Yes. Easily. What kind of stupid question is that?

Elias and Mark are degenerate drunks and gamblers, but they don’t let that stop them from being the top assassin team in the galaxy. Together, they scour the stars to find their targets, and between gigs they search for clues to their pasts.

If only they had known that some things are best left forgotten.

Hey everyone! I’m writing this story on the fly for a contest on Royal Road, and figured I’ll post it here as well. I’m not quite sure where it’s going, or if I’ll finish it. Let me know if you like it and want it to continue. Just keep in mind this is basically an edited first draft. It may not be up to the usual quality. This story is just for fun, so have fun reading it. <3 There will be more of the higher quality serious stuff coming as well.

Now, enjoy this preview.

—PREVIEW START—

“Now that is a big fucking ship.”

The Merrick Lavigne sat in the vacuum of space between two toes of the Cat’s Paw Nebula. An unusual place to park a luxury cruiser, so close to the heat birth of new stars, but it won points for creative insanity.

“What kind of cunt names their ship after themselves?” Elias asked, sitting in the pilot seat of a much smaller vessel as he examined the cruiser through a telescope. His own ship, the Barbara Anne, wasn’t much. She was more akin to a car than a proper vessel, but she was fast and big enough for one man to live in for a few weeks at a time—everything an assassin needs. He had her stopped fifty feet outside of the Merrick Lavigne’s radar range to be safe.

“Zzz-ckt-euhhtk-kttickt-zzidt-i-cktzz?”

The question came from his shoulder, where a small beetle was perched, or large depending on the scale someone went by. This bug was a bit like the rhinoceros beetles that Elias remembered from back home, except not at all. It had three horns, pincers, and four golden wings underneath a holographic shell. Add to that the drinking and gambling addictions, and there wasn’t another one like him in the galaxy. Elias called him Mark.

“I don’t actually know a Barbara,” he answered, “ship had the name when I bought her.”

“Tkickt-ckt-zzzzdt-zztckt?”

“Nah, why bother?”

“Zct-cktickt-ckzzickt!” Mark jumped up and down on Elias’s shoulder, wing cases clicking along with his words.

“Look, if you want to pay for the new paint job she’ll need, you’re welcome to name her whatever you like.”

The bug went silent, busying himself with cleaning a nonexistent piece of dust from his antenna.

Elias glared down at him before shaking his head and returning to watching the Merrick Lavigne. “As I thought. You’re a cheap bastard, you know that?”

Mark’s response was to jump onto the telescope and wiggle his carapace in a rude gesture.

“Bug off,” Elias waved his hand, the gust from Mark’s wings blowing his hair back as the beetle returned to his shoulder. He stowed the telescope back in its overhead compartment. “Seems they’re here for the long haul. You ready?”

“Zzickt!” Mark’s entire body bobbed with his nod.

“Alight, tuck in.” Elias held a pocket on the front of his jacket open, and Mark hopped in. “Could be a rough entrance.”

—PREVIEW END—

First chapter coming up soon!

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33

State Dinner and a Show

Vanessa

The State Dinner was the most opulent event Vanessa had ever seen before.

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Vanessa entered the old apartment in a huff. She had spent the last three hours trying on dress after dress, only for Barron’s overbearing mother to veto each one as soon as she walked out of the dressing room. Seemingly nothing was good enough for the woman’s tastes, including Vanessa. Barron’s mother had not been shy in her disappointment that her son hadn’t chosen a more suitable match, otherwise known as a woman on their family’s social level. The woman made offhand comments at every opportunity about her weight, hair, nails, parents, and anything else she could dig her perfectly manicured nails into. It took everything in Vanessa not to lay into the old bat toward the end of their shopping adventure. Only the knowledge that she would pay for it the next time she would run into Barron helped her stay cordial, if not polite, with his mother.

“How’s the dress?” Eddie called over as she shut the door. He was at his desk, clicking and typing away on the system. He didn’t look over when she entered.

“Hideous, I hate it.” She walked over to stand beside him.

He looked up at her with a furrowed brow. “Is it really?”

“No,” she admitted. “It’s gorgeous, which makes me hate it even more.”

He smiled and turned back to face the screens once again. “You’ll have to tell me the rest later. It’s time to call our friend.”

“The lawyer showed up?” She wasn’t sure Liam’s parents had believed them when they told them that their long lost son wasn’t dead, but was being held in a local precinct on suspicions of terrorism. It was a gamble on their part, but one that Liam had assured them would pay off, confident in the knowledge that his parents would never allow their name to be besmirched in such a way.

“Just like Liam said he would.”

“Oh god,” she leaned against the desk with a sigh of relief. “I hate this.”

“Yeah…” Eddie brought up the call box and dialed the number.

“Are you sure this is going to work?”

He stared hard at the number on the screen. “It has to.”

Eddie clicked the call button and the line began to ring, and then it stopped.

“What the hell,” he whispered, clicking the call button again.

It rang again, and then stopped again.

“He’s refusing our calls.” Eddie’s voice was hitched in worry. If they couldn’t get through, then Liam would be in even more trouble than he already was.

“Wait.” Vanessa grabbed her bag and started digging through it until she found what she was looking for. Pulling a business card from inside of a small pocket, she held it out to Eddie. It shook in her cold fingers. “Here. Call this number instead.”

Eddie looked at the card and smirked. Taking it from her, he input the number and pressed the call button once again. This time, someone answered.

“Hello?”

A man’s voice came over the speaker, and Vanessa smiled at the sound of it. “Detective Jamison.”

“Operator?”

“Yes.”

“Not that I’m complaining,” James said with a confident tone, “but to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Maybe I just wanted to talk to you,” she said.

Eddie cringed.

“Or maybe,” James said, elongating the word, “I’m the next best option after Reid ignored your first two calls.”

“Can’t get a thing past you, can I?”

“Well, I am a detective,” he said in a light tone.

“Speaking of Reid,” she said, bringing the subject back to her real reason for calling, “he wouldn’t happen to be near you, would he?”

“As a matter of fact, he is. He’s currently listening to everything we say. You’re on speaker, and Captain Gibson is listening in as well.”

“Detective Jamison,” she teased, “I didn’t pin you as the type to put a lady on speaker without her knowledge.”

“Depends on the lady.”

“Alright, that’s enough.” A gruff voice they had never heard before came over the speakers. “Is this what you two have been doing this whole time, flirting with the enemy?”

Eddie had a look on his face like he had wanted to ask the same thing of her.

“This is Captain Gibson, superior to these two idiots,” the new voice said.

“I gathered as much,” she responded.

“I assume you’re the one we have to thank for the lawyer.”

It wasn’t a question, but she answered it anyway. “I can neither confirm, nor deny.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Operator. Unlike my subordinates, I’m not impressed by your cheek.”

“How would you know until you’ve seen it?”

Muffled laughter sounded in the background of the call, and Eddie shook his head, motioning for her to get on with it.

“I’m hanging up now,” the Captain’s gruff voice announced.

“Alright,” she interjected before he could disconnect the call, “fine. We didn’t send the lawyer.”

“But you contacted the Borja family so that they could send the lawyer?”

She paused for a moment to look at Eddie, who nodded. “We did.”

“William Borja is one of yours.”

“Is he?”

“Stop playing games,” the Captain’s voice rose in decibel, “He’s yours. Somehow you convinced this kid, a member of the most prominent family in the country, to give everything up and join your little vigilante club.”

She glanced again at Eddie. He was leaning his elbows on the desk, his hands gripped in a closed double fist over his mouth as he listened to the call. He was taking slow, deliberate breaths. Seeing him like this put a pressure on her chest.

“Not me, Captain.”

“What, many other women in your little gang to lure men away from their families?”

She smiled at the idea that she could convince anyone to do anything with her feminine wiles, especially Liam.

“You think too narrowly, Captain.”

There was silence on the other end of the line for a few moments before the Captain’s voice returned.

“I don’t understand.”

Of course he didn’t.

“What makes you think that it’s a woman that he would give his life up for?”

“Holy shi—”

James’s voice came over the speakers, and was swiftly cut off, like the flick of a switch, or the tap of a mute button. She and Eddie waited, impatient, for the men on the other end of the line to get over their narrow-minded shock.

“Captain?” She asked once she got tired of the silence from their end, which didn’t take long.

A faint hiss of ambient noise filled the speakers as soon as the call was no longer muted.

“I hadn’t considered,” the man confessed.

“I know.”

“I thought… I didn’t think that there were any left.”

“Homosexuals?” she asked.

“Yes.” His voice was quiet.

“About that,” James interrupted.

“Really not the time,” Reid’s voice joined in.

“I don’t know, seems like a great time to mention—”

The line went quiet again. She looked at Eddie with confusion, and he gave her a similar look back, clearly also wondering what James was about to say. The line came back to life before they could delve any further into their curiosity.

“Operator,” Reid’s voice came over the line, “where are you leading us? Who is this other man?”

“Detective, I’m glad you asked.”

Eddie was staring at the screen that held the call box. Grabbing his hand, his attention turned to her instead. Whether or not they were doing the right thing, they were well past the point to change their minds. His grey eyes were wide as he stared up at her, and she nodded, giving him the encouragement to do what they had set out to. He took a deep breath, and began to speak.

“Captain, Detectives…”

“Who is that?” one of the men whispered.

“Shh!” said another.

Vanessa squeezed Eddie’s hand, and he continued.

“This is Eddie Blake. I’m the leader of The Iris Collective, and I’d like to make a deal with you.”

“A deal?” Reid asked.

“You let Liam go back to his life, back to his family. Drop all charges.”

“And what do we get in return?”

Eddie took a breath. “You get me.”

“Not enough,” Captain Gibson’s voice interjected.

She waved him on.

“Me,” he repeated, “and the Collective.”

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30

An Interrogation

Detective Reid

Reid entered the interrogation room with an arrogance that he didn’t feel, smiled at the man handcuffed to the metal table, and dropped the manila folder he held to the hard surface with a resounding slap. He and James had spent the last three hours letting the kid sit alone in the room while they read up on everything they could find about him.

“So,” he started, sitting opposite the young man and flipping open the folder with the flick of a finger. He leaned back in his chair and took a moment to read from the pages in front of him, ignoring the kid as if they had all the time in the world to waste. “Mr. Borja, is it?”

Borja said nothing, and Reid frowned down at the documents on the table.

“Says right here, William Borja.” He pointed down to the name on the page. “Quite a… foreign name for such a prestigious family.”

“You’re one to talk.”

Reid glanced up and caught the pointed look that the Borja kid gave him. He smiled in return. Ok, family it is.

“Should I call you Mr. Borja, or do you prefer William?”

Borja stared at him with hard eyes, but didn’t answer.

“It’s the strangest thing, Mr. Borja,” he continued in a casual tone, as if they were having a pleasant conversation about the weather, emphasizing the man’s name. “It says here that you were reported missing by your parents almost four years ago.”

He looked up from his papers, and still the kid said nothing, so he continued.

“They had a funeral for you last year, did you know that?”

Again Borja said nothing, and again Reid continued in a pleasant tone as if the kid wasn’t staring daggers at him.

“I’m told it was attended by the créme de la créme of the country’s high society. See? Says so right here.”

Reid tilted the folder up to show him, pointing at a spot on the page, but the other man didn’t make any move to look at the document. He shrugged and pulled the folder back to himself.

“It even says that President Wilkins made an appearance, though his name isn’t listed on the guest list. Security reasons, you understand. He’s a close personal friend of your family, right?”

A muscle in Borja’s jaw twitched. Reid continued as if he didn’t notice the other man’s tense demeanor.

“What a sight that must have been, to see the President of the country at the funeral of some brown kid. I’m sure your family, and President Wilkins, will all be very happy to know that you’re alive, Mr. Borja.”

“How does it feel to be a traitor to your people?”

Reid looked up at the man’s rough whisper to see that his teeth and fists were clenched. He had him.

“Well…” Reid laughed, smiling at the kid before him. “We don’t all have the benefit of being close personal friends with the President of the Fundamentalist Party, now do we, Mr. Borja?”

William Borja glared at him, and Reid’s smile widened.

“Must be awfully nice—to live such a clean and privileged life—in your sparkling ivory towers, above all the muck and unpleasantness of the lower castes.”

The younger man was struggling to keep his breathing even, his chest rising and falling faster as his anger grew. He only had to push him a little further to send him over the edge.

“If anyone should know what it feels like to be a traitor to their people, well…” He took a moment to look Borja up and down with raised eyebrows, letting his words hang between them. “It’s a shame that your people didn’t even get the courtesy of the camps, but then, that’s not something that you and your family need to worry about, is it Mr. Borja?”

