Apache Strike Force: A Spotless Novella Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Author’s note

  1 - The Eye of Simon

  2 - The Labels

  3 - Parasitosis

  4 - Predator

  5 - Apocalypse Now

  6 - The Pigeons

  7 - Living a Lie

  8 - House Rules

  9 - The Boyfriend

  10 - Rapt

  Acknowledgments

  About The Author

  Other Books in The Series

  This book is dedicated to you, dear reader. Take this modest offering of pointless fluff as a token of my gratitude.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE:

  Most quotes introducing this book’s chapters are fictional. I am grateful, however, to Alan Tyers and Diana Gabaldon for providing me with two very real excerpts of their work. Because, yes, someone out there made the decision to write a book about Victorian helicopter parenting. Not all heroes wear capes, Mr. Tyers, but I'm sure you do.

  ONE

  THE EYE OF SIMON

  “The aircraft ripped through the night air as he went full throttle. Whoever fucking dared to hurt Chanterelle better get ready to fucking die.”

  —Samara Frost, SEALcopter #1 – Blades of Love

  That phone call went all sorts of wrong. Although, in retrospect, I’m not sure what I expected: I had been missing for eight months, possibly dead to all who loved me, and one fine morning in December, I just called my dad out of the blue. It was 7:00 a.m. in New York, he hadn’t even had breakfast yet, and there I was, sobbing at the other end of the line, struggling to form words. I was in Paris; I was okay; I wanted to come home to him.

  “Island, Island, honey, is that you? Oh God, are you okay? Are you wounded? What happened? Is there someone with you? What the hell happened?”

  I had no intelligible answer to my dad’s subsequent barrage of questions, no strength left to keep my own emotions under control and reassure him. I tried to speak, but only hiccups would come out, and wiping my nose with the sleeve of my fleece pj’s didn’t seem to help. That’s when a former hit man known to most as March, who had just gotten out of bed at 1:00 p.m., came to the rescue. I hadn’t even noticed him entering the living room. He was wearing nothing but a pair of dark boxer shorts; he must have woken up when he heard me crying. I found myself cocooned into a safe haven of bed-warmed skin and springy chest hair as he carefully took the phone from my shaking hands.

  March barely had the time to say, “Good morning, Mr. Halder,” before my father exploded. “Who the hell are you? What have you done to my daughter? Island! Where are they holding you? I swear I’ll—”

  “Please calm down, Mr. Halder. Island is perfectly safe—”

  “How much do you want?” my father barked.

  His outburst only made me wail harder. “Dad, I swear I’m okay! Please, listen!”

  “Don’t worry, honey! It’s gonna be okay; I’m gonna find you! And you”—I gathered that growl was for March—“I’m gonna find you too! And I’m not Liam Neeson, but if you touch a single hair on her head, the last thing you’ll see is—”

  March gave the slightest wince at the rage-fueled rant pouring from the speaker. “I understand . . . but I can assure you I’m not holding Island hostage.”

  “Let me speak to her!”

  With a big gulp of air, I managed to hold back my tears long enough to take the phone from March’s hands. “Please, calm down and listen to me. I’m not being held hostage or anything.”

  March’s palm squeezed my shoulder in silent encouragement. I swallowed hard to steady my voice. “Like I said, I’m in Paris, and I’m okay now. I promise.”

  “Who’s that man with you?” my dad probed, before his breath caught, and his voice cracked into a near sob. “Honey, they told me you were dead! I need to understand what happened.”

  “He’s . . . his name is March.” I gulped as a year-old memory resurfaced, of Joy catching March as he was busy roping me on my bed with my own tights. The keywords summing up this dreadful incident could be: misunderstanding and BDSM. “Joy told you about him . . . back when he took me to Paris for the first time.” I winced and refrained from adding: Remember? He’s my forty-year-old dom.

  Of course my dad remembered.

