“Oh, the rocketeers outside?” Donovan laughed, throwing his head back as great peals of laughter exploded from him. “They weren’t trying to kill you. Maybe him.” Donovan jerked his thumb at Stephen and smiled. “They were trying to ‘rescue you’ from us. Your real mom was trying to get you back… but, and trust me on this, your real mom is one bad mama-jama. You do not want her to find you.”
The world spun as his words crashed down on me, threatening to drag me down with their weight. Was that really true? Was I really, like really, really, just some pawn that had been stolen from my parents as leverage? Was that all I was? Was that all my friends were too? I reached out for something to steady myself, and inadvertently, grabbed Stephen’s hand. I spun, and was about to hit him or scream that he was nothing but a filthy liar, but the look in his sapphire eyes stopped me cold.
“No, seriously,” Stephen’s voice was calm and understanding. “Your mother is one of the most powerful women in the world. The thug from earlier told you that. She’s also the world’s most dangerous terrorist. She runs the world’s largest private army. She holds allegiance to no one. Let me be straight with you. The real reason the US hasn’t fallen and countless cities haven’t been fire-bombed in the last sixteen years is because we have you. If she gets you back, no one will have any leverage over her.”
“In short,” Donovan continued, and I had to struggle not to feel both overwhelmed and double-teamed, “your mom has found our super-secret lair, and you are no longer safe here. Now that she knows where you are, she has already begun mobilizing forces to get you back, which sounds all nicey-nice, but trust me, not nicey-nice. Not even nice. Once your mom gets you back, she will, not to sound cliché, but she will totally, unequivocally, take over the world.”
“You’re all crazy!” I snapped at Donovan. “My mom runs a restaurant in the middle of a Podunk town. If my ‘real’ mom is as horrible as you say, why did it take sixteen years for her to find me?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.
“It took sixteen years to find you because we’re pretty good at keeping the place where we hide all our most important hostages secret. It’s one of the main reasons we think there might be an insider working with her,” Stephen said, and as the words left his mouth, Donovan shot him a glance. Stephen blanched and looked away.
“Your real mom is sick, Abby, and she has gotten desperate,” Donovan said, turning his emerald gaze back on me. “She needs your organs if she is to survive. You are the only one whose organs her body won’t attack. Right now, she gets new transplants whenever she needs them, but the length of time they last is decreasing at an exponential rate.”
“So you expect me to believe that not only have you guys kidnapped me for my entire life, but my mom is a crazy person who wants to take over the world and who also wants to cut me open and take my organs for herself?” I asked. The idea was ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.
“Basically,” Donovan said and smiled. It pissed me off so much, I wanted to smack him. “She never claimed to be mother of the year or anything.”
“Um…” I bit my lip and swallowed. “So why don’t you just shoot me in the head and be done with it?”
“Oh, believe me,” Donovan said as he turned back toward his computer screen. “The thought had occurred to me. But your mom chasing a living you is much safer for the world than her going unhinged and trying to take out her wrath on us for killing you. She’s made it very clear that if we execute you, she’s going to nuke a couple cities.”
The room spun a little as he said this, the words reverberating around in my head like a bass drum. I was being fostered by a government agency who would like nothing more than to kill me so I wouldn’t fall into the hands of my real mom. To make matters worse, the only reason they hadn’t just shot me in the head and dumped my body into the sea was because my terrorist mother had said she’d nuke cities if they did so. It almost made me hope that Donovan’s people didn’t find the nukes because I was pretty sure if they did, I was going to be dead-as-a-doornail-Abby.
That thought sobered me. Who was I to be so special that I was worth a couple cities? Would I really condemn entire cities to death just so I could live? Surely there had to be another way. Surely, I was missing something, right?
