ONE
LIBERTY FIELDS
SERA
“Ma’am, I don’t give a fuck what your GPS is telling you to do. The road’s closed. We have power lines down all over the goddamn place and water up to our necks. Now turn around go back the way you came before I have your car towed.”
The man wearing the high visibility vest, leaning in through the window of my rental, looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel. His name was Officer Grunstadt, and he’d eaten curry for dinner; I knew this because he’d been blasting me with his spicy breath while I’d been arguing with him about the state of the road up ahead for the last ten minutes. The twitch in his left eye was a recent display of his frustration. The rain had fogged up his glasses, and large, fat water droplets coursed down his face as he, once again, pointed back in the direction I’d just come from. “Liberty Fields is only thirty miles away. There are two motels there and a bed and breakfast, though I think the bed and breakfast was already fully booked the last I heard. You can figure out what you want to do tomorrow, once the storm’s died down.”
“I can’t go back to Liberty Fields. I have to get to Fairhope, Alabama, in two days, or I’m going to miss my sister’s wedding.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, sweetheart. Catch a flight.”
“Every flight out of Rawlins and Laramie are cancelled until further notice. I need to keep driving, officer. You have to understand, I—”
“I do understand, miss. I understand perfectly well. You’re a pretty young millennial with a bad case of ‘I always get my way.’ You’re not used to be being told no, and you want me to break the rules. Unfortunately, I have a twenty-one year old daughter, and I’m used to all this…” He reaches out his hand, gesturing at my face, “…nonsense,” he finishes.
Asshole. Rude, small town punk asshole. “Firstly, sir, please do not gesticulate in my general direction like I’m a piece of trash you found at the side of the road. Secondly, I am not a millennial. I’m twenty-eight years old. I’m a successful business owner. The reason why I’m successful is because I’ve worked my ass off, not because I’ve pouted, sulked, or convinced anyone to break rules for me. I know the storm’s bad, but the winds are calming down, and Waze does say the road is open and clear just another mile up ahead. You have no idea what stresses I’m dealing with, or the consequences I’ll have to face if I don’t make it to this wedding on time. So just let me through the damn blockade.”
Officer Grunstadt gave me a tight-lipped smile and pointed through my car, out the passenger window, to the other side of the road, where an overweight guy in a yellow plastic rain jacket was eating a sodden Subway foot-long. “See Jo over there? Jo gets four hundred dollars from the state to tow cars. That’s why he comes and stands out here on nights like tonight, come hell or high water. If I wave Jo over here, it’s gon’ cost ya an extra two-fifty on top of that four hundred to get your car outta his lot, and that’s after the twenty-four hour holding time is up. So, Miss…?”
“Lafferty,” I said, sighing heavily.
“So, Miss Lafferty. Is sitting here, arguing with me worth six hundred and fifty dollars to you? Or would you rather just turn back, get dry, get a good night’s sleep, and hope the fallen power lines have been dealt with by the time you wake up?”
God, this guy was a real piece of work. I forged a smile, digging my fingernails into the rental’s steering wheel, begging myself not to say anything that would get me into trouble. It had happened before. “You’re right, Officer Grunstadt. A night in a shitty motel does sound perfect right now. Thanks so much for your assistance.”
The road back to Liberty Fields was narrow and winding, turning back on itself a hundred times before I even saw another car. The whole world seemed deserted. I’d tried to convince Grunstadt the wind was dying down a little, but the truth was it buffeted and rocked the car like crazy as I drove through the hammering rain; I had to focus to keep the thing from careening off the road and into the dark line of trees that bordered either side of the single-lane highway.
“Should never have left Seattle,” I grumbled to myself. “Should have just stayed home and watched Shark Tank, for fuck’s sake. Wyoming is the worst.”
My sister and I had always wanted to road trip across country. Sixsmith, my father, had forbidden us from doing it, which made sense. Sixsmith hadn’t wanted us driving off, because he’d known full well we’d never have come back. He would have had no one to torture and manipulate. He’d have had no one to cook his meals and clean his house. He’d have had no one to beat on when he came home drunk and bored.
