She holds my gaze for a moment and then agrees with a nod. Maybe a smile too. But I can’t see it. She drops her head and her long, wet hair falls forward to cover her face.
“I’d have gotten you something better than a candle.” She lifts her head up so I can see a sliver of one stormy, blue eye peeking out from behind her hair. “For your birthday, I mean.”
“Yeah… well. You weren’t here and Misha was.”
“Misha’s dead now.”
“I know.” I sigh as I rub both hands down my face. “I’m aware.”
“She deserved to die.”
“You want me to run you a bath, then?”
“Everyone’s dead now, huh?”
“Indie.” I say this sternly. “We’re not getting into this.”
“Into what?”
“You know what.”
“I’m just saying. Just making an observation, that’s all. Everyone is dead now.”
“We’re not dead. You’re not dead, I’m not dead. Adam’s not dead. Donovan’s not dead…” I stop because she’s right. Plenty of people are dead. But I don’t want her thinking too hard about that. Not when she’s in this frame of mind. “Who cares about dead people anyway? We’re still here.”
She inhales deeply and sinks a little further back into the couch cushions. Pulls her legs up to her chest and wraps her arms around her wet jeans. Hugs herself.
She told me once that Donovan taught her that. He told her to hug herself when she was alone and afraid because hugs cure everything.
“We are still very much here, aren’t we?”
“Bubbles?”
She nods. “Sure. Why not?”
“You gonna be here when I come back?”
“Do you want me to be here?”
I nod. “Please don’t go.”
She smiles at me. And when Indie smiles… fuck. I don’t even know how to describe the feelings that run through my body when she smiles. It’s relief, and happiness, and a sense that everything is actually going to be OK. Like this shit will work itself out and we’ll all be normal again.
But it’s a lie.
That smile is a lie and those feelings are lies too.
Because we were never normal.
There is nothing normal about the feelings I have for this girl. Woman, really. She’s a woman now. But she didn’t start out that way. No one starts out that way. There has to have been a time in her past when she was just… what? Just a child? An innocent child?
I want to believe it. I really do.
But it’s not true.
This girl was bred. She was made. She was a plan.
I know there’s a contradiction in there somewhere. Maybe it’s not even that hard to find if I cared to push the curtain aside and take a good look at my life, and my actions, and myself.
And all the ways I contributed to the plan called Indie going off the rails.
But this isn’t the time for self-reflection.
She’s home.
After everything that happened that day, she came back. And she came back to me.
Not Donovan. Not Adam. Me.
I walk to the bathroom and flick the light on. Stand there, still and silent. Listening for the tell-tale sound of a front door closing quietly behind her as she makes her escape.
But that sound doesn’t come. I know she could sneak out without me hearing, she’s that good at her job. But I also know that if she is leaving, she’d want me to know it so she’d make enough noise so I’d hear.
She made some mistakes early on, but in the grand scheme of things Indie’s job performance was impeccable. She is the meaning of the word professional.
Not professional like she says all the right things and always follows instructions. She’s almost never that kind of professional. I’m talking about that feeling you get when you know someone can take care of shit. Can get the job done.
Relief. That’s the feeling you get when you send Indie Anna Accorsi in to do a job. Relief that she will come out the other end and you can tick this particular task off your checklist.
But she never saw herself the way we saw her. I guess all truly talented people are guilty of that particular divergence. Geniuses are all insane, aren’t they?
I start the water, adjust the temperature, then pick up the bottle of cheap strawberry shampoo and squirt some under the roaring faucet.
If she leaves now, I’d never know. I could go check, but then she’d know I was checking. So instead I sit on the toilet lid, lean forward, and hold my head in my hands as I start falling into the past…
I met Adam Boucher when I was nine years old. I don’t think Adam was a part of what his father was doing that day they showed up at my family’s compound in Alaska. I don’t think he knew the real reason Mr. Boucher bought me and took me home with them.
I certainly didn’t.
I still don’t know all the specifics. All I know is that one day I was living at home with my family and the next I was living in New Orleans with the Bouchers.
The day we got home—my new home—Adam’s father took me into his office and sat me down in a chair that was monumentally too big for me and started spelling things out.
Adam would be leaving soon.
I would be staying behind.
We didn’t have much time to put this whole thing together.
Adam had a job and I had a job. This was the way of the world we lived in.
I just kept nodding my head. Yes. Yes. Yes. Whatever you say. It’s not like I had a choice. My decision had been made. He had already explained some things to me back in Alaska. He had already spelled out my choices in no uncertain terms before we left.
So there was nothing else to be said on my part. Just… yes, yes, yes.
But Adam didn’t go away. Something happened. His father changed his mind? He got kicked out of the program? I’m not sure.
All I know is that Mr. Boucher’s grand plan for Adam and I was upended. Never happened.
And everything was pretty normal after that—if you don’t count the martial arts training, the trips to the private shooting range, and the way Mr. Boucher, and about two hundred other Company higher-ups, died that night in Santa Barbara all those years ago.
Everything was pretty damn normal until Adam went down to that island in the Caribbean and came home with Indie Anna Accorsi.
I wondered about that a little bit back when it happened.
But I never quite wondered enough.
“Knock, knock.”
I glance up and find Indie leaning against the doorway peeling her wet jeans down her legs. She kicks them aside and then sighs. “So, really. How have you been, McKay?”
“I’m OK. I can’t complain.”
“Still building things with your hands?”
“I do a job here and there.”
She lifts her t-shirt up over her head and lets it fall to the floor. I know I shouldn’t look but I look anyway. Her bra isn’t sexy. There’s no lace. No flower pattern. It’s just black cotton. Same as her underwear. More practical than anything else.
I distract myself with thoughts about her gun. Where did she put it? It doesn’t really matter. The only thing that matters is that it’s not still tucked away in her jeans. And that means she’s not here to kill me.