Brides of Bannack Box Set: Mail Order Bride

by Natalie Dean

  Adrianna handed over her gun, which unsettled her greatly. She realized that there was no way she could take it inside the Hummer for the obvious reasons, but she still hated to go in unarmed.

  As The Celtic handed his gun over to the bodyguards, he pointed towards the truck. “I think that ice cream was a mistake,” he said in a deadpan voice. “I also think that expiration date was lying to me.”

  She ignored him. It wasn’t the time for laughing. They both needed to be on the top of their games. The bodyguards forced Adrianna to reach for the sky and patted her down. His hands were giant. It was like having an elephant grope you.

  His fingers ran across her thigh, where he would have found a gun previously. For one second, she panicked, but then she remembered they’d taken both of her guns back when they’d been interrogating her.

  “She’s clean,” he rumbled to his fellow bodyguard. The other brute nodded in agreement after clearing The Celtic.

  Inside the limo was dark. Irritatingly dark, but Adrianna could see four bodyguards, one in each corner, looming seriously over them. There, on the other end of the limo, sitting with a drink in his hand, was The Owl.

  The Owl wasn’t what Adrianna had expected. She’d figured he’d be a big guy, but he was surprisingly small. Not tiny, but shorter than she thought he'd be. Despite his height, he was built like a bull, with thick muscles weaving over his stocky frame. She was starting to believe The Celtic’s theory that he’d been a fighter previously. Although what little she could see of his skin in the darkness was wrinkled, he still looked strong and capable.

  She could see his lips moving as he spoke. Something about the way he talked was just… wrong, like his lips were just a millisecond behind what he said. That made no sense, so she assumed that he had a speech problem. It would explain the soft, strange voice too.

  “I’m quite a fan,” he said. In person, it was even more obvious that something was off about his voice. It sounded like he might have had an excellent, lovely voice at one point, but maybe due to a throat injury or something sustained from fighting, it was left broken. “You, Agent Whetmore, have evaded me. You’ve surprised me. You’ve impressed me. In all my years, I’ve met very few who have done that so consistently.” He spread his bulky arms. “Join us.”

  “I’m listening,” she said. “But it’s going to have to be good.”

  By good, she meant, You surrender to the law and let us go, but she didn’t think he needed to know that.

  “Here’s my offer,” he said. “Join me, and you will both join my ranks. You will be protected. Rich. Powerful.”

  Adrianna nodded, thinking. But she wasn’t thinking about the offer. She knew she had to decline. She was thinking about minutes ago, when they had still been in the house before coming out, just after they’d hung up on The Owl.

  “They’ll search us,” Adrianna had said, scrambling towards the bedroom. “I got something they won’t see.”

  “You better hurry!” The Celtic said, glancing out the window. “They look serious.”

  Adrianna dashed into the bedroom and uprooted the chest in the corner. Underneath was a small case that she struggled to open. Her fingers were shaking, not from fear, but from adrenaline. You don’t know true adrenaline until you’re searching for something to save your life and a friend’s life with a time limit of mere seconds.

  The case popped open with a hiss. Inside was a series of little objects—a pen, a hair clip, etc.—but she grabbed the only thing that she cared about: the watch. It looked like the sort that elite, Arab businessmen might wear. Sleek. Expensive.

  And very, very dangerous.

  As cliché as it might seem, the FBI agents, or at least the really good ones, were given cool gadgets. The first time that she’d seen them, she’d felt exactly like James Bond, like at any moment she might order a drink that was shaken, not stirred. She’d never seen the practicality of the little gadgets. An exploding pen. A knockout hair pin. All that was cool and fun to think about, but in the real world, they were rarely needed. Very few things could beat out a real weapon.

  But the watch was a little different. An industrial strength flashbang packed into a small, aluminum chassis. She’d never had a use for it. She just couldn’t wrap her mind around a scenario where a ticking flashbang would be helpful. Flashbangs? Yeah, they were helpful. Toss them into a crowd and they were incapacitated. But the watch wasn’t as powerful as a normal one (though it was amazingly strong for its diminutive size) and it had a clock that ticked down.

