by Angel Lawson
“Wait, so you’re saying if they shoot someone, it’s my fault?”
“You berated and made a fool of him in front of a gym full of people. I can’t have you undermining our efforts. The mayor won’t like it, either.”
“So I just let him say disgusting things to me? Come in my gym and humiliate me?”
He shakes his head. “No, and none of those things are right either. I’m talking to him too. Just be careful, okay? He doesn’t know that it’s Astrid under that suit out there. We don’t need anyone on the edge more than they already are.”
Astrid exhales, annoyed with the entire situation. She doesn’t like Rowe and she isn’t a fan of this task force, but she knows both are out of her control. She grabs a fresh target and hangs it on the board, pressing the button to put it into place at the end of the range. While Jensen watches, she reloads the gun and adjusts her ear protectors. Then she trains the weapon on the target and fires.
If the government is sending armed men after her, then maybe she needs to add something new to her arsenal.
*
With the scent of gunpowder on her gloves, Astrid leaves the Agency’s office and heads to Draco’s. Casper sent her a message while she was at the range. If he’s reaching out to her, she’s not going to waste an opportunity.
The staff allows her on the property—Draco has given her access—and she goes straight to his cottage. Using her key, she unlocks the door and walks past the mountains of books to the office.
She flips on the computer and finds him at his desk, making intense faces at the screen. “Die, you fucking scum,” he mutters, and she rolls her eyes, assuming it’s a video game. What the hell is going on with these guys and their games?
When he doesn’t notice her presence, she takes a minute to watch him.
She’s seen his avatar for so long that it still surprises her that he’s a real person. If she met him on the street she’d think he was cute maybe. A little nerdy for her taste—jocks have always been her thing. Although Owen dashes that theory a little. Under her guidance, he’s turned into an athlete and it makes her curious if Casper has these enhanced skills as well. She’d love to put him through her training program to see how he’d do.
He’s not out of shape. Draco said he had a workout room attached to the bunker and she notices lithe arms under his baggy t-shirt. His face is thin but not gaunt. She finds his cheekbones fascinating; high and sharp. His eyes are dark, like his hair, and his features are classically Japanese.
Astrid bumps into the desk on the way to the chair and one of the books in a tall stack slips. She tries to catch it and doesn’t. It clatters loudly to the floor.
“What the…” he says, shifting his eyes off the game. They narrow when they see her.
“Hey Cas,” she says with a little wave.
“I’m out, guys. Work calls.” He fusses with his console and turns his attention to her. His voice comes out tinny and altered. He’s not ready to reveal his stutter to her. “So I’m the stalker, eh?”
“I wasn’t stalking you.”
“Uh, huh. Good thing I wasn’t doing anything weird.”
“Is that something I should be concerned about?” She’s seriously asking. Living with two men has been, uh, eye opening to say the least.
“It’s always good to knock,” he says with a wink. At least he’s in a good mood. Way better than the last time she’d been here. Maybe he’s changed his mind about meeting face to face. “So look, I got some intel about some terrorist activities focused on Crescent City.”
She frowns. “What kind of terrorists?”
“I’m not sure, exactly. I’m going to keep my eyes and ears open for anything suspicious. It could just be chatter because the stuff with Demetria put the city on people’s radars. You know how crazy bastards like to copy-cat. They may just want to see if your team will show up or if the task force is really up to the job. Who knows with these lunatics? But if there’s truth to it, we need to stay on top of it.”
“Good idea. Do you think Jensen knows? Because if he does, he didn’t tell me.”
“Depends on how good his data collection is.” He smiles at her. “I doubt it’s as good as I am.”
She leans back in her seat and watches him again for a minute. She likes this calmer, happier Casper. “So why did you call me up here?”
“Security. This is a direct feed to Draco’s office. Anything offsite could possibly be compromised. If these threats are real, I don’t want them to know we know.”
“Makes sense.” She waits a beat. “I thought maybe you’d reconsidered meeting. You know, face-to-face.”
The reaction from Casper is instantaneous. Tense jaw, neck, and shoulders. She wants to take it back but she doesn’t because they have to get past this. “I just need a little bit, dude. Can you give me that?”
He inhales and then exhales slowly. Astrid is too far away to read his echo, but even with the separation she senses his anxiety. If she could, she’d give him a hat with ears and let him wear it. “Fine. Meet me at the door.”
“How do I get there?”
“Go out the back door of the cottage. Follow the path.”
She breaks into a wide smile. “Thank you.”
He grunts in reply.
Not giving him a chance to back out, she’s out of the house and down the back steps in a heartbeat. The path is easily marked, pavers leading away from the house and into the wooded area of the hills. The stone bunker is covered in crawling ivy. She wouldn’t have noticed it if she wasn’t looking, but there in the middle is the outline of a door.
She sends him a text.
I’m here.
I know
Will you open the door?
This seems like a bad idea
Nah. It’s a good one.
He doesn’t reply but she hears movement behind the door, then the scrape of metal and whine of hinges as it swings open. Astrid stands on a square paver with her hands shoved in her hoodie and waits.
