“You can just throw those away,” I said, a casual tone in my voice. “They’re just fan mail.”
“Fan mail?” he said, opening one written on red paper.
I chuckled. He didn’t. After reading the first one, he opened one on yellow paper. “What is this crap?”
“I told you, fan mail.”
“Who would do this? I’m gonna find out and—”
“It’s no big deal, Dakota,” I said. “Honestly it doesn’t bother me. It’s kinda funny actually. To think—”
“There’s nothing funny about this. They’re threatening you.” His eyes were wide, and his mouth was pressed into a hard line.
“They don’t mean it. You should see the bathrooms.”
The girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms had derogatory statements about me all over.
“What?” he said, moving down the hall toward the nearest girls’ bathroom. By the time I caught up with him, he was reading all the comments on the stall doors. Many were about me. He’d gone in the girls’ bathroom for me. A thrill moved through my body.
“Dakota, it’s okay,” I said, moving toward him. He walked passed me to the paper towel dispenser and pulled a bunch of towels out, then wetted them in the sink. He scrubbed furiously on the first door.
“That won’t wash anything away.”
He kicked the door. “What’s wrong with people? This isn’t right. I’m going to see to it that it stops.”
“You think this is bad?” I said, grabbing his head and leading him out into the hallway. “This is nothing. There was this girl at my old school—Katie Lee. Now she was a real piece of work. She bullied me from the second I got into high school. It wasn’t pretty.”
He pulled me to the side of the hallway and stopped. “I can’t do anything about how people treated you in Colorado, but I intend to make this stop right here, right now. And I need you to understand that you shouldn’t put up with it. It’s not right. No one has the right to say these things about anyone. They are all lies. Do you understand this, Misha? You don’t deserve this. You should demand better treatment.”
It was hard not let an overwhelming love spread through me for Dakota at that moment. He was on fire and amazing. He was protecting my honor. He was my knight in shining armor. I pulled him to me and kissed him hard until a teacher broke us apart. I wasn’t even embarrassed we’d been caught. This guy was the real deal.
He went and complained to the office and then found the janitor and asked him to get rid of the garbage on the walls. My hero. He or someone from Madness kept an eye on my locker as much as possible, and the notes stopped coming before the end of the week.
Agent Wood and Agent Penrod told me several little updates from Division and even laughed with me when I told them about my fan mail. I was making progress. Slowly but surely. I wondered if I had time to get them to fully trust me before I was kidnapped. I was surprised it was taking so long.
***
I was supposed to be meeting the Avengers at the mall on Thursday to retrieve the tapes of our heist. So, when I woke up, I met with my agent parents to see if they could help me with some problems I could see with the heist.
“I’ll be with the Avengers at the mall after school. We’re breaking into mall security and the risk of getting arrested is high. They like to be chased, so they’re cutting it close. Too close in my opinion. They’ve discovered response time is five minutes. We need seven to be in the clear. I need you to give us that extra two minutes. I can’t get kidnapped if I’m jammed up. Could you help me out?”
Penrod’s eyes narrowed slightly, then returned to normal and she unpressed her lips. trying to hide some agitation.
Wood took a step back and put his hands on his hips. “When did you plan this little heist? A little warning would have been nice.”
“Sorry, I should have told you sooner.” Great, now I would be back in the little kid corner. “Could you please help me out?”
“We’ll try,” Agent Penrod said, letting her eyes flash. “There are other things we needed to be doing, though.”
Once we were all in position, Payden created our diversion. He was dressed all in purple and black spandex and began tumbling his way around. He began in the food court. People whistled and cat called and because he was so good, they also clapped and begged him for more. Sure enough, the security guards came rushing out of their office, and Anna went to work on the locks. She had to disable the electronic security and open the door with a lock picking kit. She was fast. I watched from the end of the hallway, hoping I wouldn’t have to use my womanly wiles against the two security goons.
Anna was in and out of the office in five minutes flat. The guards should have been making their way back, having received information that someone was breaking into their office, but the guards were nowhere in sight. It was funny to watch the three others in the hall with me wait around, hoping someone would come and chase them.
We all just walked out of the mall, no one on our tails. The whole adventure had been a letdown for the Avengers. No one even got close to catching them. Thank you, Agent Wood and Agent Penrod.
School let out early on Friday so that everyone could travel to Eugene for the football game. I liked this school. Excused absences for football games? That rocked. Madness caravanned there in three cars. I rode shotgun with Dakota. I couldn’t figure a way to get out of it. Tarran and Troy sat in the back seat. I loved the way my hair blew in the wind when we drove with the top off.
Madness all sat together in the bleachers, and I happened to be on the end. At half-time, someone tapped my shoulder from behind me. It was Frankie.
“We’re blowing this joint, Misha. There’s this awesome half-pipe about a mile from here. Want to go check it out with us?”
Before I could respond, Dakota stood and turned to Frankie. “Get out of here, Frankie. Misha’s with me.”
“She can choose for herself,” Frankie said. “You don’t own her.”
“I told you to leave, Frankie,” Dakota said, his teeth clenched together.
