Sneak Peek: Untitled
Untitled
Excerpt
(Six Months Later)
Batman and Robin. Brides and white. Peanut butter and jelly. Ketchup and fries.
Some combinations were meant to be, but weekend sleep-ins and telephones were an indisputable exception to the rule. Blindly grabbing bed pillows, Erin clutched them against her head in an effort to create a barrier between her ears and the annoyingly incessant rings squalling for attention on the other side of the room.
Saturday mornings, especially those following manic workweeks, were designed for cocooning and catching extra Z’s. Wondering who’d decided otherwise, she reluctantly rolled onto her back and, abandoning the two down pillows that were failing miserably as on-the-fly soundproofing devices, blinked to clear the groggy eyes that matched an equally fogged mind.
Though eruptive phone peals no longer set off the immobilizing meltdowns they’d once triggered, she still wasn’t altogether free of the angst that quickened her pulse. On this particular occasion, it helped that she’d slept long and hard and, like a coma patient slowly coming to, was numb to the deeper twinges of anxiety that, at full consciousness, would have snarled her thoughts and chilled her spine.
Preferring the peaks and valleys of reality over unbroken bubbles of pharmaceutical bliss, she’d decided long ago to ditch the arsenal of pills, capsules, and tablets that’d been prescribed as supplementary healing aids. Adamantly bent on picking up the pieces and moving forward at a pace that suited her, and not the armada of steamrolling handlers, keepers, and watchers charged with her safekeeping, she’d opted out of the “take one every four to six hours” method of coping less than one full month into the transition.
Consequently, there were times when random events and trips down Memory Lane got the best of her and, conversely, times like now when her mind provided brief respites from its deep, circuitous rounds of reminiscent what-if thinking. Minus a crystal ball, there was no way of knowing what the future had in store, but one-day-at-a-timing it with a head unencumbered by unnecessary happy pills was the road she’d committed to.
“Reality, even when it is sad, is better than illusions.” A bite-sized gem attributable to Helen Keller, it was her favorite wisdom pearl and, more often than not, the sole voice of reason and validation in a world where the beliefs of so many seemed diametrically opposed.
****
Molded into the desk chair that’d served as overnight bedding, Mason, awakened by the broad beams of sun infiltrating the slats in the window blinds, winced and gingerly sloped forward with his forearms propped on his thighs.
It wasn’t the first time he’d pulled an all-nighter, or the first time his office had served as a poor man’s Ritz-Carlton, but it was the first time he’d had no say whatsoever in the matter. Mumbling curses as he twisted his wrist and glanced at his watch, he loosened his tie and back-rolled the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows.
In no uncertain terms, his body, in all-out mutiny mode, was making it clear that the candle he’d been burning at both ends was as detrimental physically as it was emotionally.
His eyelids dragged like sandpaper-lined windshield wipers—never before had he been so conscious of the number of times a human being actually blinked; his extremities felt as though they’d been anchored down with hundred-pound ankle and wrist weights; and his ribs, still bruised, bandaged, and sore from the beating they’d taken during the fatal skirmish with a fugitive who’d resisted arrest, reminded him that they, too, were in a state of distress.
Fatigue generated sloppy thinking. Sloppy thinking generated poor execution and mistakes. And poor execution and mistakes generated undesirable outcomes, including death at the most extreme end of the spectrum. Like each of his colleagues, he knew the dangers of running on empty but, as an up-and-comer still negotiating ladder rungs, his choice of rejoinders was restricted to “How high?” whenever his superiors yelled “Jump.”
He’d recently read somewhere that more than ninety percent of those in the workforce, whether despondently flipping burgers at minimum wage or salaried and comfortable at blue-chip organizations, loathed their jobs. Personally, he happened to belong to the minority ten percent who, on some level, found enough satisfaction in their nine-to-fives to respond “good” or “excellent” when questioned but, nonetheless, there were still times—now being one of them—when he fantasized about chucking it all and using his insider’s know-how to hide himself deep within the abyss he’d stashed so many others in.
