BLACKBIRD

Chapter Four

19 APRIL 2022

A pair of eyes were staring at her, large and brunneous, set on a long, structured face with a vaguely dimpled chin and thin cheeks. In the center of the face, painted by a tawny complexion, was a wide, rounded nose, crooked at the bridge like the man had broken it but never set it back into place. She could see the man standing in the Cadottes' living room, blankly watching her like he'd been caught red handed. Like he was trying to calculate what he was going to do next.

Like he was just as shocked as she was that they had met again.

An odd sense of anger festered in her gut. She had done so much, worked so hard, so that she'd never be in this position again, and yet here they were. She clenched her jaw, bracing herself both mentally and physically for another fight. She wasn't going back, and she certainly wasn't about to let him kill her either. She'd fight. She'd fight like she always had.

"And I'll stand beside you until the stars die out."

Her head snapped to the voice that had echoed beside her, startlingly similar to James' yet too deep and too smooth for it to have been him. She was met by brilliant green eyes, like little emerald suns, blazing and beaming. The face they belonged to was blurred, a fuzzy ivory painting of high cheekbones and a downturned nose, something that could be contorted from a face she didn't recognize into one she did. Still, this wasn't James - the color of the eyes, the golden blond of his hair, the greater height and baritone voice didn't match - but something in his tenor, in the root of his person, felt identical to the man she knew now.

No, wait, that was a wrong way to put it. This man didn't remind her of James. James reminded her of this man, this figure she could recognize but not remember.

The strident trill of an incoming call drew Alana from her daydream, the sharp cut into the silence chasing away the memories of two men, one who had gone missing years ago and one she had met in her dreams just last night. Though by memory Alana had no recollection of the emerald-eyed man, it felt like the complete opposite, like she had met him before a very long time ago. His words rang in her head - I'll stand beside you until the stars die out - like the toll of a bell, a saying she knew for a fact she had heard before. She just couldn't remember when, or where, or even who.

Alana sighed and picked up her phone from the table she sat at, answering the call of her boss back in England who headed the British side of Madcap.

"Find anything?" Alana asked.

Lara Kaw was an austere woman, hardened by almost four decades of servitude to several different organizations, which had turned her into an unyielding figure of severity and strength. They were so unlike that Alana had been terrified of the worst when they had first met, but Kaw had quickly grown fond of her, eased by overlaps in their past and shared experiences - one of which involved a man with a crooked nose. For that reason, Alana had called her the day after her assignment in South Dakota and asked if she could look into the pendant-wearers, plagued by the memories of men she had thought were dead.

There was a sigh on Kaw's end of the call, which echoed into a sinking feeling in Alana's gut.

"I found two possibly related things, and you're not going to like the second one."

Apprehension found its way to Alana's mind, doing nothing to ease the anxiety she was already in turmoil with.

"Why's that?"

"The first thing I found were reports of a group of people who had attacked one of our teams in Italy. They had bird pendants too, but we don't have any pictures to compare nor sightings of their faces nor any fingerprints to analyze." Kaw then paused, hesitation ringing in her silence. "The second thing I found was a wooden pendant engraved with the symbol of a bird in flight on its front. It was in investigation evidence storage. I got a couple of operatives of that Italian team to confirm it was the same one, now we just need your source to confirm."