Kennedy
I watch her work for hours that day. The methodical, plodding work. The mystical fascination with each object she comes across. The reverence. Christ Lord, all of it turns me on.
She’s got such concentrated attention. I adjust myself under my pants as I lean against my truck and watch over the site. I remember very clearly what it feels like to have that concentration focused on me.
In the understatement of the century, let’s just say that I wasn’t ready for last night. I feel like I’m halfway down the waterslide and I’m not sure if there’s a pool of Jell-O at the end or a pool of poisonous snakes.
I think of that one room in Esposito’s compound where each wall is lined with different kinds of carving knives.
Yeah. If I had to guess, it would be a pool of poisonous snakes.
God. I still can’t believe I’m doing this. I have yet to actually go rogue, but that’s just a matter of buying us as much time as possible while Dare gets my mom and sister safe and out of the states. He was fucking pissed when I called him last night. I had to explain why they were in danger in the first place. He thought I’d gotten out of the hustle, like the rest of them.
Alessia’s family was a mob family for a long time. A few years back, her dad and her brothers quit the game. They left the states, picked up their roots, took the money and ran. Never looked back. They’re gonna skin me alive for keeping my mob connections live. For working for a mob boss.
Dare cooled down pretty fast, although I don’t know if he’s told any of the rest of them. Alessia, or her brothers, Dante and Fabi. But he let me know an hour ago that he’d landed in New York City. He was headed to Brooklyn now to try and extract Mom and Mara with minimum fuss. I try to think about anything else.
In a few hours, they’ll be free and clear and I can officially go off plan. Swoop Row somewhere that Esposito will never find her. And then I’ll breathe a little easier.
Although, the waiting around isn’t entirely bad. It’s cool to watch her wrap up her dig site.
She’s got a lot of authority on the site. You can tell all of the crew really respects her. And she just looks so fucking cute in that safari gear. I wish that I could give her more time to look for whatever she and her father were hunting for. But we just don’t have it. The literal second Dare has my mother and Mara secure, we’re getting the fuck out of dodge.
I watch the last of her crew trickle out of the site for lunch. I notice that Row does not afford herself the same luxury. She’s working with the same intensity that she was four hours ago. The woman is a machine. Maybe I should wander over to some of the food stands and get something for her to eat.
“Kennedy!” Row calls to me from across the site.
I’m off the car like a shot, but I realize right away that she’s calling to me in excitement not distress. She stands up where she is and waves me over.
I raise my eyebrows at the orange tape that circles the entire dig site and she throws up her hands. “Just hop it! It’s not electric!”
I do just that and saunter over to where she’s standing, almost completely submerged, in a hole. It looks just like a grave.
“God. Kinda gives me the willies to see you down there,” I tell her.
“Why?” she asks, pushing her sunglasses up on her face.
“Because it looks like you’re standing in a grave,” I reply. I don’t add the part about her standing in her own grave over my dead body.
“That’s just it!” She claps her hands in complete excitement. She looks like a little girl. Like the ten year old version of herself. “This IS a grave! It’s Iairos, Kennedy. I found him!”
She motions next to her at a vague outline of something she’s traced in the dirt. It’s a stone box, about three feet long and a foot tall. One corner sticks out from the hard-packed sediment. A weird feeling creeps up my spine.
“Is that a casket?” I ask her. “A tiny casket?”
She reaches her hand up to me and I clasp it, help to haul her out of the hole. She slaps her dusty hands on her pants.
“We won’t be sure until we investigate further, but I can feel it. In my bones. That’s the resting place of Iairos.”
I pull off my baseball cap and scratch my forehead. “Well, I feel like an idiot, here. But who the hell is Iairos?”
Row takes a swig of water from the canteen at her hip, splashes a little on her hands to get the dust off. She motions to the shade of a tree at the edge of the site.
I follow her there and the two of us sit on a piece of canvas laid out under the dusky silver leaves of an olive tree. She pulls an orange out of a little cooler that sits to our side and starts to peel it.