Satisfaction flooded his system as the kid leapt to his feet, the handcuffs rattling against the bar they were secured to. Borja leaned over the table, rage written all over his features.

“Stop it! You don’t know what you’re talking about! I’m not like them! I’m not—”

“Hey, you can’t go in there!” a voice sounded from the hallway a second before the door was thrown open.

“That’s enough, Liam.”

Reid turned around in his chair to see a man, whose entire existence screamed unimaginable wealth, step into the small room. His broad shoulders filled out his custom tailored suit, graying hair combed back, each strand held in place with the sheer pride of the man’s social stature.

“Who are you?” The Borja kid looked at the man with wide eyes, his breathing erratic from his unfulfilled outburst of emotion.

“A question I would also love to know the answer to,” Reid said as he stood from his chair to better get a look at the man who had interrupted his interrogation. Captain Gibson and James stood in the hallway behind him, looking flustered. James was glaring at the back of the man’s head.

I’m Francis Aldrich. I’m here to represent Mr. William Borja at the request of the Borja estate. Your Captain has all the appropriate paperwork.”

He made to walk further into the room, but Reid held his arm out to stop him, hand on the front of the expensive suit. The man, Aldrich, looked down at Reid’s hand with a raised eyebrow.

“A lawyer? Since when are terrorists afforded the right to representation? Maybe you need to brush up on the laws that have been passed in, oh I don’t know, the last two decades or so.”

“Detective,” Captain Gibson admonished from behind the lawyer.

“Captain,” Reid responded in kind, “the law is clear.” He pointed behind himself at William Borja. “This kid is ours.”

“Detective Reid,” Gibson’s voice was hard as granite, “remove yourself from the room now. This interview is over.”

Teeth grinding together, he looked from his Captain, to his suspect, and then to the lawyer. This final man he leveled with a glare. The lawyer stared back at him with a bored expression.

“Fine.” Removing his hand from the suit, he grabbed his folder from the table and pushed past the lawyer.

The lawyer brushed at the front of his suit with a hand, as if to remove a bit of dust or dirt.

“What the fuck, Captain?” he whispered as soon as the door to the interrogation room had closed.

James’s eyes darted between Reid and Gibson.

“Not here.” Gibson turned and walked away, leaving Reid and James no choice but to follow him.

“What the fuck?” Reid repeated, louder, once they were secured within the privacy of the Captain’s office. “That kid was about to break!”

“Oh can it, Reid!”

Reid shut his mouth at the Captain’s yell, an angry red flush stretching over the man’s bald head, lighting him up like a beacon.

“You think I’m not just as pissed about this turn of events as you are? Finally you two accomplish something in this case, and we can’t pursue it.”

“Why?”

Reid couldn’t recall a single instance in the last twenty years when a suspected terrorist was afforded the right to a lawyer, or any rights at all for that matter. Usually they were interviewed, and then executed. Wilkins had a zero tolerance policy when it came to any acts of sedition that anyone may be considering enacting against his administration.

“We don’t have a choice,” Gibson answered. “This order comes from the top.”

“The top?” Reid asked in disbelief. “The President?” He may have used the Borja family’s association with Wilkins to needle the kid during his interrogation, but he never believed that the man actually gave a shit about him.

“Know anyone else up there with him?”

“This doesn’t make sense, it’s his policy!”

“Why would President Wilkins care about what happens to some brown kid?” James asked. “No offense,” he added to Reid.

“Thanks,” Reid responded with a sardonic look at his partner.

James smirked and winked. “Anytime.”

“If I had to guess,” Gibson interjected, “I’d say it had something to do with their buckets of money. They’re half the reason he gained popularity so quickly when the new parties were coming up.” He looked at Reid and James. “Would you alienate the richest family in the union by killing their youngest son, were you the President?”

“Nah.”

“Suppose not.”

“Exactly,” he said. “We’re not completely cock-blocked. The kid may have a lawyer, but the arrest still stands, so he’s still ours for now. That was the best that I could get you.”

“For now?”

Reid was relieved to know that they would still be keeping custody, and was eager to continue with his interrogation once the lawyer was gone, but it sounded to him like their jurisdiction over the kid was temporary.

“I’m not about to attempt to make a guess on what other laws will be ignored in the face of that family’s immense wealth. Best we can do is keep working the case, and assume that no law is sacred when it comes to this kid. All interviews are to happen with the lawyer present, and attorney-client privilege will, unfortunately, be honored for this one. I mean it, you two.” He pointed a finger at them. “I don’t want to catch either of you sneaking off to listen at the intercom when Mr. Aldrich requests time with his client.”

“That’s a shame, I was thinking of doing exactly that,” James quipped.

Gibson scowled at him. “We’re going to have to go old school, Detectives.”

Reid schooled his features and glanced sideways at James, only to find the other man doing the same.

“Old school?” James asked, his lips twitching.

Reid turned to stare forward with determination, his eyes burning with effort as he pressed his lips together.

Gibson’s head turned red again.

“Get out of my office.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n,” James said with a salute.

“Old school, sir,” Reid nodded to the man and turned to open the office door.

“That phrase is old school,” James mumbled behind him.

“Out!”

They laughed as the door swung shut.

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29

An Arrest

Detective Reid

“How long have we been here?” James asked. He leaned back as he upended a bag of chips to pour the last of the remaining crumbs into his open mouth.

Reid grimaced, rolling his shoulder to try to relieve a stabbing pain in his back. “I don’t know. What time is it?”

James brushed a few errant bits of chips from the front of his shirt and tossed the empty bag into the backseat before lifting his left arm to check his wristwatch. “Looks like it’s five past I-can’t-believe-we’ve-been-watching-this-building-for-the-last-two-weeks-o’clock.”

He glowered at the redhead. He didn’t want to be sitting on the Senate Office Building anymore than James did, but his feeling that something was off about the Senator and his staff was all they had to go on at the moment. The audio tech had finally gotten back to them about the muffled voice they had recorded weeks ago, claiming a backlog for his tardiness. It was a man’s voice telling the Operator to hang up, but it led them nowhere without any sample to compare it to.

So far their stake out of the Senator and his staff had proved just as fruitless. The Senator went from home, to work, met his wife for dinner, and went home again. If he wasn’t the most uninteresting politician in D.C., he was certainly a contender for the top slot. His staff was equally uninteresting, if only because they did exactly what Reid would have expected.

Grant Cooper, the chief of staff to the Senator, worked longer hours than any of them, rarely leaving the building before midnight, only to return a few hours later to start a new day. He seemed to subsist on caffeine and information. That man had his hands in more pockets than Reid had in his entire wardrobe, but this wasn’t unusual behavior in the country’s capitol. Politicians had to know things to survive. Grant Cooper, and by extension Senator Ross, knew plenty.

The assistant was almost as boring as the Senator. She left by five most days, only staying later if the Senator also stayed late. She always went straight home, and stayed in her apartment until she had to leave for work the following morning. She didn’t visit anyone outside of work, and no one visited her. The most interesting thing about her was that she was to marry a member of the Barron estate, though that was no secret. It was literally front page news that the young Senator had finally chosen a bride, and pictures of Chance Barron and Vanessa Brown graced the cover of every magazine as the fated wedding approached. The Barron family were like royalty, and Reid wondered—not for the first time—why the man would choose to settle down with an anonymous woman from an unknown middle class family. What did this girl have to offer that the many prominent upper class women didn’t?

“Heads up, the secretary’s leaving for the day,” James said, ducking down in his seat despite this distance from the building. “On time, as usual.”

Reid watched Vanessa Brown emerge from the front entrance, talking on her phone. She smiled as she hung up the call, stowing her phone away before walking her usual after work route.

“What do you think she’s so happy about?” James asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Probably something about the wedding.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me. What could she see in that pompous ass, anyway?”

Reid smiled. James had been lamenting the woman’s engagement ever since it was announced in the papers.

“Fame, notoriety, wealth the likes of which you and I could never imagine?”

James grumbled something unintelligible beside him, and Reid laughed.

“Come on, man.” He clapped James on the shoulder. “Chin up. Plenty of fish in the sea and all that.”

“Whatever… Should we follow her today?”

“No. Looks like she’s heading for the train as usual. I don’t want to waste another night sitting outside of her apartment.”

“Fair enough.”

Reid looked back to the building. Senator Ross exited soon after his secretary and got into a large SUV. “These people really never change their routine, do they?”

The SUV pulled away.

“Alright, we’ve got some time before Cooper leaves for the day,” James said, leaning forward and turning the ignition on the car. The engine roared to life. “Where do you want to eat?”

“Wait.”

James looked over to where Reid was focused. Grant Cooper had just exited the building, several hours sooner than he usually would, and he wasn’t alone.

“Is that the Majority Leader with him?”

“Yeah,” Reid confirmed. The Senate Majority Leader, Henry Lawrence, was one of Wilkin’s top dogs in the government. Nothing was brought to the President without his approval first, and it was said that he was the brains behind much of the carnage of the early years of the party’s tenure.

“Dangerous man to rub elbows with.”

“Yeah. I wonder what they’re talking about.” Reid would have given anything to be closer to the two men, so that he might overhear a snippet of what they were discussing. Whatever it was, it seemed to have both of the men’s fullest attention, as they were leaning toward each other.

“No fucking way.”

James’s words gave voice to Reid’s thoughts. Right at that moment, when Henry Lawrence leaned forward to say something to Grant Cooper, the older man’s hand caressed that of the younger man in a gesture that was far too intimate to be considered anything but flirtatious. The last thing they saw before another black SUV pulled up to block their view was Grant Cooper smirking at the Senate Majority Leader.

“We’ve got to follow them,” James said, throwing the car in gear.

Reid was apt to agree with him. He didn’t much care about what adults did in the privacy of their bedrooms, but for one of the most prominent members of the party to partake in sexual activities that he himself had made illegal, it was an opportunity that was too good to pass up.

As James started to reverse from the spot they were parked, Reid’s phone rang.

“Yeah?”

“Detective,” a young man’s voice greeted, “you asked to be notified if any calls came through that could be possible Iris Collective activity.”

“Shit!”

“What?” James asked.

“Possible Collective activity.”

“Maybe it’s not?” His tone was hopeful, but his face cringed.

“What are the details?” Reid asked the dispatcher.

“A woman called to report that she saw a questionable group of individuals go into her neighbor’s house, the house being occupied by Stephen and Mable Cohen, according to the caller.”

“How long ago did this call come in?”

“Just a few minutes ago, sir.”

“Fuck.” Reid contemplated what to do for only a second. “Alright, send the address to my phone.”

“What? We have a sure thing right in front of us! They’re leaving!” James said as the SUV pulled out from the office building.

“They’ll still be gay tomorrow,” Reid said after hanging up on the dispatcher, and checked his messages for the address. “The Collective will be gone within an hour.”

“Ah, fuck!” James shook his steering wheel in frustration. “Fine! Let’s catch these bastards!” He slammed on the gas, the tires squealing on the asphalt as they were launched back out of the parking spot. They were thrown against their seats as he stopped the car and put it in drive, stomping the gas pedal again to propel them forward.

Reid flipped a switch on the dash, a siren blaring out of unseen speakers on the exterior of the car, and a red light behind the rearview mirror flashing in a bright rhythm.

The home wasn’t far, across Stanton Park and up 8th Street. With James’s driving, they arrived less than five minutes after leaving their stakeout spot. The car skidded to a stop in front of a nondescript row house, the front door sitting ajar. Reid and James pulled their guns from their holsters as soon as they exited the vehicle, jogging to the house, and up the front steps, as quietly as possible. They stopped outside the open door, and Reid’s heart pounded in his chest. He looked at James, who gave him a nod.

Slipping inside, Reid took the left, while James took the right. They cleared each room off the front hall, pointing their guns in as they turned each corner, until they reached the large living room at the back of the first floor. A pair of legs stuck out from behind a dark leather sofa.

“Watch my back,” Reid whispered.

James posted himself in the doorway, keeping an eye on the hall they had just come down, as well as the room Reid was venturing into.

He approached slowly, looking to his left and right for any places that someone could hide, and rounded the couch. A man lay face down on an ornate rug. Reid took one hand off of his weapon, glancing around the room as he felt the man’s neck. There was no pulse, and the skin of the corpse was cold.

“He’s dead,” he told James, who looked over at him when he spoke. The thundering noise of someone running down the stairs erupted above them.

“Shit!” James yelled, disappearing into the hallway. “We’ve got a runner!”

Reid stumbled in his hurry to stand and follow James, tripping over the legs of the corpse. He arrived in the hallway in time to see his partner slip out the front door as he chased whoever had appeared from the staircase. Racing for the door, the setting sun blinded him as he emerged from the home. Somehow, he made it down the steps without falling, and stopped.

“Captain said you might need backup.”

