Best of 2017

EVERYTHING LUKE HAS EVER DONE HAS BEEN on a grand scale. The PR for the show is much of the same. Tickets sold out within minutes. It makes me nervous. It makes me content. As content as I can be with a broken heart.

This show is for him.

An entire catalog of our time together.

The songs I wrote from my first moments in captivity to the moments I fell in love with Javi. And then… the songs that express my grief in the only way that I can.

It is a timeline of our entire relationship. A small blip in the enormous number of seconds and hours that have compiled my life. But these seconds and hours I spent with him are the ones that have impacted me most.

The ones that will haunt me for the rest of my days. The ones that I will treasure. There is only one thing I need to complete the story. One more song for the final chapter.

You can’t choose who you love, for better or worse.

But there is one thing that will determine the way that I remember Javi. The thing that will help me to understand him. To have my closure. The thing that will provide me with the lyrics for one last song. And this thing cannot be found at Moldavia.

In fact, there is only one place that it can be found.

And I am not certain that anyone else even knows this place exists. Except for me. Because I am paranoid, like my father. And because I did not trust him after Javi was poisoned. I tracked him up here into this cabin in the middle of the woods.

As I stand here in the clearing, I know that this is where my answers lie.

I have observed my father closely over the years. I have witnessed the fashion in which he sought out devices. The places he would hide things he did not want found.

I am well informed of the precautions he takes and the way he goes about his security measures. And this is how I know that what I’m looking for will not be inside the cabin at all. When I find the loose floorboard on the porch, I know I am right.

I lift it up and reveal the visibly undisturbed earth below. A trick my father once taught me. To everyone else, it looks like nothing. Just dirt. To me, it looks like a tarp below, covering something else. Something more sinister.

I am right.

When I brush my hand over the dirt, there is plastic beneath. I pull it up, only to reveal a shoebox below.

It is not high tech. Anything the agency would have my father keep would not be kept here. This is something he has done on his own. In a hurry. Something he intended to come back to. And I must get to it first, whatever it is.

I don’t look inside. I take the shoebox and replace the tarp, covering it with dirt. Then I leave, checking my mirrors the entire drive back to Moldavia.

My heart is racing, and my palms are sweating, and I am afraid of the answers this box might carry. Something that once opened cannot be undone. But I have come to realize that what Javi said rings true.

Nobody can hurt me anymore. I have a built a fortress around my heart. Whatever this box contains, I can handle it. No matter how sinister. I am ready to know the truth.

I am ready to learn my father’s secrets.

So, when I am secure inside of Moldavia, I open it up. On top, there is a file. An old file, with handwritten notes. It takes me some time to read the messy scrawl. But it is clear from the header that it is a medical record. For Javi’s mother. It speaks of her illness. Her mental decline. The tumor in her brain. An incurable tumor.

Her illness was not random. It was because of the tumor. A tumor that would prove fatal in time, as evidenced by these very notes. What I can’t understand is why my father would keep the file hidden away like this. Why it would matter to him.

There is so much paperwork that most of it seems irrelevant. It is the entire history of her medical records from the time she was first diagnosed to her last appointment.

And then there are transcripts. At first, I think they are part of her records as well. Until I see the dates.They were after her death.

They are transcripts from something else. An interview performed by my father. An interview of Javi. He was only a child at the time. Eleven years old. It was after his mother had died.

I read through the entire transcript. Three times. My father always told me how dangerous Javi was. He told me how he had killed his mother, and what a tragedy it was. But it was never true.

The truth is right here, printed in ink. A truth that I can no longer deny. My father has been lying to me for so long. But even worse, he has been lying to Javi. Javi told him what happened that day. He told him how his mother believed there was a device implanted in her stomach. That she had to retrieve it. How she made Javi watch as she gutted herself like a fish and tried to perform her own surgery. She died of the blood loss, despite Javi’s best efforts to save her.

It is a secret he has lived with his whole life. Allowing everyone around him to believe he was a murderer. That he murdered his own mother in cold blood. And my father has not only condoned the lie, but he has perpetuated it.

He turned Javi into a killer on the basis that he already was one. He inserted him into the operative training program and left him there.

A child.

He was only a child.

And I was wrong before that nothing could hurt me.

Whatever was left of my heart has now disintegrated. It aches in a way that there is no cure for. This is a memory that will haunt me for eternity.

