Chapter Nine
O’Connor
“Thank you, Jack. This…” She shakes the paper in her hand lightly. “This means a lot to me.”
I don’t have a chance to respond before she’s stepping into my space and wrapping her arms around my waist.
My entire body goes stiff. A hug… It’s just a hug.
I don’t know the last time that I’ve received a hug. Or given one.
My arms feel like lead as I lift them to her shoulders. I don’t even squeeze; I just wrap them loosely around her. She’s so fragile, I’m afraid she’ll break.
“Me too, me too!” Avery squeals from the hallway, sprinting towards me.
Linden moves away just in time for her daughter to launch at me, squealing as I catch her midair.
“Sorry, we’re huggers.” She laughs softly, gently removing her daughter from my arms.
Linden’s hug did something to me, but Avery’s cracked something inside of me.
I feel off.
I feel…
“I do have brownie mix in the pantry, if you want to stay for dessert,” she offers.
I shake my head, and I swear a screw has been knocked loose. “Uh, no. I need to go home. I need to check on something.”
“Jack?”
“Thanks for dinner.”
I don’t even know if my feet touch the ground as I fall back, retreating to my lightless sanctuary.
I might be inside the home that I’m pretending to live in, but it’s this room with no windows, surrounded by the artillery that keeps me alive, where I feel at home.
Cold metal, steel. Firepower.
No warmth. No feelings.
I need to stay away from them. I can’t be the man I need to be when I’m coaxing a little girl to eat dinner, and seizing up when her mother touches me.
Her hand on my neck, her body tucked against mine.
It makes me want a lot of things. A lot of things that make me feel more human, and less like a machine.
But being in black ops means being a machine.
Stone cold. Deadly.
Music starts next door, and my listening devices pick up on it, feeding the sound into the room, defiling my sanctuary.
The singing and dancing will start soon, but I’ll ground myself from here on out. I won’t play nice with my neighbors.
I can’t. Or it will be the death of me.
* * *
I stand silently in the black shadows of the balcony, waiting for assurance that the mansion is quiet. I won’t enter, not tonight, but I will plant a listening device right outside Edmund Scott’s office.
Merrill’s office is deeper inside the house, according to the floor plans. My intel is getting me one step closer to infiltrating the house, but I need to be able to do it seamlessly. One slip-up could destroy this entire op.
Like driving through their front gates like I did last week.
I’ve never been so reckless in my entire career, let alone with Project Obsidian.
I’ve taken down some of the worst offenders in the world without a whisper of it getting out. This op has to go the same way.
That’s how you prevent collateral damage.
I might not follow the parameters of the law, but I have a code. Eliminate threats to protect the innocent.
That’s the job.
That’s all I live for now.
My thoughts shift back to little Avery the night she almost took a swim. That pervert that was within reach of her.
My only regret is that I didn’t kill the man slower.
I would have killed the landlord too, but even I know that I didn’t have a good enough reason.
That wouldn’t have been an emotionless kill. And that’s the danger of getting attached.
I’m a lone wolf. That’s how it’s meant to be.
Except even after planting the bug and ghosting through the shadows to safety, I find myself at my neighbor’s backdoor. Not my own.
I slip inside too easily. But I won’t encourage her to reinforce her locks because I’m the only one getting inside. I’d protect her from anything else that dared.
The kitchen is clean like it normally is, other than a few errant coloring pages. The living room is nearly empty besides an old couch and some sort of tufted egg chair.
Down the dark hallway is one small room with all of Avery’s toys. The walls ring true to Linden’s education background. It could pass as a preschool in here. Alphabet and number posters. A chalkboard and probably every paper Avery has ever laid a crayon to.
My steps are slow and even, not a single floorboard creaking as I enter the other bedroom.
The two of them are cocooned in the center of this raggedy air mattress that is steadily losing air. If I could come up with any excuse, I’d buy them a bed. But Jack O’Connor doesn’t know about their sleeping situation; only this ghost that’s haunting them does.
Linden shifts in her sleep, probably because she’s miserably uncomfortable, and I don’t take my chances in case she wakes up. I disappear out of the room and back to the kitchen.
My eyes catch something on the counter that I didn’t notice before. A pink piece of construction paper with my name printed across the top. Linden obviously wrote it, but below my name is a cascade of scribbles and shapes. Lots of colors.
They made me a picture?
I pinch the soft paper between my thumb and pointer finger, fighting the urge to take it with me. It takes more effort than I’ll ever admit to set it back down.
A deep pain in my chest blooms, but a noise from behind me forces me silently out the back door.
Only a minute later, Linden emerges from her back door. She doesn’t see me hiding in the shadows, of course. I’m an expert at being invisible.
She settles into one of her porch chairs like a ball with a throw blanket wrapped around her, tipping her head back to look at the moon.
I look too, wanting to see what she sees. It’s only a small crescent away from being full. The light hits her face like a spotlight, making her look like the very thing that the heavens would love to steal away.
Then a tear rolls down her cheek, and it makes me want to destroy anything that tries to take her.
My fingers grip the top of my balaclava, and I slip it off my head. I can’t approach her. No version of me can.
But I can pretend that in any other universe I could wipe the tears off her face.
Her new fuel pump arrives tomorrow. That means she’ll have a working car. A Social Security card, and every reason to leave this place.
I know there is more that I don’t know about her situation, but I hope she runs anyway. I want her to take Avery far away and never look back.
As much as the thought of never seeing them again makes the dull ache in my chest sharper.
Her eyes droop closed, and I watch her body drift into a deep sleep, right out in the open, unsecured.
But it’s alright, because I’m watching her.
I’m always watching.