So I’d waited. I’d waited until Amy was eighteen, a legal adult, before I’d packed up our bags, stole Sixsmith’s red Chevrolet Beretta, and got us both the fuck out of Montmorenci, South Carolina, for good. We’d worked in bars and as temps in offices, scraping enough money together to go to community college. Amy had studied languages, and I’d studied business management. Once we’d completed our degrees, unbelievably, Amy had moved out to South Carolina with her boyfriend, Ben, and I’d relocated to Seattle with dreams of creating my own consulting firm. It hadn’t been easy. There’d been many months when I couldn’t make rent, and many months when I’d thought about giving it all up, becoming a waitress, and living from pay check to pay check. I’d thought about that a lot, but I’d stayed the course. My persistence had finally paid off six years ago, when I’d landed a huge corporate account with a private lender. After that, I’d had more clients than I knew what to do with. I’d had to take on three new members of staff just to cover the workload.
My H.R. department—namely a perma-harrassed woman in her late forties called Sandra—had insisted I take time off to drive to Amy’s wedding. If only I could wrap my hands around Sandra’s neck right now, I’d throttle her. It would have taken six hours to fly to Alabama. Maybe a couple of hours in a car on top of that to reach Fairhope. But now, here I was, after three days on the road, stuck in the middle of the biggest flash flooding the state of Wyoming had ever witnessed, instead of being tucked up, comfortable and warm in a fancy hotel.
Goddamnit.
As I pulled up outside the Liberty Fields Guest House and Artisan Art Gallery, I mourned the fact that the place certainly did not appear to be a fancy hotel. Fat lot of good my Hilton Rewards points were going to do me out here. The guesthouse looked like a derelict, abandoned farmhouse, perched on the side of the highway embankment as I pulled into the packed parking. My teeth rattled together as I traveled over a series of giant potholes, invisible in the near perfect darkness, and I swore colorfully under my breath. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to be dealing with any of this. It didn’t seem to matter what I wanted, though. The car rocked from side to side as I slid my arms into my thick winter jacket, preparing myself to face the weather. Through the windshield, the trees on the other side of the parking lot were bowed, their branches waving like outstretched arms, reaching for help. God, it looked fucking miserable out there.
Opening the car door, I swung my legs out, and my feet disappeared up to my ankles in frigid, inky black water. “Ffffffff—” I stopped myself from swearing. This night just couldn’t get any better. Seriously.
There were so many cars parked haphazardly in the lot that I had to walk a solid hundred and fifty feet to reach the dimly lit entrance to the guesthouse. The rain seemed to come down harder as I half ran toward the building, my teeth grinding together. I had no idea rain could actually be this cold. Shit, I needed to get inside. I needed to get inside. The rust-flecked handle on the front door of the motel threatened to fall of in my hand as I yanked on it. A blast of heat hit me in the face as I hurried through the entranceway, and strains of Jonny Cash’s ‘I Walk The Line’ flooded my ears. The left hand side of the lobby wall was fitted out with a stand—the same kind of stand you’d find in any normal hotel, where local businesses and tourist attractions advertise themselves—but the slots on this stand were all notably, depressingly empty. Liberty Fields was a black hole in the center of the State of Wyoming, zip code: nowhere.
The motel lobby smelled like damp and mildew. A puddle the size of Lake Michigan had collected in front of the rickety looking front desk; it was impossible to avoid the vast body of water as I made my way to the counter to ring the brass bell. Not that it mattered, of course. My feet were already soaking wet, right along with the rest of me. I hit the top of the bell for service, and nothing happened. No sound. No cheerful, inviting, I-need-help chime. Nothing.
“For fuck’s sake.” I looked around, searching for the night manager, but no one was to be seen. I leaned over the counter, hunting, hoping and praying for a savior to come along and tell me they had secret, exclusive retreat out back that I hadn’t noticed on my way in, but all I found were stacks of rotting newspapers, a metal dog bowl with food encrusted around its rim, and a mouse trap butted up against the wall. Very encouraging indeed.
