The Split

Chapter 31

Poughkeepsie New York, 2024

The crackling of the fire gave way to a loud popping sound, and woke me from my nap. Startled, I instinctively reached towards my side and nearly jumped from my chair before realizing what had happened and that my gun wasn't on me.

"Jumpy tonight huh?" Meela laughed. I looked over my shoulder to see her watching me from the kitchen smiling.

I looked over the leather back of my seat and smiled at her. I wanted to tell her of the vivid dreams that consumed my sleep, but we had discussed them before and she was having dreams of her own to decipher. My visions of Cuba continued, and the past year had begun giving way to another dream entirely.

Every time I would dream it was the same thing, I would watch myself die in Cuba, and a new scene would appear around me. The new dream was confusing, filled with strange vehicles and what appeared to be robots. It seemed I was watching something occur in a time past my own, but I wasn't sure what. Unlike Cuba, I myself was nowhere to be found, and instead I watched a man I had never seen before sneaking around in a dark building.

I settled back into my chair, "Guess my nerves are a bit fried."

"Makes sense," she replied. I could hear her pulling glasses down from the cabinet. "Two contracts by yourself in a row? You really know how to spoil a girl."

"I wouldn't say all that," I grinned, "Someone had to set this place up, and we both know I would've done a terrible job."

Meela had gotten a lot done in the fifteen day span I was gone. The bare-floored place I had left was a fully furnished home by the time I returned. Her choices were tasteful, subtle shades of burgundy and dark leather were everywhere the eye could see. The place definitely had her feminine touches, but to her credit, she had retained the rustic sportsman vibe that the house's log cabin style construction demanded. There were several mounted deer high on the walls. I had shot only one, several weeks before, the rest she had presumably bought somewhere in my absence.

I had surprised her with the house on her birthday. We had been looking for one several months before in the area, and one day we had passed this one. Meela had instantly fallen in love with it, but I played it cool and told her it was too expensive. Her reaction when I told her it was her's had exceeded even my wildest expectations.

We had a place in the city, a studio in the Bronx provided by ACE. A year into our new job, we had bought a condo in Miami as well, but neither of them would do. I would've been content with either one, but Meela wouldn't have it. Though I could call any place home, Meela had always wanted a proper house, a place with some land away from the rest of the world.

Ever since she was a little girl, she had dreamed of a cabin overlooking a river. So I had bought her one. The house met all of her criteria. It was nearly ten miles from Hyde Park, the nearest part of Poughkeepsie, and several miles away from State Highway 9.

The walls were constructed in the fashion of a tradition cabin, with huge intersecting logs stacked on top of one another. It appeared that the builders had used the same kind of tree for the entire house. Even the shade of the wood seemed identical, from the front entrance all the way to the walk out second story porch overlooking the Hudson. The woods around our homestead were peaceful, dense with trees that reflected the seasons beautifully. A fair number of creatures called this part of the woods their home, and when you sat on the back porch you could look down and watch them play.

It had four bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms, more than we needed, but Meela had furnished them all anyway.

The master bedroom had been her pet project. In the middle of the room was a California King sized bed, with a nightstand on either side. Meela had covered the walls in paintings and photos of us, but the centerpiece was on the wall directly across from the bed. She had commissioned an oil portrait of the two of us from a picture we had taken at a dinner party in Manhattan. the painting was nearly as tall as I was and dominated the room, drawing your eye almost immediately.