by Natalie Dean
“I’m innocent, Agent Whetmore,” he told her.
“How do you know my name?” She didn’t even care. She was looking for a way to get him busted. She could see her phone in her pants over by the dresser where she’d stripped down. Even dumber. She felt like a complete idiot wearing sheer sleepwear, her gun in the hand of the man she was tracking.
If Agent Stone could see her now, he’d break into his granite laugh. “Sure are fine and mighty, ain’t you?” he’d bark. “Some agent you are. Put your clothes on, woman, before you make a complete mockery of the force. Leaving your gun....”
“I knew who they would put on me,” he said. “I’ve seen you on TV before.”
“You wanna give me my gun?” she asked. It felt like one of those dreams where you’re naked in school. She felt hot color rising to her cheeks. It was a million times more embarrassing, and just a little bit exciting. But that was weird, so she tried to focus. It was like dragging a boulder through sand to focus and get herself together. First of all, the rain outside was jacking with her senses, so she kept catching glimpses of his aura all over the room, as though her head had a faulty wire. Second of all, none of her training had prepared her for the simultaneous firing of senses, making her hesitant to do or try anything.
“I can’t give you your gun back just yet.” He looked her up and down. “Sorry to startle you. I mean you no harm.”
“Really? ‘Cause you’re kinda pointing a gun at me.”
His motions were a little slowed as he lowered her gun. For the first time, she noticed the darkness under his eyes, and the tired way he stooped over. He was coping, but he was obviously tired.
“I don’t plan on hurting you,” he said. “Just… hear me out.” He met her gaze firmly. His eyes were gentle and strong, and sent Adrianna’s heart a-flutter for some idiotic reason. “Please.”
She crossed her arms to cover her chest. It helped a little. She still felt her cheeks burning, but it was starting to fade as the embarrassment of the situation sunk in.
So much for instilling a sense of dominance, she thought to herself. “Sure,” she said out loud. “I’m your captive audience.” She tried to fake a confident smile and failed miserably. She had always been bad at acting. She had wanted to either be an actor or an FBI agent as a kid. After several horrible performances, she’d turned to the FBI.
He met her eyes and dropped into a cheap chair by the mobile air conditioner. “It’s a long story. You might wanna get comfortable.”
Sure. Get comfortable. She tried and, once again, failed.
“Tell me what you think I did,” he said. Oddly, he said it like a request, not like an order. He certainly could have just ordered her to talk. The rain was starting to slow, but she still couldn’t pick up any signs of guilt in his aura.
“You killed George Ortiz,” she said. “Shot him at his own house. You then ran away, and the FBI put me on you. Fast forward to here.”
He frowned. “How’d you even find me?’
“Can’t explain it,” she said, like she’d told people half a million times before. “Just a gut feeling.”
“You… tracked me down into the middle of nowhere… on a gut feeling?”
“Um… yes.”
“Wow. I’m impressed.”
“Weren’t you trying to prove you were innocent or something?”
He smiled faintly, but his exhaustion spilled through. “Right. Thanks. I’m innocent. I didn’t kill George. He was my friend.”
“Oh,” she said sarcastically. “Great! I guess I’ll just call up HQ and tell them that you’re totally innocent. I’m sure it’ll hold up in court.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“No,” she said. “I do believe you.” Oddly, she was telling the truth. She still couldn’t pick up any trails of guilt from murder on his aura. Her signal was still jacked up with the rain. Admittedly, it was getting better. “It doesn’t matter whether I believe you or not. I’m still supposed to bring you in. The courts decide your guilt. And believe it or not? If you run from me, it really doesn’t help your case.”
“I’m not running from you.”
“Oh, you just happened to go out for a random vacation across the country right after you were accused of murder?”
“It’s not like that. Someone is trying to kill me.”
“Let me just take you in. Give me my gun and I’ll take you in,” she assured. “The FBI will keep you safe.”
“Not from him.”
It was getting a little ridiculous. She was tired of sitting on the bed, half naked, while he had her gun. “Give me my gun,” she said. “And we can work this out.”
“Can’t do that.”
“Give me my gun, please?”
“No.”
“Pretty please?”
“The physical appearance of the please doesn’t matter,” he said. Just for a second, his real side shined through—a gentle, funny heart. “It appears that we’re at an impasse, Agent Whetmore. You cannot take the gun, and I cannot give it to you.”
“I don’t really see it that way,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because….” She’d been reaching for her spare gun on her leg the whole time. He hadn’t seen it. Not too many people sleep with a gun on their leg, and when he’d broken in, he hadn’t seen her leg. It had been covered by a sheet. Finally, she got ahold of it and had it up before he could blink.
She squeezed the trigger once, hard. Bang! The bullet streaked into his leg. It wasn’t bad. He wouldn’t die. The small-caliber bullet would hurt, but there was no chance that it would cause any bad damage.
He made a strangled yelp and grabbed at his leg. Partly too startled to move, he tumbled to the ground.
Before he could pick up her chrome handgun from the floor where he’d dropped it accidentally, she scooped it up.
“You shot me!”
“Good observation. You’ll be fine. I’ll patch you up. Room service will be here shortly.”
