In Between Dreams (7 page)

“Stop it!” Bailey begged, her voice cracking from the nerves. She hated sounding weak, knowing the encounter was serious. However, Sam had Daniel unable to fight back without causing real damage to his arm. Daniel’s head dropped, knowing he had allowed his emotions to make him vulnerable. Sam could take care of himself, and had he not been coming off a bender, Daniel wouldn’t have let Sam get the advantage.

Sam looked at Bailey and shook his head for her to stop, but she couldn’t. She refused to sit idly by while Daniel and Sam got into an actual physical fight. “Please, Sam, let him go. This has gotten out of hand.”

“Danny?” They all heard the voice at the same time. Daniel and Sam looked toward the bedroom door, which was behind them. Halene was
closing the door quietly, and she looked around the room with her eyebrows together and her head tilted. “Sammy? What’s going on? Do you really need to be doing this with the client already freaking out? This is embarrassing!”

Every person in that room felt the constant need to protect Halene. None of them wanted to fight in front of her or tell her they were having a spat. They wanted to shield her. A lot of the reason for this had to do with her age. She was younger and still had so much innocence surrounding her, and they wanted to keep that for her. Too many young people lose their innocence too young. She was a valuable part of the group, but the parental need to protect her was always there. They were her guardians during these missions, and it was important to keep her safe.

Daniel would rather get punched in the face than let her see him like that. Sam relaxed his grip on Daniel’s arm and allowed him to gain his balance. He reached over to help Daniel up. Daniel pushed his helpful hands away. “Back off, mate. I’m okay.” Daniel was clearly embarrassed to have Halene see him on the floor. He was equally mortified Sam was the person who put him in the position. He made a mental commitment to himself to never let it happen again.

“We’re joking around,” Sam finally said. “Bailey was all nervous ’cause she thought we were serious. Daniel was showing me a new move.”

Halene was apprehensive as she looked around the room. Finally her eyes fell on Bailey. Bailey broke eye contact and looked at her feet. “Sam, come with me. I need to meet someone in the lobby so we can get Mei a fake ID,” Halene said, and waved him toward her.

“Go on,” Daniel urged, rubbing his shoulder with his left hand. Sam walked toward the door silently. Sam glanced back at Daniel once Halene was out the door. Daniel raised his right hand, quickly flipping him off. Bailey shook her head and looked away.

Bailey started to come down from the rush of adrenaline. She took a breath and sat back down. Daniel sat next to her, and she glared at him openly now that Halene was out of the room.

“What was that about, Daniel?” she whispered to him, her eyes asking for answers. He laughed her off. “I’m serious,” she said.

Daniel mocked her serious look back at her. “Stooooop,” she whined, and swatted at him. As she hit him, she realized Sam had been right. She did act like a child around Daniel. “Come on,” she stated again, straightening herself up and waiting for an answer.

“He gets under my skin, always has,” Daniel explained in the relaxed way he always acted. He never gave a full explanation for anything.

“So you were going to jeopardize the mission, because you don’t really like him?” she said, looking at him disapprovingly. “You’re both so crazy.”

“I’m not. He’s the one who literally got in my face.” Daniel feigned innocence in his expression while pointing his good hand at his chest. Bailey pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows to show that she was holding her ground.

“And you couldn’t let it go?” she shot back.

Daniel wiped his hand over his face in an exaggerated way before looking at Bailey with a smirk. “You remember what Rodney would always say to us when you and I would bicker?”

“‘Just make out already’?” Bailey said. “He was ridiculous.”

“No,” Daniel shook his head. “He was smart, smarter than he ever got credit for,” he told her with a raised eyebrow, and she looked at him with disfavor.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Bailey wondered aloud.

“I’m telling you, you and I bicker all the time. It’s not because we don’t like each other. It’s because of something else. There’s more to it than the fighting. It’s what we do.” Daniel’s words confused Bailey, his soft side beginning to come out after such a horrible confrontation.

“So you’re saying you and Sam want to kill each other, because you want to make out?” she offered jokingly.

Daniel bumped his shoulder to hers, which made her look up. Their eyes met again. “I’m saying things aren’t always what they appear to be.”

