Fisher

---

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect the next morning, so I took my time before emerging.

Sometime after I had left the living room, Jade had gone to the suite on the opposite side of the house.

And I had lain awake all night, shifting between a completely contrasting set of emotions.

Joy, pure, unmarred, the likes of which I had never felt before. But always tempered by sadness, some measure of regret.

I tried to tell myself that what had happened with Jade was meaningless, a simple expression of my sexual frustration and lack of time to find someone to take care of those particular needs.

But it wasn’t true.

No, what had happened with Jade was so much more. It was me doing something I so seldom did. Losing control. It was her, proving that she was so much more than she seemed at first sight. Proving that I wasn’t the impenetrable fortress that I wanted to be, that I’d hoped I was.

And that realization only fueled my regrets.

Because I could not be dissuaded, would not be moved from my path. But, in choosing the vengeance that I wanted, I knew that I would be forfeiting Jade.

It seemed a silly thing to think about, but one that couldn’t be denied or avoided. I had known that this would be temporary, that perhaps she would provide some company to pass the time, but now she meant so much more, and I wanted so much more.

Being with Jade before, and especially now after last night, made me think of things that I didn’t want to.

Like what would happen after.

For so long I had been focused on the Murphy brothers, destroying them, seeing them pay for what they had done. I’d always assumed that I would die in the process, and I had been fine with that.

But being with Jade made me wonder, made me think, even hope that maybe I wouldn’t. And if I didn’t, what would I do with my life after?

I hated thinking of that, hated realizing how empty, how adrift, I was.

Without the Murphy brothers, I would have nothing. And once I had taken my final vengeance, I would lose the thing I had only just now realized that I wanted.

It was a screwed-up situation, beyond screwed, but it was the one I currently found myself in.

Some part of me wanted to toss all thoughts of the future aside, focus on the time that I had with her here and now, but I couldn’t let myself do that.

Because if I did, I wasn’t sure that I would be able to stay strong, and if I didn’t stay strong, I wouldn’t be able to do what I needed to.

I went to the home gym in the house, completed my morning workout, and then showered and dressed.

After all that, I could think of no reason to stay away from the living room, and I wouldn’t have Jade thinking I was a coward.

So, after a deep breath, I emerged.

Instantly, my eyes went to the couch, my mind filling with memories of her touching me.

I was stone solid within seconds, and no amount of willpower would take that thought away.

Still, I ignored the pressing need that I knew only she could satiate and went into the kitchen.

I found Jade there rummaging through the cupboards.

“Did you find what you need?” I asked.

Jade shrieked and dropped the pack of crackers she had been holding.

She shifted, her long skirt, the only thing I had seen her in I realized, swishing with the speed of her motions.

“Dammit, Fisher! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” she said.

Her eyes were bugged out wildly, her hand dramatically lying against her chest.

Like always, I wanted to smile, but even more I felt a warmth in my heart, felt the lightness that I only did when I was around her.

I swallowed past it and said, “No. I was simply asking a question.”

“Well try to make some noise next time.”

“Perhaps you need to improve your situational awareness,” I responded, walking into the kitchen to retrieve a glass from the cabinet.

I filled it with water and began to drink, acutely aware of Jade glaring at me.

I finished the water and put it down on the counter and then turned to look at her.

It seemed that was what she had been waiting for because the instant my eyes connected with hers she shook her head.

“My situational awareness is excellent I’ll have you know,” she said.

She said the words low, an edge to her voice that was surprising.

I realized then that I had hit on a sore subject for her, and I wanted to know why that was.

Chastised myself for even thinking that.

I wasn’t supposed to be getting pulled in deeper, wanting to know more about her. None of that would help me achieve my goals, and that and that alone was what I needed to focus on.

Still, the need to ask, the desire to know were strong. I managed to fight them back, though, and instead shrugged.

“I meant no offense.”

To my surprise, those words seemed to placate her.

“Well, if you didn’t mean any offense,” she said.

She gave a nonchalant shrug of her own and then turned back to the cabinets.

It seemed that all was forgiven, something that I instinctively understood. It was strange that I felt so in tune with her, so connected, especially after such a short period of time. But strange or not, I did.

“You found something suitable to eat?” I asked.

“Yeah. There’s a box of crackers. A few small cheese wheels. And some yogurt that’s just this side of questionable,” she said.

“That’s all?” I asked.

“That’s plenty,” she said.

“There’s other stuff in there. You can make it,” I said.

“No. I’m fine,” she said, her expression tight, though she was attempting a smile.

It didn’t take a genius to see that she wanted to drop the topic, and I had other things to be concerned with.

I sat at the table, suppressed my little surge of happiness when Jade sat across from me.

