FOUR
PREDATOR
“‘I warned you, Caprice, I never lose sight of my goals!’ he roared. She stepped back, her heart tap-dancing deliriously under the confines of her tight bustier. No man had ever wanted her enough to place cameras in her apartment. Such was the inescapable power of Dante Fenix.”
—Jazzmeen Fury, Winds of Lust
“It’s . . . interesting.”
“You don’t like it?” Sitting on the couch, I bit my lower lip and kept my head still while March inspected the results of Kalahari’s efforts. The feeling of his fingers threading in my hair sent delicious shivers coursing down my spine, which did contribute to alleviating my self-doubt to some extent.
“I do. I didn’t expect this, but it does look very sophisticated.”
“Of course it does. I’m a pro,” Kalahari gloated while little Sam snoozed and drooled in Ilan’s arms.
I did like it. I just worried that it was maybe too hardcore for someone like me. But it was a great idea: she’d trimmed my nape, and with a razor and some mad skills, turned my bald spot into some sort of tribal design that was half-hidden by the hair on top, and which you could reveal by lifting the curls. Very edgy.
March caressed the bristles on my nape, careful to avoid the inch-long scar that was still healing. “There’s a bit of a punk vibe to it.”
“That’s my middle name.”
That earned me a chuckle. “Certainly.”
Yeah. Next time I flipped another driver or helped myself to half a dozen napkins at Subway, I would do so with the confidence of those who lived on the fringe of society.
•••
Time flies when you’re doing nothing, lazing around on the couch and binging on episodes of Albator—or rather Captain Harlock, for purists. Ilan had been a fan as a child, and that passion had never really left him: he had box sets of the ’78 and ’84 seasons and all the movies. Night had fallen, and the cloudy winter sky was now a deep-purple blanket illuminated by the shimmering lines of the Eiffel Tower. At Kalahari’s feet in his baby beanbag, Sam appeared to be doing crunches while space-pirate Albator blew up enemy ships.
Around eight, his parents made an unsuccessful attempt at putting Sam to bed, which ended with ferocious wails and quite a lot of pedaling and kicking the air. Defeated, they placed back their little bundle of hate in his beanbag chair, and he calmed instantly, happy to observe us while we ate a late snack—mine consisting of soup, water, and inner tears while Ilan ordered paninis and salads for three. After we were done, March checked his watch and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Your father will land in less than an hour; we should start heading to the airport.”
In an instant, the fear and the longing I had suppressed all day returned full force. This was it. Forty-five minutes from now, we would be reunited. March and I hadn’t discussed it again since the phone call, but I knew that my little world was about to tilt on its axis: I couldn’t keep up the charade any longer, and one way or another, March was about to officially become part of my life . . . which entailed that my father would have to shoulder the weight of at least some of our secrets—I was never telling him March had once put me in his trunk though.
I got up from the couch on shaky legs. “Okay. Just give me a second to grab my coat.” I knelt by Sam and patted his leg gingerly. “Good-bye, you. Try not to drool too much; I think your dad is running out of clean T-shirts.”
Ilan’s shoulders shook in breathless laughter as he picked up his drool machine. Kalahari pulled me in for a hug and caressed my newly cut hair before she whispered in my ear, “He’s good with duct tape. He’ll make a great dad.”
I felt my cheeks grow hot as we parted. “I guess, I mean, maybe . . .” I mumbled.
Did I mention earlier she was ruthless? Because she was. Visibly reveling in my discomfort, she went on with a coy smile. “Enjoy all the sex first, though! You’re at the honeymoon stage; it’s the best part, when you fuck through value packs of condoms.”
Ilan nodded in confirmation, and I’m pretty sure I lit up like a red light while, next to me, March cleared his throat. “Thank you, Kalahari . . . for welcoming us.”
She pecked his cheek. “Don’t kill too many people on the way to the airport. And I’ll be waiting for my call tomorrow: I want to know how it goes.”
He took a sharp breath. “Hopefully well.”
She patted his chest tenderly. “He’s going to love you.”
I didn’t miss the lines of worry that appeared on March’s brow as she predicted this. He might have seemed cool and totally prepared, but I realized that he too was nervous about what was at stake. How this evening played out would determine whether we could hope for a normal life together . . . or if I would have to make a choice I didn’t even want to think about.
