Ben…
“Wait. What. Is. Happening?” Shay shoved against me with surprising upper body strength.
Dark hair tumbled every which way in loose wild waves.
Long black lashes brushed her cheeks, eyes pinched shut to block out offending sunlight.
Brows scrunched down.
Lips tugged into a tiny frown.
Unaware. Cranky. And absolutely adorable.
And I was the luckiest fucker on earth; she’d chosen to share her secret world with me. Watching her sleep for the last hour had also helped take my mind off of my dilemma. And had given me time to process her unconventional, disturbing, and highly illegal solution to it.
I blocked out my concerns and kissed the top of her head. “You crashed. Hard.”
She squinted a wary eye open. “Where are we?” she grumbled.
“On your train.”
A slow smile curved her lips. “Our train, now.”
“Our train,” I agreed. But not the same one we’d stolen time on. And not the 5:00 a.m. return either.
When we’d first hit Harrisburg, we’d inhaled the largest breakfast known to man at another of her favorite greasy spoons. Then we went birdwatching along the Susquehanna River. After that, we wandered around Fort Hunter Park before exploring its mansion—on our own, while expertly evading the official tour guides and hosts.
We’d eventually caught the packed noon train to head back. Once we’d claimed two side-by-side seats, she’d settled heavily against my shoulder.
And she’d fallen fast asleep minutes after we’d pulled away from the station.
I nudged her. “You clenched my hand so tight a moment ago, I thought you’d break bones.”
Her hand eased its death grip. “Sorry. Had another bad dream.”
“About?” Hell, we’d had plenty of stress-ammunition last night at dinner. “Low-flying power-line diving again?”
I offered her the half-full coffee I’d been holding since before we boarded.
She gave a disinterested headshake, to the coffee and my attempt at humor. “No. This one was different.” She sat up straighter and flicked glances at the nearest passengers, forward, across, and behind us.
Apparently satisfied about any potential eavesdroppers, she continued in a lowered voice, “I walked into a community library. Not a big one like my main downtown one. The space was small, geared toward family and kids. There were brightly colored play areas that had tables covered with pop-up books, puzzles, brainteaser games, and wooden trains.
She gazed up at me with a gentle smile. “You were there.”
“Dreaming about me already?” I lowered my voice, “Are we naked?”
She arched a brow. “You are fully clothed and up in a tree house that’d been built into an entire corner of the building. I know you’re up there, and you know where I am, even though I’m down away from you. We can’t hear each other, don’t talk to each other, but everything felt good—safe.
“As I wandered around the place, I realized a river ran into the library from under the corner of the tree house, toward the center of the main room. Right after it came out, it forked and flowed in two different directions.”
She swallowed hard. “I crept toward the river, and as I got closer, knowledge came into my mind, little bits at a time, about an alarming creature that lurked in the water.”
“A crocodile?”
Her brow furrowed and she gave a quick headshake. “A giant child-eating snake.”
“An anaconda?”
She let out a heavy breath, clearly disturbed by the image. “Yeah, I think so.”
“You’ve been watching too many adventure movies.”
“I saw the snake.” She shot me a pointed shut-up-and-listen glare. “Then I glanced around. Little kids were running back and forth, laughing and squealing, hopping on steppingstones to cross the river. Parents watched and cheered them on. No one seemed to know.”
Her brow furrowed. “I panicked and ran to the help desk to warn the librarian.”
“Good. Person of authority.”
“Right? Except she seemed to know. And didn’t care. Then I realized that parents knew too. Not one person was alarmed or even bothered that their kid might be devoured.” Between words, her breaths reduced to choppy gulps. “I didn’t understand it.”
“What did you do?” I rubbed a soothing thumb over the back of her hand.
“I called 9-1-1 with the librarian’s phone. I waited with the damn thing held to my ear, but nothing happened. It just rang and rang; no one picked up on the other end. In my gut, I got the sense no one would save us, no one had our back.”
Something told me the dream paralleled her past: No one had protected her.
“While I was on the phone, the snake slithered up to the ladder of the tree house, then morphed into a man. You blocked his way at the top of the ladder, staring down at him. Then you and Anaconda Man talked, you above, him below, but I couldn’t hear what either of you said.”
She paused and took a deep breath, gaze unfocused as if she searched her thoughts.
“In the dream, I somehow understood that he’d revealed his true nature, and you’d told him he wasn’t welcome. But if he tried anything—if he went up against any innocent in that library—you would destroy him.”
Definitely about her present. Going up against her past. I tightened my hand around hers. “Damn straight, I would.”
Lost in reliving her dream, if she’d heard me, felt me, she gave no indication. “With no one down where I was to help, I wandered back to the river to make sure I hadn’t been imagining things. And there was the massive snake, head up and scanning side to side, hunting as it undulated through the water.
“All of a sudden, I straddled the fork in the river, one foot on either side. The snake’s head snapped around. Its eyes focused on me. I couldn’t move.
“But then I looked up and saw you.
