“We should walk while I explain.”
I raise an eyebrow at him, crossing my arms stubbornly across my chest. I will not let him dodge this conversation again.
“I’m not avoiding again, I promise. We do need to get to Dominic soon, though. In case there’s a kitsune around.” He reaches out and takes my hand in his own, weaving our fingers together, and gently tugs me in the direction of the airport. “Please.”
I walk next to him. To my surprise, he doesn’t let go of my hand after I’ve given in. Also, to my annoyance, he doesn’t say anything for a long while.
“So, about keeping us from being torn apart…” I prompt.
“I started falling for you the day we met.” He stares straight ahead. There’s not a shred of doubt in the statement. It’s a fact he’s sharing with me.
A gasp escapes my lips and I nearly trip over my own feet. Sani steadies me and patiently waits for it to sink in. “You never…”
“I know,” he says. “I’m cautious, I guess. Everyone I’ve ever loved has been ripped away from me. I wanted to make sure it was real before I put myself out there.”
He pauses for several seconds. I wait. What else can I do?
He runs a hand slowly over his hair, matching the motion with a deep breath. “A year after our assignment started, I decided it was time to make a move. So I asked your mother’s permission.”
My jaw drops as I look at him. “You asked my mother?”
“Old-fashioned?” he asks, a smirk playing at the corners of his full lips.
I laugh. “Totally.”
“Not where I come from.” He gets the sad faraway look that accompanies any mention of Uganda.
I squeeze his hand, bringing him back to the present. “So what’d she say?”
He shakes his head. “I get why,” he says. “I know where she was coming from, especially considering the situation with your father.”
“Sani.” There’s a threat in my tone. “What did she say?”
“She said I would get over it.” This isn’t even the beginning of the story, I can tell. My mother would never leave it at just that.
“And?”
He sighs, resigning himself to telling me the whole story. “And, in the meantime, I was not to engage in any romantic activity with you.” His voice is stiff and detached, and I can hear my mother in his words.
“Why didn’t you just say ‘screw you’ and do it anyway? I would have.”
He smiles, knowing it’s the truth. “She said if I did, she would have me transferred to the D.I.C. satellite office in Russia. I would never see you again.”
“She was kidding,” I say. “Wasn’t she?”
He shakes his head and glances sideways at me, hesitant. Whatever he sees in my expression gives him the courage to continue. “A year ago, I went to her again. I told her that I’d really like her approval, but I didn’t need it because I knew you had feelings for me, too. We work together every day, and it was killing me, piece by piece. Every time our hands brushed, I wanted to hold your hand. Every time a guy at school checked you out, I wanted to shove him in a locker. I could barely stand it every time you looked at me, begging me to make a move, knowing I couldn’t do it.”
My breath catches in my throat at his confessions. Every word sends my hearts crashing wildly against my ribcage. I swallow against the lump in my throat, but it comes right back.
“All this time…” I start to say.
Sani stops walking and turns to stand in front of me, taking my other hand in his. Several seconds pass before his eyes stop searching for somewhere else to look, and his gaze settles uncertainly on mine. “I told her that I loved you, and I wasn’t going to get over it.”
Wait, had I passed out when we landed and now was hallucinating? Or did Sani really just say that he loved me? I squeeze his hands. They feel real enough. Though to be honest, I don’t know what hallucinated hands would feel like.
“Kitty?” His voice is as soft and sweet as cotton candy. The uncertainty on his face convinces me this is really happening. “You still with me?”
“Yeah, um.” I look into his cool green eyes to steady myself. We’ve wasted so much time. It’s like we were playing chicken and we both swerved when we should’ve crashed into each other. How much energy had we wasted, trying to keep our true feelings buried under others when we were both dragons? “What did she say to that?”
He shrugged. “She didn’t say anything, just dismissed me. But the next day, I saw Director Bean in the hall and he said that he was really going to miss me, especially how polite and not troublesome I was—I think that was a dig at you—when I left in three days for Russia.”
“She transferred you? But you didn’t go anywhere.” Rage, familiar and hot, slides through my veins. My own mother. How dare she!
