by Loretta Lost
She turns to look at me with a huge smile on her face. “Cole, you’re going to MIT in the fall.”
I can’t think of anything to say, so I just walk forward in quick strides and gather her up in my arms, kissing the hell out of her. She seems surprised and resistant at first, but soon she relaxes and kisses back, laughing lightly at my enthusiasm. When our kiss finally breaks, I pull away to see that familiar spark in her eyes. What I always thought was a glint of wickedness was actually something else entirely. It’s a deep sense of righteousness and justice.
“Cole,” she says in admonition, blushing a little.
I only then realize that everyone in the prison is whistling, cheering, and banging their hands against their cages. We’re the center of attention, like a couple from a romantic comedy embracing in the middle of Grand Central Station and confessing their feelings in the climactic scene.
My cheeks are burning, partly from embarrassment and partly from smiling so hard. “Sorry,” I tell her. “I’ve just never had a girl take down a judge for me and then shut down an entire prison so I could leave.”
“We better hurry before someone finds out.”
“Let’s take a few of my friends, the good guys.” When she nods, I turn and gesture to my cell. “This is my roommate, Little Ricky.”
“Nice to meet you, Little Ricky. Thanks for taking care of Cole for me.”
“He took care of me,” the small boy says shyly. I can tell he gets nervous around pretty girls.
“Come on,” I say to Scarlett, guiding her over to the cells, freeing some of the other kids who had complained about McFarlane. But only the guys who I’m sure don’t deserve to be here. Some of the kids give Scarlett hugs in thanks, and a few of them are crying.
“Let us out, too!” Marco shouts from his cell. “This isn’t fair. Me and Johnny shouldn’t be in here neither.”
She looks at me and Ricky for confirmation, and we both shake our heads.
“No way,” I tell her.
“Those guys are bad news,” Little Ricky whispers.
“Let us out of here, Cole!” Marco shouts. “Please? Come on, we’re friends, right?”
“Ignore them,” I tell her.
“Look,” she says softly. “There are a bunch of protesters outside. We leaked the story to the press yesterday, about the crooked judge who accepted bribes and put tons of underprivileged kids in jail for personal monetary gain. So today, an anonymous hacker saw that story, and took down this prison. As part of the protest. Okay?”
“Okay,” I respond, and Ricky says, “Gotcha.”
Many of the other guys echo this sentiment.
“Let’s get out of here,” she says with conviction, and we all begin heading toward the exit. I move in a daze, kind of unable to believe this is happening after months of enduring torture in here.
As we step into the sunlight, I feel euphoria wash over me as it really begins to sink in that I’m free. And I haven’t lost too much time. I thought I was going to be stuck in here for two years, but it looks like my life isn’t going to get totally ruined after all.
When Scarlett takes my hand, I find a cold metal object being pressed into my palm and I look at her questioningly.
“Wanna get married?” she asks with an unbelievably angelic smile.
Opening my palm to look at the ring she has placed in my palm, I suddenly feel like this whole experience of being in prison, and being rescued by a gorgeous teenage hacker girl in red high heels has all been for this single moment. It was all just an elaborate marriage proposal.
I am sure there is some extremely logical reason she wants to get married, and she’s about to explain all those logical logistics posthaste.
But for now, I’m just going to pretend that I’m a wrongfully accused knight who was captured and held in an enemy dungeon, tortured and close to starvation. But just before his spirit could be broken, his warrior princess slayed the dragon and took down an entire kingdom to rescue him from the throes of evil.
How would you respond if faced with similar circumstances?
The only possible answer is obviously, “Hell, yes.”
Chapter Twenty
About to get shot again?
“Don’t move a fucking muscle,” the woman with the gun hisses. “I’ll blow your brains out. From this range, I would have to be a Kardashian to miss.”
As she steps closer to shove the gun into my face, I feel the old injury on my face begin to throb with the anticipation of being shot again. I am suddenly frozen, waiting for the bullets to pierce my skin.