In front of him stood Howards and several other beat cops, their cruisers arranged on the street in an inverted V to cordon off the house, red and blue lights flashing bright. All of their guns were trained on a man who was on his knees on the asphalt, ankles crossed, and hands interlaced behind his head of dark curly hair.

James stood a foot from Reid, hands on his knees as he caught his breath.

“I had him,” James said between huffs of air.

“Yeah,” Howards said with a smirk, “and I’m sure you ace the physical every year.”

“Screw you, you old bastard,” James wheezed, straightening up and stretching his back with a pained expression.

Howards let out a single snort of laughter at James’s expense.

Reid put his gun back in its holster and walked around the officers until he was on the other side of the man kneeling on the ground. For the first time, he looked into one of the faces of the Iris Collective.

“He’s just a kid.”

The man stared up at him, expression blank. Reid had expected to see fear or anger on the face of anyone that they would catch from the elusive underground organization, but it wasn’t there. This man looked calm, unafraid of the consequences that he would soon be facing.

“Take him straight to the precinct,” Reid said, breaking eye contact with the man to address Officer Howards. “No detours.”

“Ah, Detective, you take all the fun out of my job.”

Howards returned his pistol to its holster and put handcuffs on the kneeling man, the other officers keeping their weapons trained on the suspect until he was secured.

The man’s eyes didn’t leave Reid’s until he was hoisted to his feet and led past him to be placed in the back of one of the cruisers. It gave him the creeps.

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28

A Tip

Vanessa

Vanessa sat at her desk in the Senator’s office suite, struggling to keep her attention on the thick bill in front of her. Page after page of legalese describing further ways that the government could subjugate the population wasn’t exactly the most stimulating reading material on its own, but it was especially dry when she was eager for the end of the work day to arrive.

She had checked the clock no less than six times in the last hour, but no matter how many times she glared at it, it refused to move faster. She checked her phone. Five minutes had gone by since the previous time she looked at it.

“Ahem.”

Her head snapped up. Grant was sitting at his desk, opposite hers, staring at her. He raised his eyebrows, turning his attention to her left. Following his gaze, she found Senator Ross staring down at her with a raised eyebrow. Her heart jumped into her throat. Had he asked her a question? His expectant look suggested that he had.

“I’m sorry?”

“I had the most interesting conversation with Senator Buschlen on the floor today,” he said in a casual tone, though his face remained impassive. “He’s taken on a new apprentice. You’ll never guess who.”

A shiver flowed over her as the blood drained from her face.

“Or maybe you would,” he amended, taking in her pale features. “Anyway, as it turns out, this young apprentice has recently become engaged to a young woman whose twenty-sixth birthday is in approximately three weeks. A young woman who happens to work in the building—this very office, in fact.”

She bowed her head to avoid his gaze. He cupped her chin with a gentle hand, lifting it so she would look at him again.

“Were you not going to tell me?”

His brows were drawn together, and his face held an emotion that she had never seen on it before: hurt. That Senator Ross, in all his power and authority, could be hurt by anything that she could do—or, in this case, fail to do—was unthinkable. Her eyes found Grant, who was still at his desk, watching the conversation with rapt attention.

“Don’t look at him.”

Her attention snapped back to Ross.

“I just…” she started, but changed direction given the fact that they were not alone. “Can we talk about this privately?”

“Oh, I already know all about it, sweetheart,” Grant said.

She didn’t take her eyes off of Ross, her face falling with the realization that he had told anyone else what Barron had done to her.

“Grant knows everything that happens in this building,” Ross said, as if that made any of this better for her. What else did Grant know? He couldn’t actually know everything, could he?

The Senator let go of her chin and stepped back, holding out an arm toward his open office door. She stood, happy to move the conversation to a more private location, even if the topic was pre-emptively tying her stomach in knots. She was reminded of his trip to her apartment. The man had a knack for inspiring dread in others, or maybe just her. He followed her in and shut the door.

“I told Grant,” he said, moving to stand in front of her, “because he cannot do his job for me if he isn’t kept abreast of everything that transpires in this office. I had to tell him about dismissing Barron from our team, and so I had to tell him the reason why. I can promise that he will never hold it against you.”

She crossed her arms over her stomach. “You seem sure.”

His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Do you believe him to be the type of person that would?”

“I don’t know…” She looked to his side, pouting like a child not getting their way. “I wouldn’t put it past most of the people in this government.”

“I suppose that’s a fair conclusion to come to, given the last two decades,” he said, “but if you trust me at all, then you can trust Grant in equal measure.”

She nodded. “I’d rather no one else knew about this.”

Ross sighed. “That will be difficult, as Barron has already told anyone who will listen about his upcoming nuptials. I’m told it will be… quite the affair.”

Her wide eyes finally made contact with his again. Why wasn’t she being informed of any of this? She knew the answer as soon as the question passed through her mind. She had been avoiding him as much as possible, including ignoring his phone calls and going back to a no-contact existence with her parents. Of course she hadn’t heard anything. Who was there to tell her, except for the man who was telling her now?

“I had no idea.”

“Of your engagement?”

“No, that I knew. I was lucky enough to visit my parents on the day that he petitioned them for my hand. It was the first weekend after… Anyway, I asked my father not to promise me to him, but it was too late. They had already signed the paperwork.”

“Do you want to kill him?”

She laughed at this, but her amusement died in an instant as she caught the look on Senator Ross’s face. “You’re joking, aren’t you?”

For a moment his face was as serious as she had ever seen it, no rage like he had displayed with Barron, and no pity. Then his eyes crinkled with a smile, and he chuckled.

“Of course,” he laughed. “Though it would solve things rather nicely, wouldn’t it?”

“It would,” she exhaled.

“Alas, I would likely lose my position, if not my life, were I to interfere with another man’s right to marry who he chooses.”

She nodded, humming in agreement.

“Sit with me.”

Ross turned the two chairs in front of his desk to face each other, and she sat in the one he offered to her. He waited until she was settled to take the other seat, unbuttoning his suit as he did so.

“What do you know about the Barron family?”

“Um…” she thought over the question for a moment. “Almost nothing. I know that they’re obscenely wealthy, and if Barron is anything to go by, they’re a large people.”

The Senator turned his head to the side as he laughed at her description. “Yes, that would be an accurate assessment.” He cleared his throat, squashing any lingering amusement. “What you don’t know is that they’re one of the most influential families in the country, second only to the Borjas in wealth. While the Borjas are double the wealth of the Barrons, the Barrons have more than ten times the wealth of the next family in the hierarchy. They have the ears of several prominent members of Congress, Wilkins’s cabinet, and Wilkins himself. There is nothing that you or I could hope to do to stop this wedding from happening. Do you know anything about your upcoming nuptials?”

She did know about the wealth of the Barrons in relation to the Borjas, given that their presumed dead son was one of her best friends, but she couldn’t tell Ross that. “No, I know nothing about the wedding. I haven’t spoken to Barron, or my parents since they sold me off to him.”

Pity flashed over his features before he schooled them and nodded in understanding. “A reaction one could hardly blame you for. Barron is not one to waste time. He’s scheduled your wedding for the evening of your birthday.”

“What? That’s in less than three weeks!” Her heart hammered against her ribcage.

“I know.” Leaning forward, he covered her hands with one of his. “Stop that.”

His demand shattered the glass box that her panic had trapped in. “Stop what?”

“Ever since he attacked you, you rub at your right hand whenever he’s mentioned. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

She looked down. His thumb was ghosting across a spot on her right hand, the skin a burning red color. It marked where she could still feel Barron’s touch, where he had grabbed her at the moment she had tried to make him leave. “I… didn’t realize.”

“That’s why I’ve told you,” he whispered, giving her hand a comforting squeeze before letting go and leaning back into his own space.

“I’ll never stop being confused by you.”

“Me?” His eyes narrowed. “I’m the least confusing person in this building.”

She snorted. “Hey, you said you weren’t good at jokes.”

His shoulders bounced with silent laughter and he shook his head at her. “So, this wedding,” he continued, bringing the conversation back on topic. “As I said before, it’s going to be quite the affair.”

“I don’t know what that means,” she admitted, hopelessly ignorant of the world she was about to dive into. Her family wasn’t poor, but they were far from the level of society that the Barrons lived in. Comparatively, she wasn’t sure that people like the Barrons even lived in reality.

“It means guests, lots of guests. Almost everyone from the Senate will be there, some from the House, the entire Cabinet, and of course, President Wilkins.”

The air of the room thickened. “I didn’t think he could be bothered to attend something like a wedding.”

“I can promise you that is not the case. He will be there, as will every noteworthy newspaper in the country, some from other countries, and even the less savory publications. I suggest you avoid reading those ones for the next few months, if you can. Your life is about to get very public. Every victory, every fault and failure, and every move you make is now fodder for the press. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

Her first thought was the Collective, Eddie and Liam. How could she possibly continue her work with their organization if everyone was watching her and waiting for her to slip up? Maybe after the excitement died down, though that couldn’t be what Ross was referring to. “Will I still be able to work here?”

“I don’t think that Barron will allow it, no.”

Her head spun with all the information that Dixon had given her in this short conversation. Boiling anger steamed the cold fear that had already been a near constant presence since Barron’s proposal. “It shouldn’t be up to him. What I want should matter.”

“I don’t disagree,” he responded, his pity returning. Somehow, pity from this man felt worse than when she received the same from Eddie and Liam.

“You’re sure you can’t kill him?”

She was only half joking, but Dixon laughed anyway.

“I wish I could,” he said, a dark look clouding his eyes that suggested that he really did wish he could kill the pompous bastard. A second later, his eyes cleared. “Alright, I’ve kept you long enough.”

Dixon stood from his chair, turning it to face his desk once again, and she followed his lead, doing the same with hers. When she turned back to face him, he placed his hands on her shoulders and squeezed with gentle pressure.

“I know it may not seem like it right now, but you’re going to be alright.”

He was right about the first half, at least. Her current future did not look like a future worth having. She had to trust in her friends, in the Collective. They had a plan, and it would work. If it didn’t, there were other paths out of a hated life, though she didn’t tell Eddie or Liam that.

“Thank you, Dixon,” she smiled, it was forced and disappeared as quickly as it came, “for everything.”

He stared at her for a moment longer and then cleared his throat, patting her shoulders one last time before sending her on her way.

She gathered her things from her desk and left the office, hurrying down the wide hall of the building. Once she was a safe distance from Dixon’s office, she slowed her pace and pulled out her phone to call Eddie’s line at the Collective. It rang once before an arm was around her. Hitting the lock button to disconnect the call, she looked up at the person whose arm was currently weighing down her shoulders. The icy blue eyes of Chance Barron stared back at her.

Her first instinct was to pull away, which he was anticipating if his secure hold of her was anything to go by. She was effectively glued to his side.

“Hello, my darling fiancée,” he said, loud and with a bright smile. “Have you missed me?”

“No.” Her tone was braver than she felt.

He laughed as if she had told a brilliant joke, steering her into his open office suite. “Leave us, Tracy,” he directed to his secretary. “My fiancée and I have much to discuss.”

The secretary jumped up from her desk without a word. Vanessa tried to beg her to stay with her eyes, but the other woman stared at the floor as she exited the room, closing the door to the hall once she was through.

Barron wasted no time in pushing her against one of the desks as soon as the secretary was no longer around to see them. He kissed her like a man starved.

“No, Barron,” she said between his kisses, and felt a glimmer of pride beneath her fear when her voice didn’t waver. “Please, stop.”

His kisses slowed, and his grip on her loosened, though his arms stayed fixed around her waist. As he caught his breath, he rested his forehead against hers. “Don’t worry, beautiful. I’m not going to take you here.”

There was little relief to accompany his reassurance.

“Now that you’re mine, I have no desire to see you soiled before our wedding night.

Nausea roiled in her stomach. She swallowed hard to avoid vomiting on the man. “Then what do you want?”

He laughed, leaning back to look her in the eye. “I love your fire.”

“That’s good,” she said, not bothering to hide her displeasure, “because it’s all I have to give you.”

He smiled brighter and stepped back to allow her to stand without the desk pressing into her lower back, his arms falling away from her body. “You’re scheduled for a dress fitting tomorrow. I’ll send a car to pick you up in the morning.”

“I’m not going to that. I’ll wear something I already have.”

Grabbing a lock of her hair, he let the strands run between his fingers, much as he had at the Prime Minister’s dinner party. When he reached the end of it, his hand came to rest on her collarbone, relaxed fingers encircling her neck. His pulse beat a smooth rhythm on her trachea through the pad of his thumb. “As much as I’d love to see you in that blue gown again, with how it put your nipples on display for me…”

His other hand ghosted over her breast and she jumped away from him, slamming back into the desk. A sharp pain exploded in her back, and she was sure there would be a bruise to show for it.