After we’d said our final good-byes and the Citroën’s doors slammed shut, he leaned back into his seat and drew a long sigh, his gaze lost past the Eiffel Tower’s gilded silhouette.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “You look tired.”
He shook his head. “No, don’t worry. It’s just that . . .” I waited while his jaw worked in silence. He eventually turned to me. “They have a baby.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” I replied in a giggle.
March waited for me to fasten my seat belt like he had and then turned on the ignition. “I suppose that seeing him was a bit of shock . . . because it made me aware of the passing of time in a different way. I never realized Kalahari was no longer twenty-three until today,” he concluded with a faint smile.
“And you figured you’re no longer twenty-four either?” I asked tentatively.
He ducked his head. “In a way.”
“It made me think about Beatriz and Antonio’s daughter too. Is she born yet?”
“No. It will be at least another week until my Twitter feed is polluted with ugly animated gifs and baby pictures.” He smacked his tongue in disapproval. “I should never have accepted to follow him.”
I bit back a laugh because he looked genuinely annoyed, but I would have to find out what Antonio’s Twitter was ASAP. I had to witness that storm of crappy gifs.
It was a quick drive to Roissy past rush hour, and before I knew it, we were on the freeway, lampposts flashing by in a hypnotic ribbon. We exited into an industrial area away from the main terminals and toward a smaller airstrip I figured welcomed private jets. The parking lot was almost deserted, and when I stepped out, I noticed a dark shape driving across the runway, its lights gleaming softly in the night mist. I drew a trembling breath that fogged the air around me. Was it him?
March noticed too. His lips curved. “Right on time.”
My pulse picked up as he led me through the small and quiet terminal. Under the dim lights, a couple of businessmen waited for their own flights on long leather sofas, drinks in hand. I barely spared them a glance. My legs worked faster and faster, until I was running past glass doors and onto the darkened tarmac. Breathless, I sprinted, grew wings, and flew toward the lone shadow stepping down the airstair. I didn’t need to see his face, and he didn’t need to see mine either. He hurried down the final steps and started running too.
I felt his arms around me and smelled his cologne as he pulled me into a crushing hug, like when I was a child and he pretended he was a monster who specifically ate tummies, like that sunny day in October when they lowered my mother’s casket in the ground and I just couldn’t take it. He murmured my name, sniffed hard, and I realized he was crying. It was his tears and mine mingled on his cheek, his fingers in my hair, and mine digging into the soft scarf around his neck. He pulled away, just enough to cradle my face in his gloved hands. Through the glimmering sequins blurring my vision, I saw the pale blue eyes I knew, the mustache he liked to think made him look a little like Burt Reynolds.
His thumbs wiped my tears, and he caressed my hair over and over. “Don’t cry, baby girl. I’m here now; it’s gonna be okay.”
I nodded, my throat too tight to let through any sound.
He was smiling, but the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes and the lines around his mouth were deeper than I remembered. He had lost weight too. Those eight months spent mourning and hoping had taken their toll on him.
As he patted my cheeks, the corners of his mouth fell down all of a sudden. His eyes narrowed, staring past my shoulder. At March. He let go of me, but his hand lingered on my back protectively. “Is that him?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. November . . .” he said, in a voice so cold I barely recognized it as his own.
March nodded. “It’s an honor and a delight to meet you, sir.”
My dad took a step forward and froze. “Cut the crap. Are you armed?”
“No.”
March’s answer surprised me almost as much as my dad’s question. I hadn’t noticed, but he was right: the black holster I was used to seeing under his jacket appeared to have been missing all day. It meant nothing and everything; it squeezed my heart and made me smile. “It’s okay, Dad . . . I told you he wasn’t dangerous.”
“Island, honey, you don’t know him like I do. Believe me, this man is hiding terrible things!”
My eyebrows shot up in sync with March’s. What the hell? How could he already know? Phyllis would have never said a single word without March’s prior approval, I was certain of that. She was too smart to let anything slip. So, maybe Murrell or someone from the DOJ? I couldn’t picture a former CIA agent like Murrell shitting all over a classified file the size of March’s, and the guys at the DOJ probably didn’t even know he existed.
