by Natalie Dean
“Hey,” he said softly. She met his eyes and started to fall into them before catching herself. “It’s going to be all right, okay? You worry too much. Everything is going to be okay. We’ll protect each other.”
She saw herself giving a response, but inside, that emotional whirlwind was starting. They were still on opposite sides of the law. He knew he was innocent. She knew he was innocent. But in the end, there was a solid chance that neither one of them would make it out. She… no, they had to track down The Owl and bring him down—or at least find evidence to use against him—which would be hard enough as it was. To make matters worse, word of the kid whose truck they’d busted up would wind up getting all the way up to Agent Stone.
When he heard that she might have gone haywire, he would put agents out on the both of them. She might be able to prove herself innocent, but if the agents found them before they busted The Owl, The Celtic was going to be arrested. Then they were back to square one.
It was a disaster.
Yet there was nowhere Adrianna would rather be.
After The Celtic got all fixed up, Adrianna found him a handgun to defend himself. As she handed it to him, he frowned.
“Is this loaded?”
“No, I’m leaving you with a useless piece of metal.”
“Well, no, I mean… you trust me that much?”
She met his eyes. “Should I?”
He kept her gaze. “Absolutely.”
She pushed the gun into his hands. “Don’t leave, okay? You already know I’m not taking you in yet. I mean, you can leave if you want, but it’d be a dumb thing to do.”
He winked at her. “I’m not going anywhere, Adrianna.”
Before she could muster a good response, he was talking again. “But you are. Why are you leaving me?”
“I’m just going to shower.”
“Oh.” There was a pause. “You mean this place has water?”
“Well, duh. Why wouldn’t there be?”
“Just kinda expensive if you’re never here.”
“You know what? You’re right. But here we are, so it was worth it. Anyway. I’m going to shower. You keep an eye out.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She had no idea when it had happened, but she had grown quite fond of The Celtic. One moment, he was just someone she knew, just a peer. Well, peer wasn’t really the right word. She was, what, six years older? Something like that? But the point was that all of a sudden, entirely without her permission, he’d made his way into her heart—which, besides her father, nobody she’d known in her entire life had done.
She had awful choices in men. Lots of guys had hit on her in the agency, but none of them had done it for her. Of course she had started falling for a wanted fugitive.
She grabbed a spare set of clothes from her designation drawer and went into the bathroom. She started stripping, which was basically just a process of moving from one ache to the next. Knee. Arm. Rib. It just kept going until she was finally naked, when she stiffly walked into the water.
Although undressing had been awful, the water was worse. So much worse. As anyone who’s had a carpet burn knows, you don’t want water on a fresh wound. It stings like one would not believe and grows astonishingly tight in an unusual way. For Adrianna, who looked like she’d been in a warzone, everything hurt.
But after that initial pain, everything settled in and the warm water felt like heaven. To wash all the pine needles out of her hair was breathtaking. She had no idea that they were irritating her that much until they were gone and she felt freed.
“Hey!” she heard from The Celtic halfway through her shower from outside.
Adrianna instantly jumped to soldier mode. Of all the time the killers could have found them, of all the minutes, it had to be the one time she was showering. She would need to jump out and grab clothes (did she have time?) and snatch that little gun from the medicine cabinet. It wasn’t great for shooting, but it would have to do.
She was halfway out of the shower when The Celtic finished his statement. “Do you think the peanut butter is spoiled?”
She froze, one foot on the bathmat, the other in the shower. “What?”
“I found some peanut butter. Do you think it’s spoiled? Can peanut butter even spoil?”
“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” she said, stepping back into the shower and trying to calm herself down. Getting to soldier mode was easy. Just get mad. Let adrenaline flow. Meta stuff. Resort back to the training that the agency had given her. Going back to civilian life was harder. The agency taught her how to get into the mindset of being an agent. They didn’t teach how to get out of it.
Chapter 11
After her shower, she realized something.
She was a criminal.
Sure, it was justified and all that, and if it were a movie, hopefully the audience would root for her. But in real life? She was a criminal for aiding The Celtic. She could go to jail. Jails weren’t too good for former FBI agents for the obvious reasons. Even if she wanted to, it was too late to clean her record.
She dressed quickly and hobbled out of the bathroom stiffly, way too aware of the wounds that were tightening up from the water. After dropping her clothes into the washing machine, she came back into the living room of the little house to discover The Celtic laying on the couch with a bowl of ice cream and a jar of peanut butter beside him.
“Oh, no,” she said, crossing her arms and completely failing to hide her amusement. “Go ahead. Eat all my stuff.”
“I figure you’d be okay with it,” he said, a spoon of ice cream halfway to his mouth. “I really don’t eat this bad normally, I swear. It’s just… mint ice-cream. It’s my weakness.”
“I don’t think it’s that good of an idea to eat that,” she said. “It’s probably expired.”
“It’s not. I checked.”
“Well, that’s unexpected.”
“You make it a habit of keeping around expired food?”
“Well, no, but… never mind,” she said. “C’mon. Move over.”