  This time, an unbearable silence stretched between us. I could almost see the various bricks of partial data, parental prejudice, and mild paranoia organize themselves in his brain as he murmured, “Did you . . . run away with him?”

  “No! I was . . . look, something happened at the Poseidon . . . It’s very complicated, and I don’t want to do this over the phone.”

  “Oh Jesus . . . Jesus . . .” I felt his ragged sigh in the speaker as if it were my own, and I had to blink hard no to burst into tears all over again.

  I knew I had already said too much and not nearly enough, that every missing piece of the puzzle was absolute torture to him, but I couldn’t tell him like this, over the phone, that I had been kidnapped, brainwashed, drugged, nearly lobotomized . . . It was too difficult to put in words with 3,600 miles between us, so all I said was, “Please. Trust me. I can . . . I mean, I’ll jump on a plane as soon as—”

  March stepped in before I was even done talking. “Island, it’s too early. Your wound—”

  “What wound? What is he talking about?” And with this, my dad was panicking tenfold.

  I had almost forgotten about it, but as if on cue, a zing of pain at the back of my skull reminded me that there was still a rather large patch of hair missing and a one-inch-long cut there. My stitches were now dry and clean, but it’d be at least another ten days before they fell off.

  “Well, I got”—I bit my lower lip. He wasn’t going to like this—“I got a little brain surgery.”

  A renewed string of breathless cussing reached me through the speaker. “Jesus fucking Christ . . . Baby, baby, what happened?”

  My lips parted to answer, but words failed me. For a couple of seconds, I just stood still in the middle of that quiet, impersonal Parisian living room, my gaze lost past the windows and the gray weather outside. I looked up to find March’s tired and attentive blue gaze seeking mine.

  Memories collided in my newly awakened brain, good and bad, as I contemplated trying to explain to my dad how some mad Norwegian scientist had been ordered by my supervillain uncle to put a neuroelectrical implant in my brain to shoot my long-term memory and how they’d locked me up and drugged me for eight months, before March came to save me in an ice-cream truck that fired rockets, and seven days ago, that same implant had been removed, thanks to the very turd who had been overseeing my captivity all this time. Also, I’d been to space. To stop the aforementioned uncle from firing a nuclear missile at Earth. There’d been a sloth . . . and Dries, my biological father . . . was dead.

  No. It was too early for a detailed account of my recent adventures. I needed to ease my dad into all this. And maybe I needed time too. Everything was too fresh, too vivid, and already, I could feel knots form in my throat as I tried to put words on what I’d been through. “I’ll tell you everything,” I eventually said. “But I need a little time.”

  I thought he’d explode again and insist on knowing everything, but he just said, “Wait for me, honey. I’m coming.”

  That sudden gravity, the renewed strength in my father’s voice, those made me realize how much I needed him right now. “Okay, I’ll be waiting.”

  “Island, honey?”

  I sniffed. “Yes?”

  “Can I speak to . . . March?”

  I gritted my teeth and gripped the phone a little harder in response.

  You see, back when I was a teen and went to live wit
h him after my mom’s death, it took me less than a couple of weeks to realize that this father of mine, who sent me Mickey Mouse postcards and cutting-edge gaming consoles for my birthday, belonged, in fact, to a different species than my mom. She was an adept of what you might call . . . free-range parenting. As in: “I’ll be away for the rest of the week; you call that trattoria down the street to order your meals. Love you, chérie.”

  Now my dad . . . Did you watch reruns of Airwolf when you were a kid? I did, and I wanted Jan-Michael Vincent to marry me and take me away in his supersonic helicopter, and we’d fire at the bad guys with the chain guns and blow up enemies with our rockets. What I’m trying to say is that the first time I saw my dad explode at a math teacher who had dared to slam me with a C- for sustaining that Descartes’s equiangular spiral equation could be used to predict the size of a giant, man-eating nautilus, I came to realize that mine was an authentic helicopter dad. Hovering, droning above school personnel, orthodontists, and shop assistants alike, ready to fire at the first offense. I learned to anticipate his outbursts and associate them with Airwolf’s theme: the rotor would start spinning slowly, then faster and faster, in tune with heroic background music, before a random Jeep on the ground exploded in a blaze of flames and smoke.

