Hearts Under Siege

by Natalie J. Damschroder

  “I told you. Dad.” Brady joined her on the bed and swapped her tea for the file. “He finally came out of hiding, and I couldn’t very well cut him short when he wanted to talk.”

  “Is he okay?” The question was sincere, not tossed off because it was expected, and Brady loved her for it. She could have pushed them to dive back into the file.

  “As okay as any of us. He suspects something.”

  “What, we haven’t covered our tracks well enough?” She smiled, and Brady’s gaze caught on her smooth, pink lips. Again. They were close enough to lean over and—

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah, apparently not.” He dragged his gaze across the room to the pile of photos next to her bed. “He wanted to know where we got off to all the time, you and me, and told me to make up my mind before I made a mistake.”

  Molly’s arm tensed against his. She seemed to realize he could feel it and moved away a little. “Make up your mind? About what?”

  Brady shook his head. He didn’t want to go there, but couldn’t seem to keep himself from inching in that direction. Part of him wanted to lay it all out for her. Molly had always helped him see things more clearly. But he eyed the thick file they were only halfway through, and the pile of photos awaiting Molly’s artistry, and knew it would have to wait.

  “Nothing. Let’s get through this and see what’s going on.”

  After another hour and a half of reading, Molly reluctantly moved to the other bed to work on the tribute board. Brady’s entire body relaxed when she did, and he hoped she didn’t notice. Sitting on the floor, he leaned against the bed next to her and read the mission statements, pausing as they got near the end.

  “You notice something about these?” he asked her.

  “Yeah, they’re not so clockwork.” She snipped at the edges of some frilly-looking border paper. “I can’t interpret the spy-code, but it looks like he encountered trouble during each of the last three.”

  “Yeah.” Brady let his eyes unfocus and imagined the cases. “Communication problems, so meets didn’t go as planned, and at least twice the source backed out. He had to recover the info himself.” As opposed to receiving it from someone willing to hand it over.

  “And what was that about an extraction?”

  Brady smiled and opened his eyes. “You’re picking up the lingo.”

  “Yeah, well, after this many reports, I should.” Some scraps of colored paper fell to the floor next to him. He wasn’t looking, but he still knew that she’d set down the scissors and started glue-sticking stuff onto the board. The air moved when she did. Warmed when those movements brought her arm closer to his head. Caused the faintest of electric traces across his skin.

  “Hey.” Molly nudged him with her elbow. “You there?”

  “Barely.” Brady pinched the inside corners of his eyes, pretending he’d been distracted by blurred vision rather than her presence. It wasn’t even like a lust thing. He was just super-aware of her, in a way he never had been before.

  “Right. The extraction. He was supposed to get a pickup from a remote exchange and the driver never showed. He had to steal a vehicle.”

  Molly shifted to unfold her legs. One dangled over the side of the bed next to him. It was smooth and glossy, her soft yoga pants or whatever they were riding up to her knee. She must have shaved recently. Without thinking about it, Brady raised his hand to run his palm over her calf. Yep, smooth. A few seconds later he registered how stiff the muscle was under his hand, and that Molly wasn’t breathing.

  Crap.

  He dropped his hand and cleared his throat. “So, uh, how’s the—thing—coming?”

  “I’m almost done.” Her voice was low, almost husky, and desire trickled through him. “How many more missions?”

  “Just this packet at the back.” Brady set the file on the floor and leaned forward to straighten the fasteners and remove all the pages on top of the plastic sleeve on the bottom. The move pulled him away from Molly, but she drew her leg back up on the bed anyway. He heard rustling and a scrape, and the bed creaked. When he peered over his shoulder, he saw she’d leaned the finished board against the wall and climbed off the foot of the bed. Avoiding him, obviously.

  He sat up and turned to study the board. She’d made a timeline of Chris’s life, pictures of him as a baby, then a child, then older, mostly with his family, some with friends. The usual milestones were there, like graduation and his wedding and the day his Little League team won a tournament. Each image thickened Brady’s throat until the lump burned and made his eyes water. He could feel Molly watching him and tried not to blink.

