The Moon
Change and deception
In all fairness, it had been a while since Colin brought his work home with him.
Still, something you never get used to is seeing a dead body—or at least, I hoped not.
I’ve certainly had my fair share of experience with them, and it’s still unsettling.
Thank God Taylor went bar-hopping was my first coherent thought after the reality began sinking in.
I could feel myself starting to go into shock, so I bent at the waist, looked down at the floor, and took some deep breaths. It didn’t take long for the weird buzzing in my ears and the grayness on the edge of my vision to go away.
I took another deep breath, straightened up, and took an assessing look around.
Our living room was trashed. The television had been knocked off the entertainment center, connector cables ripped out of its back. The entertainment center itself looked like it had been kicked or something; the side panel was smashed and the whole thing was tilting dangerously. The cable box was blinking all red zeroes. The coffee table was also lying on its side, the glass top shattered, shards and glittering beads of broken glass scattered around on the faded and worn Oriental rug. The couch had been shoved out of line and the end table was in pieces. One of the easy chairs was on its back; the other had been knocked aside and was splattered with blood. The hideous, tacky cuckoo clock Storm bought me in Switzerland had been knocked off the wall and lay in the debris from the coffee table, smashed, the door open and the little yellow cuckoo bird dangling on its wire.
Everything that had been hanging on the walls in the living room was now on the floor, frames bent out of shape and the glass cracked. I couldn’t tell if any of the art itself was ruined—but that could wait.
And there was the blood…
There was a huge puddle of it spreading out from under the dead man’s head. He was on his side, his back to me. The way his head rested against the floor made it look like it had been smashed in on that side, and his neck looked broken. His thick bluish-black hair was soaked with blood. His head was turned away from me, so I couldn’t see the face. He was wearing what Colin called “cat burglar garb”—black pants, a black turtleneck, black sneakers.
“Glad I waited to put up the Christmas decorations,” I heard myself saying. I shook my head and took my first good look at Colin. I immediately switched over to caregiver mode. “Jesus, Colin, are you okay?”
Under normal circumstances, Colin was probably one of the best-looking guys I’ve ever seen—certainly in the top ten, at any rate. He is so handsome it’s almost absurd. He’s shorter than most people think or remember, because he’s so charismatic he seems taller. But he’s only five seven on a good day, with about 210 pounds of pure, defined, thick muscle packed on his frame. If he weren’t one of the top undercover operatives in the world, he could make a living as a fitness model. His olive skin tans easily, making his emerald-green eyes pop, and when his thick bluish-black isn’t cut buzz short, it cascades in Apollonian curls around his face. He has dimples in his cheeks, a strong square jaw, and perfectly straight white teeth beneath sensual thick lips. He can move not only quickly, but silently. He is ridiculously flexible and agile.
Once he’d rescued me when some bad guys had drugged and kidnapped me, and to make our escape he strapped me to his back and rappelled down the side of Jax Brewery.
It’s a long story.
Right now, there was a nasty-looking bruise on his right cheek and a huge discolored lump on his left forehead. His right eye was blackened and swelling shut. His big strong hands were covered in blood. His upper lip was also getting fatter as I watched, and there was some blood leaking out from both nostrils. His tight black T-shirt was ripped, the fabric hanging loose from his left shoulder. Angry red scratches, bleeding in places, ran down his chest, and his left nipple was also bloody. His dark jeans were soaked with blood.
“Um, I can explain,” he said. He put his hands on his knees and bent forward, trying to catch his breath. He straightened back up with a sheepish look on his face. “I’m sorry about the mess, but…” His voice trailed off.
I took off my coat and hung it on the coat tree. “Yeah, well, I’d been thinking about redecorating.”
I walked into the kitchen and got the heavy-duty first-aid kit I kept under the sink. I shook my head. Part of the cost of being in love with someone who does the kind of work Colin does is you have to patch him back together from time to time. “I assume this has something to do with whatever case you’re working on right now and you can’t tell me anything or you’ll have to kill me,” I said, walking back into the living room.
