Release Me If You Can

by Christina C Jones

  “Whatcha’ want me to say, Mimi?” he asked after a heavy sigh, swiveling his chair to face her. “I told ya’ everything I knew when we got here.”

  “I want you to tell me how you’re feeling… you know, like friends do.”

  Quentin shook his head. “I don’t got time for this shit.”

  He started to turn his chair back around, but Naomi caught it by the arms, stopping his rotation.

  “Uh-uh,” she said, twisting him right back to his position facing her. “Don’t shut me out right now. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  Quentin lifted an eyebrow at her, and when he did nothing else in terms of a response, she dropped her head into her hands. After a short groan, she sat up, tossing her hair back from her face.

  “Okay… I’ll start it off: I believe her.”

  Sucking his teeth, Quentin leaned back in his chair. “Of course you do. All anybody’s gotta do is sell you a sob story about Wolfe, and you’re ready to play superhero. Hey, cut that shit out!” he exclaimed, dodging the half-hearted kick Naomi aimed at his calf.

  “You cut the shit out. Don’t act like I’m out here being a vigilante. My focus has always been singular — still is.” She paused to scowl for a long moment before she rolled her eyes and continued. “Anyway, I believe her because she’s telling the truth, not because I’m being conned.”

  “How ya’ know it’s the truth?”

  Naomi smiled. “Because I looked her in the eyes while I had a gun pressed to her forehead. People tend to tell you the truth when you do that.”

  “What? She’s supposed to be resting, they had to do surgery to close her shoulder up.”

  “So I woke her up.”

  “She took a bullet.”

  Naomi shrugged. “It went straight through. She’ll be fine in a few months.”

  “Not the point, Mimi.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Naomi leaned forward in her chair, tipping her head to the side. “The point is that I believe her. And I want to help her.”

  “With what?”

  “Umm… getting her daughter back?”

  With a huff, Quentin propped his hands behind his head against the back of the chair, then turned his gaze back to Naomi. “Man… who says her daughter was even really kidnapped? Could be bullshitting us, usin’ sympathy as leverage.”

  “She could, yes. But I don’t think she is, Q. I think she’s another one of Wolfe’s victims, and he’s proving himself to be just as disgusting as we all thought, by using his own child to manipulate Renata into committing a crime. Come on, Quentin… if this was reversed, would you have said anything, if it meant your child was in danger?”

  “She’d already reached out!” Quentin sat up again, and scrubbed a hand over his face. “As painted_pixel, she’d already involved me. Hadn’t given me the details, but she’d told me her kid was taken from her. That’s what had my head fucked up on the Paris job, and a few before that! Tryna’ to figure out how to help my friend. You can’t convince me she thought she was alone in this. We were on the same damn side. She had me.”

  Naomi shook her head, then took Quentin’s hands in hers. “She thought she had you. For two seconds, can you look at this from her eyes? She reaches out to her hacker friend, who she’s known for years for help with her daughter. Okay, that’s established. But then, as part of her job, she actually runs into the man on the other side of the screen. Works with him. Finds out that he works for the federal government, that he’s on a Special Ops team specifically geared against the man who has her child… Is this a setup, or some sort of test? And even if it’s not… is he being watched? Is Wolfe going to assume the whole plan is coming out? Is he gonna send someone to “clean it up”? I don’t blame her for keeping her mouth shut. I would have too.”

  Quentin propped his elbows on his knees, then dropped his head into his hands. He guessed she had a point, but still… it just didn’t sit well with him. Renata knowing who he was and not saying anything, the fact that she’d — under duress or not — given out information that compromised their team, and what maybe bothered him most… how the hell had she ended up in a relationship with Damien Wolfe?

  He knew women considered Wolfe appealing, if rich, handsome, and scum of the earth was your type. There wasn’t a single doubt in Quentin’s mind that Wolfe was willing, capable of, and probably well experienced in talking the fairer sex out of their panties, grown women and younger ones alike. But Renata seemed so much… smarter than that, than falling for the charm of a snake. That… he just couldn’t wrap his head around.

