3. Unknown,Unknowable?
UNKNOWN, OR UNKNOWABLE?
JAKOB
For a few moments, all I can do is lie there, gasping, hurting, and amazed that I pulled that off.
I think of Thomas, and the many, many hours we spent sparring and wrestling together, before his heart attack.
God, that was a loss. Thomas wasn't just a driver—or just a bodyguard.
He was my friend. One of two humans on this earth I've ever truly, totally trusted.
Thomas went behind my back to help her against my wishes, because he knew I'd lost myself to obsession.
He was protecting me from me. He knew my secrets.
He knew me when I was still Jakob, before Caleb Indigo ever existed.
Thomas, in fact, was the first person I ever hired as a full-time employee.
At that point, I had a lot of liquid capital and a burning passion to reinvent myself.
My new persona would be bigger, better, richer, more powerful, more cunning, and more unstoppable than Jakob Kasparek ever was or could be.
What I didn't have was an office to work out of, or much of a concrete plan besides getting into commercial real estate and keeping my businesses largely on the right side of the law.
I bought a used Escalade, contacted a headhunter, and conducted roughly a hundred interviews before hiring Thomas.
It was something in his demeanor that got me.
He was calm, polite, stoic, well-spoken…
and underneath all that was a subtle but definite air of do-not-fuck-with-me hardness.
For almost eighteen months, I lived out of a hotel and worked out of that SUV with Thomas as my sole employee.
He was my constant companion for nearly twenty years, and when he died so unexpectedly, I wasn't sure I'd recover.
He's the only reason I emotionally survived walking away from her, from the life I’d so carefully constructed.
"Jakob?" A tentative female voice shakes me from my possibly concussed reverie.
"Yeah," I groan, sitting up and dislodging the body.
My belly is soaked with hot, wet blood—his. I look down at myself as I get to my feet; I'm stained with blood from chest to belt, and my black button-down is soggy and sticking to me. Yeah, I'm gonna need a change of clothes.
I hear shouting from the stairwell, and adrenaline sizzles through me all over again.
I snag the dropped pistol and shove it into my waistband, rifle through the dead man's pockets—I take the two spare magazines for the pistol, a rubber-banded roll of twenties, a cell phone, and a folding pocketknife.
Last, I strap the dead man's assault rifle across my chest and the single spare magazine for that.
"Let's go." I march away from the elevator in the direction of the stairwell to the parking garage.
Brys follows me. "Not to question your capabilities or anything, Jakob, but do you know what you're doing with that machine gun?"
"It's an assault rifle, not a machine gun," I correct. "And more or less, yes."
"Cool, I don't care what it's called. It's just that you didn't seem to be too accurate with that pistol.
And, like, you threw the gun after it was empty.
Now, I know I'm not, like, super knowledgeable about guns and whatever, but the only time I've ever seen a good guy throw a gun at a bad guy is in satire. "
I open the door to the stairwell, poke my head, listen for a moment, and then creep in, Brys on my heels. "No, I do not have any formal training in the use of firearms. You've had the bad luck to fall in with the one person in my entire social circle who's not an operator—and that's me."
I've watched plenty of training videos, however, and I have some idea of what I'm doing.
I'd never say that to my Arrows, of course, because they'd laugh me out of the room.
I tilt the rifle over the railing, peer down, listen, and then put my shoulder to the wall and slide around the stairwell, keeping as wide a field of view as possible on the way down.
We reach the bottom, and I push the door open from one side, exposing as little of myself as possible, gesturing for Brys to stay well out of the way of any lines of fire, should anyone shoot at us.
The garage seems quiet and empty but for the rows of parked cars. I'm not one to take such things for granted, however. I glance over my shoulder at Brys, who is scanning the shadowy corners with wide eyes, gnawing on her plump, pink, kissable lips.
Wait, what?
I growl at myself for the errant, idiotic, unhelpful thought. Sure, we've kissed twice in the two hours I've known her. Sure, those kisses have left my pulse pounding, my blood sizzling with a superheated effervescence, and my long-suppressed libido on a rampage.
There's no space in this situation for me to be distracted by said plump, kissable lips. Or by her plump, round, spankable ass. Or those big, bouncy, kissable breasts.