That’s another part of the cost.
You can’t ask questions, you can’t know anything, you just have to have blind faith.
Like right now. There’s a dead body in our living room and I may never know why.
Sometimes I lose sleep worrying about where Colin is or what he’s doing. That usually happens when Frank is off wrestling somewhere and I’m home by myself…and have probably smoked too much weed. I’ll lie there in bed, missing them both and imagining the worst.
Having a vivid imagination can be a curse.
But the sad reality is worrying doesn’t change anything. So, I just push those fears into a dark corner of my mind and forget about them. Life doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle, and should my worst fears come true someday, I’d deal with it then.
As Mom says, “Worrying is just borrowing trouble.”
“You’re dressed up,” Colin said, taking a step toward the couch. He winced and put a hand up to his ribs. “Where are Frank and Taylor?”
“Taylor and I went to the premiere party for the Grande Dames,” I replied, opening the first aid kit. “Frank’s wrestling in Pensacola and Taylor went out with some people from the party. Thank the Goddess for small favors.”
Colin gritted his teeth and made it to the couch, sitting down with a groan. “He was a really bad guy, Scotty.” He gestured with his head toward the corpse. “Believe me, the world’s a better place without him. If I hadn’t killed him, he would have killed me…and then you would have walked in here…” He closed his eyes and winced again. “I was terrified you or Frank or Taylor were here, or would come home, or…”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I sat down next to him on the couch and started dabbing at the bloody slashes on his chest. “Do I need to get you to a hospital? You don’t look so good, Colin. Seriously.” His face was pale beneath the tan. “I’ll get you a painkiller.” I had some leftover from an abscessed tooth situation I’d suffered through during the summer.
Rule number one: never discard medication, because you never know when it’ll come in handy.
“No, I’ll be all right.” He yanked down on his T-shirt, finishing the job of ripping it from his muscular torso. He wadded it up and tossed it on the floor. There was an even more hideous bruise running from the hip bone to the bottom of his rib cage. “He got some good licks in, though.” He started pressing on his ribs. “You know what? I think a painkiller would be terrific, thanks.”
Shaking my head, I carefully stepped around the broken glass and the debris on the floor and walked down to the bathroom. I found the bottle of pain pills, shook one out, and filled a Dixie cup with water.
“Thanks,” he said as he took them from me. I flipped the coffee table back up onto its legs. The cigar box holding my deck of tarot cards had been knocked across the room, spilling out cards in front of the wrecked television. I gathered up as many of them as I could—I’d check to see if any were missing later.
“I suppose calling the police isn’t an option?” I sat down on the edge of the coffee table, retrieved some antiseptic wipes from the medicine kit, and touched them to the scratches on Colin’s chest. His chest flexed as I wiped the scratches clean. His nipple didn’t appear to be torn, just scratched. “Let me get some ice. That eye and your lip…”
He smiled at me. “Am I still pretty?”
I kissed the top of his head. “You’ll always be pretty.”
He’d managed to get his jeans off when I came back with the ice pack. There were bruises on his legs, too. He was wearing black Calvin Klein low-rise briefs. His leg muscles rippled as he bent his knees, checking for any breaks or fractures. He took one of the ice packs and placed it over his swollen eye.
“Brace yourself,” I said, putting a little pressure on Colin’s ribs with the other ice pack. “This doesn’t hurt?”
“Nothing’s broken, I was just a little winded.” He smiled. “I’ve taken much worse in the field when I didn’t have a sexy nurse to take care of me.”
I wiped the blood from under his nose, checking to make sure the bleeding stopped. I glanced back over at the body and felt another wave of nausea. Get over it, you can’t get sick, I told myself sternly.
I take great pride in being good in a crisis.
“But how did he get in?” After the last time someone broke in trying to kill Colin, we’d made the building more secure. We replaced the wooden door on the street level to the passageway with a steel door and had the frame reinforced. Razor wire was strung across the top. The vacant space on the first floor also had a reinforced and padlocked steel door into the courtyard. The shed at the back of the courtyard had a door to the parking lot, but it was also reinforced steel.