In addition to the heavy witness protection caseload shared with Lea, he’d found himself being pulled, ever more increasingly, into intensely volatile and emotionally-charged undercover assignments—the bulk of which disturbingly underscored man’s inhumanity against man. While outwardly he appeared to be a natural at discreetly insinuating himself into eclectic arrays of groups and situations, buddying up to whoever needed buddying up to in order to glean information and facilitate arrests, inwardly conflict churned like tidal waves.
Looking at the hand and finger that, only days before, had held and pulled the trigger of his service revolver and, in self-defense, taken another man’s life, he wondered how in the hell doctors were able to compartmentalize and conceal their emotions. How did one save a life—or watch one expire—one minute and continue on, business as usual, the next? His brother, thankfully a better emergency room physician than off-the-cuff inner-thoughts sage, had once described it as “just this thing that doctors do.”
Thinking that maybe it was a thing that he, too, could do if he buried himself in just the right amount of paperwork, he’d defied “take a few days off” orders and, instead, plunged into the sea of manila and accordion folders that’d, disappointingly, provided only temporary distraction from the storm brewing inside.
Lifting his head, he glanced at his desk and zoomed in on the notes scribbled across the front of the last file he’d been working on—Erin Galloway, case number 17624.
Credible threats? Minimal. Long-term protection? Confident that subject has fully assimilated and is able to handle herself. One last surveillance and face-to-face before termination.
****
“Ms. Galloway?”
“Yes,” Erin answered, relaxing at the sound of the familiar—Damon the gate attendant—at the end of the line. Tucking herself into the robe she’d slipped on over the pajama shorts and t-shirt that conceded more to comfort and functionality than style or sex appeal, she sat on the window seat with her knees tucked to her chest and twisted open the blinds.
On the other side of the street, Mr. Albright manicured his pride-and-joy perimeter of green. A recent widower in his early sixties, he routinely pampered his lawn and lush landscaping with the same gentle disposition she’d watched him lavish upon his late wife. Dressed in dungarees and a straw hat as he tended a trellis of canary-yellow roses, he was the complete antithesis of the Armani-clad studio executive who, on weekdays, inhabited the same body.
Genuinely fascinated and ever the fly-on-the-wall, she often found herself crooking a finger, drawing back the curtains, and watching for longer than intended as he seeded, decluttered, and organized the earth that, as he’d once told her, “takes my worries down under and returns them as colorful, soul-healing balms.”
A copy of his recently-published memoir had earned a spot on her bookshelf. While skimming its pages days before, she’d learned of his plans to retire and relocate at year’s end.
Prematurely lamenting his departure, she lowered her hand and let the curtain fall shut.
Connections. No matter how loose the ties, whenever paths diverged, her heart grieved in earnest over the loss of acquaintances it’d grown fond of.
Though there was a portion of psyche that still despised small talk, she’d, by and large, learned to value the chance meetings and fleeting exchanges shared with those whose paths routinely crossed her own. Nevertheless, to a parched soul thirsting for the mind-meld rapport of kindred-spirit camaraderie, the brief escapes from loneliness were little more than water beads meted out one miserly drop at a time.
Even monastically-sequestered monks and nuns required some degree of meaningful human contact.
Her professional life may have been thriving but her social life, if reserved chitchat with the postal carrier and assorted store clerks could actually be called that, was in need of a serious jump-start—a reality she’d devoted a lot of thought to lately—but, when proactively casting herself into wider seas wasn’t an option, she was at a loss as to how it was she was supposed to proceed.
Hampered by a combination of cold feet and the restrictions imposed by her situation, she’d tested the waters only twice as her newly-minted self. Once on a blind date with a potential suitor who’d been thoroughly, and unknowingly, vetted by Lea. And once more at an industry function where Mason, hovering discreetly in the background, had shadowed her every move.
Though she’d held her own during each trial run, neither experience had been particularly pleasurable and neither had bolstered her desire to rekindle a relationship with the world at-large. If anything, they’d sparked the opposite reaction, touching-off the deep retreat that she’d yet to rebound from.