The sound of a door opening echoes throughout the stairwell above us, shocking me out of my horny reverie.
It feels like my thoughts are being broadcast for all the world to see on a chryon running across my forehead: Man who claims to be dead thinking perverted thoughts about woman he's supposed to be rescuing. More at eleven.
I inch forward through the door and into the garage, scan the space, and dart out into the open, dropping into a crouch between a thick, square concrete pillar and a Range Rover. "I don't suppose you own one of these, do you?" I whisper.
"No," she whispers back. "Do I look like I know how to drive? If I want to go somewhere, I call a driver like a normal person. I live in Manhattan, for fuck's sake."
"Normal people can't just call a driver."
"You've never heard of Uber or Lyft?"
"That's not what you meant," I point out. "You meant a private chauffeur."
"Shut up, asshole. Don't judge me."
I snicker. "I'm not. Up until last year, my driver was one of two people I actually trusted."
"What happened last year?"
"He died of a heart attack."
"Oh." She gently nudges my arm with her shoulder. "I'm sorry. No one knows us like our driver, huh?"
"No kidding. The secrets that man carried?" As soon as those five words leave my mouth, I silently curse myself for being seven kinds of an idiot.
I don't recognize myself around this woman. My dignity, my poise, my restraint, my intellectual sophistication? The traits I've long prided myself on? Farts in a windstorm, when Brys Bennett is around, it would seem.
"Have a lot of secrets, do you?" She sounds amused—she probably knows I didn't intend to say anything quite so revealing.
"I mean, I conducted a lot of business in the back of a car, before I was able to lock down office space, early in my career." I feel good about this save. "Thomas was privy to the details of a lot of very sensitive deals."
She snorts. "Uh huh. I'm sure that's what you meant.
" She nudges me again. "What's the plan here?
Hide in the garage until the bad guys find us?
Have a nice little shoot-out down here? I don't know about you, but reenacting the movie Heat doesn't sound like my idea of a good time.
Especially not when the guys after us are trained killers and you, by your own admission, are not. "
"I'm not an operator, no," I tell her. "But I'm not helpless. And you're still safer with me than on your own. Unless you're lying to me and you're actually a secret spy or something."
"Nope, no secrets here. Just little ol' white collar me, no combat skills of any kind except BJJ, which I do primarily for exercise, and so I can break a mugger's arm if I had to."
“You may need that before the day is out,” I say. “This is where knowing how to hot-wire a car would come in handy." I glance at her, the question in my expression.
She splutters. "Don't look at me, Jake."
My look turns into a glare. "Jakob. My name is Jakob."
It's weird to introduce myself as Jakob; I haven't been Jakob Kasparek for more years than I care to count. I was Caleb Indigo for nearly all of my adult life; I was twenty-five when Jakob vanished, and forty-three when Caleb died in a car bomb.
"Alright," I whisper. "Let's find the exit."
"You mean that big bright thing over there?" She points at the door that's rolling up as we speak, admitting a resident.
"Has anyone ever told you how much of a sarcastic pain in the ass you are?" I mutter.
She just snorts. "Repeatedly. It's a feature, not a bug."
The resident pulls down into the garage, makes a wide circuit, and parks in a corner away from the elevator and stairs; perfect. I cut across the garage and creep between the front bumpers and the wall. The resident is an older woman with silver hair in a Karen bob, driving a new Mercedes S-class.
Brys snags my arm an instant before I reveal myself. "Jakob, no," She hisses. "She's an old lady. You're not carjacking an old lady."
"You're right, I'm not carjacking an old lady. I'm…aggressively borrowing."
I step out into the light as the woman straightens from the back seat, her arms full of paper bags laden with groceries, a Birkin worth as much as her car hanging from one elbow.
"Hello, ma'am," I say, keeping my tone level and conversational, the rifle slung across my front, my hands gripping the strap rather than the grip and handle.
"I'm afraid I'm going to need to borrow your vehicle. "
She blinks at me, her gaze flicking over my shoulder. “Is this man bothering you, dear?"
Brys appears beside me. "No, ma'am. He's actually doing the exact opposite."
"When you say borrow, I assume if I get it back at all, it won’t be in one piece?"