Scarlett sighs behind me. “So much for your private island, Cole.”
I try to think. My muscles have instinctively tensed up, trying to get so hard that they create body armor to protect me from future bullet wounds. Willing myself to move, I try to get my limbs unfrozen. I know I need to think fast, but act faster. Rodriguez isn’t here to help me, so I try to remember what Levi taught me long ago.
“Look,” I say to the woman holding the gun, lifting my hands in a gesture of peace. I hope that she doesn’t see the slight tremble in my fingers. “We’ll cooperate with whatever you want. Just tell us what you need. We have food, cash, jewelry, the complete series of Breaking Bad on Blu-ray—” I pivot mid-speech to grab the woman’s gun and disarm her. Tossing the gun to Scarlett, I groan as the woman slams her knee into my side. I counter back with turning and punching her in the face, which she successfully blocks. Damn, I’m slow. But I manage to grab her wrist and twist it, using Aikido to wrestle her to the ground.
“You have Breaking Bad on Blu-ray?” Scarlett asks me, sounding annoyed that she hadn’t previously known this. “Where do you even have the TV?”
“Just pick up the gun and help me out!” I say, grunting as I struggle with our attacker. The woman slams her palm into my nose before hooking my leg with hers to knock me to the ground. She shoves her knee into my back to keep me down, but I am a lot bigger than her. I twist my body and grab a handful of her hair, jerking her forward as I put my knee in her back instead.
“Who the fuck are you?” I demand as I yank her arm up with firm pressure, intending to break it. “What do you want?”
She laughs softly, which puzzles me and reminds me of Snow. She also holds up her hand in some sort of signal, which makes me anxious. I scan the desert for any sign of other people. Alarmed, I turn to look into the mobile home to see Scarlett approaching the doorway, dressed in her bed sheet and holding the gun. But she is not pointing it at the woman—the gun is merely sitting in her palm.
What the hell is she doing?
“I thought you’d be more of a pencil-neck, pencil-dick paper pusher,” the woman on the ground says. “Didn’t expect you to fight back. I’m impressed. How did you manage to get shot twice with moves like that?”
“Who the hell are you?” I ask her again, growing impatient and putting more pressure on her arm.
Wincing in pain, she looks up to see Scarlett standing in the doorway. She lets a low whistle escape from her lips. “Agent Shields, haven’t you ever fucking heard of sunscreen?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of pasty-white hackers who never go outside?”
The woman sighs and shakes her head. “This is what happens when you send agents into the field without proper training.”
“Yes, I think I missed the training session where they went over proper sunscreen use. Is there a PowerPoint presentation I can download? Also, when someone gave me a trunk full of cool spy gear, including automatic firearms, cellphone jammers, bugs and keyloggers, she forgot to include emergency sunscreen.”
The woman laughs, and I feel awkward about not releasing her. She doesn’t even seem to notice that she is being restrained, and Scarlett obviously knows her. But my whole body feels stiffened to the point of immobility. I am not taking any chances.
“To be fair,” the woman says, “when I said you should get some field experience, I didn’t know there would be so many actual fields involved.�
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“Cole,” Scarlett says with amusement. “This is my boss. You can release her. Unless she’s about to fire me for getting a really bad sunburn.”
There. Now I feel slightly more comfortable letting her go. It is difficult to make my muscles move, as they are locked so tightly I feel like my body is made of wires and steel. I have to take a deep breath to get enough oxygen into my arms so that they can relax and get out of kill mode.
Scrambling off the ground, the woman immediately rushes over to Scarlett and gives her a hug. “Oh, Sophie. Thank God you’re okay! I was sure you’d either been killed or captured.”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Scarlett says, returning the hug with surprise. She seems genuinely happy to see this woman. Looking at me over her friend’s shoulder, she smiles. “Cole, I’d like you to meet Agent Luciana Lopez.”
When the woman turns around to shake my hand, I frown.
