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For an organization with a core group who claimed to be family, there were sure a lack of homey, heartwarming, familial moments to speak of. When James woke up after surgery, patched up from his gunshot wound and hopped up on painkillers, he’d been surrounded by Teresa and her so-called family, pitchforks already grazing his skin. Or maybe that had been a family-bonding activity after all—questioning his every move and motive, clarifying how he’d found them and managed to show up bleeding on their doorstep, wondering if he had any ghost abilities.
It seemed counterintuitive to James. They knew of his time in the army and with Camila. He found Teresa in Malta. They were well aware of the security and armory at his house in Phoenix. He showed up, after a year of radio silence, because he had to. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to them. The biggest surprise should have been that they hadn’t seen an attack coming until he tipped them off on it.
But their family wasn’t…it wasn’t the quintessential family gathered around the tree on Christmas morning. There were no jokes being thrown around and few pleasantries exchanged. Tony’s self-portrait and the candles lit in his memory—a constant reminder of the 16-year-old who died by a car bomb meant for Teresa—those were reminders enough that they were laughing in the face of death every time they left the mansion and returned at the end of the day.
If James was being honest, it was for the better no one was making an effort to keep up appearances, to play the charade. It wasn’t Mary J. Blige’s version of a family affair. No cookouts, no movie nights, no dinners in the formal dining room. Kelly Anne was probably the last person who’d said something even remotely nice to James without later leveraging it to get him to use the dirty tricks he had up his sleeve. She and Pote always retreated to their wing of the house by midnight, not to be heard from until the sun was up. And Teresa? She wanted nothing to do with James. No, that wasn’t true. The way her wishes were only fulfilled if James cleaned up the messes she left in her wake left him feeling defenseless to her frigid demeanor.
James nearly had frostbite.
At least the middle of the night snacking James did was solace and uninterrupted. A few grapes, some rice pudding, or a handful of Zapp’s chips—all could be enjoyed at the island counter at 4 AM without judgement, without worrying if someone had set out to end his life at that exact moment. Without worrying he had to focus on taking someone’s life at that exact moment.
“Well I’ll be damned,” a voice interrupted the solace.
The mansion didn’t have an open concept floor plan, but the kitchen was in a centralized location, multiple open thresholds leading into it from different parts of the house.
It gave the last member of Teresa’s family the chance to impede on James’ reprieve. It was the family member who came and went at will. The one who’d outfitted James in yellow and put a gun to his head, but hadn’t been bold enough to pull the trigger.
(At the very least the yellow shirt had been silk.)
George.
“Jack Ryan snacking after midnight?” George quipped. “Do you have any idea the kind of wrench that will throw into your diet and exercise plan?”
“Seriously, Jack Ryan?” James scowled. “Your references need work, George.”
George had first dropped the nickname when he declared they’d be going on a field trip, right after dropping the yellow shirt in James’ lap. James thought it was a bit on the nose compared to some of his other material.
“And yet you know exactly why I called you that,” George shot back.
“I’m surprised you even know how to navigate away from the E! Network on a TV menu,” James said flatly.
A smile began tugging at George’s lips, until it morphed into a full-on grin. “Now there’s the humorless Giant Peach I know. How you holdin’ up?”
“I’m cornered in a kitchen with you at 4 AM,” James sneered. “How do you think I am?”
The oversized island took up much of the space in the kitchen. James was standing in the corner between the island counter and the refrigerator.
“Aw, come on now,” George laughed. He laughed. The thing about George was that the further he frustrated someone, the more he was pleased with himself. “You ain’t still mad about the Warehouse District, are you?”
James’ response was a glare and George snickered, tickled pink by James’ discontent.
“I’d apologize,” George went on with a shrug, joining James at the island, “but you and I both know I wouldn’t mean it so…”
So get over it, was the unfinished implication. James had gotten a lot of that lately, been talked down to, been disrespected, been basically reduced to nothing more than a lowly intern—qualified to set the building on fire but not to have a PIN code to make photocopies. If anything, James’ predicament gave weight to George’s credibility as a member of Teresa’s family. Bad judgement calls and underdeveloped tactics apparently ran in the family.
