Natalie was an expert in this kind of self-medicated entrance into oblivion.
The music was not a comfortable distraction; it reminded her of the drilling beat the night Alvis tracked her down for the second time. Repetitive, like caged walls, pressing too close. Also the same night she'd walked out on Aaron. And nearly killed those boys. But she listened anyway, unpicking the notes, eyes half lidded. Let herself become swept away into a piercing, deafening nothing.
Until company claimed the seat next to her, and any sense of peace vanished.
She laughed, though it was a mirthless sound. He owed her no explanations, whatever the twist in her chest. Jay made no vows, at least not to her. The tangle of their lives precluded anything close to definition. Why was he even here? "Cayli will be pleased. She likes Anna Marie, I think. But you probably ought to tell her upfront you're not staying; it'd be pretty bad form to break the same girl's heart twice."
Perhaps she said it a little coolly. But she understood. There was comfort in being known, and sometimes the past was a blanket with which to soften the sharp uncertainty of the future. She got that even if she wasn't the type to look back, perhaps because there was little in the way of comfort to be found there for her. Dead children, abandoned lovers, damaged family ties. She grimaced, inwardly scornful of such maudlin thoughts. Thankfully too numb to feel their sting.
Truth was, Jay ought to find joy where he could, while he could. Africa would not be forgiving. The chains of the Nine were unlikely to allow him the breath for quiet moments, the comfort of familiar relationships, the distraction of something softer. Duty bordered Natalie's life, but she hardly lived within the lines. Where he saw dereliction, she saw only survival. His homecoming had hardly been the sort with balloons and banners; she did not blame his chase of a sweeter welcome. But she couldn't watch it either. Her chest constricted; she downed another shot.
It didn't seem to lessen the pain, though; one small feather atop a mountain of it, really, but it was breaking her all the same.
"If she's what you want, Jay, then fuck the complications. Fuck the consequences. Life's too short. Africa taught us that."
Hark the sage advice of the inebriated. The words tore even though she spoke the blunt truth, and she thought seriously about walking away. She didn't want to hear an answer, or count the moments while he considered the possibility. But she was pretty sure the moment she stood she was going to feel the effects a lot more than the pleasant numbness of now. Partly that was her empty stomach hastening the shots' charm. Partly it was the rate at which she'd consumed them. She signalled for another.
The glow of a screen swam her vision, and she peered down to look despite herself. It took longer than it should to unravel the blur around the words. "She was looking for you earlier. I'm supposed to give you the same message when I see you." Her eyes slid up from the phone to his shadowed face then, knowing it was a mistake. Making it willfully. The hat blanked most of it from view, darkness cast low; just the hard angle of his jaw and the hint of his frowning lips.
It made her want to lean in foolishly; to brush those lips as she had before, until the harshness melted away.
A beautiful distraction, and she was past the point of caring about sense.
But he felt a million miles away.
And soon, she realised, he would be. Their time here was fleeting, and soon duty's claws would yank the chains towards war. He'd be gone, and she had no reason to think she would see him again. One drunken message surmised the entire bridge of their communication over the intervening months. Had she not fought to find him, it was unlikely their paths would have crossed. She knew with certainty that she would not have attended the fundraiser.
"I knew." Her chin sank onto a fist, head swimming with the motion. One finger circled the rim of her empty glass, gaze diffusing upon nothing. Her thoughts were becoming slipperier, but she was in the mood for raw truths. Darkness stirred darkness. "Since I was seventeen. Though I didn't have Brandon's secret dungeon to teach me how to use it. There was no one to teach me at all." A sharp smirk reared for the sting. She'd even called it that to his face; he hadn't denied it. Her glass exchanged for a fresh one, the tip of the barman's brows suggesting she had probably had enough. "For a long time it came in fits and starts. Mostly when I needed it. Not always though."
The bleakness of her words left a void she did not have to explain, and there was a sense of stillness in that. The coil of grief was surprisingly manageable; the alcohol or the company, she could not tell. It was the first time she'd shared the burden with anyone who understood exactly how heavy it was to carry. Natalie's eyes pressed closed, her chest swelling. Not a vulnerability she would normally choose to share, but she was only human, and she'd reached her limits the moment she downed the first shot. Her head dipped, just feeling the dig in her chest a moment before she rallied. When her head rose everything spun.
Enough that she pressed a hand to the bar, like she was in danger of slipping off the stool.
