22. Marc
Marc
S omeone had booked the entire top floor of the Metrolux in Jayapura, and reporters were baying for blood outside.
Every news channel showed the facade of the hotel.
The paparazzi tried sneaking into the lobby, but a bunch of Indonesian cops had started arresting anyone who didn’t belong in the hotel while their colleagues tried to unravel the mess.
Kidnappers.
Terrorists.
Celebrities.
Harried diplomats.
A bunch of climate protesters facing off against fans wearing “Free Marc” T-shirts.
Phae.
On the couch next to Marc, Serena changed the TV channel as Heath poured a beer in the kitchenette.
Earlier, Serena had spent an hour on the phone with Owen in London while Heath called Edie to reassure her.
Then they’d both spoken with their parents, with Liam, with Marissa and Eisen and Janie.
Then their friends had begun checking in, and Serena complained her fingers were numb from all the texting.
Marc? He’d talked with Owen and said hi to Edie, and then his finger hovered over Kitty’s number, but what would he say to her?
Yeah, I’m fine, your stepdaughter ran through a hail of gunfire to rescue me and then she turned into the Grim Reaper.
Did Kitty know what Phae did for a living?
Where she went after those flying visits home? Marc didn’t think so.
For all those years without Phae, he’d been worrying about entirely the wrong kind of body count.
He’d feared he’d never see her again.
Now he grew nervous that he would.
She was here in the hotel, or at least, she had been earlier. They’d passed in the hallway, him on the way back to his suite after another round of questions, her with three stony-faced men in suits.
Attorneys?
Cops?
Diplomats?
Frank was in the hospital, and one member of the Wild Roots Collective was in a body bag.
They’d arrested Katie, who wasn’t Katie but KD, it turned out—he must have misheard the name—plus Frank and their shaken but uninjured colleague.
Marc had hired them an attorney, plus one for himself because he’d killed a man, hadn’t he?
He’d killed a man, and he’d never unsee that.
How many men had Phae killed?
How did she sleep at night?
How could he sleep at night?
The answer? He couldn’t. In the early hours, after dinner with Heath and Serena, he left the suite and took the stairs to the roof garden, a surreal oasis that overlooked the city with trees set around a sparkling turquoise pool, a waterfall tumbling among flowers, and lights twinkling between rocks.
He tapped one boulder. Fibreglass. Hadn’t he spent his life living a lie?
Why did it surprise him that so little in this world was real?
Details of the kidnap plot were gradually coming out, although Marc couldn’t be sure that everything on the news was real.
But Heath had his sources too, and apparently, Wild Roots had sourced their weapons via a local environmentalist with connections to the West Papua Freedom Army.
Through him—inadvertently, he swore, after he’d gotten arrested—the terrorists had managed to find the stilt house and show up with a plan to kidnap Marc.
If they’d succeeded, their demands would have been much harder to fulfil than simply not building on a beach.
And instead of grilled pineapple and a paperback, Marc and Serena would have been facing shackles and solitary confinement.
The top of the glass wall dug into his chest as he leaned over, looking at the street below.
Even at this time of night, the paparazzi were lying in wait, along with a few placard-toting folks who could have been fans or protesters.
Nobody looked up. Marc was safe, even as he contemplated swinging a leg over the wall and jumping.
Last month, he’d been disillusioned, a ways off happy, but content to keep living the life he’d chosen because sweeping change seemed a step too far.
Last night, he’d realised he couldn’t go back. Couldn’t keep up the pretence anymore. Couldn’t deal with the interview requests or book proposals or demands from his publicist.
“If you’re considering a swan dive, you should know that I have a taser.”
Marc spun to see Phae standing behind him, her shiny brown hair bathed in a halo of light they both knew was a lie.
She was no angel.
“You came up here to rescue me again?”
She shook her head, took a joint out of her pocket, and lit it. The distinctive smell of marijuana floated on the air.
Some things changed.
Some things stayed the same.
“Remember when we used to sneak out to the barn to smoke?” he asked.
“Remember when Booker thought he’d stubbed out his blunt and set the lawn on fire?”
Damn, that had been a wild evening. They’d put out the flames with buckets of water, but explaining the scorched patch to Rex was more of a challenge.
In the end, they’d used sunshine on a glass bottle to relight the fire the next morning, put it out again, and been hailed as heroes. Smoke and mirrors, quite literally.
“Remember when your dad found weed in your backpack and you swore some other kid had planted it there?”
“You mean the time he sued the school for failing to enforce its anti-drug policy?” Phae rolled her eyes. “Who could forget?”
She held out the joint and Marc took it, the first time they’d touched outside of a war zone in a decade. Residual sparks shot up his arm as he took a drag.
“You found a dealer here? That was fast work.”
“Brought it with me.”
“They didn’t search you at the airport?”
“I have a private jet and diplomatic immunity.”
“Oh.” What was he even supposed to say to that? “Congratulations.”
She shrugged. “They’re just tools.”
“Because you can’t bring your guns on a commercial flight?”
“Something like that.”
And Marc had used one of those guns to kill a man.
Until he fired, he hadn’t been sure he could pull the trigger, and although the man’s death replayed over and over in his head, he didn’t feel as upset about taking a life as he’d expected.
After all, he still regretted the handful of bucks he’d shot as a teenager.
But yesterday, it had been that terrorist or Phae, and the choice was an easy one to make.
Afterward, a guy who looked more like a surfer than a soldier had shown up and taken charge, and he’d told Marc to gloss over the details of the incident if anyone asked questions, so he had.
And nobody had mentioned the body in the forest. Nobody had swabbed his hands for gunshot residue or threatened him with arrest.
“Are you in trouble?” he asked Phae, and she barked out a laugh.
“No more than usual.”
“I mean, will you face any charges?”
“No.”
Good.
“Will I face any charges?”
“Also no.”
She sounded so relaxed about the situation, or at least, as relaxed as Phae got. Curiosity made him ask, “You do this type of thing often?”
“I don’t think you’d like the answer to that question.”
“So it’s a ‘yes.’” He held out a hand for the joint, took another deep inhale, and then coughed.
When was the last time he’d smoked? About two months after he moved to California, probably.
His grumpy landlord—who also happened to live next door—had banned smoking in the apartment, and Marc figured it was a sign he should get healthier.
“And to think I worried the Army would break you.”
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
Two could play at quoting Nietzsche. Marc took a step closer to the woman he’d adored since the age of thirteen. “And every profound spirit needs a mask?”
“Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.”
Another step. “Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.”
“Become who you are.”
An invisible string pulled them still closer, the same energy he’d felt the first time he laid eyes on her.
He’d been in Nebraska for a week, shipped off to live with a grandma he barely knew after his mom died in a car wreck.
Booker had been the first friend he made in Abundance, and even though a couple of other kids warned him about Rex Roebuck, he’d accepted Booker’s invite to shoot some hoops.
And that was when he’d met Phae. The first words she’d spoken to him? If you’re smart, you’ll leave.
He hadn’t heeded her warning then, and he couldn’t heed it now. Not when she was as much a part of him as his own limbs.
“The true man wants two things: danger and play.”
Marc tilted Phae’s chin and brushed his lips over hers, then waited for the punch to the gut. Real or metaphorical; he wasn’t sure which.
But it didn’t come.
Instead, she turned and walked away, and that hurt more than any fist ever could.