That’s when I saw Duncan, Payden, and Houston making their way up the bleachers. This wouldn’t be good. The rest of Madness must have clued into what was happening because the guys all stood up. I stood up when the Avengers were only ten feet from us and put my arms out as if to hold the two groups apart. “Look guys,” I said. “Like Frankie said, I can choose for myself and tonight, I want to stay here with Dakota. Thanks for the invite Frankie, but I’m going to pass.”
“Whatever, Misha,” she said, turning to go.
I thought Dakota would watch them until they disappeared. Instead, he trained his eyes on me, a look of complete disbelief on his face. “You’re going to pass? Have you hung out with them before or something? They acted like they know you.”
“Let’s sit down, Dakota,” I said. “Everyone’s staring.” And they were. I sat, and the rest of Madness, excluding Dakota, followed my lead. Dakota continued to stare hard at me and finally sat after what seemed like forever.
He took my hand from my lap and said, “Please tell me you haven’t been hanging out with those goons.”
I had the perfect lie. “Of course not,” I said, my insides trembling. “I know them from my classes at school, Dakota. They seem nice enough, especially Frankie. What do you have against them?” My throat constricted. That was a total lie.
He rubbed the top of my hand, looking down into my lap and then back up into my eyes. “Trust me on this one. They’re no good. Stay as far away from them as you can.” The fire in his green eyes slowly melted away as he pleaded with me. “Please. Promise me you won’t ever hang out with them.” He squeezed my hand.
While I knew I most definitely would be hanging out with them, I couldn’t let Dakota know that. He hated them. I’d no idea how much until now. “I promise,” I said, a hole seeming to open up in my heart with the lie.
He grabbed me into a hug. “Thank you, Misha. I just want you to be safe. Those idiots put their live
s in serious danger every day. Thank you for trusting me.” He pulled away, and our eyes met. He smiled, and so did I. When his lips met mine, the requisite fireworks exploded in my gut, and the Avengers were a distant memory.
That time the Roseburg Indians won by a field goal. It was a nail-biter.
On Saturday, the drama department was holding a music festival fundraiser to get a new sound system. We had to be there at six in the morning to set up. My assignment was with foods, and Dakota wasn’t happy about it. He was with the theater department.
“I’ll go ask Ms. Anderson if she’ll let you switch to theater. I’m sure she won’t mind.”
“It’s okay, Dakota, really,” I said. “I don’t mind working with the food. It will be fun.”
“I have no doubt about that,” he said. “I just don’t want you working with the partner they’ve assigned you to.”
My partner was Houston. Yesterday Dakota had made it crystal clear that I wasn’t to hang out with anyone from the Avengers, and Houston was an Avenger. Dakota quickly stalked up to Mrs. Anderson who was talking to Duncan. This could be bad.
“Could you move Misha over to the theater detail, Mrs. Anderson, we could really use her inside.” I wondered how long his diplomacy would hold out.
“I don’t think so,” Duncan chimed in. “We need her with the foods, both Tasha and Millie haven’t shown up yet, and they probably won’t.”
“Could we talk privately?” he asked Mrs. Anderson, his eyes ripping through Duncan.
“I’m sorry, Dakota, but Duncan needs her. You’ll have to make do without her.”
“But—,” Dakota said.
“No buts, Dakota,” Mrs. Anderson said. “My word is final.” She turned to talk to Duncan, and I saw Dakota narrow his eyes at him. He kicked at the ground and then turned to me. “Sorry,” he said. “You’re going to have to work with those idiot Avengers.” He pulled me to the side. “Don’t let them fill your head with nonsense. They are crazy, every one of them.”
“Dakota, thank you for looking out for me, but I feel I’m a good judge of character. I can figure it out.” It was hard to keep the bite out of my words.
His phone beeped.
“Crap,” he said. “I’ve got to go. Just don’t talk to anyone.”
I gave him an irritated look before turning and going to the food volunteer area.
I quickly found out what a big deal this was. There were twenty kids working the foods area of the festival. I would be rotating around each of the six booths throughout the day, starting in the cotton candy booth with Houston and ending with snow cones.
Houston was interesting to work with. The food and games required tickets. When certain kids came up and held out a ticket or two for the item they wanted, Houston would whisper to me to give them extra, citing reasons like they were poor, his mom is mean, her dad doesn’t even pay any attention to her. He would also give substandard product to certain people that he had an obvious contempt for. How could Dakota judge him so harshly? I also learned more about the kids in the Avengers, including the fact that Frankie’s dad was in an accident when she was five and lost his hearing. He’d gotten involved with several groups for deaf people and three years later, left Frankie and her mom for a beautiful deaf woman.
Duncan was the student leader in charge of all the food booths. He had amazing organizational skills and was efficient and effective. It was interesting to see him lead outside the daredevil group. He was responsible, and didn’t take any chances. It was like he was a different person. Another Avenger Dakota had no clue about. He was great.
There was also the games section with blow up slides, bouncy castles, and obstacle courses as well as a go-fish booth and ponies to ride.