"I'm glad it worked. For Cayli. I wasn't sure it would; there isn't exactly a manual. But I can feel it in other women, like a resonance, even if they're not using it. Jay, it's beautiful, like the purest music. The kind of joy that's almost painful. But dangerously sweet." She contemplated the glass, then the hand pressed for balance. The smooth skin of her wrist where wounds had sliced. "I think I killed people in Netlands getting Ekene out. I've hurt people with it accidentally. At least until I learned how to control it."
She didn't say it with regret, just fact. Jay spoke so quietly, though, the words a chokehold like blood filled his throat. The memory of the voicemail drifted. The fear in his tone still burst like glass in her chest when she recalled it, enough that she shifted despite her own best interests. She turned to face him properly, one elbow on the bar. Her knees brushed against his in the close proximity, though it wasn't a purposeful touch then.
She peered like she couldn't quite decide what she'd found. He could be a million miles away and still pull at her like there were trailing hooks in her heart. Fortunately she was drunk enough that the realisation was only met with acceptance; there was no recoil from it this time. In fact she wasn't really thinking at all. Her head tilted like she might snare him from under that hat. Hair fell like silk against her arm. "I won't let her go through any of the things we did."
She finally fell silent. Not the sort to make promises lightly. Feelings and complications over Jay aside, she meant it. Not as some grand overture. Just with the simple certainty that had protected Ekene, whatever grim mistakes he had made, because at the time he had needed it.
She twisted back. Emptied her glass and felt her senses mist. That might be one too many. Even the music seemed languorous now, like her ears muffled. It keened a recollection of the last time, pushed a pounding heart into her throat. She traced where the wounds had been, wondered if she could convince herself a lie, but the memories were still there. She was supposed to be forgetting. Instead it was all just meshing. The only thing not blurring was her awareness of Jay in her peripheral.
Her hands laced over her head. To stop the spinning as much as anything, both elbows planted. She spoke without thinking. "At first I thought I imagined your voice in the tunnels. I thought perhaps Pavlo had put something in my system; he delighted in the fear, and there was lab equipment everywhere when I woke up. It seemed more logical than the truth at the time. Because sometimes I want you so fiercely it scares me."
He'd be gone soon, and she'd become a memory. This would become a memory. Her swimming brain found it a reasonable confession at the time, even as something curled protectively inwards afterwards. Once spoken it sounded stupid. He'd find it stupid. But her lips curled with all the ruefulness of a reckless heart anyway. She'd dashed herself against the rocks for less.
"I am very drunk," she whispered. "And I don't think I'm going to be able to stand."
Jay fell into a cavern of silence. Utterly and completely stolen of words, thought, reaction. Natalie's words echoed the thoughts buried deep that none should know. Locked down so tight, Jay barely acknowledged the existence but for when the cage rattled for freedom.
Silence was the sandy foundation upon which the towers of his heart were built, but sand dissipated with the merest wash of water. Whether that water slid silent as white foam warmth or slicked a green carpet over swamps didn't matter. The notion of truth eroded away what he thought held him up as sure as venomous lies. The wave swept. Sand erased. The pieces began to fall apart.
He wanted to hide. Maybe he did. Eclipsed beneath the shade of the Stetson. She couldn't see the ghosts flashing behind his eyes like they haunted the inside of his skull. The headache was their doing. Scratching and clawing to be let out. To erupt and roar the painful truth rather than sit inside, dusty and caged.
He wanted to leave the furnace that was confronting the truth. Inhibitions crushed, Natalie was the conduit to a soul that lied only to itself. She could plunge into those dark places, unafraid of being bit by the vipers hidden therein, and wrench away what she believed existed. A lobotomy would be preferable. Jay was ready to flee, needing to hide in the darkness like a frightened kid beneath the sheets.
The ice that flushed his skin wasn't what shook him to his core. It wasn't the flash of forced light or the sting of raw truth.
It was the possibility that Natalie might stop reaching into the dark. She might withdraw her hand when the fangs sank too deep. For some reason, she was a cord to the outside world, the streak of a comet to a man isolated on his lonely island. A shout into the universe that shouted back.
What if the universe went silent? That sound, the complete vacuum of nothingness, would be worse than any other fate. In this moment, listening to her, watching her struggle as surely the drinks proved, as comprehension sank into his bones, Jay knew the truth. A truth he wasn't going to lie over.
This was a second chance, and he wasn't going to blow it. Not again. Secrets be damned. Darkness be damned. He could make his own damn light and use it to dispel the ghosts haunting her shadow.
The hat dropped on the bar. He turned to grab her arm before she fucking fell off her seat. His grip clamped the wrist as a steady anchor, not as chains. A wrist smooth and pale, shackles cast aside.