She sat next to him and together, the two of them figured out how to stop The Owl, stay away from the long arm of the law, clear both of their names, and come out of it alive.
“So,” Adrianna said, who had warmed up some frozen food she’d set there in the safe house, “What do you know about The Owl?”
“Not too much. He’s smart, smarter than most. I’ve never seen his face, and I haven’t heard from anyone who has”
Well, that was bad news. Hard to prove someone was the head of a mysterious, never-before-known crime organization without being able to even recognize them, much less prove guilt. “Nothing?”
“I know he’s got a bad leg. Nobody really knows what it is, but supposedly, he limps. Arthritis, maybe?”
“He’s old?” she pushed.
“I have no idea. I’d bet he is.”
“Why’s he called The Owl? You guys all have an organization where you pick random the names? The Owl? The Celtic?”
“Ha, ha. He’s called that because he’s quiet. At least, that’s what I’ve heard. I’ve always wondered if he’s, I don’t know, an ex-fighter or something. Bad joints. Could be an explanation. Soft voice? Throat injury? But anyway—”
At that exact moment, the spare cell phone, the one that Adrianna had never shared the number for… rang. Adrianna and The Celtic exchanged startled glances. Both of them knew that nobody had the phone number. She kept it around if she wanted to call someone like the cops. She hadn’t even known that it could receive calls.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?” The Celtic asked.
Adrianna reached for the phone, slid the icon across to answer, and pulled it up to her ear. “Hello?”
The guy’s voice was deep and very, very soft. It was weird, but she almost had to strain to hear him. “Agent Whetmore, I assume?”
“Who’s this?”
“This,” he said softly, “is The Owl.”
Adrianna pulled
the phone away from her ear and frantically pointed to it, mouthing The Owl!
The Celtic’s eyes widened and the spoon of ice cream froze halfway to his mouth. What?! he mouthed back.
She pulled the phone back to her ear. “Pleasure is all mine,” she said coolly, like how James Bond might say it.
“Funny,” said The Owl from the other side. “I’d like to ask you a favor.” He took a long, rasping breath. He sure sounded old. Not senile, just on in his years. “No, do yourself a favor. Give up this nonsense. Could I persuade you to check your window?”
Adrianna felt dread wash through her. He wouldn’t have said that unless he was outside. She popped her head to the window, hoping they wouldn’t just shoot her in the head. They didn’t, giving her a full view of the road outside. Four, black vans, an ice cream van, two black cars, and a Hummer limo. He sure didn’t do subtle.
“Here is my proposal, Agent Whetmore. I am tired of death. I hope you are as well?”
“What’s your point?”
“My point. I have need of someone with your area of expertise. I can keep you safe. I can shelter you from the law. You realize that by sheltering him, you have your own law hunting you. I am more forgiving.”
“Gosh, that’s so nice of you.”
“Let me be frank, Agent Whetmore. You have two options. You can either abandon these silly notions of law and order and join me—both of you will be kept quite safe—or you will not live to see tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry,” Adrianna said sarcastically. “Can you speak up?”
“I’ll be seeing you soon,” he said. “Three minutes to decide what to do. What will you do, Agent Whetmore? Needless death or peace? I eagerly await your answer. Do not disappoint me.”
The call cut off.
“I think that went well,” Adrianna said, ignoring the nerves building in her stomach. Based on the number of vehicles outside, they were doomed. There was no way that they could fight off that many people. She’d also thought that nobody could get her phone number, but he’d called her out of the blue.
“You think he’s outside?” asked The Celtic. One look at him, and Adrianna knew he was ready to fight. His profession was another where he had to switch his predator self on in a hurry.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how he even got that number.” She kicked the table, cursing. “Okay. We have to fight.”
“We have to survive,” The Celtic said. “You see them?” He gestured outside. “We don’t stand a chance unless you’ve got a tank holed up in here somewhere! We can’t fight them.”
“We can’t surrender! The moment we stick our heads out of that door, they’re coming off!”
He raked a hand through his hair. “Okay. Okay. Here’s what we do.” He was pacing. “I say we meet him outside.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Okay, go with me here. Even if we pull off a miracle, even if we manage to kill every single one of them out there, all he does is drive off. He’s got plenty more men. We need him. Until he’s done, we aren’t safe. Neither of us will be.”
“So, what, you’re just going to walk out?”
He swore, which was the first time she’d heard him curse. It was also the best time for it. “Call the cops.”
“We can’t. They don’t have the firepower to deal with these guys. It’ll just be a bloodbath.”
“Guess this is the only option, then,” he said, and opened the door to the outside. “Hey-hey-hey! Let’s talk!”
And the door to the limo opened.
A man came out, just another boring grunt. He gestured to them in the common he’s waiting symbol.
“If this goes wrong,” Adrianna muttered as they walked out of the house towards the limo, “I want you to know I blame you.”
He snorted. “If this goes wrong, I’ll see you in heaven.”
Chapter 12
Walking from the house steps across the street to the Hummer was one of the longest journeys that Adrianna had ever made.