Almost instantly my mind began conjuring an image of this being real, of us settling down for a leisurely morning, one that would involve breakfast, and then an intense morning and afternoon of lovemaking.

A world free from all of the shit that was swirling around us, one where it was just me and Jade.

I shook my head and Jade quirked a brow, looking at me curiously.

“Nothing,” I said, responding to her unspoken question.

“If you say so,” she replied.

She smiled at me again and then took a bite of her cracker.

I was simultaneously confused and pleased by the way this morning was unfolding.

I had long ago given up trying to predict how Jade might respond to something, but to have her like this, seemingly unbothered, not regretful, was something that I welcomed. I wanted to know the why of it, questioned why she didn’t seem to be having more of a negative reaction, but in truth, I wasn’t brave enough to ask.

She seemed to be content, and I was more than happy not to do anything to break that contentment.

Because that would come soon enough.

I watched her finish her crackers, take one bite of the yogurt and discard it, and then declare herself done with breakfast.

We had mostly sat in silence, a companionable one, but one that I knew was soon to end.

“Here’s your phone,” I said to Jade.

I reached into my pocket and slid the device across the table.

She looked surprised, then reached for it.

“Why do you have my phone?” she asked.

“I took it from your place. You’re going to need it,” I said.

She looked at me, her expression instantly defensive and closed off.

I didn’t like that, but I had expected it and tried to ignore the tinge of hurt when I saw it.

“What am I going to need it for? If you think I’m gonna set anybody up…”

I shook my head. “I’m not asking you to set anybody up. But you and Patrick’s wife, you’re close?” I asked.

I knew the answer, but Jade confirmed it anyway when she nodded.

“Closer than close. Or at least we used to be,” she said, tossing in the last as though it was meaningless, though the meaning was definitely not lost on me.

“So if you drop out of sight and she doesn’t hear from you, that’s going to make her suspicious,” I said.

“And if she’s suspicious about me, you think that might lead them closer to you?” Jade asked.

“Doesn’t that strike you as a reasonable concern?” I said.

“Why do you ask me questions like that?” she said, her frustration clear.

“Questions like what?” I said.

“Questions like ‘Doesn’t that seem like a reasonable concern?’ You know exactly what I’m going to say. You know it’s a reasonable concern, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re doing something that you’re going to regret, doing something that is going to hurt people who don’t deserve it. So why do you ask me questions that seem like you expect me to tell you it’s okay or try to make it better?” she said.

I hadn’t been doing that, at least not intentionally, but I had felt compelled, felt the need to make sure she realized that I wasn’t a monster.

That would have to stop.

“My mistake. I was simply trying to consider you in this,” I said.

“Bullshit. If you were considering me in this, you never would have shown up at my house,” she said.

“And that would have made you happy.”

It wasn’t a question, and Jade didn’t try to deny it. That hurt like a sonofabitch, but I appreciated her being honest. That counted for something at least.

“So what do you want me to do, Fisher?” she asked.

She said the words on a long breath and when she finished she sat back against her chair, her shoulders slumped, looking for all the world like she was defeated.

I didn’t want to see that on her, not ever, but I knew there was nothing I could do to take it away. And some small part of me tried to convince myself that this was for the best. At the very least if she thought less of me, I wouldn’t have to worry about things going too far.

“I don’t want you to set her up. I just want you to talk to her. Make sure she knows that everything is okay,” I said.

“It sounds a lot to me like setting her up,” Jade said.

“You don’t have to make a call,” I replied quietly.

I tried not to sound exasperated, and must have done a fairly good job because Jade looked at me, her expression still defeated, but piercing, searching now.

“Why am I helping you?” she asked.

The question seemed to come out of the blue, and it wasn’t one that was directed at me, or at least I didn’t think so. It sounded like she was asking herself the question, but I decided to answer.

“You aren’t helping me. You’re helping them,” I said.

It was the truth, but making myself say those words was difficult, something that I didn’t exactly enjoy even though I didn’t doubt that it was the case.

Jade didn’t disagree. “Thanks for reminding me,” she said.

She grabbed the phone, then she stood and walked out of the kitchen.

My first instinct was to follow, but I ignored it. Jade might betray me, sell me out, but I decided to trust her.

I might pay for it later, but to my surprise that felt good. To be able to take a person at their word, to not have to wonder at their ulterior motives, wonder when—not if—I was going to end up getting fucked.

That probably would happen, I didn’t see a way that it couldn’t, but for now, I would take what I could get, pretend that this thing with Jade was real.

And deal with the consequences later.

---

Jade

---

I held my phone in my hand, tossing it from one palm to the other, trying to decide what to do.

The fact that things with Fisher were…whatever the hell they were, didn’t help any.

After last night, well, after I had finally accepted that I couldn’t wrap my head around what had happened last night, I had decided that I was going to put that aside completely and look at this from a coolly logical perspective.

