by Lena North
She giggled, mumbled something about seeing him later, and left without even a glance at me.
“Uh,” Jamie said, and I did laugh then.
“No need to look so sheepish,” I said. “It’s not like I’m your girlfriend, and –”
He cut me off immediately, “Snow, please. Surely you know that if you want to be my girl, all you have to do is say so.” I had no answer, and it must have been clear on my face because he raised his brows. “You didn’t know?” he asked.
“Jamie…” I trailed off, not sure what I wanted to say, or do.
He was one of the nicest, most caring persons I’d ever met, but being his girlfriend?
“Right,” he said. “Well, now you know, and I guess I’ll visit the family a bit more than I’d planned.”
“Okay,” I said weakly. “But, Jamie, I don’t know if –”
“I know,” he said reassuringly. “Let’s just continue building on what we have. Who knows what will happen?” Then he winked at me and asked, “Okey-dokey?”
I burst out in surprised laughter, which probably was what he’d intended. He looked satisfied as he leaned back in the chair, and changed the topic to the research I was supposed to conduct. He seemed to know more than me about the kind of microbes my professor was studying, which didn’t surprise me at all, and when I couldn’t answer some of his questions, he calmly said that we’d figure it out together when he visited the Islands. I hadn’t exactly planned to spend my free time studying, but doing it together with Jamie might be fun.
“Have to go,” I said finally, and got up. “Thanks for…” I indicated my half-eaten sandwich with my head, and went on, “Call me if you plan to go home?”
“Will do,” he answered, and leaned in to hug me.
Unfortunately, he squeezed my shoulder, and I winced.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Snow. What?”
Well, crap.
“A box fell off one of the cabinets in the lab,” I improvised quickly. “Hit me on the shoulder, and I got a bruise.”
He pulled my shirt to the side, peeked at my shoulder, and his brows lowered. Then I was shuffled through the cafeteria and a corridor, and into a small room. Ignoring my protests, Jamie quickly unbuttoned my shirt and pulled it off. After a lot of poking and prodding, he started twisting my arm around gently.
“Looks like it’s okay,” he murmured.
I pulled my shirt back on, buttoned it up, and moved toward the door.
“I know it is,” I said and walked out into the corridor.
It was sweet that he got all worried about a bruise, but I’d had it with men pulling at my clothes and providing unwanted help.
“I’d like to do an x-ray,” Jamie said. “It’s a big bruise. There could be a crack in one of the bones.
I sighed. We were standing just outside the door to the examination room, and I noticed the trim. It was rather thick, and before I could have second thoughts, I jumped.
Then I was hanging from the top of the door, using the trim as a ledge and holding on with my fingertips. I heard a choking sound behind me but ignored both it and the soft crack coming from the trim. When I’d stopped swinging from the jump, I slowly bent my arms to pull myself up until my forehead touched the trim above the door.
When I’d lowered myself down again and let go, I turned back to Jamie and said calmly, “I don’t think there’s a crack in any of my bones.”
His mouth had fallen open, but he collected himself quickly and said, “I would have to agree with that assessment.”
I laughed at his stunned face, and his eyes lit up with humor.
“Holy guacamole, Snow. How did you even do that? Your muscle strength versus mass ratio must be exceptional.”
“Not really,” I said, not sure what he was talking about. “It’s mostly technique.”
I’d seen my climbing buddies make similar moves, although when we were rock climbing and not always quite as fluidly.
“Maybe I could…” Jamie started.
He was suddenly moving, but I was too slow to stop his awkward jump. He managed to grab the trim by what I thought was sheer luck.
“Yoo-hoo,” he shouted triumphantly.
Then there was another crack from the trim, and suddenly the whole board came loose. Jamie fell to the floor, landing partially on his feet and partially on his behind. The trim came with him, and he tried to grab it but semi-failed and slapped himself in the forehead with it instead.
“Ouch,” he grunted.
I put a hand over my mouth and tried so very hard not to laugh, but failed miserably. A whimper escaped, and Jamie looked up at me.
“This is one of the moments when saying crapola is entirely appropriate,” he declared sourly. “Or what-the-fuckola.”
I burst out laughing, and slowly a grin spread on his face. I stretched a hand out to help him up, and then he turned to look at the hospital staff who had stopped to stare at us. Most of them were grinning, although a few were laughing openly, and a middle-aged nurse came toward us.
“Doc Jamieson…” she sighed indulgently and pulled the trim out of his hand. “I’ll get the janitor.”
“Thanks, my sweetness,” Jamie said and patted her shoulder.
She gave him a grin over her shoulder as she disappeared down the corridor. Then the small device on Jamie’s hip started beeping. “Shit, have to go,” he muttered, and before I could reply, he hugged me and walked away briskly.
I followed him with my eyes until he’d disappeared, and then I went home to start packing.
Chapter Four
Go get it
I looked at Jiminella’s bike and thought about the long uphill road to Double H, Wilder’s ranch in the foothills. Nightmares had pushed at my mind so I hadn’t slept well, and I worried about what kind of reception I’d get from the guys in the group. I’d met Wilder and Mac a few times in the past year, and knew most of the others from my life in Norton. I wasn’t sure what they’d think about me joining their close-knit crew, though, and I also wasn’t sure what Hawker would have told them.
