Commodity

  “Most of it,” I finally say.

  “How did he react?”

  “He didn’t do it,” I blurt out. “I asked him, and he said he didn’t.”

  “How long have you known Falk, huh?” Caesar asks. “You met him right before everything happened, right? Just another one of the guys on your security detail.”

  “He didn’t lie to me,” I say. “I trust him.”

  “Do you?”

  I look back to the balcony, but Falk is no longer there. I catch a glimpse of him heading down the stairs, and my heart starts to beat faster.

  “I’ve got to go,” I say.

  “Yeah, I’m sure you do.” Caesar lets out a long breath. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  “You’re welcome.” I quickly head back to the kitchen area to prepare another pot of coffee. Falk is behind me a moment later.

  “What did Caesar want?” he asks.

  “I just took him some coffee.” I set the pot over the grate near the coals.

  “Answer the damn question, Hannah!” Falk wraps his fingers around my wrist and turns me around to face him. His grip is gentle, like it always is, but it’s unexpected. For a moment, my body tenses, and in my mind there are other hands grasping my wrists. I bite my lip hard and glare at Falk.

  “Just stop it!” I yank my wrist out of his hand and step back. “Falk, you can’t keep doing this!”

  “Doing what?”

  “This!” I throw my hands up into the air and turn away from him. “You can’t keep treating me like this!”

  I glance behind Falk and see Caesar eyeing us. I growl under my breath, grab Falk by the hand, and haul him back to the apartment. Once inside, I stalk over to the far side of the living room and turn on him.

  “This is all bad enough as it is,” I say. “We still have no idea what’s going on. You’re still claiming it was aliens, for fuck’s sake, and I can’t live what life I have here if you’re going to get on my ass for talking to other people!”

  “You don’t know anything about them,” Falk say. “I’m only trying to—”

  “I know, I know,” I say, interrupting. “You are just trying to keep me safe, but there isn’t much point in being safe if I can’t act like a normal person!”

  “This is far from a normal situation,” Falk argues. “For that matter, you aren’t a normal person anyway.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Are you forgetting the fact that you’ve been hunted for months? There is a reason I was hired, you know.”

  “Seriously?” I stare at him with an open mouth. “You think I’d forget about that? I haven’t forgotten, Falk. It just doesn’t seem to matter a whole lot now!”

  “If Tyler Hudson walked in here right now, would you still feel that way?”

  I can’t respond immediately. He’s put the mental image in my head, and I can’t help but let it play out. Falk and I arguing over my safety, the door opening, and Hudson being there with a gun pointed at my head. Falk wouldn’t even have time to react before he pulled the trigger.

  “That’s not going to happen,” I say softly. “Even you said he was dead.”

  “He’s probably dead,” Falk says, correcting me. “I still stand by that, but he had a lot of people on his payroll.”

  “And you think they’re lurking around here?”

  “I would be.”

  His words send a chill through me.

  “What are you saying?”

  Falk mumbles something under his breath, but I don’t catch the words. With an exaggerated sigh, he drops down on the couch and leans his forearms on his knees.

  “There were reports of people in his employ in the area,” Falk says. “That’s why you had six guards waiting for you instead of four. I think they were going to try to grab you at the airport.”

  I gasp. I always knew there was a possibility that they were coming after me, but no one had ever been caught in the act. Paxton and his uncompromising insistence on top-notch security had made sure of that.

  “If the information I received was correct, there was more than one of them, too. If they were nearby when all the shit went down, they could have survived the same way we did. They could be in the area. They could even already be a part of this little camp.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought you had enough on your mind.”

  I cover my face with my hands. In some ways, he’s right—there’s more going on in my head than I know what to do with.

  “I don’t like being kept in the dark, Falk.”

  “It’s enough that I know,” he says. “Telling you that information only would have frightened you. I know you’re a strong person, but I also know you can only take so much. I want you always thinking clearly, and that’s hard to do if you’re constantly watching over your shoulder. That’s why I’m here—to watch over your shoulder for you.”

  “You mean ‘to be paranoid.’”

  “Call it what you want.”

  “I have to be able to talk to people, Falk.” I want to be able to think and talk about this rationally, but the image of Hudson coming through the door keeps replaying in my mind. “I know you want me close to you all the time, and I can put up with a certain amount of that, but you can’t stop me from talking to the other people here.”

  “How did your last talk with Beck go, huh?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “That is exactly the point!” Falk yells, and I jump, taking a step back. Falk points a finger at me. “He was dangerous. You know it and I know it. He had you cornered in the shed, and god knows what he would have done to you.”

  “How did you know that?” I ask. “I didn’t tell you he cornered me.”

  “I figured it out.”

  “How?”

  “Because you only react that way when someone’s touched you!” Falk runs his hand through his hair and turns away, his jaw tight. “The shed isn’t that big. I knew he’d grabbed you, and that could only have happened if you were cornered. Fuck, Hannah—it was hours later, and you were still shaken up. Are you going to tell me I’m wrong?”

