* * * *
“Do you ever notice how everything that you’re supposed to stick up your vagina is all in one shelf?”
The old woman bypassing the aisle I was currently standing in turned her head enough to glare at me before continuing on.
“Will you focus?” Sonya snapped, her voice an irritated warble in my ear. I stopped examining the condoms, tampons, and douches long enough to roll my eyes at my cell.
“Oi. Tame that shrew. I don’t have time for your attitude. I’m trying to engage in a friendly conversation,” I said, turning to wander off, only to pause with a sigh of disgust. “Correction, I told Sonya, my gaze burning holes in the baby diapers and infant paraphernalia directly adjacent from the contraception and vibrating sex rings. “Things that go in your vagina and things that come out of your vagina? All in the same aisle. It’s like this in every store. Every time I go to buy tampons I know everyone who sees me is wondering whether I’m pregnant, horny, or in need of some good old fashioned feminine wash. It’s actually really stressful.”
“Phaedra.”
She sounded exhausted. Poor thing. After a final grimace at my surroundings, I moved on.
“There’s not really anything else to tell,” I assured her, wondering for what felt like the hundredth time where these people kept the chocolates. It was basic human fucking rights to keep all sweets within arm’s reach of patrons. Or at least in their direct line of sight. What sort of sicko designed a pharmacy this way?
“And you really couldn’t get anything?”
I understood her frustration so I allowed my voice to soften. “I searched the office while they were at some meeting and there was nothing. They have a second room, but I couldn’t get past the lock. The only hard evidence I have is that Judge Jenkins is a freak in the sheets. Not exactly what you were hoping for, but it’ll sure as hell give me a chuckle or two. Along with a quiet sense of satisfaction.”
“Damn.” The expletive was without heat, and silently, I echoed the sentiment. “We need to get those cameras and microphones up ASAP.”
“You’re preaching to the choir,” I said, my spirits lifting as I stumbled upon the holy grail of candy aisles. “What’s the status on that anyway?” I asked, filling my little hand basket with caramel filled goodness.
Sonya laughed, but not like she was happy. “Turns out Mark is using them for some investigative report on the plastic surgery of the rich and famous. We won’t be able to get our hands on any of it until he’s done.”
“You’d think our story would take precedence.”
“He called dibs.”
“Prick.”
“Don’t I know it.”
We both sighed at the same time, and, satisfied with my spoils, I headed up to the cash register. “There’s something I want you to look into,” I said finally. “There’s a group calling themselves the Huntsmen running roughshod over Evans and his people. How about you see what you can dig up on them for me?”
I’d been chewing on this bit of information every since Evans and Marcus had told me about them. While I’d love nothing better than to do the digging myself, I knew Sonya would appreciate something more hands on. Plus, I had no idea how deep she’d have to go to get anything good, and if Evans caught me anywhere near the Huntsmen…
Let’s just say I was fond of both of my ears and leave it at that.
I couldn’t afford even the slightest rumor of dishonesty. I needed him to learn to trust me, but we also needed more leads. I wanted to know why a group of self-proclaimed rebels had made Gabriel Evans their target. What had he done to make them hate him so much?
Sonya was brimming with as many questions as I was by the time I’d finished filling her in on what I knew. Her voice was tight with excitement, and I found myself smiling a little as I parked my car in front of my building.
“I’ll start working on it tonight. I know a guy in the police department who may be able to give me a few names. It won’t be much, but it’ll give us a start.”
“Sounds great,” I told her, phone pressed between ear and shoulder as I struggled to unlock my front door. “Keep me posted.”
We hung up without saying goodbye and with my newly freed hand, I was finally able to get into my apartment with my bag of junk food still intact. It was Friday night, and I was ready to roll myself in my favorite blanket like a tortilla and eat until my self-esteem got off its high horse and came back down to earth. I’d noticed I’d been a little cocky about fitting in my size nine jeans again and figured a bag of bite sized Twix, a large Snickers, and two Danish pastries would put me in my place.
The second I stepped through my front door I knew something was wrong. When you live your life a certain way, when things are always in one place, it’s easy to notice change. Maybe someone else wouldn’t have noticed that my living room window had been opened recently, or the fact that my desk had been rifled through, the papers just a smidgen askew, but I made my living noticing details that others missed.
I went over to the side table stationed by the window and readjusted the lone orchid on the surface. I liked the leaves to face a certain way, so that when you looked at the plant from any point in the apartment, you’d be able to see the myriad of colors that made up its center. Someone, or something, probably the wind from the opened window, had disturbed the plant enough that it had been knocked crooked in its jar.
I didn’t appreciate it, but had expected it. You don’t work for powerful men without spiking the interest of their enemies. Luckily for me, I’d cleaned out anything of importance long before I’d started working for Evans.
Still, as I pet my orchid I looked out into the darkness beyond the window, and wondered if maybe, just maybe, the ones who’d been here earlier were still out there. Watching.
Just in case they were, I gave them the finger before turning away.
My nightly routine was a simple one. Strip and change into an oversized shirt I’d stolen from an ex-boyfriend. Put my hair into a bouncy top-knot and drag my blanket into the living room so I could watch TV until exhaustion got the better of me. After turning on the television, I plopped on the couch with my bag of junk food and gorged.