The smile that came over his face at her reaction was one of immense satisfaction. His hand was still held in the empty air where her body had just been. She forced herself to take slow, measured breaths as he continued.

“My bride will be wearing something more tasteful at my wedding.”

“Fine,” she responded through gritted teeth.

“Good girl. You can go now.”

With that, he walked into his personal office off of the staff suite, ignoring her. She raced for the hallway, not bothering to care about the door slamming into a bookcase as she flung it open.

Taking quick steps to distance herself from the office, she had to wrestle her breath back from the adrenaline that had stolen it from her lungs. Pulling out her phone she dialed Eddie again. He answered on the second ring.

“You’re late,” he said, his annoyance plain to hear.

“Sorry. I ran into Barron in the hallway.”

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” she lied. “He just wanted to inform me of the mandatory wedding dress fitting he’ll be sending me to in the morning.”

“Ugh, I hate him.”

Eddie’s disgust made her smile. “Me too.”

“Ok, we’re late enough as it is. Are you ready?”

She sighed. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Patching you through.”

The line clicked, and then started to ring.

“Five hundred and first dispatch, dispatcher eighteen speaking, what is the nature of your emergency?”

“I’m not sure if I’ve called the right number, but I was just walking my dog, and I saw an unsavory group of characters go into my neighbor’s house. I wouldn’t question it, but these people didn’t look like the sort that one expects to see in an upscale neighborhood like this—”

“Where are you—”

“Not that I’m one to judge, you know. I just can’t help but to notice, and I don’t think my neighbor is the type to hang with the wrong sort of people, though I don’t know, she might be. Who knows what anyone is up to in their own home, really?”

“Ma’am, if you could—”

“For all I know, she could be some kind of criminal—”

“Madam!”

“I beg your pardon!”

“I’m sorry ma’am, but I need you to tell me the address that you saw the individuals going into.”

“Oh, it was that Mable Cohen’s house. I’m not one to gossip, but I’ve heard whispers that she’s a bit of a tart. You don’t think she’s having some kind of sex party, do you, and while her husband is home?”

“I don’t know ma’am. We’ll pay her a visit and find out. Can I get your name, please?”

“Oh no, I don’t want to get involved.”

Vanessa hung up the phone and smiled. That was pretty good, if she did say so herself.

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27

A New Plan

Vanessa

“We’ve been found out.”

Vanessa wasted no time with pleasantries as she entered the headquarters, only there was no one there to hear her declaration. Eddie and Liam were not in the kitchen, the dining area, or the living room of the apartment. Approaching the bedroom door, the sound of a shower could be heard behind the wood, as well as the two men giggling. A moan was quick to follow.

“Oh my god.” She covered her ears with the palms of her hands to shield herself from the sounds of what she assumed was something she did not want to be party to. She had heard enough of their fooling around in their college days to last her a lifetime. Walking back to the entrance, she removed one hand from her head and pulled the door open wide, slamming it back in place with a loud bang that shook the floor. A scuffle came from the bedroom, accompanied by muffled voices and a squeak as the water was turned off. Smiling to herself, she took a seat at the kitchen table, facing the bedroom, and crossed her arms as she waited. The bedroom door was opened a few minutes later to reveal the two men, hair sopping wet and two identical sheepish grins on their faces.

“Sorry,” Liam said. “We weren’t expecting company.”

“Clearly.”

“Uh,” Eddie said, avoiding her eyes and clearing his throat, “so, why are you here?”

“We’ve been found out,” she said, repeating her earlier words.

“What? What do you mean? By who?” Eddie’s grey eyes bore into her, all embarrassment of his bedroom activities forgotten. He parked his chair at the table.

Liam went to the kitchen, filling three glasses with water. She waited for him to finish passing out the drinks before she continued.

“Detectives James and Reid showed up at my work today. They were looking for Senator Ross, believing him to be in danger.”

Eddie’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve been keeping an eye on them. There’s nothing in their case files to suggest that they were looking at anyone in the government, let alone Ross.”

She flushed. “Yeah, that’s my fault, I think.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was the day of the execution… and Barron.” Her fingers spun her glass in place on the tabletop. “I called Reid right after I ran out of the apartment. I honestly didn’t remember it after everything at my parent’s. I wasn’t able to say much, just a few words while I was freaking out, but I definitely said the word ‘senator’ at some point.”

“That would do it,” Eddie sighed, scratching at his head with both hands and leaving his hair a mess. “It’s fine. They were going to catch up to us eventually.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, guilt like acid in her chest.

“Stop it. Nothing that happened on that day is your fault.”

She disagreed.

“Shit,” Liam said, leaning back in his chair. “What was it like, seeing them in person?”

“Well, Reid practically started interrogating me right there, so I’d say it was pretty terrifying.” She huffed out a breath. “It took him maybe a minute to be convinced that he knew me in some way. I think it’s only a matter of time before he realizes that I’m the Operator.”

“Yeah, but he won’t have proof,” Eddie said.

“I really don’t think that’s going to matter to him, do you? His family’s safety depends on him stopping us. If he thinks he’s got one of us, he’s not going to back down.”

They lapsed into an uneasy silence as they considered the implications of one of them being caught by the fervent detective. She had no confidence in her ability to withstand a real interrogation by the Detective. He already had a handle on how to push her buttons in a phone call without knowing anything real about her. In person would be a whole new level, and one where he was far more experienced than she was.

“That would mean the end of the Iris Collective,” Liam said, giving voice to what she had been thinking. Eddie nodded absently in agreement.

“How is it not the end already?” A cold wave hollowed out her insides. “The cops are literally at our door. The Secret Service, because of me, now know that someone is targeting Senator Ross. They’ll have doubled his and his wife’s security by now. We’ve lost four of our people, again because of me, and Chance fucking Barron will be an even bigger nuisance once we’re married. There’s too much happening, on too many fronts. Maybe we should just call it now. Going after Mrs. Ross was a mistake.”

Eddie gave her a hard look. “No. We’ve known you would be forced to get married for years. One of the first things we did,” he indicated himself and Liam, “was make a plan to keep you safe when the time came. We’ll get you out of here.”

She wanted it. She wanted it more than anything she had ever wanted before in her entire life. The chance to disappear forever from this place, and from Barron, was like something from a dream that seemed too good to be true. It filled her thoughts during the day whenever she had a few seconds to let her mind wander. She, Eddie, and Liam would run away to a different country, one that wasn’t under the influence of Wilkins or any other dictator. They would live a life that was free and open, a life without fear. But the longer she thought about it, the more sure she became that she couldn’t take that road.

“A few years ago, when we first decided to fight—to really fight—we promised each other something. Do you remember?” She looked at Eddie, and then Liam.

“No, Vanessa.” Liam said. “Those were idealistic proclamations from before we really knew what we were getting into. We’re talking about reality now.”

“Don’t, Liam. Nor you, Eddie,” she added as the other man opened his mouth, his cheeks flushed red in anger. “I promised, the same as you, that I would do everything I could to stand against this system. We all swore the same oath to fight the laws that Wilkins put in place, even if it killed us. I’m not dead yet, and neither are you.”

“We’re not talking about us leaving,” Eddie said, “just you.”

“Are you kidding?” She leaned her palms on the table. “So you’ll just replace me? My position with Ross is more secure than ever, and we have no way of knowing if you’d ever find someone inside the government to work with you again. I’d rather go to bed with someone I hate than throw away everything that we’ve accomplished so far. Marrying Barron would afford me even more access to the government, including to Wilkins. When would we ever get another chance to get this close to Wilkins again?”

“I don’t give a shit about getting close to Wilkins,” Eddie sighed, rubbing a hand over his face, “or Ross. This isn’t a game anymore.”

She sat back. “I never thought it was.”

“You know what he means,” Liam added.

“How unusual to see you stepping out of your zone of neutrality,” she said, looking Liam up and down.

“Oh, stop,” he admonished. “Why are you acting like this? You don’t want to marry him anymore than we want you to.”

She looked away. “You’re right, I don’t, but I also don’t want to leave. I thought I would want to run, I really did, but I can’t. I can’t do it.” She looked back at them. “I know it doesn’t make sense, and I’m sorry if I can’t make you understand. I barely understand it myself. I just know that I have to stay. I have to fight. If not for me, then for everyone else in the same position. I have no choice over my life, my body, or who I’ll be allowed to marry. Don’t you dare try to take this decision from me as well.”

Eddie hung his head, and Liam’s eyes were red as he looked at her.

“Ok,” he whispered.

“No.” Eddie looked at Liam like he had grown a second head. “It’s not. None of this is ok.”

“Eddie…”

“No, Vanessa. I can’t let you do this.”

“It’s my choice, Eddie!”

“And you’re making the wrong one!”

She glared at him, chest heaving, and he glared back at her.

“I’m not just going to sit here and let that man rape you, whenever he wants, for who knows how long.”

His voice was quiet when he said it, but it still hurt as if he had branded the word into her skin. It brought the ghost of Barron’s hands back to her body, and she shook her head to try to dispel the memory. He was right about what would happen to her, but didn’t he think that she already knew that would be the case? She knew what she was in for with Barron, and it certainly wasn’t something that she looked forward to in any sense. Even still, she couldn’t give up the fight for the threat of one man when there were thousands more like him, doing the same and worse to other women. At least if she stayed she could still make a difference, however small it may be. Eddie’s face was hardened with his resolve, his plan to ignore her written in his features.

“If you do anything to take away my choice in this, I will never speak to you again.”

His eyes were glassy, his chin trembling as he held her gaze. “I can’t let this happen to you.”

She smiled, her own eyes burning. “Then you better use that big brain of yours and think of something that doesn’t involve me leaving forever, because I’m not going to do that.”

“It’s decided, then.” Liam clapped his hands together, causing her and Eddie to jump. He glared at each of them in turn. “It’s time to stop arguing, you two are worse than siblings. We know the problems that we face, and we know the solutions that we want for these problems, however impossible it may seem to achieve them.” He looked at Eddie. “You want her to run,” he looked at Vanessa, “and you’re not going to. It’s time to come up with a new plan.”

“Thank you, Liam.”

“This doesn’t mean I agree with what you want to do,” he responded.

“Right,” she mumbled, slouching in her seat.

Eddie stared hard at the table, picking at a spot where the varnish was peeling. “What if this was the end?”

He didn’t look at them, his words far away, and she wasn’t certain if he knew that he had spoken aloud.

“It’s not,” she responded. “We’ll think of something.”

Eddie began laughing.

Liam turned to her with a worried expression at the same time that she turned to him, and she knew the same look was reflected on her own face. Eddied laughter continued, and she wondered if the stress had finally gotten to him, if he had finally tumbled over the edge of sanity.

“I know,” Eddie said, one hand on his stomach while the other wiped the tears from his eyes, “but what if it was?”

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26

I Know You

Detective Reid

Reid and James walked through the halls of the Senate office building in silence. It didn’t take long to figure out exactly which Senator that the Operator must have been referring to. Only one team of the Secret Service had made an arrest in the last week, and that team was assigned to Senator Dixon Ross. Unfortunately, the four people that had been arrested were executed before he and James even knew about it, made a spectacle for the public to see what happens to traitors and insurrectionists in this country. James tried requesting the information gathered in the interrogation of the prisoners, but had been met with a swift refusal. It didn’t surprise Reid that the Secret Service didn’t want to cooperate, they were infamous for playing things close to the vest, but it meant that a more traditional route of gathering information had to be taken.

There hadn’t been a display of violence like that on the television since the early days of the Fundamentalist regime, back when the people had tried to fight back against the new government that was instituting so many new freedom-destroying policies. The protests had been arranged a few weeks in advance, and every organization big and small had signed up to march on the capitol. Those who couldn’t make the main event had gathered in all the cities and towns in the nation. It was the single biggest day of resistance in their history, and he was one of many beat cops that had been conscripted to keep the peace as the people marched. It had seemed like any other protest, until the killing started. He still didn’t know who started shooting first, the police or the protesters. All he knew for sure in the first few minutes was the screaming, the bodies on the ground, and the smell of blood and gunpowder in the air. He tried to help some of the people that were bleeding out in the street, but had soon been pulled out of the carnage with the other officers. It wasn’t until he had stumbled back into his precinct with the others, their uniforms covered in blood, dirt, and soot, that their commanding officers had told them what was really happening.

They had gathered around the television in the bullpen and watched in horror as, for over an hour, citizens in protests across the country fell in a hail of bombs and bullets. Eventually, the screen stayed fixed on the sea of bodies in the street, and nothing would happen for so long that they would think they were looking at a picture instead of a video feed. Then a survivor would try to stand up among the fallen. A shot would echo from the screen, a spray of blood, and the survivor would collapse on top of the rest of the dead. At some point, there was no more movement, but the occasional flutter of a flag in the dark.

