The Surrender Gate: A Desire Exchange Novel

  “Dugas says they’ll show up on our doorstep within forty-eight hours.”

  Travel time, she thinks, hoping this won’t be the last time she can channel her father’s investigative skills. Forty-eight hours is plenty of time to plan a last-minute trip, provided you’re in North America.

  “Are we’re sure it’s our doorstep they show up on?”

  “They come at night. When we’re alone. So…” He cuts his eyes toward the idling Navigator a few feet away. “…Make sure you’re alone. For those forty-eight hours at least.”

  Just beside the sliding doors to the terminal, Jonathan’s shadow, a stubby Iraq war vet named Frank Dupuy, scans their surroundings with almost imperceptible jerks of his neck. He is the opposite of Marcus Dylan, a younger, stockier version of Cliff Clavin from Cheers. When Emily first saw the contrast between the two men, she almost burst out laughing. Not because she thought anyone’s appearance should subject them to ridicule, but because everything about Frank Dupuy made it clear Arthur Benoit didn’t want Jonathan sleeping with his new bodyguard. (Although, if Arthur’s plan was to truly keep Jonathan and Emily from getting confused again, he should have tried a dual-track approach and set Jonathan up with a protector who looked like an Olympic gymnast.)

  “Why am I scared?” she asks him.

  “I don’t know. Maybe Arthur’s the one nerving us out here. What with the guards and the black cars…”

  “This is his last shot to find his son, Jonathan. He’s the one who’s nerved out.”

  “The guards are a risk then. If these people get wind of them, they might bolt and then there’s no shot of finding Ryan at all.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying Arthur’s concern for your well-being might be working against Arthur here.”

  “And you think Arthur’s got nothing to be afraid of?”

  “I think people are more afraid of sex than they should be. Always have, always will.”

  “Got it.”

  “Look, Dugas wouldn’t tell me anything about the test he went through. But he did say there’s no pain, no torture. That’s not the game these people play. It’s not the game people pay them to play.”

  “So what is the game?”

  “Pleasure and fantasy.”

  “Those are his words?”

  “His words exactly.”

  “Okay.”

  “But also, Em… Come on. When have you ever not been scared of something?” These words would feel like an accusation coming from anyone besides Jonathan. But he’s spoken them with the level intensity of someone who’s known her almost her entire life, and the moment feels more intimate than the feel of him inside of her, or even the long hours of strained nocturnal proximity they shared the night before, side-by-side, fully clothed, as chaste as siblings forced to share a bed.

  “I guess you’re right,” Emily says. “But if there’s nothing to be afraid of, why are you going with me?”

  “‘Cause you have a tendency to freak out over things that aren’t actually scary.”

  “I see. So you think I’m going to freak out?”

  “I think you’re stalling because you don’t want me to get on the plane,” he says with a broad smile.

  “I think you’re kinda right.”

  He takes both of her hands gently in his and gives her a lingering kiss on the cheek.

  “See you on the other side, Miss Conran.”

  “Have a nice flight, Leonard.”

  Jonathan grimaces. Then he takes a few steps in the direction of the Navigator and gestures for Marcus to roll down the passenger side window.

  “Hey, Robocop!” he calls. “If anything happens to her, I’ll hunt you down and choke you with a pink scarf.”

  “Sounds good,” Marcus says, but he’s already rolling the window back up.

  To Emily he says, “Twenty-four hours and the guy’s already losing his touch. Be sure to talk real slow in case he can’t keep up.”

  But the Navigator’s window is plunging again. “RoboCop?” Marcus shouts back. “Dude. Seriously. That’s like from nineteen eighty-four.”

  “Nineteen eighty-seven, dude. And they remade it in twenty fourteen. Just saying!”

  “Good-bye, Jonathan,” Emily says. “Try not to seduce anyone until you’re back on the ground.”

  “How else am I going to mend my broken heart?” he asks with one hand to the aforementioned injury and a pouty lower lip. It’s a clownish expression and gesture, but there’s a flicker of real hurt underneath it, and for a few seconds, the pit of Emily’s stomach goes cold, separation anxiety swirled with a tangle of other dark predictions.

