by Natalie Dean
The last car still trailing them swerved to avoid hitting the biker, overcorrected, and ditched itself between some pines. That was the last of them, for now.
“You ain’t nuthin’ but a hound dog,” Elvis said, and then the song cut off. The respite was tragically brief, though, as another sound came blaring on equally loudly afterwards. The kid tried to turn it off with shaking hands to no avail.
“Hey, you’re bleeding,” said The Celtic, leaning up between Adrianna and the kid to see better.
“Yeah, one of them shot me. I’ll be fine.” She winced, but she hid it. “Went straight through.” She caught sight of his face, which was bruised up. The biker guy hadn’t gone quietly off into the night. “Oh jeez.”
“It looks worse than it feels,” he assured. She didn’t doubt it. He had years of experience getting his face bashed up.
She pressed her forearm against her inner thigh. It was barely bleeding. Luckily, the guy hadn’t been too good of a shot. She’d been scared he might have gotten her badly.
She looked back towards the door. The truck wasn’t going to like it, but it would make it. Luckily, she was a good enough driver to make it the next ten or so miles to town. She had no doubt that they would make it. She’d known it was too easy for them to bust through the fake barricade, but she doubted that they had any more men up their sleeves… yet. Sure, The Owl would probably round up some more, but they would be relatively safe in the city.
“You okay?” she asked the kid. Miraculously, he hadn’t been injured whatsoever. She would’ve been crushed with guilt if something had happened to him.
He nodded silently, eyes wide.
“We’ll get you in to the police when we get into the city,” she told him. “They’ll take care of you.”
“W-what… what are you two g-gonna do?” he stuttered. “You taking him in?”
Sometimes it amazed her to see how ordinary people reacted to her everyday life. Sure, it wasn’t every day that she got into an outrageously dangerous car chase, but it wasn’t rare either.
But he’d asked a question, one that she didn’t want to answer because she didn’t know yet. She couldn’t turn The Celtic over. If anything, the last day or so had proved to her that he wasn’t safe with the general public. She had no choice but to keep him off the grid.
“We’re going to a safe house,” she finally said.
The Celtic’s eyes widened in surprise, but he didn’t speak. Instead, he sat back in the seat as they drove on into the city.
Chapter 10
Descending into the city was a bit of a culture shock for Adrianna. She went from way out in the middle of nowhere with no electricity or common conveniences whatsoever to the city, where everything that anyone could possibly want happened daily.
At first, it was just a couple houses, their owners woefully unaware of the killers lurking in the forest mere miles away. Then there was a convenience store, and then a little while later, a bar. Soon, buildings were springing out of the ground left and right until nearly all the precious greenery had been replaced with buildings.
As soon as she could, they ditched the truck. They parked it off the road somewhere on the outskirts of the city.
“We can’t leave my truck,” protested the kid, who had admittedly pulled the unlucky straw that night. He’d probably been headed to a party somewhere based on his appearance and breath (he smelled drunk) and he’d had the awful luck of coming across The Celtic and Adrianna. “It’s very expensive.”
“You can come back for it,” Adrianna said, handing him the keys. “But we can’t take it with us.”
“Why not?” he protested. “Someone’s gonna steal it!”
“It’s too bad if they do,” Adrianna said, “But those guys that are chasing us are looking for it.”
“….Oh.”
She winked. “There ya go. Don’t worry. I’ll get the agency to pay for repairs since you basically saved our lives. It’ll all be back to new once we get this all wrapped up.”
“How long is that gonna be?”
She hesitated. She actually had no idea how long it would take to bring down The Owl. He was obviously clever. He had avoided detection for years. Adrianna was fairly high up in the agency. There weren’t long lists of things she didn’t know, but she had never even heard of The Owl. Moreover, she wasn’t confident that Stone would believe her. More than likely he’d take a month or two to figure out whether he should take her seriously.
“I’ll look into it,” he’d grumble when she would tell him, but she knew better. He never looked into it. She had no idea how he’d kept his position after all those years. Sure, he would eventually, but it would take him entirely too long to discover that there really was a murderous cult of thugs working for a mysterious top dog, apparently killing off professional fighters systematically.
So they left the truck and continued on foot for a little while. Finally, after about ten minutes of walking, they were in the city. It felt good to see dozens of people around. Adrianna had never loved the city. In fact, she’d been born and raised a country girl. She’d gone to public school and had internet at her house and all that… but she wasn’t a creature of the city. It was a strange and unsettling experience for her to actually be thankful for everyone bustling around her. If anyone caught them, they would be pretty hesitant to open fire in such a crowded place. At least, that’s what Adrianna was hoping.
