“I seldom repeat myself, Harden. I told you, I don’t give anyone the chance to take back anything that’s mine.”
The man had this thing with cryptic lines. It grated at Rick’s nerves. It had to be done on purpose, to keep everyone off-balance, while he remained in control. Not going to happen to him, Rick decided. “You gave her my file all those years ago,” he said coolly. He could analyze a situation just as well as the other man. Time to attack instead of giving ground.
“Yes.”
“Why? I wasn’t around. You didn’t have to tell her anything about me. You could keep her, or were you already tired of her, wanting to get rid of her?”
Rick studied Jed for signs of anger but the man’s control was superb. Nothing. Not a shred of emotion in those eyes. His reply, when it came, was shockingly simple.
“I gave her your file because she was a married woman, Harden.” Jed stood up and looked down at Rick. “She belonged to someone else, and as long as she refused to deal with it, I had no choice but to give her room to grow, to be whomever she wanted to be.”
“So you waited ten years to send her back to me?” Rick asked skeptically.
Jed twirled what was left of that weed in his hand then dropped it on the ground. “It took two years for her physical scars to heal. Two more to train her to be a good GEM operative. Four years of being on her own, besides surviving. She went into retirement and on her own, after a year, she decided that it was time. Read her stuff, Harden. What’s the color of her hero’s eyes?”
“Green.”
“What does he do?”
Rick didn’t like the tables turned but replied anyway. “He works for an agency and is being set up.”
Jed nodded. “She’s been following you for a year without anyone’s prompting. Surely that tells you something. My facilitating her new assignment is just a matter of course. I’ll help Nikki as much as I can. It’s now up to you, unless—” The dark eyebrow rose a fraction. “You would rather return her to me? She remembers everything now, so I won’t be taking advantage of her, and I must admit, I miss my Nikki a lot.”
“Fuck you,” Rick offered rudely.
For the first time Jed laughed, a surprisingly rich, genuine sound. He crushed the plant under his boot. “I have other plans,” he said, and the amusement disappeared like a magic trick. “I want those who killed my men, Harden. Five years, ten years—I’ll get them.”
Rick stood up. Sitting down while this man was around wasn’t a good idea. “I win on that account,” he told him. “I have waited ten years to get Gorman.”
“Point, I have had ten years watching Nikki. By the way, Nonphysical Persuasion is just the first part of NOPAIN. My talents lie in Innovative Negotiation, Harden, remember that.”
They stared at each other. Rick understood the hidden message very well. Jed McNeil never lost a fight; he wouldn’t have let go of Nikki if he’d found anything about Rick that proved him guilty. He was warning that he would be watching. Rick nodded back. He would make damn sure the man stayed far, far away from his woman.
To give the men some time, Nikki went back to get her bicycle. She knew Jed wanted to speak to Rick alone or he wouldn’t have taunted him that way. Besides, she needed to sort out what to do next. What Jed chose to reveal worried her. She suspected Rick somehow already knew about him—the antagonism he’d shown was raw and abrasive, as if he hadn’t been able to control himself. Jed would undoubtedly use that emotion to get what he wanted; he manipulated everyone like that.
She sighed. Men. She was afraid of them. Their size. The way they casually used force to solve a problem, be it pounding a hammer at a stubborn nail or showing their fists at each other. The careless power they could wield over women, with intimidation, physical or emotional, or sex. Her grip on the bicycle handles tightened. She knew how a man could break a woman.
It had been ten years and she still couldn’t run away from her fears. Jed had called it her emotional garbage that she needed to throw out, not sneak it around inside her, like guilty dirt thrust under the carpet. She held on to the bike like an anchor as she looked indecisively at the jogging path.
The two men back there were honorable men. One saved her, saw her through the worst of horrors. The other wouldn’t hurt a hair on her. Yet she didn’t trust them enough to face them with any of her emotions. Partly it was because they both had a knack of seeing through her calm façade. She had erected this wall to stop the pain of humiliation, to evade men who had violated her out of greed and power. For a long time, before she did so, a man’s hungry look would drive her to nausea and near hysteria. Allow anyone too close, and her whole being would scream in warning.
Nikki took a deep breath. She felt safe behind this emotional barrier, but it also isolated her from the world. She had kept out people who offered friendship and love because she had been afraid. Unless she took down this wall herself, she would never learn to trust, and wasn’t that the most important thing in finding balance? To trust again?
She got on the bicycle and retraced her path, passing the joggers and taking in the scenery. She smelled grass and sunshine in the air. It all brought home a point. She wasn’t alone trying to survive the next session of question and torture any longer. She didn’t need to lie awake at night and think of deep darkness without color. If she would just reach out her hand, there were colors everywhere, and she could, if she dared to hope, touch a warm body next to hers. And she wouldn’t have nightmares of sweat and tears because the strong arms that would envelop her belonged to the man she loved. It was a nice daydream.
