2. A Barnacle Attached To A Very Fine Backside
A BARNACLE ATTACHED TO A VERY FINE BACKSIDE
brYS
"Wait," Jakob says. "Just…wait." He presses me flush against the wall and peeks around the corner. "Okay, we're good. Go, go."
I feel silly, scurrying barefoot toward my door like I'm sixteen and late for curfew all over again.
If it wasn't for the very immediate and very visceral memory of gunfire still ringing in my ears, I'd think this whole thing was a big joke or prank.
It's the type of idiotic, over-the-top bullshit my idiotic brother Bryan would pull because he thinks it's funny.
Only the fact that the armed men chasing my mysterious companion were absolutely firing live rounds convinces me that even Bryan isn't stupid enough to hire men to fire live rounds at me.
I know Bryan doesn't like me, but I don't think he's malicious enough, or clever enough, to pull off an assassination attempt like this.
Never mind the fact that if this is an assassination attempt on me, it's a very roundabout way of going about it.
And he is exactly that stupid, admittedly, but even for him, this would be a cockamamie way of trying to get at me.
All of this runs through my head in the space of fifteen seconds, and convinces me that this situation is most likely exactly what Jakob is claiming—Occam's Razor and all.
Which means creeping cautiously up to my door and trying to unlock it silently feels a lot less silly. There could be killers on the other side of this door.
I pause with my hand on the knob, look over my shoulder at Jakob. "I'm scared to go in."
He doesn't say anything, and his expression doesn't change—stony, impassive. He pulls me away from the door and pushes it open from one side; when we aren't immediately cut down in a hail of gunfire, Jakob enters the condo.
"Wait here," he says, once we're both over the threshold.
I hang back just inside, perfectly content to let him sally forth boldly into possible danger, closing the door and putting my back to it as Jakob moves through my home. He peeks into the powder room off the kitchen, then vanishes into my bedroom suite.
"I don't see any sign that anyone has been here, but take a quick look yourself. You'd know if anything is out of place or missing."
"Missing? They're thieves now, not just killers?"
"No," he says, sounding nearly amused. "Not to my knowledge."
I do my own quick assessment and come to the same conclusion. "Everything is as it should be."
Jakob goes into my kitchen, spotting my drying mat cluttered with upturned coffee mugs and juice glasses.
He grabs a glass and fills it from the faucet, gulping it down in two swallows before refilling it and drinking again, this time more slowly.
"I find it hard to believe we lost them that easily," he says.
"I've been running from them for…" he shakes his head.
"Halfway across Manhattan, let’s just say that. "
"I have an idea," I say. "How about I get in bed and go to sleep, and you go away and take your killers with you? This has nothing to do with me."
"I wish it were that simple, Brys, truly I do." He goes to the window and peers out without putting his body in front of it.
"But they saw me for, like, six seconds. What are they going to do, Jakob? Sit down with a sketch artist?"
"Or CCTV footage," he says. "Those four men were hired to find and kill me.
They're just the stooges. The one who hired them has world-class computer techs on his payroll, the kind of people who can ID you based on a single still from grainy CCTV footage from an ATM across the street, feed that image into an algorithm, and track your movements across the city. "
"That's Hollywood bullshit. Fictional computer magic." I really, really want this to be true.
"Unfortunately, it's not. It takes longer than they make it seem on TV, but it's definitely real.
And I guarantee you that there's some nerd clacking away at a keyboard somewhere, tracking our journey across Manhattan to this address.
Or, more likely, IDing you, pulling up your address from public records, and sending a team here. "
"Why me?" I ask, more out of petulance than anything else.
"Pure bad luck, Brys, and that's pretty much it. I ran into you, they saw me with you, and now you're in the crosshairs."
"Whose crosshairs, though?" I snap. "Who wants to kill you? And why? And who are you, for that matter?"
