No Fair Lady

by Snow, Nicole

  “Miller Rush. And I knew you’d get yourself in the thick of it if I didn’t help you beat him to it. Kids are a sore spot for both of us. So I helped his man, J.T., secure that encrypted data he’d pulled out of Mederva in exchange for backing up everything related to Galentron. Didn’t you wonder how that shit made it onto their list of charges in court?”

  “So you saved me some dirty work. Bravo. But Oliver, fifteen years.” My lips tighten.

  I won’t break.

  I just don’t understand.

  “Deanna Bell and her data cache back in Heart’s Edge. The stuff you helped Clarissa Bell and Nine dig up and broadcast to half the country...all your bravery I only found out about after the fact—”

  “Like I could forget? What? You were there?”

  “Not in the flesh. But Deanna originally got that neat little package of incriminating evidence from Marianne Jonas, Mayor Bell’s former secretary. Deanna tried to get her to spill what she knew for years. The girl was persistent, but it was the call with me that made Marianne open up, comb through her records, and decide to take action.”

  I drop my face. “A shame I couldn’t save the old woman.”

  “You saved her data with the Bell sisters and the former Nighthawk. You saved her legacy, and it helped save an awful lot of lives,” he whispers, reaching for my shoulder. I can’t fight off his reassuring squeeze. “And I gave Marianne a working blueprint for that code they used, the one Deanna Bell ran with, helping hide everything. I also told Marianne Jonas to tell Deanna to get in touch with you.”

  My eyes whip to his face. And here I thought I was the grand chess master in that whole situation, when really, none of it would’ve happened without Oliver’s hidden hand.

  Dear God.

  “Hey...” he whispers, but I’m already turning my back. “Fuchsia?”

  “You didn’t answer the other question. You never came back. You never sent me a message—not anything I could hope to decipher.”

  He’s stone silent.

  A stillness between us sprouts so thick I could cut it.

  “Guilty,” he finally says. “I could give you the full litany...all the reasons why it made sense to help you from a distance, to throw myself into the gears when I could, to stop them from doing shit this isn’t the time or place to talk about. But the last couple years especially, I could’ve found you. And I didn’t.”

  A chill ripples up my spine at the strange, bitter honesty in his voice. Slowly, I pivot on one heel, turning to face him.

  Lifting an eyebrow. Waiting.

  “Fuck, you want the truth?” he growls. “Truth is, I’m sorry. I was too damn scared to face you again, even when I had something besides Galentron crap to face you with. I didn’t know how, Fuchsia. Didn’t know if you’d ever want me, when I’m not the same man I was before. Didn’t know if you’d ever find it in yourself to love, to forgive, after everything that—”

  This man.

  This marvelous, bullheaded, wounded, marvelously stupid man.

  Reeling is the only word that describes this state of being.

  How can I lose my daughter again, and get Oliver back in the same day?

  Durham, I’ll never get close to him again. I’ll never pry whatever he knew out.

  Not even if Oliver’s FBI contact locks him up.

  “I always wanted to be with you, if you’d just told me! If you’d just...found me...” So much for not breaking. Everything’s going blurry, my mouth salty and my eyes burning. “Fuck, we could’ve been—”

  “Living on the run? Isn’t that what you’ve been doing since that last big romp in Heart’s Edge?”

  He doesn’t say it—how’s that working out?—but the fact that he doesn’t need to is totally Oliver.

  And the fact that he’s right, that the answer is not fucking well, hits me so hard I sway on my heel.

  He catches me effortlessly.

  I’m a wanted woman, however resourceful.

  In hindsight, it’s nothing short of a miracle I was even able to get to Durham without winding up arrested, living a life in the shadows and always focused ever since the truth came spilling out about Galentron and my presence in Heart’s Edge over the past year.

  I can’t even tune into Blake Silverton’s stupid conspiracy love line radio show without hearing my name and the latest salacious rumors at least once a week.

  I don’t know how Leo Regis pulled off living in the wild as a fugitive for eight freaking years. I haven’t even hit the one-year mark, but I know it’s just a matter of time before my luck runs out.

  And unlike him, no heroics in the world will redeem me.

  No judge would exonerate a Galentron agent who did the unforgivable several times over.

  The truth is a cold, practical splash of reality—but there’s nothing icy at all about the huge arms that come around me, wrapping me up in Oliver.

  In his familiar warmth, his strength, his indescribable scent. That smell always makes me think of a warm day deep in the forest, steady and soothing and just a little sharp.

  It guts me.

  And I finally collapse in a wretched heap against his chest, leaning against him, mourning...

  Everything.

  Her.

  Me.

  Him.

  Time.

  An entire life without him or the family I should’ve had.

  “Listen.” His voice rumbles against me, soothing and low and surprising. “If you’d been with me, you never would’ve pulled it off. Never would’ve been in the position to do the things you did.”

  “What things are those?” I snap. “Building Durham up into a bigger monster? Dragging my heels after I finally got up the gumption to exit? Taking forever to finally do something, and convince the good people of Heart’s Edge that we could put them down, once and for all?”