  “What do you think?” she asked, her voice still not normal.

  “It’s…uh…it’s perfect.” He had to swipe his sleeve across his eyes. “You did a great job.” His own voice came out squeezed. The lump didn’t diminish, even when he swallowed. He focused on the decorations she’d glued on the board. The background was some kind of navy blue plaid or something, and silver and black wavy borders framed each picture. She’d somehow gotten hold of objects that had been important to Chris, and attached those between photos.

  “How did you get these?” Brady fingered a track ribbon and pointed to the boutonniere from the wedding.

  “Your mom was looking through a box of memorabilia the other day. I told her I’d put it away for her and brought it up here instead.”

  “So you planned this board all along.”

  She shrugged. “If I had time.”

  Brady’s eyes filled again as he gazed at her, overwhelmed with gratitude. “Molly, you’re—” His throat closed, and he couldn’t get another word out.

  Immediately, she came around the foot of the bed and put her arms around him. “I’m sorry, Brady,” she whispered, clearly trying to comfort him. But grief wasn’t what he was feeling now. Gratitude wasn’t even the right word. It went deeper than that. He tightened his arms around her back, absorbing the hug, and tilted his head down to inhale her. As soon as skin met skin, heat flared. It was only his cheek to her temple, but the softness reminded him of her calf under his hand, and suddenly he was aware of the press of her breasts, the rest of her body, soft but strong and, at the moment, relaxed fully against him.

  He lowered his head more to angle his face into her neck. He slid his hands up her back to her shoulders, tugging her closer. She sighed when his mouth met her neck.

  “Molly,” he murmured, aching. “I need—” He didn’t know how to say it, wasn’t even sure what he felt.

  She pulled back enough to cup his face in her hands. Her touch was gentle, sweet, and he closed his eyes, turning in to one palm.

  “Brady.” She waited for him to open his eyes. “Whatever you need, I’ll give you.”

  But her voice cracked, and as steady as her gaze was, he saw the pain beneath it. She thought he needed comfort, just like the first time he’d lost himself in her, trying to bury his agony.

  She was wrong. He wouldn’t use her again, nor let her think that was what he was doing. He released her, but kept his hands on her hips so she wouldn’t move away. “Molly, I don’t want—”

  “Okay!” She cut him off and pulled away, avoiding his eyes and bending to pick up the plastic sleeve of papers.

  “No, listen. I mean—”

  But she’d already lifted the flap and pulled out the pages, her eyes going wide and her mouth dropping open slightly. “Oh, my God.”

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She slid the pages out further and turned them to face him, horror haunting her expression. Icy cold doused whatever frustration and need had been burning in him when he saw the red letters stamped across the page.

  CANCELED.

  Chapter Ten

  Molly had never felt a change in atmosphere as sudden and terrifying as the one just now. The dim light in the attic bedroom was no longer cozy, but sinister. Hope had winked out of existence, the block letters spelling out the possibility, not that Chris was alive, but that he’d been murdered. />
  Brady’s legs had given out and he’d dropped onto the side of her bed. The disorientation of going from “about to be kissed” to “unspeakably shocked” left her dizzy. But she had to overcome it. Had to, once again, be strong.

  And to start thinking logically. She stared at the pages in front of her. They weren’t the usual mission report. “Brady, wait.” She flipped through the half-dozen sheets of paper, skimming, catching phrases and sections on each. “This isn’t a completed mission.”

  “No.” He sounded empty, distant. “He didn’t complete it.”

  “No, I mean, this isn’t a final report. Wouldn’t a final report be in here by now? What if—” She swallowed. “What if ‘canceled’ means the mission? Not Chris?”

  Brady stared blankly up at her. Then understanding slid into his expression. His eyes focused again, heating up. He stood. “Maybe. I never had a canceled mission.”