James didn’t know George had become a full-fledged yet part-time member of Teresa’s family. He thought George would have been long gone, off to permanent vacation without guns but with plenty of ganja, after the devastating loss of Bilal. Because he’d been George’s full-time family. Still, James knew George—knew his modus operandi. James and Teresa met George on the same day. A few weeks ago in the Warehouse District wasn’t even the first time George had threatened James’ life—there’d been the incident of a dagger against his spleen and another with a gold-plated gun to the face. James hadn’t had to point and tell George to aim right between the eyes that time.
James sighed. “I’d expect no less from you, George.”
George reached for the pack of Raisinets James was working on and poured them in his mouth, straight from the box.
“Well since we’re exchanging pleasantries…” George said around a mouthful of the chocolate-covered raisins, ignoring the look of disgust James gave him, “you wouldn’t have come here if you really valued your life. You know damn well we’re into something more dangerous here than whatever double-o-seven bullshit you were doing before.”
“You’re not off by much,” James responded somberly. “I’m really starting to question it.”
As he placed the box of Raisinets down on the island counter back in front of James, George cleared his throat. “So what are you still doing here, you dipstick?”
George had a penchant for being direct, always saying things plainly, voicing his opinions boisterously whether they were valid or not. But his words came to James like a loaded question.
Logic and rationality had begun to elude James. He’d been hurt and betrayed more in the last week by the only person whose moral high ground he’d ever accepted than in the last year. The itch in his bones and the clever voice in his head—the one that was still sane—were already telling him to stop walking on fences, to leave and never look back. It was the stupid weight in his chest telling him he still had unfinished business, telling him not all hope was lost and he could still figure out a way, telling him to wait more.
It would probably serve James better if someone ripped the useless weight of his heart out of his chest. If only his ribs would part ways and allow it.
After a pause to consider George’s question thoughtfully, James answered, “She told me she wanted me to stay.”
Teresa being the gravity that made sure their feet never left the ground, the reason for everything they were doing, no further explanation was needed.
George chuckled. “Let me guess. You got a glimpse of the new her up close and she ain’t lil’ ol’ Principessa no more. She bust your chops and break your heart right down the middle into symmetry, Baby Chapo?”
James frowned, sliding the destroyed box of Raisinets back across the counter toward George. He didn’t know where to begin—the bad table manners a five-year-old would put to shame, the total lack of respect for the heart’s asymmetric physiology, or equating Teresa’s attitude as of late to no more than teasing.
“Selling out an ally…framing and killing someone,” James muttered. “Is playing God what you’d call busting chops these days?”
George snapped his fingers and pointed at James. “See, there’s your problem. You’re trying too hard. You don’t like Teresa’s orders? Don’t fucking do them. Don’t carry them out.”
“Like that’d go over well.”
“Why do you care?” George challenged. “Don’t waste your time. Who you got to impress anyway? Let her get bored of you.”
Shit.
The second you become valuable to her—the second she takes an interest in you—it’s gonna be harder for you to get out. So be careful.
James grimaced to himself, shaking his head, rubbing his fingers over the pads of his thumbs on both hands. George wasn’t wrong. It would serve him well to take some of his own advice.
“I told her once, in the beginning, she should let Camila get bored of her if she wanted to be able to walk away from this life,” James revealed sadly and gestured around the room. “Probably should have guessed she’d never take my word for it and we’d end up here anyway.”
“Now don’t you sit there and give me those dejected puppy eyes, Roger Moore!” George rolled his eyes and picked up an unopened bottle of Siete Gotas tequila from the center of the island. “When she figured out about Lucien, about the raid on the delivery truck and the warehouse, she switched out the product. That ring a bell to you? Care to remind me where she might’ve learned that trick from?”
James sniffed and swallowed the air.
