Chapter 2
CALLEN
THE OLD FASHIONED comes first, because I ordered it the second I sat down. I needed something to calm my nerves and more importantly something to do with my hands. Swirling this giant ice cube around a coil of orange peel seems…sophisticated, I guess?
Which is a lie.
I’m not sophisticated. In fact, at this point, almost ten years since I ended my career as a Navy SEAL, I’d describe my life as stumbling into each day.
I’m an order-taker, a rule-follower. But now the rules are muddled and the orders are kills.
My life changed the day I left the FBI and swore my allegiance to Vesper and her team.
For better or worse? The verdict is still out.
I’m playing a part. Reality is, I’m the odd man out in a group of assassins who seem to have a healthy dose of apathy about life and death in their DNA.
I don’t kill like Linc, Lance, Cricket, and Vesper.
Even when I know our targets deserve a painful death three times over, it’s hard for me to simply see a job.
I see fathers, children, best friends, siblings.
Evil or not, they’re still people. Aren’t they?
Maybe in a few more years with the team I’ll lose my sense of humanity too. Here’s hoping.
I take a sip of my drink and cringe. Hell, I don’t even like old fashioneds. Too sweet, too much ceremony, the orange peel a little too fancy for a man who used to drink whatever can was in the cooler.
But it’s a respectable drink to be holding. And Melissa, my ex-wife, always wanted respectable. Not the belching contests my SEAL buddies would hold after chugging a twelve-ounce Coors. She wanted a different life—full of suits, spas, and name-brand diaper bags and strollers.
I’m ready to give her that life now. I was ready years ago, but she needed time after the divorce.
Time for me to reinvent myself. Time for Melissa to meet the new me.
No more disappearing, no more lies, no more secrets…
Well, outside of the unsavory fact that I am indeed a part of an underground team of assassins who can’t help but uncover painfully corrupt government schemes.
I still love her. No need to trip over the little details.
The waiter returns to the table with a small, chilled flute of plum wine.
Hers. Dassai 23. Melissa’s favorite since a tasting menu in Coronado a decade ago when she decided sake was “too aggressive” and the sommelier brought her this instead.
The mmmm sound she made after her first sip is engrained in my memory.
It’s the small things. A woman wants a man who remembers.
The restaurant is the good kind of quiet.
Cedar and low amber light, a sushi counter where a guy with clean sleeves, and tattoo-free forearms, is portioning out toro with a knife sharper than Cricket’s favorite hunting blade.
There’s such a low hush of conversation among the patrons, so low in fact, I’m convinced everyone in this establishment is a lip-reader.
My phone lights up against the marble table. Like a schoolboy with a crush, my heart pounds, dreading the last-minute cancel and the annihilation of my reconciliation plans tonight. No, she wouldn’t. She’s the one who wanted to meet in the first place. That means something. I think. I hope.
Succubus
Traffic is a NIGHTMARE on the 14th st bridge. 15 min behind, I’m sorry. Order me a drink?
I start to type that it’s already done, then delete it, because it reads like I’m trying too hard, which make no mistake, I am.
Reading her message, it dawns on me I still haven’t changed her contact name.
I keep meaning to. It was funny in a specific, ugly season of my life—the divorce papers still warm, a buddy reading them over my shoulder, the two of us deciding the only sane response to losing everything was to be a couple of assholes about it.
Succubus. It got a laugh out of me when I had no laughs left.
Now it just sits in my phone like a stain I’ve stopped seeing until company comes over.
Take your time. I’ll be here. Also, stop texting while you’re driving in D.C. traffic.
Succubus
Same ol’ Jeff. Such a dad.
I smile to myself. She doesn’t realize what a compliment that is these days.
The thing I’ve recently registered about my current line of work is how badly it ruins you for ordinary evenings.
I’ve spent the better part of two years now inside something I still don’t have clean language for.
Conspiracy stacked on conspiracy. Bodies that the official record insists were never bodies.
A First Lady who, the more I learn about, the less I sleep.
I signed up for it with my eyes open and I’d sign again, because Vesper is the finest commander I have ever served under, and I have served under quite a few between the military, civilian security, and finally the FBI.
I’m loyal to Vesper because once upon a time, she saved my life.
And not to mention, the alternative was going back to government work, pretending the chain of command was clean.