“You appeared at the edge of the tree house, told me to reach up, then you grabbed my arms and yanked me up into the air. When I landed, you’d lifted me even higher than where you were, my feet on the railing, your arms locked around my legs.”
She paused. Took a deep breath, then blew it out. “That’s it.”
“That’s enough, though, isn’t it?”
Her gaze locked on to mine, those expressive green eyes searching. And just like the dream, she understood without us having to say a word. Her chin dipped with a brief nod. “Yeah.”
“They didn’t have your back.” I gave her hand a solid squeeze, then lifted it up and kissed her knuckles. “I do. And I will. Always.”
I offered up the lukewarm coffee again. She accepted it and gulped down a few healthy swallows.
An overhead announcement blared something, the doors closed, and our train accelerated eastward once again. The temperature remained balmy. A constant metallic tang permeated the air. Muted conversations chattered in a low hum all around us. Bodies jostled with the occasional rock of the coach.
After she handed me back the cup, she slumped in her seat. “Do all parents suck?”
About the dream. Because she knew I knew. The gist of it, anyway. Something bad that she still struggled with to such a degree, she could only process through it small steps at a time.
I shrugged, then did my best to answer the generic question at face value. “From every kid’s perspective? Probably.”
“Nooo...I’m serious. Specifically. Do you know anyone whose parents are amazing?”
“I guess we’re all human, flawed. None are perfect, but Cade and Kiki’s parents come pretty damn close, I suppose. Even then, I think their parents hit a rough patch when Cade was in high school.”
“But their parents still loved them through it all, right?” Her voice broke halfway through.
My heart broke with it. That she’d had to endure horrific pain so young. Alone.
I put a comforting arm around her and pulled her close, gently rubbing her shoulder. If she needed to go down the path, face her massive anaconda, I’d destroy it for her any way I could. And so, I told her the truth. “Yeah, they did. If I had to pick a set of parents, if any of us really had a choice between our own and someone else’s, we’d probably all pick the Michaelsons’. For all their understandable faults, they have a pretty cool family.”
“Who has the worst?”
“Don’t know. I’m an only child of an alcoholic mentally abusive father and a codependent mother.”
Her fingers drummed once on my jeans. “The child of a criminal alcoholic about-to-be-incarcerated father and his soon to be prison-widow mother.”
I coughed out a laugh. “Thanks for that distinction.”
She dropped a single nod with a smirk. “No probs.”
“But really, none of us besides Cade’s family had it all that great. Mase’s dad is an uncaring career politician and his mom’s a snobbish socialite. They only had kids because their social circles expected it and any family outings gave great media optics: boosted approval ratings and garnered votes. Kids served as useful career props for them.”
“Rough.”
“Yeah. It’s why Mase surfs. At first, surfing for him and his brother was just to escape an unloving family life. Now it’s his passion. The only place he feels free.”
“Kind of like Loading Zone for you. That nightclub is your passion.”
“More like an obsession.”
“But Loading Zone is so much more than just your business. It’s not just a place where you escape, or become free. They’ve become your family.”
“Not just my family. Now your family too.”
“So Mase and you hung out a lot at the Michaelsons’ house?”
“All the time. Why we’re so close. But we’re not the only ones the Michaelsons opened their home to. Hannah got tucked into the fold; she had an absentee mother and a sperm-donor father, was raised by her grandparents until they died. Similar story with Kiki’s boyfriend, Darren. Darren and his sister never knew their dad, and after their mom struggled for years with depression, they...well...they lost her.”
Didn’t need to dredge up those details. Wasn’t my story to tell. And not the point anyway.
Shay went quiet.
She didn’t need to say aloud how bad hers had been. The story lay hidden in her questions, her sadness and hesitation. Whatever her family past, it’d been bad enough for her to run away from. And I got the feeling she hadn’t ever wanted to go back.
Trust doesn’t come easy for you. Why I didn’t push her for something she wasn’t yet ready to share. If and when she felt safe enough to do it with me, I’d be there for her.
When the silence dragged on, I tucked her tighter against me. “We’re all your family too now.”
Her tense muscles relaxed as she exhaled. “Even Cade and Kiki’s parents?”
“Yup. Even Victoria and Garrett. They’ve taken in strays ever since I’ve known them.”
“Hey!” She shoved herself away from me. “I’m not a stray.”
“Aren’t you?” I thought about my unstable childhood. How alone I’d felt. And how many times I’d escaped to anywhere that wasn’t my house. “Aren’t we all?”
All of a sudden, she startled, her brows lowered, then she leaned away from me and pulled out her pink phone from her back pocket.
“Rafe,” she murmured as she swiped the screen to retrieve the text.
I saw the message when she angled the screen toward me. Two words.
All set.
Great. Am I? My head spun with the enormity of what she’d suggested, how to right my father’s wrong.
Shay pocketed the phone then stared hard at me. “We can do this. We have to.”
“You say that as if we have no choice.”
“We always have a choice.”
Depended on perspective though, didn’t it?
I’d been fighting while paying my dues, treating people with dignity, and earning every penny and ounce of respect along the way.
She’d battled her way by beating the system, taking without asking, and justifying by judging her entitled victims.