“I went back to her on my hands and knees and begged her to undo it,” he says. He looks away for a second and coughs gently. I know that look well; if he were human, his eyes would be sparkling with tears.
“How’d you convince her?” I ask. “When she’s made her mind up about something, there’s no going back.”
“I gave my word I’d keep my hands off of you and promised to continue to keep you out of trouble. I said if she knew any other operative who could—” He has the decency to look apologetic here “—temper your, uh…impulsiveness as well as I could, I’d gladly take the job in Russia. She saw my reasoning and trusted me to keep my promise. I think she knew you were better off with me as your partner.”
Mouth slightly parted, I stare at him for a few seconds. This is all too much. My mind races with a thousand different thoughts. Then I stomp forward at a quick jog.
Sani quickly catches up with me. “Where are you going?”
“First I’m going to rescue Jacob. Then I’m going to rescue my mother,” I say. “So I can kill her.”
Sani stops. “Kitty, wait.” He grabs my arm and spins me around. “Please.”
It’s the pleading that makes me stop and stare up into his beautiful, hopeful eyes.
“What?”
His voice is so fragile, like he’s simultaneously afraid and hoping I’ll break him. “Can I kiss you now?”
A grin explodes onto my face. I jump up, wrapping my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist. Yeah, a little hasty, but we’ve both been waiting for this moment for three excruciating years. I think we’ve moved slowly enough. He answers my grin with one just as wide.
“I want to try this again, in case you didn’t catch it the first time,” he says and pauses to stare deep into my eyes, placing a hand on either side of my face. “I love you. I have for years.”
My hearts burst into fireworks; I don’t know any other way to describe this feeling. “I love you!”
He leans his head forward and I meet him halfway, our lips touching tentatively at first. Then he presses his full lips against mine and opens his mouth just a little, like a question waiting for an answer.
Oh man, do I have an answer for him.
I’m filled with this desperate feeling, like I can’t get close enough to him. I press my lips harder against his. Every touch, every movement sends a thrill through my stomach.
His arms circle my waist, gentle at first, but then he presses his hands against my back and pulls me against him, deepening our kiss. My head spins in the most delicious way. There’s nothing in the world except for me, Sani, and the scant space between our bodies. The way his lips move against mine is like a promise, an apology, and a declaration all rolled into one.
I have no idea how long it is before Sani reluctantly pulls his lips away. Like the separation pains him and he has to make up for it somehow, he rests his forehead against mine.
“If we don’t stop now, I never will,” he says.
I’m having serious trouble getting enough oxygen. “I know the feeling.”
He gently lowers my feet to the ground and places a kiss on my temple, sending warm shivers through my entire body.
“Right,” I say. “Rescues first, making out later. You never let me have any fun.”
…
Dominic is sitting on a planter in the passenger pickup area of LAX. “What happened to you two?”
I look down and see the brand new gaudy Washington D.C. tourist clothes I bought at the hotel this morning are dirt-stained and torn here and there. Sani looks worse.
I shrug. “Ran into a little trouble, nothing we couldn’t handle.” No need to tell him the CIA’s on my back, right? Or that I tackled Sani in a storage yard because he wouldn’t kiss me. He’d have a field day with that little tidbit.
Dominic’s eyes travel down to our joined hands, and he smirks. “I knew you two had something going on.”
Well, this is super awkward. None of us say anything for a good forty-five seconds but, to Sani’s credit, he doesn’t let go of my hand.
“What’s the plan?” Dominic finally asks.
Oh, right. The plan. I should probably get one of those.
“First, Kitty needs to rest,” Sani says.
Dominic and I both begin arguing with him at the same time.
“I don’t care,” Sani says, holding up his hands as if to stop the words we fling at him. “She almost passed out when we landed and, we all know, no matter what our plan is, she’s going to be doing the heavy lifting tonight. A high-calorie meal and some time sitting down, at the very least.”
Something troubling churns to the surface of my thoughts. “Tonight?” I ask.
“Yeah, that’s when we’re going to make our move, right?” Dominic says.
