Campbell_Book One

Chapter 25




May 2003

Los Angeles, West



“What’s that?” Leah asked, peering into the hole Tal had just finished digging in their backyard. It was at least two feet deep and three wide.

He stopped and wiped his forehead. “It’s our future.”

“A hole in the ground is our future? Tal…” Leah frowned and sat in the dirt. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He stomped into the house and returned a few minutes later lugging two pillowcases. She counted as thirty gold bars made a gleaming pile on the ground. “We’re going to start burying gold back here, under the garden.”

“Hedge fund?” She smiled.

“More like a seed fund.” He grinned back.

“You’re such a dork.” She watched as he put the bars in plastic bags and buried them, planting five, and then dumping some dirt over them before burying the others. “You think gold’s the future?”

Tal wiped some sweat from his brow. “I hope the garden’s the future, but I don’t see that happening.” He put the loose dirt back in the bed he’d created. “We’ll enjoy the garden. And someday, we’ll put these to good use.”

“You sound like your dad.”

Tal grinned. “Thanks, you.”

“Where’d you get those from?”

“I got into Granddad’s safety deposit box at the bank. His, and the ones next to it. Someone sold me the keys.”

Leah worried that Tal was blowing through their money, trading it for things that seemed frivolous, but as she eyed the newly settled dirt, she had the feeling her concerns were unfounded. “For….”

“Far less than this gold is worth.” He shook his head. “People don’t know the value of things.”

Leah stretched her legs out in front of her, enjoying the warmth of the sun on them as Tal collapsed beside her. “The smart ones do.”



November 2012

Los Angeles, West



“I need to go, but I don’t want to,” Lucy whispered, leaning into the hand that was miraculously stroking her cheek. “I don’t want to leave you here.”


“I’ll be able to make it home soon,” Bull replied gravelly. “And they’re taking good care of me.”

Lucy smiled over at Rika, who was puttering away in front of the stove in her bright, shiny-clean kitchen, making grilled cheese sandwiches for her girls for breakfast, at their request. It was a very domestic scene, in contrast with the one of the tiny, ferocious woman she’d watched choke out a kid on the bridge a week earlier.

Though she hadn’t known her long, Lucy knew if anyone could handle a wounded Bull, it was Rika.

He’d almost died, and despite his improvements over the last few days, she still wasn’t entirely sure he wouldn’t. He’d lost a lot of blood, but both wounds had stayed close to the surface. The healer Rika knew, Lupa, said they would have been fatal if they’d been an inch the other way. The wound in his thigh had cleared a lot of muscle and missed the femoral artery, and the hole in his gut was going to leave a hell of a scar, but the bullets hadn’t hit any organs as far as anyone could tell. The healer had been by a few times a day to check in, and do lots of things that Lucy didn’t understand. The girl was about her age, and while her methods made Lucy uncomfortable because they caused Bull a great deal of pain, they seemed to be effective.

She curled up beside him on the mattress they’d hauled into the living room and did her best to memorize everything about him; his smell, the way his heartbeat, on the chance that she’d never seem him again. She’d lost enough lately to become jaded about everyone’s mortality.

“Lupa will be over around four,” Rika whispered to her after Bull fell asleep. “So you can feel good about him being okay before you leave.”

“I think she’d have to tell me he’ll be up doing jumping jacks tomorrow before I’d be okay to go,” she replied, untucking herself from his good side. “There’s a few things I have to do then before I go.”

Rika nodded. “Don’t be too hard on him.”

“Connor?” Lucy laughed. “You’re the last person I thought I’d hear say—”

“I meant Tal.”

“He might not even be there,” she said, her eyes searching her new friend’s. She’d been avoiding Tal for days now and it seemed he’d been doing the same thing with her. “And I’m not being hard—”

“You are being hard, but that’s how we protect ourselves.” She reached over and tapped Lucy’s forehead. “Change doesn’t come easy sometimes.”

“And sometimes it comes too late.”

“There’s no such thing as too late,” Rika tisked. “Go on then.”

“Is he there?”

Rika shrugged and batted her eyelashes, her eyes gleaming. “Now how would I know that?”