Was it with intent or merely irony Teresa made a call back to something he’d done—switching out the coke with something decidedly not incriminating—to circumvent an FBI raid at the same time he was stuck in a pantry in the French Quarter, lying in wait on her orders? And what he’d done back then, with El Santo’s product, was something they’d never seen eye to eye on. Teresa met with James before she went on the run, said she was out, done with the business, leaving for good—so when she turned up at the train depot with a street gang to collect, he’d already switched out the product, replicated the logo of El Santo’s cult on every last bag. At the time, maybe for lack of creativity, he thought leaving her without a foothold in the business would help her. He thought it could be the last push to set her free. She’d just seen it as betrayal.
“She wanted you to stay,” George spoke in reminder. “There must be some part of her that knows she needs you.”
“The only parts of myself she needs are the ones I don’t like.” James shook his head. “She only needs my capability for destruction.”
James was pretty sure he and Teresa mirrored each other, but only the past versions of themselves.
It had gotten dire. It was unimpressive, how Teresa had embraced cruelty, wrapped it around herself like a warm blanket for comfort. And when she asked him you have a problem with it now? about sending him to kill someone, without regard for anyone’s humanity—not his, not her own, and certainly not Captain Gamble’s—James felt the mirror shatter on his reflection. It was like an out of body experience, him in pieces on the ground, while Teresa walked barefoot through the broken glass without gaining a single cut.
She knew about Suzie, about how that experience had broken him. She knew going back to work for Devon had cost James a part of his soul and why he did it anyway—because he believed his proficiency for cruelty was for her cause of better. Instead, there was only her denial of the better parts of herself. She threw it in his face, used that rhetorical question to tell him his opinion was moot and his feelings were irrelevant. Teresa had become practically cartoonish. James never could have dreamed up a version of Teresa so callous.
“Oh, God damn it,” George sighed with exasperation. “Listen, Jameson—can I call you Jameson?”
“No.”
“Jameson,” George stuck with the misnomer, a twinkle in his blue eyes. “I’ma let you in on a secret I’m sure no one had told you, which I will vehemently deny if you ever bring it up, by the way. So listen carefully. When you showed up here, bleeding to death, she was out of her mind worried about you. Just because it’s her and you’re you. Had nothing to do with you being a killing machine.”
James’ jaw clenched.
George really wasn’t improving James’ impression of dressed-in-white Teresa. It was nice to hear she didn’t want him to die, but it wasn’t exactly surprising either. The history between Teresa and James was full of instances of coming to the aid of one another for the very reason of preventing death. It didn’t change who she’d become, how she could justify her actions and be very selective about her humanity. It didn’t change the way she didn’t seem to care if she’d lost his reverence for good, as long as he served his purpose. A killing machine.
“I don’t know what’s more pathetic,” James scrubbed his hand over his face, “me getting my chops busted, according to your very inaccurate definition, or talking to you about it when a few weeks ago you were ready to blow my brains out.”
“You’re a little bitch either way,” George smirked. “Now hand me that pen.”
With his eyes, James followed the direction George pointed at. There was a short stack of papers on the opposite corner of the island—some maps of how cartel territory was carved up in Miami, the very reason George was present and where he was headed next. There was a Sharpie on top.
George had swiped the box of Raisinets off the counter once more and emptied the remaining contents into his mouth by the time James walked over to grab the permanent marker and returned. James held the marker out to George, regarding him quizzically.
George popped the cap off and laid the face of the candy box down on the table. He leaned down over the counter as he began scribbling something onto the cardboard.
“So Teresa isn’t who she was before, and she’s not who you thought she’d be. Big deal,” George said nonchalantly as he wrote, once again talking while he chewed. “If you’re really put off by who she is right now, well, she’s got miles to go. She’s not in her final form.”
James would expect no less than George defending Teresa to the death with unwavering loyalty. George had always been enamored by Teresa’s gutsy attitude and enterprising moves.
When he was done writing, George dropped the empty box of Raisinets down on the quartz countertop in front of James, the smell of drying Sharpie still wafting in the air.
“What’s this?” James asked, angling the box toward himself to read what George jotted down.