“Wha—”

“I’m saying the reason Sam and I fight isn’t always because of what we’re fighting about. We’re always fighting over the same thing. Always,” Daniel said with a shrug. “You’ll figure it out eventually.”

Bailey scrunched up her face in confusion before taking her first guess: “Power?”

“You know what it is. You aren’t thinking about it hard enough,” Daniel said, and looked upward, thoughtful. “Or you’re afraid to say it out loud,” he mused with his usual smug look. The look that said, “I know something you don’t know.”

Bailey opened her mouth to argue but closed it quickly. Daniel had finished a large talk about how everything has a different meaning. She didn’t want him to look into anything she said. She really wasn’t in the mood to play games.

Bailey knew in her heart what Daniel was referring to. She knew what he was trying to say. The problem was, she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to be aware. Ignorance was bliss.

Bailey leaned on her hand to the opposite side of where Daniel was sitting and closed her eyes for a minute, thinking, remembering.

Bailey had recently turned eighteen when one of their “missions” took the group to a small town near Montgomery, Alabama, called Fitzpatrick. It was a town where people who didn’t like neighbors loved to go. The rural farmhouses were miles apart in some areas. The house where they stayed was much too small for the three of them. So Bailey often went outside to get some air.

They were at a house that was being foreclosed due to the husband’s gambling problem. The wife was pregnant and emotionally spent because of her husband’s disappearance for nights on end. He would come back angry or remorseful and without a dime to his name. Bailey sat on the porch and fanned herself with a notebook as she looked down the long dirt driveway, hoping the husband, Finn McPhee, would drive up the driveway soon. They’d been in Fitzpatrick for a while and had yet to talk to Finn about his gambling or how they were going to get the family out of this mess.

Bailey chewed on her lip as she waited. She didn’t want the couple to get kicked out of their house. She didn’t want to be there, but more than that she wanted this mission to have a happy ending. Not all missions did. She realized her hope was unrealistic.

Daniel came out of the house and wiped the sweat from his furrowed forehead. This was before Daniel started graying. His hair was jet-black, and he was pretty tan for the middle of February.

“Why are you so tan? It’s winter,” Bailey asked.

“I’m Australian. Are you dumb or something?” he said before shaking his head at her. “Mrs. McPhee is making lemonade for us,” he said with a shrug. “I thought people in the south were all about homemade? I don’t get her obsession with the powder crap.”

Daniel always had something to say about everything. He was overly decisive, and he couldn’t relax. He was either yelling about how he loved or hated something. It was never in between. He was a vocal extremist.

“Maybe she likes it,” Bailey offered. “Or maybe she doesn’t know how to make it homemade.”

Daniel let a grunt escape his lip. “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Why do you always have to defend perfect strangers?”

Bailey’s face flushed with anger before she responded, “You’re joking, right? Lilly McPhee is a perfect stranger? The same woman who has opened her home to us and is currently making us lemonade is a perfect stranger?
We’re
the strangers, Daniel! This is her town, her home.”

“Not for much longer,” Daniel said matter-of-factly.

Bailey glared at Daniel so hard he thought she might bore a hole through his skull. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Daniel chuckled and tugged at Bailey’s arm for her calm down. “Come on, Bales.”

Bailey rolled her eyes in an exaggerated motion. “Bales?” she scoffed. “Like as in ‘bales of hay’? That is not my nickname. Kill that one right now before it grows.”

His smile faded, and he frowned at Bailey theatrically. “I happen to like it, Bales.” He was egging her on at this point.

“You need to be nicer.” She turned away from Daniel, looking down the road again.

“You need to stop being so serious all the time,” Daniel spit back. He opened his mouth to speak again, but the screen door opened and Lilly walked out with a pitcher of lemonade and a southern smile.

Lilly was a chubby bottle blonde with a pregnant belly. Her hair was pulled into a lazy ponytail, and she was wearing a long yellow sleeveless sundress with a white apron over it. Lilly’s cheeks were rosy from the heat. Her eyes were a bright blue, and she always made eye contact with whomever she was talking to. She had a bit of sweat forming on her forehead from the heat. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand after setting down the lemonade.

