Target 84 (21 page)

“If your heart is broken, do you have a phantom heart?
”―
Damon Suede
I should call but I don’t want to be the one to break. Call me prideful or stubborn but I’ve bent until I snapped and this time I’d rather she bends a little first.

The last eight days have been a monotonous routine.

I drink. I read. I repeat. Not in that order always. I’m pathetic. Pining over something that was never truly mine but somehow Greta sets my soul ablaze. I burn just thinking about her.

I look for her everywhere but so far I haven’t seen her anywhere. It irritates me and relieves me simultaneously. What would I say? Would she even talk to me? I pushed too hard that night. I went too far. I let my anger get the best of me and I snapped at her. I gave her a reason to forget me.

“Ow!” I snap.

“Man up,” Sawyer grunts as he resumes his work. “By the way, where did you get this idea? It’s going to look sick when it’s finished.”

He’s referring to the tattoo I’m getting. The thought had come in a dream. In it I was struggling to stay above water. I was nothing more than an anchor sinking to the bottom of the ocean floor when a small bird swooped in, grabbing the chain and flying upwards, trying to pull me up. I broke the water’s surface and remembered the feeling of the sun beating down on me. Of the crisp air. All around me I’d felt Greta. I’d smelled her even.

“It was a dream,” I tell him.

“Weird. So, is the bird pulling the anchor up or is the anchor keeping the bird from flying? The way you have it laid out, man, it could be either. Like a constant struggle for power between the two. I like it.”

Sawyer is strangely an incredibly attentive man. After describing what I wanted to him, he’d drawn up the idea and it’s almost impossible to decipher whether the bird is free and helping the anchor or the anchor is its cage. It’s the power struggle of Greta and I depicted flawlessly. She is my freedom and my captor.

“I don't know,” I tell him, because I don’t know how our story ends. The spot he’s working on is directly over my ribs, under my arm. The needle vibrations are painful and can be felt at the opposite end of my ribcage. I close my eyes and focus on the machine like music playing. It’s loud and distracting. It keeps my mind from the pain. A sunburn being repeatedly scratched by nails raking over it. That’s about the level of pain right now. But this tattoo, the dream, it stuck like a broken record in my thoughts. I was compelled to have it drawn up, compelled to have a part of her with me forever, to feel the pain of her and see the beauty as well.

I decide to man up and call Greta when my appointment is over. If I break, I break. I just hope it’s not too late.

“Nothing burns like the cold.
”―
George R.R. Martin
I walk towards a bungalow-style house that has seen better days, carrying one duffel bag. Its dark green paint peeling, the house’s windows are covered in plastic and the roof has been patched with shingles in several different colors. The yard is mainly fallen pine needles and dirt, ringed by thick woods. The driveway disappears into trees; there is no sound of traffic and no sign of a road from here.

A sanctuary.

A refuge.

And for me, that’s exactly what it will be.

What would Bentley think of this place? I shove the thought away. I’m here to
not
think about him. Setting my bag down just inside the door, my chest heaves with guilt.
Guilt
for leaving Pepper behind.
Guilt
for leaving Allie while she heals from trauma.
Guilt
for leaving Bentley behind without a single word. Maybe Bentley was right, maybe I am a coward.

Thick layers of dust cover everything in sight and probably everything out of sight as well. The elderly man I’d paid to rent this place wasn’t lying when he said it hasn’t been used in ages. Pushing up my sleeves, I kick my bag to the corner and shut the door behind me. This cabin, if you could even call it that, will be my home for the foreseeable future.

I cashed out my accounts, moving them to different accounts that have no link to Ravenbrook because there will be no more deposits. My work phone was tossed in the garbage disposal. Shredded. I broke the lease on all of my apartments but the Christiansburg one, which I paid forward a year in rent to hold. I will have to return there at some point to pick up all my things before starting over somewhere new. I’m absent without leave. Rogue. A marked woman as soon as Dee catches wind.

Rummaging under the kitchen sink cabinet, I find a rag and cleaning solution. Running water is the only amenity the cabin offers. No electricity. No internet or cable. The wooden shed looked low on my way in. It’s warm now but the evenings will be chilly. After I clean I will need to cut more wood and start a fire.

I spray and wipe down everything.

I think of
him.

I chop wood. I stack wood.

I think of
him.

I think of Bentley.

His smell. His fingers.

His stupid dimple.

My lungs constrict. Why is this painful?

I inhale as deeply as I can and I scream until my vocal chords burn and my voice is raw.