“One of the safe houses on one of the cays in Belize. Those are the coordinates. Memorize them.” George re-capped the marker and tapped it twice against his temple. “If it’s too much, if you can’t be here anymore, or if our fearless leader kicks you to the curb, you can go there. You show up, the staff will know what to do. They’ll set you up real nice.”
“Jeez, George.” James was a little dumbfounded. “I didn’t think you liked me all that much.”
“The hell you talking about? You’re my favorite Kardashian, Ken.” George wiggled his eyebrows. “And I don’t even recall you appearing on the E! Network.”
A slight laugh made its way to the surface from James’ throat. “Thanks. I appreciate it. Though…if things go south, I’m not sure Teresa will appreciate my presence in one of her safe houses.”
“Hey, go there or don’t. It’s up to you. I’m sure you’ve got your own place all figured out for a rainy day,” George shrugged. “The place Teresa’s got picked out, it’s on a different cay. You wouldn’t even see her. Not The Wookie either.”
“That’s…” James cracked a smile. “That’s thoughtful.”
“Damn right,” George boasted. “So don’t say I never did nothing for you, you hear?”
“What’s going on?”
Two sets of eyes looked over in the direction of the back threshold, where Teresa had just emerged from, hair tied back and bleary-eyed.
“T-rex!” George greeted warmly. “What up, darlin’?”
“George…” Teresa squinted against the light. “You decided to get here in the middle of the night?”
“You said show up whenever,” George reminded her. “We got business to discuss, remember? Before I head down to Miami?”
Teresa and James locked eyes for a second before they both looked away, without acknowledging one another. James didn’t know if Teresa had caught the tail end of his conversation with George, but the mutual lack of acknowledgement was enough for James to know he and Teresa would both appreciate not being around each other for at least the next few hours. James blinked at the coordinates in front of him, committing them to memory, because it was nice to have options.
Teresa sighed. “Yeah, I remember.”
It was a Boaz problem—the reason George had stopped by. Anything to do with Boaz meant a headache (if not a head in a box) and spurned outward breathing with displeasure.
“The Giant Peach and I were just about to have a shot of tequila.” George picked up the bottle from the island counter and waved it around. “Care to join?”
Teresa must’ve still been groggy, James noted, because she didn’t question why there weren’t already shot glasses out on the island if they had a drinking plan all along. “At 4:30 in the morning? Really?”
“That’s last call somewhere, ain’t it?” George chuckled. “You know me, baby girl—I’m here for a good time, not a long time.”
James slid the empty box off the table and crushed it in his fist. He had the coordinates memorized, but he’d have to burn the evidence the next time he went outside to smoke. He knew firsthand coordinates to far off secret destinations were given on a need-to-know basis and couldn’t be thrown haphazardly into the recycling bin.
“Well, I couldn’t sleep,” Teresa shook her head, “it’s why I came out here. But I don’t think my stomach is ready for a shot just yet. I was thinking more along the lines of champurrado.”
“You know, I…” James trailed off when George and Teresa looked at him. “I think I’m out, too, George. Maybe next time. I’ll leave you two to talk.”
George’s eyes flitted back and forth between Teresa and James. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from commenting on the forlorn looks on their faces that had a lot to do with each other. “Fine, fine, party of one it is.”
He walked over to the cabinet where he knew the shot glasses would be. James turned to the side when he walked past Teresa, so there would be space maintained between them and he wouldn’t accidentally brush up against her. She said nothing to him as he went.
“Hey, James,” George called out right before James stepped under the threshold.
James turned around, more out of surprise than anything else. He was pretty sure it was the first time George had ever addressed him by his name.
“Yeah?”
“I lied,” George conceded. “I am sorry about the whole Warehouse District gun in your face Hawaiian shirt thing. But I stand by my words – yellow is your color.”
Teresa raised an eyebrow, intrigued by the very specific description George spewed out.
James nodded, shoving the box he was carrying into his back pocket. “Take care in Miami, George.”
In the silence of the hallway, the sound of the voices in the kitchen carried even as James was walking away, and he heard Teresa ask George about the offensive yellow shirt.