I don’t know how my father can look himself in the mirror every day. But I can’t stop. There is a hunger inside of me to know more. To know everything. So I keep digging. And in the bottom of the box, I find six more tapes. Numbered, just as the ones hidden away in Javi’s wall were.

They are identical to those tapes. In brand and size. It is not a coincidence. It didn’t make sense for Javi to keep those tapes hidden away if they were blank. And it wouldn’t make sense for my father to have the same amount of tapes, with the same numbers.

The only conclusion that I can draw is that my father replaced them with blanks and took the real tapes.

I head to the conservatory and fire up the projector. I start in order, with the first tape. The image flickers to life, and it is Javi. Javi as a child. A child in the operative program. Being tortured. Burned. Beaten. Interrogated. Trained.

I can’t look away from the horrors on the screen. Not this time. I owe him this much. No matter how dreadful it is, I owe it to him to feel his pain. To understand it. Even if it is too late.

My father comes to visit him in the tapes. He sits across from him at a steel table and asks Javi to give him progress reports. Javi refuses to speak to him. Sometimes he is strong. Stubborn. But there are times when he cries. When he pleads with my father to take him home with him as he promised.

My father always says the same thing. Soon. Another lie. One so easily spoken from his lips. It is something I can’t comprehend. I feel as though I am losing my mind. I feel as though I am watching a movie that isn’t real.

I don’t know how this man can be so different from the one who raised me. The only father that I knew. The one who was distant and busy, but always loving. Fiercely protective. They were two different men.

One good.

One evil.

But they both lived in my father’s body. They both inhabited his mind. And they are both responsible for the horrors that were done to Javi. Horrors that I can no longer refute. I have seen the evidence. I have seen all that I need to know.

I watch the tapes on repeat. Until I am consumed with hatred and sadness. With rage and regret. Until there is nothing left for me to do but to put pen to paper and write one more song.

My last song.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

I TOSS the girl over my shoulder and drag her through the desert. Within minutes, the compound is in chaos behind us.

This desert landscape is unforgiving, but it is no match for those with a thirst for freedom. And these operatives do thirst for freedom.

Their figures scatter around me in the

distance. I pay them no mind, and they do not bother me either. My only focus is on the horizon, up behind the dune where I know River and Ray will be.

I do not have many bartering chips. At this point, I only have one. Ray is not invested in her life, but I know River will do anything for her. It does not give me much to work with, but she is the only hope I have.

When I reach the top of the dune, I have my freshly acquired weapon at the ready, targeted directly to the back of her skull. But River knows me well.

He has prepared for the occasion. The guards have either been dismissed or disposed of elsewhere, and only Ray lies bloody and helpless at his feet.

River has his own gun trained on Ray’s face, but his eyes are on me.

“Let the girl go, Javi,” he instructs.

“Why should I?” I challenge. “It makes no difference to me whether Ray lives or dies.”

“Oh?” he arches a brow. “And what of your Bella? What would you tell her about daddy dearest? How he died like a dog in the desert after he had finally come home. And would she believe you?”

He knows very well that she wouldn’t. How could she after all that I have done to her? After the lengths I have gone to for my revenge. Bella would not believe that I did not kill her father. And I don’t know that she could ever forgive me for such an offense either.

“You know she wouldn’t,” River answers my unspoken thought. “How could she?”

“I will trade you then,” I tell him. “The girl for Ray. The deal is done. You have no reason to kill him.”

River considers my proposition. Despite his cool demeanor, he is desperate. River does not really know how to handle desperate. His eyes keep darting to the girl, trying to get a look at her face. But he cannot.

Not like this.

She is starting to rouse, and everything is going to go to shit if he does not make a decision soon. She makes a noise in the back of her throat, and River straightens his posture.

“Fine,” he says. “Fine. On the count of three, old friend.”

River counts.

I have always been a man of my word. But he has not. On three, he steps away from Ray. I release the girl and step back. She wakes- bound and startled- and her eyes move straight to River. Recognition flashes followed up with rage.

She struggles against her restraints in an attempt to get to him, and River breathes her name, low and quiet.

It is a secret to him. One that he does not wish to share with the world.

“It has been so long,” he says. “I know you are angry. Confused. But in time, this will change.”

“In time, I will cut your throat,” she snarls.

He looks away from her, unable to bear witness to her wrath. His eyes seek out mine, full of remorse.

“Old friend, I have always cared for you. That was never a lie. You must know this.”