No Fair Lady

Maybe she thinks she can’t trust me, either.

In the shadows, she’s that monochrome girl again.

Aged, perhaps, as gracefully as a queen, but still that girl in stark shades of black, white, and grey who learned that the only way to survive was to lock herself away.

To hide her bright fuchsia-colored heart, so nothing could touch it enough to smudge and dim its neon life.

Did I brighten your heart? I wonder. Or only steal some of its glow?

I reach over and curl my hand over hers on the seat between us, squeezing her slender fingers.

Her black gloves are warm and velvety against my palm. Then I pull away and focus on the road once more.

I remember times like this when I worked in intelligence. The quiet stillness coming like the calm before the storm. Everyone just gathering themselves.

There’s a silent camaraderie in the long drives and the longer wait. The thing about covert missions is, you spend more time waiting for your moment than actually living in it.

That leaves you locked inside your head with the ghosts of your past and the haunting presence of the other silent people around you, caught up in their own version of wordless limbo.

Yet somehow, in that liminal space, it’s still us.

Together.

That’s me and Fuchsia, right now.

Comrades in arms, together in a liminal space where all we have is silence and each other.

Then again, that endless waiting also describes our lives in Galentron’s shadow, too.

I just hope for one thing.

I hope that this is finally the moment we’ve been waiting for.

* * *

It’s nearly dawn by the time we cross the Seattle city limits and make our way toward Bainbridge Island on the ferry.

We don’t have much time.

People like us work better by darkness than we ever do in the light.

Not far outside Bainbridge, we ditch the car and continue on foot. Silent shadows, making our way through residential neighborhoods, disappearing behind fences, along tree lines, until—

There.

The house I’ve been monitoring for months. Both as a casual traveler moving through the neighborhood and through long-distance surveillance, online searches, even a few private investigators with a knack for discretion who take payment in Bitcoin, never ask for names, and won’t pick up the phone if you call.

It’s small, but comfortable. The kind of house you can picture raising a family in and not having to worry about where your next meal will come from, cozy and nicely settled.

Cute shingled roof in bright blue against white slats. Nice lawn, but not so nice it’s a sterile show home. You can tell they spend their weekends kicking the soccer ball nestled against the fence around it, trampling the grass and leaving the earth a little uneven.

It’s a home.

A place where a girl could grow up happy.

At least that’s what I’ve hoped.

We stand across the street from the house, hidden behind a parked van for someone’s home delivery service, safely out of line of sight from the windows.

It’s chilly in the early morning.

But my entire body feels hot with anticipation, and a little fear.

Fuchsia’s face is stricken, drawn, her eyes a little too wide, her lips parted soundlessly as her throat works in a visible swallow.

Then, “Here?” she whispers, raspy and barely there. “You mean…all this time she’s been here in Seattle? I’ve been miles away, and I never knew.”

“They didn’t want you to know,” I murmur. “They wanted you to believe she was dead. When you were still on payroll, they kept you too busy and out of the country too often to ever think about prying.”

“It worked.” Her lips press together, determined. “I want to see her.”

Shit. I’d be the last man on Earth to blame her, but that urge is exactly what I’m afraid of.

“Fuchsia…”

“If you’ve been watching her here, you got to see her—you can’t have that for yourself and then hold it just out of my reach!”

Her voice rises from its hush, cracks, then drops again, leaving an almost funereal stillness over the silent street where so many people sleep, oblivious to our torture in their beds as they wait for the day to start.

“That’s all I want,” she says more softly, but her voice is still strained—and breaking my heart. “Just let me see her face. She doesn’t have to see me. I’m not insane.”

I hesitate, but fuck.

She’s right.

We came all this way. I’m the one who brought her here.

And I can’t deny her that.

So in the brisk early morning air that still tastes like the night’s rainfall, we move.

I take her hand and lead her across the street.

We’re deathly silent, creeping like burglars around the house, long years of practice making it easy to move without creasing so much as a blade of grass.

We’re sheltered from the line of sight by the fence around the yard as we make our way to the back of the house. A single long, low window looks in on a bedroom past a set of sheer curtains that do nothing to block our view.