Chapter 25: The Garrote's Kiss
The taste in Cymra’s mouth was copper and lavender soap. Her hands, which had been so steady, began to tremor the moment the suite door clicked shut behind her, sealing Rafael inside with his own ticking consequence. The belt buckle’s mechanism had deployed with a sickening snick—a fine, cruel wire now looped around his throat, its ends twisted around his bound wrists so that any struggle would tighten the noose. She hadn’t killed him. She had handed his fate back to him, a perverse test of his own will to live.
She didn’t run. She walked. Down the plush hallway, past the housekeeping cart where Liam had been. He was gone, with Pedro. Good. Her heels made no sound on the dense carpet. The tremor traveled up her arms, into her shoulders, a violent shiver she had to clamp her jaw against. She passed a mirror in an ornate frame and saw a stranger: a pale woman with hollow eyes, the dark leggings, the dark jersey knit tunic a grotesque parody of a burglar or someone wanting to die.
Adam’s voice was a thin wire in her ear. “East stairwell is clear. They’re two floors down. Move.”
She found the door, pushed into the concrete stairwell. The air was cooler, smelling of bleach and dust. The sudden echo of her own footsteps was alarming. She took the steps fast, hand skimming the cold rail.
“He’s not moving much,” Adam reported, his tone clinical. “Heart rate elevated, but he’s conscious. He’s worked it out. He’s sitting very, very still.”
A part of her, a part she despised, wondered what he was seeing. The balcony doors framing the darkening Andes. The empty whiskey glass. The elegant ruin of his own design.
She pushed the thought away. It was just set dressing now.
She caught up to them on a landing between the first floor and the lobby. Pedro had Liam’s arm over his shoulders, bearing most of his weight. Liam was hobbling, his breaths ragged whines. Pedro looked up as she descended. The fear in his eyes mutated into a desperate relief, then immediately darkened again as he scanned her for injury.
“You’re okay?” he asked, the question too large for the space.
“I’m okay,” she said, her voice rough. She moved to Liam’s other side, taking some of the weight. The man groaned between them. “Talk to me, Adam. What’s our exit?”
“Lobby is a no-go. Rafael’s security detail is converging on your suite call now. They’ll find him. You have maybe eight minutes before that changes everything. Go down. Sub-level parking. Bay 14. A black van with ‘Alpaca Treks’ on the side. Key fob is in the front right tire well.”
“Charges?” Cymra asked, the word tight.
“Forty-two minutes. But your timetable just became his timetable. Move. I can move up the explosions timetable with the small piece of your earring you left in the one piece of clay. It's a specialised detonator to bypass the internal burn."
They half-carried, half-dragged Liam down the last flight and through another heavy door into a vast underground garage. The air was thick with the smell of cold exhaust and damp concrete. Their footsteps echoed off low ceilings lined with snaking pipes. Bay 14 was in a distant, dimly-lit corner.
The van was there, a beat-up Volkswagen. Cymra found the key, clicked the locks open. They bundled Liam into the back, where he collapsed onto the carpeted floor with a sob. Pedro helped him, then turned and grabbed Cymra by the shoulders before she could climb into the driver’s seat.
His hands were warm and solid. His eyes searched her face, looking for the woman he knew in the eyes of the one who had just orchestrated a brutal tableau. “What did you do, Cym?”
The old nickname, the one from their first year of friendship, shattered something inside her. She didn’t cry. She just leaned her forehead against his chest for a single second, feeling the frantic beat of his heart. “I gave him a choice. Now we choose us.” She pulled back. “We have to drive.”
She took the wheel. Pedro got in the passenger side, twisting to check on Liam. The engine coughed to life. She followed Adam’s guided route through the garage, up a steep ramp, and out into a service alley behind the hotel. The majestic facade of Hotel Muerte Buena was just a silhouette against a bruised purple sky, its windows starting to glow with evening light. It looked peaceful.