They split ways after getting into the city. The Celtic and Adrianna stood from afar, watching the boy disappear into the police building.
“Think he’s going to be okay?” The Celtic asked.
Adrianna sighed and was reminded about her rib. The adrenaline of the last day had pumped through her enough so that she hardly had noticed. Now that she was starting to cool down, she started to feel it again. Luckily such an injury didn’t take too long to heal. A couple more days and she wouldn’t feel it at all.
She was amazed they were still alive. Sure, in action movies all the heroes live, but in real life, it didn’t turn out that way. Humans weren’t all that tough. Take a bullet to the chest? You were probably going to die. Luckily, though, all the wounds they had endured were painful but not life-threatening.
“Hello?” The Celtic said, waving a hand a foot or two in front of her. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
She led him to the safe house. She had spare everything there: clothes, phone, food, antibiotics, you name it. More importantly, it was her safe house, not the FBI’s. If the Owl had a man on the inside, they wouldn’t know about it.
But her biggest worry wasn’t really about The Owl. It was about the FBI. If Stone figured out that she had apprehended The Celtic and hadn’t turned him in to a ticker tape parade yet, he would not hesitate to send other agents after her. She had to be stealthy. Luckily, she knew how the FBI operated, so she felt relatively confident of her ability to fly under the radar.
“Where are we going?” The Celtic finally asked after a good time of walking. “I thought once we got into the city, we wouldn’t have to deal with any more freakin’ walking.”
“My safe house,” she said.
He paused before speaking. “Why didn't you take me into the police station? We were right there.”
“You’re right. The Owl would kill you, and I’m not interested in having that on my conscience.” She sounded professional, but maybe she was hoping that The Celtic had a plan to get out of this mess somehow. That he would manage to overpower her and escape, never to be caught by the long arm of the law. Or that he could prove his innocence. She had no doubt that he was innocent. The more she was around his aura, the more confident she was that she could trust his word. In court, though, “a hunch” or a “gut feeling” didn’t tend to fly too high.
No, she couldn’t take him into the officials. They had to clear his name.
She couldn’t believe she was even entertaining the idea. People had a name for what she was doin
g: treason. A nasty word with a nasty punishment. If she didn’t have her powers, if she wasn’t so confident that he was innocent, and if she wasn't having these feelings of attraction toward him, she would never have considered the idea of treason. She’d get to that spare phone in her apartment and dial the agency, identify herself, and turn him in.
But she was starting to like The Celtic. She was starting to enjoy his company. The way he grinned like a big idiot. How he was strong but gentle. How he complained about stepping in some gum on the pavement worse than he did about getting shot.
Maybe in another time they wouldn’t have been on the opposite side of the law. In that wonderful, unrealistic world… maybe Adrianna wouldn’t be averse to being more than just friends, and she had a sneaking suspicion he felt the same way.
Oddly, though, neither one said anything the entire trip. Her house, luckily, was a short walk away. It was probably the only thing that had gone right for her the entire time. She didn’t have to fight for it. She didn’t have to put her life on the line. It just… was. It felt nice.
Her safe house in Calidad was her favorite. She had three or four of them all across the world, but her favorite was right there in Calidad. It was a quaint, little house; looking at it, nobody would suspect anyone but a nice, young family lived there. It was painted a crisp but not overpowering red with an affordable roof and quality windows. Finally, to top it off, it had an accent wall of brick.
“Oh,” The Celtic said as they arrived. “That’s nice.”
“Built it myself,” she said proudly. It wasn’t something she got to say too often. Nobody in the world knew about that safe house except for her and The Celtic, and maybe if someone was determined enough at the city. “Well, not all of it, but the pretty parts.”
“Impressive,” he said, nodding his head in respect.
They walked up the stone pathway, past a hippie garden gnome with his two fingers giving a peace sign. The Celtic looked at it for a second but didn’t say anything.
They came to the door, which had an extremely specific lock on it. If anyone screwed it up, it would immediately send an alarm to the police. She’d though it was a good idea at the time—ward off any thugs trying to get in. She hadn’t, however, considered the possibility that she herself would type it in wrong. Every time she entered it (which wasn’t often), she was thinking she hoped she didn't accidentally set off the alarm, alerting the cops.
She typed in the code and waited for one heart-pounding moment. Luckily, the numbers flashed green. She was in. The cops weren’t coming, which would have been a tragic and rather humiliating end to their adventure. Hiding away from the law with a wanted fugitive based on a gut feeling didn’t work too well when you called the cops to your door.
