The Refugee Sentinel Read Free Page A

the top, then sat up in the tub, stretching a dripping arm across the marble floor to pick up her tablet. She propped the tablet on her naked breasts. The screen greeted her with two horizontal sections – “Completed Targets” colored in green and “Outstanding Targets” colored in orange. A large, bold number “7” emerged in the middle of the “Completed Targets” section.
    The orange section consisted of a table with three columns and four rows:
HI-PO
EARMARKED LOVED ONE
TARGET
Sarah Perkins
Yana Perkins (daughter)
Colton Parker (father)
Gregory Schwartz
Cecilia Schwartz (mother)
Gordon Vigna (grandfather)
Floyd Dubois
Lillie Dubois (wife)
Victor Saretto (ex-husband)
Eaton Wilkins
Chloe Gurloskey (mother)
Natt Gurloskey (stepfather)
    Li-Mei read the names in the rightmost column, the only names she cared about, for what seemed to her the one-millionth time – Colton Parker, Gordon Vigna, Victor Saretto and Natt Gurloskey. She touched Vigna’s name and smiled as the photos and profile data she’d seen countless times, inundated the screen. Once more, her fingertips flicked through Vigna’s life, one page at a time, each detail and pointless fact, until she reached the bottom of the last screen. She selected an icon reading, “Confirm Target Deletion.” First, the screen responded with, “Communicating with Mission Dizang,” followed by, “Target Deletion Confirmed. Congratulations, Agent Taxi.”
    Other than the sweat trickling down her temples, Li-Mei’s face remained as stiff as a wood carving. She returned to the tablet’s home-screen - the rows in the orange table had decreased from four to three. For an imperceptible second, the corners of her mouth tilted into a smile then flattened again.
    The top of the screen showed a large green “8.”

eighteen days till defiance day (3
    Colton’s face looked like a melted candle. He grimaced, his pupils dilated and he dropped the toothbrush in the sink. He collapsed to his knees, slamming his forehead on the padded toilet seat. He closed his eyes.
    The call had him disoriented. The person on the phone wasn’t Sarah, couldn’t have been. At least not the Sarah he had kept alive in his memories, who had made him marshmallows in bed on weekend mornings and sung him to sleep with lullabies on weekend nights. This phone woman was distant, a gone-bad version of Sarah.
    He picked up his cell and dialed the office. Three-thirty in the morning was as good a time for a message, with his stupor still thick and the office still empty. He wasn’t much of a faker but going to work today, after this call, was not going to happen.
    “Hey Mike, this is Colton. Look… I won’t be coming in today. Just crawled out of the bathroom vomiting a storm. I’ll call you later today when I feel better.”
    He stopped in the kitchen with Sarah’s words still ringing inside his skull. Had he forgotten about her? How could he? He missed her. He missed the lashy feel of her wet hair after a shower during those endless Seattle Sundays filled with rain and sex. He wasn’t sure if this was how heartache felt or guilt, but he hadn’t been whole since.
    In the beginning, the sheer shock of their divorce had carried him through. As in, I’ll show the bitch. How dare she run away with my baby? Her late work nights must have meant polishing the pole of some PhD who was supposed to take us to the Moon. He must have taken her somewhere all right, with her back against a lab fridge and her legs in the air. At the same time while Colton was changing Yana’s diapers... The bitch. It was her fault. Had she come home that night, their lives would have turned out different... and normal.
    In time, alcohol and the wet fear of being alone had declawed his accusations. He did miss her, the curve on her nose and the strands of hair she shed through the house. He missed how she snorted when she laughed and cocked her head sideways when she was in a good mood. When they had started going out in