For the rest of the night and into the next morning, the public would watch as the blood flowed like a river, gathering in the gutters, and trickling into the storm drains. President Wilkins described it as a necessary measure against the terrorists that wanted to stop the country from healing after the horrors of the Greater Depression. Everyone knew it was bullshit. And, try as he might, Reid still couldn’t remember if he had fired a shot on that day.

“Hey.”

“Hmm?” He shook the memory from his mind and turned to James.

“Get out of your head, we’re here,” James said, rapping his knuckles on the ornate office door that stood before them.

The door opened a crack to reveal the face of a young woman with brown hair. When she caught sight of them, her face dropped for a split second before she gave them a polite smile. It was so fast that he would have missed it if he had blinked at the wrong moment. He wondered immediately what this girl had to hide, a hazard of his job.

James was smiling at her, his expression growing more amused as the seconds ticked by.

“Yes?” The woman looked to both of them in turn. “Can I help you?”

Reid cleared his throat. “Detective Charles Reid, my partner—”

“Jamison,” James interrupted, holding his hand out to the woman with an earnest expression.

“Oh,” she said. She smiled wide as she further opened the door to shake James’s proffered hand.

Reid scowled at his partner.

“Pleasure,” James smirked as he held the woman’s hand and eye contact.

He hated to break up the love fest, well no, he didn’t.

“We’re here to speak with Senator Ross.”

She dropped James’s hand. “Sorry, Detectives. He’s not in at the moment. May I ask what this is regarding?”

“No, you may not.” Reid narrowed his eyes at the girl.

“Sorry about my partner,” James said, glaring at him before smiling at the girl again, “he seems to have left his manners at home today. When are you expecting him back, Miss…?”

“Brown. Vanessa Brown. I apologize, Detectives, but I’m not at liberty to discuss the Senator’s schedule with anyone outside of the legislative branch, or the President’s office. If you’d like to leave me your card, I’ll be sure to let him know that you stopped by.”

“Here,” James said, pulling a business card from an inner pocket of his coat. “That’s my personal number. Feel free to use it.”

“Thanks,” she said with a shy smile, blushing as she took the card from him.

She moved to shut the door to the office, but Reid lunged forward at the last second to place his foot in the way, pushing it back open. The girl jumped away with a yelp.

“Detective!”

“Reid!”

He ignored the indignant responses from the girl and James.

“I’ve met you before,” he said, sure that there was something familiar about this woman. “Where?”

“Well, I certainly don’t know!”

She tried again to shut the door, but he held fast.

“No, I know I know you.”

“I guess it depends on how often you’re in the building,” she said, her knuckles turning white where she was gripping the door. “I’m here all the time.”

She was lying to him, he knew it. As he opened his mouth to question her more, a voice cut him off.

“Good morning, detectives. To what do we owe the… pleasure of this visit?”

Reid stepped back and spun on his heel to face the interrupter. Senator Ross and the man they knew to be his chief of staff stood in the hallway, both looking down at him with undisguised disdain.

“Senator Ross.” James reached out a hand to the Senator, who chose to ignore the gesture. He dropped his hand with a smile. “I’m Detective Jamison, this is my partner, Detective Reid.” He waved toward Reid. “We’re here to talk to you about the incident that occurred several nights ago.”

Reid watched the Senator’s eyes dart to the girl for a blink before returning to his partner. Interesting.

“That incident was already taken care of by my security team. If you’ll excuse me, Detectives.”

Senator Ross pushed between he and James to enter the office. His chief of staff stopped a few inches in front of James, looking him up and down with one eyebrow raised.

“They still hire micks in the city, do they?”

“Aha ha, that’s a good one,” James responded.

The man smirked and pushed his way between them to follow the Senator.

“Senator Ross,” Reid yelled into the office, his hand on the door again. “We have reason to believe that your life is in danger.”

The girl stared at him, mouth open in her shock. She backed away as the Senator reappeared from within the office, glancing between the two of them. She looked frightened, while the Senator smiled.

“I’m sure the Secret Service are more than capable of handling it, Detective.” He said the title like it was the punchline of a joke. “I thank you for your concern, but I have work to do.” Grabbing the door, he looked pointedly at Reid’s hand, which was still holding it open.

Reid let go and stepped back.

“Goodbye, gentlemen.”

The door shut in their face with a snap. Reid glared at it until James pulled on his arm.

“Well, that happened,” James said, looking at the door with raised eyebrows before turning to leave. “Come on, let’s go before you do anything else to sabotage the case.”

“Me?” He jogged a few steps to catch up to the other man. “Says the guy who was hitting on the Senator’s secretary.”

“I can’t help it if I have good taste,” James laughed. “Besides, you’re the one having secret intimate conversations with the Operator.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Uh huh, sure.”

He stopped and grabbed James’s coat to stop him too. “I’m serious. It’s not like that. I love my wife.”

James held up his hands. “Yeah, of course you do. It’s a joke, Reid.”

He let go of the coat after a pause, and they started walking again.

“Think she’ll call?” James asked in a suspiciously light tone.

Reid laughed. “Probably not.”

They exited the building, through the crowds of busy governmental bees, and walked toward James’s car.

“So, you and his secretary,” James started after a minute of silence, “anything I should worry about there?” The redhead’s voice was filled with amusement as he asked.

His face must have shown his annoyance, as James grinned when he looked at him “It’s amazing how your jokes just keep going.”

“It is pretty good,” James agreed. “But really, if you’ve already got something going on there…”

“Shut up,” he said, shoving him as they stopped at the intersection. The car was in a car park on the other side.

James laughed and hit the button for the crosswalk.

“No,” Reid said, returning to the subject of the secretary, “there’s just something familiar about her. I don’t know, probably saw her on the metro once. I know one thing for sure, though.”

“And what’s that?”

“We’re going to be keeping an eye on this Senator. There’s something off here.”

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25

Burnt Bridges

Vanessa

She dragged herself, again, up the staircase of the old apartment building, dread burrowing deeper with each step she took that brought her back to the fourth floor landing. She had run half the journey here, until her muscles were ready to give out, and walked the rest. The regret for neglecting to grab a coat before leaving her parents was quick to materialize. The flowing fabric of her pants provided no warmth whatsoever, the sweater only marginally better. Not only her hands, but her entire body, quaked with violent shivers. She wasn’t sure if it was only the cold that shook her. Stepping onto the landing at the top of the stairs, their voices were plain to hear through the closed door.

“She’s not answering.”

“Try again!”

“I’ve tried seven times, Liam! She’s not answering!”

“If you hadn’t screamed at her—”

“Me? You’re the one who let her through the door!”

“I’m going after her.”

“You can’t!”

“I don’t care! I’m going after her!”

The door in front of her flew open, the light from the apartment spilling out onto the dingy landing and lighting up her visage like a specter. Liam was halfway through the door when he froze, his eyes wide with surprise and worry. He took a step toward her when he noticed her shaking, but stopped short when she flinched. Moving back a half step, he held his hands out to his sides, surrendering to her constitution.

“Vanessa,” he whispered, his voice filled with a degree of love and care that she had failed to find at her childhood home.

The power of his single spoken word stung her eyes anew with the pain of fresh tears filling her already spent ducts. Her chin quivered as she fought for control over her emotions, forcing herself to take slow, measured breaths. She took a careful step forward, and another, until she was directly in front of him. He held still, waiting. Reaching out, the cabling of his sweater was soft as she pinched the stitches between her fingers. Liam. She lent forward, letting her forehead rest against his chest, and closed her eyes. Small noises escaped her as she held her breath in an effort to stop herself from sobbing. She was so tired of crying.

His arms, cautious and gentle, lifted to encircle her shoulders. When she made no move to pull away, his hold on her tightened, hand coming up to cradle the back of her head like a parent would a child.

Fingers wrapping around handfuls of his sweater, she held on and tried not to lose herself again.

“It’s ok,” he murmured. “I’ve got you. You can let go now.”

One sharp inhale, and she was crying, his words the final push to send her over the cliff of her despair. As she keened in the dark, dusty hall, Liam’s strength kept her from sinking too deep.

It took several minutes for her to calm down, but eventually her wailing quieted, and she pulled back from his warm embrace. He held her hand, leading her into the apartment. Eddie was waiting a few feet from the door, his own eyes red and worried as he watched her.

“I’m so sorry, Eddie.”

His face was pinched and pale, lips pressing together as he looked down at his legs and shook his head. He took a few breaths, wiping his eyes and clearing his throat before looking back up at her. “Clearly there’re some things that we aren’t aware of,” he said. “Let’s sit.”

She followed him to the table, where the chair she had overturned earlier was standing on its feet once again. She sat and waited for them to get situated. This time, they didn’t face her like someone accused, but surrounded her like family. Their faces were open, displaying the care they had for her. Her chest ached to be with them again, to find a way to fill in the chasm that she had struck into their trust by her actions with Senator Ross. And so, after a deep inhale to steel her nerves, she recounted the events of the last few days to the best of her ability. From Barron’s assault and Senator Ross’s impeccably timed rescue, to her unease over the Senator’s familiarity with her apartment building, and finally, her visit to her parent’s home and Barron’s ill-favored proposal. They listened to her speak without interruption. The only movement anyone made was as she told them about her experience with Barron in the office suite. Eddie had reached across the table to offer her his hand. Grateful for his comfort, she didn’t let go until she was finished, by which time his grip on her fingers had become uncomfortably tight.

“Shit.” Liam stared at the table with a blank face.

“I’ll kill him,” Eddie said.

“Settle down,” Liam admonished. “If she couldn’t take him, you definitely can’t.

Vanessa smiled in spite of herself.

“So, that’s why you saved Ross,” he continued, “because he saved you.”

Her smile faded, and she didn’t respond. It wasn’t a question.

“Oh… Oh, shit,” Eddie sighed, closing his eyes in tired resignation.

Liam opened his hand to her, and she found that she was able to reach out and accept his contact easier than she could before. The revelation brought warmth to her heart.

“I’m so sorry, Vanessa,” he said. “We shouldn’t have assumed.”

“No, you didn’t do anything that I wouldn’t have done in your shoes. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I’m sorry I stopped Ross from arriving on time.”

“No to that as well,” Eddie interjected. “He saved you. We owe him. I should have called it off when I learned that you had gotten into the car.”

Silence fell over the table, the three of them a mess of regrets over the events of the last week. Despite Eddie’s words, she still felt that the blame for it all rested squarely on her shoulders. If she hadn’t gotten into the car, or had tried to find a moment to contact them, then four of their own wouldn’t have been executed that morning. She still wanted to believe that it was all some bad dream, that at any moment she would wake up and realize that none of it had been real. Barron hadn’t attacked her, she never sabotaged the Collective, and her betrayal never led to the first arrest and loss of any of their people. But most of all, she wished that her parents hadn’t signed away her life to the one man that she could never stand to be near again.

“What do we do now?”

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24

A Mother’s Love

Vanessa

Curled into herself on the damp asphalt, her hair lay on the ground, where the icy cold was seeping into the locks. She couldn’t believe what she had just said to the detective. Yet another obstacle put into the path of the Collective by her stupidity. She shouldn’t have called the man in her state, she should have known better. Rising onto her knees, the pebbles of asphalt that were on her palms scratched against the brick as she used the wall of the building to pull herself to her feet. It was like dragging herself out of a mud pit, the dirt clinging on like a second skin, weighing her down with a level of exhaustion she had never experienced before.

As she emerged from the alley, she stopped on the sidewalk. The entrance to the Collective’s headquarters was shut. For a moment she contemplated going back inside, but then she remembered their anger, and the disgust that her betrayal had caused, theirs or hers. Feet dragging on the cement, she walked away from the building.

Unsure of where to go, she wandered down street after street in the old city. Businesses and houses passed her by, muted grey watercolors on the edges of her vision as she journeyed down the endless concrete paths. Mothers and their children avoided her, crossing through traffic or ducking into buildings. She didn’t mind. She would avoid her too, given the chance.

An hour into this aimless wandering, and by the time that even her thighs were numb to the core from the cold, the buildings had changed from the derelict to the splendid. Familiar sights appeared with each corner she turned: a school she used to go to, the porch where she had her first kiss. Whatever happened to that boy? It was a well worn path, filled with memories that only surfaced now that she was here again, and she followed it to its conclusion. Climbing the steps of a modest home of pale brick, identical to every other home on the block, she was pulled forward by the blissful ignorance of childhood. She rang the bell, no longer having a key. A muffled six note chime rang out behind the door, and a moment later it was opened to reveal a slight older woman.