“The president said we only had forty-eight hours,” Sani reminds me. “Which gives us until mid-afternoon tomorrow, at the latest.”
Dominic walks to the curb to hail a cab. I have ghetto-alley flashbacks and my entire body tenses with reluctance. “Maybe we should walk?”
“Walk?” Dominic says. “This is L.A., kiddo. And I thought you needed to rest?”
Sani looks between us, me biting my lip in anxiety, Dominic looking at me like I’m ridiculous. “Give her your hat.”
Dominic does as he’s told. I hold it between my thumb and index finger, like it might bite me. Or make my hair smell bad, at the very least.
Sani turns and walks about thirty feet to a slightly overweight middle-aged woman looking up and down the street for her ride. He pulls out his wallet. “How much did those sunglasses cost you?” The aforementioned sunglasses are sitting on her head, nestled in a mess of dyed blond curls and currently unused.
She takes her time letting her eyes travel up and down his lithe form. Does she have no shame? Sani’s nearly young enough to be her son. Granted, he is the one person in the world who can look like he’s ready for a GQ shoot after traveling across the country in convenience-store sweats.
“Just seven dollars, honey,” she drawls. “You like them?”
She definitely straightens her back to push her considerable boobs further into his view. Self-conscious, I frown at my own non-existent chest.
Gods bless him, he doesn’t even notice, but he sweetly smiles down at her. “My girlfriend is having a terrible migraine right now and she forgot hers. I’ll give you twenty dollars for them.”
The woman’s boobs deflate at the word “girlfriend,” but I have quite the opposite reaction. Girlfriend. I’m his girlfriend. Wait, or was that just another part of his lie? Being a spy is so complicated sometimes.
She slides the glasses off her head and hands them to him, snatching the twenty dollar bill from Sani’s hand. “You have a deal, sugar pie.”
Sugar pie? Where the hell is this woman from?
He walks back over to us and wipes the sunglasses thoroughly on his shirt before sliding them gently onto my face. The soft brush of his fingers against my temples sends a thrill through my arms, down to my fingertips. “Make sure your purple stripe is completely hidden inside the hat. There is a much bigger Chinese population here than in D.C., so hopefully that will play to our advantage.”
“Why don’t you just dye your hair back to its natural color?” Dominic asks. “The purple kind of stands out.”
“This is my natural color,” I say.
He points at the strand that’s only halfway tucked into the hat. “That is not natural.”
“All Chinese dragons have a stripe of brightly colored hair,” I explain. “My mother’s is red, my father’s is blue. Mine is purple.”
“And dye won’t hold in our hair,” Sani adds. “Just like tattoo ink won’t stay in our skin.”
“Weird,” Dominic says, shrugging.
All three of us walk to the curb as Dominic puts up his hand again. My hearts pound in anticipation of being trapped in another one of those traitor-machines. My dragon begs to let her fly instead, but I know Sani’s right about at least one thing: I need some rest. My legs feel like they’re about to collapse underneath me.
“Where are we going?” Sani asks.
“You need lots of food, right?” Dominic grins like a maniac. “In-N-Out!”
“That sounds dirty,” I say.
“Yeah,” Dominic agrees. “You’re going to love it.”
“About tonight,” I say as cabs pass by Dominic without slowing.
“What about it?” Dominic asks.
“I’m not sure it’s the right time. The Yakuza are a massive crime organization, essentially,” I say.
Sani catches on to my meaning right away. “And violent crime is mostly done at night.”
“Yeah, so maybe nighttime isn’t the best time to hit them,” I say. “What if they’re coming back from a drug deal—or worse, a gun deal—when we roll in? They’d be fully armed and hopped up on adrenaline.”
“Director Bean is working with them,” Sani added. “He trained us. He’d expect us to attack at night.”
“Not to mention humans always let their guard down when the sun’s up,” I add. “They feel safer.”
“So when were you thinking?” Dominic asks.
It physically pains me to say this. “Early morning.”
Sani lets out a harsh sigh. “That doesn’t leave us much time to regroup if it turns out Jacob isn’t there.”