The parking lot was a vulnerable spot. If someone managed to get past the big steel garage-style door without a pass card or the entry code, they’d need a ladder to climb up to the roof of the shed and over into the courtyard. And the top of that wall had broken bottles embedded in concrete to discourage climbers.
Of course, international assassins could still climb onto the roofs of the buildings on either side of ours, but since the shutters were still closed and latched, he couldn’t have gotten in that way.
“He was already here waiting for me, sitting in the dark with his gun trained on the door.” Colin shook his head.
A cold chill crept up my spine. What if Taylor had come home first?
Colin saw the look on my face. “I’m sorry, Scotty. I don’t even know how he could have gotten in. But he was here, waiting to kill me.” He gestured with his head. “I think his gun wound up over by the desk.” He shrugged. “Thank God I got home before you two.”
“Yeah.” I took a deep breath. “We’re going to have to get rid of the body, aren’t we?” I was about to become an accessory after the fact.
It’s not the first time, a voice reminded me.
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Scotty. No police. You have to trust me.”
“It is what it is.” I stood up. Okay, crisis mode was kicking in. “We’re going to have to get rid of this rug, there’s no way we’ll ever get the blood out of it.” It was an old Oriental rug I’d been meaning to replace for years anyway. I just hadn’t taken the time to look for a new one. “We can roll him up in it. But the blood on that recliner—”
“I’m pretty sure that’s mine.” Colin stood up, wincing. “Just use some spot remover on it. I’ll get bleach and rags.”
I stood up and walked around the couch opposite the body. I’d left the back door open and a cold draft blew down the hall. It had started raining, and it was really coming down now. I looked at Colin. He seemed okay. I felt a crazy laugh rising and forced it down. I needed to stay calm—I could have a breakdown later if necessary.
I walked over and picked up the feet. He was heavy, but I bent my knees and pulled backward. It took a few tries, but I finally got him onto the carpet as Colin returned with a bucket and rags. I could smell the bleach as he started wiping up the blood.
“I’m sorry, Scotty.” Colin’s voice was grim as he carefully wiped the floor. “I can tell you this much: my cover was blown. Angela told me to get out of…where I was and come back here to wait for further instructions.” He dipped the rags in the bleachy water and started wiping again. “I covered my tracks, believe me. Different flights, different airports, different passports. You can imagine my shock when I turned on the light and he was sitting there.” He pointed to where one of the dining room table chairs had been splintered and smashed. “He shot twice.”
I followed his pointing finger with my eyes. Yes, there were two bullet holes in the plaster wall. Shit, shit, shit. “He had a gun and the drop on you? Damn, you’re good.” I looked back at the chair. “He was a fool. He should have shot you before you turned on the lights.”
“Bestuzhev was always an arrogant prick.” He stood up. “I told him before it would bite him in the ass one day.”
I decided not to think about the fact Colin knew the guy. “But why here? Why kill you?” I was starting to feel dizzy again and sat down on the couch, hard.
“I’ve no idea. There was no way—my private life, my cover, has always been incredibly protected. Or so I thought.”
“Do you think—” My voice broke. Oh God. “You don’t think other—”
“I don’t know. I hope not. You guys aren’t the target…I am. If I’m not here, you should be safe.”
Assuming they—whoever they are—won’t want to use us to get to you. He somehow knew you were coming here today. He didn’t care if we were here or not.
And just how did he know to come here to wait for Colin?
I felt queasy.
“You have to believe me, Scotty, I had no idea this was going to follow me here. There are so many firewalls between me and Blackledge…” His voice was grim. “Nobody could have known I was coming here. But I used my Blackledge credit card…which means either the credit card company or Blackledge has been compromised.”
“But he knew where to find you.” This was bad. Really bad. “Would they have known that from tracking your Blackledge Amex?”
Colin shook his head. “No.”
My heart was beating fast. I needed to stay calm. But if Blackledge had been compromised…I swallowed and said what I was thinking.