When Lucy went back into the guest room, Zoey was still asleep, passed out on the bed Lucy had shared with Tal a few days earlier. She crawled in beside her, and for a split second imagined that everything between them was like it had been before, when they fought about stupid things like boys, who loved who more, and whose turn it was to do the laundry.

She opened her eyes and blinked a couple of times before focusing on Lucy.

“What time is it?”

“Around ten,” she replied. “I’m going to go over to Bauman’s to see Connor. I need to figure out what to do….”

Zoey’s hand wrapped tightly around hers and she gave a reassuring squeeze, her eyes sad. “Don’t kill him,” she whispered, stroking her cheek. “That’s not what you really want. It’s not what Cole would want either. You’re more civilized than that.”

“Am I?” she questioned, as she closed her eyes, soothed by Zoey’s familiar touch. “I don’t know, Zoey.”

“There are worse things than dying. You know that.”

Lucy nodded against her hand. “What happens when we go home?”

Zoey smiled knowingly. “We’ll figure it out. One way or another.”

A tear threatened to spill over, but Lucy blinked it away. “You’re so zen about everything.”

“I’ve already lost you in every possible way over the last few months,” her voice cracked. “I wouldn’t say I’m zen. Maybe jaded.”

“I just keep coming back though, don’t I?” Lucy laughed. “I’m like a cockroach.”

Zoey smiled knowingly. “I don’t know who I am any more than you do. You know that.”

“Maybe that’s what’s next. Maybe we try and figure that out.” Lucy squeezed her hand, remembering that she wasn’t the only one that was confused.

“I’m not sure anyone figures that out.” Zoey continued to stroke her cheek with her thumb. “Maybe you just narrow it down from what you aren’t.”

“I should probably start a checklist.” Lucy sighed. “It would be a long one.”

Mussing her hair, Zoey leaned in and kissed her forehead affectionately. “First thing I’m doing when we get home is cutting your hair. It’s…not good. You…don’t want to keep it like that, do you?”

She shook her head. It was hard looking at herself in the mirror, resembling Cole like she did. “No, I miss my hair.”

“It’ll grow,” Zoey whispered, running her hands through it. “Have you seen him…since Bull?”

Lucy tried to play down what she knew Zoey was curious about. “Bauman?” Lucy shook her head as she climbed off the bed. “Nope.”

“He hasn’t been there, when you’ve gone over?”

She shook her head again and did her best to fix her hair in the mirror, avoiding her eyes. “No.”

“Ce?”

She leaned in the doorway. “Yeah?”

“Don’t call him Bauman. Call him Tal. I don’t…I don’t mind.”



***



Lucy took Juan’s bike, teetering along at a painfully slow pace. She’d decided that since she had a week with nothing to do but wait for her friend to live or die it was probably the perfect time to learn and she’d spent hours each day out with Rika’s girls, Penny and Ana, playing around in the driveway. She wasn’t very good, but she hadn’t fallen in a couple of days, which she took as encouraging.

The shades were still drawn at Tal’s house and when Lucy knocked on the door, Leah answered, as she had every day that week.

“You’re here to see your prisoner?” she said, screwing her face up. “He’s still here.”

“I’m going home tomorrow, so I guess I have to decide what to do with him.”

She nodded. “He can’t stay here. I…I can’t….No.”

Lucy smiled supportively. “I know, and I appreciate you keeping him until I could decide.”

“Have you decided?”

A shrug was the only response Lucy could come up with.

Connor had spent the last week cuffed to a large piece of machinery in the pool pump-house, which seemed to keep the water circulating. It was a damp, constricting place and with every passing day, Connor looked more and more uncomfortable, which gave Lucy a great deal of satisfaction. It was time for that to end, though.

She threw him a sandwich that Rika had sent over. He stuffed it in his face greedily. “That’s all you have?” he whined. “I’m f*cking starving.”

“Did you feed my brother?” she asked, sitting down just out of his reach in the sunlight, as she’d done every day that week.


“Just enough to keep him alive,” he grumbled. “Did your friend die yet?”

“I don’t think he’s going to,” she said brightly, thinking hard about how she could punish Connor most effectively. “But thanks for asking.”

