CHAPTER NINE
ZARA
Some seasons in life are simply doomed to be our glimpse of Hades.
The flames lick at our soul, and we know the only way out is through the inferno.
It’s then that we taste the demon hunting us.
We sense it. We might be in a room full of people, but we’re utterly alone.
Beneath a bright blue sun-kissed canopy, but chained to the darkness.
Surrounded by vast open space, but backed into a corner.
My first taste was twenty years ago.
I’m perched in a hammock, staring up at the clouds. That one looks like a lion, roaring into the gloomy drizzle. My mom would like that. Power found in the simple.
In the summer, she spends all day with my brother and me.
We lie in the grass and make wishes on dandelions.
It’s marshmallows and kayaks and movies in homemade tents.
We climb trees and have three-legged races with the neighbors and swim in the lake behind our house.
There’s a rope that hangs from a thick branch, and she swings and flips better than any of us.
We have picnics by the sunflower field, and she always makes us cherry lemonade and cheesecake squares. Pure magic.
Dad joins our adventures when he can, but he travels for work. Mom has a way of making him forget all the stress. He tells us she’s still a kid at heart. That must be why she wishes she could freeze me in time and keep me nine forever. She says that about every age.
Today, the sky is divided. It isn’t the shapes that are captivating. It’s the speed. The clouds are moving faster than what seems natural. A golden glow outlines puffs of white, chased by angry poofs of gray. I think the light will lose this round.
Maybe the clouds are moving faster because they miss her too. Mom went away for the weekend, but hasn’t come back. It’s not like her. Daddy doesn’t seem to know where she is either, but he insists he’s not worried. I don’t believe him. Neither does my brother.
While he reads in the tree house, I jump off the hammock and wander, picking weeds by the house. My mom would say my spirit is stirring. She’s convinced I have a keen sixth sense, but I think I just get restless.
“You did this!” my father hollers from inside the house.
His booming accusation rattles the window, so I sneak up to peer at him just above the sill. He’s holding pictures. It takes a minute for me to grasp what they are, but then I see her. Mom. Bruised and battered. Her eyes are open but vacant, and her neck is red. I don’t understand.
“You strangled her.” His voice is eerily calm, chilling, nothing like my playful father.
Mom was strangled?
“I will have every one of my colleagues on you within the hour,” my dad goes on, his face steel determination. “I don’t care who you are. You will pay.”
Tears soak my cheeks as droplets from the sky dot my arms. My chest heaves, my heart jackhammering against my rib cage, and the contents of my stomach clamber to my throat.
She’s gone.
Whatever the person on the other end of the phone responds, it terrifies my father. His ruddy complexion turns ashen. And just as the sky opens up with sheets of anguish and a clap of thunder, his eyes find mine, and he drops the phone.
Within a year, everything that was my childhood was stripped away from me—my mother, our home, my friends and neighbors and school, even my name. We ran, leaving it all behind, but I knew it was stolen.
Two decades later, my tongue is once again heavy with the flavor of ash.
“I’m compromised,” I announce into my burner in Portuguese, and I silently applaud the lack of hysteria ushering it because, inside, I’m screaming. My mind has been screaming for days.
I’m speaking Portuguese because I can’t be sure the CIA or NSA don’t have intelligence scanning devices for certain languages here, and I don’t trust that someone from La Lune Noire—the owners, staff, or guests—wouldn’t read my lips or listen in. My paranoia is at an all-time high.
“Fuck,” Tripp hisses, jumping into protocol. “Location?”
I glance around, confirming no one is near as I roam a grassy area behind La Lune Noire, designated for employees. “I’m still at the resort.”
The clacking of his fingers on keys halts. “Are they holding you?”
There’s a group of employees having lunch closer to the building, laughing and carrying on.
Happy. The sight severs me, ripping me in half—one part wanting to bolt, the other wishing I could stay forever.
I don’t think either hope is within my reach.
And yet it isn’t an outright depiction of imprisonment.
“No. It’s complicated. I … I haven’t slept or eaten. I’m a mess, Tripp. I’ve been vomiting for days. This checking in once a week really sucks.”
Axel has either been busy or avoiding me, not that I’m anxious to see him.