Nikki braked slowly. The bicycle came to a standstill in front of the two men at the end of the path. They had been talking but turned in unison toward her, both aware of their surroundings. She teetered on her seat, keeping the bicycle balanced for a moment, as she looked from one face to the other.
Tension still emanated in waves from the two of them, but they hadn’t been arguing when she saw them. She knew Jed had gotten what he wanted; he always did. As her gaze settled on Rick, she tried to hide the anxiety in her eyes. He looked formidable, and a strange coldness invaded her belly. She wondered whether she had lost him.
“I won’t let the two of you run my life,” she broke the silence quietly. “I’ll decide what I want to do and how I want to live.”
“Nobody’s running your life,” Rick said, but his eyes had the look she had begun to recognize too well.
“No, but you want to save me, just like Jed did,” she said. “This is my quest, my life.”
“I’m part of it.” The stiffness in his jaw didn’t bode well.
“I know.” She attempted a smile. “But you can’t slay all
my dragons. This was done to me, my body, my mind. I have to be the one behind the wheel. From what I can gather, you’re both working around me, as if I’m Humpty Dumpty on the wall. That was fine before. I can see why you both think my amnesia is some kind of fragile ornament. If anything, it’s like a mirror, reflecting my reality. That mirror was shattered a few days ago and I’m still here, and I’m fine.”
“Are you saying you don’t need me?” Rick asked.
It wasn’t easy to look from one pair of intense eyes to another that was equally penetrating. Men liked to be charge. She reminded herself that these two had been in charge of her in one aspect or another in both her personas. Jed had let her go years ago, but she knew him well enough to realize that he had kept an eye on her. She gazed longingly at Rick, wanting to go to him and smooth that frown away, but that was the point. It would be doing what they wanted her to do—let them handle it.
No more. She turned the bicycle around and started pedaling back. “I need you both,” she said quietly, “to let me do my assignment.”
Rick watched his wife pedaling away from them. He was angry that she didn’t make a choice. He wanted her to come to him and show him that it was he she wanted. Instead, the woman cruised off.
“So you want to play another game of horse shit?” Jed asked nonchalantly as he pushed his sunglasses down on his nose.
Rick told him where to shove it.
Nikki heard Jed’s laughter behind her and sighed inwardly. Not good. It was risky leaving two explosive chemicals side by side like that. It occurred to her that she was the only thing keeping those two in balance.
“I
don’t share.”
The declaration was made quietly, without heat or inflection.
Nikki had waited for some sort of explosion since their return, but Rick had drawn out the tension by going into his study immediately. The door was still closed forty-five minutes later when she emerged from the bath and she’d imagined her tiger in there pacing, teeth bared, claws extended. Shaking her head, she’d decided to work on her report in front of the fireplace.
After a while, engrossed in her notes, she didn’t hear his soft footsteps. Something made her look up. He stood at the bar, still in his sweatshirt and pants. Seeing him like this sent her heart racing. She was used to him in a business suit and tie. There was something fiercely untamed about him in those old clothes, and she wanted…
“You keep eating me with those eyes, and we’ll never get a chance to talk,” Rick interrupted her wayward thoughts, the ragged edge in his voice the only hint of his current state of mind. He walked behind the bar, as if he wanted to put something between them. “We need to talk.”
“I know.” Nikki told herself to be brave. “You want to know about Jed. About everything. I haven’t been upfront.”
“I’m the last person to condemn you for anything, Nikki.” Rick pulled out a jug of juice from the refrigerator and poured himself a glass, giving the act a whole lot more con
centration than necessary. “God knows I haven’t been a saint. But we need to talk about what you want from me. I know what I want, but maybe that’s not enough anymore. Maybe I’ve changed too much for you.”
Nikki stared at him but he wouldn’t look at her, turning around to put away the jug. “What are you saying?” she asked.
“When you and the team went missing, our side wouldn’t send out an extraction team because they knew the international consequences would hurt us politically. I knew from my monitoring system that they were offering negotiations. Then, all of a sudden, you were all dead.” He took in a deep breath. “And they wouldn’t tell me anything. I couldn’t accept that.”
Nikki was quiet for a few moments, dissecting the situation from his perspective. “You went looking for me the only way you knew how,” she deduced.
“Yes.”
“By being a bureaucrat, so you could dig deeper and look for the missing information.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s how you’ve changed. You’ve become a bureaucrat, and you think that affects our relationship.” She stated her conclusions rhetorically because it was obvious meeting Jed had rattled him. She sighed. Jed would be pleased to know he’d accomplished his goals.
“Doesn’t it?” His sipped on his juice slowly, watching her intently.
