Emma isn’t normal. She’s a highly intelligent engineer who struggles with Bipolar disorder and a dark past. While working at a prominent defense company, she develops the next major weapon of mass destruction, which will redefine warfare for the future. After finally getting a date with her mysterious coworker, Ruel, she realizes they might have more of a connection than just romantic. On a business trip together to Russia, the two take their fledgling relationship to the next level the night before war is declared between Russia and the United States. With Interpol in pursuit, they flee the country amidst the newfound chaos and discover along the way that the other is hiding something, but neither is quite sure what.
We had never spoken like this out loud, only electronically. It began after an influx of borderline work-appropriate exchanges via company email around September. We decided it would be better to switch to our personal accounts. While these conversations were thick with flirtatious undertones and innuendo, we only ever spoke to each other at work. Even in our emails, the topic of my lingerie’s color had never come up.
Continue Reading Chapter 1: 7:30 P.M.
He did not know most things about my past, few people did. Ruel opened the silver door for me, and I slid into the black leather interior. Even though I saw his car every day at work, I hadn’t been inside of it until now. A jolt of excitement ran through me as I realized how intimate this whole event really was. Once we were on the road, I asked him where we were going.
Continue Reading Chapter 2: Pairing
“October twenty-third. You told me in an email. Referencing some past night you wrote, ‘I used to breath fire and that night I could see in the dark. I don’t like to think of that night. I still can see in the dark. Is that human?’ You must remember writing that to me.”
Continue Reading Chapter 3: Synchronized
Survival instincts set in immediately, and I left my smile on my face. Inwardly racing for a solution, outwardly remaining engaged with the situation. Ruel’s face was inches from mine. His hand had reached my face and he cradled my jawbone in his palm briefly before moving his hand around the back of my neck. It was only a miniscule change, but I knew with that hand placement, he could snap my neck in three seconds. He would depress a pressure point on my neck, a brief incapacitation, but enough time to reach up his other hand and twist hard enough to sever my spinal cord. Three seconds until his job here was done.
Continue Reading Chapter 4: Dinner Jackets
“It’s more or less etiquette training. For little kids. It’s fairly mean-spirited in that way, I think.” I laughed, but the spirit behind the dance training I had actually received was a bit more than mean-spirited. It was evil. Ronaldo’s dance and etiquette instructor, a wispy thing called Mrs. Katz, taught us something she called Waltz 42. Her words came to me now, “One, two, three. One, two, break. One, two, three. And lovely!” The point of the Waltz 42 was to break your partner’s wrist as a form of leverage.
Continue Reading Chapter 5: Waltz 42
I needed to warn Maria and Andrew. We had to leave the country as soon as possible. I screamed inside my head to make the phone calls, or better yet, just to go to their rooms. I could slip out without a sound. Ruel would never know, never suspect a thing. I was just a stupid girl who had become obsessed with him. Certainly he expected me to go back to his room tonight.
Continue Reading Chapter 6: Surrender
I woke up shivering. The room was cold, as if the heat had been turned off. I first noticed Ruel’s chest in my left peripheral, rising and falling in a calm rhythm. I moved closer to him for heat and pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders.
Continue Reading Chapter 7: Embassy
“Emma, I need you to listen to me,” he said, and pulled away from my ear to look me in the eyes in order to emphasize the urgency of the matter. His brown eyes were fiercer than usual with flecks of orange surrounding the pupils. My heart jumped and I swallowed hard. He continued, “We have to leave Russia. Now. Pack as quickly as you can, but only what you need. Make sure it’s warm. Make sure you have your passport, do not let it leave your body. I’m going to pack. You have six minutes. Do you understand?”
Continue Reading Chapter 8: Quattroporte
I glanced in the mirror again. They were gaining and the traffic in front of me was slowing even more. With the cars mere inches from each other’s bumpers, weaving through traffic was no longer an option. I groaned loudly. We needed a better evasion plan. I swerved into the right-hand emergency lane and sped towards the onramp’s entry point on to the highway, slowing only to squeeze between a weathered hatchback and the onramp’s traffic control light. With a quick glance to my left to avoid merging into a car, I left the car in second and floored it. Our bodies pressed backwards into the cool leather seats with the force of the car’s speed.
Continue Reading Chapter 9: Jam
“Who are you working for?” Ruel asked, his voice in a low growl. Had the switch not gone off and I’d not made the changeover to my old self, I might have been scared of him. As it stood, I found it encouraging, almost sexual. I took my right foot, which was still on the bottom rung of the ladder, and kicked him as hard as I could in his testicles. He groaned and I kicked him again, just as hard. This time he loosened his grip on me, so my third kick was aimed slightly higher to throw off his center of gravity. As he shifted his weight to steady himself, I rammed my left elbow into his ribs, and my right hand flew to my coat to pull out the pistol. With the momentum of my elbow swing, my body spun to face him, the Glock’s barrel immediately finding his chest.
Continue Reading Chapter 10: Organization
“I’ll be back for you in one hour,” Jeremiah told me from the passenger seat. He rolled up the window and drove away, leaving Ruel and me a block from the safe house. I kept my head down the best I could to avoid any cameras. Ruel ushered me into an empty hallway belonging to an old apartment building. I followed him up wooden stairs that sagged in the middle, polished with the wear of hundreds of years of tenants’ daily treading. He unlocked a door on the third floor and led me into what looked like a minimally furnished apartment. I wondered how long Ruel planned to stay here.
Continue Reading Chapter 11: Shepherds
A series of dark figures morphed into a daytime scene. People were hustling below me in downtown Atlanta. It was windy. I was on the roof of a building looking at the street. A group of five men emerged into the plaza across from me, and I spotted him. Emilio Hernandez. My mark. Two of the men were bodyguards, and the other two must have been associates. I didn’t know who Emilio was, or why I was killing him, I just knew I had to.
Continue Reading Chapter 12: Dying
