Chapter 2

The very first thing she did when I opened the door was to deliver a full-armed slap that staggered me back a couple steps while trying to blink the stars out of my eyes and shake the ringing from my ears.

When Allie’s face gradually resolved out of the blurry sea of lights, she met my gaze with a grave stare.

“That slap was for being such an idiotic, insensitive jerk,” Allie said matter-of-factly.

Yeah, I definitely deserved that.

Then she reached out to grab my head between her hands and roughly pulled my lips down to hers. The ensuing kiss was violent, messy, and glorious beyond words.

There was a faint hint of moisture to her eyes when she finally pulled back after an eternity or two, licking her puffed up lips as though reluctant to end the kiss.

“And that was just to show you how much I missed you,” Allie said, biting her lower lip while still clutching fiercely at my head.

“Uh..” I managed, still breathless.

“Really, you’re such a dummy,” Allie said, shaking her head while looking at me with equal measures of disbelief and pity.

“What are you talking about?” I muttered.

“You can drop the grouchy act now. I haven’t exactly been sobbing myself to sleep and dumping truckloads of ice cream down my gullet for this entire month, you know?”

“Huh?”

“Well, just for the first three days or so,” She admitted under my disbelieving gaze.

“Um,” I began but was cut off again by her warning glare.

“Fine, it was almost a whole week. I swear, Kaizer Lee, if you ever make me so sad again, I will..”

“You will?” I prompted.

“I will crawl into a hole and die of a broken heart,” Allie said in a barely audible voice, tears brimming in her eyes.

Then she seemed to shake it off and flashed me another of her glorious smiles.

“Well, what’s done is done. Don’t think I’ll let you off the hook so easily, but considering the extenuating circumstances involved, how dumb you are, and the fact that you thought you were doing it for me, I’ll let it slide - at least for now.”

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

“Dr. Macias at UCLA Medical Center’s Oncology department?” Allie raised her eyebrow at me.

“B-But he swore patient confidentiality was sacrosanct-” I began.

“Hah. I just leaned on him a little and the poor little grandpa cracked,” Allie grinned toothily at me, snapping her fingers. “Just like that.”

“Oh.”

“Then hiring a stripper named Misty Mounds? By the way, we’re burning those sheets right away. Buying a new mattress, too.”

“Um, okay?” I said numbly.

Allie’s eyes softened as she smiled adoringly up at me. “That’s more like it. But for now, we should start packing.”

“Hah? Packing? Where are we going?”

“Your treatment.”

“Allie, it’s advanced stage 4 cancer. They wouldn’t even try chemotherapy, let alone surgery.”

“Yeah, I know. Those lousy quacks, they’re all useless.”

“Then?” I prompted.

“We’re going for a little more... Alternative means of treatment.”

“Alternative? As in herbs, prayers, and such?”

Allie’s smile grew wider as she shook her head. “A little more unorthodox. What do you know of the Orb Collective?”

“The what?” I blurted out.

“The Orb Collective. They’re the ones behind all the mysterious disappearances of late.”

“What? How would you know that?”

“I’m a seasoned public defender, remember? That means half the time I have to do my own sleuthing, and I’ve had my dirty little paws on the US government’s dirty laundry for years. So, I did my thing and sent word down the vine..”

“Allie,” I said warningly.

“Oh, fine. I pretty much went into panic mode and pressed all the buttons, so sue me. Damn if I’ll let the man I love waste away without me moving heaven and earth to do something about it.”

That sounded like the Allie I knew and loved, alright. Stage 4 terminal cancer? Hah, no sweat. Knock it out with a single punch, be home for dinner right after too. And damn if I wasn’t touched.

Allie kept right on going, explaining all the favors she had to call in, the shady information brokers she had to contact, the bridges she had to burn, and victims she had to threaten.

In the beginning, all I could think was, “That’s my girl,” with a proud grin. As she kept going, however, I grew increasingly horrified by the extents to which she had gone.

“Hey, wait a sec,” I finally erupted, unable to sit still anymore.

Allie paused in the middle of her exposition. “Hmm?”