“Get in,” a deep voice rumbled next to me.
I smiled as I turned toward Olly. He was the one I’d been closest to as we grew up, and the one I’d met the most when I moved away from Norton. When he started training with Dante a while back, he’d gotten into the habit of letting me know when he’d drive down to Marshes, in case I wanted to tag along.
We didn’t talk on our way through the city which wasn’t unexpected at all. Olly was silent, but not in a way I’d ever found uncomfortable. It wasn’t that he was disapproving, or shy even. I always thought of it as him simply not speaking unless he had something to say that would be of value. His father was just the same, and I remembered how safe I had felt sitting on the huge man’s lap as a child.
“You’ll be fine,” Olly said as we turned off the main road and passed through the huge wooden entrance with the two capital H’s.
“Yeah,” I murmured.
When he’d parked the car, he turned to me and smiled gently. His eyes were soft and warm, and when he raised a hand to box me gently on my cheek, I leaned into his fist.
“Just keep your cool, Snow,” he said. “She’ll try to rattle you, so don’t let her.”
“I can do that,” I said with more confidence than I felt.
Then we got out and walked around the house to the back porch where breakfast was laid out. Wilder and Mac were already eating, and no one else was there.
We chatted about mundane things over coffee and more food than I usually had that early in the morning. I tried to relax but the mood was strange. It was as if the air vibrated a little with a restless energy that seeped into my soul in a way that I’d never felt before, and wasn’t entirely sure I liked. To my surprise, it subsided when Wilder walked inside to discuss something with an older guy who Mac told me was Andy, the manager of the ra
nch.
“I wasn’t going to join you today, but I think I will,” Mac said calmly. “She’s happy that you’re here, Snow, but she wanted to go to the Islands herself, so she’s also pissed.”
“Huh,” I said.
“Not at you,” Olly murmured. “At her dad.”
“Okay,” I said.
I wondered if she’d take her anger out on me, and how I would handle that, but then Wilder came back, and we started talking about what I would do once I arrived in the Islands. It didn’t seem like a lot to me, and Wilder was clearly skeptical too. From what she told me, I was mostly supposed to keep my eyes and ears open and not get involved in anything.
That sounded incredibly dull, and after a while, I suggested that if they let me know exactly who they suspected and where these individuals supposedly did their illegal actions, I could easily find out more.
“Let’s go,” Wilder said and got up.
“Babe,” Mac said, and it sounded like a protest.
“She needs to know,” Wilder said. “Let’s go.”
I followed her into a huge barn and stopped. It was an enormous training facility with what looked like a boxing ring in the center. There were various kinds of equipment on one side, and weights and the like at the other.
“I want you to try to take me down,” Wilder said.
What the hell? I wasn’t a fighter and never had been. Surely she knew that?
“Come on,” she insisted, bending down to move through the ropes and into the ring.
I debated which would make me look more like a fool; refusing, or getting the shit beat out of me. The decision was easy, though. I wasn’t a coward, and wouldn’t act like one, so I stepped into the ring.
I dodged her successfully a couple of times but the ring was too small, so after a failed feint, she got hold of me and threw me easily on my back. It hurt my shoulder although I took great care not to let anything on, and got up again.
When she’d thrown me around for almost ten minutes, she asked, without even panting, “Will you yield?”
“No,” I said, and she sighed.
“Stupid,” she muttered and got out of the ring.
Then we moved out of the barn and rounded it to find a shooting range behind it. Well, crap, I thought. I could shoot, sort of, but not very well and not with the kind of weapons Wilder kept in a locked shed next to the range.
When I’d missed the target numerous times, she looked at me.
“Do you get why you shouldn’t get involved?”
I did totally get that and was about to tell her so when Olly took a step forward, pulled the small handgun out of her hand and swung his arm around and up. The pistol flew through the air in a high arc and landed on top of the barn with a clunking sound.
“Olly, what the hell?” Wilder snapped, and when he just looked calmly at her, she added, “It’ll take us forever to get that down. We’ll have to get a couple of ladders, and rope, and maybe –”
“Why don’t you go get it, Snow?” Olly said instead of answering her.
Our eyes met, and he had a distinct smirk in his.
“Okay,” I said.
I didn’t understand how he knew that I could, but I got what he meant, loud and clear. You might not be a fighter like Wilder, but you’re not useless, or worthless – that’s what his action showed me. I was already planning the best way up there when Wilder pushed out a small snorting sound which annoyed me to no end.
“What?” I asked.
“You’ll go up there and get it?” she asked right back.
“Guess so,” I said.
“Right,” she drawled, and I got even more annoyed.
I’d been pushed around for hours, and she’d done it to show me how unprepared I was for the kind of work they did in the group, but she didn’t know me. That angry feeling in my core started bubbling, and suddenly I wanted to tell her to go to hell.
“I can get that gun down for you, if you need my help,” I said with pretend affability.
“Right,” she repeated, and I thought it sounded a bit condescending.