She was clean and polished in her cream colored blouse and flowing pants, carrying herself with a level of importance that Vanessa could never hope to aspire to. Hair, a deep brown that was streaked with grey, fell over her shoulders in a beautiful wave to frame her shocked face.

“Vanessa?”

She said nothing as she stared at the woman for a moment. After everything, she still felt the clench in her chest, the desire to love and be loved. A sob escaped her as her face crumbled.

“Mom.”

Her mother rushed forward, ushering her into the entryway of the home, shutting the door behind them.

“What are you doing here? What happened? Oh, you’re a mess.”

Clucking over her like a distressed hen, the woman held up a damp strand of Vanessa’s hair. To her mortification, the clump of hair had dirt and some tiny rocks within the tangles. Her mom tutted in disapproval.

“Come on, this won’t do. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Vanessa let herself forget why four years had passed since she had last spoken to her parents as her mother led her up the stairs of her childhood home and drew a hot bath. She needed this, if only for a short while. Her fingers were numb, refusing to cooperate enough to undo the buttons at the front of her coat. After several attempts, and only one button being released, she gave up and dropped her arms, allowing her mother to help her undress. The steaming bathwater burned her skin as she sank into the gleaming clawfoot tub in the large, pristine bathroom.

Unlike the bath in her apartment, this one was big enough to submerge her entire body, and the oils floating on top of the water smelled like a meadow. Slowly, her muscles and joints thawed, until even her bones seemed to relax. She sighed and leaned the back of her head against the rim of the tub. Her mother bustled around the tiled room, removing her soiled clothes from the floor, and cleaning the dirt she had tracked onto the gleaming tile. Strange, of all the things, she had forgotten how clean everything was here.

Dirty clothes in hand, and held at a distance, her mother left the room. She returned a few minutes later with fresh clothes. The pants were hung from a hook on the door, while a sweater and undergarments were set, neatly folded, onto a white tufted bench that sat against one wall.

“Let me help you,” the older woman said, grabbing an expensive bottle of shampoo from the marble countertop.

Vanessa put up no protest as her mother scrubbed her hair clean. She had learned long ago not to question the woman when she was on a mission. If mother wanted to pamper her today, she wasn’t going to complain.

Once clean, skin blushed red from the intensity of her mother’s scrubbing, she dried off and put on the clothes that were supplied. Everything was cream. Cream slacks with wide legs that waved like a pleasant summer breeze when she walked, and a soft cream turtleneck sweater with a thin delicate knit. It clung to her body enough to be attractive, while avoiding being immodest. Even the bra and panties she was given were of the same golden white color. The clothes felt exquisite on her skin, of a higher quality than she could afford for herself, but they itched with the memory of overbearing expectations.

Her mother guided her to sit on a stool in front of the vanity. In the mirror, her hair was saturated with a sweet smelling product, dried, and styled. A relaxed wave, which cascaded over one shoulder like a waterfall of shining, silky chocolate. With a simple application of blush and mascara, her mother deemed her worthy of being allowed into the rest of the house, a perfect doll to decorate her parent’s perfect home.

They descended the stairs together, and Vanessa turned to head for the kitchen. Her mother grabbed her arm to stop her.

“You don’t think I got you all done up to hide away, do you?”

Of course, she forgot. Her parents never could go a single weekend without entertaining guests when she was younger.

“No, mom. I don’t want to socialize right now. Tell dad to come to the kitchen if he wants to say hello.”

Rather than let her go, her mom linked an arm with hers. “Nonsense,” she said, “he will be so happy to see you home. You couldn’t have come on a better day.”

She had no time to wonder what her mother meant by her words, or the excitement in her tone, as the woman dragged her through a set of double doors into the sitting room of the home.

“Look who’s here!”

The cheerful tone of her mother’s pronouncement died in her ears as she took in the scene in front of her.

Her father, dressed smartly in gray slacks and a light sweater, was sitting in one of the overstuffed floral armchairs. Sitting on the sofa next to him, dressed casual in an emerald cashmere turtleneck and tan slacks, was Chance Barron. He stood when she entered, like the perfect gentleman she knew him not to be, and smiled in happy surprise. The small teacup and saucer he held looked like a child’s toy in his hands. Lightning shot through her heart at the sight of him.

“What is he doing here?” She directed the question at her father, who looked at her in surprise. He stood and walked over to her, pulling her into a hug that she did not return.

“Oh, my darling girl! It’s wonderful to see you after so long.”

“What is he doing here,” she asked him again, her teeth clenched, along with the rest of her muscles.

“Oh,” her father laughed, as if he had only just remembered the indelible Senator that currently disgraced his parlor. “Mr. Barron here has come to petition for your hand. Well done, darling!”

All feeling drained out of her, the hugs and congratulations from her parents a static noise in the background as she looked over at the man in question. He somehow appeared larger than ever as he stood, a dark stain on the clean brightness of her childhood home. Lifting the gold-rimmed teacup to his face, he paused to give her a salute before he took a sip. The cup hid the smile he was wearing, which promised that all of her nightmares were about to come true. Her feet moved, her parents leading her to the side of the room that he stood, and she snapped out of her shock.

“No!” Pulling her arms from their grasps, she took several steps back.

Her mother’s mouth dropped open, her father’s eyebrows shooting for his hairline as they looked back at her.

“No,” she said again, shaking her head. “I won’t marry him. Choose someone else.” Her last statement she directed at her father, pleading with him to save her from this madness.

“Vanessa!” her mother whispered, eyes wide.

She knew that tone, and felt the old pull to fall in line and stop being an embarrassment. She ignored it, grabbing onto her father’s hand in both of hers as her parents made their way back to her.

“Please, Daddy,” she whispered. “Anyone else. I’ll marry anyone else you choose, I promise. Please, not him.” A stinging struck the back of her eyes.

Her father looked surprised by her objection, and brought his other hand to cover hers, his skin warm and soft. “I’m sorry, dear,” he said, “but we’ve already signed the contract. He made a very generous offer.”

“Offer?” She looked back and forth between his eyes, certain that she must have misheard him, but his expression remained the same. “Am I a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder?”

He stared, gaping like a fish. She pulled her hands from his, her mother’s hands landing on her arm as she turned to leave.

“Young lady—”

“Don’t!” Yanking her arm from her mother’s grasp, she left the room. In the front hall, a shaking hand over her mouth as she tried to calm her breathing, muffled voices drifted to her from the closed doors of the sitting room.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Barron. I don’t know what’s gotten into her.”

Her mother’s voice.

“It’s quite alright. I know what a difficult time of a woman’s life this can be.”

“You are most generous to give her your grace. She has always… struggled with the rules of our society. I have no doubt that she’ll fare better in her new life with you.”

Her father’s words stung like a slap to her face, and the nausea that rolled in her stomach at Barron’s response made her gag.

“Don’t you worry, I’ll keep her out of trouble.”

She fell against the doorway of the front entrance, stepping on the bottom of her mother’s beautiful pants in her hurry. Pulling her old dirty boots over the clean fabric, the front door slammed open as she bolted from the home.

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23

Choosing Sides

Detective Reid

Detective Reid was typing up the last page of a report for an arrest he had completed that morning, some kid from the ghettos that was trying to solicit business for a gambling establishment. It wasn’t that people couldn’t visit these establishments if they so wished, the government was happy to turn a blind eye to these little pleasures if it kept the population distracted. It was that the teen was soliciting outside of the neighborhoods, which was illegal. His cell phone vibrated on the desk. He finished the last touches on his notes before picking up the device, skimming over the lines on the screen as he brought it to his ear. He added a missing period to the last line.

“Yeah?”

There was no response, and then a gasp.

“Amina?” He straightened in his chair, notes forgotten.

James looked up from his own work, as well as several others on their end of the bullpen.

“I’m sorry,” said through another gasp, a voice that he recognized right away. “I didn’t know who else to call,” she added.

“It’s alright. Give me a minute.”

Holding his phone above his hammering heart, he turned to James, who was staring at him with concern. “Rayan hit his head. He’s fine, but Amina’s having a fit.” The lie came easy.

“You sure he doesn’t need a doctor to take a look? I can drive you.” James stood, grabbing his keys from the top drawer of his desk.

“No, no.” He waved for James to sit back down. “It’s fine. He’s fine. She’s just being a mother, you know? Panics at every little thing.” He rolled his eyes with his last words, shaking his head as if Amina worrying over the wellbeing of their son was somehow ridiculous.

James hesitated a moment, a line appearing between his brows as he lowered himself back into his seat. “If you’re sure…”

The back of Reid’s neck was tight. “Yeah, I am.” He stepped back from the desks. “I’ll be right back, just going to talk her down real quick.”

Hurrying out of the precinct, he jogged across the street once outside, and faced the building. He didn’t want to be caught off guard again, on the off chance that James would decide to follow him. Once certain that he was alone, and well out of earshot of anyone, he returned the phone to his ear.

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

“I—I can’t breathe.”

It was difficult for him to make out the words between the gasping breaths of her panic.

“Ok. It’s ok. Are you hurt? Are you in danger?”

“No, I… I’m in an alley.”

“An alley?” Now that she mentioned it, he could hear cars driving by in the background of the call, and he fought the sudden urge to run off to check the lanes between every building on the street. “Why are you in an alley? What happened?”

“I don’t know!” Her yell stabbed at his eardrum. “I was there, and—he was going to… touch me, and I—I ran!”

He squeezed down on the phone. “Touch you? Did someone hurt you? Did this person do something to you?”

She didn’t answer, instead emitting nonsensical noises in between her gasps.

“Operator!”

The thought that something vile had been done to her turned his stomach, setting ablaze a righteous need for vengeance within him. For a brief moment, he forgot that he was just as much her enemy as whoever else may have hurt her.

“No! Not him—the Senator—he—I can’t—”

Anything else she had wanted to say to him was lost as she broke down into heavy gasping sobs on the other end of the line. As his mind caught up with her disorganized words, her sobbing stopped.

“Oh god.”

The line went dead.

Lowering his arm, he stared down at the phone, thumb hovering over her number on his call log. She needed help. He swallowed, moving his thumb from her number to the button on the side of the device. The screen went black with a click. The phone was heavy as it landed in his pocket, carrying the weight of his thoughts with it. If he heard her right, and he was pretty sure that he had, she told him something that may change the course of the investigation—something that could buy more time for his family. He took off, running into the street. A car screeched to a halt, a police cruiser, and Reid held up his hands in an apology as he skipped around the front of it. The men inside the car yelled something from the passenger window as he ran through the double doors and into the building.

“James!”

Every head in the room turned to stare as he came to a halt at his partner’s desk, hands on his knees as he caught his breath.

The other man leaned forward in his chair, hands on the armrests and his eyes wide in alarm. “What? Are Amina and Rayan ok?”

“What?” Reid asked, staring at the redhead in confusion before remembering his lie. “Oh, no. It wasn’t Amina,” he smiled. “It was the Operator.”

James’s mouth opened, anger replacing his worry, and looking like he was going to lay into him for lying again. Reid waved a hand in the air, cutting him off before he could get a word out.

“Yeah ok, you can yell at me later if you want, but shut up.”

James glared.

“She was in a state, man. Panicked, frightened. From the sound of it, it sounded like something bad had happened to her. It’s not important. Anyway, I think she let something slip that she wasn’t supposed to.” His body was practically vibrating with excitement.

James’s face was the definition of fed up, but his green eyes lit with curiosity. “We’re coming back to that other thing later,” he promised.

“Whatever you want,” Reid agreed. He wasn’t about to argue with the man when he needed his help.

“Well, what did she say?”

“She said, ‘the Senator.’”

James raised his eyebrows. “The Senator?”

Reid nodded. “And then she stopped crying and hung up.”

“She was crying?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, she was in a state.”

“Hm.” James looked down as he thought it over. “You’re thinking that their next target is a senator? Bit above their pay grade, isn’t it?” His face was skeptical.

“I don’t know,” Reid said, “but I think it’s worth checking out.”

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22

Loyalties Lost

Vanessa

Vanessa’s feet were leaded weights as she climbed the stairs of the old apartment building that housed the Collective’s headquarters. Each step on the old wood elicited a dull thud that echoed off the dingy walls. She was a stranger, unwelcomed by the stale quiet and darkness of the stairway.

The men in the large black SUV that Senator Ross had left behind had stayed outside of her apartment the entire night. When she left for work in the morning, they had ushered her into the vehicle the moment she emerged from the building. She went along without protest, too scared to question whatever the Senator had ordered them to do. To her relief, the drive ended where it had begun the previous night, at the Senate office building. He had asked them to make sure that she made it to work without incident. Just as well, as the idea of being pressed upon by the morning metro crowds had been eating at her the entire time she was getting ready that morning.