  She pulled it around her wrist and locked it. It was a little big, but if she kept her hand open, it wouldn’t fall off.

  “Why are you putting jewelry on?” The Celtic snapped. Apparently his predator state wasn’t too patient.

  “This isn’t jewelry,” she said, snapping the watch across her wrist and handing him two, tiny, clear earplugs.

  “What are these for?”

  “Just put them in,” she hissed. Probably a minute until the killers started coming in. She put a pair of earplugs in her own ears, which slid in neatly. “Can you see them?” she asked The Celtic, who was pulling his hands down after inserting his own plugs.

  “No. What are these things for?”

  She dashed back towards the living room. The killers hadn’t come out yet. Probably fifteen seconds. And they wouldn’t come in. There was too much of a threat for them. They’d just rip the house up from the road and then come in, sweep it, and leave before the cops arrived.

  “Look,” she said hurriedly to The Celtic as she laid a hand on the door. “This is a flashbang. When I give you the signal, close your eyes so you don't get blinded.”

  Back to the present. They were sitting in the limo of The Owl, renowned crime boss, two bodyguards on either side, and two more in front of those. The Owl was directly in front of them, waiting for a response for his proposition.

  Adrianna flashed her eyes down to her watch. Twenty seconds. When she’d quickly set the watch, she’d had no idea how long to expect. It would be useless if the flashbang went off while they were being searched for weapons, so she had been careful and set the timer for longer. “What makes you think I can trust you? All you’ve done is try to kill us.”

  “An interesting question,” he said. “I suppose you’ll simply have to trust me.” Again, his lips were just a shade off, like a movie that hasn’t quite synced up right with the audio. It was close enough where Adrianna wasn’t sure if she was just imagining it or not, but something seemed amiss.

  Eight seconds. Five. Four. Three. Two.

  Adrianna kicked The Celtic from beside him. A stealthy sign. She’d realized that she hadn’t planned on what the signal would be, so if she gave him a subtle one, he might miss it and get stunned with the others. Together, they might be able to take the guards by surprise, but her by herself would be doomed.

  She clenched her eyes tight and hoped The Celtic did the same. She’d been around flashbangs before in training exercises. They were nasty, nasty beasts. Even with her eyes closed, she could see blinding light, heard shouts of surprise and anger, and thrashing.

  The bodyguards figured out in a hurry what was going on. They’d be blind for quite a while, but the inside of the limo was only so big. At their impressive size, they could span most of the room. The one to her left threw his arms around her and got her in a bear hug almost before she had opened her eyes. A good bodyguard. A dangerous one.

  She tried to slip out, but he was quite strong, even for his size. She couldn’t pull away, and her broken rib started yelling at her again in pain. She elbowed him in the face to no avail. She was starting to run out of air. He was incredibly strong. There was a solid chance he’d break another one of her ribs, but at the last second, she wormed her way out of his grasp. He lunged for her again, but she ducked him and grabbed his gun.

  That’s when stuff got real.

  She fired off a single shot at the gorilla. There was essentially no way for her to miss at that close of r
ange, and his yell proved that she hadn’t missed. Utter chaos ensued. The blinded bodyguards didn’t stand much of a chance. They couldn’t even find their guns.

  Moments later, the whole thing was over.

  The Celtic had evidently taken a handgun and poked the end of the gun towards the driver. “Drive! Get us out of here!”

  Adrianna and The Celtic took The Owl hostage. “Do what he says!”

  The driver looked like he was considering running for it, but at the last second gunned it and slammed his foot on the pedal. The Owl started struggling in The Celtic’s arms, but The Celtic whacked him on the head with the handgun and he slumped to the floor limply.

  “Well, that was surprisingly easy,” The Celtic said from the limo floor.

