Perfect Strangers

It’s a full day before I speak again. A day I spend lost in thought, wandering aimlessly through the lavender fields that surround James’s beautiful, centuries’ old, cream-colored stone country mansion.

The low drone of thousands of worker bees harvesting their bounty of nectar from the fragrant purple blooms lulls me as I stroll between the uniform lines of flowering bushes, my arms wrapped around myself to quell the occasional chill brought on by the dark workings of my mind. My intellect struggles to adjust to this new reality, but it keeps stumbling and falling down.

I married a man who uses his powerful position to covertly sell weapons. I took a lover who kills people for money. And I suspected nothing of either of them.

I might be the worst judge of character who ever lived.

Beyond the obvious feelings of stupidity, betrayal, disgust, anger, depression, and guilt, there’s a sneaky little bastard of an emotion I wrestle with that takes the longest time for me to accept. I keep strong-arming it away as I traverse the long, undulating rows of vivid violet, listening to the comforting crunch of gravel underfoot and breathing in the fine, perfumed clouds that fill the air.

Vengeance is bitter and burning within me. A poisonous snake flashing its fangs deep in my gut.

I don’t want to admit I’m the kind of person who believes in an eye for an eye in the biblical sense. Justice is one thing…sheer bloodlust is another. I’m an educated woman, not some medieval peasant screaming for the accused town witch to burn, baby, burn.

It’s hard to look my own savagery in the face. But, as twilight descends once again over the lavender fields, I finally accept the truth.

Not only do I want James to kill the man who shot my daughter, I want him to kill that son of a bitch in the slowest, ugliest, most painful way possible.

I want him to suffer.

I know it won’t bring Emmie back. Of course it won’t. Nothing can. But the pain I’ve been carrying since her death is a living, breathing beast inside me, and I didn’t understand until now how pain can cut your legs out from under you one moment and the next grow you ferocious new sets of sharp claws and teeth.

Looking at the graceful stone estate set back against a stand of ancient pines that James calls his home, I wonder how I’ll recover from this. How can I keep putting one foot in front of the other in this world when everything I thought I knew about life—and about myself—has been proven wrong?

A peregrine falcon turns lazy circles in the deepening blue bowl of the sky overhead. I track her progress for a moment, admiring the elegant spread of her wings, feeling her piercing cry in a lonely corner of my heart. When she banks hard and dives like a rocket between two bushy rows of lavender then emerges moments later to climb back into the heavens with a small, wriggling bundle caught in her talons, it seems like an omen.

A dark sense of purpose fills me.

First things first: I’ll decide what I’m going to do about James, Christopher, and the rest of my ruined life once my thirst for revenge is slaked.

Dorothy, you’re a long way from home, indeed.

Feeling oddly calm after that decision, I make my way slowly back to the house. My hair and clothing are saturated with the sweet scent of the lavender fields. A fine, pale gray dust clings to my shoes. I slip the shoes off inside the front door, then pad barefoot over the cool, smooth travertine pavers to the place where I know James will be waiting.

When I enter the library, he looks up from his book. Our eyes meet. Whatever he sees in mine makes him close the book and set it aside.

I can read the title from where I stand: A Moveable Feast.

Hemingway again. I’m starting to sense a theme.

James asks, “Did you sleep at all?”

“Enough.”

We gaze at each other across the room. Dressed in a navy sweater and jeans so worn they’ve faded almost to white, he sits barefoot with one long leg crossed over the other in a battered brown leather chair. A matching sofa sits opposite him. Between the two is a wooden coffee table laden with a cut-crystal decanter filled with amber liquid and two glasses on a square silver tray.

He carried me into the house last night, as I found my legs unable to when we arrived. Shock has a way of undoing the normal workings of the body. He tucked me into bed fully clothed except my shoes, arranged the covers around me, and kissed me on the forehead before turning out the light.

He knew somehow that I wouldn’t run away or call the authorities or do any one of the million other things I could’ve done. I suppose it’s the same way he seems to know everything else about me. All my secret needs and longings, all the tucked-away thoughts in my head.

I say, “I’d like to talk now.”

Inclining his head, he gestures to the sofa opposite him. “Of course.” When I sit, perching on the edge, he inquires, “Whiskey?”

His tone is polite. His face is exquisite. His sweater is made of the finest cashmere. The killer with beautiful manners, a beautiful face, and a beautiful home in the French countryside who worships my body like a religious fanatic and is going to do for me what no one else has been able to do. The awful thing that must be done if I’m ever to crawl out of this hellish pit I’ve been living in for the past two years.