Avoidance. A fail-safe strategy, to be sure. But, with each passing day, she felt more like a caged zoo animal—bound by invisible fencing rigged to deliver punishing jolts whenever she roamed too close to its perimeter—than an independently-functioning human being. Truth be told, she knew that many of the enclosures were self-constructed and rooted in fear, but that didn’t make shaking them off any easier.
Copyright © Mary M., 2009.
Sneak Peek: What Happens in Vegas…
What Happens in Vegas…
Excerpt
The expletive-laced mouthful careening through his ear canals sizzled and exploded like heat-seeking missiles. "You must be out of your freakin’ mind," Sam seethed, lowering the styrofoam cup from his mouth to the counter while fighting against impulse to keep his temper in check. Seated at the bar, he glanced at the facing mirror and locked eyes with Logan, who stood at his back.
A public lounge was no place for a private showdown but Logan’s modest entourage was the only group occupying the plush VIP hideaway and Sam’s patience had worn well past thin.
"Your ass valedictorian at the Naomi Campbell-Russell Crowe School of Charm or somethin’? Care to repeat the load of crap that just left your mouth…only this time to my face?" He crushed out his second cigarette in half an hour and swiveled on his barstool, waiting for a reply as he and his adversary sized each other up like two starved lions ready to pounce and devour.
"No need to. You heard me right the first time."
At that, the seated mass of muscle scratched his chin and rose to his feet. Poised half a foot taller and, at least, a hundred pounds heavier than the man who’d just called him out, he supposed for a moment, tongue-in-cheek, that he could easily flatten the annoying fly standing in front of him with one quick swat but, checking his anger and ego in deference to the professionalism he prided himself on, he drew a deep breath, instead, and racked his brain in a ragged scramble for the right words to frame and defuse the situation.
Despite the menacing hard body that earned his bread and butter and cemented his reputation as one of the best in the personal protection industry, the easygoing spirit on the underside of the pecs and abs of steel was both generous and compassionate.
A knock down, drag-’em-out with a client would definitely be a first. A first he wasn’t eager to have linked with his name—or conscience.
In the span of their five year association, fists had never usurped dialogue as means to an end but, figuratively, he and Logan had been at each other’s throats all morning and literally seemed ominously imminent.
A word here. A look there. Pot-shots, real and perceived, had volleyed ad nauseam and it wasn’t surprising that the dam heading off full-on confrontation had finally given way.
The problem was, Sam wasn’t quite sure which Logan he was confronting. A generation in age separated them, as did lives that deviated socially and economically, but superficial differences were no deterrent to the genuine "boys will be boys" camaraderie that’d evolved into a tight bond. It was hard to pinpoint exactly when or where but, somewhere along the way, a personal relationship had branched off of the professional one, resulting in a long-running friendship anchored by a mutual love of music, sports—and anything with a steering wheel, accelerator, and fast-running engine.
Though it’d never surfaced as a topic of conversation, Sam had gathered early on that there was also another mutual love—though he often got the feeling that the word family was a sometimes unsettling and abstract notion that Logan, from a safe and comfortable distance, was only just beginning to explore internally.
In his down time, "Uncle L," as he was known to Sam’s two toddlers, was an infrequent—but frequent enough to be adopted as a family member—guest in the Richardson home. Both kids, Sam, Jr. and Ava adored him. And Ella, his wife, reveled in her multi-faceted, self-appointed role of big sister slash backup mom slash personal matchmaker. It was clear from the warm-hearted manner in which he interacted with each of them that the lovefest flowed both ways. He—“the white sheep of the family,” as he jokingly called himself—was as crazy about them as they were about him.
There was something about the man that inexplicably lured those around him in like moths to a flame. It was what his career was built on, in part. But that same "it" was a characteristic that’d been glaringly absent in recent weeks and Sam had been one of the first to pick up on it.