A lot to ask, something I wasn’t entirely sure I’d be able to do, but it was the only option.

Which meant acting completely normal around Fisher, or as normal as I usually did. It also meant pretending that I was completely unaffected by him when nothing could be further from the truth.

When I had first seen him this morning, after I had recovered from the shock of his entry, I had been overcome with the desire to go to him, kiss him again, feel his skin against my palms.

All night I had been tortured with the memories of having touched him, tortured by the desire to do more, to have him touch me.

But that wasn’t possible.

As much as I wanted it, I knew that treading further down that path was dangerous, so I had resolved to keep myself detached, keep focused on what was important and that was Nya.

So why was I hesitating to call her?

I suspected I knew the answer, but couldn’t allow myself to accept it, at least not yet.

Because every time I thought of pushing those buttons, I remembered Fisher’s face.

He had seemed…hurt.

A silly thing to think, especially given what I knew of him and what he planned. But the emotions on his face had been there, plain for me to see. And I couldn’t ignore them.

I also couldn’t ignore the fact that I cared.

When he’d laid out his reasoning, he had been rational, methodical, but I had seen through that surface level.

He knew I cared about Nya, knew that I didn’t want anything to happen to her, but he seemed to be discounting the fact that I, as insane as it was, also cared about him.

It made sense that he would. After all, I knew the circumstances well, would assume that someone in his position wouldn’t expect anything from someone in mine.

More importantly, I didn’t want to give him anything. I didn’t want to care what happened to him.

But I did.

And because of that, this thing, already so incredibly complicated, was only going to get that much worse.

I stared at the phone one last time and then finally dialed.

As I listened to it ring, my heart began to pound, harder, and then harder, and it occurred to me that I didn’t know what to say.

I thought I did a pretty good job of keeping my cards close to the vest, but Nya knew me better than anyone here on planet earth. Could I reasonably expect myself to go through with this? Keep something so monumental from her?

I didn’t know, and combined with the fact that I felt as though I was being consumed by guilt, I had no idea how this would go.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Nya,” I said, happy my voice sounded relatively normal.

“Hey, Jade!”

“Am I bothering you?” I asked.

“You’re never a bother,” she said.

“Thanks,” I responded.

It was an automatic statement, but it had so much more meaning than she would ever know. I never had been a bother to her, even during those times that I’d been caught up in my own shit. She cared about me, and this was what I was doing to her.

My throat clogged with tears, but I swallowed them down, refused to let them come out.

“How’s Siobhan?” I asked.

“Perfect,” she responded.

I laughed, feeling a moment of pure levity.

“I would say you’re biased, but in this case I happen to agree. And how are you?” I asked.

“I’m good. Just regular,” she said.

I heard something in her voice, a slight hitch, a hesitation, and on instinct I followed up on it.

“You sure?” I asked.

Nya sighed, but then quickly recovered. “Yeah. I’m fine. I just might be out of touch for a while,” she said.

“Oh?” I responded.

“Yeah. Just for a bit.”

“Anything for me to be worried about?” I asked, my alarm rising.

“No. Just a little impromptu getaway,” she said.

She was lying. I knew she was lying, and she probably knew that I knew she was lying, but I accepted it. “Okay. Well have fun. When you get back, can I come by and visit you and the baby?” I said.

“You know you’re welcome anytime,” she said. “Oh! And Eden mentioned that she saw you near the hotel.”

My heart was pounding so hard I thought it might break, but I swallowed, tried to keep myself from sounding as nervous as I felt.

“Yeah. I just wanted to get out. Try something new for lunch,” I said.

I could kick myself for letting those words come out, and I heard Nya’s exclamation of surprise.

“Really?” she said.

“Yeah,” I responded.

“That’s great! I hope you do that more often.”

I allowed myself to breathe, figuring that maybe I had made it through this. “Yeah. I’ll try,” I said. “Have a good trip. Stay safe.”

“You too, Jade,” she said. “Bye.”

“Bye,” I whispered.

I hung up the phone and then threw myself back to lie on the bed.

“What the hell are you doing, Jade?” I asked.

I didn’t have an answer, but I knew that the situation had already gotten infinitely more complicated. Nya hadn’t asked me anything about the hotel, and she knew me well enough to know that there was no way I would have missed the news of its fire. I also hadn’t mentioned it to her, which would make her suspicious because there was no way I would disregard such a huge topic of conversation.

On the surface, the conversation we’d had seemed normal, the usual idle chatter that we always shared, but it couldn’t have been anything more different.

And that crap about an impromptu vacation?

One of the things that Nya and I shared was being incurably curmudgeonly. Neither of us ever liked to go anywhere, so the thought that Patrick would whisk her away for a weekend getaway was laughable on its face.