“There’s no chance…no chance Angela might have sent him?” Angela Blackledge ran the agency Colin had been working for since he’d left the Mossad in his late twenties. “I know you can’t tell me about your latest mission—any of your missions—but you haven’t done anything that would make her want to, um, you know…” I gestured toward the body. I couldn’t say it. I didn’t even want to think it. “Have you?”
“No. This last mission—it was a total shit show right from the start,” he replied, nudging the corpse with his foot. “I suspected we’d been compromised. The mission blew up in our faces too fast for it not to have been. But it never occurred to me to think that the agency had been…shit, agents all over the world could be in jeopardy. I need to call Angela.” He got up and walked over to where his duffel bag was sitting in the hallway. I hadn’t noticed it there. He pulled out his secure satellite phone and pressed a few buttons. After a few moments he said, “Angela, it’s Colin. Call me the moment you get this.” He slipped the phone back into his bag. He started pacing. “Well, yes, we were compromised, certainly. I can’t tell you much, but I can tell you that our ‘surprise’ mission to rescue a hostage wasn’t a surprise to the hostage takers. We lost a couple of men, good men. Angela told me to abort, get out of there as fast as I could, and just come back home to New Orleans.” He stared at me.
I knew him well enough to know he was thinking the same thing I was.
If Blackledge was compromised, maybe they’d gotten to Angela already.
“Take a hot shower and get dressed,” I said. “I take it you’re going to have to skip town?”
He didn’t answer, just gave me a sad smile as he walked past on his way to the bathroom. I wanted to hug him, kiss him, do something to let him know I loved him, but let the moment pass.
Once I heard the shower come on, I checked out the front door. It hadn’t been forced, and there were no signs the lock had been tampered with. The deadbolt was sturdy but had been sticking lately. I’d been meaning to spray some WD-40 into it, just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
It was still pouring down rain. Lightning flashed close by, and the thunder that followed shook the house. I shivered.
The assassin—what had Colin called him? Bestuzhev? He’d either had a key or picked the lock.
But how did he get past the gate? Rain or no rain, you can’t pick a lock on Decatur Street, even at night, without being seen, questioned.
I bit my lower lip. Is Colin telling me the truth?
He’d lied to me before.
We’d separated from him for a couple of years back when we first became a throuple (I hate that word. Taylor was the first person to use it to describe our three-way relationship, but I’m getting used to it the more I hear it), because his job—a case he was working on—required him to let us believe he’d murdered two of my uncles (that’s a really long story). But he hadn’t killed them, and we’d all welcomed him back into the family once we knew the truth.
I also knew if it was necessary for his job, he’d lie to us all over again.
But with Taylor part of our family…we hadn’t been completely honest with him about Colin’s job.
Such a fucking mess.
I glanced up at the ceiling.
What if another assassin is upstairs?
My blood ran cold. That hadn’t even occurred to me.
I was walking back to the kitchen to get my gun when there was a crash from the bathroom.
I ran back down the hall and opened the bathroom door. Colin sat on the floor, naked. The room was filling with steam from the shower. He looked dazed, woozy.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” I knelt down beside him.
He winced. “I slipped getting into the shower like an idiot. I’m really sorry about all of this, Scotty.” He pushed himself back up to his feet and gave me a sad smile. “You know the last thing in the world I want is put any of you in danger. And the living room—”
“Frank wanted a new television anyway, and I’ve been meaning to redecorate,” I replied breezily, holding his arm as he climbed into the shower. “Just get cleaned up, I’ll lay out some clothes for you. Are you sure you don’t want to go to the emergency room?”
“Too many questions.” Colin stepped into the spray. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” I picked up his underwear off the floor and went into the spare bedroom. Since Colin wasn’t home as much, we kept his clothes in the spare bedroom. I found him some clean underwear, a T-shirt, and clean jeans, walked back into the living room, and got his bloody pants and the torn scraps of his T-shirt. I put the T-shirt in the trash and tossed the pants into the empty laundry basket in the bedroom.
Shit, DNA, I thought. Oh, well, I’ll just wash everything with bleach.
