The Love of Money II – Chapter 12: Lit Fuse

Tuesday, September 10th, early morning

Something very different from the forest noises woke me up, and it was already fading by the time I realized what it was.

A helicopter.

A fucking helicopter had just flown overhead, and I was caught with my pants down.

No. My pants were still off.

I glanced beside me to see Chloe gone, and snatched my pants as I rolled from under the blankets. Being in such a hurry, I barely noticed how stiff they were getting from the lack of washing. A day in the forest was like five days in civilization in terms of garment maintenance.

Slipping my pants on as I stepped outside, I only vaguely registered the cold morning air creeping over my bare skin. The helicopter had too much of my attention. I peered through the canopy of trees, ears strained to hear the whisper of blades, but they’d already faded, leaving nothing but the stillness of early morning.

“Came from the southwest,” Chloe’s voice drifted from behind me. I turned to see her approaching, still limping a little from yesterday’s activities. She was fully clothed and had a small satchel that carried the two rockets we took from one of Tanaka’s mercenaries.

“Isn’t that the direction we came from?” I asked.

“Yep,” she said, stopping well outside my personal space. She set the satchel on the ground. Then, she took a moment to check me out, her eyes doing a quick scan up and down my body. “Damn,” she said. “You’re coming along nicely.”

“What?”

“You’ve lost a few pounds,” she said. “Getting a little more muscle, too. Your workouts are starting to pay off.”

I glanced down, and that’s when the temperature hit me. It wasn’t unbearable, but it was definitely uncomfortable without half my clothes.

Refusing to be distracted, I said, “Thanks. You’re going to the cabin right now?”

“That might be our people. The sooner I get there, the better.”

“I should go with you,” I said.

Chloe shook her head as she reached just inside the hut and pulled out the pack she’d taken with her the last two days, straightening as she slung it over her shoulder. “I need to move quickly. You’ll slow me down.”

She must have seen the offense on my face because she continued before I could even open my mouth.

“You know I don’t think you’ll be a burden, but you don’t have my training, and I’m faster alone.” She reached between two trees and pulled at a large cylinder—the rocket launcher. “It’ll be slow enough going with this thing,” she said as she slung it on top of the pack.

I studied her, noticing the dark rings under her eyes. Other than that, she looked completely unfazed. “Chloe, you’re hurt, and you have your limits. I should be going with you.”

She pointed to the rockets. “Hand me that bag, would you?”

I obliged as she continued, “I already told you, no. Besides,” she jerked her head in Astrid’s direction, “someone’s got to keep an eye on the princess.”

I considered pushing back against her insistence to go alone, but even with her injury, she could have cracked my head open with that rocket launcher. Besides, she was probably right. With our luck, if I went with her, that was likely the moment when a wolf or something else showed up and ate Astrid, who was practically defenseless.

“Be careful out there,” I said, leveling a look at her to let her know I meant it.

She winked at me, the only sign that the Chloe I’d gotten to know was still there. “I’ll be back this evening. Hopefully, with help.”

Heading in the direction of the cabin, she called out, “Astrid has the remote. Keep sending that signal. That chopper might not be our people.”

“Okay,” I called out, annoyed that she hadn’t even addressed the giant elephant in the room—her resignation.

“We’re going to talk later, though,” I called after her.

“No, we aren’t,” she said without looking back or breaking stride.

Yeah, she knew what I meant.

And if Chloe thought we wouldn’t talk about any of this later, she had another thing coming.

______

Tuesday, September 10th, late morning

“Feel better?” I asked, as I leaned against the doorway of the helicopter and sat down.

Astrid sighed and passed me the remote. “I didn’t realize how washing my face would make me feel like a completely new person, and brushing my teeth is almost enough to make me forget about being trapped here.”

“Yeah,” I said as I repeated the all-too-familiar pattern on the remote. “Sorry I let you go without it for so long.”

“It’s okay,” Astrid said. “It’s low on the list of priorities right now. Thank you for everything that you’ve done for me.”

“No problem,” I said, distracted as I stared at the remote. It still bothered me how Chloe had seemed so… tactical this morning. We barely exchanged any words before she traipsed into the forest again, and it was like she couldn’t wait to get away from me. Of course, I knew better; she was in a hurry to reach the cabin just in case those were our people.

Still…

I leaned my head against the wreckage and recalled our conversation from the night before. Chloe’s words came back to me:

I’m thinking of quitting when we get back to the States.

“I’m thinking of quitting when we get back to the States.”

“What?” I’d asked, lifting my head to look at her.

“My position. I think I might have to vacate it after we return home.”

“Why?” I asked.

Chloe had studied me for a while, and I’d never seen her look so uncertain and vulnerable. I thought she was about to ask me to kiss her again, but instead she simply said, “I crossed a line.”

“I’m okay with that,” I said.

“I’m not,” she said, her tone flat. “I can’t trust myself to make good decisions, and you can’t trust me to do my job.”

