Time Bomb_On The Run Romance

by Madi Le

  "Yeah."

  "So what do you do to beat guerrilla fighters? You can't just try to use their own tools to fight against them. If a full-sized force worked for a guerrilla conflict then everyone would do it."

  "So what, then?"

  "Who's got more resources? Who's got more people? Them, or us?"

  Grant's jaw tightened as the words twisted in his head. He was frustrated, but if he was going to lose his temper with her, Misty wasn't sure what she was going to do. She was already at the end of her rope; it wasn't time to get sassed at.

  "Them, I guess."

  "So we give them a taste of their own medicine. You're trapped in the thought process like you're still working for the government. But you're not."

  "What are you suggesting?"

  "I'm suggesting that we attack them directly. Come after them using their own tactics. And besides," Misty continued, picking up steam, "you've got at least as much firepower as them."

  "How do you figure?"

  Misty looked over at him. It was almost difficult to say any of this, given how little confidence she had in any information that she could have given him in the first place. "What is it, exactly, that you thought I was doing when I got caught up in this mess?"

  Grant's eyes fixed on the street and he sucked a breath in. "Okay, then. What's the plan?"

  "Get me someplace with WiFi, and we'll see what we can do."

  "You promise not to smash in anyone's face?"

  "No promises," Misty said. She hoped that her tone held an air of teasing, because she wasn't sure how much teasing she was doing, and she sure as hell wasn't ready to admit that she had that kind of violence in her, or that it had felt as natural as the rest of it.

  "I could almost kiss you," Grant said.

  "Then kiss me."

  She leaned over towards him. He took his eyes off the road and pressed his lips against hers. He tasted pleasant, and his scruff scratched her face enough to irritate. It reminded her of him, though, and she liked that enough to limit herself to a momentary sour expression.

  Misty turned back to the road, watched the street lines moving underneath them, and tried not to worry about what was going to happen next. Eventually everything was going to go wrong for everyone, and the trick was just making sure the you were on your feet when it happened.

  Furthermore, she was almost getting used to things going wrong. It'd been a long year already, and only getting longer. Now, at least, she had something to look forward to, and someone who she could lean on when things got harder. And, in spite of herself, Misty knew the things were going to get harder.

  Misty took a deep breath, and leaned back in the seat of the car. 20 minutes later, they'd found someplace where they could sit in their car while she connected to the Internet. Grant seem to think that's the best way to go about it, in order to avoid running into any trouble inside.

  Misty tried her best not to take it too seriously, given how much trouble she'd caused last time they were seen. Now that they'd been in a new spot of trouble, it only made sense that the problem of being recognized to be even worse, because no doubt they'd been on the news again.

  She reached into the back of the car, grabbed the laptop she surreptitiously brought with her, and made a doe eyed expression grant when he gave her a hard look.

  "What? You didn't think I need a souvenir?"

  "I don't think we need that kind of trouble," Grant said.

  But when she opened it up and started working, he didn't say anything more. If anything he seemed almost pleased with her, in his own way. It might've frustrated him that she'd the been up to some old tricks, but now that it was working in his favor, he wasn't about to complain.

  Misty worked quietly, the only noise in the car coming from the radio and her fingers tapping keys. It hurt her head accessing all this information, just like it had last time. And just like last time, she didn't want to do it again. There wasn't much choice, though, and she knew better than to avoid something just because she didn't want to do it.

  Things moved quickly. That was how it tended to go, when she got involved in things; either it moved too slow, or it moved too fast. There wasn't much in the way of things between two. This was one of the fast times. Things were getting aggressive and she was going to have to get aggressive to match. Not she was complaining, of course; after all, it was her suggestion this time.

  The difficulty started coming when she started getting packets back from servers she'd never sent requests to. It wasn't long from there before she started to realize what was going on. But she had worked do, and I meant that she had to keep working even if she wasn't sure what she was going to do next. Even if she was concerned, just a little bit, that they might get caught. That was the concern on the time and she couldn't afford to change things now. Not when they were close to getting away for good.

  In the end, she finally left at the last minute. Any longer and there's no way they would've made it without getting caught. By the time they were up to speed, she could already see lights in the rear view, flashing blue and red in the evening sky. And what's more, she'd learned something more than a little bit upsetting.

  There weren't many chances for Misty to stretch her legs in the past year. Most the time, she just been running and trying to get by. Like a student backpacking through Europe. Only once or twice had she had any excuse to really use any of the abilities that she'd learned in the life before she could remember.

  The one thing that she had learned, when she had reason to access those skills, was that she was good at them. Compared to most people, she was a wizard. But not compared to these people. Compared to these people, she barely even knew what she was doing.

  That, more than any FBI task force, worried her.

  Seventeen ♥

  *

  Grant's fingers tightened around the wheel of car; a car he knew was stolen, but allowed himself to believe Misty is found legitimately. His shoulders were tense. He tried to shake them out, but it was no use. First, he would have to figure out how he was going himself back on the right path in life. Second, he was going to take Misty with him.