With those thoughts in mind, he’d just decided that his hands were safest in his pockets where they could do no harm when a forceful open-palmed blow struck his chest. As he staggered back against it, the stool he’d been seated on toppled over, greeting the marble floor with a loud reverberating crack.
Righting himself before he, too, hit the ground, he cast a quick glance over his shoulder at the bartender, who needed no further prompts to set aside the glass and towel in his hands and flee the scene.
In the loud stretch of silence that followed, emotion eclipsed common sense, rendering both men speechless.
Brianna winced and Max, Kai, and Zach, the three men rounding out the security detail, bounded from their seats to referee but Sam angled his head, redirecting them with a wordless "All mine" nod. Barely able to restrain himself, he shed the professional mask he’d been dying to lose and cut directly to the chase.
"Bad move, man. A really bad move." Kicking the overturned stool aside, he jabbed a retaliatory finger into Logan’s right shoulder as his own chest rose and fell in angry heaves. "You wanna go a round with me? Let’s go! Say what you wanna say, do what you gotta do. And don’t expect a goddamned thing less from me."
He scanned Logan’s features, trying to find some semblance to the man who usually inhabited the body that seemed to have been taken over by a wayward clone.
Given the same situation on any other day, with any other client, he admitted to himself that he probably would’ve taken the swing he wanted to take so bad, then promptly resigned. But Logan wasn’t just "any other" safekeeping duty.
However belittling his orders may have seemed and however twisted and misinterpreted they may have been on the receiving end, it was concern, more than anger or one-upmanship, that’d motivated the sequence of "lay down the law" directives he’d dished out. With a decade of experience under his belt, he’d been active in the industry long enough to witness more than a few burned-out celebrities twist salvageable hard patches into irreparable "Where Are They Now?" tailspins and, whenever warranted, he considered it part of his job to stand as a buffer between his clients and their egos at the first visible sign that the two were engaged in battle.
He ran a hand across his mouth then folded his arms over his chest in an effort to prevent himself from making a move he’d later regret.
Logan, undeterred and still enraged, picked up where he’d left off. His voice was low and raspy from a weekend of excess but his words were on point and razor sharp.
"Let’s get somethin’ straight. In case you’ve forgotten, you work for me. Got that? I pay your ass to protect me, not to climb inside my head and play shrink. When and if I want your advice, I’ll ask for it. So, until then, step the hell off and get outta my face before—"
"—Before what…? Before you run out, get shit-faced again, make some more dim-witted, half-assed decisions, and wind up calling me after the fact to clean up another one of your messes? You don’t want me or anybody else inside your head? Well, somebody’s gotta move in and take over because the vacancy sign’s been flashing non-stop for a while now and I have yet to see you make attempt number one to hit the switch and shut it off. What’s gives with you, man? You and I both know that none of this is your MO. What the hell’s been going on up there lately?"
"One more time…off of my back and outta my face," Logan replied hotly as Sam stepped forward.
"So this is how it’s gonna play out, huh? Well you’ve said your piece, now it’s time for me to say mine. Wanna fire my ass once I’m done? Fine by me, bro. I’ve got a mile-high list of potential clients who’ll snatch me and the rest of the crew up tomorrow. I may be on your payroll, as you so rightly pointed out, but you get clear on this—it’s my company, my team, and my choice to be there. You contracted for a service, I’m providing it. Don’t like the way I deliver? We can part ways right here, right now. Just give me the signal.
"Second thing: At your beck and call whenever you decide to break protocol, I’m not. Me and Ella, we had plans for today but I climbed out of bed, left my wife and kids on a Sunday morning. Left them clear on the other side of the country because a friend called me. Not a client, but a friend. You called me. I interrupted my life, hopped a cross-country flight with the guys, interrupted their lives—to bail your ass out of a situation that’s entirely of your making. And none of that seems to mean a damned thing to you—"
Wincing as his anger turned inward with each leveled charge, Logan interrupted with a guilt-laden olive branch that stopped well short of a full explanation. "—Sorry, man. I just needed…I just need…"
Blindsided by the abrupt three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn that had him thinking he’d just been zapped to an alternative universe, Sam stepped back with a sigh and braced an elbow on the bar. "Yeah? I’m all ears," he prompted, eyes wide and arms gesturing in question as the unfinished statement hung in the air.