“It’s really not a huge pleasure to meet you,” I say with annoyance. “Why would you point a gun in the face of a man who’s just been shot?”
Luciana rolls her eyes. “Relax, Mr. Pikachu shorts. I had the safety on the gun the whole time. Men of your generation are so sensitive.”
“Sadist.”
“First of all, I couldn’t be 100% sure that either of you were alive and in this vehicle—I got the specs on it, and this thing is an armored, military prototype for a new tank that contains built-in ammunitions? Are you fucking kidding me? This thing could waste me from miles away if the people inside were paying attention to their surroundings instead of each other’s bodies. It would be stupid if I didn’t go in guns blazing. My ‘field agent’ here failed to keep me updated.”
“Hmmm,” Scarlett says, stepping out of the tank in her bed sheet and studying the exterior. “We really need to work on the monitoring systems and alarms for intruders. At least some visual and audio mapping to check for anomalies in the area.”
“We?” Luciana repeats. “Um, last time I checked you already had a job. Working for me.”
“Yeah, well I had her first,” I tell Luciana, stepping toward Scarlett possessively. “And due to the tragic death of a really swell guy, Scarlett has inherited an empire. That comes with tons of responsibilities. So, I think I win.”
Luciana laughs. “I think you’re confusing your Scarlett Hunter with my Sophie Shields. And Sophie chose working for the CIA over working for you.”
“Only because of personal circumstances,” I say softly. “Also, she worked with me, not for me.”
“Aw, shucks. Please don’t fight over me and my technological talents,” Scarlett says, pretending to be embarrassed. “Actually, just keep on fighting. I feel so appreciated right now.”
“Speaking of personal circumstances,” Luciana says, raising an eyebrow and looking at Scarlett. “I only really flew out here because your boyfriend is worried sick about you. He called me saying you’d disappeared and begged me to send help.”
“Zack? Dammit.”
“He sounded like he was crying. He was so worried.”
“Yeah, that’s my bad. I should have let him know I was safe.”
“And I probably shouldn’t let him know that I found you naked in your brother’s fancy mobile home, while your brother was also in a precarious state of undress?”
“For god’s sake, Luciana. Cole is my foster brother.”
“Clearly,” she says, studying my build from head to toe. She walks around me appraisingly, and I can feel her eyes burning into my glutes. “Mmm, and thank god for that.”
I clear my throat, feeling like a piece of meat. “We’re also married, and she’s broken up with Zack.”
“Does Zack know that?”
“Yes,” Scarlett says. She hesitates. “He’s just not totally willing to accept it.”
Luciana nods. “Okay, look, guys. I need your help. There’s some shit going on in L.A. that’s getting really out of hand, and we gotta go check it out. There were explosions at two of Cole’s worksites, and while we suspect it’s probably just whoever shot Cole trying to draw Sophie out, some of my superiors want me to investigate whether it’s possible that we’ve stumbled onto some kind of terrorist activity. Especially since Cole ran an international business and has connections to the Middle East, and recent problems in Karachi.”
“Whoa,” Scarlett says softly. “That’s… escalating quickly.”
“You want us to physically go somewhere?” I ask the woman, afraid to have our little bubble popped before we’ve even gotten a chance to get comfortable here. We haven’t even had the time to binge watch a single season of Breaking Bad! “I can’t really travel right now. I don’t have any identification—because I’m dead.”
Luciana sighs loudly and dramatically. “You do realize that you’re talking to two CIA agents, right? Do you think my name is really Lucy Lopez?” She rolls her eyes. “God, men are so whiny. I got shot, wah, wah, don’t point guns at me, it’s scary. I’m dead now, I can’t get on an airplane, I don’t have a driver’s license in the ten million dollar love-shack I designed for the military and NASA, but really only use to bang girls like it’s a Volkswagen Bus from the ’70s. I’m such a poor boy, I have a papercut on my face, please pity me, Mommy, kiss it better.”
