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“They sweep for bugs randomly since the surveillance issue, and they’ve already swept this room for now, I was looking for…” He looked like he was about to break into a cold sweat.
“What?” The word snapped through the air like a whip, shocking us both. Well at least my fear was coming out as a stone cold bitch. I could work with that. When he looked at ME, I raised an eyebrow in defiance.
“It’s a sniffer. Checks for chemical components used for…” his voice trailed off again and it felt like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water on my head.
“Explosives?” I asked, finishing his sentence. Evan nodded and I let out a long exhausted breath. Part of my mind was screaming that this insanity was not my life, and another part seemed to have broken.
Explosives. Because after stealing cars, murdering neighbors, and stalking, why wouldn’t my torturer be an explosives expert too? I couldn’t stop my mind from drifting back to who I had been before that trip to DC, and in all honesty I didn’t think I’d be able to go back to who I was back then. Too much had happened, and so little seemed to matter from those days.
“I guess I should be glad you guys are thinking of that because being blown up in my own home hadn’t even crossed my mind.” I tried to keep my voice strong but heard the waver in my words as fear began to trickle down my spine.
Evan reached out and placed a hand on my arm, giving me a small reassuring squeeze. “You remind me so much of my little sister sometimes that it’s scary.”
I looked into his eyes and cocked an eyebrow. “How so?” Did she have to deal with assassin stalkers too?
“She was always getting into trouble, having to stick her nose in everything. If there was gossip to be collected or a mystery to follow, she was front and center. Since she could walk, she was stomping head first into a situation, self preservation be damned. And when I’d swoop in to play the part of big brother, she was usually pushing me back and taking on the world on her own. She’d never let me fight her battles, and always had her spine straight, taking on anything, usually with a wise-crack thrown in to get things going.” He chuckled as he seemed to get lost in his memories. “I asked her once why she had to be so independent and fierce. She never had an answer, but when I asked why she couldn’t keep her mouth shut… the answer stuck with me. She told me that she stood up to the world with her mouth so they wouldn’t notice her knees knocking.”
I placed my hand over his, a smile tugging at the corner of my lips. “And now?” I was afraid with all the past tense that his little trip down memory lane had a horrible ending. There was something sad about the way he remembered his sister’s words, and I felt my lungs freeze in anticipation of the world finally catching up to her.
He grinned, looking more like a proud father than a proud brother. “She’s still standing up to the world with her mouth, but I don’t thinkanythinghas her knees knocking anymore.”
He let his hand fall from my arm and left the room, sliding past me easily as he made his way to the next room to work and I let out a shaky breath. Finally, something that didn’t end in tragedy. And a compliment that had me re-evaluating myself as I sat down in front of the closed laptop.
I spent my life living within the labels placed on me by the world around me. A new title and I simply acted it out, giving people what they thought they’d wanted of me. But in all the labels plastered to me by those around me, none of them had been as meaningful as the compliment placed on me by Evan. He’d seen the real me, the part of me that was afraid, knees knocking for sure, but I still stood up to the world, determined to face everything head on, and much like his sister, alone.
My thoughts were shattered by a strange melody breaking the silence of the room. It sounded like the beginning of a dream sequence in a 70’s sitcom, and I was looking around for the source of the noise when I heard a sigh come through the speaker attached to one of the two cameras in the library. The camera closest to me.
“So, I take it the tune before I talk is not a welcome one? I’ll work on it. Usually I don’t even get to use the two way talk on these things. Always behind the curtain, never get to play the Wizard.” It was Jack, immediately bringing to mind the conversation I’d had in here previously when Aiden was with me. He was obviously trying to announce himself so as not to scare me. Something vastly different than the jump scares he’d been after only the day before. It seemed the past day and a half had left Jack just as subdued as the rest of us. I kind of hated it. I needed his levity in times like these and without it, the house seemed too somber.
“I thought I was slipping into a dream sequence,” I said, shaking my head. “I was waiting for the corners of my vision to go all hazy and everything.
