Auctioned to Him 6: Damage

by Charlotte Byrd

  Chapter 27 - Logan

  I open my eyes slowly. Every part of me aches and throbs. The sun is so bright, it’s blinding me. I can’t keep my eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time. Squinting helps a bit. After a few moments, I manage to lift up my head and look around. I’m in the middle of a thick jungle. Mosquitos and other insects are crawling all over my body. I’m experiencing everything in third-person, as if I’m watching myself onscreen and none of this is actually happening in real life.

  I notice that I’m dressed in the same pants and dress shirt that I wore to the wedding.

  Except that the dress shirt is drenched in blood. I reach my hand and place it on my stomach. When I pull my hand away, it’s covered in blood. Suddenly, it’s no longer a third-person experience. My stomach hurts like hell and so does my leg. I was in shock. My training tells me that I was in shock, but now I’m coming out of it, and everything’s going to get a lot worse. Shit.

  I look around again. The jungle is a flurry of activity. Insects and reptiles all around. People. I need people. I try to sit up, but I was shot in the stomach and curling up is pretty much out of the question. I try to check my body for other injuries. Both arms seem to move fine, but the left leg...something’s wrong with my left leg. I reach down as far as I can and feel the wetness of my pant leg. More blood. The calf throbs, sending shooting pains up to my spine. I’ve been shot there too. Perfect.

  And then, somewhere far away I hear voices. Little kids. Laughing and giggling. With great difficulty, I turn my head in the direction from which the sounds are coming.

  “Hey! Hey!” I yell. The first one is barely audible. My voice cracks and I cough. I try again. I don’t know how much time I have, but I’m pretty certain that they’re my only chance.

  I try again in Spanish. “Hola! Hola!”

  Their laughter stops as they walk up to me. The kids are two boys, no older than seven or eight. They are very small for their age – must be Mayan rather than Mexican.

  “Help,” I whisper, first in English, then in Spanish. They stare at me and then talk amongst themselves. I can’t understand them. They must be speaking Mayan, an indigenous language of the region, and I don’t know any Mayan. Suddenly, one takes off. The other one stays with me. He rips some leaves off a nearby bush, cleans my leg wound and presses the leaf to it. He whispers something in Mayan. It has a calming effect on me. I lay my head back down on the ground and close my eyes.

  * * *

  I must’ve passed out, because the next thing I know, I wake up in a small wooden cabin with a beautiful old Mayan woman leaning over me and applying bandages to my body. She sings something quietly as she takes off one bandage and puts on another. When she sees that I’m awake, she smiles at me and continues her work without stopping. I look around the place. I’m lying on the floor in the main room. A few hammocks hang around me, attached to the walls. The cabin itself has a thin metal roof and no glass in the windows. Just shutters to keep the elements out. But most of the time, the windows and the door are wide open to let in the sunshine.

  Somewhere near the front door, two boys sit on the floor, eating something wrapped in large green leaves. The place is filled with the most delicious aroma I’ve ever smelled – fresh tamales and spices. My mouth starts to water. As if she can read my mind, the woman finishes with my bandages and brings me a glass of water and a plate with an unwrapped tamale. My stomach throbs as I sit up a little against the wall, but it’s definitely a lot better. I stuff some rice and beans into my mouth and thank her by nodding my head. She just smiles and walks away as if recuperating recently-shot CIA agents who were left for dead in the jungle is something she deals with every day.

  As I sit there, I see a large cockroach crawling on the ceiling. I have already seen geckos and an assortment of other little creatures, but this is the first cockroach that I’ve seen this close up. This area is filled with them – and they are huge with wings. I move my index finger a little and point out the cockroach, expecting the woman to scream and let her two boys deal with it, but everything about this place is a surprise. Without so much as a change in her expression, she walks over to the front door, grabs a flip-flop, and knocks it down on the ground. The cockroach opens its wings, but she catches it between her palms and hands it to one of the boys. From what I understand, she tells him to go deep into the jungle and let him go. Until this very moment, I still had some doubts. But as soon as I saw her do this, all of my worries vanish and I drift back to sleep certain that I would make a full recovery.