"You're right about her, Natalie," he began, wondering if the words pierced the veil of alcohol. How did she even know about Anna Marie? What did Cayli whisper? Questions for later. He'd try to breech those walls anyway. She had to hear. Ten thousand lives spoke from within, wanting, needing her to hear. "I used to want her. I used to want a lot of things. I don't want them anymore. I'm not the same man these people know." Maybe he never was. Maybe the man he pretended to be was a lie all along.
He licked his lips like the gesture may empower strength to hang on when she wanted to leap from the ledge. The thing was, if she was going to fall, he'd follow her down.
Nobody so much as glimpsed who he was. Except her. For some damned confusing reason, she accepted it. Darkness and light. She stood steadfast, staring down the barrel of this weapon sure to blast any second without flinching.
The voice in the darkness that called her name. She didn't imagine it. She was likely to forget this entire conversation, but he would remember for the both of them. The touch on her arm was too much and yet not enough. He wanted closer than was possible. To grip her close. Warmth and need and desire burning within them both finally freed.
"You will do what you need to do, and you will be what you need to be. Because that's who you are." For Cayli, for him, for her family. For Ekene. They both shed blood, both beat clenched fists on the concrete to bloody pulps. But they both clawed onward by tooth and nail. All it took was a hint of hope. A flicker of light across the vast, empty universe. A direction to march onward. So long as that existed, all the shit and blood between here and there was tolerable.
She was so beautiful.
"Come on. Let's go upstairs."
He helped her to her feet, left behind yet another teased meal. Another drink abandoned. But God knew he would drown himself in the same golden seas of despair that she chose for herself. He knew what it was like to be so drunk he couldn't operate. When the walls warped and weaved with each step. To bleed and cry until the last drop of water was wrung from his body. The clink of empty bottles tripping up underfoot. To lay on a pyre of glass, begging someone to set it aflame because he couldn't do it himself.
He accepted her weight against him. Boots led the way as she shuffled along. The Stetson was the shield that blocked neon lights from ripping across her pale gaze. It seemed all backward. Like she was suppose to be the one that banked the floodwaters of despair overflowing his soul. Yet at the same time it felt so right. Nothing else mattered but this moment. Let him plunge into darkness with company for once. He could handle the fangs, his flesh armored by hope and thickened with cause. God help him if hope and cause were stripped away. The vulnerability might kill him, then.
He paused as they stepped into the hall. Jasmeen, Anna Marie's friend, turned a corner just then, fixed him with a glare. He smiled and nodded, a dip of the head, but silence stretched forth like shaking hands with an old friend. She huffed and hurried away. She was likely off to report to Anna Marie. He'd not stop her.
The wide hall might as well have been a narrow alley. Jay studied each and every shadow like ambush awaited within. The elevator dinged. He didn't exhale until her room door clicked behind him.
He planted himself against the door, Stetson dangling from one hand while his head rested back. His own silence was a deafening, familiar song to a tune they both knew.
Restlessness crept in, though. He moved from the door to cross the entire length of the room to the window. They were not high up by his demand for easy escape but high enough to study the sky. The stretch of the landscape beyond was mostly flat. The horizon far. Stormclouds bubbled high, white towers in the distance. It was that time of year.
He should leave her alone. He should do a lot of things.
But he didn't.
His palm covered her wrist, consumed the scars that no longer were. Stopped her tumbling backwards. The travelling heat was not a new sensation, but the strength in it was. Like she could let go at that moment, and even if the plunge was steep; even if it tugged them both down into whatever darkness awaited, he would not let go. It stilled her mind; silence that came, not from the oblivion she sought at the bottom of a bottle, but something else. Her pale gaze followed the connection up. It was as close to peace as she remembered in a long time.
When she stood everything swarmed. A surprised oh met the rush, like gravity somehow forgot to do its job. A pillar of warmth kept her upright against the lurch, a twist of her mouth, half insisting she was not yet done. Though she didn't fight it either. Her gaze strayed up like the story unravelled and she unravelled with it. Somehow forgot she should be looking where she was going rather than at the beacon in the storm.
Though something of his words apparently impacted; prompted the tease of a not quite innocent smile. She bled rivers all over the floor today, but the sting of her humour never quite faded to something decent.
"Be a gentleman, yes?"
The journey up was a blessed blur. The hotel room emerged like a blink and step through a portal, the sudden quiet pounding around in her head like absence. Her weight sank down on the bed. She wasn't sure the world would ever stop spinning, even captured in her hands, though if she sat very still it was tolerable. Something insidious crept into her chest at the trap of four empty walls, at least until she realised Jay had not deposited her and left.