“You should just kill me,” he suggested for what had to be the fiftieth time.

“The thing is, it’s up to me, and you know? I’m not sure how I want to do it yet. It’s a big decision.”

“No, it’s not,” he said coolly. “Gun or knife. If you were going to bludgeon me to death it would have happened when you were angrier.”

“What if I’d agreed to work with you, all those months ago when you came to my house. Would any of this have happened?”

“Hard to say,” he answered honestly. “You didn’t though, did you?”

“Nope,” she sighed. “And you know, after this, after everything, I’m not sorry I didn’t, if this is any indication of how you conduct yourself.”

“Even if your brother was alive?”

“You killed my brother, not me,” she said, wishing she could say the words with conviction. “And I’m responsible for what happens to you. Where’s his body?”

“You can keep asking, but it doesn’t mean I’ll tell you,” he replied in an irritating sing-songy voice.

Glancing down at his fly, Lucy cracked her knuckles. “I could torture you, force you to give it up. I did castrate my grandfather.”

“At the tender age of ten with a steak knife,” Connor said, shaking his head unfazed. “I’m not telling you.”

“Do you think that’ll keep you alive?”

Chuckling, the small man leaned as close to Lucy as he could get. “I just don’t want to give you the satisfaction, you dyke bitch. You may have been able to convince Tal of whatever you convinced him of, but I could give a rat’s ass about helping you get closure. Here’s some closure for you. I didn’t even kidnap him. He wanted to come with me. He wanted to get away from you!”

Lucy wasn’t sure if he was lying about her twin, but for her own sanity, she decided to tell herself he was. His eyes were dark, hard, as he looked at her in the sunshine. There, sitting by the nicest pool she’d ever seen, on a beautiful sunny day, Lucy Campbell figured out Connor Wilde. He was afraid to grow up; afraid of what would happen in a world where everyone else was changing.

Cole had been right. He was afraid of being left behind.

Lucy stood, locked the pump door, and went inside. Leah was painting her nails a vibrant shade of green at the kitchen table.

“Why aren’t you back at work?” she asked, sitting beside her.

“I’m stuck watching your prisoner.” She raised her eyebrows as Lucy sat across from her. “And the movie thing is kind of on hold until some stuff gets straightened out.”

“Like a new government?”

She shook her head. “Just some high level transition stuff to start. Reporting structures. We need to do the movies for revenue. That’ll start up again soon. They’re doing some closing shots for a few things today.”

“I’m going home tomorrow.” Lucy raised her eyebrows.

“Good,” Leah replied evenly. “Let things get back to normal around here. A new normal.”

“Is he mad at you?”

She shrugged. “About your brother? I don’t think so. He hasn’t mentioned it, but he’s got a lot on his mind right now. I think getting to this point was probably the easy part.”

“I should see him—”

“He’s in his office,” she nodded down the hall. “I guess I probably should have told you that in case you decided to spill your guts about anything.”

“I’d never spill my guts to you,” Lucy replied snidely as she stood and slowly started down the hall. Her face grew hot as she approached Tal’s office. She had a lot to say to him, but wasn’t sure how to make the words come out right, in a way that explained anything, or would make it easy for her to leave.

He was sitting behind his desk, laptop open when she walked in.

“You weren’t going to come out and say goodbye?”

He gave a half shrug and closed his laptop. “I don’t really know what to say to you.”

She took a seat on the couch in his office, her hands folded tightly in her lap. “I’m going—”

“Tomorrow,” he nodded, “I heard. I’ll be in touch with logistical information once you’re back—”

“Of course,” she muttered. “I can’t let Andrew continue on with the war against East like he is. We need a better plan than blowing up the shit out of everything because we’re angry.”

“That isn’t the best plan,” Tal agreed. “I’m meeting with Vegas next week to come up with some terms for a ceasefire and an arrangement for peace. They’re willing to talk.”

“Good,” Lucy nodded. “Listen, I know I said a lot of things….”

“And you had all the right in the world to say them.” He looked at her sadly. “And I can’t say anything but I wish things had been different.”

“You could say you’re sorry.”