  He doesn’t look at me as he speaks, and Caesar’s words echo in my head. Do I really know Falk any better than the rest of the people here? Do I trust him?

  “I have to be able to talk to people,” I say again. “Unless you have something that points to one of the people here being connected to Hudson, you have to let me act like a person, and people need people. You’re isolating me, Falk.”

  “That isn’t my intent.”

  “But that’s what’s happening.”

  He leans back on the couch for a moment and stares toward the balcony door before he stands again, heading to the kitchen drawer where he keeps a pack of cigarettes.

  “Come outside with me?” he asks.

  I nod and follow him to the balcony. He lights up and leans his elbows against the rail, slowly drawing the smoke into his lungs.

  “I was married,” Falk suddenly blurts out.

  “What?”

  He closes his eyes and drops his head down so his chin is nearly touching his chest. I watch his shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath.

  “Right out of high school,” he says quietly. “She was two years older than me, but I’d just graduated. My parents…well, they thought we were nuts, but when you’re eighteen, you know everything, right?”

  He looks up at me with pleading eyes. I can only nod in response.

  “We’d only been married a year,” he says, continuing. “Had our anniversary the month before. I came home from work—I was flipping burgers and had to close that night—and I found her.”

  His body stills, and he doesn’t speak again for a long time. I hold my breath, waiting, but I already know what’s to come.

  “The police said it was a random burglary, and I guess they were probably right. She’d been shot right in the chest. If I had been there…”

  He squeezes his eyes shut again.
/>
  “Maybe,” he whispers, “if I was there, I could have saved her.”

  “Falk…” My voice trails off. I don’t know what to say.

  “I can’t…” He shakes his head slowly as I walk over and place my hand over his on the railing. “I can’t let that happen to you, Hannah. I can’t let someone get to you just because I’m not there.”

  “I’m sorry,” I finally manage to say. “That had to have been awful.”

  “Yeah.” He takes another long drag off the cigarette. “I enlisted right after that. Deployed right after training. It was a good distraction.”

  He turns his head and looks at me.

  “I won’t let my guard down, Hannah. Talk to people if you have to, but I’m going to be there all the time. I already let you out of my sight once. I can’t fail like that again.”

  “I understand,” I say, “and you know how much I appreciate what you’re doing for me. You don’t have to do any of it. It’s not like you’re still getting paid.”

  “Not sure the cash would help much right now.”

  “True, but still—you aren’t obligated.”

  “Yes,” he says simply, “I am.”

  *****

  True to his word, Falk remains at my side. He hasn’t given me any shit about talking to other people and at least seems to be okay with me talking to Christine and Chuck even when he’s more than ten feet away.

  He’s even started helping prepare meals just to stay close to me. Though he had been working hard on getting the freshwater well dug, he seems to have left the task to the other men.

  “Have you ever even been inside a kitchen before?” Christine asks.

  “What did I do now?” Falk drops the spoon he’s holding right into the pot of vegetables, beans, and chilies. It sinks into the mixture, and Christine shoves him out of the way.

  “You have to keep stirring it, or it’s going to stick and get burned!”

  Falk looks to me with pleading eyes, but I hold up my hands and shake my head. I’m not getting into the middle of this. The man may have been in combat, but he has nothing on the kitchen queen.

  “Go get the tortillas from the fire!” she orders as she fishes the utensil from the pot.

  I snicker as Falk grabs some tongs and tries to get the tortillas out one at a time without putting holes in them.

  “It’s a good thing you can cook,” Christine says to me. “If things ever get back to normal around here, you’d starve if he was left in charge.”

  “He did fend for himself for several years, I believe.”

  “I bet he lived off carry-out and microwavable pizzas.”

  I have no idea, so I don’t argue the point. I start gathering up plates and forks for dinner as Caesar, Brett, Ryan, Chuck, and most of the rest of the guys file out of the woods with their arms full of firewood.

  “Smells good!” Chuck calls out as he drops a bunch of logs near the open fire. “We just need some margaritas to go with it!”

  “There’s rum in the shed,” Ryan says.

  “Close enough!”

  Chuck mixes rum with a large can of pineapple juice, which works quite well. I’ve never been much of a drinker, but his concoction is pretty tasty. Even Falk has a small cup of the drink.

  Christine has become more creative with the cooking, and the Mexican tortillas filled with canned vegetables and black beans are delicious. I’m not sure how she seasons them, but it works. It would have been nice to have some cheese sprinkled on them, but dairy products are pretty much gone now.

  Christine continues to order Falk around after dinner as I move to the other side of the fire to sit. Though my leg has pretty much healed, it sometimes gets sore when I stand for too long, and I need a break. I find an empty lawn chair near the shed and back away from the fire. There’s less wind here, and I’m tired of the smoke getting in my eyes.

  Brett grabs a chair nearby and yanks it over so he can sit facing me.

  I haven’t spoken to Brett very much. I’ve noticed him with Caesar quite often, and he has a similar bearing. I once asked if he was also in law enforcement of some kind, but he said he had been working in manufacturing.

  “You made the potatoes?” he asks. “They were damn good.”