Most of Madness and only Frankie from the Avengers were working in the theater. They would be doing improv, mini plays, and one-act shows. At only three bucks apiece it was a bargain. Dakota was in charge of that part of the fundraiser. He made sure the right people were in the right places at the right times. He was able to sneak out a few times to say hello and kiss me while giving scathing looks to every Avenger around me. I would have to educate him about how great the Avengers were.
I had no doubt they earned enough money for the lighting system plus some. There was nonstop business the whole eight hours we worked. I was bushed and thought everyone else would be, too, but I was wrong.
The Avengers had other plans. We broke into the cage that contained the driver’s ed. cars and took them on a joyride up the canyon. We built a fire, and they drank beer. I discovered all kinds of interesting information. The Avengers were started by Duncan and Anna. They found each other in juvie. Then they siphoned off several members of Madness who wanted a bit more of an edge to their activities. Maybe that’s why Dakota didn’t like them. They had taken several members away from his beloved group.
Lunden said, “Yeah, Duncan could go to juvie every day and it wouldn’t matter. His parents would get him out.”
“At least your parents pay attention to you,” Duncan said.
“I’d rather they leave me alone, like your parents.”
“It’s not fun being left completely alone. Besides, they expect me to be perfect.”
“You are perfect. You can’t fool anyone anymore. No one would ever believe you’re a part of our group.”
“That’s not true. My hair is purple if you hadn’t noticed.”
“You just need some bling on your skin man.”
“You know that’s not happening.”
“You got any ink, Misha?”
“Maybe. That’s for me to know and you not to.” I felt like being smart.
“Actually,” Frankie said, “She has ink behind her ear. I’ve seen it.”
I’d almost forgotten about the small bird tattoo Division had given me.
“Do you have it anywhere else?”
“You’ll never know.”
“Ooh! Challenge!”
Once the fire died down, I drove everyone back to the school. Neither of my agent parents were at the house. Had they been out observing me and just hadn’t come back yet?
I met Jeremy for a short meeting late at night. He filled me in on what he’d found out about Dakota. It matched what Dakota had told me about himself. It made me feel good that Jeremy might be leaning toward Ian as the leader, too.
“Dakota’s not out of the woods yet, Misha. I have a couple of guys still digging, seeing if they can discredit the things we uncovered on the first round of discovery. We’re hoping to have all the info by tomorrow. Did Agent Wood replace your tracker?”
“No. Why would he do that?”
“Didn’t they tell you yours was acting up? Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. We got the memo from headquarters earlier today.”
“Maybe they didn’t get the memo. They were gone when I got back from joyriding.”
“Regardless, I want that replaced tomorrow. No excuses.”
“All right.” Certainly they would have told me had they known. Where were they anyway?
I planned on telling Dakota that I couldn’t meet with him on Sunday, but he showed up at my house with brunch, so we spent a few hours watching old movies. I had still been in bed when he arrived and didn’t get the chance to confront my agent parents about where they’d been and get them to replace my tracker.
Dakota told me about recruiting Tarran and Mindy to Madness.
“So, you were just wanting to hook up with the girls?” I said.
“Truth be told, you’re not the first, but I hope you will be the last.” He grabbed my hand and kissed me.
A sweet thrill ran up my spine. My plan on distancing myself from him was not going well. I thought I might need to be a bit mean. Could I be? I had to be. “How can you be sure? We’ve only known each other for two weeks.”
“Are you mocking me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Stop it,” he said in a seductive voice. “It doesn’t become you.” He kiss
ed me.
Nothing would work on this guy without me having to be downright mean. He was too determined.
After he left, I walked into my agent parents’ office to tell them about my defective tracker and to remind them about the plan for tomorrow and not to expect me until late. They could replace it then. I stopped short when I saw them huddled together in front of the fax machine whispering.
“Did we get a fax?” I asked, remembering that Jeremy said he would be sending some information.
They turned around slowly and both said, “No,” a bit too quickly. While they hadn’t done anything obvious to make me believe they were keeping something from me, after they turned around, they seemed a touch too stiff. As if they noticed I had noticed, they both relaxed.
“Are you sure?” I said, moving in their direction. They moved away from the fax machine and let me by. There was no paper in there. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Agent Wood put a piece of paper in the basket on the desk.
“We’re sure.”
“Whatever,” I said, pretending not to care. I would look at that fax when I got home after school. I didn’t have time for this. Even if they destroyed it, I had learned at headquarters how to retrieve a copy. Why were they keeping things from me now? We were supposed to be a team.
“We did get an email from Jeremy, however,” Agent Wood said. “Your tracker isn’t working properly, and we need to replace it. And Jeremy had to go out of town to meet with one of his detectives. He won’t be back until tomorrow. He said to be safe on the climb and use ropes.”
“We’ll be there, watching,” Agent Penrod said.
I had a sudden attack of anger. “Did Jeremy tell you to come or something?” I tried to say it in a way that showed curiosity, nothing else. I don’t know why it got me upset that they would be watching. I never felt this way when Jeremy was there protecting me.
“He did. He doesn’t want you to go anywhere alone again. He thinks your kidnapping is imminent.”
The way he said it got my back up.
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