Heart Song Anthology by Carolyn Faulkner (summer reads txt) 📗

had purchased several balloons from a street vendor, enough to covertly fill the room, and then some. He walked out with what remained clasped in his hand. Red heart balloons even if the main color of Valentine’s Day for the Danish was white.

As he exited the hotel with a slight spring in his step, the most spirited he had felt in a long while, Asher noticed a child running around the gardens outside. He slowed to watch the young boy pull back a slingshot and shoot birdseed through petals on flowers, at unsuspecting bugs, or at some imaginary foe.

The slightest shadow of a smile tugged at his cheek as he watched him, perfectly innocent and oblivious – something Asher could never recall being himself.

One balloon string slipped from Asher’s fingers as he passed him, floating up towards the sky. The boy looked up, his mouth dropping into a curious O, as he watched the balloon float lazily upwards.

Asher held out the remaining bundle of balloons. “Trade?”

For a moment the child looked confused, then took the balloons and held out his slingshot and birdseed.

Taking into account the wind speed and direction, and the weight of his ammunition while ignoring the stickiness of the grip, Asher pulled the slingshot back to his cheek and fired the seeds into the air. The balloon exploded.

I’ve still got it, Asher thought with some satisfaction, turning to return the slingshot to the boy, then froze.

A figure with the same business haircut, same body type, same posture as Krone stood watching him and the boy.

Krone was dead, Asher knew it logically. He’d pulled the trigger. He’d watched the bullet strike Krone between the eyes and blast out the back of his skull, killing him before he could hurt Cora anymore. He knew Krone was dead, and yet his stomach still tightened as his blood chilled in his veins.

“Mr.? Are you all right?” asked the child in a heavy accent, concerned at Asher’s sudden blank stillness.

Asher looked down for a split second before he returned his gaze back to Krone. Or where Krone had been. When he looked back up he was gone, his figure having evaporated into mist.

“Mr.? Do you want your balloons?”

“Keep them,” Asher mumbled, searching the horizon for his old handler. He could have sworn it was Krone himself. Asher swallowed; apparently Krone’s ghost didn’t just haunt Cora.

On the walk back to their cramped apartment, Asher felt the need to look over his shoulder with every crunch of snow beneath someone’s boot, and any flash of movement to his peripherals. He was always aware of his surroundings, some training simply could not be undone, but now he was hyper aware of himself and the world around him.

He checked over his shoulder every few steps, thinking what Krone would say to him if he were alive to see him now. “You can’t represent The Company looking like a homeless man,” he would scold. Krone always wanted Asher to remain well groomed, so now Asher let his beard grow a bit scraggly and his hair was long enough to tickle his neck and sweep just over his ocean blue eyes.

“An expert marksman such as yourself shouldn’t be associated with such a witch,” Krone’s imaginary words echoed through his head.

Stop.

“Look how weak she has made you.”

Enough. His traitorous mind did not listen; instead it remembered what Cora had looked like laying on the ground covered in her own blood with Krone’s foot positioned over her fingers as if ready to crush them.

“She’s changed you.”

Yes, for the better.

“You can’t have the job and the girl, Asher,” Asher recalled Krone spitting, his gun ready to steal Cora from him forever. “and you can’t have your life without the job, so choose. You either choose her and die with her, or choose The Company and live.”

He had chosen Cora; and the fear that they could still both die, as Krone had threatened, was what was slowly killing them both.

All those thoughts evaporated when he opened the door to their apartment.

Cora sat on the floor assembling some electronics with tools and wires strewn all around her and a look of determination Asher hadn’t seen in some time. He had missed that look.

“Cora?”

“Genevieve,” she corrected. “But tonight you can call me Cora because I am on the hunt.”

“The hunt?”

“Some lowlife is selling cigarettes to kids, and maybe Genevieve would sit back and let it happen but not Cora, so you can call me Cora but only for tonight. Shouldn’t take me longer than that to catch this snake, not once I get him on film.”

“Do you know the laws in Denmark? They may differ from Florida’s,” Asher pointed out.

“Film is film,” Cora grumbled. “If I catch him on film doing something shady on a certified surveillance camera then the whole world is in agreement that it’s evidence.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. I say so.”

Asher smiled again, but his beard hid it. It was nice to see her so spirited, and exactly what Asher had been hoping would happen when she discovered her Valentine’s Day surprise.

Cora stood with her surveillance camera fully assembled. “I’m going out to install this thing somewhere.”

“May I come?”

She looked up and the purse of her lips slackened. “Is it a good idea for both of us to be drawing this much attention to ourselves?” she asked hesitantly.

Honestly he didn’t know, but he did know he was tired of the fear, and tired of seeing it eat away at the woman he loved. Plus, he wanted to be close to her while she still looked like her old self. “If Cora is back, then so is Asher.”

She smirked at him, and this playful grin made his chest tighten with nostalgia and hope. I miss you Cora, come back to me, but it was gone almost as quickly as it had formed.

4

Dangerous Lovers

In their attempt to be as inconspicuous as possible, Cora and Asher bundled up to fight the evening chill and to prevent any of their features from being