  “So you wouldn’t know what the report would look like.”

  “No.” A tiny spark of hope flared in his expression.

  “Okay.” She inhaled deeply and took his hand. “Come here. Sit. Let’s look at this.” As she backed to the other bed, drawing him with her, his hand tightened on hers until her bones shifted. They sat, and she set the file aside to concentrate on the special sleeve she’d taken the papers from. It was opaque and green. The white label on the front had no words, only the notation “#476-1B” in stark black type.

  “Do you know what this means?” She showed Brady. He took it from her, flipped to the blank other side, then back again. “No. It’s not a mission number. Those are all six digits.”

  “Right. Data’s not designated this way, either. That’s by date and an agency code.” She felt him look at her and shrugged. “I never figured out which agencies were which codes.”

  “I’m sure SIEGE would be happy to hear that.”

  “Pfft. I can’t be the only conduit paying attention.” She didn’t pick up the papers right away. Brady’s tone was clearer, and he looked less shell-shocked. She wanted to give him a little more time before they started reading and all the blood drained out of his head again. “So what do you think the number refers to?” she asked him, but he shook his head.

  “No idea.” He held out his hand for the papers. She reluctantly handed them to him, and they started reading together. The top of the first page was similar to the mission reports, with basic parameters in a code she couldn’t decipher. But Brady knew enough to make reasonable guesses. He pointed to the space on the form for location.

  “This is strange.”

  “So far, everything is.”

  “He went to Canada.”

  She shrugged. “So? Don’t you guys go everywhere?”

  “Yeah, but we spend a lot more time in unstable countries.” He studied the papers, his brows dipping. “I’ve never gone to Canada.”

  “Maybe he was meeting someone who’d fled one of those unstable countries?”

  “Maybe. That would have a low-risk expectation.”

  She didn’t remark on the obvious, that if this was Christopher’s last mission, it had been anything but low risk. True accidents could happen anywhere, of course, but his missing body alone told them that wasn’t the case here.

  “When did he go? Does it say?” She hated that she couldn’t figure out the coded language. It was English, and some of it she’d figured out over the fifty-plus reports they’d read, but not enough to decipher this one.

  “The date of departure is three days before his reported death.”

  “So this has to be where he was when he died. Took them a long time to send his body down from Canada,” she mused.

  “His non-body,” Brady corrected, but absently. He frowned harder at the last page. “If I’m reading this right, they determined he’d become a threat to the organization and decided to terminate him.”

  Iciness radiated from Molly’s core. “In which sense of the word?” she nearly whispered.

  Brady slid the papers back into their sleeve, his movements stiff. “I can’t tell. They didn’t fire him, because the facilitators are acting like he was a highly regarded member of the company.”

  “But they could have planned to do it after this mission, and he died first.” She took the sleeve and slid it over the fasteners in the file, adding all the pages on top of it. She wasn’t sure why. Were they going to return everything? Brady took the file from her and shoved it under the mattress, shrugging when she raised her eyebrows. Not the best hiding place…but she supposed that depended on who they were hiding it from.

  “If they meant terminate permanently,” Brady said in a low, hard voice, “then they might have carried it out.”

  “We have to investigate.” She knelt on the floor and took Brady’s hand. “We need to find out what really happened. And where he is. What I don’t get is, if they killed him, why was the coffin empty?”

  Brady nodded, but the nascent hope was gone, replaced again by bleakness. “I’ll go to Canada.”

  “We’ll go to Canada.” She squeezed his hand. “But first, we have a funeral to get through.”

  …

  Brady stayed in Molly’s room overnight. They slept on separate beds, a few feet from each other. Molly felt a little like they were back in college, when they’d been studying late or just hanging out, and crashed in the same room. Or the holidays, when she’d stayed here and shared Brady’s room, but 100 percent platonically. Looking back, she had to wonder why Rick and Donna had allowed it so easily. Why they’d believed there was no possibility of anything inappropriate.

