I couldn’t have stopped myself from hugging him if I’d wanted to.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” he whispered, hugging me back.
“Me, too,” I said.
“I’m going to find those guys, Snow.”
“I know.”
“Then I’m going to beat the shit out of them.”
Apparently, Min-Hee wasn’t the only one with some repressed rage. I gave him one last squeeze before pulling away. “You ready to go down?”
“After you,” he said, grabbing Min’s hand, and the three of us walked into the gym together.
The huge Welcome Home banner was over the top—but that was nothing to the cake. I was guessing the Strykers were responsible because Omma could never have afforded a four-tier monster like that. Colorful balloons were everywhere. They’d set out tables filled with some of my favorite foods, the others I assumed were Ash’s. Music filled the gym, not loud enough to cover conversation, but it was Koi DJ’ing, so it wasn’t exactly quiet. He waved at me, and I waved back.
There were a ton of people here. I recognized a lot of them from The Academy and CCDS. I even spied a few news crews, hanging off to the side. Ash’s dad was still the forerunner in the election even with all the drama surrounding his candidacy. Of course, they didn’t know the whole story. According to Omma, the Strykers had kept our kidnapping a secret. Ash and his parents were talking with my mom by the punch bowl on the other side of the gym. But once he saw me, Ash’s eyes lit, and he started making his way over.
Before he could reach us, though, someone blocked my view.
“Hello, Snow.”
I looked up. “Hey, Agent Evers. How’s it going?”
He was just as I remembered: stiff posture, military haircut and watchful eyes. When he just stood there, staring, it started to get a little weird. I felt the need to speak.
“I hear that you were out looking for us,” I said. “Thank you for that.”
He nodded. “I’m glad to see you and Mr. Stryker made it home.”
Another pause.
“It was good of you to stick with him, even when you weren’t the one they were after.”
I shrugged. “What else was I supposed to do?”
“You could’ve done a lot of things.”
“I wasn’t going to leave him there alone.”
His sharp eyes drilled holes into mine. “Loyalty is very important—don’t you think?”
Okay, this had officially left weird behind and entered What-The-Hell territory.
“I do,” I said slowly.
Another curt nod. “Well then. I apologize for keeping you from your party.”
As Agent Evers left, there was something funny about his walk. It was nearly unnoticeable, but since I was watching him, I detected a slight limp. When had that happened? He’d always moved so smoothly, almost with lethal grace. Ash joined us a second later, but I was still watching Agent Evers as he joined the rest of his men.
Something tightened in my gut.
“Snow?” Ash’s gaze followed mine. “Are you…holy shit.”
And that was when I knew it wasn’t just me.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” I asked just to be sure.
“Yeah,” Ash said through gritted teeth, “I’m seeing it.”
“What?” Bae Bae asked, and at the same time, Min said, “Are you okay, Snow?”
No, I wasn’t. If Ash hadn’t seen it, too, I might’ve dismissed it as paranoia. But we couldn’t both be wrong. Agent Evers had rejoined the other members of the Strykers’ security team. There were five, including his brother, Agent Smith. And they were all wearing black suits.
Five guys. Wearing all black. I could easily picture them in black ski masks. And then there was Agent Evers with his limping right leg.
The same kneecap I’d busted on the gunman.
It could’ve been a coincidence. I even thought it might be until Agent Smith, while laughing at one of the other guy’s jokes, turned to face us—and I saw the slash in his cheek. My stomach twisted again. The driver. His eyes met mine and didn’t hold the slightest remorse. Agent Smith didn’t even flinch just held his glass up to me in salute.
“Son of a bitch,” Ash breathed. His anger was obvious; he was nearly shaking with it. “It’s them.”
I shook my head. “We don’t know that.”
“Come on, Snow, yes we do. It’s them.”
“Who?” Bae Bae said.
“The assholes that kidnapped us,” Ash spat.