She drove carefully, not too fast, through the winding lanes of the town. Tourists strolled, ice creams in hand. Music spilled from cafe doorways.
“The wire…” Pedro said quietly, staring out the window. “It was in the buckle I gave you.”
“A gift from Adam and designed by Mike. After what happened on our land, our hacienda. After Marrakech.” She changed gears, her movements precise. “I asked for a contingency. Something deniable.”
He absorbed this. The fact that she had carried that, had planned for this, for years. “You called him a janitor.”
“He is.”
“You were… magnificent. And terrifying.”
“I was scared,” she said, and it was the most true thing she’d ever said. "The idea of losing you... it's not one I can live with."
Adam’s voice returned. “Security found him. They’ve cut him loose. He’s furious but coherent. He’s evacuating the hotel. The charges are still active. He’s trying to save his empire.”
“Will he make it?” Pedro asked.
“Unclear. His evacuation route is… congested. Police scanners are lighting up with panic from his staff. The story is already propagating. The feed from your glasses, Cymra, the audio from the suite… it’s out. It’s done.” Adam's voice is steel. "He won't make it out, Cym. I won't let him."
They drove in silence for a while, leaving the town, heading toward the main highway back to the city. The night was fully dark now.
In the back, Liam’s breathing evened into sleep or unconsciousness.
Pedro reached over and took her hand from the gearshift. He laced his fingers through hers. His palm was sweaty. Hers was cold. They held on tight.
“When I heard his voice in the suite…” Pedro began, then stopped. “I felt thirty-five again. Small and stupid. And then you walked in. And you dismantled him with words. You saw him. The way I never really let myself see him.”
“I had a better angle,” she said softly. “I was always in the wings. Watching your scene.”
He brought her knuckles to his lips, a hard, warm press. “I love you. Not like a friend. Not like a cover. I am in love with you. I should have said it when we were surrounded by books, not after… this.”
She glanced at him, the oncoming headlights washing over his beloved, tired face. “I know. I’ve known for eleven years that I was in love with you. I was just waiting for you to catch up.”
A half-sob, half-laugh escaped him. “God, you’re smug.”
“It’s my best quality.”
Adam interrupted, his voice different. Softer. “You should pull over. Find a vantage point. Now.”
She signaled, taking the van onto a gravel pull-off that overlooked the valley. The Hotel Muerte Buena was a cluster of golden lights in the distance, a jewel box nestled in the dark folds of the mountains.
They got out. The air was cold and thin. Liam stayed in the van, asleep.
Cymra stood beside Pedro, his arm around her, her head on his shoulder. They watched.
For a minute, nothing. Just the beautiful, deceptive glow.
Then the light changed.
It wasn’t a single explosion. It was a quick, sequential chain, a deep whump-whump-whump that reached them a second later, felt in the chest more than heard. The golden lights winked out, replaced from within by a low, ruddy glare that bloomed upward. Sections of the roofline seemed to sag. A tower of dust and smoke, illuminated by the internal fire, plumed into the night sky. No sirens reached them yet, just the low, digesting rumble of collapse.
The quiet rooms were quiet no more.
Pedro let out a long, shuddering breath. “Is he in there?”
Cymra watched the fire grow. She thought of Rafael’s gray eyes, calculating his own survival to the last second. “I don’t know,” she said. And it was the truth.
Adam confirmed it a moment later. “Thermals are a mess. The blast pattern is inconsistent with a full evac. We’ll have to wait for identities.” A pause. “The livestream is wildfire. Moss’s aide is your star witness. You need to disappear for a while. But, one of my men, one who was in deep mourning-- secured Rafael in the building at the last moment.”
Cymra turned from the burning hotel, pressing her face into Pedro’s neck. He held her, his grip tight enough to crush the terror out of her.
“Where to?” he murmured into her hair.
She looked up at him. The glow from the distant fire danced in his eyes. For the first time in eleven years, the path ahead wasn’t a script she was writing for someone else’s benefit. It was an empty page.