Nikki pursed her lips. She had never been good at making speeches. That was why she wrote stories. It was less personal, and easier to choose what to say or not to say when she could delete at will. She didn’t have that option now. Her tiger was waiting. “You’re angry because of what I did, and I don’t blame you.” She swallowed, willing her voice to be stronger. “It was selfish of me, and yes, I know it wasn’t right to let you suffer. I can never make it right, no matter how many times I say I’m sorry. If anything else, I’m responsible for your becoming a bureaucrat. I wish I could change the past, Rick, because I can’t bear to see you hurt.”
“Make me understand. Was the thought of having a hus
band so frightening that you would deny my existence for nine years? Was there never a moment when you were curious at all, just to even want to talk to this stranger who knew you?” Rick carefully finished his glass of juice and placed it in the sink. “Was I just nothing in your mind?”
She wanted to be truthful, yet was reluctant to hurt him even more. She had to be very careful here or everything would blow up in her face. “I don’t know what Jed told you,” she began, pulling at the pages on her notepad, “but it was over between him and me a long time ago. I just didn’t want to commit to anything or anyone, Rick. I had this…delusion…that I could forget what I couldn’t remember, if that makes sense at all. I wanted to be a new person because I felt like damaged goods. Everything was new in the here and now whereas the past was ugly and tainted, and somehow, even if it’s not true, you were lumped in there as part of something not to remember.”
“I see.”
Nikki threw the notepad down. “No, you don’t. You’re hiding your anger and pain, and I know my words are hurtful and cruel, and nothing I say or do will make it all right.” She stood up and began walking toward the bar. “I just let time pass. One day I retired from field work. Another day I decided to write. It was then that I realized my writing was revealing my inner self, and no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t run from my past. Jed had been right—there will never be peace for me until I make peace with my past.”
She reached Rick, with the bar a barrier between them. She placed her hands on the counter and leaned close. “It’s difficult to resist a bait set deliberately for me. Jed dangled it—you, my past, my file, everything. And all in the course of saving my country again. How could I resist? This was my chance to come back and see for myself, whether the sight of you would jolt my memory, whether it was possible to see myself through your eyes.” She took a deep breath and exhaled. Be brave, she repeated. “I knew the risks of doing this, that if you found out the truth, all of my investigation could be jeopardized, so I opted for secrecy.”
His back against the small refrigerator, Rick regarded her with somber eyes. “But part of the whole thing was to get me to talk,” he said in that strange subdued voice. “Your—Jed already admitted that much. So you were sent here to mess with my mind. Get me to make the wrong move. Your agency wanted Gorman, and somehow has concluded that I was keeping something that they wanted.”
“That
might
help them to net all the traitors,” Nikki corrected. “They want to know what you have over Gorman, and vice versa.”
“And what luck that they just happened to have you in their arsenal. They saw an opportunity to get to me and use it, and of course, here you are.” There was no sarcasm, just that frustrating monotone.
“It was
my
decision. They couldn’t have forced me if I’d refused.”
“So tell me, besides the temptation of reading your own file, and maybe seeing your husband without any commitment, besides the luxury of being able to make up your mind what you want for your future—be it Jed McNeil or Ricardo Harden—besides all that, did it ever occur to you that I should have a say in this future?”
She was fast losing control of the situation. He was twisting her words, reading more into her motives than there really was, but who could blame him, when everything he had said was true? “What if you didn’t want me?” she whispered.
His green eyes came alive, and all of a sudden, he was leaning over the counter, his face inches from hers. “How could you say that when you knew I had been requesting the return of your remains every year? How could you
think
that when your precious Jed had his eye on me for nine fucking years and knew every detail there is about my life? He knew enough to stay away from you, I’ll give him credit for
that.
I asked him why he never contacted me, told me about you, and you know what he said? He said he knew I would never have accepted your being alive and not wanting to contact me, that I would move heaven and hell to find you. If
he
knew
how I felt about you, Nikki, how could you not know? The file was there, the information was there at your fingertips. What did you do, check now and then, and see the stupid son of a bitch becoming nothing more than a paper pusher? That it’s just not worth reliving life with him? That—”
Nikki pushed her palm against Rick’s lips. “Stop,” she pleaded, the shocking torrent of words slicing every fiber of her being. “Please, please, stop. It isn’t that. It has never been that!”
She trapped his face between her hands, blinking back her tears as she tried to form words that weren’t there. “I…you…No…” She released him and slapped the counter in frustration. She didn’t want to say it, but she had to. Saying it out loud was horrible, but at least he wouldn’t think she sat around calculating what would give her the best happiness. She lifted a weary hand to sweep the hair away from her forehead and took another deep breath. Exhaled. Finally she said, “It’s worse. You meant nothing to me for a long time. And I know I didn’t try, didn’t attempt to reconnect with you or my past, or anything or anyone to do with it. It wasn’t decent or honorable or moral. But I never meant to hurt you. Never, Rick, never.”