“Iairos was just a boy. An ordinary boy.” She hands me an orange slice. “The stories put him at about eight years old when he died.”
“How did he die?”
“Well,” she says matter-of-factly. “We can’t possibly know for sure, not unless we exhumed him and studied his remains. But the story says he died of an illness. Something that caused him to wither away to almost nothing. So he was the size of almost a four or five year old when he died.”
She pops a slice of orange into her mouth and watches a plane track across the sky. She’s both here, with me under the olive tree, and she’s away, in the story she’s telling.
“The story is that his sister was ill with the sickness first. She was dying. Withering. Probably some kind of cancer from the sound of it. But anyways, Iairos loved his sister very much. She was younger than he was by a few years and he spent much of his life protecting her.”
I think of Mara. Of Dare, perhaps there right this very second, extracting her out from under the nose of a torturous mob boss. I gulp. Jesus. Not right now. I can’t think of her right now.
“But once she was sick, dying, there was nothing he could do. He was helpless. So he went to the temple of the gods. And he offered himself in her place. He was bigger and stronger, he argued, so it was almost as if the gods could feast twice in exchange for one soul. They’d already feasted on his sister and now they could feast on him.”
“Is that temple the one about thirty miles down the road?”
“The very same,” Row nodded. “It still stands. A gorgeous testament to Greek architecture. And one of the clues that ultimately led us to this dig site.”
“What happens next in the story?”
“Well,” she said as she adjusted the cap on her head, once again looking into the distance, toward Mount Olympus. “His sister Kyna, she got better. And sure enough, Iairos started to die. She was horrified and furious as her brother became weaker and weaker while she thrived. She went to the temple and attempted to strike the same deal that Iairos had, but the gods were done making deals. They were done with the petty issues of mortals. And they sent her away.”
“By the time she returned-30 miles is no joke for a 6 year old-Iairos was gasping his last breaths. She laid with him while he died.”
“Wow,” I murmur. I can’t help but imagine me and Mara in that position. How she would feel if I were dying beside her, because of my devotion to her.
“Now, Iairos and Kyna were orphans, with no money or reputation,” Row continued. “But the community, having heard of Iairos’s sacrifice for his sister, pooled their goods and treasures and had a high priest prepare him for burial.”
“They turned him into a mummy?”
Row nods. My stomach turns as I think again of the little casket in the ground not far from us. There’s a tiny little mummy in there. God. That sounds lonely as hell.
“But it’s probably not how you think. The Greeks didn’t create mummies the way the Egyptians did. It was much more similar to how we bury people in modern day society. Clothes, airtight casket, you know. But there was one difference. A big one. Kyna had the priest cut out her brother’s heart.”
“Jesus,” I say. Repulsed by the idea.
“It was not a common practice, but they say that she was a very compelling little girl. Beautiful and persuasive even as a child. The man did as she wished and she took the heart in a small stone box, buried it on a cliff overlooking the sea.”
“Why would she do that?”
“It seems she thought that if she kept his heart separate from his body, then someday, when she could bend the gods to her will, she could reunite his heart with his body and he would come alive again.”
“Bend the gods to her will?” I ask, raising my eyebrows.
“Exactly. The crux of the story. The loss of her brother changed Kyna. She became heartbroken, bitter, furious with the gods for what she felt they’d done to her. She grew to be a beautiful woman and a powerful warrior. Legions of men fell under her command with not much more than a word. She had plans to wage war against the gods.”
“Wow,” is all I can say.
“Yeah. She was a real fireplug. Her army was strong, and filled with others who’d felt wronged by the gods. They marched across Greece, to Mount Olympus. There the army planned to fight the gods. To battle them. Not for control over Olympus, but in order to have their wrongs righted. In Kyna’s mind, Iairos had done everything he could to protect her life. And Kyna wanted, needed, to return the favor. But the night before they were to climb the mountain, the army camped at the bottom. Kyna accepted a glass of wine from a soldier. There was poison, from the gods, in the glass. She knew immediately. She felt the familiar withering feeling of her childhood sickness. The one that had taken Iairos.”