*

The sun warms my face, the sounds of rustling leaves as the trees creak and sway in the wind are abundant. Nearby, a stream crawls its way across some rocks. A bird chirps. I pull another weed from the ground, the wild rose bushes pricking my fingers every so often as I try to get in around them.

I want to cry, but crying never changes anything. I feel like screaming at the sky and smashing the windows, like tearing down a brick wall with my bare hands. I feel like ripping the head off roses one by one, crushing their beauty in my fists. When I woke this morning, the things I dreamt about him made me blush. My bitter pill I swallow is the silence that I keep, it is poisoning me day by day.

I plod into the cabin, fingers dripping blood from the thorns of roses. Holding them over the sink, I watch as one drop of blood after another falls from them into the water, diffusing in clouds at the center of widening rings. Missing him makes me burn from the inside out. My chest has become an incinerator. My heart is fueling it.

It's been nearly a month and I still
feel
him as if he’s physically around. It’s cruel. My body and mind ache for him.

“ANYTHING will burn with enough gasoline and dynamite.
”―
Robert A. Heinlein
I don’t know why I’m always surprised at how much paperwork is generated by a crime. Contact reports, witness statements, detective activity reports, financial workups, preliminary evidence reports. I’m already knee-deep in paperwork and even as I pour over documents, fellow agents are breezing through the office to drop even more reports on the table. I try to focus on it.

She infiltrates my thoughts when I least expect it.

A month of the silent treatment has my stomach knotted. I can’t focus on work. I can’t focus on anything. I call her every day. I leave a voicemail every day until the mailbox alerts me it is full. I text. No response. Dark and dangerous like a secret that gets whispered in a hush, I feel weakened by the mere thought of her. I want her more by the minute. It’s time to end this game before I go mad.

“Hello?”

“Hey Pepper,” I greet.

“Bentley?” I can hear the smile in her voice.

“Yeah,” I answer.

“Oh hey, what’s up?”

“This is weird but, do you know how I can get a hold of Greta?” I ask. She sighs loudly.

“No.”

I wait a beat for her explanation. None comes.

“That’s it? No?” I ask.

“She’s gone, Bentley. I don’t understand it but...I haven’t heard from her since she left.”

“Gone,” I state.

“Bent?”

“I’m here,” I say.

“You guys had something, didn’t you?” she asks.

“I guess, but maybe not. Maybe I had something,” I say.

“No. It wasn’t one sided. She didn’t tell me anything but I know she felt
something
. I could sense it. I don’t think she’s being honest with herself.”

“What makes you say that?” I ask.

“She sounded more like she was saying goodbye than leaving for an extended vacation. Like she was running.”

“Why would she leave?” I ask.

“Why would she stay? She’s Greta. Aloof. Maybe you scared her off.”

“Should I find her?” I question.

“Do you want to?”

I pause, thinking about Pepper’s question.

“That’s a yes if I ever heard one. Bring her home, Bentley,” she says before disconnecting our call. I pull the phone from my ear and stare at it like it bit me.

Setting the phone down, I open the Google browser at my desk and search the County Registry of Deeds for Christiansburg, looking for the record owners of Greta’s building.

“I am not the moon orbiting around your planet; I am the sun that will burn through your frozen mind.
”―
Shannon L. Alder
I have survived sixty-two days without him. I feel as though I am lying in the desert under a scorching sun waiting for the rain to come, yet all I end up with is burn.

I read. I clean. I weed. I cook. I chop wood. I hike.

He is always present with me...my everything: thoughts, desires, and needs. I’m changing, giving into emotion. It’s painful to morph from black and white to full color.

Why did I do this? This time away is breaking me. I am not the same. I’m becoming someone new. Like a caterpillar to a butterfly or maybe like being born.

It’s chilly up here on the mountain. I sit next to the fire in the evenings to keep warm. The leaves are changing, rapidly saturating the view with crimsons and fiery oranges. I pruned all the rose bushes. I pulled off the blossoms one by one in preparation for winter.

“I would like to burn them to ground and stand on their ashes.
”―
M.F. Moonzajer
Seventy days and I can feel her as if she lies next to me in bed. I am so close to finding my little bird. She thinks she has taken flight but all she has done is cage herself. That cage will be my freedom.

Once I find her, all will be right. She soothes a part of my being that never admitted to being chaffed. There is only before Greta, there can be no after. There will just be before and
now.

I burn for her.