“Baby, isn’t that... Uhh, kind of, I don’t know.. Legally questionable?”

You know, I truly love her to pieces, but sometimes, just sometimes, she can give me a look that makes me want to bury my head into the dirt and never come back up for air again.

“Sweetheart, by that point I had already violated over 14 different federal statutes and state code regulations. Have you been listening to a word of what I’ve been saying?”

“What? Are you serious?”

Allie just rolled her eyes at me, scoffing.

“I haven’t even gotten to the good stuff yet. Let’s see,” she said with a pensive frown, counting down with her fingers. “Extortion of several high court judges, stealing the Attorney General’s digital access key to the FBI database, unauthorized examination, and reproduction of top secret material-”

“Stop, enough, I get it. But what about your job?”

“What about it?”

“Won’t you get into trouble?”

“Aw baby, you’re worried about me? Don’t be..”

I could finally let out a sigh of relief. Of course, my Allie was too smart to get burned. She always had a plan. When others were busy coming up with plan A, she would already be executing plans A, B, and C, while simultaneously developing primary and secondary contingency plans for each.

“.. By now, I’m so far up trouble’s ass you couldn’t dig me out with a nuclear submarine.”

I could only stare at her, completely flabbergasted.

“B-But-” I spluttered.

Whether it was my bloodless complexion or the spastic twitching of my facial muscles, Allie’s look was one of concern as she patted me on the head.

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, Kai. I already submitted my 2-week resignation notice. It was getting old anyway, with all those wrinkled up mummies continuously coming on to me.”

For a moment, all I could think about was the triumphant grin on her lips when she told me that she’d won her very first major case against FAMACO, the global biotech giant.

“I nailed their balls to the wall and made them watch as I slapped them silly in front of Superior Court,” she had crowed, her eyes full of delight for a well-deserved victory after a hard fought battle. “Ah, this is never going to get old.”

“Babe?” Allie asked.

“Yes?”

“Pay attention, I’m getting to the important part,” she said, elbowing me in the ribs.

“Uh-huh,” I said, feeling sick in the stomach. Had I just forced one of the youngest and most promising legal specialists of the country into dumpstering her entire career in one massive pile of fire?

“So now, all we have to do is find the last link in the network,” she finished proudly, nodding to me. “Which is..?”

I gave her the most winning smile I could patch up together from the nausea clawing up the back of my throat.

“The O.R.B. Call Center?”

“Kai! Really?”

“What?”

“It’s the Orb Collective! That’s what this is all about!”

“So what’s the Orb Collective?”

“I don’t know. Well, no one knows, really.”

“Then why-”

“Here, read this,” she said, flinging a manilla folder at my chest.

I barely caught it. The very first thing that jumped at me was the big fat red seal on top that read, “TOP SECRET - CONFIDENTIAL.”

Looking up, I quirked my eyebrow in Allie’s direction.

“Oh, don’t be such a prude,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You’re supposed to be dead by next year, so what’s a lifetime jail sentence or two?”

“Nothing to me, sure. But what about you? How did you get your hands on this?”

Allie shrugged. “A little bird.”

“Must be a very fat little bird with a lot of turd up its ass.”

Allie just giggled at that.

“Allie, first your job, now your freedom? Dammit, you can’t risk your-”

“Oh, shut up and read,” she said, throwing up her arms. “As I said, what’s done is done. So what if I end up serving a few tours in Guantanamo.”

“What?” I cried out.

“Kidding, kidding. Now, read.”

I frowned as I caught a nervous edge to her emotions, but I couldn’t tell if it was from just from our reunion, or whether she had really sent her entire career down a fiery chute straight to hell just for me.

When I gingerly pried the case folder open, I found that most of it was edited out behind thick streaks of black ink. Still, after a few minutes of study I was able to piece together the gist of it.

“This Jonathan Bingham, is it true?”

“I checked his records and was able to verify that he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer a year ago. A few months ago, he vanished from all public records.”

“He didn’t die?”