"I'll explain…well, maybe not everything, but some of it. For now, though, we have to keep moving. Which means you need to change into practical clothes, and fast." He eyes me. "Do you, in fact, have anything so prosaic as jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt?"
I huff an annoyed but amused laugh. "Yes, Jakob, I do."
He shrugs. “You never know. I've known quite a few women who wouldn't be caught dead in denim."
"So, seeing as this is my first time running for my life from murderous cretins, should I pack a bag, or…?"
He arches his eyebrow. "No. You should not pack a bag.
You should leave your cell phone here. You should grab as much cash as you have available.
No ID, no wallet, no phone, no purse. No lotion, no hand sanitizer, no lipstick.
Just you, comfortable, practical clothes, and sturdy, sensible shoes in which you can run if need be.
If I were you, I'd do something with your hair.
Braid it. Put in a bun, tie it back, put on a hat, something.
Because as gorgeous as your hair is down, it's gonna be a problem loose like that. "
I do my dead-level best to ignore the way the word “gorgeous” makes my heart pitter-patter. ”You've got a lot of experience running for your life from murderous cretins, do you? With innocent women in tow, especially?"
He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Just go change, Brys. You can be witty and sarcastic at me later."
"Fine. Just…stay here and make sure the murderous cretins don't walk in on me naked." I glare at him. “You either, mister."
He holds up both hands, palms out in surrender. "Of course not."
I head into my room. The first thing I do is sit on the closed toilet lid and use a wet washcloth to scrub my blackened feet clean. Remove makeup. Braid my hair.
The thing I didn't say to Jakob is that his comment about not being caught dead wasn't all that far from the truth; I was just too embarrassed to admit it.
I have jeans and sneakers; I just… well, to be perfectly honest, I have in fact said out loud that I wouldn't be caught dead wearing jeans in public. Desperate times and all, though, right?
I peel out of my slinky little dress and the barely-there undergarments required by such a revealing garment.
At the exact moment in which I stand facing my closed but not locked bedroom door, buck-ass naked, the door slams open inward, revealing a wired and intense-looking Jakob.
"They're here!" He stops in his tracks, mouth ajar, eyes wide.
"Shit. Um. Apologies. But get dressed as fast as humanly possible. "
Another instant passes, in which he blatantly stares at me before ripping his gaze away from me and lurching out of my room. The whole thing occurred in under ten seconds, and I haven't even had a chance to be pissed off.
I step into plain black granny panties and a sports bra, my best—and only—pair of jeans, and a pair of ungodly expensive hiking boots my idiot brother gave me for Christmas one year, even though the closest to hiking I've ever come in my life is cutting across the grassy part of Central Park.
Which I did in a pair of Jimmy Choos. Fortunately, he managed to get them in the right size, so at least there's that.
I spend a precious moment waffling between my favorite comfort hoodie—a men's XXL Rangers pullover that belonged to Charles—and my leather biker jacket.
I opt for the leather, mainly because some possibly misinformed voice in my head says it will provide some sort of protection against… something. I'm not entirely sure what.
I exit the room and find Jakob at the window, peering down at something from the edge of the frame. He snaps his fingers and points, indicating that I should join him at the other side of the window.
When I do, and look down, what I see makes my heart sink into my boots: not one, but two large black SUVs, disgorging men in jeans, tees, and body armor who carry machine guns like this is Iraq circa 2004 instead of Manhattan in 2026.
"What the fuck did you do?” I snap at Jakob. "Kill a warlord's daughter?"
"Worse. His dog." When his comment only gets him a puzzled look, he sighs. "Clearly you haven’t seen John Wick." He eyes me. "I don't suppose you own a firearm? Or some other weapon?"
"Unless you count my Wüsthof knives as weapons, no."
He shakes his head. "Yeah, no." Another speculative glance. "Why on earth would you have a professional chef's knife set?"
I arch an eyebrow. "For cooking with." When he merely stares at me without expression, I sigh in irritation. "I enjoy cooking, alright? It relaxes me. It's my hobby."