On the other side of the lobby, I spied a public payphone. Pulling a handful of quarters out of my jeans pocket, I took advantage of the opportunity and I called Amy.
“God, Sera. It’s nearly two in the morning,” she groaned when she picked up.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry. I just—fuck—I’m still stuck in the middle of nowhere. I have another twenty-four hours to drive, and it looks like tomorrow’s going to be a complete wash out. I don’t know if I’m going to make it.” In my experience, it was better to rip the Band-Aid off as quickly as possible, especially with Amy. She was hardly a no-nonsense woman, but if you strung things out with her, she tended to get a little hysterical.
“What do you mean, you don’t know if you’re going to make?” Her voice was a little groggy when she picked up a second ago, but now it was sharp with accusation and worry.
“There’s a huge storm, Amy. The roads are all closed. I’m stranded in Liberty Fields.”
“Liberty Fields? Where the fuck is Liberty Fields?”
“I—god, I don’t know. It sucks, though. I can tell you that much.”
Behind me, the guesthouse door chimed, and a loud groan drowned out Johnny Cash for a second. I glanced over my shoulder, hopeful that it was the night manager entering the building, but when I saw the guy who stooped through the doorway to enter the place, I immediately know he didn’t work here.
A creature like that simply didn’t exist in a place like this. Tall. Square jaw, lined with a swathe of black stubble. Bright, intelligent eyes—so damn pale, like quicksilver—traveled over me as the newcomer took in the lobby. The black suitcase in his hand appeared to be designer. Definitely not something a night manager would be carrying around with him. He looked like a character right out of Reservoir Dogs. Our eyes met, and there was absolutely nothing. No greeting smile from a fellow, weary traveller. No relief at finding someone else waiting in the lobby. Absolutely no flicker of emotion whatsoever.
“Sera. You do know what’ll happen to you if you’re not here on Saturday, right? I will disown you and never speak to you again.” Amy’s voice rattled down the phone. I turned back around, pressing the receiver harder against my ear.
“Yes, yes. Disowning. Eternal silence. I’ll do everything in my power to make it, I promise.”
“Don’t promise me you’re going to try! Promise me you’re going to be here!”
“Okay! I promise. If I have to get up in two hours and break through the road cordons, I’ll make sure I get there. How’s Ben?”
“I don’t know. Drunk?” Amy said pathetically. “Who has their bachelor party two nights before the wedding?”
“Hmm. I’m sure he’s fine,” I replied. I wasn’t really paying attention, though. The guy who’d just entered the guesthouse was standing at the front desk, and he was about to ring the bell.
“It doesn’t work,” I told him.
His back was to me; he didn’t turn around.
“Sera, we can push the ceremony back to later in the afternoon, but that’s it. The weather’s not going to hold into the evening. We have to make sure we’re inside by five.”
“I know.” I pinched my brows, trying not to groan. “Everything will be perfect. Please don’t stress.”
I recognized the manic edge to my sister’s voice. The vein in her temple would be visibly pulsing right now. “Oh, okay. My maid of honor’s telling me she might not make my wedding, but I shouldn’t get stressed. I’ll just start popping those Valium Ben’s dad pre—” The line crackled, and I couldn’t hear Amy anymore. Static flooded down the line.
“Amy? Hey, Aim?” Nothing. The static grew louder, roaring, drowning out the thunderous rain hammering against the lobby windows. I pressed my forehead against the side of the payphone, slowly closing my eyes. Perfect. She was gone. No surprise, with the weather being what it was. I must have seen four or five downed telephone poles on the way into Liberty Fields. It was a miracle I’d even managed to make the call in the first place. God…
She was going to be freaking out so hard.
I turned away from the payphone, resting my back against the wall. The guy with the suitcase had moved away from the front desk and was stabbing at his cell like he was trying to force it into cooperating by sheer force of will alone. “Good luck,” I muttered under my breath. “I had service until I turned around on the highway, then…poof! Gone.”