  “It’s not over yet,” Adrianna snapped. Even through the tinted windows, she could see the fleet of vehicles giving chase. Someone shot at them, stupidly. If The Owl was still inside, he might easily have been shot. Somehow Adrianna doubted that such a move would have been wise. Luckily, though, the Hummer limo was bulletproof and the round bounced right off with a clink.

  “Drive!” she commanded the driver.

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere!” She looked around, trying to focus on where they were. “Right! Take a right up here!”

  They sped through the city. She was thinking that the thugs would quit chasing them once they made it into the heart of the city, but she had evidently been quite wrong. They sped right after them, swerving right and left and clipping half a dozen cars.

  “They’re still behind us!” The Celtic said.

  “Really?” the driver said sarcastically.

  “Take a left!” The Celtic said.

  The driver slammed on the brakes and drifted through a red light to take a left. Someone honked, but they stopped the moment that they saw the chase going on. The thugs were still firing at them. Worse, they were starting to get smart. The windows were bulletproof. The whole Hummer wasn’t. The bullets were starting to break open the car’s chassis, nearly pegging a couple of them.

  “Right! Left! Straight! Straight! Left!” Adrianna kept ordering the driver to keep taking turns. She hoped she knew where she was. She was pretty sure she was headed the right way, but it wasn’t like she had enough time to get on Google Maps and see if they were going the right way towards the Calidad FBI headquarters. She’d driven all over Calidad, but never under such pressure and never from that way.

  One of the cars beside them swerved a little too hard trying to take a right, skipped through the yard of a bank, and slammed into the bank’s columns. Even going at the speed it was going, it barely did anything. It just wrapped around the marble columns, scaring some people, but doing very little damage.

  They were getting closer. She was starting to recognize places. Luckily, they weren’t in rush hour, so there wasn’t as many cars on the road as there could be. Most cars swerved away to avoid them, but so far there hadn’t been any awful crashes.

  Finally, she spotted some flashing lights. The police had finally caught on, but they chased after all of them. Unsurprisingly, nobody pulled over. The whole group—the Hummer limo with The Owl, The Celtic, Adrianna, and the driver, the cars and vans chasing, and the policemen chasing all of them—went roaring along down the road. A short while later, a helicopter was up in the air, probably filming it live.

  She was doomed. She suddenly realized that. She’d essentially handed in her resignation when she’d gotten them started on a big chase. Just because she was an agent of the FBI didn’t mean that she got to do stuff like that.

  Finally, she spotted the agency building up ahead, looming over the interstate with dozens of floors. They were close. The big problem was that there happened to be a football game at that time, so fans were everywhere. The limo driver started swerving to try to avoid plowing anyone, overcorrected going up a hill, and started to flip.

  Adrianna’s heart rose into her throat as the limo started into a whirlwind of rolling. She had no idea what happened to the driver, but she, The Celtic, The Owl, and all the bodyguards flew around in the main compartment. A couple of the windows shattered, tossing glass all over them. Adrianna hit what she thought was a door and one of the dead bodyguards slammed into The Celtic. He slammed into Adrianna, nearly tossing both of them out of the window.

  Finally, the limo came to a painful, crumbling halt a hundred feet away from the agency. Adrianna clawed her way out from under the bodyguard to the top, gasping for air. The Celtic emerged too, pulling The Owl up with him.

  “You okay?” he asked her.

  “I think,” she groaned in response. The inside of the Hummer limo was crumpled up like a crushed soda can, having jagged edges sticking out violently. She could hear shooting outside, but from her position, she couldn’t push open the hatch. They were stuck inside. Trapped.

  The firing continued. The FBI had to have the upper hand. There were hundreds of agents inside that building, but there was only a small army that was working for the now-unconscious Owl. Sure enough, after a few moments, the shooting died off, there was a loud squealing of tires, and everything got very quiet except for the shouting and the sirens.

  She heard something bashing on the chassis, then someone ripped open the metal. When her eyes adjusted to the light, she recognized Agent Stone.

