Thorn
Jess put her hands on her hips. “I'm telling you, this is the best way to do it,” she said, her eyes blazing. “The girls all told me that Silas sometimes goes through and picks up a new fling for the night, and he usually does that on Wednesdays, when he has nothing better to do with himself. It doesn't hurt to go down there and—”
“What are you going to do if he picks you up?” I snapped, putting my hands on my hips as well. “It's one thing for you to be standing on street corners and chatting with prostitutes; I can still watch you while you're doing that. But if you go along with Silas — even if you stay in his car and don't go into his house — you're basically a sitting duck. I can't keep track of you guys. And I can't help you out if you need, short of calling the police, but that's going to be bad for you as well as for Silas. There has to be some other way.”
“I think she's got a good idea,” Gabi piped in. “It's not something that he'd suspect, her just walking right into his lair.”
“Anyway, what other sorts of weaknesses does he have?” Jess argued. “You say that he's this horrible, bloodthirsty killer, right? But he's just a man. I'm sure he has a weakness for a pretty girl, and–“
“It's too risky,” I said again, my voice a mere growl this time. “I'm not going to let you—”
“You're not the boss of me,” Jess said, tossing her head a little. “Thorn, we may be doing ... whatever it is that we're doing. But you can't control me. You don't get to decide what I can or cannot do. I'm telling you, this is the only way for us to get to Rian. Unless one of you comes up with some other bright idea, this is the plan we're going to go with.”
I scowled at her, but it was clear from her expression that she wasn't going to back down. And as much as I didn't like the plan, I didn't have a better idea. Finally, I threw my hands in the air. “Fine,” I said. “Whatever.”
Just because I cared about her, it didn't mean that I could…
It was Gabi who came up with the alternative plan. “What if you didn't meet him at his car?” she said, frowning thoughtfully. She glanced back and forth between the two of us, and I wondered if she was actually going to help me out. “Think about it, Thorn. You're a member of the Sigma Saints. You could easily march into their headquarters, with some sort of a cover story in case you get caught in there. And Jess could go with you as your bimbo of the week, your arm candy. No one would question it.”
“But how are we going to get to Rian, if she's at Silas's house and we're at the Sigma Saints' headquarters?” Jess asked, rolling her eyes a little. “That totally defeats the entire plan.”
“I doubt Rian stays at his home when he isn't there,” Gabi said, looking as though the gears were turning in her head. She shrugged a little. “He wouldn't be able to trust her there. And anyway, he would want to show off his pet. My sister is pretty.”
“That's actually a good point,” I said, thinking it over. “I would feel better about things if we were in the headquarters, even if things started to go wrong, I could pull some strings with people I know out here, make sure that we have some sort of backup protection in case anything went wrong.”
“We'd still dress you up just the same,” Gabi said. “You could still use your sex appeal to distract Silas while Thorn finds Rian and frees her.”
“What about the packages?” I asked Gabi, frowning a little. “Silas won't be happy, and when Silas is unhappy, he goes straight to Katia. Once Katia finds out that Rian's been freed, she'll suspect that you had something to do with it. It won't be safe for you to—”
“I'll deliver one of the packages before we do all of this,” Gabi said, shrugging a little. “As a sign of good faith to both you and Katia. I've already been thinking about how to do it. There's a little spot at the back of the prison yard that borders on some woods. I think I can bring the packages there and get them through this weak section of the fence. Then I could tell Katia where they were and she could go get them. That way, none of us need to worry about carrying the packages into the prison.”
“That's a good idea,” I said, nodding at her. To be honest, it didn't really sound any safer than the original plan for smuggling the packages into prison, especially because I wasn't sure how Katia was supposed to get the packages from the back fence to her bunk without being caught with contraband. But as long as that was all out of my hands, I didn't really care what she was planning. I was just ready to be done with this whole thing.
“Deliver one of the packages today, then,” Jess told Gabi. “You'll want to get your sister out as soon as possible, I know, and I'm ready to go back home and be done with this mission. I want it over.”
Gabi nodded. “So do I, if I'm being honest. And Thorn, I'm sure you feel the same.”
I nodded. “I should do some research, before we storm the national headquarters, though,” I said grimly. “We need to know what sort of a place we're working with. At the very least, we need to figure out someplace to have as our meeting place. I'll head over there today and poke around a little. Maybe meet up with a friend there, if I can arrange for that, just so I can make sure things go as smoothly as possible when we go over there for real.”
“That's a good idea,” Gabi said approvingly. She frowned, though. “And what are you going to do with Jess?” she asked. “You can't be planning on just leaving her here on her own.”
I looked over at Jess, considering her for a moment. I didn't think that she was going to run, not since that day when she had called up Emmanuel. I think she was starting to realize that she was a part of this, whether she wanted to be or not. She certainly had been pulling her weight lately.
“You're not going anywhere, are you?” I asked her. Jess shook her head, biting a little at her lower lip.
Gabi raised an eyebrow. “Do you really believe her?” she asked, a sneer in her tone. “She could turn us all over to the authorities, and you're just going to take her word that she'll still be here when you get back?”
“Yeah, I am,” I said simply, shrugging a little. I fixed her with a challenging look. Gabi was the one to look away first.