Moscow aside, this script was old, and it usually ended the same way. But she wasn't looking for ephemeral comforts. At least not only. And he was looking out the window; clinging to more honour than he ever admitted to having. She wondered what thoughts rattled within as he beheld the familiar landscape outside; a home he left for a reason, yet still rent bloody gouges in his soul. Or maybe he only looked for Amengual shapes shadows.
With a little effort she shed the shoes from her feet. The wallet clattered from her pocket and bounced off the floor unheeded. Natalie used the headboard to centre her balance, though right then every damn limb felt like it belonged to someone else. Her toes dug into the carpet. Single-minded determination pushed her path through a swimming world, until one hand found purchase on his hip. As much to steady herself as in mindless affection. The other snaked across his stomach, her head pressed soft against his back.
The passions of his kiss were not forgotten; the heat of his touch apt to unravel her in a distinctly different way. But this was not that. She closed her eyes, breath soft.
Her question stirred expectations Jay barely held of himself. Despite the grim situation, a grin eeked out from beneath the brim of the Stetson. He never assigned such ridiculous titles to himself before. “No thanks” was the answer automatically summoned. His eyes were not filled with base hunger. She was unlikely to even remember the tease, though he might remind her later.
Cargo planes weren’t known for nice round windows with which to view the globe from above. But he knew the world curved a hazy blue arc. The last day was a blur, impossible to believe where they stood this time yesterday. From palaces and power to corn and casinos. The gray uniform of the Nine was in his room, laid out on the bed when he exhumed a cleaner shirt from. Natalie wrapped in pale blue that sparkled like sunbeams glinting on ocean waters. Tuxedos, champagne glasses, Ascendancy. If he wanted to impress Anna Marie, a flash of the winged skeleton would do it. Instead, retreat was the order of the day.
The wallet buzzed again. Cayli probably going stir-crazy. The same restlessness that itched his bones to activity yanked on her soul as well. He felt bad for the kid, but she could survive a little longer on her own. Morbid pun intended.
A press to the hip shocked like electricity like touching a hot socket. The flinch was small. Sickness, failure and guilt threatened resurrection from someplace long buried. The void was filled with something else, though. Tension drained slowly as her hug allowed no competitors.
Shielding her, Jay could hold back the rain that threatened to drench them both. Long, lonely roads awaited both their futures. He was suppose to meet the Dominions in Africa in short order. Titles wouldn’t bring Natalie into the cross fire. Red cross representative or CCD ambassador belonged in embassies and board rooms, not in the heat of battle. Though, given what he now knew she years-ago mastered, she might be an asset to the fight. Except Jay knew his limits. If duty ever conflicted with her, he knew what he would choose and fuck the consequences. Those were the kinds of decisions that lost battles and saw good men killed. If Natalie walked the continent, Jay would plunge into the arc of that bleak horizon until finding her safe. It killed him to realize it, but she had to stay behind. CCD preferably. Probably a bad idea to leave her in the States. Her family was well-connected, her father seemingly especially. Maybe he could protect her. Even from prison. Alvis was a possibility.
He didn’t move. Never wanting this moment to end. Or at least letting the closeness of her fill his memories until he could see it even should blindness strike in the future. He could carry on through the turmoil of the future with this peaceful moment to cling to better days.
A knock on the door and Jay jumped.
Natalie was unlikely to stand on her own, so he helped her a moment before stealthily padding to the door and checking the sight-bore. Probably Cayli’s impatience gained the best of her when messages went unanswered. Natalie said she’d been tracked down before, implored to deliver a plea to the older brother mediator between a teenage girl and their parents.
He checked the bore, a swimmingly round distortion of the hall beyond filled his sights.
All breath caught in his chest. The power swarmed into grasp. Emotion drained. Muscle and instinct replaced it. A fraction of a second was all there was to make the decision. Goddammit.
He yanked open the door with a whoosh of air. The man on the other side wasn’t expecting confrontation. He expected a guy hiding under the bed ready to piss himself afraid. A pissed off guardian hovering on the edge of darkness was the last thing he expected to face.
A blast burst from Jay in assault. The man with all his muscle and sinew of an oak tree, flung from his feet. Slammed into the opposite wall. Slumped still. He wasn’t stupid, though. His buddy waited out of sight of the peep hole.
The air was hot like Jay was a mirage flashing in the desert. He moved. Struck. Deflected. Muscle moving faster than the power that he launched like missiles on air-strike.
So maybe he wasn’t completely without emotion.
He dragged the first one into Natalie’s room. Stopped only when his hand hurt and the guy was too injured to escape. Bonds of the power caged him. He’d not be able to crawl away even if he tried.
