26. — birds fly.
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Staten Island, New York
Frankie, Private Airport
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Frankie worked on chewing the edges of her sharpened red fingernails as Larkin maneuvered the four-door Ram pick-up truck down a desolate stretch of road she didn’t recognize in the darkness.
Larkin wasn’t like everybody else. He wouldn’t tell her to stop, and if he even noticed her anxiety playing out in the rear passenger bench seat, he didn’t make her aware.
“You could at least tell me where I’m going,” she said.
Larkin eyeballed her reflection in the rearview mirror. “Francesca—”
“It’s Frankie, for fuck’s sake!”
Always the consummate professional, Larkin never crossed a line with her or anyone else his job for her father deemed him responsible toward.
To him, that seemed to include keeping the people who meant most to her father at arm’s length, in a kind and respectful way.
Which meant he never used Frankie’s nickname, and she thought it ridiculous.
They were way past that.
“Just so you’re aware,” her father’s head of security said, “I don’t typically allow people to swear at me, and that isn’t very lady-like.”
Now she understood his attraction to Sissy. Two peas in an annoying fucking pod.
“Yeah, well—”
One hand lifted from the wheel, pointing a finger up.
“I will give you a pass from my usual lecture about how kids your age are seriously causing the irreparable degradation of the English language with all this swearing and slang nonsense, because I know it’s been an intense night for you.
I will not give you a second pass, however. Keep it in mind.”
“What are you, my dad?”
Larkin chuckled. “Oh, no. If you were my kid, I’d have locked you in a tower where boys and sex didn’t exist. From the jump.”
So much for not using slang, she thought. It all made her laugh a little.
Frankie desperately needed the relief, and the glint in Larkin’s eye in the mirror said he knew it, too.
“Thanks,” she whispered.
“No problem, kiddo.”
“You could tell me where we’re going.”
“I can now, yes,” Larkin replied, his eyes peeled on the road ahead of them as the vehicle started to slow, “because we’re arriving at phase three of a several part plan that your father has been working on for a while.
I suggest you listen closely and ask as few questions as possible over the next handful of minutes, Frankie, as I will not have time to repeat very much. ”
She already had a question. “What plan?”
“Keep up,” Larkin murmured as the truck suddenly whipped sideways into what looked like a dirt road. “There’s a black duffle bag next to you on the seat. Could you open it, please?”
Frankie hadn’t paid much attention to the bag next to her, as she figured it belonged to Larkin. Pulling it into her lap, she opened the zipper only to make a noise of shock at what rested on top of folded clothes. “A gun?”
“Two summers ago, you spent every weekend at a firing range with me and your father. Do you remember?”
“Yeah, of course.”
It was one of the few summers she got to have with her father without him needing to run off or jet away to the next job. Or whatever he had to do that constantly left her alone and without him.
“You were a pretty good shot, I thought,” Larkin noted, a hint of pride in his tone, “so let’s hope you still are. If you need to be, I mean.”
She eyed the gun, not really wanting to touch it. “Am I supposed to keep it on me, or...?”
“No, it is for emergencies only. You know where it is, and you know how to use it should you need to. It’s the same model you practiced with every weekend at the range. Nothing is different. It’s already loaded.”
“Okay.”
“The bag is full of clothes Sissy packed for you. And a pair of running shoes because I’m sure you don’t want to be wearing those heels for however long this is going to take. Also, at the top of the pile is a hoodie of Nico’s. He left it hanging in the entry last week. I thought it a nice touch.”
Frankie immediately began to dig for that item, wanting the smell of him to ground her anxiety. Pulling it from the bag, she held it to her face, and breathed Nico in. The scent of his favorite body wash, and the aftershave he liked around the collar, had her closing her eyes.
Larkin started talking again. “In case of specific situations once an inevitable event came into motion, dove one and dove two must be moved from whatever their current location to an immediate second through various means.”
“Doves?”
Larkin paid her no mind as he causally, easily, navigated what seemed like a trail with trees all around and bushes so close to the truck that the branches scratched along the sides.
His speed quickly returned to the same it had been on the previous road.
“Frequent vehicle switching is a must and will likely continue to happen should it be needed. Don’t get prissy and make demands, the men, me included, who will be doing the driving or escorting over the next few weeks are not paid to care if you don’t like what’s happening or if you refuse.
