Page 30 of Boneyard HEA

“No.” He squeezes me again. “You are normal. Killing affects people. You need to remember to live life. You choose joy and happiness and everything that comes with it, or you can choose misery. Why choose misery? Hey?”

Then he returns to Loxland.

Blinking, I sort through his words. Killing affects people makes it sound like he knows the feeling in a personal kind of way. I am not surprised.

Live life has to be a worn-out slogan from somewhere. Probably a TV show.

It’s a thought though. I’m not the only person who has ever murdered.

Can I do that, keep searching for the others, with blood on my hands, while also being centered enough to enjoy my life? Is it selfish? He’s made me think and, I guess, made me feel better about being happy and vengeful.

Today, Tomás is a philosopher and a therapist.

Tomás

I rejoin Aaron, leaning on the ferry’s steel rail and squinting into the morning sun with occasional dots of spray wetting my face. We’ll be docking soon. The deck sways underfoot, the wind blusters, and the curves of the island’s rocky shores hug us closer as we approach.

“Why all of the insistence on her obeying, when she already agreed to do anything we ask of her?” I look across at Juniper, where she stands on the other side of the bow with her blue dress flapping at her thighs.

The collar on her neck is black because Aaron felt it was less noticeable than red, but he wanted her to wear one. Since I spoke to her, she seems happier, with the hint of a smile curving her lips.

“This does not feel right.” He grimaces. “I know. I know. This isn’t normal or right because blackmail isn’t consent.”

“Perhaps not. Other women they say yes, sir, no sir, because they know it is what they want. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Transactional,” I muse. “You all get what you want, and then you toss them away. Is not this almost the same?”

He grunts, casts a glance at her then around the empty bow section. Everyone else has gone inside to organize their luggage and their families, ready to disembark. “Doesn’t feel it. This is messy, and I like order. You know that. We can’t ignore what she’s done, or what I’ve done.”

“True.” This is a unique kind of power and sex relationship. He excuses himself by saying we help her and that she was at fault to start with. So did I.

I turn it over in my mind and am not sure who wins with this.

Us, because we get a cute submissive for a while who will do anything for us, or else we make her pay a devious penalty.

Her, if we help her get away with a justified murder or three?

And if the police catch up to her, we may all lose our freedom.

“Is it the killing or the blackmail that bugs you, chamos?”

He frowns. “I wish I knew. Just messy,” he mutters.

I only give him a smile and a shrug. Not as messy as murdering someone yourself. Murders eat away at your soul, and I don’t believe we ever grow that part back. You grieve forever, for yourself, if not for the dead. Then there are those who have lost their humanity and become animals. They are different. They can kill a thousand then sleep like a baby.

Not our Juniper though. I can see she feels the wound in herself. It is better to do that. To never forget but also to live, to enjoy life, and be happy. Why waste another life?

Our catamaran ferry slides toward the jetty with a surging arrow of foam rolling away from the white hulls knifing the crystal blue of the sea. This one ahead is the public jetty. The resort the fraternity is using is on the other side of the island. The other guests will be arriving on a privately arranged yacht.

We are the last of the passengers to leave, rolling our two large suitcases with all the gear Aaron needs onto the ramp then the jetty, while Juniper watches with an almost wary expression. As if she still cannot believe what she is doing.

Aaron has booked us a room in a small hotel, a hundred yards to the right along the narrow street that parallels the beach, and so we are walking there. My suitcase complains loudly on the tarred road surface until we reach the pavement. He’s renting this room just to house his equipment, so we can duck out and come here to use it without CNC security restricting our research.

I had assumed he was simply giving Juniper facts. Developing profiles on the CNC Frat members is more than that. The men and women of the fraternity are all moderately corrupt, from what dealings I’ve had with them. They’re also rich, apart from a few oddities such as me, who were lucky enough to be sponsored. Great corruption comes with great wealth. Mid-rich, I am, at best.

If Aaron upsets any of them, I will be ready to step between him and them. My new life is partly owed to him. I study the man where he rolls a suitcase ahead of me, the wheels rattling on uneven pavement. The sub-tropical sun has made his expensive yellow linen shirt stick to his back. Aaron is a closed-off puzzle, sometimes, but I like him.