“So is there a plan going forward?” I asked a bit more timidly than I’d have liked. I mean, you’d think I’d have something better to say after all that but really? Really I didn’t. It was so crazy sounding, so fantastical to say a crazy terrorist army was mobilizing on my tiny town of Folsom to steal my organs. It was something I could only deal with by not dealing with it. That meant I had to focus on something. Right now, the easiest something to focus on was what we should be doing next.
“The plan going forward is simple,” Donovan said, already tapping away at his keyboard, filling his screen with all manner of interesting graphs and statistics. He wasn’t even looking at me anymore and I had the impression I was “this” close to being dismissed. “Stephen is going to take you the hell out of dodge and try and keep you safe until we can find a new place to keep you safe or your mother dies. Whichever comes first. And I want you to know this up front. He will kill you before letting your mother get to you. Make no mistake. We’d rather endure her wrath then let her heal body…”
“So, theoretically, the cities could get nuked, and I could still die anyway?” I asked, and as I did so, Stephen stiffened.
“I won’t let that happen, Abby. I will keep you and the cities safe,” Stephen said.
“And if you can’t?” I asked, swallowing back the rising tide of terror that seemed to well up inside me from nowhere.
“Then he’ll kill you,” Donovan said, voice strangely jovial as he stared at Stephen. “Isn’t that right, agent?”
Stephen bristled. For some reason, I got the distinct impression that while he knew that potentially killing me could be part of his job, he’d long since dismissed it from being a real solution. It was like saying you were either going to be an astronaut or a rockstar when you grow up. It was something that you never really considered. And… admittedly, that made me feel a lot better.
The reason why? Because if our positions were reversed, much as I hate to admit it, I’d probably smile, then take him out back and put him down like Old Yeller. My life versus the fate of the whole world? Did they think I was stupid enough to think that a super-secret organization that specialized in kidnapping children from deranged psychopaths would have any qualms about drowning me like an unwanted kitten?
No, sir. If there was one thing I was, it was practical. It was why I couldn’t believe a guy as hot as Stephen would have any interest in me at all. I nodded absently to myself. It was why Lisa Ann was my best friend. We were so alike but so very different. And that was pretty much when it dawned on me.
“So Lisa is fostered too?” I asked even though Donovan had long since dismissed me.
“Yes,” Stephen said as he took me by the hand and led me toward a door in the far wall that I hadn’t seen before. “Her real parents make biological weapons. Weapons that we’d rather not fall into the wrong hands.”
“The wrong hands being not your hands?” I asked, glancing up at him.
“Bingo!” Donovan chimed in from behind me. “You catch on quick, love.”
5
“Is he always such an ass?” I asked as Stephen led me down one of the endless tunnels we had been following for the last few minutes. He had been talking the entire time but I hadn’t really been listening. I’m sure whatever it was he was saying was important. I was also sure that there’d be a time in the not too distant future where I will wish I’d paid better attention. Unfortunately, my mind was still reeling from the last few minutes of conversation. The conversation where I’d found out that my entire life was a sham.
Even my friends’ lives were all shams too. My best friend Lisa’s life wasn’t real either. Hell, she was the daughter of some super geniuses somewhere and while that made a certain
amount of sense because she was like way smarter than me, that didn’t make it okay to steal her, me, and everyone else from our real parents. They couldn’t all be as horrible as Donovan had claimed, could they?
“Donovan was using his charming voice,” Stephen said so matter-of-factly, I’d have sworn he had said the exact thing several times before. “You don’t want to hear his annoying voice, or his angry one, for that matter. He was being as nice as he could. It’s a hard thing to do when you’re broken inside.” Stephen stopped for half a step as he said the words. “Don’t tell him I said that,” he added a moment later.