Then she sees his face.
Eyes squint against the bright daylight. She smiles at his heartbeat, hammering so hard in his chest that it sounds like it may tear through. She catches his scent; soapy shampoo and detergent. Emotion wells in her because he’s like her, one of them, and it’s like finding a lost piece of her soul.
His dark brown eyes widen when he sees her and his fear slams into her even from this distance. He takes her in from head to toe. She opens her mouth to say something and a deep, odd sound comes from his throat.
“Hey,” she says, trying to play it cool. But Casper isn’t cool. He’s a hot mess and without another word or sound, he slams the door. She runs forward and slams her hands against the metal. “Casper!”
There’s no reaction but through her palms she feels the tiniest vibration of echoing through the metal. He must be leaning against it. Astrid presses her hands flat and takes what she can get…a little piece of his heart.
*
After a while she feels nothing but silence though the door. She turns and walks back down the path until she reaches the small garden she’d raced through earlier. The house has a nice-sized back porch but the garden is nicer, including a small stone patio and fire pit in the center. Comfortable chairs surround the pit, but taking a look inside, she gets the feeling it’s never been used. Who would Draco bring out here? Does he have other friends?
Astrid enters through the back door that leads to a hallway. To her left is a nice sitting area. Her right, the door leading to a bedroom. Dark wood furniture catches her eye, along with deep gray bedding. She inhales and draws in the scent of sugar and vanilla. Draco’s room? Curiosity gets the best of her.
The floors are hardwood like the rest of the house but a soft white rug fills the space under the bed. A tower of books is stacked on the bedside table, letting her know which side he favors. The left—or closet to the door.
Forever the protector. There’s a second fireplace in the room along with another comforta
ble leather chair. A tall wardrobe backs against the wall along with another shelf of books. Maybe Casper isn’t the biggest or only nerd in the group. She walks over to the bed and runs her hand over the soft linen pillow and picks up the book on the top.
“What are you doing?”
She spins, holding the book in front of her, but she nearly drops it at the sight of him.
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
Nearly naked Draco wrapped only in a towel, slung low across his hips. His hair is wet. Water drips down his shoulders, chest, and stomach. She swallows, trying to make herself look away from the trail of hair leading downward, but is failing miserably.
“Astrid?”
“Right.” She shakes herself out of it. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he replies, with a tense nod. His fingers hold onto the towel with an iron grip. It does nothing but accentuate the taut muscles in his arm. “What are you doing in here?”
A drop of water clings to his nipple. She clenches the book like a protective shield, because no woman is immune to this kind of body. “I uh…I was out back. With Casper.”
His expression softens. “You talked to him? He let you in the bunker?”
“No, not really.” She tries to regain her senses and turns to place the book back on the stack. “He agreed to a face-to-face. And to be fair, that happened. Right before he panicked and slammed the door in my face.”
“Ouch.”
“Progress, right?” It’s a stretch but also true. “He didn’t cuss me out once.”
His eyebrow raises. “That is progress.”
“Yeah, well, I apologize for invading your personal space. I didn’t know you were home.”
“So right, why are you in here?”
“Snooping, duh.” There’s no reason to lie. Draco doesn’t do lies well anyway. Which is why no matter how much he fights it, the attraction he has to her rolls off him in waves. She eyes him again, growing more comfortable with being in the presence of his body. “I thought you had a meeting.”
“Signing the insurance papers didn’t take long.” He wrinkles his nose. “Then I had to come home and wash the lawyer stink off.”
She laughs. “So maybe us meeting up like this is…fate.”
His gray eyes darken and hold hers. “I don’t believe in fate, Astrid.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Then what do you believe in, Mr. Perfect?”
He swallows. “I believe you’re trouble, Ms. Petta. The kind of trouble I can’t have in my life. Not right now.”
She’s moved a little closer to him. Or, despite his protests, he’s moved closer to her. Like magnets.
“Trouble?”
He groans and runs his hand through his damp hair. “You’re beautiful, sexy and strong. You intimidate the hell out of me but I like this team thing we’ve got going on. I like working with you—with Quinn and Owen. Your mentors had a good vision and after everything with Demetria, I want to help.” She feels the immense heat from his gaze. “I won’t mess that up because I find you attractive.”
She opens her mouth to speak, to tell him that there is more. She wants to tell him about the bond she and the others share and how it makes them stronger—more attune to one another and their cause, but his jaw tightens and she’s fully aware that he already knows.
“Draco—”
He shakes his head and she’s surprised when he reaches for her, tilting her chin so he can brush his lips over hers. Fire ignites and spreads through her limbs but he pulls away as quickly as he started. His chest heaves with self-control and one fist balls into the towel around at his hip.
“There is one thing you need to know about me, Astrid.”
“What?” Her knees are a little wobbly.
“I’m willing to be part of a team, but when it comes to women? I don’t share.”
His words drop like a truth-bomb, one Astrid’s not ready for. It’s good he doesn’t wait for a reply before he turns and walks back into the bathroom and closes the door, because she’s speechless.