  And so, as my dad waited for me to hand the phone to March, I could hear the low hum of the rotor, gaining speed. I gulped.

  “Island?” my dad insisted.

  March’s lips moved to form a silent, It’s all right.

  I feared it would be everything but, and I’m somewhat ashamed to recall that he had to pry the phone from my hands when I raised it: my fingers wouldn’t let go . . .

  “Mr. November speaking.”

  As soon as March’s deeper timbre replaced mine, my father’s voice went down to a threatening hiss. I caught the words jail and FBI amid what sounded like a slew of gruesome threats.

  “It’s all right, Mr. Halder,” March replied, his voice even—no doubt because the slightest hint of cordiality might be interpreted by my dad as taunting and would inevitably lead to another round of fire. “Please do contact the FBI, and ask for Mr. Clifford Murrell, who recently joined the International Operations Division. I believe he’ll be able to confirm that Island is not currently being held against her will.”

  My jaw probably hit the floor at the same time as my dad’s. He went silent for a few seconds, allowing March to go on. “Of course, since you don’t trust a word of what I’m saying, first you’re going to call Attorney General Matthew Jensen, who graduated with you from Harvard and heads the National Security Division. He will no doubt look up Mr. Murrell for you and confirm his identity. Once you’ve spoken to Mr. Murrell, my assistant will contact you to arrange a private flight to Paris at your earliest convenience.”

  Okay. He had prepared for this. Like, really prepared. I stared at March wide-eyed while, on the other end of the line, my father remained speechless. He was probably thinking he had been dragged into one of those thriller plots where mysterious assholes call you out of nowhere and seem to already know everything about you. “Island,” he said hesitantly. “Is she still there? Let me talk to her.”

  “Of course.” March gave me back the phone with a little wink.

  My dad drew a few feverish breaths before he asked me in a near whisper. “Honey. I need to know . . . is he dangerous?”

  I decided that if March was going to be part of our lives for the foreseeable future, honesty was the only viable policy. Looking up at the interested party with a tenderness I could feel warming my chest and easing the tension in my limbs, I answered, “No, he’s not dangerous—not to you and me.”

  TWO

  THE LABELS

  “Honestly, some hobbies are best left unshared. Make sure to check yours against our list on page 145.”

  —Aurelia Nichols & Jillie Bean, 101 Tips to Lock Him Down

  Sitting cross-legged in an oversize velvet armchair, I held my head still as a young doctor examined my pupils with a penlight. He’d shown up not long after my dad had hung up with a final promise to come for me as soon as possible. Uncharacteristically, March had retreated to the bedroom after welcoming the doctor, to take a call from Phyllis. I was pretty sure those two were monitoring my dad’s every move on top of organizing his flight to Paris. I knew March and his omnipotent assistant meant well, but I’d probably need to have a chat with him about not tapping my family’s phones, at some point. Mine? Let’s be real: if I forbade March to geolocate it to his heart’s content, I’d probably end up with a tracker stuck to my underwear label instead . . .

  “Have you eaten yet?” the doctor asked with an unmistakable creole accent—guy must have been from Guadeloupe or Martinique.

  “Sort of,” I replied. “Does applesauce count?”

  He chuckled. “Yes. Any pain?”

  “My stitches hurt a little, but the rest of my head is actually fine. I honestly thought I’d wake up with the worst migraine of my life.”

  His lips quirked. “Give it a little time.”

  “Great . . .”

  He shrugged. “Your post-op MRI showed no trace of bleeding. I’m writing you a prescription for painkillers. Only take some if you need it: it’s not candy,” he warned while scribbling something on a prescription pad.

  “I get it.” I watched him close his case and grab his coat and scarf from the couch. “Can I go out?”