Sure enough, after about fifteen seconds of her standing over him, gun in hand, the door burst open with two frightened hotel employees rushing in. “What happened?” yelled one, obviously not well trained for such scenarios. “Oh god! Oh god!”
“Calm down,” she said. “My name is Agent Adrianna Whetmore, and I work for the FBI.” She reached to her wallet and handed it to them. Inside was her license card, which really doesn’t mean that you can shoot someone in public and get away with it, but most people didn’t question it. They just complied.
“Ohhh,” one said, staring down at the red strain growing on The Celtic’s thigh. “C-can we… can we help you?”
“I think you should probably get some bandages before he loses too much blood,” she said calmly. “I know how to apply them.”
“You shot me!” contributed The Celtic.
She didn’t really know what to do. She’d bagged criminals before—lots of times, in fact—but she’d never had to worry about what she was wearing. Keeping her gun trained on him in case he tried anything, she slipped into her clothes.
“I’m an innocent man,” The Celtic urged. “He was hunting me! I had to get out before he hurt my daughter!”
“Who is the guy you keep talking about?” she asked. The employees returned with arms full of bandages, like they were trying to patch a large dam, not patch a man who had been shot in the leg.
“I don’t know his real name. He goes by The Owl.”
“Boy, you guys sure like your names.”
“The Owl isn’t a fighter. He’s a broker.” He winced. The Celtic was tough. A lot of guys would have been crying. That was the first evidence she’d seen that he even felt the wound. She supposed you really didn’t get into professional fighting without being able to ignore some pain. “George and I backed out of a deal with him. He killed George. He was coming for me.”
“He can’t get you if you’re with us.”
“He will in prison; he’s got guys everywhere.”
She didn’t have an answer for him, so she set to fixing up his leg. It was easy. She could have done it in her sleep. The bullet had just clipped his thigh. It hadn’t stuck in his leg, which is when it would have gotten him into real trouble. He was strong. His leg was a veritable sculpture, like one of the ones from ancient Greece, with rippling musculature.
“Sorry, but I had to shoot you,” she told him.
“Yeah,” he muttered. He had that look in his eye that made her nervous. He wasn’t going to be easy to contain. A professional fighter with the same knowledge of police work that she had. Great.
“Can you stand up?”
He stood up. Okay, maybe she was wrong. He was taller than her. Not by a lot, but he was. “I’ve been through worse.”
Mental note: The Celtic could apparently take a gunshot to the leg and feel fine a moment later. Not a guy she wanted to mess with too much.
“You should know that he’s going to kill me before I testify,” he told her as she steered him towards her car.
“I’ll protect you.”
He snorted in sad amusement. “There was a reason I was running. I suggest you drive quickly.”
She was starting to get a better sense of the aura of her surroundings as the rain cleared even more. There was something around them, some dark aura, but she couldn’t quite get a fix on it. Somewhere, though, something was setting her mental alarm off like crazy. As she led him out to her car, the sense exploded. Someone was watching them.
She twisted. There, in the parking lot, was the biker from earlier, still with his helmet on. He was just in the very corner, hidden under the shade thrown by the building itself. Silently, he bowed his head just the smallest bit, as if to say I see you.
She shook it off. When she shut the door on The Celtic, he was still watching.
She had him in the passenger seat. She didn’t want him behind her. Even handcuffed, she wasn’t willing to give him the opportunity. She figured that he would be just fine in the backseat, but if she pegged him wrong, it wasn’t too hard to believe that he could wrap the chain of the cuffs around her throat and strangle her.
Did she peg him as the kind of guy that would do that? No.
But if she was wrong?
Not something she wanted to confront in the middle of driving.
“Is your gun loaded?” he asked.
“Yup.”
“Good,” he said. It was funny. Most of the times people said that, they were trying to be threatening. Not him. He was almost saying it like he was relieved that it might come in handy.
The drive went about as well as it could have. He was mostly silent, staring at the pine trees that zipped past the car window. Not even once did he look like he might consider breaking out, but he looked her over once or twice. It was a different sort of look: mildly interested, but mostly curious.
“What have you done with my daughter?” he finally said. His voice was so soft that she at first didn’t even register that he was speaking to her. His voice was cool to listen to—like a cello being gently stroked. Strong, deep, and soothing.
“She’s safe,” Adrianna said. “She’s back at the station.”
“Is she scared?”
“No.” It was true. The little girl was having the time of her life running around the agency. She had absolutely no idea that her father was a wanted criminal. She just knew that there were lots of places to explore. The agency had their hands full keeping her contained.
He nodded solemnly. “Does she know?’
“Not really.”
“Is she being cared for?”
“By our best.”
He seemed satisfied with that answer, so he just leaned back up against the seat. “I’m innocent.”
“Yeah, you said that.”
“I mean it.”
“I’m sure you do.”
She zoned back to the biker back at the hotel. She had no doubt he was following her. She also had no doubt that he was connected to The Celtic somehow. At first she’d assumed he was just an interested party trying to make a statement about the FBI (it happened surprisingly often). People would figure out who agents working for the FBI were and would heckle them. Sometimes it was just staring from across the street. Other times it was full protests. Yet other times, they were out for blood.