“She knew the gods had won. They would not fight her. So, she used her remaining strength to go back to the site where she had buried Iairos’s heart. Her army, now headless without her, dissipated and scattered, asked for mercy from the gods. She asked for no such pity. She dug her own grave. Right next to the box that held Iairos’s heart. She laid a stone tablet over her own chest and closed her eyes to rest forever.”
“What did the tablet say?”
“It explained her story. Who she was. Who her brother was. And where his bones lay. She asked anyone who found it to return the two components of him to one another. To make him whole again.”
I let out a long, smooth breath. For a moment, while she’d been telling the story, it almost seemed like the bright sun had dimmed. But now, the clouds part and the two of us are back, side by side under the olive tree, looking out over the site where Iairos’s body might very well lie.
“So, I take it you and your father found the tablet. The heart.” I assume this is what has inspired such passion in the two of them to find the remains of Iairos.
But Row shakes her head. “No. My mother did. She was an archaeologist too. That’s how she and my father met.” Row adjusts her cap again, just a little bit lower over her eyes. “It was a standard dig, they were expecting to find some old clay pots. Maybe some animal remains. The site was an ancient place of sacrifice. They didn’t expect to find the tablet, the few bones of Kyna’s that had survived. The small stone box containing traces of organic matter, with human DNA attached to it.” Row’s eyes are so distant. So clinical. As if she isn’t talking about her mother.
“She became obsessed with reuniting the heart and body of Iairos. She could barely rest or eat or talk about anything else. She got sick about a year into the search. About 15 years ago. Leukemia. It withered her body just as Iairos and Kyna’s body did. A coincidence, to be sure, but a haunting one.”
I’m holding her hand and I’m not sure when I started, but all I know is that even under the hot Greek sun, her skin is cold.
“My father never believed in magic or hocus pocus like that. But he never got over my mother’s death. I think he feels in some way, that the unholy separation of Iairos’s heart from his body was a curse. One that transferred to my mother. Killed her. I think he feels that if he reunites the heart and the body, then all three of them, Iairos, Kyna, and my mother will all be able to rest in peace.”
“And what do you think?” I ask. I truly have no idea what she thinks. She’s as shuttered and closed off as I’ve ever seen her.
Row slips her hand from mine. “I think that the dead are dead. Not resting. They’re gone. Poof. But my father is alive. And peace on this matter would certainly make his life better.”
She stands, reaches a hand down to help me stand too. “And I think that it’s a very interesting archaeological find. It has a nice symmetry to it. A narrative end. Which is a rarity in my world. Usually there’s a lot more beginnings to stories then there are ends.”
I stand beside her and watch as her companions on the dig start loading carefully marked and wrapped archaeological finds onto a large truck. Part of me can’t believe how well she’s taking all this. Her entire life has been completely turned upside down in the last 24 hours. Not to mention the fact that she’s standing here, calm as can be, while we dismantle the dig site on something she and her father have been searching for 15 years. In order to make peace with her mother’s death, no less.
I don’t know if I’ve ever felt like a bigger dick than I do right now. Watching her head back over to the truck to oversee the loading process. Watching as she glances back, wistfully, at Iairos’s grave.
I glance at the time on my phone. Dare should be extracting Mara and my mother from Brooklyn right this very second. If everything goes according to plan then he’ll be calling me in about an hour, telling me that we can get the fuck out of dodge. Hopefully, her father will be revivable at that point, and we won’t need to figure out a way to get an unconscious man out of Greece.
Unfortunately, I think this means that she’s gonna have to hide the grave. Bury it and hope it doesn’t get plundered. I saw how long it took for her to excavate a shard of pottery this morning. It was the size of a nickel. There’s no way she’s exhuming an entire casket in less than two hours.