  When they see each other again, will they be the same people? Are they underestimating these silly sounding tests The Desire Exchange will put them through?

  The doors slide open behind him and Jonathan raises one long arm. At first she thinks this will be only her good-bye, but then he pitches forward in a dramatic bow that’s half Broadway star, half maître d’, before a thoroughly unamused Frank Dupuy takes him by one shoulder and steers him into the crowded terminal.

  Emily steps back inside the Navigator. She’s braced for some comment from her shadow. But Marcus is too busy fiddling with his phone.

  “All set?” he asks.

  “Yep.”

  “Good,” he says, still swiping and tapping and pretty much ignoring her.

  “Looking for some tunes?” she asks.

  A car horn bleats behind them. Marcus shoots an angry look in the rearview mirror, sees it’s an airport cop, and pulls away from the curb, his phone still in one hand. “A distracted driver is a dangerous driver,” she says in the light, singsong voice of a television mom from the 1950s.

  “On long drives like this, there’s only really one kind of music that keeps me focused. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I guess not as long as it’s not—” Before she can say the words death metal, a peal of strings comes pouring out of the stereo speakers, lush and surprisingly melodic. The chord changes that follow sound distinctly Asian. Marcus stares dead ahead as he steers them out of the tangle of airport traffic. Is this some stilted attempt to bare his soul, to prove he’s not some big dumb lug?

  Then the singing starts.

  Emily lets out a startled cry, as if she’d been poked in the ribs. Her fingernails bite into the armrest, which she realizes she’s suddenly holding onto as if for dear life. The woman’s voice—she thinks it’s a woman; it might not be human—is a piercing, warbling sound, like what she imagines a monkey might sound like if it were being murdered, slowly, or maybe nails on a chalkboard if the chalkboard had nerve endings and a mouth and was screaming out in protest. She’s not familiar enough with Asian cultures to know what language it is, but it’s definitely from that part of the world. Marcus closes his eyes for a second or two and then takes in a slow, deep breath, as if the shrieking, ear-piercing, jangling music coming from the speakers is feeding his soul, sustaining him even, as he steers the giant SUV onto the access road and toward the onramp to Interstate 10.

  “What is this?” she asks. She’s trying her best not to be a bitch, but it comes out sounding the way people in a dentist’s chair ask how much longer?

  “Cantonese opera,” Marcus shouts back. “It’s called Sacrifice of a Princess.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “You like it?” he asks. “I think it’s really beaut—”

  And then he loses it. He snorts so loudly she can hear it over the shrieks coming from the stereo. He’s doubled over laughing, his watering eyes still fixed on the road, but one fist coming up to make sure his eruption hasn’t sent anything flying from his nostrils.

  She kills the stereo with the flick of one hand. “I can’t believe you!”

  “What? You don’t like it?” He’s actually giggling now; boyish sounding things that make him grimace while his shoulders and upper back shake.

  “Seriously?”

  “Were you really going to l
et me listen to that all the way to Florida?” Just the mention of this prospect causes Marcus to lose it again.

  “No, of course not, but I didn’t want to sound like some racist who hates Japanese opera.”

  “Well, that’s good, ’cause Cantonese is Chinese.”

  “Alright, you know what—”

  “No. What? What do I need to know, Emily?”

  “Never mind,” she says. She turns her face to the window because she figures if he can only see one blushing cheek, it will somehow diminish how badly he just duped her. And then she finds herself laughing in spite of herself.

  “Hey,” Marcus finally says, “I just wanted you to see that your gay friend isn’t the only one with a sense of humor, alright?”

  “Well, congratulations, Marcus. You’ve made that very clear.”

  * * * *

  “Unbelievable,” Marcus mutters.

  Parked in the overgrown backyard of a modest brick house just off I-10’s passage through Northwest Pensacola, a few yards from a drainage canal spackled with hovering insects, Emily’s gleaming new car looks like a princess at a flea market.

  Lily’s new car, she reminds herself.