The door swung open, letting in a waft of chilly air. The benefits of living in a chilly part of the world was pretty near endless to her—nice temperatures, you weren’t sweating all the time, snow was cool, all that stuff. But there were a few flaws, namely that buildings got cold without a heater.
Inside was where the real fun started. Adrianna had a bit of a… funky fashion sense. She didn’t play by normal rules in life or in interior decorating. Sure, she followed some—accent walls, that kind of stuff—but past that, she really let loose with a couple cool pieces. Probably her favorite part of her house was a gigantic hippo couch that was carved to look like a fat, black hippo but was hard on one side and plush on the other.
“Oh my,” The Celtic said, touching the hippo chair gently, like he wasn’t sure if it would attack. “This is interesting.”
“Yup,” she said as she checked outside. Everyone walking around out there looked normal. Unless the killers were working with elderly ladies and young couples pushing baby carriages, they hadn’t tracked them. Presumably, they were safe.
She drew the blinds, darkening the room. After taking one last look outside, she turned back into the room to come face to face with The Celtic, who was holding a realistic fake rose an inch away from her face.
She jumped back automatically. “What are you doing?”
“No?” he was grinning. Idiotic joker. A loveable one, though. “I just figured that the rose fit the mood of the room. We’re not being romantic?” he acted jokingly bashful and put the rose back into the vase. “Oh. Never mind.” He failed to put the rose in properly the first time, so he pulled it out and tried again. That time, he was successful. “Why do you even have a fake rose in here?”
“My grandma gave them to me,” she replied, wondering why she had been hoping he was serious with the rose. “C’mere. I got something for you.”
“Oh, really? Is it a birthday present? You know, it was my birthday last week.”
“It was? Really?”
“Yup.”
“Happy birthday, then!”
He gave her that big, happy smile of his. “Thanks, Adrianna.”
Suddenly, she realized that he had called her by her first name. He’d never done that before. He’d always just called her Agent Whetmore if he tried to get her attention. Despite herself, she felt a stirring in her heart. She liked to hear that.
“Well, consider this your birthday present,” she said as they walked into the bathroom. The bathroom, as backwards as it sounded, was one of her favorite rooms. She hadn’t spared any expense in there. She was a shower person, so she’d installed a nice, walk-in shower with modern, black tile and a rainforest faucet so it felt like walking into rainfall. She hadn’t always been a shower person. She’d used to abhor showers, but she was broken of that habit in the agency. One of her fellow agents had talked to her randomly about it once, and his statement of why he didn’t bathe was, “Why bathe? All you do is sit in dirt.”
She hadn’t had an answer.
So she started showering. The agency only provided showers anyway, so it became habit. Then, years after joining the agency, she was wedded to showers only.
But the useful part of the bathroom wasn’t just the shower. It was also where she kept her bandages for patching herself up. It was the first time that she’d been forced to use that safe house, so the bandages were still in their original packing.
“Take your shirt off,” she said as she ripped open a package.
He whistled suggestively.
“Shut up,” she said sweetly without looking at him. She was vaguely aware of him pulling his shirt off, so she subtly stole a couple glances. She didn’t want him to catch her, so she wasn’t able to look for very long, but what she saw, she liked. A lot. In the past, she’d been able to see little glances of his musculature under his shirt and of course while researching him, she’d seen him shirtless.
It was different in person.
But then his shirt was off, and she concentrated back on the package before he noticed she was staring.
She got the feeling that he knew she’d looked, but he didn’t say anything, which she appreciated. She felt like a child, but she had no idea what to say if he started questioning her. She hadn’t had too much practice flirting. She’d been gawky in high school, but once she’d grown beautiful in the agency, she’d been focused on her work. She didn’t have time for romance. Now, in her thirties, she was wondering if she’d made a mistake. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she felt herself transported back to high school, wanting the cute, athletic boy to talk to her.
Except she was an agent of the FBI and the cute, athletic boy was a man accused of murder. She felt ridiculously much like she belonged in a silly murder show. None of it seemed real. She could’ve sworn that the whole thing was an idea dreamt up by some high schooler, not real, hard, dangerous life.
She bandaged him mindlessly, letting her hands do the work. She zoned out for a second, thinking.
“Ow!” The Celtic yelped.
She pulled back. “I’m sorry! Did I hurt you?”
“No,” he said. “Got you again.”
“You’re mean,” she accused.
“Guilty as charged,”
he said, raising his arms so she could better get around his chest. “You okay? You look kinda… sad, maybe?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
He nodded. He was good at reading emotions. Almost too good. But then again, with someone like Adrianna who tended to be an emotional whirlwind of various passions at all times, that was probably good.
“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.”