Tal shook his head. “I’m not sorry. If I said I was sorry, it would undermine everything that’s happened, everything that needed to happen over the last few months and I won’t do that. We don’t get to choose our lynchpins.”

Lucy sighed, on the fence about his logic. “I’m not going to kill him. I want him to live to see everything that’s going to happen. You’re going to be responsible for him.”

“I’m going to be responsible for him?” Tal raised his eyebrows. “That’s what you’ve decided?”

“Since you weren’t before.” She twisted her mother’s wedding band on her thumb. “You will be now.”

Tal cradled his head in his hands, his brows knit together. “I guess I’ll have to find a place for him. He can’t stay here.”

“He took advantage of Leah. You’re f*cking right he can’t stay here.”

“That’s your interpretation now?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “It is.” She pulled her map out of her back pocket and pointed to one of the islands off the coast that had once been a military stronghold. She’d spent some time the night before asking Rika about the geography of the area for her own knowledge. “You’re going to send him to one of the islands off the coast. I don’t care which one. Not Catalina. Rika said it’s gorgeous there.”

“Does Rika know you’re not going to kill him?”

Lucy shook her head. “No, but she said he was mine to do what I wanted to with. She’ll understand.”



***



Tal looked at her map as she spread it across his desk. He avoided her eyes because he knew he’d be unable to stop himself from saying all the things he wanted to say if the right moment presented itself. He wanted to apologize. He wanted to tell her that he’d never be complacent, that he’d learned much at her expense. Their dynamic had changed though, and he knew revealing those things to her would put him in a position that he didn’t want to be in beyond the next few hours. He had a lot to figure out, and although she said she didn’t have any interest in more power, he knew she’d be unable to help herself from meddling if she was given the opportunity, and Tal wanted a shot at doing it on his own. He knew that regardless of anything he said, she was going to leave and return to her position and Campbell, and he was going to remain where he was and define his, and they’d have to work together. It was better if they didn’t contaminate that with any more feelings.


Tal picked the furthest place from himself that he could—Connor was driving him nuts chained up in the back yard. The last thing he wanted was to put him somewhere he’d have to have regular contact with him. “We’ll send him to San Clemente. There’s an old military base there, and we’ll rig something up.”

“I want you to keep him healthy, and I want him to have a television on with the news all the time.”

“Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll do that.”

Lucy folded up her map. “And then we have a lot of work to do, Bauman. We’ve got to fix this shit with East. A lot is riding on you. I’m going to need your help.”

“And if I f*ck up?” he half joked.

“You won’t,” she said simply, grinning the most genuine smile she’d mustered in weeks. “Because I’ll be watching, and I know you’d never give me the satisfaction.”

He watched her walk out the front door a few minutes later, purposeful in her stride as she climbed on the bike, and although everything was up in the air, he knew one thing for certain.

It wasn’t the end.





About The Author



Though born in Nova Scotia, C.S. Starr lives in Toronto, Canada with her husband of few years, but partner of many, a fluffy white dog named Sushi, and a diabolical cat named Kimchi. When not writing, she spends her days meeting interesting people and talking about books across Canada and trying to convince herself she is really and truly a runner.



This is her first (published) novel.



She blogs here: csstarrwrites.com

You can find her on twitter here: @cs_writes





UNEDITED PROOF




Here’s a sneak peek from West, Book Two in the Campbell Trilogy:



Chapter 2

March 2013

Campbell



“I can’t forget, but I’ll forgive you, eventually,” Lucy whispered into the phone. “I…I know you didn’t know.”

Tal paused. “Come see me, Ce. Or we can meet somewhere in the middle.”

Lucy exhaled and cradled the phone carefully, imagining what it would be like to see him across a room, a field, anything. She pushed the thought out of her mind. “I can’t. I can’t leave or my brother…I don’t know what he’d do. He’s not right.”

“So that’s it? You’re never going to leave?” he asked. “Is that what you want? To be chained to your job? Your war? Your house in the middle of nowhere?”

“I want a lot of things I’ll never have.” She wiped an errant tear away and looked at the tattered map in front of her, drawing an invisible line between Campbell and Los Angeles with her finger. There, he was only inches away, but West may as well been on a different sheet of paper thumbtacked to the wall in the barn.

