9
Simon
“Okay, wait, let’s back it up for a second here…” Jayne exited the doorway and turned so he faced Simon in full. Simon barely saw him. The world had become a surreal dream, like Simon’s spirit had been plucked from his body, and he was floating off-kilter from his physical form. “Evelyn Warwick is in Shep’s room, and now someone is coming to kill us? Excuse me while I call bullshit. Are we being pranked? This is one of those reality television shows, isn’t it? I’m not falling for it.”
In an attempt to feel like a person again, Simon sucked in a lungful of air. He ended up sounding like a fish hauled onto the shore and left out to dry in the sun.
“Simon, you’re going to pass out if you keep breathing like that,” Jayne warned. While his lips curled with displeasure, his eyes showed evidence of concern. He briskly made his way down the hall and braced Simon with one hand, using the other to keep Parker against his chest. “Panic doesn’t define you. It will pass. Do you remember the breathing exercises I taught you?”
“N-No,” Simon stuttered. With Jayne’s hand there to support him, his knees went weak. “H is going tokillus, Jayne. He’s going to—”
“Shh.” Without invitation, Jayne planted his forehead against Simon’s, effectively pinning Simon’s head against the wall. With Jayne so close, Simon was forced to close his eyes—he didn’t want to be the one who made it awkward. “Okay, so here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to breathe in with me to a count of five, then you’re going to hold it for seven, then exhale for nine. Five, seven, nine. Okay?”
“Okay.” What Simon wanted to say was that breathing wasn’t going to stop Harlow Warwick from breaking down their pathetic apartment door and cracking their skulls like eggshells, but he knew that Jayne wouldn’t want to listen to him, anyway. Besides, it’d be nice to enjoy a few last deep lungfuls of air before certain death.
Simon certainly couldn’t enjoy them when he was dead.
“Then we’re starting right now,” Jayne whispered. “One, two, three, four, five… hold it, two, three, four, five, six, seven…”
Parker, who was starting to appreciate his surroundings now that he was almost six months old, reached for Simon and grabbed onto his shirt. His tiny fingers tugged, and as Simon exhaled while Jayne counted, he reached up and stroked the impossibly small knuckles on Parker’s hand. The situation they faced was terrifying, but if he didn’t hold it together and figure a way out of this mess, then Parker might be hurt. Not physically, of course—Simon didn’t believe for a second that Harlow would hurt a child—but emotionally. Their little family was dysfunctional at best, but it was still better than no family at all. If Harlow came in and disposed of the rest of them, then Parker would be on his own.
Simon couldn’t let that happen.
He followed Jayne through a few more measured breaths, then turned his head to the side and forced his legs to support his weight. Jayne, seemingly pleased, unlatched Parker’s hand from the front of Simon’s shirt and took a stop back. “That was much more useful than I thought it was going to be. I was about five seconds away from getting you a Xanax.”
“I’m okay,” Simon said. He was not okay. “But we need to have a talk. Like… a real talk. A for-serious talk.”
“Yeah, we do.” Jayne nodded toward Shep’s bedroom door. Shep was missing—Simon figured he’d slipped back into the room while both of them were distracted. “We need to figure out how to return to the dimension where Evelyn Warwick isn’t sitting in Shep’s bedroom. What the hell kind of timeline did we slip into where one day, a celebrity just turns up out of the blue and sits on your furniture like it’s no big deal? That’snota reality I think I’d do well in. After years of poor, deliciously greasy life choices, my overtaxed heart can only take so much.”
While Jayne’s humor was appreciated, it did little to assuage Simon’s fear.
“Evie sitting there isn’t the problem,” Simon stressed. “The problem is that she’s sitting there alone.”
“Shep’s in there now, I think,” Jayne said. He glanced toward the door.
“No, no… I mean…” Simon squeezed his eyes shut and pushed his hair back from his face. It had fallen in the way of his eyes again, and the rusty tint was distracting. “I mean, Evie… Evie goes everywhere with a bodyguard. Her father. Harlow Warwick.”
“Oh, yeah, I read something about that online once.” Jayne shifted Parker to his opposite shoulder, effectively blocking his attempt to tug Jayne’s ear off his head. “It was cute. He was kind of hot, if I’m remembering right. I wouldn’t mind if he wanted to bemybodyguard.”
“Jayne, no, that’s not…” Simon sighed. “That’s not the point. The point is that…”
“What?” Jayne furrowed his brow. “Simon?”
But Simon didn’t know what to say. The truth was, he kept most of his life a secret from everyone, including his brothers. Neither Jayne nor Shep knew what he did for a living. He’d fed them vague information in the past—IT work, mostly. Remote jobs that allowed him to stay home all day and take care of the house and the scholastic obligations he needed to fulfill as Shep’s guardian. What he hadn’t told them was that, mostly, he did work that oftentimes wasn’t entirely legal. Hacking into databases through SQL codes and cross-site scripting, disabling alarm systems remotely, accessing webcams or other recording devices…
It wasn’t like he worked for anyone unsavory—Simon drew the line at assisting criminals—but for the right individual, he’d been known to do less-than-legal work upon request.
How was he supposed to explain that to Jayne without Jayne losing his shit?
“The point is, I, uh, I’ve worked with Harlow Warwick before.” Simon chose each word carefully, navigating what he said with care. “I actually… I do a bunch of work for him… and he doesn’t know that Evie is here. No one does.”
“Well, everyone knows she’s missing, at least.” Parker reached for his ear again. Jayne grabbed hold of Parker’s hand and brought it to his lips, kissing it all over. Shrieking with delight, Parker babbled a nonsensical string of syllables. Jayne beamed at him. “It’s all over the internet. There was ahappeningat Geek Out Con. The lights cut suddenly, even the emergency backups, and when they booted back on, Evelyn was gone. People were scurrying like ants. It was insane. A woman was trampled and apparently had her arm broken in the panic. People were fleeing the convention en masse.As annoyed as I am that Shep barged into the apartment like he did, I’m glad that he wasn’t caught up in all of that. It was a total disaster.” Jayne paused. “But what do you mean, you do work for Harlow? You mean like maintaining Evelyn’s website or something?”
“Exactly like that,” Simon replied, glad that Jayne had fed him an excuse. “So I… I know who Harlow is, and I know what he’s capable of, and I also know that he’s not happy that Evie’s disappeared. He’s looking for her.”
It was all mostly the truth. In actuality, Harlow had never delved into his past with Simon—Simon had dug into it for himself. And oh, what a past it was.
A BUD/S graduate at eighteen, recognized for his excellence during SEAL tactical communications advanced training, and deployed with his first SEAL Team at twenty, Harlow was not someone Simon wouldeverwant to face on a bad day. With twelve years of active service on his resume, and the next six working as Evie’s bodyguard, Harlow had a physique that would allow him to snap a man in half with a flick of his little finger. Since Simon had fallen head over heels for him, he’d imagined Harlow using that strength to pin him down and take his body over and over—but it wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine that Harlow could use that same strength to strangle the life out of him.