“Anywhere,” she said. “We’ll just drive.”
The gravel crunched under their feet as they returned to the van. Liam was awake, his good eye glassy with painkillers from the kit Adam had stashed under the seat.“Are we ghosts yet?” he mumbled, leaning his head against the window.
“Not yet,” Cymra said, sliding back into the driver’s seat. The engine turned over with a reluctant growl. She pulled back onto the road, leaving the orange smudge in the rearview mirror.Pedro traced a line down her neck with his finger, a silent question.
“I feel everything,” she answered the unspoken query, her eyes fixed on the winding blacktop. “And nothing.It’s like I’m watching a very good, very violent film. I just hope I wrote the ending right.”
“You always do,” he said.
Adam guided them onto a smaller, unmarked route that switchbacked down the mountain away from the main highway. “Satellite shows increased patrols on the primary routes.This will take you to a private airstrip. Different one. Safer.”
“An airstrip?” Pedro asked, his hand pausing on her shoulder.
“You didn’t think you were driving to Patagonia, did you?” Adam’s tone was dry.“The van gets traded at the hangar.New identities, new destination. The story is already leading the news cycle. You two are presumed missing, likely victims of Rafael’s ‘criminal collapse.’ It’s the perfect cover to vanish.”
Liam snorted in the back.“Vanishing sounds good. Can I vanish somewhere with morphine?”
“Soon,” Cymra promised.
They drove for an hour in near silence, just the hum of the tires and Liam’s uneven breathing. The adrenaline was a receding tide, leaving Cymra’s limbs heavy and her mind strangely clear. She replayed the feel of the garrote wire against her fingers, the precise resistance before it bit.It hadn’t been rage.It had been a calculus.
The road finally flattened, cutting through a vast, dark field. A single hangar loomed ahead, a solitary rectangle of corrugated steel under a spray of stars. A small twin-prop plane stood outside, its propellers still.
A figure stepped from the shadow of the hangar door, illuminated by the van’s headlights. It was Mike, Adam’s ever-silent partner, his face impassive.He gestured for them to come.
They transferred Liam to a waiting stretcher inside the hangar.Mike wordlessly handed Cymra a slim dossier and two Canadian passports. The photos were recent, the names bland and forgettable. “Flight plan is filed for Santiago, then layover to Vancouver,” Mike said, his voice a low gravel. “Fuel and supplies are onboard.The captain is… reliable.”
Pedro took the passports, flipping through them. “Thomas and Elaine Ridgeway.” He looked at Cymra. “I like the alliteration.”
“Of course you do.” She managed a weak smile.It felt foreign on her face. "Remember this is just temporary until we can be ourselves again."
Mike pointed to a duffel bag.“Clothes, cash, burners.Leave everything else. Especially that.” He nodded at the simple gold band on her left hand.The ring from their lavender marriage. The prop.Cymra stared at it.The metal was warm from her skin. She twisted it once, a full rotation, then pulled it off. It felt like shedding a layer of her own body.She dropped it into the duffel bag with a final, quiet click.
Pedro had already removed his.He didn’t look at it.They boarded the plane. The interior was worn but clean, smelling of lemon polish and jet fuel. Liam was secured on a converted bench seat, already slipping back under. Cymra and Pedro took seats near the front, buckling in as the engines began a high-pitched whine.
Through the small window, Cymra watched Mike drag the Alpaca Treks van into the hangar and close the doors. The world outside ceased to exist.The plane bounced once, twice, then lifted smoothly into the night. Argentina fell away beneath them, a tapestry of shadows and distant, lonely lights. The burning hotel was now just one pinprick of memory in the immense dark.
Pedro unbuckled his belt with a sharp click and moved to sit beside her, taking her hand in both of his. He didn’t speak for a long time, just held her hand and watched her profile against the window’s reflection.
“When we land,” he said finally, his voice barely above the engine’s drone, “what’s the first thing you want to do?”