March tilted his head, gauging my father with unreadable eyes. “Did Agent Murrell tell you that I was . . . ‘hiding terrible things’?”
My dad waved an angry finger at March, and I reckoned that his invisible rotor was now spinning fast. “Do you think I’m stupid? I’ve seen that video like everyone else!”
I looked back and forth between the two of them in complete confusion, which only deepened when March replied, “And I am profoundly sorry you had to witness that, but I’d like to stress that those were very specific circumstances—”
“You killed three men!” my father roared.
Blood froze in my veins—not because of the three guys, obviously. I had no idea how many people March had killed over the course of his career, and I tried to overlook the fact that he probably didn’t know either. “Can either of you tell me what’s that . . . video?” Sweet fricking Raptor Jesus, if there was any public trace of March’s exploits, I could kiss my dreams of a white-picket fence and family Christmas good-bye.
March cleared his throat. “There’s been a minor leak of the incident on . . .” He flicked his hand up to indicate the sky. On Odysseus.
I felt blood drain from my face. “Oh. My. God. How . . . minor?”
“Anecdotic.” Reading the disbelief in my eyes, he quickly added, “Island, you had just woken up, and I didn’t want you to worry about this. I can assure you it won’t be a problem.”
Just as he said this, my father pulled out his phone, his face pink with barely controlled rage. “You and I don’t share the same definition of what a problem is, Mr. November.” He swiped across the screen to load a specific file and pressed play with a dramatic tap. “Honey, I know you’ve been through a lot, and I’m sorry,” he said with a grunt as the video started. “This is difficult to watch.”
I braced myself for the worst when Yayleaks’s logo appeared on-screen. It soon faded out to reveal regrettably high definition footage of what I recognized as one of the twelve sections of Odysseus’s ring. Three guys seemed to be talking to each other, but there was no sound. Two of them wore the white space suits of the orbital ring’s rotation crew: they’d turned on the US government to become Anies’s minions and killed the rest of the crew to make room for him and his Lions. The third one wore a black suit and had a gun—a Lion, indeed.
Power went out all of a sudden in the section, and the phone’s screen turned near black . . . before the camera switched to night mode, revealing a fourth man. Whose face had been conveniently replaced by a Predator’s head. Hilarious . . . The Predator—let’s call him that—twisted one of the guy’s necks so hard his head nearly came off before he used the dead body to shield himself while he shot another guy in the head and the third first in the knees, then in the head too. My eyes darted to March’s impassible poker face. I cringed.
After my dad had stopped the video, I went for the obvious angle of defense. “That’s, um, horrible. But what makes you think it could possibly be—”
“I received a call,” my dad ground out, his eyes firing lasers at March.
One of March’s eyebrows rose. “A call? May I ask from whom?”
“An anonymous caller who, like you, appeared to know a lot about me and my daughter,” my dad shot back. “He told me that there was no use calling the police or the FBI, that you were protected at the highest level, but that . . . from one concerned father to another, he thought I had a right to know.”
March and I exchanged a look. A guy old enough to call himself a father, who knew a lot, about a lot of people, and had taken five minutes out of his busy schedule to throw one last banana peel in the way of his favorite hit man. How reassuring to know that Erwin’s old ass was doing well . . .
My dad’s nostrils flared. “You’re not denying that this . . . is you?”
The Predator raised his palms in a pacifying gesture. “Mr. Halder, I perfectly understand how such incomplete footage could be subject to misinterpretation. Why don’t we find a more comfortable place to sit down and work through your concerns together.”
Unfortunately, March’s nerves of steel and well-rehearsed lines only served to inflame my dad further. He took my hand and attempted to drag me away. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I only came here to take my daughter back! Stay away from us!”
I resisted and freed myself. “Dad, please stop and listen to me. I already know about all this.”
His features pinched in an expression of betrayal. “But you didn’t know about the video.”
“No,” I conceded, sending a glare to the culprit. “But I knew . . . what kind of job March did. I’ve known since I met him.”
My dad’s face decomposed, almost literally so. He went from shock, to horror, and finally, the ghastly pallor of a living dead. He remained mute for several seconds before the usual scowl returned to his features, and he simply asked, “But what is it that Mr. November does, exactly?”