He used the power to snag the other guy’s ankle and drag his ass in next to his friend.
Guns were shoved aside. Did Amengual not warn anyone who they were dealing with?
He stood over the pair. The same tight-jawwed muscle from the hospital. Panting. Swarming with power. Darkness flitting around the room like demons. Natalie said her power was beautiful. Like music. Jay’s was anything but beautiful. It was crushing and violent. The flashbomb of a nuclear eruption that incinerated its targets to dust.
He could do it, he realized. Incinerate these two shits to dust and kick their ashes into the carpet. Far easier than he cared to admit. The more chilling realization wasn’t the capacity within to do just that, but that Jay only barely hesitated from carrying out the gruesome end. It wasn’t mercy that hesitated executing Wallace-Johnson. It was the epiphany that he how greatly wanted to do it.
He had questions for these two bastards. Amengual’s hounds. Did they really think to take him so easily? To knock on the door and jump a trained operator and Rod of Dominion?
Then understanding flooded in. He whipped around, Natalie forgotten until now.
This was her room.
They were here to take her.
He had to retreat. If he didn’t, he’d kill them both before there was time to extract answers, and they'd envy Andres Amengual's violent reaper of carnage.
Natalie had never coveted silence, but this was the softest lullaby she had ever known. The tension eased out of Jay's muscles, his breaths rhythmic like waves. Warmth suffused through, flesh and blood real, and her breathing deepened, rocking on the edge of drifting. Any sort of peaceful sleep was a well earned victory these days. The yearn for comfort was deep. She was about to tug him backwards. Innocent, for once.
Then she was back on the bed, taking (it felt) an inordinately long amount of time to fall into its softness. This time she curled up, pulling a pillow into her arms, pale hair mussed in a veil over her face, eyes already closed.
At least until something pierced the quiet. She pushed herself up, pillow still in her lap. But bleary-eyed focus found little more than confusion. It took a minute. It took more than a minute. But her brows lowered, coolness wrapping her veins. Sobriety was a long way off, but the sting of fear at least made her feel more alert.
Jay wore the face of a devil; swarmed by darkness. But it was the bodies deposited on the floor she was looking at. A clearer head might have intervened upon the situation with habitual calm; wielded it expertly, made sense of the chaos. Instead she sank back against the headboard and tried to blink a path through her sluggish thoughts. "You bring me the nicest gifts. But I don't think I can put them in a vase."
She drew her knees up; balanced her chin in a palm. At least to give her head something to rest on. Her brows were still furled in a confused frown, but recognition did muffle through the haze. Not that it made anything remotely clearer. "I saw them at the hospital," she said. "But I don't think they're here because I called them assholes."
“I saw them too.” The words clung like bats in the rafters. Lofty, shadowed places stretched into memories that Jay did not want to resurrect. White hospital, shining tiles, opaque glass. He’d plunge the entire building into black waters if he could, watch it sink and walk away forever. But from those infinite depths something bloated and rotting floated to the surface. He forced himself to look at it, lip curled with disgust. Natalie’s light-hearted humor did not reach the inner fiery circle that he stalked like his own red-painted kingdom.
He stalked to the first one. Caged, trapped with bars of light. He was going no where. Rippling muscles were useless now. Well-dressed slacks and good sturdy boots. He’d give it to the guy. He had fine taste in footwear. The second moaned, palm pressed to his forehead. Raw red blushed his face. Jay didn’t envy him the migraine soon to erupt, even as his own fist ached, but the guy was lucky he wasn’t a corpse.
He knelt, hand sinking a lead-anchor upon his chest. Warning him to stillness while the other yanked open the guy’s jacket amid the feeble defense. “Hands to yourself or you’re going to lose one.” The order was humorless, the steel-cage of his eyes flashed a single warning. From a pocket was dug a wallet and magazine. The latter was chucked near the .44 Jay previously kicked far from reach. The former was locked tight.
The guy managed to spit a few mumbled curses. Lost in the slur were a few protests. “The hell is wrong with you.”
Jay barked a shallow laugh. “A lot. Now, shut up.”
“He’s right. You belong in jail,” he murmured. Jay wasn’t playing, though. It was all he could do to not put a bullet in their hearts right there.
“You’re here to kill us and you think I belong in jail.” He laughed at the insanity of that. But the laughter died down as he pulled something else to light.
He turned the thing over in his hands. The world fell to utter stillness. His heart might stop. But he stared until heat forced the first burning blinks.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. was stamped in gold across the top of the badge.
Jay looked at the second guy. He was starting to rouse. “That’s right,” the man moaned as he tried to get up, but he pushed through the pain and made it to an elbow. “FBI.”