I don’t know what to make of the blend of incongruent emotions he provokes in me.
Anger, fear, lust, comfort, and maybe a bit of awe.
Since our return from downtown on my first official workday, I’ve translated a host of boring documents.
Each evening, I go back to my suite and work out until I devolve into a nauseous, shaky mess.
Even my bones feel like they’re walking on death row.
“Zara, what the hell is going on there? Are you hurt? Why the fuck didn’t you call the emergency line?”
Tripp’s shock is warranted. That was far more vulnerability than I would traditionally extend, but I’ve never felt this forlorn.
“It’s not …” I swallow all the dread plaguing me, feeling so foolish. “I’m not sure he knows—”
“Who? Start at the beginning.” He practically coos that, treating me like an asset who’s on the verge of a mental breakdown.
Maybe I am.
I drop my head, leery that someone might read my lips on the name.
“Axel Noire. It’s still not clear if he knows I’m Dad’s daughter, but in a resort full of people who do what we do, he’s convinced I’m here on assignment.
And he … Tripp, this guy makes me feel like a novice again. I’m so out of my fucking league.”
“You are never out of your league. You master every situation we put you in. You always have. But,” he sings that with a thread of amusement, “a little humbling couldn’t hurt.
You can’t always be the best. And since you’re talking to me, I think you’re probably just freaking out. You need to get your head on straight.”
Irritation sizzles beneath my skin. “Since we’re talking life or death, aiming to always be the best is a wise goal. The only goal.”
“All I meant was, these are growing pains. You’re used to missions where you’re a shadow.
You slip in and out without notice. And you’re brilliant.
But that’s a sprint. And you’re fast. This takes endurance.
” He chuckles. It’s condescending, even if he doesn’t intend it to be.
“Nothing you’ve said so far is a true distress signal.
Long jobs have hiccups. I’d say you just aren’t used to the marathon. ”
“This isn’t funny,” I snarl. “He took me into the city.”
His humor morphs to concern. “You let him change your location?”
I wouldn’t traditionally do that without alerting them, but I was … duped. I fell for the sapphire eyes, the stoic demeanor, the jaw cut from granite, and the magnetic touch, beckoning me closer. It’s mortifying.
“I wavered, but he’s been nice. I don’t know.
” A sigh squeaks out of me. I’m so off my game here.
Maybe I was even before I came, but there is no point in sharing that.
“I didn’t really have a choice. Anyway, we had lunch and explored the city.
We were having a good time. Next thing I knew, he was spewing all this stuff about how there’d been a hit out on him the same day I showed up and how my arrival was suspicious.
I argued back, got a little pissed. I wasn’t too worried because we were in the open.
I trusted him and feared him, all at once. But then he … whistled.”
“Whistled?” Tripp parrots, and it’s as if the world stills, like it did when Axel and I were on the Riverwalk.
A shiver trickles down my spine. The birds fly in slow motion. Their warning cheeps are drowned by the rustling trees, the resounding bass from a loudspeaker, and the far-off prattling of the employees gathering on the elaborate brick patio. Signs of life.
“Yeah.” I string my fingers through my hair, remembering. “And at the sound, everyone as far as I could see froze. Cops, musicians, tourists. They were all there for him, ready to shoot me.”
“Fuck,” he growls, his frantic pecking resuming. At least now, he’s catching up. “But he didn’t hurt you?”
“No.” I shake my head even though he can’t see it. “He gave me a choice. I could leave right then or come back and play by his rules. I chose to come back.”
“Okay,” he mocks. “That was a choice.”
My spirit stirs, like it did that day when I was nine. “Not a good choice.”
“Then why did you make it?” he barks. “What is going on with you? And why the hell would he give you a choice if he suspected anything duplicitous toward him?”
He should’ve killed me.
There’s no easy way to explain where my mind was on that riverfront.
It was busy and chaotic, searching for an escape route and reasons and something else I can’t quite name.
I wanted answers about Mom. I like it here, maybe more than I’ve ever liked anywhere.
I hate to fail. And the thought of saying goodbye to Axel was daunting.
He was threatening me and freeing me at once.
In that moment, I was desperate to keep holding on to him. It didn’t make sense.