My dark knight in black, bloody armor, taking up his sword for my cause.

He couldn’t be more perfect if I’d conjured him from a dream.

“Whiskey would be good, thanks.”

He pours me a measure, pauses to glance at my face, then pours more. He hands me the glass across the table then settles back into his chair and waits for me to begin.

I sip the whiskey, savoring its smoky burn. Then I lift my eyes and look at him.

“This man, the one you said fired the shot that killed my daughter. How do you know it’s him?”

“He’s a colleague of sorts.”

My upper lip curls like a wolf’s.

“No—not like that,” James says quickly, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. His tone is low and urgent. “We don’t work together. I don’t work with anyone. But as I told you before, there are only a few people who do what I do at my level. It’s a small, elite group, and everyone knows who everyone else is. And if someone fucks up, everyone knows that, too.”

He pauses to assess my expression.

“Go on.”

“The bullet that hit your daughter was intended for your ex.”

So the phone told the truth. “Why would someone want to kill Chris?”

“A deal he was brokering went south. Chemical weapons were set to be transferred from one group to another—”

“What groups?”

James pauses for a beat. “Does it matter if I say the US to Israel? Or Russia to China? Or rebel factions to freedom fighters in any country? All over the world, every day, people are trying to kill each other because of differing ideologies. Religious, political, or otherwise. The names change, the methods of mass destruction change, but the goal remains the same: death.”

Swirling the whiskey in my glass, I say absently, “No, the goal is power. Death is just a means to an end.”

After a moment, he replies. “And those means are what your ex-husband specializes in.”

“As do you. Apparently, I have a type.”

Hearing my dry tone, he frowns. “There’s a million miles between what I do and mass murder.”

Settling back against the comfortable sofa cushions, I kick my feet up on the coffee table and swallow another swig of whiskey, my strange feeling of calm intensifying. “It’s only a matter of degree, James. You can tart it up however you like, but you’re a killer, just like him.”

“Not like him,” he counters, his voice hard. “I’ll never be like him. He doesn’t care who he hurts. Men, women, children, the elderly, animals, anything. He sells weapons that destroy everything they touch, and he does it without a second thought to the consequences.”

“And what is it you think you’re doing? Culling the herd? Separating the wheat from the chaff? A service to society?”

A faint smile plays over his full lips. “In a word…yes.”

“Nice to see a man take pride in his job. Let’s get back to why Chris was targeted.”

After another pause to examine my expression, he turns all business. “To put it simply, he got greedy. The shipment was delayed, the people who were expecting it got antsy, and Chris decided it was an opportunity to make more money. He told his clients the deal was off unless they ponied up more cash—for bribes to customs officials to get the gears moving more quickly, or so he said—but they found out what he was doing and didn’t appreciate being blackmailed.

“They ordered a hit to make an example of him. Only the hitter they hired got sloppy.”

“Sloppy,” I repeat, needing more.

James restlessly adjusts his weight in his chair, uncrossing his legs and sighing.

“Shooting accurately from a moving vehicle is extremely difficult under the best of circumstances, but attempting it while the mark is surrounded by a crowd is just dumb. Professional protocol dictates the hitter should’ve set up in a building across the street and taken aim from an elevated, hidden spot with an easy exit. But for some unknown reason, he decided to go cowboy and make a mess.

“It was total amateur hour. A complete fucking disaster. It’s a miracle the license plate of the car wasn’t caught on camera. The only reason that idiot isn’t in federal prison right now is sheer luck.”

Luck. That’s not a word I’d use to describe anything about the situation.

Suddenly, I’m back in that moment, in the dizzying panic of the screaming, fleeing crowd, kneeling in shock on the cold ground over the still, silent form of my baby girl, pressing my palms over the small hole between the second and third button of her favorite pink velvet coat while a dark red stain bloomed around my hands like a flower.

Emmie’s eyes were wide open when she died. They were hazel, like her father’s. A gorgeous, deep green-brown flecked with gold.

I close my eyes and rest my head against the back of the sofa, awash in terrible memories but somehow more peaceful than I’ve felt in years. Perhaps it’s the sedative effect of the lavender fields, calming my mind and easing my nerves with their famously mesmerizing scent.

Or perhaps I no longer have a grip on my sanity.

James murmurs, “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you to hear.”

“I want to hear it,” I say, keeping my eyes closed. “I need to hear everything. It’s better this way. At least I’m no longer living in the dark.”