  “I found The Celtic,” she said.

  Agent Stone immediately arrested them both.

  Chapter 13

  Four months later, Adrianna found herself waiting in the elevator as it slowly climbed higher and higher. She impatiently checked her watch. A little late. Not bad, but closer than she’d like.

  Finally, the doors slid open, and she found herself where she had been months before—the building where The Celtic lived. She had started calling him by his real name instead of his fighting alias. David just had a better ring to it. More personal. That was good since over the last few months they had grown more and more personal.

  When she’d first heard his name, she’d thought it a common, boring name. But as it turned out, his parents had named him that because David meant “loved one” in Hebrew. So it was a little cooler after that, but it had still taken her a while to get used to calling such an extraordinary man by such a common, everyday name.

  She found herself walking down the long walkway to his apartment, thinking about the first time she’d been there. At first, she’d seen it as a dark place, somewhere that had once been happy and vivacious before a criminal stole the happiness away. The longer she spent there, the more that feeling of violence faded away in her eye and the public’s.

  Right after The Owl had been arrested, dozens of fighters had emerged to testify against him. Apparently, he’d been a busy boy. Threatening. Punishing. Killing. All that stuff had finally caught up with him. The courts had given him life without the possibility of parole.

  She came to the door of the apartment and rang the doorbell. She flashed back to the first time she’d been there, searching out with her powers to judge whether someone was inside, whether the criminal had left any obvious clues. Now, she’d grown to love seeing that door. It meant she could escape from her troubles and have someone to cherish. Two of them, actually, but each in very different ways.

  She knocked.

  “Come in!” she heard David say from inside.

  She twisted the handle and walked on in. Inside, David, aka The Celtic, was sitting at the table. He glanced up at Adrianna and winked affectionately before focusing back on his daughter. Ellie was sitting on the floor, using crayons to continue her artwork on the wall. The art had grown since Adrianna had first seen it.

  “Hey, sweetie,” Adrianna said as Ellie came sprinting up to her and tackled her leg in a hug. “How’s the little artist?”

  David kept working on the laptop on his table. Apparently, he’d been an aspiring writer. A writer of what? Romances, of all things. Adrianna had laughed when she first heard that, making him blush. She’d apologized and explained:
he was all-so-perfect to start with. It only made sense that he was a hopeless romantic just to top everything off. Even though he was still fighting professionally, Adrianna had inspired him to try to continue his otherwise untouched passion.

  “Oh,” he said as he typed away madly. “She’s been working hard. Look at the end.”

  Adrianna followed the trail of artwork. Initially, David had attempted to keep Ellie from drawing on the white walls, but he’d finally given up. She tended to follow a surprisingly linear fashion, moving from left to right. Walking along it, you could see her art getting better. You’d also see some important events. They weren’t normal events like “ the first day of school!” but tended to be more like “that time that we went to see that cute puppy at school!”’

  As Adrianna traveled down the trail, she found herself feeling happier and happier. At first, she’d been completely oblivious. It was pretty primitive stuff. Just some random lines with a couple distinguishable pictures. But the more time she spent with them, the more she became an expert in child-art reading. Not much, but she was able to pick out a couple different animals: dog, cow, fish, and some people. The most obvious was David, and every now and then a couple friends from school.

  But then, at the most recent art, knee-high on the wall, Adrianna found a new person.

  Her.

  Her breath caught for a second. It was the first time Ellie had drawn her.

  “Oh, baby,” she crouched and looked Ellie in the eye. Ellie sheepishly studied her little shoes. “That’s so beautiful! You’re so talented. Can you give me a hug?”

  Ellie shuffled in. When Adrianna was just walking around, she was more than happy to come sprinting up to tackle her. But when Ellie was actually asked for a hug, she suddenly became the literal embodiment of shyness. Finally, after months of inching closer, she buried her head in Adrianna’s chest. She was so small that her arms could barely reach all the way around.