“Next time he tells me my real mother is trying to kill me, I’ll make sure to remember not to tell him that you said he was broken inside,” I said a little more harshly than I probably should have. I thought about apologizing, but didn’t. Instead, I shook my head and glared at the neon blue lights that lit up the pathway beneath my feet. “He was telling me that my mom wants to gut me like a pig and that, not only is my life a lie, but my friends’ lives are too.” I turned on Stephen in that instant, whirling with a speed I didn’t know I had. My hands balled into fists. “You will not defend this. You will not give me your little smile and your stupid words after leading me into a dark tunnel under the sewers!” I was hitting him over and over as tears clouded my vision. He raised his arms to ward off my blows, not trying to stop me, but keeping me from doing any lasting damage. “My mom’s restaurant was attacked by people with rockets. I got shot at! My entire life is a LIE!” I flopped down on my knees, sobbing. “Just go, get away from me. I can’t deal with you right now.”
He stood there, looking at me like a kicked puppy. He didn’t say anything, didn’t move. No, he just stood there looking at me, and the more he looked at me, the more I wanted to smash his stupid face in. I closed my eyes tightly, wishing the tears would stop, wishing I could do something, anything, to make it better. But no, I was stuck here in this stupid dark tunnel with him and with Donovan’s stupid laugh ringing in my ears, gnawing at my brain.
He touched me. Nothing inappropriate, mind you, just a light touch on the shoulder. Oh, I’m sure he was trying to comfort me as he awkwardly placed his hand on my shoulder. Maybe they didn’t cover this part in super spy school or something.
“Don’t touch me!” I screamed, throwing his hand off as I leapt to my feet with such force he took a step back, preemptively warding off the blows he was sure would follow. That’s when I took off running.
I sped off into the distance, unsure of how big this tunnel actually was. Yet, the tears kept coming, and the more I tried to stop them, the angrier I became… and the more I cried. Finally, I came to a door. Another stupid, rusty door with one of those dumb valve handles. I hit it. It was like hitting an immovable object, like hitting everything that had happened in the past… what? Fifteen? Twenty minutes ago?
That had been all it took for my entire life to be ripped out from under me. Exhausted, angry, and defeated, I slumped against the door. I wasn’t sure how long I sat like that, with my face cradled against my knees, when Stephen showed up. I hadn’t heard him. Whether that was because he had moved all stealthy-like or because I was too wrapped up in my own drama, I wasn’t sure.
“Alright,” he said, and I was pretty sure he was simply telling me that he was here. And, though I don’t know why, it made me feel a little better. Granted only a little, but that was still something. Despite the fact that they had shot at him, that he had been scared of Donovan, and that he now had to defend me, he was still here. Even after I unfairly screamed at him and attacked him, because really, this wasn’t his fault. I knew that, and I’d still yelled at him. Yet for some reason, he was still right here, by my side.
Slowly, I raised my head and looked at him, my entire body trembling, and asked him the most obvious question in the world. “Why are you here?”
“To protect you,” he replied, shifting uncertainly in the dimly lit hall. The blue lights in the floor cast innocuous shadows across his face as he ran a hand through his hair. Even now, standing there so unsure of himself, he looked gorgeous. His blue eyes filled with such depth, such hurt, that I knew he wanted to comfort me, only he didn’t know how. Really, I didn’t know how I wanted him to comfort me either. I just wanted him to know what he should do to help me. Was that too much to ask?
“Why?” I squeaked.
“So the world doesn’t end?” he offered with a shrug as a smile crossed his face for a moment. Was he trying to lighten the mood? If so, he was failing.
“Lies. The world is better off without me. We both know that,” I said with a shake of my head and buried my face against my knees again. The cold floor was starting to numb me through my clothes, but I was determined not to move one more step until I knew why he was so hell bent on protecting me. Why did he want to help me when, despite what Donovan said, throwing me into a dumpster behind a liquor store with a bullet in the back of the head was the most logical solution to the world’s problems?
He bent down toward me, took my chin in his hand, and tilted my head until I was looking at him. A shiver ran down my spine as I stared deep into his sapphire eyes, and a wave of sadness washed over me.
“You aren’t the first girl I’ve been assigned to protect,” he said, and I wondered if he was trying to will understanding into me. He swallowed once and something in my chest tightened. I’m not sure why, but I was pretty sure the story he was about to tell me was not going to end with unicorns and sunrises.