  Marcus ordered her to stay outside while he obtained the keys and registration from their secret car broker. Whoever he is, the guy lives like a humble schoolteacher so she has no idea if he’s in the habit of selling insanely expensive cars to people who don’t technically exist, and that’s fine with her.

  “Argento Grey leather,” Marcus begins, walking in a slow circle around the Aston Martin. “20 spoke silver wheels. Arizona Bronze exterior. And a convertible? Christ, almighty. I swear to God…” He’s made each one of the car’s specs sound like an accusation.

  “Didn’t figure you were much of a car person, Mister Dylan,” Emily says.

  “What made you figure that?”

  “I don’t know. You just seem more…practical. Jeeps, Hummers, tents. That kind of thing.”

  “Nothing practical about a Hummer. And besides, practical people can appreciate a work of art. And this car is a work of art.”

  “Can’t argue with you there,” she says quietly. She’s running one finger along the car’s driver’s side like someone in a commercial. She wills herself to stop, but it’s no use. The shiny gold paint exerts the same gravitational force on her fingers as a box of Wheat Thins in the pantry on a lonely Saturday night. “I like how the headlights go back as far as the tires. And it’s like… The whole car looks like it’s just got these energy waves in it. Like it’s building up energy just sitting here… Oh my God. What’s happening to me? I sound like some…car nerd. Is that what they’re even called? Car nerds?”

  “I think the term’s gearhead. Or it used to be. When I was a gearhead.”

  “I am not a gearhead. I refuse to be a gearhead. Now Lily Conran? It looks like she’s a gearhead for sure.”

  “Unbelievable,” Marcus says again. He’s crossed his arms over his broad chest, and he’s shaking his head with parental disapproval.

  “So I’m sensing some judgment around me and this car.”

  “Emily, giving you a car like this, well…it’s like giving a Van Gogh to a five-year-old.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Do you even know how to drive this thing?”

  “It’s a car, Marcus. It doesn’t go to the moon.”

  “It’s an Aston Martin, Emily It’s not just a car. Saying an Aston Martin is just a car is like—”

  “Don’t! Don’t finish that sentence, Marcus. I have this image of you as something other than a douchebag, and I just want to hold on to it for as long as I possibly can.”

  “Oh, okay. Let’s go back to talking about how the car has energy waves moving through it. Does it have a chi too?”

  “Hey, soldier of fortune. If you’re going to get this bent out of shape about a car, I’m not sure if you’re up to the task of protecting me twenty-four, seven.”

  “I’m bent out of shape because this car is being given to someone who might not appreciate its full magnificence.”

  “That’s a big word for a jarhead.”

  Eyes ablaze, arms falling from his chest to his side. “I am not a jarhead. I was a SEAL, not some bullet sponge with a bunch of bullshit sayings who goes running headfirst—”

  “Watch it. My dad was a Marine. I know the drill. You think you’re hot stuff ’cause you can tread water for a whole day. But you’d have to do it with ten pounds of gear on your back everywhere you—”

  “Osama bin Laden is dead! You’re welcome!”

  “Was that you?”

  “No. But I knew one of the—”

  “What’s his number? I’ll send him a fruit basket.”

  “Emily, we need to talk about you and this car.”

  “Or we could talk about how condescending you’re being right now. I mean, when was the last time you drove an Aston Martin?”

  “Never,” Marcus says in a lustful whisper.

  “Well, start being nicer to me and maybe I’ll let you.”

  “Don’t play games with me, young lady. Not with this car.”

  “Fine. What kind of games should we play then?”

  She wasn’t planning it. She hadn’t rehearsed it. It just slipped out. Their little back and forth had a hard edge to it; maybe that’s what pried the comment loose and brought it to the surface in the form of a brazen come-on. He’s studying her, sizing her up. It looks like he’s forgotten about the car altogether, and now there’s just her and his silent fantasies, which she can feel electrifying the stretch of driveway between them.

  He’s trained to kill with his bare hands, fully capable of taking her, restraining her, finding her soft spots. But for some reason, he’s holding back. Surely, it’s not professional consideration. Did Arthur not tell him this whole thing is basically a fix-up? Or is that her job? And should she do it now, here, in the dingy backyard of this anonymous little house they might never see again?