“You never know unless you try,” he replied quietly. “I think about us out there a lot. Even though we had nothing—”

“I’m not good for you. I don’t know what I want, and I’m…I’m a f*cking mess, Tal. You know that.”

“I feel like you’re…we’re something that’s supposed to be. I can’t explain it.”

She hated when he said things like that because they were exactly what she wanted to hear. “And what happens when it all goes to shit? Then what?”

“Then we go to shit and then dig ourselves out. That’s all anyone can do. You sound more miserable every time I call. Is staying there really a better solution, since your hands are tied with East? Come down. We’ll at least talk in person.”

His tone was gentle; soothing. She hoped he had more to say just so she could listen for a while, and drown in his words and escape her situation; her rudimentary war, her progressively shitty relationship. There was nothing beyond the words, she knew, since she didn’t know what they could possibly be in breath and form, because she was terrified to give it a real shot.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever had someone like you in my life.”

“Same,” he murmured. “Come see me, and we’ll vanish for a little while. Drive down the coast together. Make them come find us again and blame it on some unknown. We’ll get lost and find each other out there.”

She smiled at the thought, even though it was impractical. “It’s a nice idea—”

“Lucy?” Zoey rasped, pushing the door to her office open, rubbing her eyes groggily in her housecoat. “It’s three in the morning.”

The expression on Zoey’s face confirmed what Lucy had assumed for the last month or so; she knew exactly who her late night calls were to, and she was not impressed. Even if Lucy wasn’t ready to openly admit her feelings for the president of West, Zoey saw them all over her face, and she made little effort to hide them, in the selfish hope that she’d force her to make a decision so it wasn’t on her.

“I’ll be up in a few,” Lucy muttered back, feeling both guilty and annoyed at her intrusion.

“Whatever,” she grumbled, slamming the door behind her.

“I have to go,” she whispered sadly to Tal. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”

“High noon,” Tal said wistfully. “Oil prices are on the agenda.”

“Great,” she sighed. “I wish I could, you know.”

“Then do,” he whispered. “Why can’t you? I mean it.”

“Good night,” she replied, her voice wavering and her heart heavy. She trudged up the stairs and found Zoey sitting cross-legged on her bed, furious.

“I haven’t with anyone but you. Not since you came back. We talked about this and agreed we’d try—”

Lucy’s grey eyes bore into her girlfriend’s, challenging her to just ask her so she’d have to admit it. “I haven’t seen Tal in months, and I haven’t with anyone—”

“What you’re doing with him? Planning to f*cking run away? I hear the way you talk to him. What you’re doing is worse than anything I ever did. You’re involved with him and it’s not sex. It’s more than sex.”

“I am not. It’s not,” Lucy insisted, although she knew it was.

“Then why are you trying to keep it a secret?”

“Why are you looking for problems when there aren’t any? You’re making shit up to fight about.” Lucy felt like an a*shole pushing it back on her, but she was at a bit of a loss to explain the goals and aims of her late night phone calls with Tal. She didn’t know what she wanted; there was no way she was going to be able to explain it to Zoey.

“You are secretly calling a boy that you had a brief relationship with. The only boy you’ve ever had a relationship with. You are pretending it’s nothing. I’m not looking for problems. You’re avoiding them. If you don’t want to do this,” she gestured between them and tugged at her ponytail like she did when she was anxious. “Then we won’t do this. Go. Just go. Do it. See if it’s what you want. You’ll know. You’re being an a*shole to me, and probably him too.”

“I don’t know what I want from him,” Lucy exhaled, sitting down cross-legged on the bed. “I don’t know. It’s a lot to think about, and it’s not just about me and him. It goes so far beyond us that I can’t even wrap my head around it.”

Zoey relaxed slightly. “There. That’s all I wanted.”

She cocked her head at her curiously. “For me to admit that I don’t know?”


“For you to be honest with me.” Her blue eyes glistened, and she blinked back tears. “If you want to be with him, you should—”

“I don’t know if that’s what I want,” she replied quickly. “It’s just…it’s nice talking to him.”