But the more she thought about it, the less confident she was that the biker was just an ordinary guy. He was too interested, too prepared. She’d seen his aura. Normally, protesters’ auras were brightly colored—brilliant red, usually. They were angry, and their auras showed it. The Celtic’s aura was a cool blue with little streaks of orange; he was calm. Anxious, but calm.
The biker, conversely, had a nearly entirely black aura. She’d only seen a couple of them. Both were serial killers that she’d tracked down. He was sociopathic to be sure, and dangerously violent to boot.
Sometimes her powers were a blessing. Other times… they were awful. She knew that guy was after her. She knew he meant her harm. But she couldn’t go up and just confront him based off that. There were laws, and she couldn’t break them just because she had a feeling about him. She was never wrong, but she still couldn’t do whatever she wanted.
Suddenly, as they were cruising along yet another slow turn, her danger sense went off.
A flood of adrenaline pounded through her veins. She felt herself getting ready to fight or run. Something, no doubt about it, was kicking on her adrenaline drive.
She slammed on the brake and stopped off the side of the road fast enough to whack the Celtic’s forehead against the dashboard.
“Ow!”
“Get out,” she commanded. “Now!’
“What? No.” He touched his nose and brought his fingers away red. “I think you broke my nose.”
“Get out!”
She reared up the front of her gun and pointed it at him. Her danger sense was going nuts. Something was about to happen. He clambered out of the car, hands still shackled. Keeping the gun pointed at him, she yelled for him to run. He didn’t question her this time. Then Adrianna took off running too.
And then the bomb planted in the engine of the car exploded.
The funny thing about explosions that Adrianna had learned over a couple of them was that they were loud. Really, really loud. As close as she was, the sound hit her like a tidal wave, tossing her off her feet like a ragdoll.
She slammed into the moss beside the road. She screamed in pain, clutching her ears. It felt like a bus had run her over, stopped, reversed, backed up over her, and then drove forward over her again. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t hear. The flaming car was just an orange blue.
She let out a scream of curses, some of which were real and others of which she came up with right then in a moment of inspiration, fueled by pain and shock.
A blur stumbled away. A pale one, with a hint of blue.
The Celtic was making an escape.
She tried to get to her feet and stumbled. She hugged her stomach, groaning. She was a tough gal, but she’d still been close to the car when what she could only assume was a planted explosive had detonated. Hardened soldiers had been killed by less. She was amazed she was even alive. The Celtic had been near enough to get some of the blast, but he’d gotten farther away than her.
Now the blur of The Celtic grew closer to her. Not good. She fumbled for her gun, but she couldn’t see it. Her head felt like someone had put it in a blender. His boot cleared in her vision, right by her skull.
She heard The Celtic say something. She couldn’t pick out most of what he was saying, but her brain kicked in enough to read his lips.
Are you okay?
She was pretty sure that she said something back, but she couldn’t even hear that. The world was the quietest that it had ever been. She could have unloaded her handgun right next to her ear and wouldn’t have heard a thing.
The Celtic put his shackled hands around her forearms and gently pulled her to her f
eet. She was still pretty well out of it, but he was still speaking to her. She wasn’t picking up any of it.
Together, they hobbled away from the burning hulk. As Adrianna’s vision cleared, it became obvious that he hadn’t come away without a scratch. Something—a piece of the door, probably—had gouged a cut over the top of his right eye. It wasn’t gruesome, he would be fine, but head wounds tended to bleed quite a bit. Both of them were limping, and Adrianna was relatively sure she’d broken a rib or two. Something had clocked her in the ribs with a tremendous amount of force right after the blast.
She inhaled and it hurt. Yup. She’d had enough broken ribs throughout the years to recognize one.
“That could’ve gone better,” she coughed finally. She wasn’t even ready yet to deal with the fact that he had helped her. In a minute, she could think about the implications of him stopping to protect her instead of running while she was down, but right then, it took up all her mental strength to keep upright.
“Yup,” he said, and spit. She was starting to pick up his voice again. She spotted a deep, red liquid seeping from his ears. She suspected her own ears had sustained some damage. “How’d you know?”
“Just a hunch.”
He gave her a funny look. “You have some impressive hunches.”
“Thanks.”
Adrianna knew they had to get out of dodge before whoever planted the bomb showed up to see if it had worked, but all she wanted to do was curl up on a couch somewhere and sleep for eight to ten hours. She forced herself to wake up and snap out of it.
“We gotta get out of here,” she heard herself say. The shock was starting to wear off. She could at least think, which was a huge step up from earlier, when her thought processes capped out at realizing that the fire was warm. She patted her jeans. No phone. She assumed that it had gone up in flames with the car.
They started off deeper into the woods. Most folks would walk along the road, but anyone coming to clean up would search the road first. If that biker was alone—and she felt confident that he wasn’t—she might be able to handle them. If he had friends, they were in some big trouble. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t checked for bombs. She’d known the biker was trouble. She knew someone was out for her, and, if she trusted The Celtic, someone was after him too. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but for this whole case she’d been just one step behind. Rare, for her.