One Nightstand, Two Times

Harmony House: Episode 30

“Harmony House” is a serial novel with episodes released every Tuesday morning. You can read the setup for the story or start from the beginning. Each episode comes with high-quality audio narration for you to enjoy on the go with the Substack mobile app.

Previously…

In the last episode, Jessie and Deepu were discussing their situation and how they might attempt to escape the basement room. We learned that Deepu’s anxiety is linked to the tragic shooting of his parents in their convenience store when he was only ten. When he broke down Jessie comforted him. Moments later, Hawk, one of their captors barged in. There was an altercation, Deepu retrieved the gun from the floor, and accidentally shot and killed Jessie. In the confusion that followed, the terrorists’ masks fell away, revealing their faces to Deepu and ultimately signing his sentence to death.

“You don’t need to sneak out,” Evangeline said. “I’ve been awake for a while. Your pants are in the dining room.”

She had been watching the canine-like shape of him crawl around the floor of the bedroom in the dark sniffing around for his socks and underwear so he could slink away before the rays of the sun changed him back into a man who might be held to account. It wasn’t upsetting to her. She found it refreshing for once not to be the one trying to make a clean getaway. Every man she had been with was sticky. They coveted her money or her body or both. While Scott had clearly enjoyed himself last night, she could sense him holding back. It was delicious.

“Sorry,” he said, whispering for some reason. “I didn’t want to wake you but I was…”

The poor thing couldn’t even formulate an excuse. This was even more delicious. He was not used to being fake.

“It’s okay, you didn’t propose last night. I’m a big girl. Would you like some light?”

She grabbed the remote on the nightstand and slowly raised the blackout shades. The growing rectangle of golden light filled the room. Scott rose from his lupine crouch squinting and shielding his eyes as he transformed into a man. Once the shade was up and the room was filled with sunlight, she sat up and leaned against the headboard, not bothering to cover herself with the sheet. Scott had managed to find his boxers and was sliding them on when he looked over and saw her. She was pleased to see the hungry glint of the wolf return to his eyes. He smiled, dropped his socks, and crawled quickly across the bed to her.

Morning sex was a rare delicacy she didn’t allow herself, but she made an exception. If nothing else, it was a good distraction from everything she wasn’t ready to think about. He was strong and vigorous, and she came quickly, another rare and surprising turn of events.

Afterward, they lay entangled, and she was glad he didn’t want to talk. Talk after sex always went in one of two opposing directions. Let me get closer to you or let me find a way to extricate myself. It was nice to just lay at the crossroads and feel each other breathe— to enjoy the animal comfort of closeness. After a few minutes both of their phones started ringing. She recognized the ringtone. It was the ultra-secure conferencing app Scott had made them all install when they had established the war room, and this stopped being a fun little contest.

“Fuck,” Scott groaned, pulling his arm out from under her. “We need to answer that.”

“Let’s just take the call here, together,” she said, doing her best to sound completely serious. He shot a look at her, and she started laughing. “Go. Get your shirt on and pick up the call from the other room. I’ll answer it from here.”

He scrambled out of the room. A moment later they were just two frames in a grid staring at the other two frames that comprised the Houze emergency response team. She was enjoying watching Scott try to smooth the unruly cowlick in his hair that she had been pulling through her fingers moments before. Her smile faded when she noticed the look on Schultz’s face. Her stomach clinched. How much more bad news could there be?

“Good morning, everyone. Sorry to call so early but there’s been a new, um… development…”

Was the Englishman going to cry? His face was contorting as he tried to wrestle down his emotion. His unflappable cool was gone.  

“I woke to a message this morning from the terrorists. Jessie is dead.” The words rushed out in an anguished burst. He pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and covered his face with his hands.

There was a trough of silence as they took in this information and their collective emotional response laddered up like an enormous wave that finally crashed with all of them expressing some version of the same question. Chris’s voice was loudest.

“What happened? What happened? Damn it, Schultz, what happened?”

“This is what they sent,” Schultz said, sniffing and regaining his composure. He shared his screen so they could all see the message. “I will read it in case it’s too small for you to see.”

There has been an unfortunate escalation.
Jessie attempted to escape last night.
He was killed in the altercation with one of our people.

This event accelerates our timeline.
Unless you want us to broadcast to the world pictures of Jessie’s dead body accompanied by the story that you silenced him by hiring an assassin to shoot him while he was out in the woods on a break, you will do exactly what we ask. Deepu is of no use to us, and we won’t hesitate to kill him as well should you not comply 100%.

