30 Seven
I woke to the sound of someone moving through the apartment.
The blood, the couch, the patchwork of staples holding me together.
The city outside was blank and silent. I heard only the low hum of the fridge and light footsteps, occasionally interrupted by careful sounds of chopping and rustling.
Something smelled good.
I listened and looked at her silhouette, cautiously moving through the kitchen against the dim backdrop of the under-cabinet lighting.
She was trying to avoid waking me, which meant she didn't know I was already awake.
I flexed my fingers. My right hand was a bit sticky with the leftovers of dried blood. I should have felt worse, but I'd known worse for a long time.
I sat up slowly, head spinning, and waited for the dizziness to clear.
There was a shape at the edge of my vision.
"Hey," she said, keeping her voice low. "I'm sorry if I woke you up."
"You didn't," I echoed.
She hovered near the couch, eyes landing on my bandaged side and then glancing away. "I made a sandwich." She set the plate on the coffee table next to the sofa.
The plate was ceramic, patterned with faded blue flowers. The sandwich was cut in half, one half already sliding apart. There was also a handful of potato chips, the cheap kind, crumbled at the edges.
I sat up straighter, ignoring the flare of pain, and reached for the plate. "Thank you."
Kimmy nodded and turned around. "I'll go to the bedroom so you can eat." She waved at the door across the way. "Privacy, you know." She motioned vaguely at her own face, then at my bandana. The fabric was damp with sweat. I wanted to take it off badly, I realized.
Then it dawned on me, I'd just thought of her as Kimmy, not the client.
It was bad. No, it was worse than bad. It went against every rule of the Bureau.
"Okay then," she muttered and retreated to her room, closing the door behind her.
The silence that followed was heavy, but not suffocating. I waited first. Just to make sure she wouldn't come back. Maybe she'd forgotten something.
After a couple of minutes, I pulled the bandana down and let it hang around my neck.
I ate with both hands, tearing through the sandwich in under five minutes. My body needed the calories. I chewed with my mouth closed, swallowed, forced the chips down even though my throat was sandpapered raw.
When the food was gone, I waited some more, then stood to test my legs. The world tilted, then corrected. I walked to the window and pushed the curtain aside an inch, just enough to see the street below.
The cars parked by the curb were all familiar, which meant no tail. Good. The lamps on the curb glared against the asphalt.
I held my breath for ten seconds, then let it out slow. My reflection in the glass was pale, eyes sunken and dull, hair matted and unruly.
I turned, crossed the living room, and hovered near her bedroom.
The door was closed. A seam of light glowed under it, warm and yellow. I knocked, gently, not wanting to startle her.
"Yeah?" she called out.
"Are you still up?"
She hesitated. "Reading. What's up?"
"Nothing. Just…" I trailed off, then pressed my shoulder to the wall. The pain in my side was a nuisance, but manageable.
A minute passed. I listened to the sounds in her room—the faint rustle of a page turning, the creak of her mattress as she shifted. I sat down on the floor, leaning my back against her door, my legs stretched out in the hallway.
For a while, I just stayed there, staring at my black socks.
I didn't know if I was guarding her or the other way around.
Maybe both.
Time dragged on, and I was exhausted, but my mind was too wired to sleep. This situation was a total clusterfuck and I needed to figure out how to deal with it. I needed to make some changes to my plans now that I knew someone was after me.
"What are you reading?" I asked.
"Just some women's fiction book."
"Is it any good?"
"It's decent. The writing is a little boring. But sometimes that's what you want."
I nodded, forgetting she couldn't see me. "Sometimes boring is better."
"The plot is great though."
"What's it about?"
"It's about a young woman who has a mental health crisis and she moves from the city to the small mountain town where she meets a recently widowed local business owner."
"What exactly is boring about it?"
"Well, it takes them several chapters to meet. They also don't share a lot of pages together in the first half of the book. Things pick up around midpoint though."
"I see."
"Sounds a little bit like us," she added quieter, perhaps not sure if it needed to be said.