“Dying leaves a huge paper trail. Police reports, hospital records, morgue entries, etc. This guy, he simply vanished into thin air one day.”

“Then this medical chart..” I trailed off, swallowing hard.

“Yes, a couple weeks ago his corpse was found in the Alaskan wilderness by a couple of fishermen. That’s a copy of his autopsy report, the original of which now lies in one of the most fortified government bunkers of the country, along with the body - or what remains of it after the scientists got done running their tests.”

I slowly shook my head while scanning the document. “I can’t believe this - it just doesn’t make sense. It’s got to be someone else.”

Allie shook her head. “No, I already verified it via another source. It’s all true. You know what this means?

She didn’t give me a chance to say anything as she stepped forward and clasped my hands in a feverish grip.

“Fourteen months ago, Jonathan Preston Bingham was diagnosed by three different Cancer Treatment Centers with terminal pancreatic cancer. Two weeks ago, his frozen corpse was found out in the middle of nowhere, with the cause of death being unknown - upon autopsy, all his organs were immaculate, and there wasn’t a single cancerous cell anywhere in his body.”

“There’s got to be a mistake somewhere,” I said slowly, shaking my head.

“Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t you dare give up on yourself - on us,” Allie said, her voice breaking.

Allie’s trembling fingers squeezed my hands as she looked up into my eyes, the desperate entreaty in her eyes almost too painful to bear. And damn, I wish I could give her what she wants, but I can’t. I must not.

“But it’s cancer. It doesn’t just go away from one day to the next. It’s cancer. It kills more people than any and all wars combined!” I said, knowing I had to be the voice of reason before this madness got even more out of hand.

Allie lowered her head as her chest shuddered, and she murmured something I couldn’t quite catch.

“What?”

“I said,” Allie said, lifting her head and glaring at me with such ferocity it was all I could do not to reel back in shock. “What the hell are you so fucking scared of?”

I stared at her, moving my lips but unable to find the words.

“You sit here in your little cave with one foot in the grave, feeling all high and lofty because somehow you think what you owe me is to remove yourself as surgically and neatly as possible from my life so you can rush off to hide in some remote corner of the world to die in silence.”

Allie stabbed her finger at my chest.

“You selfish bastard. I don’t need you to buy me a black dress and a garland of flowers for your own damn funeral. If it comes to that, I’m just going to torch the whole fucking building and let that be our funeral pyre.”

She clutched at my chest and pulled me closer with surprising strength.

“I’m going to do this, with or without your help. But so help me god, if you keep whining about how impossible this all sounds one more fucking time, I’m gonna shove my high heels so far up your sniveling ass that they’ll need that secret lab to dig them out. You got that, Kai?”

I did the only thing I could do, given the circumstances. I laughed.

I laughed so hard that I could feel tears streaming from my eyes. After a moment, Allie joined me. It was only a matter of time before we found ourselves collapsed on the floor, sides aching something fierce and wheezing for breath.

“Sorry for being such an ass,” I murmured, kissing the top of her head where it lay on top of my chest.

She snuggled deeper into the crook of my neck and gently planted her lips there.

“I hereby forgive you for being such an ass.”

“See? I told you those ridiculously high heels would come in handy one day. How else would you have won this latest case so thoroughly?” I teased, scoffing. “And you scolded me for wasting my money on those monstrosities.”

“Shush,” Allie whispered, her eyes closed as she lay on top of me.

“Allie? Are you OK?” I asked, lifting my head up.

“Mmm, I’m just a little tired. You know how many ninjas I had to wrestle down to get all that info? And you kept giving me so much grief, you dummy. Whatever, I’m gonna take a nap now,” she said, pushing me back down.

“Oh. Sorry,” I replied, staring up at the ceiling while feeling the warm cadence of her breaths on my skin.

“If you are, then shut up already,” she said irritably, shifting her weight on top of me like a kitten shuffling in her lair.

“Just one last thing,” I murmured, beginning to feel a little sleepy myself.

“What?” she said irritably.

“I love you.”

“Mmm, I know. Now shut up.”

“Yes, ma’am.”