The guy glanced at me sideways, and once again I was startled by the intensity of his pale blue, silvery eyes. His mouth lifted up at the corner into half a caustic smile. “You don’t say?” His voice was the snarl of a chainsaw: rumbling, low and raw. He’d probably smoked a pack a day for fifteen years to get a voice like that.
If I hadn’t already been frozen solid, I would have melted from the wave of heat that exploded across my cheeks. Turned out Mr. Black (as I’d named him in my head) wasn’t so friendly. He slid his phone into his pocket, straightened his spine, allowed his head to tip back, and then cracked his neck.
He looked like he was about to say something else, then apparently thought better of it. He rubbed his hand through his dark, wet hair, sending a shower of water droplets up into the air. He was dressed head-to-heel in black, nothing too out there or ostentatious, but it was clear the plain shirt and the plain pants were brand name. His shirt was soaked at the shoulders, and his leather shoes were splattered with mud, but other than that he was very well turned out. His facial stubble wasn’t due to neglect. It was the perfect length—not too long, and not too short. His neck and his throat were trimmed neatly, too, showing that he obviously took care of his scruff on a daily basis.
The men in my line of business were a little more showy with their wealth, their clothing, and their personal hygiene. A couple of the guys at the law firm opposite my offices had even started wearing makeup, believe it or not. I certainly had not believed it when Sandra told me she’d found a guy touching up his eyeliner in the elevator mirror one morning. It had taken seeing the exact same guy, doing the exact same thing, a couple of weeks later for the idea to really take root in my mind.
Mr. Black definitely wasn’t wearing any eyeliner. His eyelashes were dark enough already, inky against the paleness of his skin. Perfect, really. The kind of eyelashes a woman would lynch a sales rep at Sephora for. I quickly glanced away when he turned to face me. Had he noticed me looking? Fuck, I hoped not. That really would have been the perfect way to end an already shitty day: busted checking out a particularly cold, frosty character in a crappy motel lobby.
“You’re in the doghouse, then,” the guy said. Once again, his unique, devastatingly deep voice caused a relay of electricity to run up and down my spine, lighting up my nerve endings.
“I beg your pardon?”
He pointed an accusatory finger at the payphone.
“Oh. Oh, right. Yeah. My sister. Her big day’s tomorrow.”
“And you’re stranded in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a giant rain storm.”
“Yeah. Bad luck, I know.”
He shrugged, scratching at his jaw. “Or bad planning.”
I’d been told in the past that my death stare could literally eviscerate a man at twenty yards. Mr. Black didn’t wither and die under the weight of my cold look, though. If anything, he seemed to be enjoying the attention. I buttoned my lip, choosing to ignore his barb. Yeah, sure, I could have made better arrangements. I could have checked the weather ahead of time. I could have used common sense and caught a goddamn plane, and yada yada yada. Just because he was right and I did land myself in this particular predicament through my own lack of foresight, didn’t mean he got to chide me like I was a complete moron. But I could take the high road. I could be the bigger person and not sink to bickering with a stranger.
“You’re upset,” he offered.
I flared my nostrils, exhaling slowly down my nose. “I’m fine. I just want to get a room, get some sleep, and get out of this shit hole. Just like you, I’m sure.”
Mr. Black laughed silently, propping his black suitcase up against the threadbare, heavily stained couch that had been positioned beneath the large picture windows by the front door.
“Not at all. I plan things very well,” he informed me. “I’m right where I need to be.”
“You came here on purpose?”
I was met with stony silence and a flat, indecipherable stare. “Liberty Fields is an historical landmark. Why not?”
I’d been out of the habit of rolling my eyes for well over a decade, but I felt prompted to give ceiling tiles a once over in this instance. This guy was something else. He was baiting me, being difficult on purpose, and it didn’t look like he was going to quit any time soon. “All right, buddy. Well, I hope you have a stellar Hicksville vacation.”
“I’m here for work, actually.”