I placed the clean clothes on the toilet and shut the bathroom door.
I’d finished cleaning up most of the mess in the living room when Colin joined me. His hair was still damp. “I’m so sorry about this.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know how I’m going to explain how everything got wrecked to Taylor, though.” I shrugged. “Let’s get the body rolled up in the carpet.”
“Okay.” Colin checked his satellite phone. “Hang on, Angela left a message.” He pressed some buttons and held the phone up to his ear. After a few minutes he turned the phone off and tossed it back in his bag. “She’s just as shocked as I am. I’m going to head out of town once we’re done here—there’s a six a.m. flight out of New Orleans to Houston.” He glanced at his watch. “That should give me just enough time to get rid of this mess and get to the airport. You mind if I take the CR-V?”
“As long as you don’t leave any evidence in it.”
“Get some twine and some garbage bags. You’re going to have to help me carry him out of here.”
I got the twine and Colin tied the carpet securely once we finished rolling him up in it. He then tied garbage bags around the ends and the center.
“What do you think? The Rigolets?”
The Rigolets was the narrow mouth connecting Lake Pontchartrain to Lake Borgne, which wasn’t really a lake but a narrow-mouthed bay that opened out to the gulf.
“The tide should be going out now,” I said, looking at my watch. “With any luck the tide will take him right out of Lake Borgne and into the gulf.”
“Perfect. Let’s get him up.” On the count of three we lifted the rug and started carrying him down the hallway. He was incredibly heavy, and my back and shoulders were screaming as we made our way out the door and to the staircase.
There was about an inch of cold water in the courtyard, but the rain had lightened up some. Still, I was sweating and out of breath by the time we got the body out to the parking garage. Once we’d lifted him into the hatch of the car, we kissed and I held on to him. “Be careful,” I whispered into his ear.
He kissed me and whispered back. “I’ll call as soon as I can.” He stepped away from me and touched the side of my face before slamming the hatch shut. “All right. I’ll leave the car at Park’n’Fly lot at the airport. I’ll text you the spot number when I’m in the terminal. Wait and pick up the car later in the afternoon or wait until Sunday morning. And don’t worry, I’ll clean the back out once I get rid of the body.” He climbed into the driver’s seat. “I love you. I’ll get in touch as soon as I can.”
“Love you, too.” I paused. “I have to tell Frank about this.”
He winced. “It’s better if he knows so you can both be on guard. But do you have to tell Taylor?”
“I won’t.” It was bad enough I was an accessory after the fact and was going to make Frank one, too. I wasn’t putting Taylor at risk.
Maybe…maybe he could stay with Mom and Dad for a while.
I watched Colin drive out of our parking garage.
This might be the last time I ever see him.
My eyes filled with tears, but I wiped them away.
Exhausted and drained, I went back up to the apartment. I finished sweeping up the broken glass and splintered wood, carried the wreckage down to the garbage cans in the courtyard, and tried to get the living room as back to normal as I possibly could.
It was about two thirty in the morning when I finally got undressed and got into bed. I was worried I would be too stressed out to sleep, but exhaustion trumped worry and I fell asleep almost as soon as I closed my eyes.
I woke to the sound of my cell phone ringing on the nightstand. Thinking it was Colin, I opened my eyes and reached for it.
Taylor’s face was looking at me from the screen and it was 8:17 in the morning. I unlocked my phone. “Taylor?”
“Scotty?” He sounded weird, his voice kind of slurring. “I—I need help. Can you come?”
I swung my legs out of the bed and was walking into the bathroom as I said, “Where are you? What’s wrong?”
“I—I don’t feel so hot. I feel really strange.” He gulped. “I’m at Eric’s suite in the hotel. And—and he’s dead.”
“What?” I put him on speaker and splashed water on my face. “Did you say he’s dead?”
“Dead.” He muffled a sob. “And I’m naked and I don’t know what happened and I’m scared and I don’t feel good. Can you come?”
“Stay where you are and don’t touch anything. I’m on my way.”