  His eyes flicked into the rear view mirror, hoping that he wouldn't see any stars. For what seemed like the first time in several days it seemed he got. Nobody had to worry about anything anymore, at least for a few minutes.

  "What do we do now?"

  Misty shrugged.

  "All right" Grant said, answering his own question "we'll go back on the road. Keep heading towards the coast, and don't stop until we get there."

  "You're not planning on getting hungry again?"

  Greg held back a rejoinder. It wasn't going to clever or witty, but he had enough meanness to make it sting anyways. And, for the first time in his life, Grant knew better than make a bad decision.

  "I don't know if I'd go that far." Misty looked at him through the corner of her eye, leaned back, closed her eyes, and relaxed. Ran washer another moment longer before putting his eyes back on the road. Beside them, a car slid past going a little slow for grants liking the rest of the ride all four hours of it, went in silence.

  Grant tried not to miss the sound of her voice. He tried not to miss her company. He tried to think that it was all just fine there, listening the sound of her breathing and wondering when it would be appropriate to turn on the radio. In the end, he decided that it wasn't. The silent ride continued, and he only woke her when they finally got close to. His hand settled on her knee. "five more minutes."

  Misty opened her eyes slowly, looking startlingly feminine. "We there yet?"

  "Almost," Grant said. His expression was grim, a mixture of his anxiety over running from the cops, and the boredom for solitary hours on the road, with nothing but the lines on the street to keep him company.

  Misty balled up one hand, used it to rub her eyes, and looked at him with eyes that couldn't have been any more sleepy before she rubbed them

  "Why so sour?"

  Grant looked at her
. He told himself not to say anything all. The only thing he could do at that point, other than to stay silent, was to make things worse. He opened his mouth. " what's there to be so happy about?"

  Misty pouted. Grant tried to decide whether she was joking or not, eventually decided that he was. He still had doubts.

  Her question kept repeating his head, though, digging. Like some kind of burr in his saddle.

  When was the last time that he been really happy? Years ago, he was sure. It had played into the ending of his previous relationship with his ex-wife. Now, when he was with the woman he always hoped he would end up with, all he could do was feel sorry for himself. He looked at Misty and forced a smile.

  "Other than being with you, I mean," Grant said.

  Misty leaned her head back as they pulled into the parking lot, the faintest of smiles showing on her lips. When he pulled into the parking lot, Grant had every intention of using the drive through window, and yet, as he pulled past the door, he found himself moving his hands, pulling the car into the parking spot.

  Grant eased the door open, slid out, walked up to the front door. Misty followed. He held the door and she smiled at him, politely, apparently having forgiven him for snapping.

  He stepped up to the counter, and this time it was his turn to wait for her. He leaned against a garishly-colored stand bolted to the floor, showing off the kids' toys of the month. He took in the room around them. The place was crowded enough that he worried about it, but he wasn't about to go without eating. The way things had gone, he wasn't sure he would get another chance.

  He paid for the meal with his card, the same as he'd been doing. They ate quickly; there was no other choice. Grant made sure that Misty faced the wall. It didn't help. He considered himself good at keeping his head down; that didn't appear to be high on Misty's list of priorities, and she was swiveling her head around to look at every part of it.

  Then again, that might have been a good thing. This time, she didn't immediately jump up. Instead she leaned in, close enough that she could speak quietly. Grant watched her carefully, noticing the shift in her posture before she had even begun to get close.

  "There," she said. "Someone filming us."

  "You sure it couldn't be some kids pulling some kind of prank again?"

  "Hundred percent. He's sitting down."

  Misty gestured with her eyes. Sure enough, there he was. He was sitting in a corner booth, alone, and trying to hold his phone in a way that came off as candid. Sure enough, though, he had it angled precisely, and though his face wasn't pointed at the phone's screen, his eyes were without a single doubt.

  The pair of them stood. Grant trashed the food, and Misty started to corner the kid. The kid, having seen what happened to the last guy who was fixed with that expression, decided that he wanted to leave. Grant caught his coat as the young man passed him by, as if the twenty-something was barely higher than his knee.

  "Going somewhere?"

  "I don't want any trouble."

  "No? Then we'll go talk in my car."

  "I don't need to talk."

  "Come on," Misty said, coming abreast of the two men. "It'll be fun."

  She pushed the front door open, held it while Grant pulled the kid through. For all his protests, he didn't do anything to stop them.

  "You know who we are, huh?"

  Grant slid into the back seat of the car, his arm still wrapped around the kid's shoulder. Misty slid into the driver's seat, leaned down to do whatever she did to get the car started, and it kicked to life.

  "Everyone knows who you are, dude."

  "Sure they do," Grant said. "We're famous."

  "What are you going to do to me?"

  Grant looked at him, his expression one of almost genuine surprise. "Do to you? Nothing, kid. You're going to be just fine. Eat your wheaties, or whatever it is you do."

  "You mean you're not gonna hurt me?"