Brys steps forward, putting herself between the woman and me. "Ma'am, I live in this building myself. And you have my word that no matter what happens, I'll see that either your car is returned in the same condition or replaced."
She sighs. "It was an anniversary gift from my husband," she says. "But it's far too big for me. If you could find a way to replace it with something smaller and easier to park than that behemoth, then we have a deal."
Brys laughs. "That can be arranged, I believe."
The older woman sets her paper bags on her trunk, rummages in her purse, and withdraws a key fob, which she hands to Brys. "If anyone asks, you stole it."
Brys tosses the fob to me. "If anyone asks, he stole it."
The sound of a crashbar and the slight squeal of hinges echo through the underground garage.
"That's our cue," I say, taking the fob. "Ma'am, if I were you, I'd take the elevator straight up to your house, lock the door, and don't open it for anyone."
Without a backward glance, the woman scoops up her groceries and hustles for the elevator. By the time she reaches it, I'm behind the wheel, Brys is beside me, and we're backing out of the parking space.
I glance in the rearview mirror as we angle up and out of the garage, the door opening automatically; a cluster of men swarm out of the stairwell.
The last thing I see is muzzle flash as they fire at us; their rounds thunk low into the trunk, and then I'm skidding out into traffic, horns blaring and brights blinking and voices cursing from open windows.
Beside me, Brys is twisted in the seat, watching out the rear window as her condo building falls away. When I turn, and her view of it vanishes, she slumps back around, sighing. "Now what?"
I shrug. "I don't know, Brys. That's the honest truth. I don't know. I guess we get out of the city."
"And go where? Where can we go that these goons won't find us?"
"That's a good question. For now, we just get off the island of Manhattan and ultimately out of New York—it’s the most heavily surveilled city in the world.
I'm hoping once we're out of the city, it'll be harder for Poo—” I cut myself off before I say his name.
"For my enemy's computer nerds to find us, and thus hopefully harder for him to send his goon squads after us. "
“Your enemy is poo?"
I sigh. "No, Brys. I'm keeping the details from you. Hopefully, the less you know, the safer you are."
She snorts derisively. "The shit is out of that elephant, Jakob. You may as well spill the whole sad truth."
For a moment, I actually consider it. What would that be like? To tell someone the whole sad, strange, toxic, sordid truth of my life?
Now that Thomas has passed on, there is not one person on this earth who knows all of me. Her knowledge of me stops at the day she saw me die. Inez knows who I am now and likely suspects who I used to be, but I've neither confirmed nor denied anything.
I am unknown.
But am I unknowable?
I can't claim to be proud of who I've been, or of some of the things I've done. But not being proud of your past isn't the same as telling someone all your secrets.
"Wow," Brys says, jarring me out of my thoughts. "You really have to consider that one, huh?"
I brake to a stop at a red light, still mulling over the notion of unburdening myself of my many awful secrets. My gaze, naturally enough, wanders from the left corner of the intersection to the right.
Black hair, glossy and raven-dark, razor-bobbed at her sharp chin. Bug-eye Chanel sunglasses cover dark eyes. Black leggings hug strong, curvaceous legs. Shopping bags hang from an elbow. A cell phone is pressed to one ear.
You smile, nod. Laugh. Turn with an absent-minded glance, look over your shoulder—they're ten, now.
One with hair the color of the sun, the other with hair the color of the night.
Tall. Attractive. Well-dressed, well-groomed.
Calm. Full of poise and elegance, of course; they're your children, after all.
Beside you? Him. And he's aged damnably well.
Lean and muscular, flat of stomach and with all his hair, nary a trace of silver in the golden strands.
My fingers go to the silver staining the temples of my own hair.
What would you think of me now, Isabel?
A horn blares twice, but it's Brys's voice that brings me back to life. "Jakob?"
I accelerate away from the intersection.
Away from you.
When the crowd of pedestrians obscures you from view, I am released from your grip on my psyche, and I suck in a bolt of oxygen.
I squeeze the steering wheel with both hands to hide the way my fingers tremble.
It feels like I've passed a test of some kind.
"Jakob?" Brys's voice is soft, concerned, lacking any trace of her usual sarcasm.
"I'm not a good person, Brys," I murmur. "I never have been.”