  Over the next few days, I keep getting stronger and stronger. The woman continues to give me doses of her medicine, which she grinds up with a mortar and pestle from dried plant ingredients. After each dose, I always fall asleep and wake up half a day later, but every time I wake up, I feel stronger. I eat more, drink more, and sometime later, I even start to move around on my own. My stomach’s healing, and so is my leg. The woman seems pleased with my progress, nodding and smiling during each pivotal step in my recovery. Eventually, I start to make my way outside and walk more and more around the cabin. As I suspect, the woman lives all alone with the two kids in the middle of a thick jungle, with only a dirt road leading up to their house.

  When it’s finally time for me to go, the goodbye is bittersweet. For more than a few days, I actually debated whether or not I should stay here for good. Everyone thinks I’m dead, so what if I actually stayed dead? I could start a whole new life. I used to think that a simple life is nothing to want, but now I have my doubts. This family seems much more content than many middle class families that I’ve seen in the States. They’re actually happy. Genuinely happy. Everything is simple here. Life is about all the little pleasures. Growing your own food. Going swimming under the waterfall. Playing with the chickens and the dogs. There are no worries about careers and mortgages. Those aren’t really my concerns, but I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t a little jealous about their way of existing in the world. And if I stayed here, then I definitely wouldn’t have to fulfill the rest of my contract to Truman and that organization, which I’ve come to despise.

  And I probably would stay here, were it not for one person. The person who I thought about day and night during my recovery.

  Avery.

  I should not have kept this secret from her, but how could I have known what would happen? What the hell was she doing there on the beach? Without context, I must’ve looked like a murderer to her.

  I don’t want to admit it, but I’m a little more than terrified of her not believing me. When I find her again, will she believe me? I mean, isn’t being a CIA agent some perfect lie to cover up being an actual murderer? I think I heard that killers use that lie on more than one occasion in television shows and movies.

  What if she asks for proof? I don’t have any. That’s the point of being covert. I’m not even on CIA’s regular payroll. Only a handful of people within the CIA even know about Daffodil. Besides the extra phone, which is encrypted, I don’t have any other paperwork or physical object proving that I work there and that I was authorized – no, forced – to do what I did. And of course, there’s no way that Truman would ever corroborate anything I’m saying to a civilian. He’s not the sentimental type. So, if she doesn’t believe me…that’s that. She’ll be terrified of me, and I can’t scare her more. She deserves better than that.

  If she doesn’t believe me, then I’ll come back here, I decide. I’ll build myself a little hut a little bit away from this one. I’ll help the woman with her animals and the gardening. I’ll play with the kids. I’ll learn Mayan. I’ll start a new life.

  Chapter 28 - Avery

  Truman leaves and takes life as I know it with him. All of these thoughts that I thought about Logan over the last couple of weeks are completely false. He was completing a mission for this country and died on his mission. And I caused it. If I hadn’t screamed, then none of those other men would’ve come in and killed him. The thought of that is devastating. I
can’t breathe. I start to cry, and I can’t stop. Cynthia isn’t here to help me. Not that she could anyway.

  I sob and cry and sob for hours until my tear ducts run dry. And when twilight falls and the moon comes out, I cry some more. It starts like a wave, a tsunami, that I have no power of stopping. I cry myself to sleep and when I wake up, the first thing I do is cry again. The very thought of Logan breaks me down. Suddenly everything in the apartment reminds me of him.

  There’s a knock at the door. By the sound, I can tell that it’s Cynthia. I mumble something and she comes in.

  “Oh my God, Avery, what’s wrong?” she asks. “What happened?”

  I look at her and break down again. My eyes fill up with tears that I didn’t know I still had and then roll down my face. My eyes are so dry that the salt in my tears feels like someone’s cutting at my naked eyeball with razorblades.