  “Just… can you just trust me on this, Q?”

  When Quentin looked up, Naomi had her arms folded across her chest, the bright white of her bandaged wrists reminding him she’d been through an ordeal too, not even two days ago.

  Because of Renata.

  “Why, Naomi? Why should I trust her just because you do, when she’s the reason you almost got kidnapped, killed, whatever they were planning to do? When my ass almost got killed a few hours ago because of some lunatic after her. Huh?”

  Naomi held up a finger. “First of all, what happened to me isn’t her fault. If it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else. They wanted to get to me, so they made it happen, end of story. We should have been better prepared. Second… how do you know they weren’t after you? Could have followed you to her place, followed you two out… who knows?”

  Quentin scoffed. “Bracque.”

  “Hey! Don’t you slip into patois on me. It’s not crazy. I can think of plenty of people who would want you dead. The Russians, for when you kept replacing their Russian vodka with French. The Japanese, for that time you turned off the internet for the entire city of Tokyo. The —”

  “I get it,” he said, groaning as he sat back once more in his chair. “So… trust you, even if I don’t trust her, right?”

  Naomi nodded. “Right. Just like I trusted you, and didn’t kill your ass over that Paris job. You expected my trust then — without even asking, or informing me — because you believed in her. I think you can do the same for me now.”

  With a heavy sigh, Quentin ran his tongue over his teeth, then reluctantly nodded. “So… okay. We’ve still got stuff to figure out though. Who came after you, who came after Renata,” — Naomi lifted an eyebrow— “Or me,” he corrected. “And we have to figure out what to do about Royale, because we know her ass is crazy, how to still manage taking down Wolfe…”

  “And how to get my little cousin back. Taylor is family. Non-psycho killer crime boss family. I need her.”

  Quentin bit his tongue instead of letting out his snarky response, opting instead for another question. “Okay… what if we trust her… let her in…. and find out she’s been lying… find out she’s really not on the same side?”

  Naomi smiled, then stood from her chair. “Then, cher… you get to be the one to pull the trigger.”

  — & —

  Quentin snatched off his headphones and tossed them onto the tabletop beside his keyboard. Raising his hands to his face, he pinched the bridge of his nose, pressing hard to offset the mounting pressure of a headache. He sat back in his chair, closing his eyes to shut out the unnatural glow of the computer screen in the dark.

  An hour had gone by since Naomi returned to bed, and the basement was quiet. Everyone was back upstairs, except for him, and presumably, Renata. Digging into her background hadn’t proven itself the most effective means of getting answers about her. He had discovered that someone — presumably Damien Wolfe — had been depositing hefty checks into Renata’s bank account for years. But… looking at her, you’d never know she had an account with a balance in the high hundreds of thousands.

  As far as he could tell, for the last fourteen years, she’d lived modestly. Lived in middle class neighborhoods, drove a regular car, and paid regularly into her retirement accounts. There was nothing to suggest she was taking advantage of any perks from being the mother of Damien Wolfe’s child. In fact… it didn�
�t look like she touched the money at all, other than moving it into an account named simply “Taylor”.

  That realization, while it did increase the likelihood that she was telling the truth, did nothing to soothe the sense of anger and betrayal he felt. She was being honest? Fine. The fact remained that after everything he’d done for her over the years, she hadn’t trusted him with this. She only divulged it because she had to.

  A noise from the hall pulled him from his thoughts, and he straightened up in his chair, listening again before getting up to investigate. The sound led him to Renata’s room, and he hesitated at the door, taking a deep breath before he pushed it open.

  “The hell?!”

  Renata was on the floor, sitting back on her knees, eyes closed as tears streamed down her face. At the sound of Quentin’s voice, she opened them, and the distant, dazed look in her eyes told him whatever painkillers Savi had her on were still in effect.