It’s for her own good, but I have a pit in my stomach as I head over to her to break the news.
She sees in my eyes what I’m going to say before I even cross the site to her.
“I know, I know,” she says. “I’ll bury him.”
“Can I help?” I ask, although I’m already fairly certain what her answer will be.
“No,” a small smile flickers at the edge of her sadness. “Civilians can’t help, even with the re-burying of priceless, ancient artifacts.”
So I watch from a distance, under our olive tree. She slowly and painstakingly fills in the hole with dirt, planting certain markers here and there in the earth. I’m sure she’s making a map for herself when she comes back to dig it up. She works methodically at the gravesite while her crew loads the rest of the treasures. After an hour they, one by one, file over to say goodbye to her as she works. She must have already told them that she and her father won’t be joining them at the Antiquities Museum in Athens. She hugs a few of them, shakes the others’ hands.
And then she’s just standing there, over Iairos’s re-buried grave, watching her crew drive away with months of work. At least she knows it’ll be safe in Athens. I’m not sure how big of a consolation that is to a woman who is still under the impression that she and her father could be taken to Esposito at any moment.
She looks so sad as she surveys what’s left of the site. There’s still tape up and a few flags marking things here and there. There’s an open cooler of food and a few tool boxes around. Just small proof that they were there.
I can’t leave her alone like this.
But as I’m walking over, I freeze. Dart behind a car.
Fucking Stavros and his dickface brother, Vasilis are here. On site. Walking toward Row.
My Row.
Row sees them coming and does a double take. Instead of shrinking away from the gangsters though, she squares her shoulders and turns to face them as they come tromping across the grounds. Seeing her there, so strong, so brave, the warm sun reflecting of her deep red ponytail, I get a strange feeling like I’ve just let go of a balloon. That part of me is flying away where I’ll never get it back.
But I brush the feeling aside as I skirt around the car. Their words float to me across the quiet site. I’m sure the brothers waited until the crew left to approach her. They must not have been able to see me where I was sitting under the tree.
“You’re packing up, I see,” Stavros says.
Row folds her hands over her chest and nods. “We’ve gotten everything we can out of the site. Nothing left but dust.”
Vasilis is quiet, studying his surroundings with a contained fury.
“Ah. So you’re quick exit wouldn’t have anything to do with my two cousins suddenly put into hospital?” Stavros asks, his voice rising. Vasilis, on the other hand, stays calm, though his eyes are narrowed on Row.
I skitter around the side of another car, making sure they don’t see me. I’m behind them now, about ten feet. If Row looked down, she could see me, but I hope she doesn’t. Her eyes could give away my position.
“Your two cousins are hurt? The ones I met at the bar last night?”
Stavros nods. “They meet you and your ‘husband’ and then they end up unconscious with broken faces and bones.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Row says. “We left the bar just after y’all. Went back to my room. So we wouldn’t have seen anybody. Not in my private room.”
Stavros shifts, looking mildly uncomfortable, because there were, in fact, people in her private room, and he’d have to admit that to call her out on her lie. But Vasilis stays still, his hands in his pockets.
“But come to think of it, some of my things were messed up when we got back. You boys wouldn’t know anything about tha-”
Row gasps as Vasilis lunges toward her and lifts her clean off her feet. His hand clamps firmly around her neck. Her feet kick in the air as she scratches at his hand. Stavros steps back with a shit-eating grin on his face.
Hell no..
Sorry small-time Greek drug dealers. You had your day in the sun.
I desperately want to wipe that grin off of Stavros’s face with a right cross. But I’m not to be distracted. Not when Row’s air supply is being cut off.
My feet barely make a sound as I jet over the dusty earth. I’ve been told I move like a cat, and I’m glad for it in this moment because Vasilis has no idea I’m coming. Not until I whip my foot back and kick him in the side of the knee hard enough to tear cartilage.