"Depends on the ending of the book," I countered.
"In what way?"
"Well, if they get married and have a kid in the epilogue, that's definitely not like us." Why did I say that?
She was smart not to respond.
We let that hang. I studied the pattern on the hallway carpet, small triangles interlocked like the teeth of a zipper.
After a while, I asked, "How did you get mixed up with those men?"
The question floated through the closed door, heavier than either of us wanted.
"Your targets?" she asked, voice a notch quieter.
"Yes."
"Party. It was some influencer's product launch event.
One of those invite-only things at a penthouse the size of this entire floor.
A friend asked me to come with. I didn't really want to go, but she begged, said she needed a wingwoman.
Besides, meeting new people, especially with money and connections, benefited me at my previous place of employment. "
"Evernight Events?"
"Yep. I think the drinks were spiked. I lost time. Next thing I knew, I was in a bedroom, alone with them… And I couldn't move."
Her words were flat, like she was trying very hard not to be emotional, but they pressed against my skin and rattled inside my skull. "You reported it," I said. "But nothing happened."
"Nothing ever does when you try to bring down people who have the police and the judges in their pockets.
" She gave a sound that was almost a snort.
"My attorney was shit, my case was thrown out before it even became a case.
Someone hacked my website next. Then my boss let me go.
Gave me some bullshit excuse about downsizing.
Every single event planning company I tried after wouldn't even interview me as soon as they saw my name on the resume.
"I went from making great money to being unemployed.
Geneva was the only one who dared to hire me.
But she wasn't a threat to them. Now that I think about it, I wonder if their goal was to remove my name and my face from the social circles altogether because it would continue to raise questions…
you know…with Valmont wanting to go into politics.
" She was quiet for a moment. "I guess that's why I looked for…
you. Your agency. I want my life back. I worked really hard to get where I was at that point of my life…
when I ended up at that party. Now I can't even start from scratch. "
"You'll get justice, Kimmy," I said. "I promise."
There was a long pause. "I regret it, sometimes," she said.
That caught me off guard. "Hiring the Bureau?"
"Yeah. I thought it'd make me feel better, but all I feel is…" She stopped.
"What?" I asked.
"I take it back. I don't regret them getting punished. But I don't like that you got hurt because of me."
"That's my job. It happens."
"Normal jobs don't get you stabbed," she pointed out.
I considered this. "This is my normal. Besides, normal jobs do get you stabbed or killed. If you're a cashier in a twenty-four-hour convenience store in a bad neighborhood. You should check the news. It happens more often than you think."
"You always have a comeback."
"I'm simply stating the facts."
She made another noise—thoughtful, not judgmental. "What would you do if you could pick your own normal, if you had an opportunity?"
I'd never considered that. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I went searching for an answer in the back rooms of my mind, but all I found was protocol and a thousand different contingency plans. "I don't know," I said, because it was true.
She laughed, gently, like she found the truth comforting. "I bet you'd be good at anything."
I thought about it. "Maybe I'd travel. Maybe I'd look for my real parents. Maybe I'd just ride my bike and see how far I could go before I want to turn around."
I heard the mattress shift again. "You don't remember them either? Your real parents?"
"No."
The conversation was veering into the territory I didn't want to discuss. It reminded me of my nightmares.
I stood, feeling the muscles in my back pop, the wound in my side pulling tight with each breath. "I'm going to take another nap. Thanks for the sandwich." I didn't wait for her to reply. I walked to the window and checked the street again.
The cars were still there. No new movement. I watched for a few minutes, scanning each parked vehicle, then let the curtain fall back in place.
I drifted to the couch, pulled the bandana over my face, and let my body sink into the pillows.
I felt…strange, uneasy. After talking about my missing memories and the things I couldn't remember, I was certain I'd be in another horror movie while asleep. Only this time, when the sleep finally took me, it didn't bring the nightmares.
Instead, I saw the ocean—huge and blue, open all the way to the line where the sky began.
For the first time in years or maybe my entire life, I slept without regret or fear.