshake, "It was awkward enough being with you and not wanting you, but then we had the kids. Then you were always tired and your body was so sore from the babies. I just… I wanted more."
It happened so fast, I didn’t realize I'd done it until his jaw dropped in shock and blood dripped from his lower lip onto his white shirt. He made a noise I had never heard a human being make before. It was like an inward gasping sound. It was like he was deflating.
I looked at the gun in my hand and gasped. I hated him that much? I hated him. Words left my lips in a cold tone, "You were a very good actor, James. Very convincing."
Tears streamed down my cheeks. They were for him. I didn’t want to give him even a second longer in my heart, but I couldn’t stop myself. Ten years was a long time to believe all the lies. I needed time to catch up and see that it was all an act. Every smile, every laugh, and every moment of him being charming, it was a lie.
He coughed and moaned as he slid from the chair. The red spot on his shirt spread into a strange and aggressive pattern and then he died.
I watched as the last breath left his body. The last breath I needed to move on and not fear him anymore.
I could barely hear the footsteps and screaming that filled the air. Hands grabbed me, hitting me and dragging me from the chair. I only realized it was Servario as I was shoved into a room, and the door was closed as he left me there.
A shrill voice screamed, "I'LL KILL HER!"
I heard Servario talking, but I couldn’t hear what he said. I sat on the bed, looking down at my fingers. I had just shot… out of anger, pain, and humiliation, I had pulled the trigger. It hadn’t been for my children. It hadn't been to help the world or save anyone. It was entirely about wounded pride.
I was a very bad person, that much was abundantly clear.
Chapter Fourteen
Couch Cushions
The door flew open. Mary held a gun on me, shaking as she raged, "YOU STUPID SLUT!"
I shook my head, "Mary, let me explain." Where was Servario?
Spit flew from her pale lips as she screamed, "YOU KILLED HIM! YOU KILLED MY BABY! DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG AND HARD I LOOKED FOR HIM? DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE TO LOSE A CHILD?" Then she did something I wasn’t prepared for. She slumped into the doorframe and sobbed, drooping the gun into the lap of her pale skirt. Her face was swollen and tear stained. "I gave him life and you took it away."
I nodded, "I am so sorry."
She shook her head, "I will kill your son for this. I will kill him for this and then you will know what loss is."
My anger levels rose instantly, "You will leave my son out of this. He's just a boy, not a spy. You gave up your child! I have loved mine since he was conceived. I have raised my son, not abandoned him to strangers and forced him to work as a spy."
She sniffled, no longer crying and defiant, like she was not feeling anything. I watched her shut her emotions off, "You know nothing." She lifted the gun, "Get up."
I stood from the bed, waiting for her to kill me. Where was Servario? I wanted to grab her gun and smash her in the face with it. I wanted her to die for threatening my child, even if I had killed hers.
She looked as if she were attempting to regain some of the composure and control she was used to having as she pointed the gun at the doorway, "Let's go."
I walked out of the room, instantly terrified of the gun she had in my back. I walked down the long hallway to the front of the boat where James was dead on the floor just on the other side of the wall.
"Sit."
I sat on the couch in the living room. She sat
across from me, still pointing the gun at me, "You will tell me what you know about the Master Key and the Burrow now."
I frowned, "I know James was looking for the Master Key. I thought James thought it was Servario, but when I went to work for Servario…"
"Whore for Servario, don’t make it sound like work. You were whoring. Continue the story and say whore."
I nodded, almost laughing nervously, "When I went to w-w-whore for Servario, he too was looking for the Master Key and threatened to kill me and my family many times if I didn’t help him find it. I realized then, that James and Servario were both looking for it." I swallowed hard, "I know the Burrow is a collection of weapons. James had paperwork at the house and I read it."
He eyes narrowed, "He had paperwork?"
I nodded, "He did. He had lists of presumed Burrow weapons and possible locations for it."
She sniffed, "Why would he leave that at the house?"
"It was in a place he never would have imagined me looking."
She sneered, "Where?"
"His shoe boxes of shit he had brought into our marriage. Old medals and keepsakes and crap from when he was a boy." I lied through my teeth.
She nearly lit up, "He had keepsakes?"
I nodded.
"Well, where are they?"
"I burned them along with the papers that might have incriminated him."
She nodded at a guard standing at the entrance. He walked over, slapping me hard across the cheek. I cried out as it made my broken nose instantly throb.
"Where are they?"
I sobbed, "I burned them, Mary, I swear."
She got up and walked around the back of the couch, tapping her gun against her hand, "He had papers. He never got them from Servario, or else Servario wouldn’t ever have been looking for the Master Key." She poured herself a drink at the beautiful bar in the corner, "So Servario isn’t the Key, and your father isn’t the Key, and clearly James wasn’t the Key. Who could it have been?" her eyes darkened, "Who saved you? You were bound in a hotel, beaten and injured after the attempt on James' life. Who saved you?"