  “Why are you out of your bed?” he asked, still standing in the open door.

  She blinked hard a few times, then looked up, squinting to focus her eyes. “I was thirsty… I dropped the cup, and it rolled under the bed. I can’t reach it.”

  Her slurred words made Quentin cringe, and he stepped fully into the room. “That’s what the call button is for, so somebody can help you… but I see you’re allergic to that.”

  Renata’s eyes widened a little, as if his words had a sobering effect. She looked away, and feeling guilty, Quentin crossed the distance between them. Careful to avoid her injured arm — which was bleeding through the dressing, probably due to her over-activity — he helped her up, and back into the bed.

  Retrieving the cup she was after from under the bed, he took it to the sink and washed it well, then returned it to the table at her bedside.

  “Call Savannah down here to look at your shoulder. You oughta be thanking your lucky stars for those painkillers, or you probably woulda’ blacked out from pain down there on the floor.”

  He turned away from the bed and headed for the door without saying anything else. When he looked back, just before he opened it, he saw Renata struggling to pour herself a glass with her left hand, while not straining her injured right shoulder. As he watched, she accidentally bumped the glass, sending it toppling to the floor.

  Why won’t she just ask for some damned help?

  Quentin’s first inclination was to continue on his way. If she really wanted his assistance, she would have asked, but… shit.

  With a heavy sigh, he stalked back toward the bed, retrieving the cup again. He washed it, cleaned up the water, and poured a new cup for her without a word. When he pushed the glass in her direction, with force dangerously close to a shove, their eyes met for a moment. Hers were filled with a pain that Quentin guessed had nothing to do with the gunshot wound in her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” she spoke quietly, with a slight quiver in her voice. “I’m just… trying not to be a bother to anybody.”

  She accepted the glass, then looked away, and Quentin turned away as well. He wasn’t trying to be an asshole, not at all, but he was having a hard time pushing past… whatever the confusion in his head was. Logically, he understood that she’d done what she had to do for her daughter. Naomi had referred to her as a victim, and… rationally, Quentin knew that was an accurate characterization.

  But… he wasn’t feeling rational. He was feeling pissed, because the deep, long-standing friendship he’d had with painted_pixel was slipping away fast, thanks to Renata.

  Still without a word, he left the room. On the other side of the door, he called Savi himself to come and re-dress Renata’s shoulder. If she wouldn’t even ask for help with a glass of water now, he seriously doubted she was going to request the help she needed with that.

  four.

  Just knock, man.

  Quentin paused, with his fist lifted to tap the door. The last few hours had been spent attempting to sleep, but the only success he’d found was in tossing and turning, then finally passing out when he was just too exhausted to do anything else.

  He’d spent the night in one of Inez’s guest rooms. Until a culprit for last night’s attack was determined, returning to his apartment was unwise. Good thing he’d brought his laptop with him — it was the only thing he kept in the apartment that really mattered. Call it paranoia, or simply his nature as a hacker, but he felt neither want nor need to fill his living space with “stuff”. He needed to be able to drop everything and run, with nothing except the computer, his bag, and the contents inside.

  A conversation he’d had more than once with painted_pi—Renata.

  Her name is Renata.

  The sooner he got that through his head, the sooner he reconciled that painted_pixel and Renata were the same person… the sooner something as simple as knocking on her door to check on her wouldn’t feel so… strange.

  He shook his head.

  This wasn’t him. This nervous bullshit was foreign. He was the level-headed one, the one that operated on logic, and cooled other people down when situations became tense. Mostly, Quentin dealt in rationality, not emotion… except when it came to women.

  Boy, I swear, every bonne a rienne dat come ya way, you gotta go chasin’. One a dem fast-tailed girls put a gree gree on you, don’t come runnin’ to me wit da oo ye yi. You hear?

  Quentin chuckled a little as his grandmother’s words, warning him that she would provide no comfort for a broken heart, played in his head as clearly as if she were beside him. She’d leveled that warning with good reason, when he was fourteen. He’d developed the faintest bit of facial hair, and was feeling himself something tough. Thing was, the girls were too, to the point that his mother and grandmother had taken to threatening the random girls that called the house or showed up at the door.

  He enjoyed — loved — women, but wouldn’t say he had a weakness. Very, very few touched him on a level that moved him to action, compelled him to comfort, or garnered more than a passing concern for their well-being. Momma and Mémère, both gone now. Naomi, who he’d known since they were little kids. Inez, who he considered something like a sister. And… painted_pixel.

  Renata.

  Finally, Quentin took a deep breath and pushed the door open, realizing a moment later that he’d forgotten to knock. The first thing he noticed was warm, rich, cinnamon-brown skin.

  A lot of it.

  Or not, he thought, forcing his mind out of the gutter as he stepped in. At first glance, her bare shoulders had given the impression of nudity, but further inspection revealed that she was simply wearing a strapless top.

  Her eyes were closed, fist clenched, brow furrowed in pain as Savi cleaned and changed the bandages on her shoulder.

  Savi looked up, smiling at Quentin as he approached the bed. “Mornin’ Q,” she said in her usual cheerful voice.

  Even with her face contorted from discomforted, Renata was pretty as hell, but when she looked up at the sound of his name, her big brown eyes open wide, lush lips parted, she took Quentin’s breath away. Her long braids were all pushed to one side, and slung over her shoulder in a way that lent an unintentional sultriness to her look.

  Beautiful.

  She was looking at him like she expected him to say something, but Quentin’s mouth had gone dry. He swallowed, in an attempt at relief, but before he could speak, the door opened behind him.

  Shit.

  He tore his eyes away from Renata long enough to glance up at Kendall and Marcus as they came in, both wearing somber expressions. Almost immediately, a sense of dread washed over him as they tipped their heads in greeting, then headed to Renata’s side.

  “What is it?” she asked, in a strained voice. “Is it… Taylor? Did something hap—”

  Marcus lifted his hands in a calming gesture. “No. No. We haven’t heard anything about Taylor, but… you know when we left this morning, we were gonna grab some things for you from your apartment. But… there was a fire, Ren. All of the alarms were disabled, so one of
your neighbors called it in when they smelled smoke, but… everything is gone.”

  For a long moment, Renata didn’t respond. She remained… stuck, her brow furrowed in apparent confusion as Savannah finished dressing her shoulder, then carefully put her arm into a sling. It wasn’t until Kendall stepped into Savi’s place, putting a hand on her knee for comfort that Renata finally exhaled, with a ragged breath that seemed painful.

  She shook her head, looking back and forth between Kendall and Marcus. “Everything?”

  Quentin simply watched, somewhat baffled at Renata’s reaction to the fire at her apartment. The stuff at her place was just that — stuff. Why the hell did it matter? She should know better than this… know better than to become attached to material crap. They had the same code… or used to.

  “My… my baby’s room… her clothes, her pictures… her baby book, all of our memories… I… my paintings.”

  Quentin dropped his gaze. Of course she didn’t live completely by that “drop everything and go” mentality anymore. She couldn’t. Not with a daughter in school, becoming a teenager, making friends. Not working for the FBI, growing close to her colleagues… working towards a semblance of a normal life. She was happy, before Wolfe rocked her world — again — by taking Taylor from her. He knew because she’d told him — as painted_pixel — but still. He knew she was settled into a legit government job that she loved. Knew she’d been thrilled to find that apartment, for such a good price, so near the water. Knew that after years of moving around — for reasons he’d never understood before, but felt like he did now — she was… settled. She was happy.

  And Wolfe took that from her when he took her daughter.

  Not quite sure what to do with himself, Quentin scrubbed a hand over his face. He felt… out of place, watching Marcus and Kendall attempt to comfort Renata as she cried, rambling off things that were lost to her now. She used her left hand to brush her braids away from her face, then abruptly shook her head again.