Jay pushed to his feet, clutching the badge. It made no sense. Amengual sent FBI agents? Did he have them on the payroll? Maybe. The American government sent Marines to dismantle the factories and take Andres alive on the orders of someone in the Pentagon. Maybe it was some kind of internal investigation? Taking Andres alive was a stab into the heart of a crooked FBI? What the hell was going on? What’s worse, Jay had no idea how to find out.
A single finger lifted slim warning. “Stay the fuck on the floor while I think.” The guy tentatively moved, protests continued, boasts of impossible claims, but his voice was the fluttering of bats in the dark. Jay just stared at the badge until he absently began to search the tagged name and ID number on his Wallet.
“You’re Carpenter, aren’t you? She’s Grey.” That caught his attention, but he couldn’t look away from the portrait of a dark-haired, clean-cut guy on the FBI website proudly displayed. Jay didn’t need to check to know that the portrait matched the man at his feet.
Breath came quick. Jaw bolted shut. He searched the name of Amengual’s cousin again. Sure that it was the same man. Sure. He swore it was the same face he studied on the plane. He studied them all. Memorized all those faces. All their names. Everything he could find about anyone with any connection to the Amengual cartel, legit or otherwise.
But he had been tired. Alcohol fuzzed the usual sharpness of that mindless flight. The faces blurred and splintered, warping from one to one-thousand men and back again.
He pinched his eyes tight and blackened the screen, arm falling limp at his side. This definitely didn’t look good. Add FBI to the list of American agencies that probably wanted Jay Carpenter’s head on a pike. He scrubbed a hand through his hair, speechless, when a shriek of a Wallet buzzed from Natalie’s bag.
She watched him, battlements insurmountable, and felt like she was leaning at the edge of an epiphany, that if she could just reach that little bit further over the reckless edge she would capture something precious.
It seemed the most haunting and familiar melody. Words were useless weapons then, but she knew with certainty that when the black mist faded, when guilt and regret seeped in to pack the new wound, she would still be here.
Not to heal it, but to make it bearable.
She was drifting again, despite best intentions and the strangers bound in her room. A thought spread like ripples as she tried to focus on the flittering words. Cayli. Men and guns and the fear in Jay's eyes as he screeched them from the hospital. The pillow abandoned, she began a slow search for her wallet through the mussed blankets. Until another thought subsumed a greater ripple. Even under the influence her expression had the uncanny ability to shut down; to blanket the churning within with something smooth and empty as glass.
Grey.
She's Grey.
She's Grey.
"Shit."
The world shuddered hard. Understanding beat relentless at locked doors, but she didn't want to answer. Her eyes squeezed closed against a brittle anger, flaking away to helplessness, when the buzz shrilled from her bag on the floor.
She wondered if Jay would realise her wallet wasn't in that bag.
Natalie was unequipped for the journey, but she also knew now was not the time for him to accidentally pull that white envelope from her luggage. That was a truth that needed to come from her.
She clambered over the bed like she battled ocean waves, the room tilting maddeningly. Almost pitched off the end before she remembered to use her feet. Why was this so difficult? A few awkward steps brought her to the wall. She sank down gratefully, but everything inside carried on churning.
Finally slumped on the floor she fumbled with the zip pocket, fingers clumsy. Hideously slow. Azu's travel bible spilled out with the miniscule wallet her dad had left in the apartment. The screen was dark and silent now, but the merest touch rekindled its glow. Words blurred. The room lurched enough to turn her stomach no matter how still she tried to keep herself.
"I was coming to find you. Before. Jay, we really need to talk." Eyes open or closed it made little difference now. It was one small shift from warm, drowsy contentedness to the colder grip of nausea. Exhaustion nipped a sharp bite, though she doubted the sleep would be peaceful any longer. "When I'm sober," she amended regretfully. "We really need to talk when I'm sober."
Her face was still, pinched only by the bleariness of how sick she was starting to feel. After a moment she held the device out. Slimmer than a commercial wallet, and sleeker too, like something yet to hit the market.
"The room is spinning. What does it say?"
Her breath tightened like an actual pain as she let go. Natalie rarely lied; she was a creature of brutal truth, hard and uncompromising. But even that was a shield in its own way, for she wasn't open either. Her multitudes were contained; the good and the bad, the sins and the joy.
Aaron discovered it, and she recoiled rather than bridge the gap. Her mother lost all confidence when their family splintered and proved its threads of loyalty a sham. She'd counted Azu a close friend, his loss a devestation, but he had never pushed her to difficult topics. Natalie had no one, but it was a purposeful isolation. The one person she had ever needed cast her aside, and she doled out the same punishment spitefully to all others.