I stare at her, blinking.
She snarls at me. “Get over yourself. Grow up. Shit happens! Now, I’d appreciate if you invited me inside your war machine and made me some tea.”
Walking into the NovaTank without waiting for her invitation, she peeks inside curiously. “Whoa, this thing is amazing! I need to get me one of these someday. How does one pathetic businessman have cooler toys than the CIA?”
Scarlett is biting her lip to conceal her amusement at her boss’s rant, while my eyebrows are lifted extremely high. No one has dared to speak to me this way in a long time.
“Hey, Cole,” she says softly. “I think if I were actually your sister, that’s how I’d talk to you.”
“Scar—what makes you think that isn’t how you talk to me?”
“Do I?” she answers with a grin. “I guess it’s been a while and you haven’t really annoyed me yet.”
Luciana pops her head out of the NovaTank with excitement. “Holy shit, I just saw your shower! Damn, boy, are you an architect, or the fucking reincarnation of Michelangelo?”
Suddenly, I don’t dislike this woman as much as I originally thought I did. She’s growing on me.
“Please tell me you guys had sex in that shower,” Luciana demands. “This house is like a magic castle on wheels! Can I see the built-in guns, please? Sophie, you’ve got a good one—he’s a keeper. Men are allowed to be whiny little bitches if they are also magnificent artists. You can’t have it all!”
“Thanks, I think?” Scarlett says, making a face.
Sighing, I move into the Nova, heading for the ultra-compact kitchen. “I’d better make the woman her tea.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“So, that’s the gist of what’s been happening in L.A.,” Luciana says as she sips her tea at a table I didn’t know was there. “Do either of you know who might be behind this?”
I glance at Cole, knowing that we are both thinking about Benjamin. Then there is also Brittany. But would she really set off explosives at Cole’s buildings? I am sure Luciana already knows about these suspects, if she’s been in touch with Rodriguez at all…
“We have some ideas,” I tell Luciana. “But I need more information, especially about Brittany Brown, and what she’s been up to all these years. I need to talk to the detective about Annabelle’s crime scene. I need a computer. I need the Internet, and I can find us answers.”
“What about that whole terrorism angle?” Luciana asks. “Cole, is that bullshit, or do you have enemies abroad?”
“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I have enemies everywhere, I suppose. I would have to talk to Miranda and Levi.”
“Okay,” Luciana says. “Then we’ll do that. This tea is great! Hey, did you guys
like my one-liner about the Kardashians? I thought of it on the helicopter ride over here.”
“It was okay,” Cole says as refills the coffee cup that I have just drained. Earlier, he flipped the bed up into the wall to reveal pop-up chairs that were folded into the floor below the bed, and a table that drops down from the bottom of the bed. The NovaTank is rather small, but the amazing design of the space is so versatile that it feels perfectly cozy, and it isn’t terribly embarrassing to entertain here. Cole has thought of almost everything.
And we’ve put more clothes on.
“I think I was more scared of the gun than the mention of the Kardashians,” Cole admits. “But I still have fresh bullet holes in my body that haven’t finished healing. I might be a biased sample. What did you think, Scar?”
“Hmmm,” I say as I deeply inhale the scent of my fresh coffee. “I was worried for a second when I saw there was a person outside, but once I heard Lucy’s voice I felt better. I had a good comeback about how a Kardashian would probably still miss from point-blank range because she’d pause to take a photo of herself with the gun—but then you two started fighting. Cole, I was worried you were going to break her arm.”
He nods sheepishly. “It’s not a great time for practical jokes. Sorry if I’m a little tightly wound.”
“It’s okay,” Luciana says, patting his shoulder—his injured shoulder—and making him wince. “We’ve all been there, bud. The first time you get shot is the worst. After that, it gets easier.”
“This isn’t the first time I’ve been shot,” Cole says. “But I was also in the hospital receiving treatment for being poisoned when I got shot, so it was all a little much to handle.”