My search has led me closer but I haven't reached her yet.

“You...Watch and burn...
”―
Jasmina Mednol
uč
anin
I glance out one of the cabin’s small windows, its shutters open to the daylight. Though the sun is bright overhead, the telltale signs of rapidly approaching winter are obvious, like the frost coating the branches and leaves each morning.

I sit and sip my coffee, watching the deer poke around the yard. I like the silence here. It’s different from Christiansburg. There is almost always a breeze or critters making the space full of sound. The silence here exists in me.

There is no one to talk to so I don’t talk. I did at first. I walked around fixing up the cabin, chopping wood, cooking, and talked to myself non-stop. I bitched. I moaned. No one said a damn thing back. I owned up to myself. I took ownership of my being, maybe for the first time ever. Then I stopped talking to myself. I simply listened to life and felt.

The rest of the world, with its guilt, intrusions, injustices, and memories, falls away here, as if nothing more than the memory of a nightmare. Trading modern conveniences for this peace of mind has been a small price to pay for my sanity.

Over the last two months I’ve let myself feel my anger. I’ve accepted my loneliness. I want my life to mean something and it seems the only way that may happen is if I figure out what to do with it. I’ve read stacks of books. Epic love stories and heartbreaking novels about second chances. Every time I scoff at some notion the words I’m reading offer, I stop to examine
why
I’m so instantly put off by the idea. I find it odd that I’m so drawn to love stories yet I shy away from the thought of having that kind of love for myself.

How fucked up am I really?

I think of Bentley regularly but it doesn’t make me want to scream anymore. I don’t feel frustrated and irritated about missing his presence. I simply let myself feel it. It makes me sad that I pushed away probably the only person who might have had a shot at giving me what I need
and
understanding me throughout the process but I accept that I made that choice. I made it for him too. I left no room for a chance. Do his walls come down when he thinks of me too? I can’t know. He started, like a pinprick in my heart, and I dance the edge of sanity every time I let my thoughts of him take over. He holds my heart captive from afar.

Resting my head on my arm, I sprawl out in front of the wood stove and let the heat lull me to sleep.

“Controlled fear can’t be done quickly. A maintained, steady increase in the amount of fear you drive into someone will give you wondrous results,” Mac, our interrogation teacher, says and claps his hands together excitedly. His favorite discussions always border on the psychological aspects of interrogation. “Freedom is one of the dearest things to people. You can exploit this fact. We know that by scaring people you can make them give up their freedom, information, or loved ones. In reality a person's freedom is not for another person to give, but those who are scared for their life are, as a rule of thumb, always willing sacrifice something or somebody.” He waves his hands around enthusiastically. “Moving on! Let’s talk about Enhanced interrogation and how it correlates with controlled fear.” I glance over at Twenty-eight and smirk. So far, we’re the top two physically in the school.

The lowest numbers are now approaching graduation. Twenty-eight is one of them. I have funny feelings about him. He’s tall, broad, and ripped. My body reacts to him. I know they want us emotionless. They work with the girls harder than the boys on this particular issue. For the last four years they’ve trained me to
not
feel, so to have my body become aware of a person is strange. I’m not sure what to do with it. There is camaraderie between Twenty-eight and I, though, because we’re the top two at everything. Marksmanship, physical combat, interrogation tactics, archery, mechanical aptitude, you name it, we excel at it. Still, I don't know what that means as far as feeling drawn to him.

Mr. Marx says if you hesitate, if you’re afraid to harm the innocent, it would cost you everyone you loved. It would leave you with nothing. Leave you a ghost, cold and dead inside. Dead but still standing. However, if you had no one to lose, if you were detached, you could be efficient. Like a machine. Fearing nothing. I turn away from Twenty-eight’s eyes.

The dream startles me awake.
If you had no one to lose, if you were detached, you could be efficient.
I push my fists into my eyes to relieve the tension building. Efficient. No one to lose. Alone. All things I am supposed to be. All things I essentially am now.

The rage that builds each passing day inside me at the thought of Ravenbrook, as I examine all my pathetic views on relationships, love, and life is overwhelming. It festers deep in my gut. It’s a simmer, slowly rolling up to a full boil. The more I let myself shine through, the more I realize just how
conditioned
I was by them. Before I ever had a chance to form my own opinion, they formed it for me.

I am a monster living among angels but no one can take my soul away. After all this is over I will redeem my actions. I will walk among those angels, fallen down on red-stained, leaden wings, torn apart.

They stole
everything.