  “Good things, Fuchsia.” His words darken with regret, but they’re so gentle. “I know. I know we’ve lived stained lives. Poisoned lives apart.” He touches my jaw, then, stroking gently, nudging me up to look at him, at that lonely remaining hazelnut eye that’s so warm with emotion. So filled with the acceptance that’s always been a part of who he is, who we are. “Do you know how many people you’ve saved by working to take Galentron down?”

  “I couldn’t save her,” I choke out miserably, swallowing against my tight throat. “I couldn’t save our baby girl.”

  “No,” he says. “But someone did.”

  I look up sharply. That edge in his tone is too knowing.

  I’m afraid to feel hope.

  I’m afraid to be shattered again when I’m holding together beneath a skin thinner than fine crystal.

  But I can’t help how my heart freezes, how my breath catches, as I stare at him.

  “...what?”

  “Guess what else I’ve been doing all these years? I had a lot of time to keep tabs. And five or six months back, I made a breakthrough. I found her.”

  He gives me a one-sided smirk, confident, and so alive with warmth as he steps back, taking my hand.

  Then pulls me close and kisses me then and there.

  Holy shit.

  I haven’t been kissed since the last day I saw him.

  No matter where my job took me, no matter who I pretended to be, no matter how I froze over...

  What I never stopped being was someone whose lips belong only to him.

  Someone who loves him.

  It’s like he breathes life back into my heart, into my soul, as his mouth slants hot and hard against mine. Oliver kisses with years of pent-up passion and longing.

  I answer with the taste of candy and the desperation of a woman who can’t hold it together without him, my tongue meeting his in a war of need and loss and sadness and hope.

  And he’s grinning, breathlessly, his mouth stained with my lipstick and that faint trace of pink sugar and dye.

  He squeezes my hand tight and takes another step back.

  “We’re not out of the woods ye
t, wildcat,” he says. “Let’s get out of here without getting caught, and then I’ll show you everything.”

  9

  My Candy Girl (Oliver)

  My day hasn’t exactly gone as planned.

  The original idea:

  Track Durham down at the airport before he can make his escape, confirm it’s him, let my FBI contact know, then stand back and watch the bust as he’s dragged off in handcuffs.

  The reality:

  Intercept the most lethal, highly wanted, beautiful woman in the world before she does something reckless as years of pent-up emotions finally break free.

  Nearly die of heartache when she realizes I’ve been alive all these years and never told her.

  Hate myself, no matter how necessary it was.

  And then forget that hate entirely with the first taste of her lips in fifteen years.

  Absence doesn’t just make the heart grow fonder.

  Absence makes the heart absolutely fucking ravenous.

  I can’t stop myself from looking at her every chance I get, drinking her in, nearly devouring her with my eye as we make our break out of Bellingham and back to Seattle.

  It’s not easy.

  I wasn’t expecting my FBI man to raise an alarm so wide and loud the entire city would be swarming with police units, all of them racing toward the airfield from every direction, mixed in with those sleek unmarked cars with the tinted windows that just scream Feds—and even a few tactical SWAT vans.

  They’re not playing around here.

  Durham may be good at making himself invisible, but he’s not unknown to the people who matter.

  People who might be just as corrupt as he is but who can’t stand the ego blow of him pulling one over on them with that body double in prison.

  They’ll take him down just for the trickery.

  Sometimes, spite can be an amazing motivator.

  But goddamn, we can’t move two steps without tripping over someone in a uniform.

  It’s not really me I’m worried about as we duck through side streets. I’m nobody. I’m dead. I’m a man with a Canadian passport and a history of doing business in security consulting quite often in the States.

  It’s Fuchsia I’m concerned for.

  I have it on good authority that Durham’s boys fed all the profiles of former Nightjars and Nighthawks to the police as part of a supposed plea deal cut for “him,” even if he’s not the one serving time in jail after settling his devil’s bargain.

  Fuchsia also stands out.

  She’s too elegant, too striking, too sharp.

  All it would take is even one person vaguely recognizing her profile from a dossier to send those screaming cop cars after us. I don’t think even my contact could save us, or would put his ass on the line to do it. With all of those wounded Nighthawks going down, too, we’d just get caught up in the mega-sting as more of Durham’s accomplices.

  I can’t let that happen to Fuchsia.

  She’s not exactly at the top of her game right now, either.

  I don’t blame her.

  Too many bombshells in one day.

  I’d wanted to break it to her a bit more gently.

  Catch her somewhere private, somewhere safe, and tell her the blistering truth.

  I know where our daughter is.

  After years of searching and data trawling and a little stalking, I’ve found her.

  And I’m taking Fuchsia to her right now.

  It takes us until almost midnight to get to the outskirts of Bellingham. We’re smaller targets on foot, and we both had to ditch rental vehicles that could be tracked by GPS.

  We hide under cover of dingy roadside stands, in side streets, in abandoned buildings, both of us soaked and shivering but enduring.

  Even after all these years, we’re still soldiers.

  We know how to hunker down.

  We also have each other to help keep warm, hands locked and never letting go unless we have to.

