“I either need to run and jump over things or I need to shoot something. You pick,” Claire said, standing toe-to-toe with Neil. She’d been staring at Amelia Hofmann’s cryptic notes in German for hours and she was starting to go crazy. She had no issue with long hours, but the words were running together, and she knew that if she could just clear her brain, something would click.
“Wade has a home gym.”
“Outside. Fresh air . . . get my brain cells working again.”
“Fine. Cooper?” He waved the man over. “Take Claire out past the stables, set up some targets. Don’t go any farther.”
Cooper offered two thumbs up. “Some trigger time? Sounds good to me.” He turned to Claire. “What do you want to shoot?”
“What do you have?”
Cooper smiled and motioned out the door. In the garage of the guesthouse they were using for a war room was a van that had rolled in the day after they arrived. She’d heard one of the guys yelling to another about getting something from the van, but she’d yet to see what was inside.
When Cooper opened up the back door, Claire was all smiles. She climbed in the back and ran her hand along the stocks of a small arsenal. “Sweet.” She reached for the AR-15.
“Careful there, kid, they’re all load—”
Claire didn’t let him finish. She popped the magazine out, checked the chamber, left the round inside, and drove the magazine back where it belonged. She repeated the action with an M16 and a 9 mm pistol. With the safeties all in place, she turned back to Cooper. “Do we have any ear protection?”
A sexy smile sat on Cooper’s face. “Okay, that was kinda hot.”
She swallowed back the excitement his comment did for her insides and brushed past him. “Put it away, Cooper. You’re too old for me.”
Outside and past the stables had to be far enough away to not disturb the livestock or the people in the house. Because of the long-range distance the weapons could reach, they also needed to butt up against a hillside or risk bullets finding unwanted targets.
“We don’t generally have paper targets,” Cooper told her. “I could come up with something . . .”
Claire looked down range. “That’s a fence post, isn’t it?”
“The one about four hundred yards out?”
She nodded. “Think Wade will mind if we use it?” From where she was, the post seemed to have been abandoned next to a new fence some ten yards away. Or maybe it was a double barrier for some reason.
“I’m sure a few holes won’t make that big of a difference.”
Taking that as permission, Claire set the guns on the ground at her feet and lay down next to them. On her belly, she placed ear protection over her head.
She noticed Cooper put on his ears and focus a pair of binoculars at her target.
“You know, Cooper, I can’t help but wonder if the flowers and message from Charlie were just a warning for Sasha . . . or if the school is on lockdown.” She leaned over the gun, put the stock into her shoulder. She dug the toes of her shoes into the loose dirt she was lying on to leverage herself against the kick.
“I doubt anyone would tell you if you called,” Cooper said.
“Yeah, right. No one has a cell phone.” She took a deep breath, stared down the barrel, and squeezed. The shot buzzed past the post on the right.
Cooper huffed and lowered the binoculars.
“Sites are off.”
“All our guns are dialed in, kid. You’re just—”
She fired off three more shots, one right after the other. The final one snapped a string of barbwire. Liking the sound of that, Claire burrowed down stronger and took three more shots.
“Off to the right. Not by much, though.”
“Damn, girl.”
She took that as praise. “What about a satellite image of the campus? Can we get that?”
“Overhead, yeah. I’m not sure how that will answer your questions.”
It probably wouldn’t. Not unless you could see into the eaves of the outside corridors, where the large containers would hold the lilies on shutdown days.
Claire unloaded the magazine and reached for the second rifle.
“Richter taught you how to shoot?” Cooper asked.
“Richter taught me everything.” She took two test shots, hit the post but not the wire. “Jax would know what was going on. If anything.”
“Who is Jax?”
“My roommate.”
“You mean you had a friend? Did they allow that?”
Claire glanced up at Cooper. “Ha, ha, very funny.” She leaned back over the gun, squeezed. Barbwire flapped in the sun. “Of course I have friends. Jax at the top of the list.”
“Did she know you were going AWOL?”
“Oh, no. I couldn’t tell her. If she’d known and the headmistress found out, she’d be the one in trouble.”
“There’s no way to get in touch with her?” Cooper asked.