  Molly couldn’t get to sleep right away, as exhausted as she was. She could tell when Brady finally relaxed and dozed off, though he slept silently. She wondered if SIEGE and other spy agencies required surgery for deviated septa, or didn’t hire agents with sleep apnea. Her mind wandered while her body slowly relaxed, her breathing coming into rhythm with Brady’s. Other things would hamper being a spy. Like flatulence. That would attract attention from the people around you. One of the musicians she toured with always sneezed at least seven times. That drew attention, too. Did these kinds of things come up during recruitment? Would someone be fired or pulled out of the field if the condition came to light? A handler or facilitator could sneeze. But she got the impression that facilitators had a lot of field experience and only moved up when they reached a certain age…or stage of life.

  Her eyes popped open and she was suddenly wide awake. What if that had been what was going on? If facilitators had to log a certain amount of time in the field before being considered for promotion out of the field, maybe Chris was increasing his mission time lately because he wanted to come inside. He didn’t know about the baby back in the spring, but they had been planning by then.

  Maybe. But even if she was right, it didn’t connect to or jibe with the last mission in Canada. Could that have been training instead? She almost pulled out the file to check, but she wouldn’t have been able to decipher it any better now than she could before. Brady probably didn’t know that code, either, so she didn’t give in to the urge to wake him.

  But tomorrow, they should definitely talk to Dix.

  …

  A limo picked up the family at nine the next morning. Everyone was subdued, and not just in manner. They all wore dark colors—Jessica and Brady in severe black suits, Brady’s mother a midnight blue dress, his father a charcoal suit. Molly wore the black, black-tiered skirt she’d been wearing when Jessica called her with the news, and paired it with a light gray sweater that did nothing to relieve the somberness. All of them, Molly noticed, were pale, even ashen. All thoughts of missions and hope and cancellation took a back seat to raw grief.

  Molly had wanted to drive her own car, but Jessica had clung to her and insisted they all go together. Her entire body was trembling, the movements so fine Molly wouldn’t have known if the widow hadn’t been holding onto her. The skin of Jess’s face was taut across her jaw and cheekbones. She’d lost weight this w
eek, and only tension seemed to hold her together.

  After an endless ride that regardless ended much too soon, the limo turned into the parking lot of the funeral home. They were slightly early, so the family could be in place in a receiving line before others arrived. As the Fitzpatricks gathered at the front of the viewing room, Molly spoke with the funeral director. He confirmed the program, explained a small problem with the flowers and how he’d adjusted for it, and said nothing to indicate, by words or demeanor, that he knew the casket didn’t contain a body.

  His assistant got an easel for Molly to set the tribute board on, and Donna broke down as soon as she saw it. Jessica only stared at it vacantly for a moment before turning away. Molly felt a pang of hurt feelings, but then she wondered what the action had meant. Was Jessica simply numb after so many days of pain? Or did it truly mean nothing to her?

  When the first group of people appeared at the doorway, pausing to sign the register, the director lined up the Fitzpatricks near the casket and tribute board. Molly started to fade to the back of the room, but Donna caught her, putting a death grip on her hand.

  “Oh, no, you’re up here with us, dear.”

  “It’s family only,” Molly murmured and tried to pull away, but Donna’s glare made her relent.

  “You are as much family as any of us, and more than some,” she hissed, and Molly had to bite her lips to keep from smiling as she let Donna drag her into the line.

  She supposed the normal order would be widow first, then the parents, then brother, then the de facto sibling. But Jessica was still so weak, she ended up bracketed by Brady and Molly, with Donna and Rick starting the line. Molly tried to get Jess a chair, but she refused it, stiffening her spine and insisting she had to be strong for the baby’s sake.

  “The baby needs you to take care of yourself,” Molly murmured as the first mourners approached. “If you pass out or crumple, how is that good for the baby?”

  “I won’t.” Jess lifted her chin and accepted the hand of a Fitzpatrick cousin, the first of many.