If this conversation had been a text message, I’d have given him the big blue thumbs up by now. Being passive aggressive was a nuanced art, and far easier via emoji, especially when you didn’t actually want to start a fight with someone. Mr. Black didn’t seem to care that he was being kind of hostile, though, so why the hell should I? “Let me guess. Playing in an emo 80’s cover band? Vampire coven gathering? Tarantino cos-play convention?”
Mr. Black’s smile was cool and unruffled, though he seemed to be spitting sparks of ice from eyes. His irises were the color of winter. The color of early morning skies in February. They reminded me of being very, very small. Smoke on my breath and stiff, unresponsive fingers. Stomping my thick rubber soled boots against hard-packed snow, trying to regain feeling in my toes.
It was amazing how visual or auditory cues affected me sometimes. I could be waiting in line to buy popcorn at the movies, and then the next second I was being dragged backward through time, to fifteen years earlier, when my very first boyfriend tried to make me touch his dick in the back of his pick-up truck.
Every time I saw the ocean in person or even on TV, I immediately smelled the peachy, light, fragrant scent of my mother’s perfume, instead of the briny, salty sharpness of the water. My mind played tricks on me all the time.
“I’m a hitman. I took a job here in town,” Mr. Black said nonchalantly. He ducked down, unzipping his suitcase, and pulled out an iPad, which he turned on. The white flare of the screen as it powered up briefly lit up his face before it dimmed. I jabbed my fingernail into the rubbery seam that ran down the side of the public payphone, considering his last statement.
“I hear it pays well. Being a hitman.”
“It does.” He was distracted, not really paying attention.
“So, you roll up on a dark and stormy night. You secure a base for yourself. Then you sneak across town while the place is in chaos, and you...” I made a gun out of my hand, pretending to take aim, “…pull the trigger.”
“Pretty much. Something like that. Though, I’m going to wait until morning. Roads aren’t safe right now. Wouldn’t want to end up being responsible for an accident or something.”
That made me snort. “So you’re going to kill someone, but heaven forbid you cause an accident while you’re at it.”
“If I’m gonna kill someone, it’s because I’m being paid to do it. Not because the roads are treacherous and I can’t control my vehicle.”
Wow. This guy was good. He didn’t even flinch as he spoke of murder. Most people wouldn’t have been able to keep up the pretense. They would have laughed, or winked, or pulled a face, but not this guy. He lied as if he was speaking the truth. Looked like he believed it one hundred percent.
The lobby entryway opened, and a blast of wind howled through the door, pelting the couch and the small, peeling veneer coffee table with rainwater. A short, rotund, sour looking man wearing a cheap, plastic waterproof poncho bustled inside, swaying a little as he fought to get the door closed behind him. Mr. Black didn’t help him, but then neither did I. We both just watched as the strange, oddly shaped figure belted the bottom of the door with his booted foot, slapping his palms against the doorframe, as if he were trying to reshape the woodwork with his bare hands.
“Stupid…fucking…motherfucking…”
The door closed, and the man stopped swearing. He turned around, panting, his wide frame shuddering as he looked from me to Mr. Black and back again. His eyes were a watery blue—inconsistent and weak—and his cheeks were marked with a spider web of ruptured blood vessels and thread veins. “You’re outta luck,” he said, slurring a little. Shoving away from the entrance door, he pushed himself forward toward the front desk, as if he needed the momentum to help get himself there. “No more rooms!” he cried. Instead of raising the hatch in the counter, walking through and lowering it behind himself again, he ducked down and scurried underneath it, growling unhappily as he struggled to heave himself upright on the other side. I crossed the lobby and leaned against the desk, being very careful not to raise my voice.
“I’m sorry. There are rooms available. Your vacancy sign’s lit up in the parking lot.”
“So what? Sign’s always lit up, no matter what.” The man, in his late fifties and reeking like a stale bar rag, flashed me a yellow smile rotten enough to turn my stomach. “Besides, I ain’t had no time to turn the damn thing off. I been run off my feet, checking you people in and out all over the place. Don’t know if you’re comin’ or goin’, none of you.”