“And see, here I was, using it because I know I’m a dream come true.” The sound of quiet chuckling told me that Jack had obviously amused himself. I should have known that no one could subdue the goofball completely.
“Any reason why you’re announcing yourself?” I asked with an amused eye roll.
“Yeah, I was just checking in with you. Seeing how you’re holding up.”
“I’m not some fragile flower, Jack.” The tone held more bite than I’d ever used with him before, and, after a heavy moment, I let out a sigh. “Sorry, I’m just-” I choked out a humorless laugh. “I don’t know what I am anymore.”
“Listen, Lake.” A giant returning sigh came from the speaker, and I knew he was getting ready to drop something heavy on me. “What if I told you I had a friend who was just living a normal life. Working hard, playing hard, doing what she wanted to make life work for her. Then suddenly, her life was completely put on hold and she was essentially kidnapped by hired guns and rushed to a ‘safe house’, when she’d never had reason to fear before. She was followed by someone who was probably a paid assassin. She’s being taunted by anonymous creeper texts, and now people she cared for are dead for no other reason than some sick fuck wants to play games. If that friend cursed up a storm, cried, broke something, or completely shut down, would you call her fragile or see her as weak?”
I knew what he was doing, but I forced myself to really listen to him and attempt to work on what he was saying from an objective point of view. I wouldn’t judge someone going through that. I would have been first in line to buy that person a shot and probably first in line to have that friend’s back. “I’m not okay, Jack,” I whispered after a few moments. “I don’t know how anyone could do this, let alone trying to think about something directed at me. I’m starting to feel like this is breaking me.”
“Have you ever heard of Kintsugi?” Jack asked out of nowhere, making me blink stupidly for a second before shaking my head. “It’s a Japanese artform where broken pottery is put back together with this golden lacquer. The gold doesn’t hide the cracks and seams left by trying to piece the pottery back together. It works to add to the beauty of the piece and make it whole again. Cracks and all.”
I liked the sound of that artwork and made a note to Google it later, but wasn’t sure what it had to do with me. When I sat silent long enough, Jack let out another long breath. “My point is, those pottery pieces have been broken, but they aren’t simply thrown out and forgotten, they come back just as functional and strong as before. Broken doesnotmean fragile, Lake.”
“That was incredibly poignant,” I said after a long stretch of silence. I felt my emotions toward the havoc that had become my life start to shift, tilt on its axis until it almost felt like clarity crashed through. I’d been faking my strength for years, building my walls and defenses every time something broke me down. I had spent so much time focusing on the reason I needed my straight spine that I never noticed how it had reinforced into steel. I may have been exhausted and ready to scream, but I hadn’t broken to the point of shattering. I’d managed to weather each storm tossed at me and damn if I wasn’t feeling that warm glow of pride.
“Eh, give me a few hours and I’ll ruin all this wisdom with a fart joke.” I couldn’t help the laughter that bubbled out of me at his joke, and when I heard the sound of the dream music playing an outro for Jack, I doubled over at the added stupidity, head smacking into the closed laptop in front of me.
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DECKER
Watching her leave, I fought the need to go after her, pin her down and take that lying mouth with mine. She hadn’t been dozing off like she’d claimed before running out. She’s been staring at me from the corner of her eye, and I’d been hyper aware of the subtle changes in her body as she’d studied me. The way her breathing had become more shallow and how she’d pressed her thighs together to relieve whatever her mind had been conjuring up about me. I knew how to read people and lust was an easy emotion to pluck from the air. She was so lost in lustful day dreams that I’d been fighting the urge to grab her and sink into her in front of the rest of the team.
It had been my one reactive move, the smallest movement of my finger reaching for her without my permission that had Lake looking like a deer in the headlights and almost running from the room, taking the charged air with her. Something that hadn’t been lost on the rest of my team. They wouldn’t have been worth shit if they let even the smallest detail by them.