  She goes to the kitchen and comes back with something. I can’t see very well. When she presses something cold and soft to my face, I feel a little better. If only you could die from crying, I think to myself. Then I’d be dead already, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

  After I calm down a bit, Cynthia asks me what’s wrong again. I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to lie. I can’t. Since Logan is dead, what does it matter anyway? So, I tell her. Everything. As it happened. She gasps and then doesn’t say anything for a while. From what I can make out of her face, she’s in shock.

  “I can’t believe this,” she shakes her head.

  “I know,” I mumble. My throat is dry, and I cough. She hands me a bottle of water. I gulp it all down before either of us says anything else.

  “So, all this time, you thought that he was a killer? That must’ve been so scary for you.”

  “That’s why I stayed at your place.”

  “Oh wow, it all makes so much more sense now,” Cynthia says. “And now he’s dead?”

  I nod. Something about her presence makes the pain not so acute anymore. I still feel it, but it’s no longer like a knife through my chest. Suddenly, I feel a little numb to it.

  “And all this time, I was fearing him. Terrified of seeing him again,” I say calmly. “And now, all I want is just one more moment with him.”

  Cynthia puts her arm around me, and we stay in bed for the rest of the day.

  * * *

  A couple of days later, things calm down a bit. The pain and the heartbreak aren’t as intense. It doesn’t mean that my world isn’t full of regrets of all the things that I should’ve done or could’ve done that night on the beach. It just means that I’m able to go back to work and cut flowers. I’m able to answer the phone and explain our services to customers. I’m able to arrange bouquets and even design a few new ones.

  Being back in my shop puts me a little bit at ease. The splashes of greens and colors swaddle me as if I’m wrapped in a tight blanket. Everything’s going to be okay, eventually, they whisper to me. It might not be as you planned, it might be without Logan, but you will find love again.

  Cynthia walks in with two coffees and a big smile. Her positivity has really played a big role in bringing me around these last few days. After I gained some control over my senses, I realized that I probably shouldn’t have told her about Logan working for the CIA, but Director Truman never did explicitly tell me that I’m supposed to keep his identity a secret. Besides, someone was supposed to contact me for a debrief over what happened, but no one has yet.

  If they do contact me, then I’ll tell them that Cynthia knows, I decide, and that I didn’t think it was a big deal to tell her, because he’s dead.

  The thought of Logan being dead sends shivers up my spine. Instead of breaking down, I bury my face in the daffodils that I’m holding in my hand and try to think of something else. Something more pleasant and not so hopeless.

  The door to the shop opens.

  “Well, hello, there!” the woman says. I can’t make out her face because she’s flooded with light from the outside, but I recognize that West Texas accent anywhere.

  “Hi Dolly!” I say with a newfound pep. I’m not faking. I’m actually happy to see her.

  Cynthia looks up as Dolly comes closer. She’s dressed in a white Chanel suit, which has undoubtedly been tailored to accentuate some of her most prominent features.

  “Oh, wow, are you Dolly Monroe? The Dolly Monroe?”

  “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Dolly extends her right hand. Cynthia’s eyes focus for a second on a ten-carat diamond ring. I nudge her out of her trance.

  “It’s such a pleasure to meet you,” Cynthia says. Dolly smiles. “I’m not sure if you know, but I’m the one who got the gift certificate for your services for Avery.”

  “Oh no, I had no idea. Well, isn’t that swell?” Dolly asks. “So, this is your shop? It’s very cozy in here.”

  I smile. She’s being nice, but I know that cozy is just a euphemism for tiny. A bit too small, actually.

  She walks around the shop as if she owns the place. Some people I’m sure find her arrogant and full of herself, but I love her confidence. I know that she’s coming from a good place.

  “I love your designs,” she says, holding up one of my bouquets in front of her. “I wish the woman I hired to do my niece’s wedding had half the talent you have.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “I really appreciate you saying that.”