"You don't seem like the hobby type, to be perfectly honest with you," he says. "You seem like the type who works evenings, weekends, and holidays and orders in because you don’t have time for anything else.”
"Judgmental much?"
"Am I wrong?"
I don't answer, because he's not. I huff.
"I don't get to as often as I'd like, but I do love to cook.
And I do it well, I'll have you know." I gesture at the cluster of killers below, who are, literally, huddled together receiving instructions.
I mean, there are eight of them and two of us, and we're unarmed.
How much strategery could possibly be involved?
"What's your plan for getting me past them? "
"Getting us past them, you mean?" he asks.
"No, I mean me. You dragged me into this mess; it's your responsibility to drag me all the way back out of it unharmed. So I do mean me. I can't claim to care overly much what happens to you, Jakob. You're the one they want. I'm just collateral damage to them."
He eyes me again. "I see."
"I'm a bottom-line kind of girl, Jakob. I'm practical. Efficient. I am generally unconcerned with silly things like sentiment. And the bottom line here is that you're now responsible for me."
He nods as if this makes perfect sense. "I see." A pause. "Any useful skills? Knife throwing? Kung fu? Crazy, long-lost uncle with an underground bug-out bunker?"
"I have a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu," I tell him.
He tips his head to one side. "That's not nothing, and you very well may need it before this is all over."
“That's reassuring." I watch as the men below do their macho, about-to-kill-an-innocent-unarmed-woman huddle of manly manfulness. "Should we consider escaping now, Jakob?"
"Yes. We should." He notices my attire, now. "There we go. Nice jacket. Excellent choice.” His eyes go to my boots. "And very nice boots. Didn't take you for the type to hike the Appalachian Trail."
I snort. "I'm not. My brother is an imbecile. He figured that because I like shoes, I'd like any shoes as long as they're expensive. So he bought the most expensive pair of hiking boots he could find in my size."
He blinks. "That's shockingly bizarre." A shrug. "But you'll be grateful for them before the day is out."
"Do they know we're here?" I ask, following Jakob away from the window and out into the hallway.
"Unlikely. Follow me and stay close."
The injunction to stay close feels unnecessary. The presence of murderous cretins who want me dead merely for existing near them is enough to turn me into a barnacle attached to his very fine backside.
We pause in the hallway as Jakob seems to debate between the stairs and the elevator.
"Why would we take the elevator?" I ask. "As much as I don't relish the idea of a dozen flights of stairs."
"Because they'd expect us to take the stairs." He eyes me. "But I'm only guessing. I'm used to staying off-grid, but being hunted like this is new for me, too."
"So, elevator?"
He nods. "Worth a shot."
Right as the elevator doors open, I hear the stairwell door crash open.
Jakob hustles me on, stabs the close button repeatedly, and then the button for the ground floor.
The door slides silently closed; as the view of the penthouse floor narrows into a thin vertical slice, I catch a glimpse of bodies crouch-walking past, machine guns tucked against shoulders.
I can only hope they didn't see me. The elevator lurches gently into motion, sinking toward the ground.
The silent wait is awkward—on one hand, you're afraid that when the doors open, some asshole with a machine gun is going to shoot you to death, but on the other hand, it's hard to maintain active terror when you're idling around waiting for an elevator to stop.
The lift slows, settles; Jakob nudges me into the corner against the bank of buttons and presses back into me, physically shielding me with his body as the doors whoosh open.
"Fuck." Jakob's curse is a startled growl.
It's followed by a sharp, deafening bark, and the back wall of the elevator sprouts a hole.
He charges through the door, and then I can't see anything, can only hear grunting, grappling, curses, fists on flesh.
There's another blast of a firearm, this one muffled.
Silence.
I may not exactly like this mysterious Jakob, but he's my ticket to not dying, so I'd like him to not be dead, please.
I hold my breath and wait to find out.