What Lucy didn’t tell Zoey was that it was nice not to be the dominant partner in their conversations. It was nice for her not to have all the answers like she’d had to for so long. She didn’t tell her how intoxicating it was to have someone covet her for the reasons he did, especially since, with the war, there wasn’t a great imbalance of power between their territories. It also was nice having someone that knew her apart from Cole. She knew telling Zoey those things would not only feel like self-betrayal because she was possessive of her emotions when it came to Tal, but that it would ultimately result in Zoey trying to alter herself to meet Lucy’s ever-changing wants, needs, and desires. She didn’t know what she wanted, but she knew it wasn’t that.

“Maybe we could both…or you could.”

While it had been a long time fantasy of hers, she knew in reality there was no way in hell she’d ever sleep with both of them. The emotions involved were painful to think about. “I don’t know if it’s about that. It’s not always about that.”

Zoey nodded and her posture stiffened. “I know…I know you’re tired, and this war, it’s taking a lot out of you. I’ll try. I can try harder.”

“Zoe, you’re great. You’re fine…It’s…it’s not about that, or you, or anything. I’m just,” she exhaled loudly and wiped her eyes. “I’m just going through a lot, without him. I feel like I’m still falling from that.”

Lucy knew immediately from her girlfriend’s expression that Zoey had targeted the wrong ‘he’, and that made her heart ache.

“What happened…with Tal? When you were out there?” she asked carefully. “You can tell—”

“I mean Cole.”

“Oh,” she said quietly as her face sunk. “I wasn’t thinking….”

“It’s not just his…him being a boy that’s complicated with Tal. It’s that. I’ve told you this. I’ve asked for a bit of understanding, and you push and push.”

“I won’t push,” she promised. “I’ll do better.”

Lucy hoped that would keep Zoey busy enough to allow her the space to figure out what she wanted.



February 2016

Los Angeles, West



“I’ll have Bull bring the books next time he’s down,” Lucy said tersely over the speakerphone. “You can transition Seattle to your systems however you want.”

Bull piped in. “I’ll be down soon. Maybe next week.”

Leah rolled her eyes at Tal, who poked her in the ribs, causing her to squirm uncontrollably. “Okay, cool. That’s it then?”

“Seattle is officially West territory. Send in the clowns,” she said dryly. “Enjoy.”

“We can have another election in three—”

“I don’t give a shit. It’s one more hassle.”

Tal swallowed and frowned, thinking of how much she’d wanted Seattle not long ago. “Should we move to new business?” Leah muttered sourly, as she did whenever they had a business phone call with Campbell. Tal knew they got along okay when he wasn’t involved, but Leah didn’t like the way she spoke to him.

“Fine, yes. Let’s. We need two hundred and fifty cell phones. The new ones that the buttons don’t fall off of when it gets cold. We need citrus too. As much as you can send.”

Leah’s nostrils flared. “Anything else?”

“Any weapons or ammo you can spare.”

Tal shook his head at Leah silently. “We’ll do what we can with the phones and the citrus. I thought you were in a ceasefire.”

“We are, but you can’t make peace without preparing for war, or so I’m told,” she grumbled. “I’m sure everyone will get fired up again once it warms up a bit. Spring fever and all.”

“You’re such a f*cking pessimist, Goose. Let’s not think that,” Bull muttered, his booming voice cracking through the phone. “The phones are great, and the citrus would be very much appreciated, Bauman.”

Tal had never imagined a time when Bull would be the rational one in Campbell. “We’ll meet when you’re down and go over the details. There’s a few new phone models in the works—”

“I’d like to see those,” he agreed. “I’ll bring you down some beef and we’ll have steaks.”

He wondered if he’d ever like really Bull. He respected him, tolerated him, thought he was reasonably intelligent, but there was something about him that made Tal twitch. It was his alpha male swagger, his awareness of his physicality; his relationship with a person Tal thought could do much better.

“Great. Steaks. We’ll set something up,” Leah yawned loudly. “Anything else?”

“I have one thing,” Tal announced. “Zoey is working for me in Seattle.”

“Oh, boy,” Bull chuckled. “Really, now.”

“Doing what?” Lucy snapped, and if Tal had to guess, he’d say she’d just smacked Bull from the groan he let out.