You will schedule a press conference tomorrow evening at 6PM and you will invite all the major news outlets stating that you have an announcement to make that will have global implications.

We will follow up with the exact script that must be read by the three principals of FutureAbode. You will publicly validate the previous messages that Jessie delivered, and you will disclose everything about how GreenerTech has profited by falsely positioning itself as a corporation that cares about people and the environment.

You will also announce that you will be publicly posting all the financials for the company and its numerous shell companies. It’s time the world knows the whole truth.

Do this and we will release Deepu along with Jessie’s body.

Evangeline laid the phone down on the bed, rushed into the bathroom and vomited into the toilet. She could hear Scott shouting through the wall in the other room. She splashed cold water on her face, brushed her teeth and pulled on a bathrobe. When she walked back into the bedroom, Scott was standing in the doorway, the look on his face a mirror of what she was feeling.

“We’re going to meet at the office in an hour to discuss what to do,” he said. “But I don’t think there’s anything to discuss at this point. It’s over. We’re done.”

Evangeline couldn’t think of anything to say in response. She was not her father. High-stakes triage and damage control were not her strong suits. She nodded slowly. It wasn’t an agreement, but it was all she could offer given the whirring traffic of opposing thoughts that offered no break that would allow her to cross over into a place where she might be able to have a rational discussion. She turned and went into her closet to get dressed.

A moment later, as she was pulling a t-shirt over her head, she heard Scott at the sink in the bathroom washing his face. Then, he spoke, his voice muffled by a towel.

“I can’t believe this is happening. I never wanted any of this. I just wanted to do what I was good at, use my hands, and maybe make something that could make a difference. Now… now a man’s dead because of me. Fuck.” His voice broke.

She came out of the closet and saw his tormented face in the mirror, eyes red and brimming with tears. Had her father ever cried when he learned about the tragedies he had unwittingly afflicted on the world? If he did, she never saw it. Scott didn’t look like the rock she needed him to be right now and why should he? This wasn’t his fault. If there was anyone to blame, it was her. He should be raging at her as he did in that infamous planning session that ended in her hurling a glass at him. That seemed like a hundred years ago. She wished he would rage at her. That would be easier. There was something expected of her now, but she didn’t know what it was. Someone else had always taken care of things. If it wasn’t her dad, it was one of his people. Then she thought of Mr. Fitzpatrick, the gatekeeper for her father’s trust. Surely, he was the one to call now. He would know how to fix this. She was about to suggest this when Scott spoke.

“We’ve got to call the police now like we should have when all this shit started. If we did, maybe none of this would have happened and Jessie would still be alive.”

She understood this line of thinking. It represented the steady stream of traffic rushing from one side of her brain, the side that believed there was an idea of the “right thing.” But she was surprised to find herself standing on the median at the other side of that highway where the opposing rush of vehicles blasting past, bound for the destination of  I don’t deserve this, it’s not my responsibility, obscured her view. She knew instinctively that Scott would never make it across to her side. It would kill him. She took a deep breath and returned to the closet before she answered.

“We don’t know that. Let’s wait and see what the others think.”

Twenty minutes later, they were in the car and Scott was behind the wheel. They hadn’t spoken and she imagined that with every passing minute, they were drifting further and further apart in their positions on what to do next. She found it suddenly unbearable to be alone in her position. It was a hard position to hold, a selfish one.

“Was that all you ever really wanted?” she asked.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“That all you ever wanted to do with your life was to use your hands to make a difference?”

“Well, I guess it makes me sound pretty simple if I just say yes. But, yeah, it kind of is. I mean, sure it would be nice to be rich I guess, but I don’t know. I don’t think I want everything that comes with that.”

“You’ve never wanted power?” she asked, turning in the seat to face him. “You’ve never wanted command.”

“Yeah, I mean to a point. I have strong opinions. I have a vision I’d like to see come to life. But only as much as it does something I believe is good. I don’t want to make anybody suffer, especially not people close to me.”

As much as she didn’t want to believe this, she had been around him enough in the warehouse to know it was true. He never asked his team to do anything he wouldn’t do. He defended them fiercely.

“What?” he asked, interrupting her thought. “What are you getting at?”

“Nothing, just feeling generally like a shitty human being. I just want this to go away. I don’t want to lose everything or worse…”

“What could be worse?” he asked, turning into the parking lot of FutureAbode.