She fired off the remainder of her ammunition. “Like I said, no cell phones.”
“No computer access?”
“No . . . not . . . wait.” Claire put the gun down. “Yes. The senior computer room.”
“The what?”
She jumped from the dirt, swept most of it off her clothing. “Why didn’t I think of that before? The senior computer room. Jax and I played an online game. It was our only access to conversation with others off campus. Not that we told anyone who or where we were. We thought it would be the perfect covert way to talk to each other once she was out of high school. I planned on staying through college.” She looked at Cooper with a huge grin. “Of course. Unless Lodovica found the senior computer room, Jax will still have access and hello”—Claire hit Cooper midchest—“inside information.”
Claire reached for the pistol, placed it in the back of her pants, and shouldered the rifles. “Gotta get online. It’s almost midnight at Richter. Which is when Jax would be at the senior computer if she can.”
On a mission, Claire doubled her pace back to the war room. Once inside, she went straight to her station, ignoring the looks from the others in the room. She set the rifles on the ground next to her desk and started searching for her game.
“She thinks she has a way to talk to a friend inside Richter via a video game,” Cooper announced to everyone.
Claire saw Neil approach from the side.
“We set up profiles in a game, secret names, closed group. So when one of us left the school, we could still keep in touch. We played along with two of last year’s seniors, but they bugged out six months ago.” Claire found the game and used her log-in information and waited for her profile to boot.
“Loki?” Cooper asked.
Claire nodded. “Jax is Yoda.” She pointed to a chat room. Read Jax’s last message and laughed. Where the hell did you go?
“What language is that?” Cooper asked.
“Our own.” Claire constructed her reply in her head, had to type it out three times before pressing send. “It’s like pig latin, only using German and Russian. Every other word is a different language and has the last vowel from the previous word. We thought it was clever.”
Cooper nudged Neil. “Told you she was brilliant.”
“Only if we get the spelling correct. Overkill if no one is looking.”
“Magnificent if someone is,” Cooper praised.
“I bet Sasha would crack the code in less than an hour.”
“What did you say to her?”
Claire sat back and waited for a reply. Not that there was any guarantee there would be one right away. Jax didn’t go into the senior computer room every day. None of them did. “I told her that the air on the outside was sweeter and asked if the flowers were in bloom.”
“Code for lilies?” Neil asked.
She laughed. “We have codes for everything.”
Cooper looked at the screen. “Now what?”
“We wait. If she responds without a code word, then we know she’s been found out.”
AJ stretched out on the bed, a towel thrown over his lap. Noise from the bathroom told him Sasha was finished with her shower.
The evening played over in his head. His father’s words, his mother’s emotions or lack thereof.
He was itchy. Where did he fit in? He was way over his head with Sasha and her group of friends. They helped people, AJ stole from them. They were noble . . . he was a fraud.
“I’m proud of you.” His father’s words sounded in his head.
No matter how far AJ dug, he couldn’t find one thing for his father to be proud of.
Amelia had been the one to leave the nest with a decent job, a noble one. Analyst for the UN. Just saying that out loud sounded like something. She traveled the world and, like her father, worked diplomatically to help countries get clean water to the people. So simple, so taken for granted. Amelia had taken on the job as if she knew people who were dying from a lack of clean water.
She’d been passionate about the position and never stopped yakking about it when they got together on the rare holiday that AJ bothered to visit.
What the hell was his father proud of him for? Not getting caught stealing cars? Because he didn’t get taken out while jogging along a riverbank? Because AJ didn’t listen to him and never stepped foot in Richter outside of the day his sister graduated, and again when he insisted on an audience with the grand headmistress and all her bitchiness?
AJ rubbed his face with the palms of both hands.
He dropped them to find Sasha standing in the doorway, one of his shirts thrown over her shoulders and covering only the essentials.
His cock stirred just looking at her. The action pissed him off.
“What crawled up your ass?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t give me that. You clammed up the minute we left the interstate.”
“I have a lot on my mind.”
“Like what?”
He sat up. “Nothing. Okay. I’m not a goddamn woman. I don’t want to talk about my feelings.” With his outburst, he tossed the towel to the side and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He tugged the jeans on that were lying on the floor, zipped them up.