  “I figured you’d be saving up your energy,” he says. “You know, for your test.”

  Emily has never been slapped before. She can only imagine it would release the same combination of anger and bewildering sense of shame. There’s remorse in his eyes, but if he’s got an apology to offer, he’s sitting on it. And as far as Emily’s concerned, he’s chosen to sit on it just a second too long.

  “I see,” she finally manages. “So you’re only into virgins, is that it?”

  “Emily, I—”

  “You must be one too, right? Saving yourself for marriage?”

  Brow furrowed, he’s staring at the space between their feet. He’s drained all emotion from his expression, but that fact seems more telling than anything that might be written on his facial features.

  “Don’t do stuff you don’t want to do just to get his money,” Marcus says, his words quiet and halting, like those of a frightened young man.

  “Are you accusing me of—”

  “I’m not accusing you of anything.”

  “You think Arthur’s using me?”

  “I think it’s easy to convince a woman like you, a woman who’s…different that—”

  “Wait. Different? What?”

  “A woman who brings a different set of gifts to the table is what I'm saying. And it’s—”

  “Oh, right. Like fifteen extra pounds and a brain? That kind of different?”

  “A woman who doesn’t know what she has, alright? How’s that? What I’m saying is it’s sometimes easy to convince a woman who isn’t the…traditional type that the only way people are going to like her is if she makes herself do all kinds of crazy, freaky… You know what? Forget it. Just forget it.”

  “Marcus!”

  But he’s already stalking down the driveway, and for a second or two, she’s afraid he actually wandered off into the neighborhood. But then he returns, carrying the plastic Ziploc bag in which he’s placed Lily Conran’s brand new smartphone, passport, and the Louis Vuitton wallet that now hold
s her credit cards and fake ID. They’re a few feet apart now, but he won’t look her in the eye. And maybe it’s a trick played by the security light above the garage door, but it almost looks like he’s pouting.

  Emily reaches into her purse, pulls out her own wallet and phone and trades them with her suddenly silent, suddenly stoic, and obviously embarrassed protector. Marcus’s insult notwithstanding, she’s been dreading this moment since they discussed it earlier that day. If all went according to plan, Jonathan has just conducted the same ritual with Frank Dupuy, which means they have no real way of contacting each other, or any friend or relative whose number they haven’t memorized.

  “Here’s the map to the house,” he says, pulling a folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket. “I’ll follow you there. I’m set up across the beach road. Ten minutes away on foot, five if I run. You’ll be on camera the whole time. The house is fully wired.”

  “Even the shower?”

  “You’ve got your ring,” he says. The slight hitch in his voice tells her the comment hit its target. “Apply pressure to it three times in a row if there’s an emergency.”

  “You think ’cause I don’t look like a swimsuit model that I’m…what? Desperate for validation?”

  “That’s not what I think of when I think of your body,” Marcus whispers.

  This admission has stilled him to his core. In another man, holding his current pose for this long would result in small muscle tremors, but the folded map doesn’t shake where it rests in between the fingers of his extended hand.

  “And no, I’m not saving myself for marriage,” he says.

  He places the keys to the Aston Martin in her hand, takes time molding her fingers closed over them. Then he walks off into the shadows, bound for the SUV he’s been following her in for days now, with a Ziploc bag containing most of the proof that a woman named Emily Blaine still exists.

  11

  When he reaches the entrance to Hotel Monteleone, George Dugas pauses to watch his massive bodyguard open one of the front doors for him before the uniformed doorman has a chance to help. The doorman rolls his eyes, then catches George’s look and gives him a quick, polite nod as they walk past. Maybe he’s embarrassed to have shown his annoyance so obviously. Or maybe he recognizes George Dugas from his days of crushing political and business rivals in the public square. Either way, George feels a little sorry for the guy; if he were being forced to stand outside all night, sweating through his drawers in some heavy uniform, he’d want a mindless activity to keep him occupied too.