After a moment wherein the only sound I hear is the faraway, gentle tinkling of the bells around the necks of the goats grazing in the spelt fields on the other side of the valley, a few things realign themselves in my head.

“I’ve always loved you. You’re the only weakness I have. I’m willing to make you hate me if it means you’ll be safe.”

It makes an awful kind of sense. When you love someone, you’ll sacrifice anything to protect them. Anything…including your relationship.

I open my eyes and gaze at James. “Chris thought divorcing me would keep me safe from the people who wanted him dead.”

He nods slowly, his gaze never leaving mine. “And he was right.”

“Those men at the hotel…who were they?”

His beautiful blue eyes harden. “Not the kind of men you’d enjoy spending time with as they smuggled you back to the States.”

So they were Chris’s hired hands. Mercenaries. He made good on his threat. “How did they find me? The hotel clerk checked me in under an assumed name.”

“Did you use a credit card?”

Shit. Note to self: next time you’re running for your life, use cash. “Why would he hire them if he couldn’t trust them to treat me well?”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“I don’t understand.”

He pauses for a moment to gaze at me, his expression unreadable. “It doesn’t matter now. They’ll never find you here. No one will ever find you here. This is the only place on earth you’re truly safe.”

I take another swallow of whiskey, watching him over the rim of the glass. When I lick my lips, he follows the motion of my tongue with burning eyes. I inquire calmly, “Am I your prisoner?”

His tone turns suggestive. “Only if you want to be.”

“So I could walk out of here right now and you wouldn’t stop me?”

“Of course. But you won’t.”

His confidence sends a flare of irritation through my stomach. “I might.”

He huffs out a small, amused laugh, then rises from his chair to go stand at the windows. Dusk paints him in a palette of purple and gold. Looking out over the lavender fields, he says quietly, “You might…if you weren’t in love with me.”

He turns his head and stares at me. There’s a challenge in his look.

When I don’t respond, he strolls back toward me, his sharp gaze never leaving mine. Then he sits beside me on the sofa, takes the glass from my hand and sets it on the coffee table, and drags me onto his lap.

I don’t fight him. There’s no use in denying I’d rather be here than anywhere else, even if he is what he is.

The killer that he is. The man who takes money to end lives and makes himself feel better about it by drawing portraits and giving the proceeds to charity.

I close my eyes and rest my head on his shoulder. His arms come around me and cradle me tight. I whisper, “This is madness.”

“It’s the opposite of madness. This”—he squeezes me—“is the only thing that makes any sense.”

As I listen to the steady thump of his heart, I wonder if he’s right. Has the world gone so insane that I’m safer in this killer’s arms than anywhere or with anyone else?

“Tell me about that night, when I walked in on you and Chris in my apartment.”

“He didn’t know who I was when he opened the door, because he’d never seen a picture of me, but I recognized him instantly.”

“You talked about me with him?”

“I informed him who I was. He assumed I’d been hired to finish the job the other hitter failed at. When he discovered that wasn’t the case, it didn’t take him long to figure out what was really going on. And to freak out about it.”

I recall how enraged Chris was when he asked if I was fucking James. Sadness pierces my heart like the tip of a spear. All those years I believed my marriage ended because my husband didn’t care enough, all the pain I suffered believing I wasn’t loved, and the truth is that he cared so much he walked away instead of selfishly staying.

He left me to save my life.

But he wouldn’t have had to if he wasn’t facilitating the trade of chemical weapons from one bunch of savages to another. If he hadn’t been doing that, there would have been no need to walk away.

And our daughter would still be alive.

No matter if his motives for leaving me were good, I can never forgive him for what happened to Emmie. For all the terrible choices he made that led directly to that.

After a long time where we just sit quietly, twilight deepening to gloom around us as shadows creep farther and farther up the walls, James says, “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I was just wondering how one gets into your line of work.”

His laugh is a pleasing bass rumble passing through his chest. I close my eyes, letting myself be lulled by it. “Through a long series of strange occurrences. It started when I was in the Army. Apparently my test scores showed a certain moral flexibility that the government found interesting. I won’t bore you with the details.”

“The Army? Was that before art school?”

A smile creeps into his voice. “I never went to art school. That’s just part of a carefully crafted bio in case anyone takes too close a look at who I am.”

I don’t realize my mistake until several moments later: there’s no way I’d know about his phony art school education unless I took too close a look.

He whispers into my ear, “I get a notification whenever someone investigates my background. Someone, for instance, named Mike Hanes who works for the FBI.”