“She’s working gathering correspondence for Rika, since Rika handles correspondence.”

“She blow you again for the position?” Lucy asked coolly. “No,” Tal replied calmly, his face growing hot. “She called me, and we met when I was there, and I agreed to give her the job. She’s qualified, from working with you.”

“Hmm,” Lucy muttered. “And you trust her?”

“You trusted her for a long time, and if she did something to betray your trust, I doubt you would have allowed her to go to Seattle. I’d think she’d be in East now, or locked up in your jail.” Tal glanced at Leah who was enjoying their back and forth a little too much, a sly grin on her face. “I think she’ll be a wonderful addition in Seattle.”

The line went quiet for a minute. Lucy broke the silence by clearing her throat. “Well, if that’s everything, I’m sure we all have things to do.”

“Indeed,” Tal replied. “I’ll send the first round of phones with Otis tomorrow. Same time next week?”

“Yep,” she said tersely. “Think about the weapons.”

“Yeah, I will,” Tal said, although he knew he wouldn’t change his mind. “Bye.”

Leah laughed until she was red in the face once he hung up. “She is not happy with you.”

“What do I give a shit? So I hired her ex.” He busied himself with a pile of papers on his desk. “Big f*cking deal.”

“You used to give a shit.”

He leaned back in his chair. “She’s war hungry and bitter. I can’t help that. Everything I do lately pisses her off so I might as well do what I want.”

“Hear, hear,” Leah agreed, clinking her water with Tal’s. “With that, I’m going to call it a day. I’ve got a date.”

“With who?” Tal asked suspiciously. “That guy from the piano bar?”

“He owns the piano bar,” she corrected. “And yes. Desmond. He’s got a sister.—”

“Nope,” Tal shook his head. He didn’t like Desmond, and he knew Leah would tire of him quickly, so he didn’t worry about making his feelings known. “Too weird.”


“Don’t pretend you don’t like a little strange,” she replied, her eyes gleaming. “You and I both know—”

“Be home by two,” he chuckled. “Or at least take your keys so I don’t have to get up and let you in.”

“I’m going to sleep over,” she said coyly. “So don’t wait up.”

Tal liked the way their relationship had evolved. It was much more clearly familial, and he allowed himself to feel protective of her, but the part of him that would have been jealous in the past was practically non-existent. He was proud of the way they’d grown in their relationship and ended up in a better place.

When he got home around six, he made a light dinner, consisting of a BLT and a bowl of chicken soup, and found himself itching to get out of the house. A couple of phone calls later, and he firmed up plans that would ensure him a good night’s sleep.

He had first learned about parkour a couple of years earlier when he’d come across some kids running through the ruins of a mansion near his house. He’d hidden and watched them jump and leap effortlessly around the foundation, in and out of the swimming pool, and clear several overgrown shrubs with unexpected precision for a couple of hours. It had taken him a few nights to introduce himself to the two boys and the girl that seemed to regularly practice near his house. They ranged from fifteen to his age, and were uninterested in Tal’s political standing, which he found refreshing.

The first few times he’d traced, he hurt like hell, not from strained muscles, but from falling. He loved it from the beginning though; the freedom of moving through a variety of environments unhindered, focusing on moving and letting the day-to-day stress of his life float away as he challenged himself physically. He and the other three formed a club, and now there were about twenty traceurs in LA who met periodically to challenge themselves together.

It was a good use of his limited free time. He’d never felt stronger physically than he had in the past year or so, and his parkour friends, while not terribly close, were more into strategizing how he cleared fences and scaled walls than how he balanced budgets. It was escapism at its finest.

A newish girl, April, showed up a few minutes before he’d finished up for the night. Tal thought she was cute, with a bleach blonde pixie cut and green eyes that seemed to invite a challenge. She nodded at him as she wrapped her weak ankle.

“You’re done?” she chirped, pulling up her socks.

“Yep,” he replied, wiping his forehead with his t-shirt.

“Sorry I missed your moves. I hear you’re good.” She stood and smiled brightly at him. “Another time.”

He glanced at her for a second and quickly weighed a few pros and cons before he fumbled in his bag for a pen and paper. “Call me sometime and we’ll go out together.”