He howls and immediately loosens his grip on Row’s throat. I shift my weight, lean over, and snatch her out of the air before he can drop her to the ground. She’s gasping and coughing in my arms and the only thing that has me setting her to the side right now is the ass kicking these two dickheads are begging for.
Vasilis has fallen to the ground. Clutching his knee and glaring at us. He’s scrabbling around his ankle for something that I would bet a million dollars is about to be a gun. Time to handle it.
Row is still sputtering on the ground but she scrambles up, out of the dirt and I can tell she’s alright. She looks more pissed than hurt. Actually, she looks fucking furious.
Stavros yells and I turn toward him. He’s barreling toward me like a bull at a matador, and I’ve pretty much never been less worried about an opponent. This guy is a joke. He lowers his head, obviously about to execute some kind of tackle, so I shift my body weight at the last second and bring my knee up into his soft parts.
He crumples to the ground like a sack of flour, but I grab him by the hair halfway down. His knees drag through the dust as I crank his head back and open my six inch switchblade over his neck. A line of blood sprouts up like a necklace but I haven’t damaged anything too valuable, yet.
He’s just insurance, in case Vasilis plans on bringing out that gun he’s been trying to get out of his sock.
But I shouldn’t have worried. Because no sooner do I have the knife to Stavros’s throat, Row is standing over Vasilis. And she’s winding up like she’s on home plate with some long pipe thing, some sort of archaeologist tool. She whips it through the air and lands a blow squarely on Vasilis’s face.
A spray of blood paints the dust below him as he falls back onto the ground. “Y’all are so fucking RUDE,” Row wheezes, her voice husky from the damage to her throat. “You come here day after day to threaten me to go on a date with that dumbass.” She carelessly gestures behind her to Stavros. She glances back, sees that I have a knife to his throat and her eyes go so wide, so surprised that I almost laugh. She’s going to get good and kissed right after we clear this whole mess up.
But she shakes it off and turns back to Vasilis as he gingerly tests his jaw with his fingers. He glares up at her but she just brandishes the pipe like she’s a teacher with a pointer.
“And then you send your idiot cousins to my room last night to what? Kill me? Because I politely said no, over and over, to Stavros?” She rounds on him, keeping Vasilis in her view. “Are you kidding me? I’m a world-renowned scientist. I was on the team that discovered the Lisbon Promenade.”
None of us react to that, because none of us know what the hell she’s talking about. But the point is well made. She’s a brilliant woman.
She shakes her head. “I’m above your pay grade, Stavros. Because you’re an asshole, misogynistic prick who thinks he can just snap his fingers and have any woman he wants.”
She’s facing away from Vasilis, but her aim is perfect as she kicks his already injured knee, he rears back from his gun to clutch at his injury again.
“Snap your fingers now, Stavros,” she bears her teeth at him. “I dare you.”
“Alright, alright,” he says, holding perfectly still against the steel I have pressed against his jugular. “We’ll go. We’ll go.”
I don’t believe him for a second, but I don’t have a ton of options here. Either I gut him like a pig, which I don’t much care to do in front of Row, or I let him free.
I push him forward into the dust, motioning for Row to come stand beside me. I need to see them walk away, out of the site. Now.
Stavros crawls to his brother and tries to help him stand, but Vasilis, cold fish that he is, pushes him into the dirt.
Vasilis struggles to stand, his knee is completely eviscerated at this point. I think the guy must be running on pure rage. His suit is covered in dirt, his greasy hair mussed. A sneer splits his face in two.
And then I’m pushing Row behind me in a flash, as Vasilis reaches into his back waistband and whips out a shiny silver pistol.
My gun is in my hand in a split second cocked and pointing at him. But before I can even aim, there’s a wet “thunk.” Vasilis goes rigid and he sways on his feet, falls to the ground as a third eye, red and weeping appears on his forehead. Stavros screams in rage and grief as he scrambles toward his brother and then his head kicks to one side, the bullet entering behind his ear.
Row is gasping behind me, one step away from screaming.