The best part about eating by myself is that I no longer had to worry about who may or may not be staring at me in unabashed horror. Some women snored, some were super clingy, and I was a messy eater. It may not seem like such a bad thing, but you say that to the many dates that had to witness me pick lettuce out of my hair or wipe ice cream off my forehead. For me food wasn’t just sustenance, but an artistic medium, and as I licked the desecrated remains of baked goods from my fingertips I thought to myself, “This. This right here is probably why I’m still single.”
That thought led to another.
“I wonder what Evans would say if he could see me now.”
I remembered the wild sound of his laughter from the meeting with Jensen and snorted. Wincing when strawberry cream filling went up my nose.
When I talked to the police an hour later, I kept that part to myself.
The part where I wasn’t shot because I was digging Danish out of my nose like I was searching for buried treasure. Whenever I see people digging up their noses in their cars or offices, I always wonder why they think no one can see them through the glass.
It isn’t blacked out or anything. It isn’t a two way mirror. You should automatically assume that anything you do can be viewed by the hundreds of people passing you by on the other side of it. At the time, I still wasn’t sure if I was being watched through my own window, and I certainly wasn’t about to close the blinds in case they were, since that would be a sign of weakness. So when I got food up my nose I ducked down on my couch without thinking to get it back out again.
That’s when the first bullet came through the window and took out my honey bun.
Granted, I didn’t know that at the time. I was giggling at something on TV and doing my best impression of an inch worm in my tortilla style blanket wrapping,
so I could stuff my face into an open bag of powdered doughnuts on the other end of the couch. My head was buried in powdered sugar, so I didn’t see the honey bun, which had been left on the coffee table, take the bullet meant for me.
I didn’t hear anything either. Just a soft popping noise that I attributed to the show I was watching. When I finally reached out of my cocoon to grab the honey bun, the last of his people and my final victory, all I could do was stare at it in confusion.
“This is a bun,” I told the room at large, twisting the wrapped sweet first this way and then that. “This is not a doughnut,” I continued, finally growing suspicious. “Buns…don’t have holes. Doughnuts do.” My eyes narrowed to slits. “There sheems to be a dishturbance in the forsh.”
Note: I don’t know why I talk like Sean Connery when upset. I just do. Deal with it.
The next bullet sent the honey bun flying out of my hands and into the heart of my television screen. I didn’t bother screaming, I just moved.
Growing up in a bad neighborhood, it was instinct to flip over the arm of my couch and onto the floor. Without the TV, the room was dark and I could see the red of the sniper’s light traveling unerringly in my direction. I was still wrapped in my blanket though, so there was this breathless moment of panic when I was unrolling myself that I felt, rather than saw, that red light blazing against the middle of my forehead before I managed to scramble free and lunge out of the way.
The next shot took a nice little hole out of my hardwood floor, exactly where my head had been, and discarding the last of the blanket, I army crawled into my kitchen and huddled on the other side of the refrigerator.
I was scared.
Really, really scared. I let myself have a minute or two, let my head rest against the cool side of the refrigerator, before I acknowledged the facts my brain was throwing at me.
1.The shooter had a silencer and probably night vision, if they way they could find me in the dark was any indication.
2.They were methodical. They’d waited until I’d gotten home and settled down before taking a shot at me.
3.They probably weren’t the same people who had searched my place. If they had been, what had been the point of leaving when they could have simply laid in wait and killed me then?
4.I was suspected of being a domestic terrorist. There were Feds parked outside of my building.
That was all the encouragement I needed to make a run for it. Keeping low, I headed straight for my front door. I grabbed the doorknob and screamed when the next bullet had it shattering in my hands. I jerked back, but just as quickly reached out again. Sticking my hand in the gaping hold that had been left behind, I threw the door open and practically fell out of my apartment.
Then I ran, and I didn’t stop running until I felt fresh air on my face and pavement beneath my bare feet. I searched the street, eyes darting, searching, for the one car that had been there consistently for weeks now.
There.
Dark windows, perfect paint job despite the neighborhood, and parked close enough to see anyone who comes or goes.
My heart soared.
I don’t know what I would have done if the two men I’d startled hadn’t worked for the FBI. Maybe I would have crawled into their backseat anyway, made some new friends. But luckily, the agents who glanced first at one another and then at me, seemed happy enough to have me there, despite the fact that their cover had been officially blown. Since I sure as hell wasn’t going back into my apartment, I buckled my seat belt and smiled.
“You boys wouldn’t mind giving me a lift to the police station would you?”
They looked at one another again, and the one in the driver’s seat shrugged.
“Not like we’re doing anything else.”
His partner shook his head in disgust.
“I don’t think this is what Elijah meant by ‘watch.’”
Starting the car, the first man looked over his shoulder at me. “You got any of those tasty cakes left?”
To the mutual disappointment of all, I shook my head.
Human flesh is an endless wonder to me. Food or fucking, it doesn’t matter. I’m always hungry for it.”
—David Finland
Chapter Six