She thought about it. The question was so normal it felt like a secret code.“I want to stand in a grocery store. A normal, bright, boring grocery store. And I want to be completely overwhelmed by the cereal aisle.”
A laugh burst out of him, genuine and surprised.It was the best sound she’d heard in years. “That’s your grand fantasy? Captain Crunch?”
“Choice,” she said, leaning her head against his shoulder. “The sublime, terrifying luxury of too many choices.” She closed her eyes, feeling the steady vibration of the aircraft climb into the thinning atmosphere. “What do you want?”
He was quiet for so long she thought he might have fallen asleep.Then he squeezed her hand. “I just want to be somewhere I don’t have to listen for the quiet rooms. I want to be at your side- always."
The plane banked gently, turning north. Toward the border, toward the sea, toward a horizon that was no longer a painted backdrop in someone else’s story. Below, the invisible line between one nation and the next passed beneath the wings, a geographical formality that felt, in that suspended moment, like a sacrament.
The plane touched down in Santiago only to refuel, a blurred interval of hushed voices and shaded windows before they were airborne again, chasing the dawn across the equator. Liam was transferred to a medical team Adam trusted, vanishing into the sterile light of a private clinic with a nod of gratitude that was more a wince.The passports worked. Elaine and Thomas Ridgeway, a writer and her professor husband, traveling for a quiet research sabbatical.
They slept fitfully, curled together in the narrow seats, waking to the flight attendant’s discreet tap and the vast, cloud-marbled Pacific below. When the coastline of British Columbia finally appeared, a jagged line of deep green and charcoal rock, Cymra felt something in her chest unlock.It was the simple, profound geography of away.
They landed in a damp Vancouver morning, the tarmac slick and shining under a low sky the color of a bruise. A different car waited, a nondescript gray sedan. The driver, a woman with sharp eyes and a stillness that reminded Cymra of Mike, said nothing, only nodded and handed Pedro a single key. The safe house was a townhouse in Kitsilano, all muted grays and floor-to-ceiling windows looking onto a rain-swept garden.It smelled of lemon cleaner and new linen. There was food in the fridge, wine on the counter, and no history in the walls. It was the most beautiful place Cymra had ever seen.
“Cereal aisle first?” Pedro asked, dropping their single duffel bag on the polished concrete floor.
“Maybe tomorrow,” she said, walking to the window.The rain painted slow, winding paths down the glass. “Today I just want to stand here and not know what happens next.”
He came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist, and rested his chin on her shoulder. They watched the rain in silence, his breath warm against her neck.It was a new kind of quiet.
Robert Downey Jr.’s text came two days later, a cryptic string of emojis ending in a maple leaf and a popcorn bucket.Heard a rumor a couple of my favorite artists were in town. My trailer’s bigger than your safe house.Coffee?
They met him in a secluded corner of a park in Stanley Park, Robert looking effortlessly incognito in a beanie and a grin. He pulled Pedro into a back-thumping hug, then held Cymra at arm’s length, his eyes soft and knowing.
“The beard’s coming in nicely, Professor Ridgeway,” he said to Pedro, then turned to Cymra. “And the script for the quiet, observant wife is officially retired, I hear.”
“Burned the draft,” Cymra said, and meant it.He bought them terrible coffee from a food truck. They spoke of nothing consequential: the relentless Vancouver rain, the peculiar smell of the soundstages, Chris Evans’s new puppy. It was a thirty-minute performance of normalcy, exquisitely directed and flawlessly acted by all three.As he left, Robert squeezed Cymra’s hand. “The wingman gig is permanent, okay?Just say the word.”
Pedro’s work provided the structure. He began his shoot, a supporting role in a sprawling mystery filming at the Vancouver studios. It was a professional environment, a schedule, a reason to leave the townhouse and inhabit a known fiction. Cymra would drive him in the gray sedan, watching him transform into someone else under the makeup lights, then retreat to the garden or the local library.
