Page 88 of Longing for Liberty
I barely slept Friday night.I’d lain there close to vomiting as my entire life played through my mind. Jeremy’s brown eyes that crinkled when he smiled at me. The way he put baby Asher in a chest carrier with the diaper bag on his back and had a daughter on each hand as they set off on a Daddy Day to let me relax and work. I’d probably been the most spoiled woman in America. And then, at the end of those Daddy Days, the way I felt the weight of missing them the moment I wrote my last word, just in time for them to burst through the door, dirty and stinky with ice cream smudges around their mouths, calling out, “Mama, Mommy!” as they jumped on me and I rolled to the floor with them. The giggle-screams.
The late-night card games with Jeremy’s brother and his wife when the kids were asleep.
Cul-de-sac barbeques with the Bakers, playing cornhole, our speaker blasting a mix of country, pop, and rap. Watching the kids eat corn on the cob, getting buttery kernels all over their faces.
Football season, wearing cozy sweatshirts and taking the kids trick-or-treating after carving jack-o-lanterns.
Romance book conventions with my mom as my assistant, and how she’d buy a new fantasy-themed dress for each event.
The trip to Disney we always talked about but never got to take.
Would they come after Jeremy? Or had we been apart long enough for him not to be under suspicion as an accomplice? Wait…who would know we’d been apart other than the three whose lives I was about to end? I supposed there would be questions. Speculations among the Order of Mercy brothers.
Please, I silently begged, leave Jeremy in peace. Let him live. Let him see the resistance rise up and the OM fall.Please.
* * *
I wore maroon that night,a dress with puffy sleeves and tight everywhere else, with a blue star pinned to my chest, my hair coifed in the way of the OM girls, though not quite as large, and my makeup the way their tutorials showed. For the colored eyeliner they suggested, I chose blue. I looked like an 80s reject, not like a cold-hearted killer, so I had that going for me.
Amos and I walked onto the elevator holding hands, and he immediately pulled me against him, grabbing handfuls of my ass. I forced a giggle as I slipped my hand inside his jacket, my pinky brushing the top of his gun’s handle at his waist, making my stomach tighten.
“Won’t they see on the cameras?” I asked, letting him kiss me.
“No cameras on the penthouse elevators,” he told me.
Good to know. His voice was low, promising something for later…but if all went well, there would be no later. The reality of what I was about to do rolled through me like a tidal wave of crushing fear and guilt. Ending a life wasn’t something that came naturally to me. I had to keep reminding myself that ending three lives would save so many others. And though it meant my death, too, I was relieved to know I’d never have to give this man my body again.
FORTY-TWO
STATE NEWS: ROAN SEES MESSAGE IN THE STARS: THE STATE WILL REMAIN ISOLATED AGAINST TRAITOROUS FORMER ALLIES
Nervous blood thrummedthrough my arteries and veins too hard and too quickly as the elevator doors slid open, blasting us with a volume of music I hadn’t expected.
“Touched for the very first time…”
Hearing “Like a Virgin” as we stepped into the darkened room was surreal. A disco ball spun overhead—I didn’t remember that being there last time—sending a sparkle effect through the darkened room and making the dancing people seem…normal. Like a flashback from a different time.
But no part of this was normal.
Roan seemed to apparate from the crowd with a smile, making my insides jump as he approached in his classic look of trousers and starched white shirt. His collar and three buttons were open, showing the contours of his defined pectorals. He sipped from his glass and looked me from top to bottom, making Amos pull me closer to his side.
“Fitzy. Fitzy’s lady. Welcome.” He gestured to the room. “I expect full shenanigans, even from you.” He pointed at Amos, who ignored the comment and looked around, his brow creased.
“This is…a lot, Sam.”
It was certainly more people than the last time.
“They deserve to relax,” Roan said. “We’ve worked hard to get where we are. Everyone here has sacrificed.” He glanced at me. “Well, most of us.”
Don’t react.
Don’t react.
Don’t react.
I forced a pleasant expression to lock onto my face as I scanned the crowd of OM men and women. How many original families were there? How many of these people were related? And how exactly had they sacrificed?
It didn’t matter.