She looked at the piece of paper before tucking it into her shoe, her eyes gleaming. “Will do.”

He walked away with a smile on his face. He’d had good luck with girls through parkour, short and long term. Alvi, the last girl he’d dated for six months, was an amazing traceuse. He’d grown bored of her, she tired of him, but the sex never faltered. It had been bar none, the best of his life. There was a physicality about it that led him to rise to the occasion in ways he’d never imagined. It had made a lot of the other stuff not matter for months and months.

When he walked through his front door later that night, his house was quiet. He showered, and sat down to look at the monthly budget. Financially, West was doing very well. He’d raised taxes two points and it had led to a great surplus, which he hoped he’d eventually be able to use to start upgrading infrastructure in more rural areas to encourage people to move outside the city core and grow more of their own food.

He was flipping through his mail from the week when he found a small envelope addressed to him in the most precise handwriting he’d ever seen. It was card-sized, and he reached for his father’s letter opener to break the seal.

It had a picture of a pier on the front and was from the Elected Governing Body of the Democratic Republic of East, thanking him for meeting with their representatives briefly and extending an olive branch for the future. No requests, no demands. Just a simple thank-you card.

Tal felt uneasy possessing it, since it was a reminder that he was keeping a secret from the person who allowed him to keep his region in the lifestyle he felt they deserved. Lucy’s leniency on her oil pricing, and the taxes Tal could subsequently place on it kept a lot of things going. He immediately balled it up and threw it in his trash can. Tal’s feelings about his contemporary shifted on a daily basis, but there was always an underlying thread of respect present, because she was great at what she did, and meeting with Lucy’s enemies, no matter how he’d been ambushed into it, or how little had actually been said, felt fundamentally wrong. Like a betrayal.

He’d just fallen asleep when he woke up to the phone beside his bed ringing.

“How f*cking dare you. You knew…And still, you went and f*cking saw her. You couldn’t resist, could you?” she hissed.

Tal hadn’t received a late night phone call from Lucy for more than two years. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, and sighed. “Hi.”

“Go f*ck yourself. And now I suppose you talk to her every f*cking day, and you’re balls deep in her every time you’re in Seattle—”

He’d had enough of her insinuations about him hiring people because he was sleeping with them. It wasn’t the first time she’d made one; every time Tal hired anyone moderately attractive, there was a dig. “You’re nuts, you know that? You’re absolutely nuts. I’m not f*cking Zoey. She reports to Rika. I don’t talk to her, and I don’t want to have anything to do with her. I have no idea why you care so much, or why you’d be obsessed with a girl whose heart you broke, but you don’t have to worry about me and Zoey. There is no me and Zoey. I don’t understand why we’re having this conversation—”

“You knew you’d get a reaction out of me. That’s why—”

“I hired her because I was hiring people, and she asked me for a job. That’s it. I don’t know why I have to explain myself to you.”

“You’re so f*cking dense. You really have no idea why I’d be mad?” The bitterness in her voice seeped out and for a moment, Tal considered hanging up to avoid the toxicity. He knew that would piss her off more though, so he decided to stick it out for a few more minutes.

“I know exactly why you’re mad, and it’s childish. You’ve moved on, let her move on. I think you’d be happy that someone you once cared about is successful.” He did his best to speak calmly and rationally, partially to irritate her, and partially because he didn’t want her to know she still affected him, and her late night call had left him unwittingly nostalgic.

“I suppose you’re all having a good laugh about it too.” Her tone turned emotional and raw, and Tal’s heart ached, as it always did when she spoke from hers.

“No one’s laughing. What? Do you want me to fire her?”

“No,” she squeaked. “I don’t want that.”

“Then what do you want?”

“You know that’s a stupid question to ask me,” she mumbled. “I…I should go.”


“Night, Ce,” he murmured. “Sweet dreams.”

The phone clicked and she was gone. Tal hung his up and stretched out in his bed, both confused and saddened by her call. He’d missed their calls for a while, then forcibly convinced himself they’d been stupid from the beginning, but the pain in her voice, which she masked so well in their work calls took him back to some of the moments they’d shared, and he found himself lost, adrift in them for the better part of the night.