The Senator’s watchful eye had the added benefit of making it difficult to find a moment to slip away to answer Eddie’s summons, though not for long enough. The shuttle service lasted only the one day, but she avoided leaving her apartment outside of work hours on the second night, too nervous to chance it. Another three days, and she couldn’t deny anymore that the danger of visiting the Collective had passed.

Now she was here, climbing toward the inevitable disappointment that would be directed at her by the two most important people in her life. Eddie, their leader. Liam, their soul. And her, their Operator and betrayer. She was Judas, her betrayal precipitated by a kiss, and her body the silver.

Three steps away from the fourth floor landing, the door to the apartment opened. She paused. Liam stood silhouetted in the light from the doorway, staring at her. The nerves that had plagued her as she climbed the stairs increased ten-fold as she mounted the last steps to stand across from him.

“Hi, Liam.”

He said nothing in response. She wished he would, anything, even yelling would be preferable to his stoic silence. After several seconds, he stepped aside, waving her into the apartment.

Tremors raked over her nervous system in waves as she walked past him, a million skittering bugs under her skin. Eddie sat at the table, looking up when she entered. Like Liam, he said nothing. The intensity of the anger in his eyes pierced through her like a bolt of ice, holding her in place while her mind was screaming at her to run. The option was removed with the shutting of the door, and the scraping clunk of the lock sliding home. Liam stepped past her, taking one of the empty chairs at the table. The two men sat facing the one chair that was left to be filled, hers.

Hands shaking, she pulled it out from the table and lowered herself into the seat. Liam stared at her, and Eddie stared at the tabletop, both of their faces blank. Though, the twitching in Eddie’s jaw as he ground his teeth made it clear that he was anything but calm. Knowing there was nothing she could say to either of them that could fix what she had done, she endured the pressure of their silence until one of them broke it.

“Stephen, Bryce, Dan, Chloe.” Eddie’s voice was almost a whisper as he spoke the words to the table.

She didn’t know the names, nor his meaning in saying them, but they clearly mattered.

“I don’t—”

“Stephen. Bryce. Dan. Chloe.” He repeated the names louder, and his hands clenched into fists as he spoke them. Lifting his head, he looked her in the eye, his gaze made of stone. A lock of blonde hair hung in front of his face, quivering, and his chest moved slow and deliberate with each breath he took. “That,” he continued in a careful whisper, “is who got arrested four nights ago when our carefully planned extraction of Mrs. Ross went so spectacularly off course.”

His hard expression melted into a glare. “They told me the most unexpected thing before they were arrested, something I refused to believe was true. They had to repeat themselves three times to confirm the unimaginable thing that they had told me.”

“Eddie—”

“Because how could it be true that my best friend, my Vanessa, would do something so,” he swallowed, “stupid?”

“Please, let me—”

“How could it be true that my best friend, a founding member of this organization, my Vanessa…”

Her heart broke with his voice.

“...would ever do something against us?” His eyes were red rimmed with his emotion, and his breathing erratic. “What do you suppose the punishment is for the attempted assassination of a sitting United States Senator?”

Dizziness trickled in through the top of her skull as the blood drained from her face. Eddie shook his head.

“I tried to track them after they were taken, I really did, but the trail went black almost immediately.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he drew in a stuttering breath. “There was no news the first few nights, nothing on the police backchannels. It wasn’t until this morning that we found out what had happened to them, when they were executed.”

“No!” She covered her mouth with her fist, eyes burning and vision blurred. This wasn’t supposed to happen. They were supposed to call off the operation, try again at another time after she could explain to them why she did it.

Eddie’s eyes met hers again, and in their grey depths she saw the small boy she knew from her childhood, scared and angry as the world around them changed for the worse. Instead of Wilkins being the cause as he had always been, it was her. She was the new bad change in his world.

“The operation,” Eddie continued, ignoring her exclamation, “depended entirely on your Senator Ross being in the right place at the right time.” He paused to level her with a hard look. “They saw you, Vanessa.”

At these words, her mind went into overdrive. She was seen. Doing what? By who? An image of Barron, and the feeling of his hands roaming over her body came unbidden to her mind. She felt selfish and ridiculous that in this moment she found herself more worried that there may have been witnesses to what that foul man had done to her. Even more so, the terror that if they did see it, they may not have recognized it for what it really was. She should have fought him harder, not sat there and let him do whatever he had wished with her. Her chest constricted, pulling her shoulders down with a heavy weight. Several others had suffered a much worse fate than she had over the last few days, and here she was worrying over the idea that they had seen her giving up. That they saw her submitting herself to a much less powerful enemy than they had all signed up to fight. She was hopeless. Weak. They fought and died for a cause that mattered more than the lives they were living, and she couldn’t even muster up the strength of courage to fight one man. She was pathetic.

“Why did you do it?”

Eddie’s whispered accusation cut into her like a dull knife.

“You had him out on time. You were there at the door. All you had to do was let him go.”

“Eddie.” Her brother. “Please, Eddie. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen—”

“But it did happen!”

His fist slammed onto the table, and she jumped, tears spilling over onto her cheeks.

Liam placed a hand on Eddie’s closed fist, breaking through the other man’s anger, and Eddie ran a hand through his hair before covering his eyes. He took a deep breath, unclenching his fist and turning his hand to latch onto Liam’s. His knuckles were white with how hard he clung to this comfort. The last time she had seen him this distraught was when his parents had disappeared.

‘I thought you would call off the operation,” she said, desperation coloring her words, searching for a way to bring him back from the edge she had pushed him to. “I thought that if I made sure that he was late that you would call it off! I’m sorry, Eddie! I’m so sorry!” Her tears flowed freely now.

“Vanessa…” Liam looked at her, shaking his head. “Why didn’t you just tell us that you couldn’t do it? We would have made other arrangements.”

Although his voice held a tone that was more gentle than Eddie’s, it pushed the knife of her betrayal deeper. She choked on the blood it produced, the gravity of what she had done, and her next words came out as a strangled whisper.

“I thought I could. I was… I was ready to do what was necessary, until…” She looked away, lest they read the shame of it on her face.

“What could you possibly say that could justify this?” Eddie’s anger was returned anew. “Four of our people are dead, and for what? So you could save your Fundamentalist boss? Your enemy, in case you had forgotten. How could you be so selfish?”

“Selfish?” The room faded around her. She had been, in a way. To save the Senator was to condemn Mrs. Ross for a bit longer, she knew, but he had saved her only a few short hours before. Even if that were the only consequence of her actions, was it selfish to repay him the great debt that she owed? Was it really?

“I couldn’t lead him to his death,” she said, the only thing she was certain of, and the only truth that she could give them.

“Why? How many of the horrors in this country lead directly back to his office? You’ll help to kill the men who take advantage of the system, but not the men who put it in place?” Eddie looked at her like she was a problem that he had no hope to solve. “Wow, Vanessa. I never knew that you could be such a hypocrite.”

“I couldn’t let you kill him! Not after he—” She stopped. She couldn’t say it, couldn’t give voice to what Dixon had walked in on, to what he had stopped from happening. To say it aloud would make it all the more real. Frantic, wild energy crashed into her, filling her ears with static. Her chair fell back as she jumped up, the crack of it slamming against the old wood floor behind her hardly registered below the rushing blood in her ears. She had to get out of here. Heading for the door, she flipped the lock and yanked on the handle, but the barrier stayed in place. She pulled at it again, harder, straining with all of her strength to open it. Muffled calls of her name could be heard above the water that she was sinking into, but she ignored them.

Her attack on the door came to an end when something touched her shoulder. She jumped back. Liam was standing at the door, right next to where she had been. One of his hands was flat against the wood to hold it in place, while the other was raised from where he had touched her. His brown eyes were wide with shock and concern as he looked at her.

“I need to go,” she said, looking around the apartment for another exit despite knowing that there wasn’t one. “Let me go.”

Eddie was staring at her with a similar expression to Liam’s, his chair halfway around the table and hands holding tight to the wheel rails. He was still as a statue, as if worried that any movement on his part may cause her to bolt.

“Vanessa?” Liam spoke in a soft tone, taking a cautious step toward her.

“What happened?” Eddie asked.

“I can’t…” she said, bringing a shaking hand to her head as she struggled to catch her breath. The room swam around her, and her muscles felt on the verge of collapse. It was as if she had run a marathon in an instant.

Liam took another step in her direction, his arm outstretched.

“Don’t touch me!” Her shrill voice rang in her ears, and Liam looked at her like she had slapped him. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her, somewhere deep down she knew that to be true. It was Liam. She could trust him. Even as she reminded herself of this fact, it didn’t matter. She would rather jump from one of the windows to the sidewalk four stories below than to let his hands make contact with her body.

Her breath was coming out in short gasps, and she took the opportunity afforded to her by Liam’s shock to dart around him and race out of the apartment.

“Vanessa! Wait!”

The call came to her from a great distance. She couldn’t tell who had shouted the words. Racing down the stairs, she tripped on them several times, catching herself on the railing as the building spun circles around her. She burst out into the freezing air on the street before anyone could stop her.

Bracing a hand on the bricks of the building, she followed the perimeter of it until she came to a corner, stumbling around it into the thin alley. The narrow passageway ran down the length of the Collective’s building, and the one behind it. She made it halfway before her legs gave out beneath her, hands slamming onto the dark, damp asphalt. The knees of her jeans soaked up the moisture on the ground, chilling her to the bone, and the grit of the loose pebbles dug into her palms as she gasped for air.

Digging into her coat pockets, she pulled out her phone and dialed the first person that she could think of.

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21

Loyalties Won

Vanessa

The amber liquid swirled in the ornate crystal tumbler as she tilted her hand back and forth. The base of the glass was cool and heavy in her palm, the angles of the design stabbing her skin, but not in an unpleasant way. Senator Ross had held her, stabilizing and grounding her as she cried for several minutes, until she had been able to calm herself down. At which point he went into his office, returning a moment later with a bottle of scotch and two tumblers from his drink cabinet. They were sitting next to each other on the floor of the staff office, leaning back against the front of her desk and drinking to her sorrows.

“You came back early,” she said. It was the first thing she had said since he appeared to chase her monster away.

“Yes, I had a sneaking suspicion that young Barron may be in here trying to have his way with you,” he responded in a casual tone.

She took her eyes off of the liquor to look at him.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was never very good at making jokes.” He pursed his lips and looked down into his own glass.

She smiled at his poor attempt at humor anyway.

“I suppose that’s why you never went for President. Too many jokes in the speeches.”

“Ha, well those speeches are written by the staff, so that would be yours and Grant’s problem, not mine.” He smiled and took a sip of his drink.

“That’s true.” The scotch stilled in her glass with her hand. “Where is Grant, anyway? I thought you two would have returned together if your lunch meeting had finished early.”

“I’m not sure. I think he saw a pretty woman in the bar area.”

“Oh no,” Vanessa laughed. She had only witnessed Grant’s awful flirting once before, in her first week. He had tried to talk up a secretary that showed up to deliver a brief to their office. “Poor girl.”

“Yes,” Senator Ross laughed with her.

When their laughter died down, the silence stretched on. This wasn’t something they were used to, being alone for an extended period of time. There was always something to do or someone to see, something on the outside to keep things moving at a fast pace within the office suite. Being around the Senator and doing nothing felt foreign, and she had the recurring feeling that she was forgetting something: work, a call, or a meeting that needed to be scheduled.

“Vanessa.”

“Hmm?” She tipped her tumbler back, finishing off what was left of her drink.

“Tell me what happened.”

All of her muscles tensed at once, and she kept her gaze forward.

“You saw.”

“No.” His voice was gentle, but firm. “I want to know what happened before I arrived.”

A deep breath filled her lungs, a struggle with how tight her throat was. The last thing she wanted to do was to let herself remember the details of her encounter with Barron. Setting her empty glass on the rug, she pushed it across the fibers until it was next to Ross’s leg. He obliged her silent request, lifting the stopper from the decanter and pouring her two more fingers of the Dalmore single malt. She picked it up as soon as he was done and downed it in one go. Making a face against the burn, she held her glass out to him for more. He let out a whispered laugh beside her.

“One usually takes the time to savor an eighty thousand dollar bottle of scotch,” he said with an amused smile. The decanter clinked against her tumbler as he poured her another two fingers.

“Eighty thousand?” Her eyes were wide as she looked at him, the several grand worth of scotch in her stomach threatening to make a reappearance. His smile widened at her shock.

“Come now, enough dawdling.” He pushed the hand that held her new serving of unimaginably expensive scotch back toward her, his smile fading before his next words. “Tell me what happened.”

She cradled the glass as if it contained liquid gold, holding it against her chest with the gentle touch that she might hold a small kitten. “He did come looking for you. That much was true.”