“Being hated by everyone in the world and seen as a monster.”

“I don’t know which is worse.” He parked in his reserved spot next to the backdoor of the warehouse. “To be seen as a monster or to actually feel like a monster.”

“What are you saying?” she asked.

“I’m saying I would feel like a monster if we try to hide this thing.”

“Your brother’s not like you is he?”

He killed the engine and turned to her, his brow furrowed and his eyes narrowing, sizing her up. He didn’t answer her question, only stared at her for an uncomfortable amount of time. She had never been intimidated by a man but this one gave her trouble. Finally, he broke eye contact, turned, and opened the door. As he was stepping out of the car he responded in a clear, low voice.

“He’s not like me. But he’s definitely not like you.”

Evangeline felt her head might explode. She shoved open the door, stepped out of the car, and yelled, “Your brother must be really fucking tired of shoveling all that shit behind the horse you ride!”

When she turned to close the door, she saw Chris standing a few feet from his brother. Apparently, he had parked behind them and was just walking in with his cup of coffee. If she wasn’t so furious, she would have laughed at the expression on his face.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “You two? Fuck me.”

The three of them walked into FutureAbode together in silence. When they reached the main lobby, Chris pulled at his brother’s sleeve to get him to stop. They exchanged a look, and it was charged enough for Eve to understand they needed a minute.

“I’ll go up to the war room,” she said. “Bring me a coffee after you finish whatever this is?” she added, making a stirring gesture.

Scott nodded, and he and Chris walked toward the break room. Chris had spent his life studying his older brother’s body language, and he recognized the guilty slump in his shoulders.

“Look, I don’t even want to know what happened last night. Honestly, it’s so unimportant compared to what’s happening,” Chris said. “Jessie is dead because of us.”

“No, not because of us,” Scott said. “We didn’t invite a terrorist group. That wasn’t part of our business plan.”

“But it’s our problem now. You think fucking Schultz or Eve are going to fix this? I mean, we’re not qualified, but they sure as hell aren’t and we have a hell of a lot more to lose.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Scott said, filling one cup of coffee and reaching for a second mug. “This has the potential to destroy both of their lives too.”

Chris chuffed in disbelief. “Yeah, I’m sure this is really going to hurt Eve’s prospects.”

“The personal and financial impact of this on each of us is not really a priority right now. It’s getting Deepu out of danger. Right? You’re with me on this.”

“Of course, why would you even ask that?”

Scott leveled a sober look at his brother as he handed him the mug of coffee. “I just want to make sure you’re not hedging here. There’s no time or energy to scheme. We have to accept that FutureAbode is already toast. It was done the minute we shook hands with the devil.”

“You mean the same devil whose daughter you just slept with and are keen to defend all of a sudden.”

Scott ignored the bait. “We need a plan to get Deepu to safety. It’s time we brought in the authorities. We’re way out of our depth here.”

“We should be having this conversation in the war room with the others. It’s not just up to us.”

“I don’t know. I don’t trust Schultz. Something’s off about him. I’ve felt it for a long time, but this morning, the way he relayed the note. It felt...”

“What?” Chris said.

“It felt rehearsed, like everything else he does.”

“Well, I don’t trust Eve. What? What’s the look for? You think you can trust her now, after one night in the sack?”

“I don’t know, but I know a lot more about her at this point than you do. She shared everything with me last night. No, that’s not what I mean. She showed me the vault her father left her.”

“What do you mean vault?”

“I mean her dad’s legacy to her was this fucking digital vault with the keys to his empire. All the secrets, all the money. Everything.”

“Shit. And she just let you see it all?”

“Yeah, we spent the night going through it together. She was seeing it for the first time.”

“Okay, maybe that changes things?”

“Not really, just because there’s three of us inside the circle of trust doesn’t mean we don’t need help. We’re not hostage negotiators. We’re not a swat team.”

“Scott. You need to think this through. What’s going to happen when the police get involved? You think they’re smarter than us or that they’re going to care more about resolving this peacefully than we do? We have leverage here. You’re just not seeing it.”

“Maybe not. But I don’t want more blood on my hands. We should go upstairs now. I want to see what Schultz has to say, and I want to square that with the way he says it.”

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Who’s Who in Harmony House?

Having trouble keeping track of who’s who from one week to the next? It’s tough when you only get to visit once a week. I made a little cheat sheet just for you: