Page 52 of Reclaimed
“No?” He barks a disbelieving laugh. “So what is it, then? You like her or something?”
My jaw tightens, finger tapping against the steering wheel. I don’t even know what the fuck this is. There’s this constant grating in the back of my skull, demanding my attention no matter how many times I try to bury it.
Hell, I barely fucking know her.
She’s just a mouthy brat with no sense of self-preservation. An anomaly in my daily patterns. Keeping up with her was for the assignment– assurance of completion. Not to ease the incessant tightness behind my ribs.
Whatever the fuck it is, I don’t have name for it, and I sure as hell don’t like Slade trying to give it one.
Jersey Ellis is just an irritating little stray, her hazel eyes filled with a fire that refuses to extinguish. And I can’t decide whether I want to preserve it, or provoke it until it consumes us both.
My silence stretches a second too long.
“Holy shit,” Slade gasps dramatically. “Seriously?”
“No,” I snap, cutting him another glare. “She’s just…” Mine. “...we have unfinished business.”
“I see,” he murmurs, nodding slowly. Then he leans forward and reaches into his backpack at the footwell, tugging his laptop from inside and settling it across his thighs. “So what’s the play here, then?” he asks as he flips it open, the screen illuminating his face. “Repo mission?”
“Something like that.”
The keys click as his fingers move rapidly across them. Windows start popping open on his screen, one after another– property deeds, blueprints, security systems.
“Then we’ll need a plan,” he muses as he works. “We can’t just go strolling in there and yank her out. Harris holds her deed, the Syndicate doesn’t have clearance from The Registry to take her in. It’d be a breach of protocol.”
“Fuck protocol,” I grumble.
“This is why I insisted on coming.” Slade heaves a long-suffering sigh, rolling his eyes as he continues typing, more windows popping up on his laptop screen. “Because as fun as that sounds, I’ve got a better idea...”
“Done?” I grumble into my comms unit over the closed circuit Slade set up for us.
“Almost,” his voice replies in my ear. “You can’t rush perfection, asshole.”
The cherry on the end of my cigarette glows orange as I inhale, the sweet burn of nicotine filling my lungs. “Two minutes before I move in.”
“What, you gonna shoot your way in?” Slade snorts. “Yeah, sounds fan-fucking-tastic. Let’s just add a mountain of dead elites to clean up.”
“Wade would take them all off our hands,” I remind him, smoke lingering in the dark beside me.
“Getting rid of the bodies doesn't get rid of the problem.”
“Kinda does,” I reply flatly.
The lights in the warehouse suddenly cut out as Slade breaches the firewall, faint screams of confusion echoing from inside.
“You’re welcome,” he sing-songs.
“Finally,” I growl, taking one last inhale before dropping my cigarette. “You sure the security system’s on a separate server?”
“I wasn’t before, but I am now. It’s still online. Give me a few to get through.”
I heave an annoyed sigh, grinding the toe of my boot against the cigarette in the dirt.
The last thing I want to do is wait. Anticipation hammers in my chest, each beat feeding the violence that’s already festering beneath my skin.
She’s in there. Right beyond the walls of that fucking building, I just know it.
My pulse stutters as a door swings open, banging against the corrugated steel wall of the building. A man steps out, then another, both of them looking around in confusion and gesturing vaguely. Then a third joins them, loudly complaining about the shitty infrastructure and power grids this far from the city.