“Where?” Min-Hee asked, eyes narrowing on the security team. “You mean your agents? My God, are you sure?”
“No,” I said because I didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t quite make that leap, even if my eyes and my gut were screaming, Yes! “We can’t know that. There’s no proof. We’ve got no proof.”
Bae Bae’s face had closed down. “Are you telling me you don’t think it’s them?”
“Not exactly.”
“That’s a yes,” Ash said.
“Good enough for me,” Bae Bae said, and they started stalking their way toward the five men who I was almost certain had kidnapped us, left a dead rat on the Strykers’ doorstep, sent Ash’s father those threats. It was the almost that bugged me.
I held Ash back, and Min did the same to Bae Bae.
“Snow?” she said, and I knew what she was asking.
“I don’t know…” But I was pretty sure. I thought back to how much pleasure the driver had taken in punching me. “I think so, but—”
“But what?” Ash stared at me incredulous. “You think Evers just happened to develop a limp? You think Smith just happened to get that gash on his cheek in the exact same place as the guy who hit you?”
“He hit you?” Min’s face had gone cold, and now it was Bae Bae’s turn to hold her back. “I’ll cut his balls off and feed them to him.”
I shook my head again. “But there’s no proo—”
“Snow!”
Sadie skidded to halt in front of us, red-faced and out of breath. Her hair was even wilder than usual. She kept trying to speak but ended up doubled over instead. For a second there, I was seriously afraid she’d fall over.
“Sadie, are you okay?” Ash asked.
“Yeah,” Sadie gasped. Taking another gulping breath, she said, “I looked at…the tapes.”
I raised my eyebrows. “And? Did you find something?”
She nodded so hard I put a hand on her back to steady her.
“Holy smokes,” she said, straightening after a second. “You are never going to believe this. It took Big Tim and Little Tim a while to crack the security codes, hours and hours, but once we did, it was all there.”
“What was?”
“The tapes,” she said, “the real tapes. The ones without time gaps or missing images, the whole enchilada.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Are you saying…do you have evidence?”
“Snow, I’ve got so much evidence the truth is indisputable.” Sadie patted the square in her hands which I now saw was a laptop. “I’ve got his face in nearly every shot. That agent of yours is a piece of work, Ash. The idiot was too arrogant to delete the original files.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“It’s all right here,” she said.
Ash faced me, eyebrows raised. “That good enough for you?”
I nodded.
It was more than enough.
CHAPTER 22: ASH
Snow was on the warpath.
Instead of waiting for me and Bae Bae, she led the charge toward my family’s two-faced security team. Jesus, how long had they hated us? They’d been playing us the entire time, so it must’ve been a while. Smith grinned when we stopped in front of them, and I saw red.
“Hey, I—”
Snow’s fist flew before I could blink. Smith stumbled back, blood dripping from the scratch on his cheek, now reopened. Good.
“What the hell?” he sputtered.
I kicked his traitorou
s ass in the stomach before he could say more.
“You hit her, I hit you,” I said.
Smith was shaking his head. “What are you talking about, man? She just hauled off and hit me!”
“Cut the bull, Smith. We know it was you.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” he said.
Snow looked like she wanted to hit him again. I knew I did. “How could you betray him like this?” Snow said. “You were behind everything. You were supposed to protect him.”
“Behind what? I didn’t do anything.”
Evers tried to help Smith up, but he shrugged him off. My father’s oldest friend stared back at me, a resigned look in his eyes. But Smith…he was too much of a coward to admit the truth. The music had cut off after the first punch. We’d drawn everyone’s attention by now. The guests in the gym had surrounded us—including my parents.
“What’s this about, Ash?” Dad said, coming to stand next to me.
I shook my head in disgust. “They did it, Dad. The threats, the kidnapping, all of it.”
“You’re crazy,” Smith laughed, pointing from me to Snow. “Your girlfriend here has been filling your head with lies from day one. And you just let her do it.”