Mr. Black appeared beside me and leaned across the counter, taking something from the night manager’s hand: a long, scuffed, brass fob attached to a dangling key. On the brass fob: the number twenty-seven. “So you do have a room,” Mr. Black said, holding up the fob.
The night manager tore the cheap plastic poncho over his head, exposing a broad section of dimpled belly fat as his shirt rose up; he growled under his breath as he wadded up the waterproof and tossed it into the overflowing trashcan behind him. Above his left shirt pocket, the name ‘Harold’ had been stitched in black thread.
Harold staggered a little as he turned to face Mr. Black. “I ain’t checked that key back into the system. So, no. It ain’t free.” He lunged to snatch the key back, but drunk as he was, he ended up grasping at thin air and nearly hitting the counter face-first. Mr. Black cleared his throat, flipping the key over in his hand.
“How much to expedite the process of securing this room from you, Harold?”
“Hey! I was here first. If anyone’s gonna bribe him for the room, it’s going to be me.” I was far more successful in wrenching the key from Mr. Black’s hand. The handsome stranger standing next to me didn’t see me coming, or maybe he didn’t expect me to hurl myself at him. Either way, I yanked the key from his grip and shoved it into my pocket, hurling a vicious look at him, just in case he was thinking about trying to get it back.
With the strangest expression on his face, he whispered a word that made my blood run hot and cold at the same time. “Hellcat.” His entire body pivoted to one side, away from me, as he curled a finger, motioning for Harold to lean in and speak with him. “I probably have way more money than her. What’s it gonna be, cowboy?”
Harold, clearly a little discombobulated, just frowned. “The room’s forty-nine ninety-nine for the night.”
Mr. Black smirked. “Yeah. But if you give it to me, I’ll pay you two hundred.”
God, what a bastard. “I’ll give you three hundred, Harold.”
Mr. Black huffed down his nose, his smirk now a full-blown smile. “Five hundred, Harold. And a box of Cuban cigars. The good kind, not the cheap shit you can buy at customs.”
Harold’s eyes had glazed over a while back. He didn’t seem to be taking any of this in. I grabbed hold of Mr. Black by the arm and tugged him forcefully away from the check in desk. “Look. You heard me on the phone just now. I have to get to my sister’s wedding in Fairhope by Saturday. If I let her down, I’ll break her damned heart. I’m the only member of family she’ll have at this stupid fucking ceremony. Now, please… I need to drive out of this dump first thing in the morning, and to do that I need to fucking sleep. Please! Just let me have the fucking room!”
“You know you say fuck a lot?” he whispered, leaning into me, as if imparting a piece of information I might not yet be aware of. His snowstorm eyes flashed at me, filled with amusement.
“Lady, what’s your name?” To my left, Harold scratched at his temple with the chewed end of a ballpoint pen. Oh, thank god. The guy had seen reason. I’d been the first person waiting for a room, so therefore I got it. Fair was fair. I breathed a sigh of relief, releasing my grip on Mr. Black’s arm.
“It’s Sera. Sera Lafferty.
Harold stuck out his tongue, his brow furrowing as his hand weaved toward what looked like a guest ledger. I risked a victorious sidelong smirk at Mr. Black, but I wasn’t rewarded by a look of dismay plastered across his face. The bastard was still smirking, himself.
“And you. What…?” Harold hiccupped. “What’s your name?”
“Felix Marcosa.”
Of course his name was fucking Felix Marcosa. It suited him down to the ground. What an asshole. Harold obviously agreed with me. He groaned, shook his head, and then scribbled something sideways in the ledger. “I entered you into our state-of-the-art database as Mr. and Mrs.…” Hiccup, “…Jones. Twenty-seven’s got two beds. Figure it out. Now…” He squinted at me and then at Felix, narrowing his eyes. “What did we agree? Three hundred from you,” he said, pointed at me. “And five hundred from you. Plus…a box of Cuban cigars.”
Felix Marcosa wasn’t smiling anymore.
But then again, neither was I.