Every step, she wondered if someone would get trigger happy and take a pot shot at her. They were professionals, sure, but accidents happened. And it might not even be an accident—she wouldn’t be too surprised if The Owl had ordered them to kill them with a silencer the moment they got out of cover, then just drive away. Ruthless? Yes. Past him? She had no idea.
“This is stupid,” she whispered to The Celtic.
He was staring right at the Hummer limo. “I know.”
There were two bodyguards outside the limo to take their weapons. Two, big dudes. Both towered over Adrianna and The Celtic, with broken up faces from years of fighting. Both were wearing suits. Although they were a murderous group of killers, they were a nicely dressed murderous group of killers. Style matters.
Adrianna handed over her gun, which unsettled her greatly. She realized that there was no way she could take it inside the Hummer for the obvious reasons, but she still hated to go in unarmed.
As The Celtic handed his gun over to the bodyguards, he pointed towards the truck. “I think that ice cream was a mistake,” he said in a deadpan voice. “I also think that expiration date was lying to me.”
She ignored him. It wasn’t the time for laughing. They both needed to be on the top of their games. The bodyguards forced Adrianna to reach for the sky and patted her down. His hands were giant. It was like having an elephant grope you.
His fingers ran across her thigh, where he would have found a gun previously. For one second, she panicked, but then she remembered they’d taken both of her guns back when they’d been interrogating her.
“She’s clean,” he rumbled to his fellow bodyguard. The other brute nodded in agreement after clearing The Celtic.
Inside the limo was dark. Irritatingly dark, but Adrianna could see four bodyguards, one in each corner, looming seriously over them. There, on the other end of the limo, sitting with a drink in his hand, was The Owl.
The Owl wasn’t what Adrianna had expected. She’d figured he’d be a big guy, but he was surprisingly small. Not tiny, but shorter than she thought he'd be. Despite his height, he was built like a bull, with thick muscles weaving over his stocky frame. She was starting to believe The Celtic’s theory that he’d been a fighter previously. Although what little she could see of his skin in the darkness was wrinkled, he still looked strong and capable.
She could see his lips moving as he spoke. Something about the way he talked was just… wrong, like his lips were just a millisecond behind what he said. That made no sense, so she assumed that he had a speech problem. It would explain the soft, strange voice too.
“I’m quite a fan,” he said. In person, it was even more obvious that something was off about his voice. It sounded like he might have had an excellent, lovely voice at one point, but maybe due to a throat injury or something sustained from fighting, it was left broken. “You, Agent Whetmore, have evaded me. You’ve surprised me. You’ve impressed me. In all my years, I’ve met very few who have done that so consistently.” He spread his bulky arms. “Join us.”
“I’m listening,” she said. “But it’s going to have to be good.”
By good, she meant, You surrender to the law and let us go, but she didn’t think he needed to know that.
“Here’s my offer,” he said. “Join me, and you will both join my ranks. You will be protected. Rich. Powerful.”
Adrianna nodded, thinking. But she wasn’t thinking about the offer. She knew she had to decline. She was thinking about minutes ago, when they had still been in the house before coming out, just after they’d hung up on The Owl.
“They’ll search us,” Adrianna had said, scrambling towards the bedroom. “I got something they won’t see.”
“You better hurry!” The Celtic said, glancing out the window. “They look serious.”
Adrianna dashed into the bedroom and uprooted the chest in the corner. Underneath was a small case that she struggled to open. Her fingers were shaking, not from fear, but from adrenaline
. You don’t know true adrenaline until you’re searching for something to save your life and a friend’s life with a time limit of mere seconds.
The case popped open with a hiss. Inside was a series of little objects—a pen, a hair clip, etc.—but she grabbed the only thing that she cared about: the watch. It looked like the sort that elite, Arab businessmen might wear. Sleek. Expensive.
And very, very dangerous.
As cliché as it might seem, the FBI agents, or at least the really good ones, were given cool gadgets. The first time that she’d seen them, she’d felt exactly like James Bond, like at any moment she might order a drink that was shaken, not stirred. She’d never seen the practicality of the little gadgets. An exploding pen. A knockout hair pin. All that was cool and fun to think about, but in the real world, they were rarely needed. Very few things could beat out a real weapon.
But the watch was a little different. An industrial strength flashbang packed into a small, aluminum chassis. She’d never had a use for it. She just couldn’t wrap her mind around a scenario where a ticking flashbang would be helpful. Flashbangs? Yeah, they were helpful. Toss them into a crowd and they were incapacitated. But the watch wasn’t as powerful as a normal one (though it was amazingly strong for its diminutive size) and it had a clock that ticked down.
She pulled it around her wrist and locked it. It was a little big, but if she kept her hand open, it wouldn’t fall off.
“Why are you putting jewelry on?” The Celtic snapped. Apparently his predator state wasn’t too patient.
“This isn’t jewelry,” she said, snapping the watch across her wrist and handing him two, tiny, clear earplugs.
“What are these for?”
“Just put them in,” she hissed. Probably a minute until the killers started coming in. She put a pair of earplugs in her own ears, which slid in neatly. “Can you see them?” she asked The Celtic, who was pulling his hands down after inserting his own plugs.