  "No need, kid. You're going to tell me whatever I need to know, so I don't have to worry about whether or not you're going to pull something."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You're not going to try to sell me a line about being just a concerned citizen, I hope." The kid had long, gangly hair, and a t-shirt that Grant didn't recognize the reference to, and as much as it was stereotyping, he was pretty confident making a leap of faith.

  "What?"

  "You know what I mean. You're with them, huh? The hackers. The ones who have been looking for us."

  The kid's eyes fixed on Grant's. Jackpot.

  "So which one are you?"

  Misty drove slowly; she didn't know where they were going. But this took precedence, and furthermore, Grant still wasn't sure how good an idea it was to head straight in without getting some sense of how things looked in the surrounding area. So he didn't mind the wide, lazy loops that they were taking, even if the other drivers on the street did.

  "What?"

  Grant pulled out the stolen phone, complete with its stolen information, and scrolled through the list of names that they'd taken. Some had to be fake, he assumed. Some had to be real, though, and he was counting on the real ones to get a reaction that he could play off of. Intimidating the kid was an important first step to getting the information that they wanted, though, and he intended to take it.

  "Just stop me when one of those names seems more familiar than the others."

  "Who are these people?"

  "Your… I don't know. Would you call them friends? Associates? Confederates?"

  The young man looked at him, trying to hide his fear behind a mask of incredulity. It didn't work as well as he wanted it to–anyone could have seen through it, and it meant a humorous mix that did nothing to convince Grant that he was on the wrong track.

  "I don't know any of these people."

  "Sure you don't," Grant said. He set the phone aside a moment. "Look, kid. I'm not going to kill you."

  "You're the pair that killed all those folks back in Idaho," the kid answered. "Doesn't seem like you have much of a problem with it."

  Grant raised an eyebrow. "Is that right?"

  "We looked into it." His voice sounded thin. "It's always hard to trust information that they're actually releasing to the public. It's used to control people too often to really believe any of it. But we looked into it, regardless, and I have to say, you know… looks pretty bad."

  "So you know all about me, huh?"

  "We know about your ex-wife."

  "What about her?"

  "We know where she's at."

  "Is that a threat, big guy?"

  Grant tried to keep his voice low and threatening. It had worked so far. He didn't even have to touch the weapon on his hip, a weapon that he hadn't fired since they'd given it to him, outside of monthly shoots at the range. This time, though, the kid seemed to have realized that he had something, and all he was going to have to do to weather the storm was keep leaning on the resources he'd picked up.

  "You think you're a big tough guy, Morrison? Well, we know where to hit you. You're not invulnerable. We can hurt you."

  "I can hurt you first, big guy."

  "You can't hurt anything," the kid said, his voice raising in pitch as he started to pick up steam. "I don't matter to anything or anyone, and–"

  Grant popped him. It stopped him dead in his tracks, as his hands came up to cover his nose and his mind stopped processing language and started processing pain, and words like 'oh, fuck.'

  "Now that we've got you calmed down, we need to talk, kid."

  "What the fuck?"

  "You were getting hysterical," Grant said, as if it were the most reasonable answer in the world. "I thought it prudent to calm you down a little."

  "I think you broke my nose."

  "Hurts, don't it?"

  "Fuck," the kid said, ignoring the question.

  "Now, let's talk some more. How do I get rid of your friends? They're in tight with the government guys."

  "Fuck you, man. You think we're working fo
r the man?"

  "What did I just say? You got an ear wax problem or something?"

  "Jesus, don't hit me again."

  Grant hadn't made a move to. Misty looked at the pair of them from the rear-view. "Don't scare him, Sheriff; he's just a kid."

  "You're one to talk," Grant said.

  "You're wrong," the kid said. "About them. They're–we're–too smart to get caught up in something like that. Mark my words."

  "Everyone thinks they're too smart to be used, to get caught up in someone else's scheme. And yet, people keep getting caught in schemes. It's almost as if they're not half as smart as they think they are. Who'd have thought, huh?"

  The kid seemed to think about that for a long moment. "Can you prove it?"

  "You got a cell phone?"

  "Sure."

  "You want me to call the F.B.I. and try to turn you miscreants in again? I've got a list of names, after all, and a partial list of addresses."

  "Is that supposed to be a threat?"

  "Hardly," Grant said. "Because I already tried it once. They practically hung up on me when I finally managed to get someone to take the information down from me. They don't want you."

  "We ain't done anything."

  "You hacked into several government offices, leaked personal information on dozens of government officials, and now you're interfering with a Federal investigation. You think if you weren't doing their work for them that they wouldn't want to at least have a little talk to you? Like we are now?"

  The kid looked at Grant, and opened his mouth. He pressed his long hair back, smoothing it over, and then scratched his beard. "You're bluffing, then. You think I'm just going to take my word for it."

  "You sure? Give me that phone, and we'll make a call."

  The kid looked at him, ran his fingers through his hair again, which just made it all fall off of where it had gotten piled up on his head.

  "Alright," he said finally. "Let's say I believe you. Why pick me up?"

  "I want to know where I can hit your friends, and make it hurt enough that they leave off for a day or two."

  "Impossible."

  "What do you mean, impossible?"