Though even that was a connection broken now.
God, she felt dizzy.
Natalie watched Jay with that little piece of her life she had never wanted to share. Remembered the touch of his hand against her wrist like the rest of the world faded against a silent promise. She'd never looked for a hero; her cynic's heart scoffed at the asanine idea. She didn't see a saviour either.
She saw company in the dark places. The morbid smirk of a like soul. Arms that did not try to pull her towards light she sometimes could not see, but simply sheltered.
The words were a wrench. Three tiny little words that pulled a plug from her heart.
"It's my dad."
Natalie was really drunk.
If it wasn’t for the ridiculous situation in which he found himself, he’d stalk out the door in search of the means to join her stupor. As it was, he was holding an FBI badge in one hand and two agents sprawled at his feet. Probably should wait to make sure nobody shot him in the back first.
He thought he had problems before.
She thrust a slim piece of tech in his hands. The Legion worked with easily decade-old equipment. MARSOC was more up to date, but nothing compared to the sci-fi like advancements of the Facility. At least before Jay blew up their control room and killed a poor assistant. What he held in his hand was something of that quality. He turned it over, unfolded the flexible screen. Sensors read his innermost desires like it listened to Natalie’s voice. A message was summoned.
”A gift.”
One Jay didn’t understand.
He stared at Natalie, but rather than the vulnerable girl wrapped in his arms, he saw the angle of a paparazzi photograph. Courtrooms. Stately family. ’It’s my dad.’
The message was from her dad. A gift. One that definitely wasn’t to be shoved in a vase. They knew who he was. Carpenter. Grey. Not Northbrooke, Grey.
Alistair Grey, imprisoned in as a Custody traitor, pulled strings Jay didn’t even know exist. His tendrils touched all the way to the FBI from half-a-world away. What else did he know?
He let their bonds of light dissipate. The first agent, Preston S. Clark, Agent Clark, rolled to check on the state of his partner. Jay offered to return his property.
He sank onto the bed. The next-gen wallet laid alongside his thigh. A frown took his tone as he spoke, ”Sorry about that. Thought you were someone else.”
Preston glared as he looked up. “Carpenter, I don’t know much about you. Most of your file is black-listed. But you have about a thirty seconds to explain before I arrest you.”
Jay doubted the threat was sincere. More like he didn’t want to admit that one guy kicked both their asses in a matter of seconds. Still, a chill laced ice down his spine. They had a file, confidential, and knew his record. Details were likely obscured or erased to those except higher levels in the Pentagon command, but they had more than sat comfortably. He shifted his weight…scrubbed a hand across his hair.
The partner edged to a sitting position, leaning against the wall. Preston, despite the rawness of soon-to-bloom bruises, was in better shape. Since it was already apparent what he was, Jay spun out a rope of air to yank open the mini bar and deposit two bottles within arm’s reach. To Preston’s credit, who gasped, but held his composure pretty well for witnessing magic first hand. Almost like he might have expected as much, but it was a different story to see it for yourself. Shit, Jay could empathize.
The second guy, whose name Jay still didn’t know, accepted the water and sank his head in his hands like the world still spun for him. Maybe he should ask Jensen to heal the poor bastard. Maybe.
“You’re here for her, I take it.” He nodded a kick of the head toward Natalie. The power continued to swarm his senses, he could smell the alcohol on her even now. What did she want to talk about? Something urged her to seek him in the casino. Only to come across a guy huddled up against another woman. Yep. The good just piled up in spades today. “There’s someone coming for me too. You ever heard of a Nicaraguan cartel lord self-named El Tiburon?”
Preston snapped his head around. Apparently he had. “El Tiburon is a Federally wanted man. A dozen legitimate businesses obscure opioid manufacturing and human trafficking. If you’re saying El Tiburon is after you, then he isn’t paying us enough.” The elusive ‘he’ again. Natalie’s dad. Jay should have read more about him while he had the chance. What did he know?
Darkness deepened his tone. A hint of previous sins proudly spoken. Given the chance, he’d still slaughter the guy. Maybe he would hold back a little with the machete. Maybe not. The guy already had a bullet in the brain and two in the chest before Jay jumped him. “That motherfucker is dead. El Tiburon was claimed by Zacarias, a younger brother. The guy is having a little bit of a problem letting go.” Jay didn’t elaborate further, but the agent nodded like he had a better sense of who he was dealing with. They had no idea, of course. Raiders was pretty damn elite of a group. It wasn't a large leap to assume who it was that swung the scythe. Jay barely knew his own capacity. Ascendancy sensed the potential and cultivated it. You’ll earn it. The medal he pinned to his chest on the promise of future violence.
