Project Maigo (13 page)

Something about Endo being unconscious doesn’t make sense. Collins couldn’t take him by herself, and I don’t think Watson or Cooper would be much help in a fight. But I really don’t give a shit. It’s clear that he attacked the Crow’s Nest, but they somehow got the upper hand.

Despite my growing anger, I pause beside Collins. “You okay?”

“Probably a concussion,” she says, sounding more lucid than she looks.

Endo groans.

Without a thought, I reach down, grab his shirt and pull him up roughly. “You don’t get to wake up yet!” I move to knock him out again, breaking all sorts of rules, but no one’s going to care if he assaulted a government facility.

My arm is caught mid-swing. I turn to question Collins and find the face of the Asian woman from the port of Hong Kong glaring at me. “Let. Him. Go.”

“Go. Fuck. Yourself.” I say. Collins is going to pop her any second now, and then we’ll have both of them in custody.

But my partner doesn’t move. Instead, she sits down on the pavement, looking tired.

I look from Collins to the stranger and then to Watson and Cooper. “Could someone please explain why you haven’t pig-piled Lucy Liu over here?”

“That’s racist,” the woman says.

For some reason, this totally flabbergasts me. Not only is she kind of right, but I’m really not in the mood to have a conversation with an associate of Katsu Endo, who freaking paralyzed me the last time I saw him.

“Look, if it makes you feel better, Lucy Liu is a hottie.”

“It does,” the woman says, “but she’s also Chinese. I’m Japanese.”

“Actually,” Watson says, raising a finger. “She’s American. Born in—”

“You know what I meant—”

“I can see you’re going to fit right in.” All eyes turn down to Endo. He’s awake and looking at his partner, who is still holding my hand back.

Fit in?

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t club you,” I say.

“She could kick your ass,” he says, smiling, motioning to the woman.

“Two good reasons.”

“I saved them.”

“Saved who?”

“Us,” Collins says. “If it makes you feel better, I already knocked him out once.”

The tension goes out of my clubbing arm, and the woman’s grip relaxes. Saved them? From who?

The hole in the wall.

The destroyed car.

The brown blood.

“Gordon was here,” I conclude, yanking my hand away. If what I’m being told is true, I won’t knock Endo senseless, but I will arrest him. Standing clear of the woman’s reach, I aim my weapon at Endo. “Why didn’t you let us know?”

Endo sits up, feeling the goose egg on his forehead where Collins must have clocked him.

“About what?”

“Gordon.”

“I didn’t know he was here.”

I turn to my team. “Did he try to put something on Gordon’s head?”

Collins’s shifting expression answers the question. “He had a drill. He was...” She was with me in Hong Kong. She saw what happened to me. Even knocked silly, the pieces aren’t hard to put together. She turns to Endo. “You were trying to control him.”

“Empty your pockets,” I say, shaking my handgun at him.

He complies. There’s a folding knife, a pack of Juicy Fruit, a wallet and the same device he slapped on the side of my head. He must have been trying to drill through Gordon’s thick flesh so the device could work.

“I was following orders,” he says.

“Zoomb is
not
the United States government,” I reply. “You don’t have to do what they say, and their orders do not put you beyond the reach of the law, no matter how much money they have.”

Endo stretches, working out the kinks. “My employer didn’t send me here. I was requested.”

I make a show of aiming my gun more carefully, leveling the sights at his wang. I nearly say so, but I quickly realize Lucy Liu will just accuse me of being racist again. “
By who?
”

My phone rings. The ring tone—Marylyn Monroe singing
Happy Birthday, Mr. President
—tells me who’s calling. It the boss. Not my boss.
The
boss. I dig the phone out of my pocket, accept the call and place it against my ear. “Mr. President, the situation is—”

The man cuts me off with a very curt explanation of my situation, which feels like an enema while he’s talking, and something a little rougher when he hangs up before I can argue. I manage to maintain my composure, say “goodbye” to cellular silence, and lower my weapon. “Well, looks like we’re pals now.”

“
What?
” Collins, at least, shows an appropriate amount of disgust at this announcement.

But I can’t talk about it now. I head for the door.

“Where are you going?” Collins shouts after me.

“To squeeze the shit out of my stress doll!” I didn’t need to shout, but after everything I just experienced, everything I just
survived
, the last thing I needed was to be told to play nice with a guy whose nuts I’d like to use for a punching bag. I step inside, slam the door behind me and head to my room on the second floor.

After recovering my stress doll—I think his name is Bob—I head for the bathroom, yank down my pants and sit down on the toilet. If I lay down on my bed, someone would be in to get me inside of five minutes. Here, I can have some quality me-time. Here, I can—

A familiar-shaped white and pink plastic device is poking out of the top of the small trash can beside the toilet. I share this bathroom with Collins. Our rooms are joined by it. With a shaking hand, I reach down to the trash can and move aside the unused toilet paper that had been placed to partially cover the device.

My throat feels like Gordon’s got his hands wrapped around it.

I lift the pregnancy test, looking at the two windows. For a moment, I can’t make any sense out of it. One line, not pregnant. Two lines, pregnant. I look back and forth three times, because the test must be wrong. Two lines means pregnant. And there are two lines.

Two lines means pregnant.

Two...lines...

Bob’s head cracks open.

16

I’m ten years old. Lying in bed. Another sleepless night seeing monsters in the shadows and skulls in my discarded tighty whities on the floor. To say I had an active imagination is an understatement. But that’s not what kept me awake. Not really. To this day, I don’t know why, but some nights my arms and legs would feel heavy. Really heavy. Like they were moving through swamp muck. This unnatural and strange feeling drove me to my parent’s bedside. More than the monsters. Or the noises. Or whatever else kids fear in the dark. It pushed me past my fear of violent repercussions. To seek comfort from the unwilling.