“In fact, I’ll bet you a hundred I’ll get it down faster than you,” I added.
“You don’t know your way around here, have no clue where we store the ladders and other equipment,” she told me.
“Yeah, so?”
“You’re on,” she sneered.
“Go,” Olly called out.
And I did.
As Wilder started running toward the other side of the barn, I moved toward the main house. One side of it was facing the barn, and there was a huge tree between the buildings. I climbed up the side of the house easily, using the downpipes at first and then hanging by my hands in the small overhang from the roof. When I’d gotten as high as the second floor, I heaved myself up on the roof, stopped, and took a few deep breaths. Wilder was dragging a ladder along below me, and I knew I had plenty of time, so I rolled my shoulders a few times. Then I pulled in air, and jumped, grabbing a thick branch in the tree and easily swinging myself up on it. When I’d moved to the other side of the tree, I jumped again and grabbed the block hanging from a beam by the top of the barn, just above a couple of huge sliding doors that I guessed they had used for loading things before it became a center of badass education. Ignoring the pain in my shoulder, I climbed the rope up to the ridge and swung my legs to the side to get up on the corrugated tin covering the roof.
“Good!” my bird called out to me.
I turned my face up to grin at her as she hovered above the roof.
“Can you see the gun?” I asked.
“Follow the top, go around the chimney. It’s stuck just a little lower on the other side,” she replied.
“Thanks,” I murmured and started running along the narrow ridge.
When I’d rounded the chimney, I slid down along the tin, picked up the gun, and looked down. I didn’t know if the weapon was loaded which meant I couldn’t throw it down to Olly. Holding it carefully in one hand I slid all the way down to the edge of the roof, swung over it until I hung in the pipe, holding on with one hand. The house was two stories high so I couldn’t let go and fall to the ground, but there was a line of windows, and I swung my body from side to side, moving my hand with the movement until I was straight above one of them and looked around. It was still too far to jump, and my hand was starting to hurt. I wondered if I could drop the gun to the ground without killing anyone but decided I wouldn’t risk it and tucked it into the back of my shorts instead and grabbed the edge with both my hands. Then I moved toward the corner of the building, hoping to find a way down there.
“Snow,” the bird said when I was close to the corner of the barn. “Here.”
When I swung my head around, she was right next to me, holding the rope I’d used to get up on the roof in her beak.
“Yay,” I murmured, and she made a sound that sounded surprisingly like a giggle.
I pulled the rope until it was stretched tightly around the corner, put my feet on the side of the house and swung around, landing on the other side, feet first. After that it was easy to rappel downward until I could let go and jump to the ground, landing steadily.
A ladder was raised against the barn, and Wilder was doing something with a rope when I rounded the corner. When I held the gun up in front of me, she let go of the rope and kicked the ladder sideways, so it fell to the ground with a loud thump.
“Well, shit,” she said.
“Absolumundo,” I smirked.
She pressed her lips together angrily, took a few steps toward the barn, and started kicking it. It wasn’t the kind of girly kicks that hurt your toes and made pain shoot up your leg. Her fierce warrior moves made me worry that she’d accidentally break through the wall.
“What?” I snapped loudly.
She stopped and walked over to me. Then she put a hand in her back pocket, brought out a few bills that she gave me without even looking at them. I tucked th
em into my pocket, vowing that I’d use them to celebrate once I was on the Islands.
“I am not mad at you,” she growled so angrily I took a step backward.
“Okay,” I said.
“Asked Dad to be here today and he said it would be good for me to do it myself.”
“Okay,” I repeated, grateful that Hawker hadn’t been there to witness my non-existent fighting skills.
“I hate it when he’s right,” she said.
“I’ll spar with you later, you can work it off on me,” Olly said calmly.
“Thanks,” she murmured, and went on, addressing me, “I thought you were useless.”
I blinked, not because of her words because I’d thought exactly that myself, but she sounded so contrite and very unlike her usual cocky self.
“I learned a lesson today, and if you tell Dad that I said so, I'll kill you.”
“If you can catch me,” I said with another smirk.
“That’s just it,” she exclaimed. “I compared you to me, and that was stupid. What you did was beyond amazing and exactly what we need on the Islands. We don’t need someone going in fighting and shooting people. We need someone who can sneak around, stay hidden and move around unhindered.” She started smiling, and her grin was infectious, so I did too. “We need you,” she stated.
“You do,” I confirmed without knowing exactly what they needed me for but feeling excited about the possibility to use my skills for something positive and not only to work off frustrations. “Can we sit down and talk about what I really should do on the Islands now? Walking around listening to gossip like a ninny sounds a bit tame.”
Then we went back to the porch, and they shared details about the Jamiesons, who mostly weren’t called Jamieson at all. The family was big, and Wilder gave me a stack of papers with all of them listed, along with details about some of them.
We discussed back and forth a while, and in the end, we agreed that I would try to figure out where any drug shipments were brought into the Islands. From there we’d be able to find any links to Jamie or his family. I would also find out how often Jamie visited his family, and if possible even when. Wilder told me that they had some intel on when shipments had been intercepted in the past so we could cross check the dates for patterns.