He waited for her to continue.

She hesitated, thinking about how she could tell him that Barron had caught her crying without him seeking to know the story behind those tears as well, ultimately deciding to omit that particular detail.

“I told him you weren’t in. He then started asking my age, bringing up marriage, and how he’d been looking for a wife.” Her voice started to shake, and the room began to squeeze in on her from all sides. She rubbed her hand on the fabric of her skirt where she could still feel Barron’s touch. “I tried… I tried to put distance. I moved from my desk, and I told him to leave, but… but then…” She looked down as she could swear that she felt Barron’s hand squeezing her fingers, but it was Dixon’s hand that had found its way to hers, warm and reassuring. She turned from their hands to his face, head heavy. He said something she couldn’t hear, and slowly the size of the room returned to normal around them.

“It’s ok,” he whispered, his mouth moving the same as it had a second before. “That’s all I need to know.”

She nodded, a numbing chill crawling through her body, and looked away to stare at nothing in particular. The warmth of his hand being the only sensation that penetrated the numbness, she left her hand in his, honing in on the feeling like an anchor that could keep her from sinking through the floor.

“What’s going to happen to him?”

“Very little,” Dixon responded, his voice darkening. “Certainly less than he deserves. I detest men that would take such a thing from a woman, no better than a rabid dog.”

His anger was a small comfort, but not enough. The disappointment that the horrid young senator wouldn’t face any real consequences for what he tried to do to her was overwhelming. She wanted justice, to see him suffer the kind of justice that the Collective handed out to men like him for hurting women. Her feelings must have been written all over her face as Dixon watched her.

“I can assure you that his mentorship with this office is over. I will make sure that his once promising career comes to a screeching, and assuredly pathetic, halt. He’ll be nothing but a seat filler in the Senate, and eventually he’ll be voted out of office by his peers.”

“I thought you needed him on board with your initiatives? Please don’t do anything on my account that could hurt your career, or place you on the bad side of congress.”

“Oh, Vanessa,” he said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “You are much more to me than that imbecile.”

She was unsure how to respond to his declaration. Were she prompted to say something similar about him, she wasn’t sure that she could. He didn’t ask, and she was grateful. They sipped their drinks in silence for several minutes, until the words that were pressing at her throat couldn’t be held back any longer.

“He’s right.”

Ross looked at her with raised eyebrows. “Who?”

“Barron.” The name was poison on her tongue. “I will be twenty-six soon. My extension is about to run out.”

“Ah, yes,” he responded in derision, “our civic duty to restore the decimated population of the country.”

This was the second time he had disparaged the President’s actions in her company. Once is a slip of the tongue, but twice…

“You don’t agree with it?”

His face was hard. “No. I don’t.”

“Why?”

He sighed. “Marriages of expectation and convenience existed long before Fundamentalists started leading this country.”

Inhaling an involuntary breath, her thoughts raced. “You?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “Margaret is a wonderful woman, and a supportive partner in marriage.”

“Ok.” Embarrassment rose in her cheeks at giving such a stupid response, but she couldn’t think straight.

“She,” he cleared his throat, “she isn’t who I would have chosen for myself, had I any choice in the matter at the time.” He unraveled his hand from hers, placing her hand on top of her leg with care before moving his back to his own lap. “All that is to say that I know something of what you may be going through, and I am very sorry for anyone who has to experience the same.”

They were wrong. They were so wrong. The Senator wasn’t like the other men they had to rescue women from. Mrs. Ross wasn’t being abused, she just didn’t want to be married to him. The option for divorce was removed in the early days of Wilkins’s takeover. In the last twenty years, the Iris Collective was the first viable option that the woman had to grasp onto. If they should manage to extract her, Dixon may even be grateful. His greatest crime, aside from being a member of the Fundamentalist party, was being a member of a loveless marriage. Relief flowed like cool water over her skin.

“Ok, my dear,” Dixon said, slapping the tops of his thighs before standing up. He reached a hand down to help her to her feet. “It’s time for us to leave this dreadful place. I’ll walk you out.”

She took his hand, surprised at his strength as he pulled her up from the floor. Grabbing her bag, she threw her coat over her arm and followed him from the office.

The echo of their shoes on the floor followed them as they walked through the halls of the Senate office building. Interns and staffers crossed their path every so often, rushing from point a to point b in service of their governmental duties.

“Do you have plans tonight, a friend you could stay with, perhaps?” Dixon asked as they reached the exterior doors of the building. He lifted her coat from where it was hanging over her arm and held it open for her.

“Are you asking me to hang out, Senator?” she asked as she shrugged on the offered garment and began buttoning the large wooden buttons.

“That’s funny,” he deadpanned, reaching out and adjusting her scarf before tightening his own. “No, I’m on my way to have dinner with Margaret. I just wanted to make sure you won’t be alone tonight, after what happened.”

The warmth of her coat and scarf did nothing to stop her insides from turning to ice. Dinner, dinner with Mrs. Ross. She looked at her watch and saw that it was twenty past four. The Senator would make it to the dinner at five without a problem, he may even arrive early, but should he?

“Vanessa? Are you alright?”

Dixon’s face was full of concern as he looked at her. He reached out a hand and touched her shoulder, breaking her from her trance. They couldn’t do this, she couldn’t do this. She couldn’t let them kill him, and so she did the only thing she could think of, and stumbled. She fell back half a step before Dixon had grabbed hold of her arms to steady her.

“You’re white as a sheet,” he said.

She touched her forehead, scrunching her eyes shut as she grimaced. “I think I had too much to drink.”

“Well,” Dixon laughed, “you did have few.”

“It’s ok. I’ll be able to sit down on the metro.” In her thoughts, she begged him to take the bait, to prove himself to be the good person she was starting to believe he may be.

“That won’t do. Come, let’s get you home. Margaret won’t mind if I’m a little late, she’s quite used to it by now with this job.”

“No,” Vanessa said. Yes, she thought. “Are you sure? I don’t want to impose.”

“Of course. She would kill me if she found out that I let you get on the metro alone, drunk, with all the unsavory characters you could run into. Come, now.” He put an arm around her, holding her to his side to steady her as they walked out of the building. An icy wind blasted them as soon as they were through the doors.

“Senator Ross, Miss.”

A man was standing outside of a large black SUV, a member of the Senator’s personal security team. He nodded as they approached and opened the back door of the vehicle. Dixon helped her step up into the backseat, and the guard shut the door as the Senator walked around to the other side. He opened his own door and climbed into the backseat with her. The car was already on and warm inside, the heat burning her face where the outside air had frozen it a moment before.

“Change of plans, Stanley,” Dixon called to a man in the driver’s seat. The guard who had shut her door was gone. “Take us to Miss Brown’s residence. We’ll be dropping her off before heading to the restaurant.”

“Yes, sir.”

Dixon reached over her.

“Oh!”

“He’ll never leave if we don’t put these on,” Dixon said, pulling her seatbelt over her abdomen and snapping it into the buckle. He gave it a small tug to make sure it was latched and snug before proceeding to put his own on.

As he had said, the car began to move as soon as they were both secured in their seats.

“Here.” Dixon pressed a cold water bottle into her hand and smiled. “This will help, trust me.”

“Thank you.” She opened the bottle, sipping from it as they drove. She wasn’t drunk, perhaps lightly buzzed, but she couldn’t let him know that now.

The Capitol Building showed like a beacon outside of the SUV as they drove away from the political center of the city. Her apartment wasn’t close. By her estimate, Dixon would be at least fifteen minutes late to his dinner with Mrs. Ross, depending on how bad the traffic was. She hoped it would be enough, and that Eddie would be able to forgive her.

As they drove, her mind wandered. She stared at the buildings as they flashed by, and thought of Detective Reid. Guilt rolled in her stomach as she realized she had forgotten all about him after everything that had happened since his call. She hoped that Eddie was right, and that Detective Jamison would refrain from doing something horrible to his impassioned partner. Though, thinking about this led her to remembering something that Reid had said during their short conversation.

‘The husband’s car accident.’

Shit. Was that the new method the Collective had been working on? Her back stiffened against the seat, and her eyes roamed the inside of the vehicle. Dixon was engrossed in whatever he was reading on his phone, and the driver was paying attention to the road ahead. Everything she could see within the car looked normal. The black carpet and leather seats were dark and clean, with not a single spec of lint to be seen. The car was driving smooth, like floating on air, much smoother than the train ever was. Everything was as she would expect it to be. She turned in her seat and looked out of the back window. Dozens of cars drove behind and around them, the headlights making her eyes ache.

“The agents are in the SUV behind us,” Dixon said, watching her as she turned back around.

“Oh, right,” she said, awkward. Did the Collective know that she was in the car? Could they even get to Dixon’s car?

“Are you worried that Barron will follow us?”

“What? No.” At least, she hadn’t been until Dixon brought it up. Now it was all she could think about. “Do you think he would do something like that?”

Dixon turned his attention back to his phone screen. “Not unless he wants to deal with the agents in the car behind us.”

“Right,” she whispered, taking a deep breath and blinking several times.

They drove the rest of the way in silence. She tried not to think of dying in a horrible car crash. Her muscles didn’t relax until the driver pulled up to the curb in front of her apartment, mercifully, without incident.

“Stay here, Stanley,” Dixon said as he opened his door. He was out of the car before she could say anything to stop him. He walked around to her side and opened her door, the cold air taking the opportunity to invade the cabin. “Come on,” he said, holding up a hand to help her out.

She released her seatbelt and placed her hand in his. His fingers were warm beneath hers. Escorting her to the security door of her building, her entered the code and held it open for her. Her eyes stayed on the keypad, chest tight.

“You’d be surprised what our security knows about us,” the Senator said in answer to her unasked question—one she was too afraid to ask—gesturing for her to enter the building.

She looked back at the two SUVs that waited on the street, knowing that one was filled with a highly trained team of security agents. Swallowing, she turned back around and proceeded Senator Ross into the front hall of the building. His leather-soled shoes clicked on the tile as he entered, the security door making her jump as it slammed shut.

“Come, Vanessa. Let’s get you home.”

He mounted the staircase as he spoke. She followed a few steps behind. As he climbed higher, each step she took to follow him was like she was growing one step closer to her end.

At the third floor, her floor, he stopped and waited for her to reach him before he moved on down the hall in the direction of her apartment. He stopped in front of her door as if he had been there countless times before. He looked from her to the door, and she pulled out her keys. Unlatching the locks, she made no move to enter. He didn’t say anything, reaching one long arm around her to turn the doorknob. He pushed the door open, holding it so she could walk in ahead of him. Seeing no more point in delaying, she entered the apartment, not daring to look at him.

Walking to the middle of the darkened room, she stopped. The click of a switch, and the open space was filled with a golden light. The door shut behind her. As his steps approached her back, she closed her eyes. It was a good run.

Her eyes snapped back open when he passed her by. Entering her kitchen, he opened her refrigerator and pulled a glass carafe of water out. Setting it on the counter, he looked at her.

“Cups?”

“Um, next to the sink.”

He followed her direction, opening the cupboard she had indicated and taking a glass out. Filling the cup with water from the carafe, he returned the jug to the fridge.

“Come here,” he said, unbuttoning his coat.

She did as he asked, and he produced from a bottle of pills. He shook two capsules into his hand before returning the bottle to the inner pocket of his coat.

“Here.” He grabbed her hand, placing the pills on her palm. They were an opaque green color, with no other identifying characteristics. “I didn’t want the driver or the agents to see me giving you these,” he explained, “lest it get back to Wilkins. From what I’ve heard, sleep can be hard to come by after such an event. These will help.”

“Oh,” she said as she exhaled in relief.

“Our secret.” He winked down at her, touching her cheek before he walked back to the door. “Lock this, and don’t forget to call someone to stay with you,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” And then he was gone.

She stared at the pills in her hand after the door closed, thoughts of cyanide in sugar packets in the forefront of her mind. Walking to the bathroom off of the living room, she dropped the pills into the toilet bowl and flushed them. Returning to the front door, she locked it, and went into the bedroom to look down at the street from the window.

Senator Ross appeared on the sidewalk as he exited the building, leaning down to speak to his driver through the passenger window instead of getting into the vehicle. After a moment, he straightened up and walked to the second SUV. Speaking to them for a moment, one of the agents stepped out from the backseat, the Senator taking his place. This SUV pulled away from the sidewalk, turned around, and drove back the way they had come from. The agent that was left behind walked to the first SUV and got into the front passenger seat. She watched the car for several more minutes, steam billowing from the tailpipe as it idled, but it didn’t move.

Her pocket buzzed. Pulling her phone out, she finally took her eyes off of the SUV as the screen lit up. A message from Eddie stared up at her.

GET HERE ASAP.

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