“It’s the only place that makes sense,” I say. “And we know Director Bean is there for sure.”
“Let’s face it,” Dominic says, voicing the fear we’re all afraid to talk about. “If Jacob’s not there, we’re screwed, no matter when we go.”
He’s right, of course. If Jacob’s not at the headquarters, he’s dead, and I lose any goodwill I have with the president and the American people. Without those things, any chance I have of seeing my family and dragon friends again plummets to immaterial levels. I have twenty-four hours to save my friend from mobsters or literally all hope is lost. And with that cheery thought, we all get in a cab.
Chapter Sixteen
It turns out In-N-Out is just a burger joint. The best burger joint in the entire world, but fast-food burgers all the same. I have to hand it to Dominic, he was right about one thing at least: I love this place. Sani sits next to me with a graveyard of burger wrappers in front of him and Dominic sits across from us, slack-jawed.
“For such a small girl, you sure eat a lot,” he says. The harsh fluorescent lights cast shadows on Dominic’s face, making him look as tired as I feel.
I’m washing my third 3 x 3 down with a chocolate shake when a nine-to-five white collar slumps into the booth next to us, his back facing me. We have to keep the spy and dragon talk down to a minimum with a human so close to us. The cabbie back east taught us that anybody could be a threat, even the most unassuming characters.
“Changing makes us very hungry,” Sani says, as cryptically as he possibly can. “It burns a lot of calories, to say the least.” He leans forward, placing his forearms on the fake granite table. The way his biceps bunch underneath the cotton fabric of his shirt has me completely distracted until Dominic speaks.
“I thought you were just typical teenagers.�
�
No one has ever called me typical. I can’t say I like it.
“I could hunt instead,” I say, in between shoving fries in my mouth, the salty, starchy goodness muffling my words.
“Hunt?” Dominic’s eyebrows twist in a combination of disgust and suspicion.
“Yeah, I hear there are a lot of cattle farms around here. That would be perfect.” I’m just messing with him; greasy burgers and fries are so much more delicious than swallowing a cow whole. Trust me on that one. But you do what you have to while staking out political refugees in rural Argentina.
Once the guy at the next booth gets his burger unwrapped and firmly set in one hand, he picks up an iPad mini and starts awkwardly flicking through a news site with his thumb. I will him to click on one of the celebrity gossip stories—I haven’t been able to get my fix in days—but my mind control powers are as nonexistent as they ever were. He taps an article and whose photo pops up in full color on the screen? Your friendly neighborhood Chinese dragon. I tug the baseball cap lower on my head and try to read over his shoulder, but can only catch words like “dangerous,” “menacing,” “threat,” and “confined.” I’m sure it’s a cheery article, full of dragons dancing through sunshine and rainbows, helping old ladies cross the road, and rescuing puppies.
Sani notices where my attention’s gone and his eyes snap to the same screen. I catch one more thing on the article before the man flicks back to the main news page: a picture. Liquid hydrogen floods my veins, and I just about choke on some fry crumbs.
A picture of Director Bean with the words “sought for questioning” attached. It’s his official government headshot, the one hanging on the walls of DIC. His eyes stare out from the screen and pierce my lungs, leaving me short of breath.
Dominic finally notices us staring when we both let out a gasp. He starts to turn around but Sani stops him with a small shake of his head. Dominic presses his lips together and gives us a disapproving glare. He really doesn’t like being out of the loop, not one bit, but at least he has the sense to heed my partner’s warning.
My mouth goes dry. What kind of questioning, exactly, did they want Bean for? Was it the “polite chat in a wood-paneled office” kind of questioning or the “private plane ride to a facility that doesn’t technically exist” kind of questioning? Sani slips his hand beneath the table and grabs mine. Warmth floods from my fingertips up through my arm to my entire body, smothering the rising panic. I pull in a slow breath and refocus on the mission. There’s nothing we can do about Bean now. If he doesn’t want to be found, I definitely don’t want to go looking for him.
Dragons Are People, Too Page 15