“Chloe—”

“I’m not changing my mind,” she said. She rolled away from me, exposing her back.

“I don’t care about you being compromised,” I said to the back of her head. “I don’t want anyone else!”

“You’re gonna,” Chloe muttered.

“I don’t accept your resignation,” I said.

“I don’t care.”

I sighed and rolled on my back, staring at the low ceiling of the hut as the shadows played across it in the flickering flame’s light.

“Let’s say you quit,” I finally said, cutting through the minutes-long silence like a knife. “Would you leave?”

“I wouldn’t have a job there. Of course I would.”

I wasn’t sure what hurt more, my heart from the callous way she was suddenly treating me, or my neck from the proverbial whiplash. What the hell had happened in the sixty seconds between heaven and heartbreak?”

“Chloe…”

“Go to sleep, Marcus. We’re not out of the woods yet.”

We’re not out of the woods yet.

I violently cranked the remote to its highest setting, imagining that Helen still had the egg inside her. A desperate SOS by way of sex toy: Bitch! Get me the fuck out of here!

“What’s the matter?”

I looked up to find Astrid watching me, her head tilted… half curious, half amused as she lay back on the twisted remains of the helicopter seating.

“Lover’s quarrel?”

I blinked. “What?”

She gave me a ghost of a smile. “You and Chloe. You’ve been intimate at least twice. Something happened last night. She seemed more surly than usual this morning when she brought me the remote.”

Helen, Erin, Natashya… now Astrid. God save me from insightful women.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Astrid rolled her eyes. “I’m not stupid, Marcus. I’ve seen the way you have looked at her since we met. You’ve been wanting her badly for a while, and now that it’s the two of you alone in the wilderness on these long, cold nights, you’ve given in to your passions.” She smirked. “You’ll get no judgment from me.”

There was no point in denying it. Astrid had my number, and if I were to continue denying it, I’d just look like a fool. It didn’t mean I had to confirm anything, though, so I simply shrugged.

“At least, I know why you haven’t come to see me at night. I was hoping you’d offer to keep me warm in a way more fun than these thermal packets.”

I snorted and nodded at the twisted frames of the seats that had been her prison and, likely, her savior. “Really? Kind of limited on our options, don’t you think?”

“I’m very creative.” Astrid purred, reminding me a little of Helen. “I’m sure we could have found a way to make it work.”

“Oh, fuck!” I suddenly realized that I still had the slider up, and quickly dropped it back down to zero. If Helen still had that thing inside of her and was getting my signal, I was giving her one hell of a ride right about now. I decided to give it a rest for a few minutes.

“Tell me about her,” Astrid said.

“Chloe?”

“No. The one who is hopefully receiving your signal. Helen, right?”

“Oh,” I said, not feeling like opening up right now. “There isn’t much to say.”

Astrid closed her eyes and smiled amusedly. “I’m sure she would be flattered to hear that. It’s not true, though. It’s Roger VanCamp’s wife, correct? They’ve been married for years, now.”

“Was married to Roger,” I quickly corrected. “That’s over.”

“They got divorced?”

“Eh… not officially,” I admitted, “but they’re separated. The paperwork just needs to be filed.”

“And now she’s walking around New York with a vibrating egg inside her, and you have the remote.” There was a twinkle in Astrid’s eyes. Up until this point, she’d been sweet and pleasant. I’d called her out when she tried to manipulate me, and I guess I’d made enough of an impression that she had been relatively docile with more of a friend vibe than the in-control femme fatale one. I saw a little of that return as she asked me about Helen, but it was more charming than alarming.

And I found myself wanting to give it to her. We were being hunted in a cold, damp forest. Chloe was doing the heavy lifting, and I felt like the little kid standing there holding the flashlight. Our only communication with the outside world was by tapping out Morse code on my lawyer’s cooch. My only respite had been the sudden intimacy I’d gained with my beautiful bodyguard.

Now, with Chloe’s sudden shift in mood after handing me her two weeks, I needed a pick-me-up. Astrid’s rapt attention as I told her the story of how I cucked Roger VanCamp in every way possible seemed like a cheap way to feel better.

So, I filled her in on all the juicy detail—how Roger had sent Helen to influence me, and how I’d learned about his propensity to pimp out his wife. I told her how much Helen loathed the man and how, after confronting her, she switched allegiances. I confided in Astrid that it was Roger who had taken part in my kidnapping, and that he’d threatened me at my house party. Finally, I told her how I’d come to his partners with proof of his crime against me and threatened to leave their firm unless they dropped him as a partner. By the time I reached the end of the story where I confronted Roger in his own office and in front of his own partners, it was impossible not to smile.

“So,” I finished, “now Roger VanCamp lost his partnership and got disbarred while I get to fuck his very willing wife, and I hope he falls asleep every night in squalor, crying about it.”

I wasn’t the only one grinning.