“What. What,” she stutters, her fingers gripping my back, my ribs. I don’t think twice. She’s over my shoulder and seconds later I’m tossing her into the brown truck, peeling away from the site.
“What the fuck?” she screams and I grab her head and force it down onto the seat.
“A sniper,” I growl between gritted teeth, we’re pushing 70 miles per hour on these crowded little back streets. “Esposito must have sent another of his men to make sure I was doing my job. He must have seen you being threatened by Stavros and Vasilis.”
“Because Esposito wants me alive and unharmed,” she says, spitting the words out of her mouth like they’re poison.
She tries to sit up but I force her head down again. The sniper isn’t going to shoot her, or risk Esposito’s considerable wrath, but if he tries to shoot me, I want her well out of range.
“Well,” she reasoned. “Then he’s not really a danger to us, right? We don’t need to run from him?”
“Of course we need to fucking run from him,” I say as I fling the car around a corner, nearly taking out some pedestrians in the process.
And then my phone is buzzing in my pocket. “Get my phone,” I tell her. “In my front right pocket.”
She digs in my pocket and pulls it out. I see Dare’s phone number flash across the scene.
“Put it on speaker.” I wait for her to do it. “Give me good news.”
“I’ve got them,” his voice, tinny with the distance and lack of a good connection, say. “I’m on my way to the agreed upon location with them, and we weren’t tracked. We’re not being followed. I’d say we’re home free.”
“Thank fuck,” I say. “Because we’re screwed here. Esposito must have sensed something because he sent another professional after us. We just witnessed a hit.”
“Fuck,” Dare says. “Well, I don’t have to tell you to get the fuck out of there, do I?”
“No.” The car goes up on two wheels as I take a final turn. I can see the hotel in the distance. “Look, stay with Mom and Mara until the big package arrives at the house.”
“Are you sure about this?”
I’m resigned. The plan that he and I came up with has a lot of room for error. But it’s the only way either of us could see this working. “Yes.”
“Alright, brother,” he says and hangs up. I snatch the phone out of Row’s hand and chuck it out the window as hard as I can. It shatters into the cement sidewalk. And then we’re swinging into the parking lot.
“We have less than two minutes to leave here,” I tell her. “Wake up your father. Leave everything.”
She’s out of the car like a shot. I am too, and sprinting to the other side of the parking lot. I smash a car window and slide into the front seat, tossing my backpack into the back seat. I rip out the wires behind the ignition and start the car. This is a lot faster and a lot sloppier than I’d planned but I haven’t stayed alive this long without learning how to improvise.
With the car up and running, I charge back to Row’s father’s room where she’s gotten him partially awake, slumped over her shoulder.
“Come on, Dad,” she says. “Stay with me.”
The sedative that I gave him works on everybody a bit differently, but he’s probably not really going to be awake for another ten or so hours. He might be able to open his eyes, look around, but he’s not gonna be walking anywhere anytime soon.
I easily flip him over my shoulder and start running back to the car. I look back and realize that Row isn’t behind me.
“Row!” I scream, turning a circle. And seconds later she’s sprinting out of her own room, something gold in her hand.
I dump her father in the backseat and pull out of the parking lot the second she’s slid into the car. “Now’s not the time, but you better believe I’m gonna spank your ass red for that little side trip.”
She sends me a little grin, like she might be looking forward to me keeping that promise.
“I had to get one thing,” she says, clasping a gold necklace around her neck.
I don’t ask. There’s no time. There’s a black SUV in my rearview mirror and my stomach plummets.
“Motherfucker found us,” I growl, peeling off the main road and down a side alley that’s much too small for the big car that’s in pursuit.
Row grips the roll bar and winces as her father’s inert body thumps into one of the back doors. I can feel her eyes burning into the side of my face. “What do you care if he catches us, Kennedy? Aren’t you and whoever that guy is on the same team?”
I feel something furious and fiery explode in my belly. “Of course we’re not on the same fucking team, Row!” I yell and screech out of the alley onto a larger road. I know he’s going to catch up to us at any moment, so I cock my gun at the ready.