  Climbing fire escapes. Flitting across rooftops. That spring in my metal leg makes the leap across buildings and alleyways easy.

  She gives me that knowing smirk of hers as she goes sailing after me and lands perfectly, lightly, in those stiletto heels, ever the graceful cat who always lands on her feet.

  If her pretty smile’s a bit sad, a bit fragile, I get it.

  I can’t blame her.

  I just hope what I’m about to show her won’t shatter her world all over again.

  I’ve left a car with stolen plates on the edge of town, hidden behind a billboard off the shoulder of the road, shrouded by a stand of trees. It’s a dusty old Buick, hardly worth Fuchsia’s refined luxury tastes, but it makes a nice getaway car.

  Ordinary.

  Unremarkable.

  Unnoticeable.

  Under cover of darkness, we make the drive from Bellingham to Seattle. It’s quiet, just us and the occasional streetlamp, now and then headlights from the few other weary travelers moving through the predawn gloom.

  In the passenger seat, Fuchsia waits with a familiar stillness—it’s how I’ve seen her before missions, before briefings, before debriefings.

  She’s closing herself away in case whatever I have to show her hurts.

  In case seeing our daughter is worse than never knowing.

  In case the hope I’ve given her betrays her, because she just can’t trust anything anymore.

  Maybe she thinks she can’t trust me, either.

  In the shadows, she’s that monochrome girl again.

  Aged, perhaps, as gracefully as a queen, but still that girl in stark shades of black, white, and grey who learned that the only way to survive was to lock herself away.

  To hide her bright fuchsia-colored heart, so nothing could touch it enough to smudge and dim its neon life.

  Did I brighten your heart? I wonder. Or only steal some of its glow?

  I reach over and curl my hand over hers on the seat between us, squeezing her slender fingers.

  Her black gloves are warm and velvety against my palm. Then I pull away and focus on the road once more.

  I remember times like this when I worked in intelligence. The quiet stillness coming like the calm before the storm. Everyone just gathering themselves.

  There’s a silent camaraderie in the long drives and the longer wait. The thing about covert missions is, you spend more time waiting for your moment than actually living in it.

  That leaves you locked inside your head with the ghosts of your past and the haunting presence of the other silent people around you, caught up in their own version of wordless limbo.

  Yet somehow, in that liminal space, it’s still us.

  Together.

  That’s me and Fuchsia, right now.

  Comrades in arms, together in a liminal space where all we have is silence and each other.

  Then again, that endless waiting also describes our lives in Galentron’s shadow, too.

  I just hope for one thing.

  I hope that this is finally the moment we’ve been waiting for.

  * * *

  It’s nearly dawn by the time we cross the Seattle city limits and make our way toward Bainbridge Island on the ferry.

  We don’t have much time.

  People like us work better by darkness than we ever do in the light.

  Not far outside Bainbridge, we ditch the car and continue on foot. Silent shadows, making our way through residential neighborhoods, disappearing behind fences, along tree lines, until—

  There.

  The house I’ve been monitoring for months. Both as a casual traveler moving through the neighborhood and through long-distance surveillance, online searches, even a few private investigators with a knack for discretion who take payment in Bitcoin, never ask for names, and won’t pick up the phone if you call.

  It’s small, but comfortable. The kind of house you can picture raising a family in and not having to worry about where your next meal will come from, cozy and nicely settled.

/>   Cute shingled roof in bright blue against white slats. Nice lawn, but not so nice it’s a sterile show home. You can tell they spend their weekends kicking the soccer ball nestled against the fence around it, trampling the grass and leaving the earth a little uneven.

  It’s a home.

  A place where a girl could grow up happy.

  At least that’s what I’ve hoped.

  We stand across the street from the house, hidden behind a parked van for someone’s home delivery service, safely out of line of sight from the windows.

  It’s chilly in the early morning.

  But my entire body feels hot with anticipation, and a little fear.

  Fuchsia’s face is stricken, drawn, her eyes a little too wide, her lips parted soundlessly as her throat works in a visible swallow.

  Then, “Here?” she whispers, raspy and barely there. “You mean...all this time she’s been here in Seattle? I’ve been miles away, and I never knew.”

  “They didn’t want you to know,” I murmur. “They wanted you to believe she was dead. When you were still on payroll, they kept you too busy and out of the country too often to ever think about prying.”

  “It worked.” Her lips press together, determined. “I want to see her.”

  Shit. I’d be the last man on Earth to blame her, but that urge is exactly what I’m afraid of.

  “Fuchsia...”

  “If you’ve been watching her here, you got to see her—you can’t have that for yourself and then hold it just out of my reach!”

  Her voice rises from its hush, cracks, then drops again, leaving an almost funereal stillness over the silent street where so many people sleep, oblivious to our torture in their beds as they wait for the day to start.

  “That’s all I want,” she says more softly, but her voice is still strained—and breaking my heart. “Just let me see her face. She doesn’t have to see me. I’m not insane.”

  I hesitate, but fuck.

  She’s right.

  We came all this way. I’m the one who brought her here.

  And I can’t deny her that.

  So in the brisk early morning air that still tastes like the night’s rainfall, we move.