He tried to pretend Natalie wasn’t sitting right there. Hopefully alcohol plugged her ears and erased her memory. But if FBI agents were here, maybe even to take her to safety at her dad’s behest, then they needed something to go on. Zacarias was at the ball. He saw Jay with Natalie. Connections made men vulnerable. He would plunge the knife and twist the pain excruciating if given the chance to exploit.
“So you can imagine, I’m a little jumpy. And not to typecast, but fuck dude, you look just like Crisostomo Amengual. Maybe you should consider a haircut or something.” A morbid grin broke the melancholy of his expression.
She'd bled all over the bar through choice; careless wounds, self-destructive, soon to be forgotten truths that made her feel strangely better at the time. This second injury was more insidious, and utterly silent. It hurt far more. Natalie's gaze wrenched free, rudderless. Her hands cradled her temples like she could stop the river of time with a touch, until defeat pressed her head against her knees.
Inside she was cold.
A gift.
She banked a stinging tide behind her eyes. Control clamped hold a vise, but she kept losing grip in the vortex, like the alcohol unravelled with mischievous hands everything she fought to contain. She probably looked passed out, or on the verge, though her toes scrunched hard. Jaw like steel beneath the barrier of her arms. A closer eye might see how her muscles corded tight. The way her nails knifed into her palms. Huddled on the floor, she felt like a fool.
Around her the conversation buzzed, but she heard little of it. Especially once the roaring rush of anger began moving her blood again. Suddenly the whole situation was intolerable. Her head rose. It took a moment to pin the agent, eyes ghost pale. Spiked by ice. "You can leave now. I don't his want his gifts, I don't want his help, I don't want anything from him."
A pause after the wintry words spilled out, letting the chill settle. The emotion drained out along with her pallor. The glacial stillness was utterly unforgiving.
"Get out."
“Get out!”
Her order snapped something in his head. A spark that pulsed electricity like a live wires screaming fresh connection.
Time to go their separate ways.
He wrestled Preston to his feet followed by the partner. Preston took on the man’s weight until it was obvious the daze washing his head faded. Meanwhile, Jay gathered the weapons previously confiscated and strode to the door.
With as much commotion that he hurled them into the room, Jay kicked them out. His gaze was drawn to the crackles in the drywall opposite. “If I see you again, keep your fucking distance next time.” No negotiation. No mercy next time. Returning their firearms was a massive gesture of trust. Then he slammed the door on their faces before someone else happened onto the scene. It would be fitting for an innocent teenager to show up about then, questions rupturing tentatively sealed wounds.
When Jay returned, he planted himself in the middle of the room just to keep himself from throwing a fist into the wall. An old exercise, counting, was the fallback, but their soothing song was hollow. Shallow. How did Natalie’s dad possibly rope FBI agents into this? How did they even know where to find her? Was she being tracked? Did she tell someone where she was going?
Suspicion rallied. His heart pound a steady beat, but he stared at her unblinking anyway. Did she tell someone? What did you do?
The counting didn’t help. He paced to the window. Stormclouds bloomed darker on the horizon. Nearer. Like the weather reacted to the storm within.
Prime numbers was slightly more distracting. He counted primes. Beautiful little digits. Uncanny, indecipherable, but remarkable.
When next he moved, it was to stalk to Natalie’s stuff. Privacy be damned. He had to know if she was being tracked and Natalie was too drunk to spill the innermost churnings of her head. Her dad's tech he slipped into a pocket before it was crushed beneath heavy boots.
“Did they follow you?”
“How’d they find us?”
“Who else does your father know?”
"WHY did he do this?!"
The questions rattled like accusations, even if he wasn’t entirely sure about deciphering the difference at the moment. He had to know. If not, the flutter of paranoia might resurrect from ancient places he barely conceived existed.
When all the momentum of this chaotic tornado suddenly came to a halt. He stood upright. Back turned to her. Fists balled so hard his fingers ached. Maybe punching the agent's face in had something to do with it. Paper crunched. Breath caught in his chest. When he saw his own name, he swallowed, eyes wide with fear, and it was all over. Not so much that she knew what she knew. But about something gripped the core of his soul, twisted, yanked, and tried to dislocate it from his body. No. no. no. no.. Papers devoured. Black scoured.
He dropped it at her feet, but when he looked at her, it was with the silent turmoil of a broken trust screaming for explanation. If she was even still conscious.
She needed sleep. He had to get out of there.
Best to give them both what they needed. Else he was set up to do something he'd regret later.