“You mean,” she says slowly. “You mean you’re not taking me and my father to Esposito?”
“No,” I growl as I spot the car in my rear view again. I lean out the window and shoot out his front tire. “I’m not taking you to fucking Esposito.”
She’s silent, and I don’t have time or energy to figure out why. The SUV is swerving, but it’s still in hot pursuit. The rendezvous point that Dare and I came up with isn’t far, but this is all shot to shit if Esposito’s man see the whole thing.
My eyes scan the horizon, the ocean rolling out on one side. We pull on to a little overpass over a rivulet leading to the ocean. It’s just barely wide enough for two cars. I see the ferry in the distance. We only have a minute or so to get this douchebag the fuck off our tails.
Taking a chance, I whip the car around into a perfect 180 and the SUV slams on its brakes. This guy really, really wants to make sure Row doesn’t get hurt. Because he’s had about a hundred chances to kill or incapacitate us. My stomach curdles with absolute rage as I think about what Esposito wants her in such good shape for. Over my literal dead body.
I hit the gas at full speed and Row screams. But the SUV swerves to avoid us. It hits the side rail of the over pass, its tires spinning. I don’t hesitate. I creep our little car up to the SUV, not wanting to cause too much of a collision. And when I’m in the perfect place, just nudged up to the SUV, I hit the gas. The driver must have thrown it into reverse, because I can feel the SUV push back, for just a second. But we have better ground, and all four wheels on the road. And after another loud, revving ten seconds, the front end of the SUV tips forward and the car plummets the ten feet into the rivulet below.
“Yes!” Row screams, clapping her hands together. “YES.”
I don’t wait for anymore fanfare though. I hit the gas and gun it the hell out of there.
We squeal into another parking lot, this one mostly abandoned as most people are already on board one of the many ferries that leave from the port around the corner. I scan the lot.
“Red car,” I mutter. “I told him it would be a red car.”
Row doesn’t question. She doesn’t whimper. She doesn’t even stumble as she slides out of the car to join me. “There,” she says, pointing ten cars down to a red Mazda.
I sprint toward the car and wrench the door open. Unlocked. On a hunch and an incredible amount of good luck, I flip open the visor and the keys come tumbling down. I turn the car on and sprint back to our hot-wired car. Hauling her father out and grabbing my backpack, I head back to the Mazda.
Again, I dump him in the back seat. There’s a towel folded over the console, so I lay it over him, in case anyone looks before Dare can find him.
Then, Row and I are sliding into the car and I’m pulling away, toward the ferry. I keep a weather eye out for anyone who could possibly be Esposito’s man. I’m not sure if he’d have been able to get out of the crashed SUV and track us down, but I don’t want to get cocky. The ferry isn’t set to leave for another hour, but most of the cars that are making their way to the island along with us are already parked. The kid taking tickets looks surprised and suspicious when we pull up. I pray to God that this isn’t his car.
I open my mouth, about to bumble my way through this interaction, with a healthy wad of Euros in my hand, but Row is leaning over me. A steady stream of Greek ribbons out of her mouth and soon the kid is grinning, blushing.
“Maybe a few Euros for his trouble, sweetheart?” she smiles at me, laying a hand over mine and I realize she’s playing up the marriage angle again. I slide up my hips and take out the money, pass it over.
“Ask him to park us as close to the middle as possible, so it doesn’t look like we just got here.”
She’s speaking to him some more and the kid is leading us in, parking us in the underbelly of the ferry. And then, I’m sliding out with Row’s hand in mine. I open up the back seat and grab my bag. I slip the car keys in the old man’s pocket along with a note I’d written last night. Next, I dig in my back for a bottle of water and an apple for him. He’s gonna need it when he wakes up.
Here comes the hard part.
I close the door on Row’s father and turn to her. Her eyes are narrowing, she’s already suspicious.