Twice today, men on her team have walked away from her and shut her out. Twice she’s felt their hearts race at their decisions, knowing they were drawing a line in the sand.
Chapter Seventeen
Quinn
The tip from Luby came in after ten. Nothing major, just a text that said: The Swamp Needs Eyes Tonight.
He didn’t reply to Astrid’s follow-up texts and Owen had crashed for the night, beat from his day of training. She held the phone for a second and said, “Wanna hit the streets?”
It took five minutes for them to change and slip out the door on the rooftop. Now they’re walking down a side street in the Swamp doing what Luby asked. Keeping their eyes open.
Astrid walks beside him, her shoulders tense since she got home. It took him a while to get it out of her. The firing range with Jensen. The almost-encounter with Casper. And then something about, “Mr. Fucking Perfect and His Fucking Standards.”
He didn’t touch that one.
“I’m sure they’ll both come around,” he says, following her down a dark, gravel alley. The area used to be industrial but now most of the buildings are abandoned. It’s only a matter of time before the Harbor Line spreads this direction. “You think there’s any validity to the terrorist rumors?”
Astrid’s hair blows in the wind and she pushes it off her face. “I don’t know. It could be people just trying to stir the pot in Crescent City due to all of our recent bad press, or someone who doesn’t like what’s going on here.”
“Or it could be someone who does know what is going on here. People that know about us.”
She stops and faces him, her eyebrows furrowed. “Did you just toss out a conspiracy theory? I thought you were raised on facts and science.”
“I was,” he admits. “But the facts say someone blew up our group home, killed our mentors, and there are more survivors than we realized. We certainly didn’t see Blaze coming. The chaos in the city and the public behavior of the task force could provide whoever has been looking to take us out all these years with an opportunity.”
“Wow. That is a lot of conjecture.”
He shrugs. Quinn doesn’t like unanswered questions or puzzles missing pieces. The terrorist threat seems credible to him. “We just need to be careful.”
Loud voices cut their conversation and Astrid holds up her hand. They wait a beat, figuring out which direction its coming from. He activates his mask, pulling up the infrared and heat tracking. Astrid does the same and they creep toward the voices, climbing to the top of a crumbling stone fence. When they push the overgrowth aside, they’re looking over a large, abandoned parking lot of a former factory.
The scene below is chilling.
Large metal lights shine down on a group made up of residents of the Swamp. All ages are present, including a few faces familiar to Quinn. Astrid makes a sound in her throat. She probably knows more people down there than he does.
“What is this?” she asks.
People mill about, including children. It seems a little late for a community meeting but something about this seems off. Quinn’s eyes shift to the front of the lot, toward the men and women in familiar black uniforms.
“I guess the Task Force told them to.” He’s about to say something further when the squeal of a bullhorn echoes off the pavement. Astrid covers her ears, wincing at the harsh noise. Quinn reaches for her, touching her shoulder until it stops.
A man stands at the front holding the bullhorn and he speaks. His voice is instantly recognizable. Rowe. “Thank you for coming out tonight. Taking back the streets of the Swamp is important to you and to us. The city doesn’t like what is happening down here. The fires, the break-ins, and business men and women using your community for their personal gain.”
This sparks a round of cheers and clapping. Rowe nods, feeling the energy.
“We do not want this to be about violence. In fact, it’s the other directio
n. The incident at the parade was despicable and we hope to never see something like that again. So no, we do not want anymore bloodshed, what we need from you is your eyes and ears so we can stop the actual criminals. The vigilantes.”
The reaction to that is more mixed. One woman steps up and Astrid reaches for Quinn’s hand when she recognizes her. The woman she saved from the fire.
“These people saved me and my baby. They protect us.”
“No ma’am,” Rowe replies. “They’re breaking the law. We have police and fire departments to help you.”
“They don’t come down here! Those people, the vigilantes, as you call them, they’re here first.”
Pride swells in Quinn’s chest and Astrid’s hand tightens in his. That’s all they want, is to help people.
“I saw them on the float. They were part of that craziness!”
“My son got a broken leg that night!”
The energy shifts back and forth. Obviously, the community is mixed. Rowe calls for everyone to calm down and their voices settle.
“I know things haven’t been great down here. It’s why we want to help. We’re increasing patrols in this area and building community watch groups.”
The teenagers grumble about that. They’re not interested in being watched.
“But we need your help. We have to take the vigilantes off the street. They’re untrained and dangerous.”
Astrid scoffs at the word ‘untrained.’
“We’ve set up a tip line, and any agent you see on the street is happy to take your information. All arrests of the vigilantes will result in a possible reward.”
That gets everyone’s attention.
Astrid stands and pulls Quinn with her. “Come on. I’m done with this bullshit.”
He looks back down, thinking they should listen, but she’s already vanished in the overgrowth. The Task Force is declaring war; he doesn’t need to know much more than that.
He follows Astrid down the hill and back into the streets. She doesn’t slow once he catches up to her, but he lets her lead. She seems to know where she’s going and as soon as he spots the blue metal ladder, he realizes where they are.