Fear for Mike and Kelly makes my entire body turn cold. “It wasn’t his fault,” I say quickly. “I asked him to do it as a favor. He’s the husband of my best friend, and I was only trying to protect myself—”

“It’s all right,” he reassures me, tipping my head up with his fingers under my chin so we’re gazing into each others’ eyes. “I know why you did it, and they’re not in any danger from me. They didn’t discover anything I didn’t want them to know.”

He pauses briefly to run his thumb over my lower lip. “What I’m really interested in is why you chose to keep seeing me after you discovered what’s in my medical file.”

I’m about to answer him truthfully when all of a sudden it feels as if the floor has dropped out from under me. Because if his education was manufactured…

“Oh my God. You’re not dying of ALS, are you?”

He chuckles. “I’m as healthy as a horse. But every five years or so, I kill myself.”

I stare at him, not understanding the words he’s speaking.

“As a change of cover,” he explains, as if this is a commonplace thing. “It’s a normal precaution in my line of work. It’s much harder to track a dead man. I shed identities like a snake sheds its skin.”

I can’t decide if I’m furious or relieved. My brain throws its hands in the air and gives up, leaving me to fend for myself in this mosh pit of craziness that is my life.

I climb out of James’s lap and stand staring down at his handsome face.

Then I slap him across it as hard as I can.

His head snaps to the side, but otherwise, he doesn’t move. After a moment, he rubs his jaw. “Ouch.”

Eerily calm, I say, “If you ever lie to me again, about anything, no matter how inconsequential, that won’t be the only ouch I give you. Understood?”

“Understood. Oh, wait—does this mean I should tell you my real name?”

Now I’m absolutely certain of the emotion blowing through me like wildfire. It’s fury, plain and simple.

I slap him again.

When he looks up at me, cheek glowing red with my handprint, he’s grinning. There’s a wicked gleam in his eyes. “Just admit it, sweetheart. You’re in love with me.”

“If this is love, I’d rather have dysentery. At least then there’d be a good reason for all the shit I’m dealing with.”

He stands and pulls me into his arms. His eyes hot and his voice rough, he says, “You promised me a freebie. I’m calling it in.”

When I only stare at him with thinned lips, he tries to give my memory a nudge. “One free pass in Touchy Subject land in exchange for telling you about my water competency. Remember?”

I shake my head in disbelief. “We’re so far beyond Touchy Subject land now, I can’t even see the shoreline from the water.”

He presses, “Why didn’t you walk away from me when you had the chance, Olivia? You had the perfect out. We had an argument. I said if you didn’t call me in two days, I’d understand. You never would’ve had to see me again. It could’ve been simple. Clean. Instead you doubled down. Believing I was terminally ill, believing our time together would be limited by either the end of your time in Paris or the end of my life, why would you keep seeing me?”

“Because I’m a masochistic fool.”

“Try again,” he whispers, brushing his lips along my jaw. “And this time tell me the truth.”

My hands are flattened over his chest. Under my palms, his heart beats like a wild thing.

“Don’t you think it’s a tad ironic, you insisting on the truth?”

“Tell me.”

I know what he wants me to say. I probably would have, too, if I were the same woman I was only twenty-four hours ago. But now the world has turned upside down and my priority is no longer my love life, or my happiness, or trying to maintain anything that might resemble mental health.

All my priorities have been whittled down to a bare-boned need to see the man who killed my daughter pay the price for what he did.

I push James away. He allows it, dropping his arms to his sides and gazing at me in silence. His eyes are filled with urgency. The pulse in his neck thrums like mad.

“Bring me that bastard’s head on a platter,” I say quietly. “Do that for me and I’ll tell you anything you want.”

His smile is dark and dangerous. He steps closer, takes my face in his hands, and presses a soft kiss to my lips. “If I leave right now, I can be back before sunrise.”

“Back?”

“From Germany, where he’s been lying low.” When he sees the shock register on my face, James’s small smile grows wider. “I tracked him down with the help of a few of my associates. We don’t normally work together, but nobody wants that baby killer alive.”

So now I know the truth about his mysterious trips to Germany. He didn’t travel there to participate in clinical trials…he went to find a rat hiding in its nest.

If I wasn’t already in love with him, I definitely am now.

My emotions must show on my face, because from one moment to the next, James’s smile vanishes, and his eyes start to burn.Ccontent © exclusive by Nô/vel(D)ra/ma.Org.

He sweeps me up in his arms and carries me into the bedroom.