The heaviness in my limbs faded as I grew older. I haven’t thought about it in years. But as I climb the stairs toward the Crow’s Nest, pregnancy test in hand, I finally understand the heaviness that plagued my childhood nights. It was fear. Primal, unfiltered fear. As a person grows, barriers are erected. Mental defenses are fortified. Pride becomes the dominant emotion, keeping fear from being fully expressed or perhaps even realized. It’s how Woodstock and I can look into Nemesis’s eyes and not scream like frightened goats.

But now, my legs have never felt heavier. As my bare feet pad across the cool, hardwood floor of the Crow’s Nest, heading for Collins, who is sitting at her work station talking to Cooper, I feel like I’m ten again. I can feel the hallway floor beneath my feet. The humidifier hums behind me. The orange glow of the bathroom night-light guides my path. I expect no real comfort on the other side of my parent’s door, just the knowledge that the world as I know it still exists. An assurance that reality hasn’t fundamentally changed.

My hand reaches for the knob and turns. But the knob is Collins’s shoulder. She spins around, tired eyes like my mother’s. But then she smiles and looks concerned. She asks, “What is it? What’s wrong?” Then, I realize why I love this woman so much, and why I shouldn’t be terrified right now.

Not that this knowledge lightens my arms any. Lifting the pregnancy test feels like I’m bench-pressing Watson. My lips stay firmly shut, pinched white. The visual aid and my mortified expression will say everything that needs saying.

Collins’s eyes widen as the pregnancy test rises.

She reaches for it, but my leaden arms pulls it away.

“No one is supposed to know!” she hisses.

I’m instantly offended.

The weight lifts from my limbs like I’ve been touched by Jesus himself. A quick cure for fear is anger. “Not supposed to—how the hell do you keep something like this from me?”

“Jon, I—”

“You’re a field agent!” I’m shouting now. I’m not sure who else is in the Crow’s Nest now, but I’ve just included them in my drama. “You could have been injured on the reservation. You
were
injured today!” My eyes look her up and down. “You need to go to a hospital.”

I take hold of her wrist, but Collin’s yanks away. “Jon!”

“We’re not even married yet!” I shout.

“Jon!” Collins now has a hand on my wrist. Her crushing grip is made more painful by the skillful thrust of her middle finger into a pressure point. My head clears instantly. A quick cure for anger is pain. “Shut-the-fuck-up.”

I lower my voice. “Tell me why I shouldn’t be angry at you for hiding this. Give me one good reason.”

“It’s not mine.”

“It was in our bathroom.”

“Because
no one was supposed to know yet
.” The words come out as a low growl. My anger is in full retreat now, pursued by Collins’s. Mercifully, she releases my wrist.

“But...then who...” I glance at Cooper. She’s white as a sheet. Eyes locked across the room. I turn to follow her gaze. Endo is there, sitting with Lucy Liu and Watson. Endo and the woman are smiling. Enjoying my faux pas. Watson...poor Watson. He’s now in the position I was just ten seconds ago. I’m not sure how I missed their relationship. They did a better job hiding it than Cooper did this test. But I’ve also been in the field a lot.

“Two things,” I say, all of the childhood trauma and fresh anger gone from my system. I turn to Cooper with a grin. “First, congratulations. Second, the wetness on this test is from
your
pee. Gross.” I drop the test into the empty waste can besides Collins’s station.

To Watson’s credit, he handles the news far better than I did. He strolls across the room, calm as can be. Before reaching Cooper, who is still frozen in place, he bends down and takes the pregnancy test from the trash. He lifts it gently, like it’s a baby. The gentleness with which he holds the urine-covered device makes me feel like an asshole. He glances at Cooper. “This is yours?”

She nods.

“Ours?” he asks. His hand is shaking now.

Cooper nods again, and before I understand what has happened, they’re in each other’s arms, rocking back and forth.

“Thank God,” Watson says, and I’m not sure if he’s expressing happiness over the baby or the fact that Cooper wasn’t injured today. Maybe both. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that the man is joyful. Not terrified.

Dammit, I
am
an asshole.

“I was going to tell you at the end of the day,” Cooper tells him.

Watson shakes his head, messing up her perfect bun. “Doesn’t matter.”

Feeling like an asshole and a peeping Tom, I say, “Why don’t you two take some time. Collins and I will help our...visitors get settled.”

After the briefest of nods from Cooper, the pair head for the stairs. An odd couple, no doubt, but their affection for each other fills the room like warm taffy, gooey and sweet. I’m happy for them, really, but I’m glad when they’re gone, because gooey and sweet is not the mood I want lingering when I speak to Endo.

I turn toward my own personal nemesis, or one of them. What’s that make him? One of my nemesi? Nemesises? Or can you only have one nemesis by definition? Endo is still grinning at me. So is...
fuck
.

“What’s your name?”

I can’t keep thinking of her as Lucy Liu. It’s totally racist.

“Maggie Alessi,” she answers, not a trace of an accent.

So is Maggie.

I take a step toward them but am stopped when Collins takes hold of my wrist. No pressure point this time. She grins up at me. “Not married,
yet
?”

I try to hide my grin, but fail. “Shut-up.”

When I head for Endo again, I’m feeling far too happy. Not only are Watson and Cooper an item with a baby on the way, but Collins caught me with my guard down. Found out what was on my mind before I wanted her to. Looong before. So when I pull a chair around, sit down on it backwards and says, “Let me catch you up to speed,” it tastes bad coming out.