You will be kept safe—that is priority. It is the only priority, in fact. ”
“A few weeks?” Frankie shrieked, jerking forward in the seat.
The seatbelt bit into her collarbone.
“What about Christmas?” she demanded.
He didn’t respond.
“And Nico’s birthday.”
Carina turned thirty-eight in mere days.
Larkin continued, unconcerned, “The next phase at the current time is a chartered plane out of state. I will not tell you which state, and the pilot and staff aboard were specifically hired for their discretion and professionalism. They have been informed of the seriousness in the matter of keeping locations and arrivals secret so that it cannot be shared by anyone, including you. We will not be traveling out of country, although if needed, we will be in international waters. Passports are not needed for this plan, but should it come up at some point that we do need to leave the country, I have the needed documents. It just doesn’t say your name. ”
What the fuck?
Frankie only cared about one thing he said. “You mean, I can’t tell Nico where I am?”
Finally, Larkin answered a question. In a way. “Frankie, I threw your phone out a car ago, honey.”
She blinked. “What?”
All her things had gotten shoved into the front seat of a black sedan she hadn’t recognized. They assured her the things would get moved from vehicle to vehicle as needed, and she didn’t get much of a choice.
“Yeah,” Larkin confirmed, “you have no way to contact him until I get the sign that it’s safe for the doves to land. So—”
“I’m a dove, right?”
“Don’t focus on the little details; they don’t have to mean anything to you. It’s just how we communicate.”
“No, it does mean something.”
Larkin found her in the rearview again. The soft expression on his face said he knew exactly what it meant. “Can I continue? Once you’re on the plane, we won’t speak until we land. That is necessary, too.”
Frankie sniffled as tears gathered. “Why does it sound so involved?”
“Because it has to be. Things were left to chance and what was expected, or usual, before, and it was devastating for your father. That’s going to be your last question, got it?”
She nodded.
“Good, try to stick to it.”
Rubbing at her belly, she settled back into the seat and let the kicks of her son lull her into a less scary place. Him, and the pregnancy, she wouldn’t worry for. Every appointment showed him healthy and thriving, and she intended to get them both to the finish line in the same condition.
“As I said before,” Larkin spoke again, dragging Frankie from her thoughts, “for the next few weeks, could be less, could be more, the doves will continue to be in perpetual movement, be it on land, air or sea. There will occasionally be breaks when resting during travel has not been available for prolonged periods. Those breaks will last as long as a night of sleep, so don’t get it in your head that we’re shopping, sight-seeing, or anything in between. ”
Like that mattered now. She stayed quiet.
The vehicle finally broke into a clearing, and the headlights of the truck illuminated a chain-link fence that Larkin turned to drive alongside. Staring out the window, Frankie tried to peer through the darkness to see what lay beyond the fencing and snowy field.
Larkin noticed. “As I said, chartered plane, so we’re at a private airport.”
“Carina is the other dove, isn’t she?” Frankie asked.
Larkin cleared his throat. “Yes.”
“But everybody thinks she’s in Milan.”
“Doesn’t matter. Things happen, people talk, and then they’ll go looking. Or an attack on the property could leave her vulnerable—”
“Attack?”
Larkin dragged in a heavy breath and then exhaled harshly. “Okay, this is part of the reason we’re not supposed to talk and discuss in detail.”
“Don’t you have a dove, too?” she asked quietly in the backseat. “Shouldn’t she be kept safe?”
Larkin chuckled under his breath. “Don’t worry about her. Sissy’s a better shot than all of us combined. She knows what to do.”
The same Sissy who couldn’t kill a spider?
“Never would’ve guessed,” she admitted.
“Who do you think she learned how to shoot for?”
···
Somewhere, USA — Location Unknown
Three weeks later...
Frankie edged closer to the sliding glass doors leading to a private closed-in balcony attached to the suite of rooms where their group currently resided. A week earlier, the group finally stopped moving from place to place, day to day, and no one bothered to explain why.
She knew better than to ask, too.
“So,” she heard Carina say just outside the doors, “he’s called them all in.”
“They sit down today,” Larkin confirmed.
“He’s got them that far, then.”
A throat cleared behind Frankie. She rolled her eyes, but glanced over her shoulder to see one of the two men that accompanied Larkin on this adventure of theirs.
“Yes?” she asked him.
Gabriel, that was his name. Larkin just called him Gabe.
“Stop spying.”
“Mmm, no thanks.”