A blank expression was the only response before Logan turned and wandered absently to the glass viewing wall overlooking the airfield.
Sam shook his head and rolled his eyes. Somebody remind me to check the calendar. There’s got to be a full moon happenin’ tonight.
Thirty minutes later, the boarding call for flight 873 to Miami sounded over the public address system.
Max and Kai, speaking in hushed tones, engaged in small talk while waiting for Logan to join them at the jetway entrance. In an effort to create breathing room between himself and Logan, Sam had pulled rank, reworking logistics at the last minute. Rather than endure a tense five hour flight with his temporary frienemy, he’d swapped assignments with Kai, appointing himself the auxiliary role in Brianna’s two-man detail.
Glancing down at the half-smoked cigarette he’d crushed out earlier, he berated himself for relapsing—even if for only a few hours—into the habit it’d taken years to kick. But, then again, he reasoned, it’d kept his hands busy while he’d struggled to not slug Logan. Thwarting the urge to finish what he’d started, he reached inside his shirt pocket, pulled out the menthol pack, and tossed it across the bar into the open trash bin on the other side.
That matter resolved, the quest to make sense of the nonsensical drew his attention back to Mr. and Mrs.
For the last ten minutes, he’d been sitting and watching their quirky goodbye scene unfold. Oddly enough, for two people who should’ve been cartwheeling at the prospect of returning to their individual pre-debauchery lives, the somber expressions that read otherwise reminded him of stoically-grieving funeral attendants.
He’d seen the intensity of the impromptu parting kiss that’d rattled them both and was more than a bit surprised at the feigned air of indifference that’d followed.
Logan’s dangling "I just need…"? What he’d witnessed was revealing enough to fill in the blanks. Sometimes a picture really was worth a thousand words.
If I had that kind of a connection and generated that much heat with a woman, I damn sure wouldn’t be puttin’ my ass on a plane and jettin’ out of town.
A hopeless romantic he may not have been but a staunch believer in "where there’s smoke there’s fire" he was and, in his opinion, it didn’t take six weeks of training at the local fire academy to spot the blaze. The physical attraction was strong—no doubt about it. But also clear was that whatever bond existed was rooted deeper than surface level.
The blowup and harsh words had centered more on execution than outcome. After meeting Brianna and witnessing firsthand the interaction between the two, he understood the attraction, even if the seemingly-in-denial principals were unbelievably slow on the uptake. But that still didn’t excuse, or justify, the multitude of risks taken. Shuffling through a lengthy list of bleak might-have and could-have outcomes, he said a silent prayer of thanks that a quickie wedding was all that’d transpired.
Blunt and unyielding wasn’t his usual style but, given the size and nature of the spill he’d been summoned to clean up, blunt and unyielding was exactly what the situation had called for. He was neither regretful or apologetic about his methodology.
As they approached, slowly ambling past him en route to the jetway, his ears perked up, picking up the tail end of their extended adieu.
"So…ummm…I guess this is it." Logan lifted his bag and anchored its strap on his shoulder. "Everything’ll be fine. I’ll see to it that the paperwork’s in your hands as soon as it’s drawn up. You sure you’re gonna be okay dealing with the press? It can be a—"
Brianna’s lips formed a smile that wavered noticeably before disappearing. "—Don’t have much of a choice now, do I?"
"If you need anything…anything at all—" He touched her arm for emphasis, letting his hand linger until she leveled her eyes with his.
—I know…I know. Got your number on speed dial."
"Bye, Bri."
She raised a hand to the stubble on his cheek. "Take care, Logan."
Scrunching inch-long dreadlocks between his fingers, Sam cradled his head in his hands and sighed. Bad move, man, he concluded for the second time that morning. A really bad move.
Copyright © Mary M., 2009.