  “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?” I ask. “We don’t make it here, but there’s a coffee shop right outside.”

  “Oh no, there’s no need. I’m fine.”

  She explores the shop a little more, carefully examining the flowers and the bouquets. I get the feeling that she isn’t just dropping by. I wait for her to talk about what actually brought her here.

  “You have a beautiful place here, Avery,” Dolly finally says. “I’m going to get all of my flowers from you in the future.”

  “Oh wow, thank you,” I say, but she continues before I even finish.

  “But I’m also here to talk to you about something else.”

  Here it goes. I take a deep breath. Logan.

  “We are all wondering about Logan,” she says, carefully choosing each individual word.

  “We?” I ask.

  “Mainly, Liam, Kora and I. We haven’t heard from him for a while. Not since the wedding.”

  I nod. I don’t know what to say.

  “Have you heard from him? Kora said that you left the wedding without saying goodbye. Did something happen?”

  Dolly’s face has an earnest, eager expression on her face. She isn’t accusing me of anything. She’s just interested in finding Logan.

  “I thought he was just not staying in touch with me. But then Kora called and we realized that none of us have heard from him since the wedding. Not even Marilyn.”

  “Who’s Marilyn?” Cynthia asks.

  “His housekeeper.”

  I nod. Take another deep breath. I had hoped that Director Truman would notify the family members, but I guess he didn’t bother. I don’t know what else to tell her, but the truth. I can’t just string her along, making her believe that everything’s fine when he’s really missing. And not just missing. Dead.

  “I’m not sure if I should be telling you this,” I start. “But I think you deserve to know.”

  I tell her everything.

  Chapter 29 - Avery

  Later that afternoon, after a very much distraught Dolly finally leaves, Cynthia also takes off. She has some errands to run and I’m left all alone to close up.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” Cynthia asks one last time. This is my first time alone here since I got back from Tulum. I nod, trying to be brave.

  “I’m going to be fine.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she says. “But fine. If this is what you want, then I’ll go.”

  “This is what I want. Thanks.”

  The shop is eerie at closing time. The buckets of flowers cast long shadows and make me feel
uneasy. I’m not really afraid of anything. Logan is no longer after me. He’s not a murderer, after all. But still, I have a strange premonition that something bad is going to happen.

  For a second, I think that maybe I should text Cynthia and ask her to come back. I did have a hard day. Telling Dolly the truth has been one of the hardest things yet. The expression on her face. The sadness. The tears. All these things made my own feelings so difficult to keep at bay. And then, there are the regrets. One really major one. Logan told me that he loved me. And I didn’t say it back. I was afraid. I wasn’t sure if I loved him, but now looking back, I know that I did. I still do.

  No, I say to myself. It’s not a good idea to ask Cynthia to come back. Then she’ll never leave me alone again. I need to be able to be here on my own and now is as good of a time as ever to start this process.

  I cash out the register, count the money and put it in the safe. I make a mental note to drop all the money off at the bank tomorrow morning before work. Don’t forget, I say to myself. I sweep the shop and toss away random pieces of paper that were left out on the counters. When I get home, I’m going to pour myself a big glass of wine, climb into bed and watch Netflix. I need a new show to binge-watch. I haven’t seen Mad Men yet, maybe that’s a good one to start with. Yes! That’s exactly what I’ll do.

  Lost in my daydream of what’s going to happen this evening, I don’t hear the front door open. I continue to sweep all the leaves and stems into one pile in the middle of the shop. And then I feel a presence. Somewhere behind me. Shivers run down my spine, and my body gets covered in goosebumps. I know who it is without turning around.

  “Hello Avery,” he says slowly. Be strong. Be strong, I say to myself over and over like a mantra.

  “What are you doing here, Cal?” I ask in the most authoritative voice that I can conjure up.

  “I came to see you. Have you heard my messages?”