“Maybe y’all can keep your hollarin’ down,” she said sweetly, with no hint of sarcasm in her words. “It’s gon’ be getting dark, and these good folks here aren’t used to voices like yours. They’d think we’re getting robbed or somethin’ terrible. I wouldn’t want to disturb the Johnsons down the road.” She pointed to a trailer a ways down Fitzpatrick Road. Bailey could barely see the actual trailer, because it was guarded by trees. “They have a two-year-old who’s been having the worst time gettin’ to sleep,” she said. She took a seat next to Bailey and touched her arm softly. Lilly liked to touch people when she talked to them, as if to involve them in what she was saying.

“Mrs. Johnson says that baby Albert cries for his daddy. But his daddy is in Montgomery at the factory. Someone has to provide for them. Poor Mrs. Johnson doesn’t know a lick about anything but tending to babies. She dropped out of high school to watch her mama’s babies and basically raised them up.”

The way Lilly spoke showed that everyone and everything was important to her. She was the exact opposite of Daniel. She cared about everyone in Fitzpatrick. Even Bailey, Daniel, and Rodney.

Rodney walked through the screen door with four newly washed glasses, filled to the brim with ice and sliced lemons. “I’m sorry about these two, Mrs. McPhee,” he told her as he passed around a glass to each person. “They haven’t mastered the skill set of subtle flirting.”

Lilly laughed so hard her belly jiggled, and she grabbed it. Even with her emotional pain and the drama surrounding her husband, she still found a way to laugh through it. “It’s quite all right, Rodney, darlin’. I was there once. Luckily Finn didn’t care if I was subtle about it or not.” She was beaming at Daniel.

Bailey followed Lilly’s gaze and noticed Daniel’s expression. It was thoughtful, almost respectful. Bailey took a mental picture of this face, because she was quite aware she’d never see it again.

“Bales!”

Bailey jumped from her dreamlike state back into the Chinese hotel.

“Ew,”
she said before picking up a pillow and throwing it at his head, “You know I hate that nickname.” She hadn’t noticed that Halene and Sam had come back. She had been in a deep daze, traveling back to a time when Rodney was still with them. She missed him. She missed him so much it sometimes hurt her heart. Like there was a hole in her chest, a missing piece that disappeared without warning.

Halene giggled. “Bales,” she said with her thick southern accent filling the room, reminding Bailey even more of Lilly McPhee. “I like it.”

Sam nudged Halene to get her to stop chuckling. “If you keep calling her that, she’s going to be mad.”

“I’ve seen it, and it’s not pretty,” Daniel added.

Bailey sighed loudly and gave Sam and Daniel a look. She looked at Daniel with her eyebrow raised. “What was so important it was worth risking your life by calling me
that
?” she couldn’t shake the picture of bales of hay being passed around a farm.

Halene waved Bailey over to the table she was sitting at in the corner of the room. “We’ve got the order for Mei’s ID in the works.”

“How long is it going to take?” Bailey asked through a tired yawn.

“The man said it would take twelve hours,” Sam answered. “We’ll get it right before the excursion bus leaves tomorrow morning.”

Daniel nodded to Halene. “I gotta hand it to you, boss. Sounds like you thought of everything.” Daniel fondness of Halene was apparent in his voice and the way that he patted her shoulder lightly. As if saying “atta, girl.”

Halene gave Daniel a proud look, and for a moment, everything seemed okay. Everything was calm. It was nice when everyone worked together. Bailey was relieved as she walked over to the table to sit with the group and knew this mission would be over soon.

five.

T
hey went over the plan once again. Sam and Halene seemed to have it all figured out. Sam had purchased the tourist excursion tickets. Bailey’s job was to come up with a disguise for Mei to fool the Triad spotters who would certainly be around every corner. Daniel was going to be the “cooler” to keep the aura around Mei as calm as possible. They were fourteen hours away from getting on a high-speed train that would quickly move the team outside of Hong Kong. The hope was since they would be in the middle of a large group of foreign tourists, Mei could simply blend into the crowd. Once they got outside of Hong Kong, they would be able to find an alternative to using the Hong Kong airport and get out of the country. It would take a little longer than jumping on a plane, but it was the perfect cover. Why would someone from China go on a Chinese excursion with a group of Europeans and Americans? Bailey had to hand it to Halene; she had devised a brilliant plan.