“Point that finger at her again,” Bae Bae growled, “and I’ll rip it off.”
I had to admit. The guy was starting to grow on me.
“Snow-Soon, please explain,” her mom said. Not like she didn’t believe it, but like she wanted to hear Snow’s side of things. Her eyes never left Smith.
Snow nodded, and I watched as she visibly tamped down her anger. Her breathing slowed, her body relaxed. It was like she’d bottled it up, saving it for later. I wished I could do that.
“These agents are the ones who kidnapped us,” she said.
“That’s ridiculous,” Smith said, but my ninja girl just kept going.
“They’re also responsible for the threats delivered to Mr. Stryker.”
“Mrs. C, you’re not seriously listening to this crap?”
My mother’s eyes were hard, but she nodded. “Go ahead, Snow. Tell us why you think it was them.”
Ignoring Smith’s scoff, Snow said, “I recognized the injuries. When Ash and I were first taken, I knocked one of the men into a tree, and it split his cheek open along the bone.”
“Agent Smith?” Every eye in the place was now on Smith’s bloody cheek. Mom wasn’t the only one whose eyes had narrowed. “What happened to your face?”
“I can’t believe you’re taking her word over mine,” he said.
“Agent Smith?”
“I fell, alright? I was running on the treadmill, and I clipped my head on the track.”
Snow frowned. “And then, I saw that Agent Evers had a limp. I kicked out the right kneecap of the gunman when we escaped.”
“My brother was injured in the war.” Smith looked to Evers for support. “It acts up every now and then. Isn’t that right, Henry?”
Evers was silent as Smith laughed again.
“You call that proof?” he said and looked around. “That’s nothing.”
Snow titled her chin at Evers. “I also sliced up his arm pretty bad. The wound should be on the left forearm.”
“Henry?” My father looked like he was going to be sick.
Evers blinked. “Yes, sir.”
“Could you lift your left sleeve for us, please?”
It all happened in slow motion.
Agent Evers, my father’s number one security guard. Henry, my dad’s oldest friend, removed his jacket, unbuttoned his cuff, and rolled up his shirt like a man condemned. The bandage was large and tinged red. Snow hadn’t been lying. The cut must’ve been deep for there still to be that much blood. Even though the gun hadn’t come through for us, that injury was as good as a flashing guilty sign.
“He cut it last night while he was making dinner,” Smith all but yelled. “This is bullshit. Mr. Stryker, I can’t believe you’re going to just sit there and let her accuse us. Everything here can be explained. If we did all these things”—he held out his palms—”where’s the proof?”
“Right here,” Sadie said and propped open her laptop, hit a few keys and turned the screen toward us. “Watch it and weep, dirtbag.”
The video was actually a compilation. Sadie had put the important clips together so they ran one after the other: Agent Smith hand-delivering the written threats on different occasions, each dated and time stamped. By the tenth clip, Smith had gone pale.
“Where did you get this?” he breathed.
“From your computer,” she said.
“But the codes are encrypted. My system’s impenetrable.”
“Nearly.” Sadie smiled. “But not impossible to hack.”
Smith cursed under his breath, and my eyes went back to the screen.
Everyone watched as Evers set the rat on our doorstep then stepped inside like nothing had happened, minutes before Snow and Mrs. Lee walked up. My dad was shaking his head, a lost look on his face.
“But why, Henry?” he said. “I don’t understand.”
“Why?” Agent Evers’s face was always rigid, but as I watched, it shifted into something cold, harsh. “Why, Wes? You really have the audacity to ask me that?”
Dad looked shocked. Mom and I were speechless, too. I didn’t think we’d ever heard him talk like that. But Smith couldn’t stay silent.
“My brother saved your life,” he hissed. “Without him you wouldn’t even be here.”
“I know that,” Dad whispered.
“Then why’d you let us go? When you knew we needed the money, when you knew we were struggling, why’d you release us from our contract? Best friend, my ass.”
