Audition (North Security 4)

Frankly I’ve got a right to be. But unlike some of the other jackasses crawling through the swamp, I don’t let it get the better of me. I help Caleb haul the boat into the deeper water. The rumble of the motor sends the swamp into a frenzy around us.

Frogs panic and leap out of our way.

I’m still alive back at the parking lot.

Connor tells us all the story of how Noah shot two ducks and the rest of us fuckers shot none while we haul the hunting gear out of the boat and stow it in the back of the Jeep. Caleb bends down to shove the boat under a nearby shelter.

I feel a thousand times better when the rifles are stowed, too.

Noah and I climb into the back. Caleb takes his spot behind the wheel. My entire body prepares for the Jeep to swing to the right. It’s a shitty, gravel on-ramp and somebody’s going to die there someday, but it’s not going to be me.

Caleb turns left.

My stomach drops into my feet. He’s going the wrong fucking way.

“Did you forget where the city is, motherfucker?” I keep my voice light. A joke between buddies.

Co

nnor swings around in his seat, his grin apocalyptic. “Should I tell them, boss?”

I catch Caleb’s eyes crinkling in the light from the dashboard. His mouth stretches in a hellish smile. “It’s going down tonight. First mission.”

Fuck. Fuck. How the hell can I get myself out of this? One of Caleb’s missions is not the plan. The plan is to go back to the city, report to my superiors, and throw some pebbles at Bethany’s window. Connor’s seat jerks backward under my palm. It settles with a sharp crack—must’ve been halfway between positions on its rails. “What the fuck, man?” He looks me in the eye. “You scared?”

“Fuck no.” I’m not scared. I’m fucking pissed. Pissed that I agreed to this in the first place. Pissed that I was stupid enough not to recognize the signs. Pissed that there’s nothing I can say to get Caleb to turn the Jeep around. I know it in my gut. Goddamn it.

I watch twenty minutes crawl by on the dashboard clock. It feels like the end of the fucking world. Then Caleb makes a sharp right onto a dirt road. If there was any cover—any cover at all—I’d bail out the side of the Jeep right now. But there’s nothing. It’s an empty field, the grass cut short. A warehouse looms out of the darkness. A floodlight comes on. I raise a hand on instinct. It’s fucking blinding. My eyes lag in adjusting like they want me to die. It can’t get any worse than a warehouse in the middle of nowhere. A bead of sweat gathers at the base of my neck and slips down my spine.

Caleb brakes hard.

Oh, fuck.

It’s worse.

Now I see them. The lust on Connor’s face. The crates, piled high. And the men with guns aimed at us.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Katherine Dunham was an African American dancer and anthropologist. In 1931, when she was only twenty-one years old, she formed a group called Ballet Nègres, one of the first black ballet companies in the United States.

Bethany, five years ago

The minutes tick by. I’ve stretched so much there’s a perpetual ache in my hamstrings. It’s forty-five minutes past the time he usually comes. He isn’t coming. I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. Just because he comes to see me five nights in a row—we aren’t boyfriend and girlfriend. We aren’t going steady. The fact that I felt that way…that’s my fault. A knot in my stomach pulls tighter and tighter. Nervous energy moves me around the room, until finally I have to skip down the stairs just to distract myself from the window.

On the back porch I do a series of slow pirouettes. As slow as I can stand it. Testing my balance. Staying upright. And, yes, picturing how it will look through the window when he sees me. If he sees me. We’ve never had a formal conversation about any of this. There’s no spoken agreement that Joshua North will keep coming to my house every night. I’ve known all along that this could end at any time. I just never really believed that it would end.

Maybe I still don’t.

Ten more pirouettes, the last one so agonizingly slow that my calf starts to cramp. I let my arms fall to my sides. My eyes are perfectly adjusted to the dark. Every time I’ve faced the back windows, I used the time to scan the yard. There are no solid shadows blotting out the night. None. I find myself in first position. Like I might lift my heel off the floor and let my weight carry me into a spin. Wouldn’t that be ironic? You turn and turn and turn. That’s what he said that day in the cemetery, and that’s what I’m doing now.

Time to do something different.

“Bethany?”

Mamere’s voice has a worried edge. I whirl around, rising on tiptoe, hand flying to my throat. “Mamere, I didn’t know you were still up. Did I wake you?”

“What are you doing out there?” She beckons me close with one hand. “Your bed was empty. I came to find you.”