74.
Sienna
“Friday!” I shouted as Guy Friday dragged Jamie to the ground with his arm around her neck, aided by a slowly falling pillar of water. I could see Scott below, bringing his colleague back down at a reasonable pace, and I hovered menacingly, about ten feet away, as Friday brought her back to earth.
“Stop calling me that!” he shouted, sounding pretty cross with me. I didn’t much care, because last I checked, calling a federal agent by an incorrect yet not profane name wasn’t a crime. Assaulting a federal agent? Now, that was a crime, and one I had a feeling they were hoping I’d step into in the next few minutes.
“Stay out of this, Sienna,” Scott said, though I had a feeling his warning was mere protocol. He brought Friday down easily, setting him only a few feet away from where he stood, the strain evaporating with the pillar of water now that he’d brought his trained monkey back to the ground. “You don’t want to get involved.”
“Kinda do,” I said, “if only to knock some sense into you for sleeping with Nadine Griffin.”
There was a pause of dead silence; we were on an empty street, sirens blaring only a couple blocks away as the law worked their way toward us. “You nailed the Queen of Wall Street?” Friday asked, looking over at Scott. “Way to go.”
Scott paled, his ruddy complexion going ashen. “How did you …?”
“She texted me a pic of you two cuddled up this morning,” I said, fighting past the wave of revulsion and jealousy that was twisting my stomach like a hammock. “Congratulations, you slept with a woman under federal indictment for embezzlement, money laundering … pretty sure the list goes on.” I stared at him, trying not to let the sickening feeling of betrayal leak out in what I said next. “What were you thinking?”
He turned a shade of scarlet. “Probably the same thing you were thinking when you almost screwed James Fries.”
“Low blow,” I said, my voice tightening. “Also, I was eighteen, and while I know men are supposed to mature slower than women, this is some seriously bad judgment.”
“Let’s not play around,” he said hoarsely. “You’re jealous.”
“Hell, I’m jealous,” Friday said, arm still snugged around Jamie’s neck. She wasn’t fighting him, she was just taking it all in, her eyes thinly slitted. I got the feeling was struggling for breath. “Have you seen the gams on that lady? Her pic on the cover of Forbes was hawt.” The way he said “hawt” did nothing to alleviate the nausea I was already feeling at the thought of Scott sleeping with her.
“I still care for you, Scott,” I said, neatly sidestepping having to cop to the jealousy thing. “It wasn’t just pain between us, you know. There were other things, too, like—”
“Lies,” he said coldly. “I remember the lies. Strangely enough, I forget everything else.”
“It doesn’t change the fact that I loved you,” I said, “and some small part of me always will.” I looked over at Friday. “And it doesn’t change the fact that you guys are holding an innocent woman when you ought to be arresting last night’s lay for this atrocity.”
“Excuse me?” Scott asked.
“What did she look like naked?” Friday asked. “Because I’m guessing based on that magazine cover, it was tight—”
“Could you be any more disturbing?” I asked, unable to conceal my horror at Guy Friday any longer. “I mean, really.” I shifted my attention back to Scott. “Come on. This is not a righteous arrest. Anonymous tip? Jamie’s not involved, someone’s playing you.”
“You don’t know what we have on her,” Scott said, but the look on his face told me they had absolutely nada.
I just shook my head, closing my eyes. “Scott … come on. Don’t do this. I mean, seriously, if you send the frigging investigation down this road, you’re going to end up looking dumb. And not just a little dumb. You’ll be ahead of that guy running the meth lab at NIST for worst federal employee.” I lowered my tone to a plea. “She’s a hero. She is not the person you’re looking for.”
“If it’s like you say,” Scott said, voice scratching, “she’ll be out of jail in no time. But she’s coming with us for now.”
I closed my eyes again, letting my neck sag. In spite of what I said, I really didn’t want to get into this, not with these guys. Jail was not part of my life plan, and neither was disassembling my life so that I could help Jamie escape for what was likely to be a very short term. I could see her future; if they’d set their sights on her, she was going to go with them, sooner or later, or else they would escalate and escalate and escalate until they brought her in, willing, unconscious, or dead.
Because that was the only way law and order worked. It couldn’t abide a high-profile fugitive like this thumbing her nose at the law, even if she—or I—had the power to do it.
“No … I’m … not,” Jamie said, grunting out every word from beneath the wall of Friday’s swollen arm, and before I had a chance to react, she did something very, very foolish, and threw the whole scene into chaos.