He stared toward the door, needing to move.
Sasha jumped in front of him.
“Get out of my way, Sasha.”
“Make me.”
His breath came in short pants. “Move!”
“Fuck you.”
He grasped her shoulders, lifted her to the side, and opened the door.
He made it three steps and she was there.
“Where’re you going? Walking around Virginia without a shirt on in November is bound to capture attention.”
“Do I look like I care?” he challenged.
“No, you don’t.” She moved right up next to him. Chest to chest. “You look like you’re running from demons.” She pushed him. “This is why I work alone.” Another push. “This.”
AJ stumbled back, held his ground.
“I don’t know what the hell is going on inside your head.”
“Something you don’t know. I didn’t think that was possible.” He was picking a fight with the wrong person, knew it as the words were coming out of his mouth but couldn’t stop them.
Her nose flared. He swore if he looked hard enough, he could see steam blowing out the top of her head.
“You want to piss on me?” Her words were harsh, right in his face. “Pull it out and let it go, but you don’t have the luxury of running off half-dressed in the middle of the night because you’re having some kind of crisis. If you wanted to do that, it needed to happen before you followed me down a deserted road in the middle of Germany. We’re in this together, whether you like this or not.”
Her breath came in pants.
Tempers cooled and Sasha drew her arms over herself.
He realized then that she wore a T-shirt. Ass hanging out, bare legs.
What the hell was wrong with him?
He reached for her.
She flinched, backed up a step.
“Let’s go inside,” he said, his voice soothing.
She walked in front of him, looked over her shoulder.
Back inside the fifty-dollar-a-night motel room, he closed the door behind him and locked it. He moved to the thermostat and turned it up.
She stood between the bedroom and the bathroom, rested her hands on the door frame.
“Sasha . . .”
She held up a hand. “Save it.”
An hour later, after they’d both crawled under the covers with a good foot of distance between them, AJ stared at the ceiling, completely aware that Sasha had yet to fall asleep. He found the words to say what he needed to. “The only redeemable thing I’ve ever done with my life is find you and chase down the truth behind my sister’s death.”
She rolled onto her back, joined him in studying the stains above them.
“I’m a politician’s son with a trust fund. I don’t have a respectable career or even a direction to follow to find one.”
“You make it sound like you drive around in a Ferrari and treat people like crap.”
“Not that extreme.”
He heard Sasha exhale. “My biological father was a murderer, kidnapper, smuggler, I even found arms deals. He did drive around in the flashy car and eliminated anyone that got in his way, including my half brother. I, too, have a trust fund . . . of sorts. I don’t have a career either.”
He twisted his head to look at her. “You work with Neil.”
“No. I help Reed out. Reed works with Neil.”
“You say tomato . . .”
“We’re not all that different, AJ. I just have a slightly different skill set than you.”
He hissed out a laugh. “Yeah, right. Half a dozen languages, mad computer skills, master of disguises. I haven’t seen you fight, but I heard you rival Catwoman.”
That put a smile on her lips.
“I’m not sorry I have the training I do. Not that it’s completely useful in the outside world unless I worked with someone like Pohl.”
“Or Neil.”
She sighed.
“But you don’t like to stay in one place for long. Keep moving, avoid routine.”
“Kept me alive so far.”
“Keeps you alone,” he said. “What happens when no one is after you, Sasha?”
She looked at him in the dark. “Apparently I return to my old school and run into trouble.”
AJ rolled to his side, reached for her arm, and tucked her palm under his cheek. “I can’t be sorry about that. You’re the best thing that has happened to me in . . .” Forever.
“See, this is why I work alone, why I don’t sleep with my lovers.”
He kissed her fingers, tucked them away again. “What?”
“Pillow talk. That’s what this is, right?”
“Yes, that is indeed what this is.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, removed her hand from his, and rolled over on her side, offering her back. “We need an early start tomorrow.”
He waited a good minute before rolling on his side, reaching around her waist, and pulling her up next to him.
She froze but didn’t move away.
It took a half an hour for her to thaw and sleep to settle in. AJ finally closed his eyes and allowed himself to join her.