Stephen opened and closed his mouth a couple times, as though the words were on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t bear to actually voice them. Something was holding him back, something was making tears well in the corners of his eyes. He shook his head and stood up. “Let’s just say it didn’t end so well for me last time. But if you were wondering, yes, the girl is fine and you probably know her.”
“I probably know the girl you saved?” I asked, quirking an eyebrow at him.
“Yes. Every assignment I’ve had has been successful. I am with you despite the fact a bullet to the head would be the simplest solution because I am the best. The best chance you have for survival is with me. Just because your mother is evil, just because it seems like we’re bad guys too, it isn’t your fault.” He bent down and took my hands in his. They were so warm, so comforting, I could feel myself becoming calmer just by his touch. As he pulled me to my feet and enveloped me in his strong arms, I couldn’t help but cry. The tears started, and they wouldn’t stop.
“You need to remember that, Abby. None of this is your fault. You aren’t a thing, you aren’t leverage, and you aren’t expendable. You are a person, and you haven’t done anything wrong. That’s why I am going to protect you. That’s why I am here.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. It sort of escaped me as I buried my face in his chest, soaking it through with my tears. It sounded so ridiculous. Was I really to believe this gorgeous, hunky guy was going to take on the world’s most powerful terrorist army because I was a good person? Did he know I cheated on my last math test? That Lisa had slid me the answers when she took the test the period before? Did he know about the countless other bad things I’d done? Even if they were minor compared to say, nuking Rome, they were still something.
“You are the dumbest, most naïve secret agent in the world,” I said with a sniffle as I extricated myself from his arms and turned back toward the door. I was going to do this. I was going to go into hiding, and I was going to survive. Besides, what was the alternative? Sit here waiting for Donovan to roll me up in a carpet and throw me in the lake?
“That’s why I’m good at my job,” he said, trying to be casual. Deep down though, I knew he was trying to make sure I understood him. “I care too much.”
“Is that so?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.
“It is so,” he replied, turning away and pressing his hand against the stone near the door. Red light began to emanate from the stone around his hand and then the entire doo
r slid downwards into the ground to reveal an immense cavern. It was so bright, I had to shield my eyes to keep from going blind.
“Come on,” Stephen said, taking a step past me into the room and gesturing toward the center. It sprang open with a hiss of grinding metal and whooshing air to reveal a plane. “The plane is waiting,” he added, grinning at me like an idiot.
“Okay…” I said, following him toward the plane and up the stairs to the door in its side. It was the biggest one I’d ever seen, but then again I’d never actually seen a plane before, so there was that. It was almost forty feet long and had at least three engines on each wing. “That’s pretty cool and all, but aren’t we underground? How are we going to fly a plane underground?”
“No,” he said, yanking open the door and pulling me inside because I was too stunned to move. “Well, sort of.” The door snapped shut behind me with a clang that made me jump and whirl around.
“What do you mean ‘sort of?’ How can we be sort of underground?” I asked, glancing around the interior. It was fully stocked with all sorts of bottles, food, and a wall-sized television.
“We are underground, right now,” he said, pressing a button next to the door. There was a whoosh of air and the clanking sound of gears filled my ears. My stomach did a little flip flop like I was in a high speed elevator as I stared at him. We came to a stop with a sudden jolt that made me stumble. “And now we’re at ground level. Ta da!”
I glanced out the window and was surprised to see that he was right. At least it seemed like he was right because I could see what looked like a runway stretching off into the distance.
Stephen went up to the bar and began to pour himself a drink. I watched as amber liquid sloshed into his glass. He was drinking while serving as my bodyguard? Was that allowed? It didn’t seem like it should be allowed. I was about to ask him that when a red light toward the front of the cabin began to flash.
“Please fasten your seatbelts, we’re about to take off,” intoned a melodramatic robotic-sounding voice.
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