“I repeat, what is it you want from me?”
She looked at him, really looked, and there was nothing but contempt in his eyes. She withdrew, hugged herself because she suddenly felt cold. At one time she would have replied that she didn’t want much. Just her file, just something to tell her that she had existed. Now, after seeing and touching—loving Rick—she wanted so much more. But he was right. She was being selfish, taking and not giving back, and expecting him to give even more. She shook her head.
“Nothing? You want nothing from me?”
She rubbed her arms agitatedly. Jutting out her chin, she said, “Nothing you don’t want to give me.”
“That, at least, is a start,” he said. She peered up. His gaze remained shuttered, unreadable. “You said earlier that you wanted space to do your assignment. Fine. But you’ve got me now, and I’m not some piece of information in your head
anymore. You cannot remember. Fine. But what we have now, I won’t let you forget. Is that clear?”
How could she forget? “Yes,” she replied.
He nodded. “We have to start at a point where you’re comfortable remembering. Would you rather be Nikki Taylor, or be seen as my wife?”
She blinked. “Your…wife.”
“There’s no going back,” he warned softly. “You know how I am. My future isn’t too bright at this moment, either, and could be getting worse, but I also want you to know that I’d do my damnedest to give you everything you want, even a new beginning. That’s all I have to offer.”
She bit her lower lip to stop its trembling. “Why?”
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Because the past you want has a price. What I’m going to tell EYES will put me in jail, but they’ll locate your missing file once I take the second deal they hinted at over the phone.”
“Grandmother, why does Grandfather need money in the Underworld?”
It was the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts, and Grandmother was burning paper offerings for the dead. Especially the dead relatives, she told Nikki, because they were so annoying when they were alive. Nikki watched as bundles of “money” and material goods made from paper went up in smoke, while her grandmother chanted prayers and lit joss-sticks, filling the air with Oriental incense.
Her grandmother didn’t answer her immediately as she arranged small colored paper, called yim bo, into soft, saucerlike shapes and then crowned them with nuggets of glitter paper signifying gold and silver ingots. Her grandfather’s yim bo arrangement, she noticed, was bigger than the rest.
“Maybe he isn’t a ghost anymore,” Nikki speculated.
Her grandmother fed the fire with more paper-money offerings. She gave some to Nikki. “Here, throw some in so the ghosts won’t fight over it and get mad at us.”
Nikki obediently did so, half amused at the idea of ghosts
fighting over paper printed with bold red one million dollar markings. Things must be expensive in the Underworld.
“You have to be generous,” her grandmother remarked, as if she read her thoughts. “It doesn’t hurt to feed the ghosts generously. Some are greedier than others, and you never know what mischief they seek if they aren’t satisfied.”
“So it’s like bribery? Give them more so they don’t bother us?”
Grandmother chuckled. “Do you think ghosts don’t want material things? They are all hungry for things they can’t have here on earth, you know. They’re allowed out once a year, so they’re very hungry, especially the lonely ones, the ones who have been abandoned. Feed them, child, give them what they want.”
“What about Grandpa? Is he hungry and annoying too?” Nikki persisted in her theory. “Maybe he’s been reborn.”
She hrummphed loudly. “Your grandfather kept too many secrets from your grandmother to dare leave me all alone.” She looked around, a little frown puckering her forehead, as if trying to discern his spirit out there. “He won’t be ready to be reborn till he sees your grandmother cross over, and then he’d better have lots of money and things left for me because he’s in real trouble.”
Nikki laughed. “What did Grandpa do? Tell me! Had he been really bad?”
Her grandmother tossed more yim bo into the fire and chanted another prayer. “Bad?” She shook her head. “No, but he did things he thought were best for me, and he passed on without telling me, so he’s always going to be hungry, that naughty old man. And serves him right if I don’t feed him.”
She turned to Nikki and continued, “That’s why you always take care of business here and now and not worry about feeding hungry ghosts later. Don’t let the past haunt you, child. You get hungry, like the dead.”
Grandmother must be haunting her because she hadn’t listened closely to her teachings. Nikki fingered the key to her apartment as she made her way to the building. When she
was younger, the past was nothing but stories of ancestors and their history. Nothing to fear. No ghosts. Now, she grimly noted, she faced a multitude of ghosts, some of them ravenous.
She had come alone to be debriefed by Jed. When she told him, Rick didn’t say anything, but she was all too aware of the undercurrents. He’d let her go without a protest, planting a hard kiss on her lips. He would be in the study working on decoding the encryption, he told her. Then he would be meeting with Internal Investigations.
She opened the door to her apartment. Jed was lounging comfortably in her armchair, eyes closed. Years could go by without her seeing him, yet he always remained remarkably unchanged. The man must have a secret fountain of youth.