She bought a cheap notebook with a moss-green cover. For the first time in years, she didn’t write for a market, or a producer, or a plot. She wrote descriptions of the way the light clung to the cedar hedges after a rain.She wrote dialogue for characters who had no destination.
One evening, Pedro came home smelling of synthetic fog and coffee from craft services.He found her at the kitchen island, scribbling. He read over her shoulder.“The quiet isn’t empty here. It’s full of the hum of the fridge, the tap of rain, the sound of my own breath without a wire in my ear. That’s good.”
“It’s just true.”
“The best kind.” He opened the fridge, contemplating leftovers.“Evans wants to have us both over for dinner. Says he makes a mean vegan chili, which is either a threat or a promise.”
Slowly, carefully, they began to exist in the world. A dinner here, a walk along the seawall there.They were Thomas and Elaine, a quiet academic couple. They were also, in stolen moments in their kitchen or tangled in sheets in the dark, Pedro and Cymra, learning the map of each other without a script.
It was a Thursday afternoon, the rain a steady drum on the skylight, when Adam’s secure link chimed on the encrypted tablet. His face filled the screen, looking older. “The identifications are confirmed,” he said without preamble. “Argentine authorities just made the announcement. They found him in the sub-basement, in what was left of the west wing ‘quiet room.’ The fire was intense, accelerant was clearly used—Mike found evidence of explosive fixing(s). They had to use dental records.”
Cymra’s hand went to her own neck, fingers brushing bare skin. “And?”
“And Rafael Olarra’s body was found burned alive,” Adam continued, his voice flat. “Next to another male body, also unidentifiable via visual means. Early speculation in the media is a deal gone wrong, a double-cross within his own organization. The aide’s testimony is being corroborated by forensic evidence from the scene. It’s… closed.”
Pedro had gone very still beside her. “The other body?”
“Unknown.Possibly a security detail, possibly someone else who crossed him. The narrative is self-sustaining now. A monster consumed by the chaos he created. My guy made his choice to end the pain of the live he lived and the love he lost." Adam’s gaze shifted to Cymra. “The garrote wire was found, melted to his wrists. The official report will list the cause as a homicide during an arson event. The story you seeded is the one they’re telling.”
He signed off. The rain seemed louder. Pedro exhaled a long, shaky breath and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Burned alive.”
“Not by me,” Cymra whispered, the words a necessary distinction. Adam had used an accelerant. But so had Raf much earlier, which Mike exploited to cover their tracks.
“I know.” He took her hand, lacing his fingers through hers.His were cold.“It’s just… the image. After everything. It’s a lot.”
She thought of the ruddy glare blooming in the mountain night, the digesting rumble. She had given Rafael a choice, but Adam and his grief-stricken own, had finished the sentence. She felt no triumph, only a hollow, resonant quiet.“It’s over.”
Later, they ordered sushi. They ate it on the floor of the living room, the container lids scattered around them like discarded shields. A mundane, messy act of life.
“The studio wants to extend my contract by three weeks,” Pedro said, picking up a piece of tuna with his fingers.“More reshoots.”
“Okay.”
“Is it? Do you want to stay here, in this… beautiful, boring limbo?”
Cymra looked at the rain on the windows, the warm wood floor, the man sitting cross-legged beside her with a dot of soy sauce on his shirt.She thought of the cereal aisle, still unvisited. She thought of their real names, waiting in a drawer. “I’m not in limbo,” she said.“I’m right here. And yeah, I want to stay.”
He nodded, popping the tuna into his mouth.“Good. Because I already said yes.”
She threw a ginger slice at him.He caught it and ate it, grinning. The future, for the first time, felt less like a tightrope and more like a road, winding beyond the next curve, unseen but solid beneath their feet. Outside, the Vancouver rain kept falling, washing the world clean over and over.
"Good thing I've got a new story to write," Cymra said. "It's a love story. A thriller. Also, moments of GenX comedic timing."