  His head lolled in indecision. “Make sure the wound remains clean and covered. Eat something first, and take it easy. Parc Astérix is off the menu.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of that,” I replied with an uneasy laugh. Dammit, was this practitioner of the shadows reading my mind?

  “Thank you, doctor. I’ll make sure she stays away from roller coasters for the time being.”

  I hopped from the armchair to find March standing in the living room doorway—one of the minor inconveniences of having a boyfriend equipped with a stealth mode. I had yet to leave my pajamas, but he had changed into a pair of jeans and one of his magic crease-free white shirts half an hour ago to welcome the doctor. How one could possibly freshen up, shave, and properly button their shirt in less than ten minutes, I would never know: March was a black belt at adulting, having mastered grooming techniques and organizational skills a grasshopper such as myself could barely comprehend—much less emulate.

  “What about flying?” I asked the doctor while he shrugged on his coat.

  He frowned. “Long-haul, I suppose?”

  I nodded.

  “Normally, this is the part where I tell you to go back to bed and stay there for at least another couple of days.”

  I gave him an imploring look.

  “But you are, technically, stable enough to fly.”

  I turned to March with a victorious grin, but he didn’t seem fully convinced: his gaze searched the doctor’s, waiting for the additional warning that would warrant dragging me back under the comforter. But the guy only shook his head with a sympathetic smile that seemed to translate as, “You’re on your own, dude.”

  After the apartment’s reinforced-steel door had slammed shut, I latched on to March. “So . . . did my dad call Murrell?”

  His lips curved into one of the rare smiles I knew were for me only, pinching two dimples. “Yes. Your father was quite unhappy with the answers he was given and made sure everyone he spoke to was well aware of that.”

  I winced. “What did they tell him?”

  “Nothing. The entire Odysseus file is classified, much like yours, mine, and everything pertaining to the Lions.”

  Odysseus . . . I thought of the half-destroyed space station, a huge white ring orbiting 250 miles above us in the immensity of space. A cold tomb for the man who had killed my mother eleven years ago—and also for quite a few of his men, in the wake of March’s first space adventure. “What will they tell everyone?”

  “They’re denying that any launch took place in Ecuador, and the official report will conclude that a major depressu
rization incident in the orbital ring killed all crew members.”

  Yeah, you could call it that. March had definitively “depressurized” those treacherous astronauts and Anies’s Lions one by one. Anies himself though . . . my hand still prickled at the memory of holding the knife, plunging it into his side, so fast, so easily. I had only meant to defend myself, but in the end, I had killed him. And closed the circle. It didn’t really feel like revenge for my parents’ deaths, even though it was. More like another life wasted, more blood, and that queasiness I could feel returning in the pit of my stomach.

  March stepped closer, trailing his knuckles against my cheek. “I’m sorry . . . biscuit. For everything.”

  I kissed his palm. “It’s okay. I guess it’ll just take me a little longer than the US government to put a lid on all this.”

  “I know . . . Your father should land in eight hours. That leaves you a little longer to rest before—”

  “All hell breaks loose?” I chuckled.

  “I foresee a long night,” March admitted with a sigh.

  I leaned closer for a hug, nuzzling his chest. “Do you want to tell him . . . everything?” About Odysseus, and what had happened to me, of course, but also . . . about March’s former line of employment.

  “Do you want me to?” he asked quietly.

  He would, I realized. If I asked him, March would tear down that last wall between us, the secrecy that was his fortress. I shook my head. “I can’t ask you to do that. I’ll go with whatever you decide to tell him. We can say you work for the CIA, something like that.”

  He rested his chin atop my head. “I understand.” A sigh breezed in my hair. “I doubt he’ll content himself with elusive answers though.”

  “Yeah, he can be kinda . . . relentless.”

  “He found Struthio’s LinkedIn page and sent me an invitation.”

  I smiled against his shirt. “Oh God . . . Already?”