And now I wouldn’t be able to see Jade until morning.
I held my side, feeling every step, every move, every fucking breath I took, and unlocked the back door. The soft creak of the hinges as it opened had never bothered me before—I’d never noticed it, never had a reason to pay attention to the natural groans of the house. But now, consciously aware that there were two other people asleep inside, every sound seemed magnified.
The lamp on the corner table in the living room between the couch and loveseat had been left on. This was something else I wasn’t familiar with. Walking into a pitch-black house late at night was what I was used to, not having a beacon of light lead the way from the back door to my bedroom.
Peeling off my shirt left me winded. I had to grind my teeth, my jaw clamped shut so tightly I could’ve broken a molar, just to keep the agony from rushing out of me in an animalistic roar. I could deal with a lot. Not many things threatened to break me, but the pain that started on my right side radiated throughout my entire body. It sent a wave of unbearable heat ripping through my torso, nearly sending me crashing to the floor on my knees.
Slowly, I managed to pull myself from the haze of physical anguish long enough to get a shower and wash off the stress of the week. I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes and start over in the morning, spending the day with the only person who made me feel like less of a monster and more like a human.
Jade had once told me that I allowed her to be someone else—that I didn’t see her as an unwelcome houseguest or a mom. I understood that more than anyone. When she looked at me, she saw a network engineer. She didn’t see the blood on my hands, the days spent hiding in plain sight, the nights cloaked in darkness, sneaking around, plotting. I’d detonate, implode, if I didn’t have some level of normalcy…even if it was only over the phone here and there and in person on the weekends.
As the water swirled around the drain, I thought back on my week. God, it’d only been six days, yet it felt like an eternity. Like I’d lived a hundred lifetimes since I’d last been in the same room as someone with a pure heart beating within their chest.
I’d tailed my mark long enough—three weeks to be exact—and had the ins and outs of his days tracked. There wasn’t a minute of his entire existence I hadn’t been made aware of since he hit my radar. The weekend warrior—sometimes referred to as the babysitter or part-time shadow—kept detailed logs of his comings and goings, which matched everything I had on him already. This week should’ve been easy. It should’ve been a quick grab and go…but it wasn’t.
I hated doing the sweep at the end of a week, knowing I would be gone for two days and ran the risk of not seeing it through, but I didn’t have much of a choice. The plan was to wait until after a phone call we anticipated he’d get on Wednesday, assured it would give us valuable information. The call never came, so we waited. By Thursday night, I’d notified my boss of my decision to hold off until the following Monday. We were pushing it too close to the weekend.
To my surprise, the phone call had come in early this morning. I’d been alerted to the transcript, and once I confirmed we had what we needed, I was left with no choice but to order an imminent sweep. I knew his schedule, so it was nothing more than waiting for a blind spot and using it to ghost him. Movies show a man standing on a sidewalk all the time while a bus drives by. As soon as the bus passes, the guy is gone. That’s what I did. One minute, my mark was there, the next…gone. Like a ghost.
The window of opportunity was small, but I had confidence I could execute it. I’d done it hundreds of times over the years with very little problem. And this time, like the handful of previous sweeps gone wrong, it was out of my control. A memo had come down, but by the time it was supposed to reach me, I had already gone dark. The phone call we’d expected on Wednesday, the same one that came in early this morning, informed us of a visitor who would arrive on Monday, hence the need to move rather than wait. However, intel discovered the visitor was already here, and that was information I hadn’t received in time.
I’d gone in for the sweep, oblivious of the danger I’d unknowingly walked into. In the hair of a second between grabbing my mark and making him vanish, his friend attacked from the side, almost taking me down. And he would have if I hadn’t been high on the natural adrenaline I got from the task. It wasn’t as smooth as I had planned, or as flawless as I’d prided myself on, but at least it wasn’t a failure. Rather than one devil incarnate, I brought in two.
I also came home with a slightly broken body.
After my shower, I dried off and slipped into a pair of gym shorts, but I decided to forgo the shirt. I figured if Jade and the kid were asleep, it wouldn’t matter, and I hoped by morning, I’d be able to endure the pain long enough to cover my chest. But as of right now, the ache was too fresh, too aggravated, too unbearable to slip on a shirt.
As soon as I walked out of my bedroom, on my way to the kitchen for water, I stopped dead in my tracks, unable to move. It appeared Jade had been sucked into the same time freeze as I had. She stared at me from across the house—which from where we were was only the span of the living room. She was heading my way, tired eyes wide and mouth barely parted.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t wake you, did I?” Earlier in the bedroom, I’d tried to muffle the discomfort of undressing, but now I worried I hadn’t been as successful as I thought.
“Oh, no. I was awake—waiting up on you, actually.”
“Yeah, I got in later than expected. Thanks for keeping the light on.”
“I didn’t hear you come in, but I heard the water running. I was just coming out here to turn off the lamp. Figured you’d be tired and crawl into bed after your shower.”
The entire time we stood apart, nervously talking as if we’d never met, her eyes remained on mine. But I guess curiosity had gotten the best of her, because her gaze trailed down to my chest, her hands fisting at her sides as if she had to physically restrain herself from touching me, despite the length of space between us. It was odd, especially coming from her, since she’d never given me any indication that she even found me attractive, much less…this. Although, what was even stranger was how it didn’t turn me off like it normally would have coming from anyone else. I ignored it, stopped the thought from lingering, and assumed it had been because I’d felt a level of comfort with her that I didn’t normally have with other women.