“Do you trust me?” I ask her, taking my shoulders.
She’s quiet, her eyes are studying me. “For some things.”
“Which things?” That’s something at least. She could have just said ‘no’.
“I trust you with my body.” She blushes. But she’s honest. I love that about her. She’s not gonna lie to me. “The way we were last night. I trust that.”
“Do you trust me to take care of you? To do what’s best?”
She hesitates. “I don’t know you very well, Kennedy. I don’t even know your last name.”
“Squire,” I tell her without missing a beat. She’s right. She can’t see what’s in my mind. She can’t possibly know how hard I’m working to keep her safe. And why would she? 24 hours ago, I didn’t even know that about myself. I need to manufacture some trust here, quickly.
“Kennedy Squire,” she repeats, something soft coming into her eyes that I can’t interpret.
“Row,” I say, squeezing her shoulders. “I’m going to keep you safe from Esposito. Your father too. Do you hear me? Your father too.”
“Ok,” she whispers.
“But in order to do that, we’re gonna have to do something you’re not gonna like.”
Her eyes drop to her father in the backseat, covered by the towel. To the backpack on my back. “You want to leave him here. You want us to get off the ferry and leave him here.”
She’s right on the nose. “I’ve got a man on the other side. He’s going to get your father from there. Take him to a safe house.”
She struggles away from me. Tries to step back. She’s looking at me wild, like an animal trapped in a snare.
“Row, the three of us traveling together is way too suspicious. Esposito is going to have his entire team looking for us, some tourist is going to identify us right away to the fifty or sixty trained, hardened men that he’ll dispatch to find us. He doesn’t take kindly to being betrayed. He’ll see this as the ultimate betrayal, Row. I’ve taken the woman he wanted.”
I take a deep breath. I allow my certainty, my command, my understanding of the situation to come into my eye. “If the three of us stay together, we’re sitting ducks. If we split up, we have a better chance at living.”
“What if you stayed with my father, and I went alone on the other plan?”
“Not a chance,” I dismiss the idea immediately.
“I can protect myself,” she says, her chin up in the air and a resolute look in her eye.
“You certainly think you can,” I say. “Listen to me, Row. I’m not separating from you. Not until I know for sure that you’ll be safe. Your father, he’s an afterthought to Esposito. He was the way to get to you. If he thinks we’ve split up, then he won’t waste resources on finding him when he could be finding you.”
The words sink in one by one. Her eyes search mine, back and forth. “You mean that he’ll be safer away from me?”
“Yes,” I answer immediately. “And you’ll be safer too. If I only have to concentrate on protecting one person rather than two.”
She reaches up and brushes some dust off the brim of my cap. “You don’t count yourself in that number.”
I shrug. She’s right. I don’t count. Only she counts right now.
She looks back at her sleeping father, hidden almost entirely by the towel. “The man that will find him when this ferry lands, you trust him?”
“With my life,” I tell her. “And the lives of my mother and sister. He went to America to get them out of harm’s way. He’s taking them now to a small home he and his wife own in Corfu. Where this ferry will land in two days.”
“My father will get the same protections as your mother and sister?”
“Yes.”
She’s calmer now that she has all the information. I can see the wheels turning in her head. Her eyes cast back and forth as she thinks. I want to wrap her up. Yank her hair back and kiss her silly. I know it would soothe her as much as it would soothe me. And this is making my nerves raw as hell, watching her stand in the ill lit car park in the belly of a ferry. Dust smudging her face, her hair exploding out of her ponytail. She’s tense. And I know just the way to bang that tension out of her. But not here and not now, and that’s making me tense. I need to get her to safety.
“Alright,” she finally says, her eyes staring up into mine, so clear it’s like I could see right through her to the other side. “I trust you enough to do this.”
I immediately grab her hand and start tugging her out of the car park but she tugs back on my hand. I stop and turn. “Thank you for letting me reason it out in my head. Not just making me do it.”
I flick the brim of her hat. “I know you, professor.”