Something was up, and she was keeping me in the dark about it.

The question was, was it because she didn’t trust me, or because Patrick had asked her to?

I didn’t know the answer, but what I did know was that things had just gotten infinitely more complicated for Fisher.

Because the Murphy brothers were on his trail, and it was only a matter of time before they found him.

Which put me in another quandary.

Did I tell Fisher what I knew?

Did I stay silent?

I had no idea and didn’t know what the best course of action was.

Not for the first time I wished that there was someone in my life I could trust, someone I could rely on, but as I had learned the hard way, there wasn’t.

I was going to have to fix this myself.

Starting now.

I lingered another moment and then got up, adjusted my skirt and top, and then went back into the living room.

Fisher was there, looking out of the window to the peaceful front yard.

I didn’t speak immediately and instead took him in, one arm casually propped against the wall, his face looking almost serene.

He was so handsome my heart clenched at the very sight of him, but then clinched for a very different reason.

Why couldn’t we have met under different circumstances?

It was insane to think, but I felt a connection with him, felt right with him in a way that I so seldom did.

So of course it was just my luck that I would meet him under these circumstances, meet him in a situation where I knew there would never be a chance for this to last.

I tried to tell myself that that didn’t matter. I had suffered disappointment before, no doubt would again, and soon enough, Fisher would just be another one of those things, another reason why I would never have anything resembling a life I might have wanted.

But while those reminders usually worked, in this instance they didn’t. Instead I was reminded of the lifetime of loneliness and emptiness that I faced.

He had managed to alleviate that, unconventionally of course, but he had done so all the same. I needed to take that for what it was, be grateful for it, and move on.

“I called Nya,” I said.

Fisher didn’t move, and he didn’t flinch, but I was certain he had been aware of my presence.

“That’s good,” he said.

“That’s good? That’s all you have to say?” I asked.

“Yes,” he responded.

I didn’t say anything immediately, instead wondering why he’d said that. Fisher was definitely a wild card, but that response was so detached, nearly meaningless.

At the very least, I had expected an interrogation, one I wasn’t exactly sure how I would react to, or what answers I would give, but I had prepared myself for something.

His casual acceptance left me on unbalanced footing, so I took a moment and then tried to forge ahead.

“You know they can trace this phone, don’t you?” I said.

“But do they have a reason to?” he responded.

As he spoke, he turned to look at me, and the expression I could see on his face now was one that I recognized. He was suspicious, questioning me, which was something I understood, but something that still hurt, especially given all that I was risking for him.

“Who knows?”

“That’s your answer?” he responded.

“Yes,” I said.

A look crossed his face, one I couldn’t quite interpret, but in an instant it was gone.

“Well, I’m not worried about them tracking your phone,” he said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because I added something to it, a little software that will scramble the tower ping. The can try tracking all they want. They won’t get anything.”

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“Yes,” he responded.

“Most people say that technology is only a rumor, something we’ll have the capacity for in the future but not now,” I said.

“Do you believe it’s a rumor?” he asked.

“No. But I know that technology is high-level. Not shit that just any old body can have access to,” I said.

“And you think I’m just any old body?”

“No,” I replied.

“But?” Fisher asked.

I paused for a moment, trying to collect my thoughts, but then proceeded. “But there’s a difference between just any old body, and a person who has access to that kind of technology.”

“Indeed there is,” he responded.

“So who are you that you’d have it?” I asked.

“I’m Fisher,” he said.

“Fisher Murphy?” I said, wondering if he would deny it.

He didn’t.

“Yes,” he said.

He spat the word out begrudgingly, but I realized that he had confirmed something I already knew and at the same time had opened up an entirely different can of worms.

What I understood of the Murphys, even with Fisher’s additional information, was that they were a crime family. But I had taken them for something conventional, something if, not savory, then not at all at a level where they would have access to that kind of technology.

But Fisher’s revelation threw a little glitch into that belief.

“How did you come across that software, Fisher?” I asked.

“Haven’t I proven I’m a resourceful man?” he said.

I wanted to scream my frustration but I wouldn’t. Fisher and I had made so much progress and I wouldn’t get into a silly fight about something that was ultimately meaningless.

I shook my head, and Fisher looked over his shoulder at me and gave me a humorless smile.

“Besides, maybe it was just about money. Isn’t it always?” he said.

“You burned down a warehouse that was full of cash. It’s not always about money,” I said.

“Whatever you say, Jade.”

I wanted to scream in frustration but instead I watched as he pushed himself away from the wall and window and began to walk to the front door.

“I’m going out. You can be here when I get back. Or not. It’s up to you,” he said.

He left without another word, the slam of the door behind him leaving a resounding thud.