But fuck, today I want a Tuesday. I want a normal, stupid, beautiful Tuesday where my wife doesn’t want to cook and so we put a little pressure on our meager bank account and go out to a fancy Japanese restaurant.
I want to argue about whose turn it is to take out the trash and who isn’t pulling their weight with dishes.
I want a person who knows where I am at night and a reason to come home to her.
I want the smallest possible life. I have killed for the largest possible reasons, lately I’ve lived above the law, I have more money than I’ll ever spend, and the truth is, I’d trade the entire grand design for somebody to text me that traffic’s bad but they’re on their way.
I rotate the glass. Quarter turn, quarter turn back.
I study the orange peel like it’s interesting, force the ice to clink against the fancy lowball.
And somehow amidst my distraction, time passes.
Fifteen minutes come and go, and the front door of the restaurant opens.
The sunset light catches her silhouette and I forget, for one merciful second, every other thing—what I’ve done, what she’s done, what we’ve been. All I think about is what we could be.
Melissa expertly weaves through the tables like she’s already mapped out the place.
She comes in fast on her heels, clutch tucked under one arm, the host scrambling to keep pace, and even hurrying, she is the most composed thing in the building.
Her hair is down tonight, long, a little loose from the wind off the river.
Her slate-gray dress shines against her radiant tan skin that has never once in my knowledge betrayed her by breaking out or going dull.
Damn, she’s still a knockout.
She’s already shrugging off her coat before she reaches the table.
“I am so, so sorry. You know I hate being late.” She arrives breathless, both hands lifting in a little gesture of surrender. “There was an accident on the bridge, and then they routed everyone onto Independence, and—” She stops. Looks at me. “Hi, Jeff.”
“Hi.” I’m already on my feet. “It’s fine. You’re here safe.”
I go to hug her and she lets me, but only briefly.
It’s the kind of hug where only the shoulders commit.
A church hug. A coworker hug. I clock it and tuck it away like I’m shoving hands into pockets.
I tell myself it doesn’t mean anything. Melissa has never been one for public displays of affection. It’s fine.
“You look incredible,” I say, and pull out her chair.
She sits, smoothing the dress under her, and a little of the composure cracks into something almost shy. “Thank you. You look really good too. Finally wearing grownup clothes, huh?” She beams at me before glancing at the flute already sweating at her place. “Stop. Is this—?”
“Dassai 23? Yes, it is.”
“You remembered? That night in Coronado?” she asks the glass more so than me.
“Of course I remember. We overdrew our bank account that night on one glass.”
“Jeff…” she sighs. “I suggested a Red Robin. We didn’t have to do all this.”
“It’s fine,” I say, feeling justifiably smug. “I’m in a different tax bracket these days. I can afford to buy you the whole bottle. Although maybe I shouldn’t tell you that in case you want to adjust our alimony arrangement.”
My joke doesn’t earn the laugh I hoped. Instead, her gaze meets the table. “How’ve you been? It’s been a while since we’ve talked.”
And so we do.
We talk about nothing for a while. The bridge. Her accounting firm. Her severe gluten allergy turned out to be stress—she’s eating bread again. She compliments the restaurant like she’s never been somewhere this nice, which can’t be true. She’s always had a taste for the finer things.
But at a certain point, I don’t want to simply live a fantasy, I want to claim it. For real.
“Lyss.” Her old nickname comes out even softer than I intended. “I’m really glad you called last week. I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately.” Nerves flooding in, I turn the glass. Stop turning the glass. Turn it again. “I’ve been thinking about us.”
She holds very still. For a second I can’t read her at all, and then her mouth ripples with an emotion I can’t understand. Eyes still glued to the table, she says, “Me too.”
Me too. Two words and the whole room becomes a few degrees warmer. Thank God. I thought that whole butt-out hug was a bad foreshadowing.
I actually laugh—relief, mostly—and so does she, and we both start talking at the same time, that overlapping stumble, and I wave a hand. “No, sorry, go ahead, you first.”
“No.” She shakes her head, smiling. “You. Please. You go.”
“Such a gentleman,” I tease. “Letting me eat the awkward first.”
She laughs again, and it’s real, and I mentally urge myself forward. Okay. Okay…here we go.