“Smith,” Evers said, but that didn’t stop him. The man was just getting started.
“Do you know,” he said, “how embarrassing it was to have a client, not just any client, but a family friend, release our company from one of its only high profile jobs? We worked our asses off for you people, and that’s how you repaid us.”
Mom shook her head. “But Wesley was getting out of the law business. We didn’t need your protection anymore.”
And that’s when it all fell into place.
“That’s why you made the letters,” I said. “To keep us scared, so we’d still need you.”
Smith stared at me a moment, and I saw a hatred there I’d never seen before. As much as he’d pretended to be my friend, I knew then it was never true. You couldn’t be friends with someone you saw as the enemy.
“You’re damn right,” he said, stepping closer. “And I’d do it again if that meant we got to feed ourselves every night.”
“And Evers?” I asked.
“Oh, he had no idea.” Smith patted his brother on the back, and Evers stayed silent. “The threats were all my idea. After all, that was why your dad brought us on in the first place, to keep all those hardened criminals off your doorstep. Henry didn’t know it was me—at first. But then, Mrs. C had to go off and hire someone else, and he caught me delivering the letters. When I had to up the number of threats per day, it got a little harder to hide the truth from him.”
I shook my head, looked at Evers. “Why’d you let it continue?”
And when Evers looked up his eyes looked haunted. “He’s my brother,” was all he said.
“And you took my son,” Mom said back.
“We always intended to release him.”
“Did you?” Her eyes went flat. “In what, a few weeks after you’d gotten more money?”
Evers flinched, and I knew what was coming.
“That was my idea as well.” Smith smirked, on a roll now that there was no way to pretend he was innocent. “Pretty clever, huh? It would’ve been like a constant payday, and you know that we would never really hurt Ash.” His smirk fell as his eyes went to Snow. “But then she had to go and ruin everything.”
“Why didn’t you just ask me for money?” Dad asked, speaking to Evers alone. “Good God, Henr
y, you know I would’ve given it to you in a heartbeat.”
“I’d never ask you for money,” he said.
“Why not? You’re my best friend.”
“Friends don’t turn their back on each other in their hour of need.”
“But they go along with their brother’s crazy schemes?”
Evers stared at Dad in that steady way of his. “I’ve protected you most of my life. As a soldier, as a friend, as a security guard, but you never did the same for me. When it came down to it, you paid all that loyalty back with betrayal.”
Dad shook his head.
“We haven’t been friends for a while,” he said.
“But—”
Evers turned away, and I watched my father’s face crumple.
“Well,” Mom said, “now that it’s all out there, I think it’s time you turned yourselves in.”
“What?” Smith said as Evers nodded. The rest of the agents looked ready for a fight, and I hoped, prayed, they tried to make a move. I was so ready.
“You heard me. I’m calling the police.”
Smith shook his head, went for his gun. “I’m not going to prison.”
And then all hell broke loose.
Jesus, it was magnificent. The scene was like something out of an action movie on crack: Min-Hee pulling on one of the agent’s hair as two other Elite members forced him to the ground; Bae Bae clothesline-ing another agent; me using the leg sweep I’d seen Snow use so many times on another; Snow flipping the same guy when he got back up and tried to run.
But the main attraction was the showdown between Mrs. Lee and Agent Smith.
I knew he didn’t stand a chance. He probably knew it, too. But like the idiot he was and always had been, Smith tried to fight her anyway. And Mrs. Lee went off on him like a stick of dynamite.
She caught his arm and twisted, disarming him like it was child’s play. Two quick elbows to the face, a jab to the throat, and when Smith was left standing there dazed and bleeding, she brought out the big guns. Without a sound, Mrs. Lee took a running start, scaled his taller frame, got her legs around his neck, swung around once—literally defying gravity—and flipped him to the ground in a move I’d only seen Black Widow do in The Avengers.
It was sweeeeet.
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