  “It was actually cauliflower,” I tell him. “Seasoned like mashed potatoes but supposedly better for you. They end up tasting about the same.”

  “Well, it was damn good, whatever it was. Not sure about that other stuff. It didn’t taste like anything Mexican I’ve had before.”

  “What have you had before?”

  “Taco Bell!”

  We both laugh, and Brett offers me a drink from the flask he has in his pocket. I glance at Falk, knowing he won’t approve, though he also won’t say anything about it. He had lightened up quite a bit after our chat a few nights ago. He’s not looking in my direction, but I decide to decline anyway.

  “Suit yourself,” Brett says as he takes a good swig.

  “I was never much for scotch,” I admit. “Martinis are more my style, but they’re a little more complicated than just opening the bottle.”

  “All the complicated parts of scotch are done before it ever gets into a bottle,” Brett says. “Caesar knows his scotch. He’s picked up some good stuff on supply runs. It helps relieve some of the tension.”

  “I’m sure that’s true.”

  “It’s a little tense around here, ya know?” Brett leans forward and rests his forearms on his knees as he looks up at me with a toothy smile.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “You know.” He grins wider. “All these guys, one single chick. You realize you’re quite the topic of discussion when you’re not around.”

  The friendly chat we have been having feels abruptly different to me. I sit up a little straighter to shift my chair away, but Brett just scoots his closer. Our knees are almost touching. I swallow and grasp my upper arms with my hands.

  “So, how many people here know who you really are, Hannah Savinski?”

  My muscles flex, and I push back against the chair. I can feel my throat tightening up, and I glance around to see where Falk is, but he’s no longer next to Christine. It’s dark enough that I can’t find him right away. He was here just a few minutes ago, so I know he’s not far.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “It’s all right, babe.” Brett continues to smile at me. “I won’t give ya away. I’m surprised people haven’t figured it out.”

  “They have a lot of other things on their minds.”

  “Still, that’s a gutsy thing you did. Powerful people to go up against.”

  I nod. I’m not at all relaxed by his declaration to keep my identity to himself. Everything about his posture makes me think he wants something else.

  “Your face was all over television in Chicago,” he says with a smile. “I mean, Archive Industries is big business all over the country, ya know?”

  “Um…yeah, I know.” His words are increasing my discomfort. I’ve only talked to Falk about my past since the attacks, and he doesn’t tend to ask a lot of questions.

  “You were all ready to testify in front of all those government types, right?”

  “Something like that,” I mumble.

  “Did you get a lot of names?” he asks. “Like, the other people Hudson worked with?”

  I don’t like where this is going at all. He sounds like someone from the media, and I wonder if he really was in manufacturing work before.

  “I really don’t want to talk about it,” I tell him.

  “Oh right,” he says, his head bobbing up and down. “Yeah, yeah. Sure. I just wanted you to know you could if you wanted to.”

  “I don’t.”

  “It had to have been rough on you.”

  I look at him sternly, annoyed more than anything now, and he seems to get the idea.

  “It’s okay,” he says with another toothy grin. He leans forward and lays his hand on my knee. “I’ll shut up about
it now.”

  His grip tightens for a moment before he slides his hand up my leg. I can’t move. My vision blurs. For a moment, I’m transported back to that van, and I feel the tight grip of fingers around my legs as they’re held in place.

  “Just remember, if you start getting a little tense, I’m right here for ya.” He slides his hand a little further up my thigh and grips my flesh with his fingers.

  Everything happens so fast.

  One moment, Brett has his hand on my leg, and the next, he’s flung backwards. The chair tips along with him, and Falk is on top of him, slamming a fist into his face. I jump out of my chair, yelling at Falk to stop, but he doesn’t pay any attention to me.

  Brett grabs hold of Falk’s forearms, and the two of them roll. For a brief moment, Brett is on top, but Falk quickly jabs a fist into his side, and they roll again. I jump backward and end up against the wall of the shed.

  At that point, everyone has heard the commotion, and they all run toward the fight. Falk is still hitting Brett in the chest and face, and Brett is punching Falk in the side, screaming at him to get off.

  Caesar makes a grab for Falk, pulling him off of Brett and to the side. He tries to get a grip around Falk’s arms to hold him back, but Falk shoves him away. As Caesar regains his balance, Falk draws the gun at his waist and points it right in Caesar’s face.

  “Back off.” Falk’s voice is perfectly calm though his eyes are wide and full of fury. He’s taught me enough about guns to see that he’s flicked off the safety.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you!” Caesar yells. “Put that damn thing away before someone gets hurt!”

  “He is going to get hurt,” Falk says, pointing the gun to a supine Brett. “He is going to get a bullet in his fucking skull if he ever touches her again!”

  “Falk! Stop!” I yell, but he keeps his eyes on Brett.

  Both of them are breathing heavily. Brett places his hands behind himself on the ground and stands slowly, holding his arms out in surrender.

  “I don’t know what the hell is up, buddy,” he says, “but I was just talking to the lady.”

  “Keep your fucking hands off of her,” Falk says through his teeth.