“You’re asking me to ignore everything I’ve ever believed in.”
Those intense green eyes held me accountable. “I am.”
Because in one rare brief moment, for the very first time, we had the power to make a life-changing difference to more lives than either of us had been able to impact before.
Save countless lives. Even at the risk of our own.
The flash drive burned a hole in my pocket, branded the decision in my mind.
There’d never been any real choice. I realized that now. But I took ownership of our dangerous next step and vowed to have it make all the difference in the world.
I gave her a soft kiss, then whispered, “I’m in.”
No matter the consequences.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
Later that afternoon, I stared at an old corrugated steel building that had been emblazoned with a large skull and crossbones and a glowing red VIRTUAL PIRATES sign.
The three of us stood in a potholed parking lot inside a rougher industrial area on the outskirts of Philly. A group of five preteen kids skateboarded up, scraped to a halt, then tucked their boards under their arms and entered the business through its solid metal door.
Shay tore her gaze from the entrance, stared up at me with a frown, then glanced at Rafe. “You’re sure it’s safe?”
Rafe gave a hard nod. “You’ll see.”
I stepped forward, determined to carry out our felonious plan. Shay had come up with the idea and Rafe had connected us to the talent, but the responsibility for the events we were about to set into motion fell on my shoulders alone.
I yanked open the door and was blasted with deafening sound that vibrated my chest cavity. Bass thumped under technofunk that spooled so fast, it jumpstarted my heart like a defibrillator shock.
The rest of the assault to the senses?
We’d stepped into a virtual warzone.
Of kids.
Playing games.
Intermittent bright lights flashed from every corner of cavernous darkness. Invisible speakers blared a cacophony of electronic noise. Bomb detonations exploded. Gunfire erupted. A group of kids that’d been huddled around a giant screen shouted in triumph and jumped from various seating surfaces. Their screen flashed blinding white before it fizzled in a rain shower of pixels that transformed from gray into black.
Shay seemed impervious to all the blinding lights and deafening sounds. Instead, she walked through the room, inspecting the place. She toured gaming suites that lined the perimeter of the expansive room. Each space had its own giant monitor, a half dozen black microfiber club chairs, and twice as many kids, aged from kindergarten to some looking ready to graduate high school.
When we reached a narrow hallway, she peered through tall windows beside doors on her left, then her right. Rafe and I silently followed. But after she remained frozen for several seconds, attention glued to whatever existed on the other side of that glass, I eased in beside her.
Nine little ones, six boys and three girls who couldn’t be much past kindergarten, sat behind tables custom-made for their height. They each stared at their own open laptop that had black screens with lines of green characters glowing brightly. The walls beyond them had been painted in foot-wide vertical color stripes. Movie posters featuring Wolverine, Deadpool, and Batman—from The Dark Knight, of course—had been tacked on. Sure. Rainbows and antiheroes.
Shay’s shoulder bumped against mine, weight behind it as if she’d swayed. With a sudden jerk, her hand clasped mine. She wove our fingers together then tightened with a solid grip, as if she needed an anchor.
I gave her a firm squeeze back. Whatever you need.
As we watched, an adult stepped into our line of sight. The children’s instructor appeared to be a young woman with a slight build, long straight brown hair, and a full tattoo sleeve on her right arm that ran down from under the short sleeve of her faded T-shirt. She turned as one of the children asked her a question, then she glanced up at us. She smiled and held a finger up, a signal for us to wait.
“C’mon.” Rafe walked behind us and held a hand up toward the instructor beyond the window. “We can wait back in her office.”
Shay sucked in a deep breath, like she’d forgotten to breathe. “Why have I never heard of this place?”
“You did.” He stopped halfway down the hall, then pegged her with a hard look for a beat before his eyes softened. “I tried to get you to come here from the start. You weren’t interested.”
“You should have tried harder.”
He coughed out a dry laugh, then we continued down the hall. “Yeah, right. You know what you were like back then.”
“Skittish.”
“And hardheaded.”
Sounds familiar. “And I bet you trusted no one.”
He gave a nod as he held the door open for us, then we entered a large office area. He cast me a knowing look. “Our girl’s come a long way.”
“She sure has.” Even in the last couple of weeks.
An elbow jabbed my ribs. “Ow.” I glared at her and rubbed the spot. “What was that for?”
“What’s with this ‘our girl’? I don’t belong to either of you.” She tugged her hand free from mine to emphasize the point. “And I still don’t trust anyone.”
Rafe arched a critical brow and pointed at me, then himself. No words required. The evidence spoke for itself. We wouldn’t be here with her if she hadn’t begun to trust.
She crossed her arms, defiant as ever. “Much.” She mumbled the correction under her breath, bristling at his point but willing to accept the truth of it.
“And you are most definitely my girl.” I put my arm around her, pulled her close enough to whisper in her ear. “It doesn’t take anything away from who you are. It also means that I’m your guy. That I have part of me to give, only to you.”
The hard set of her shoulders softened, and she glanced up at me with a slight smile.
Seconds later, before we’d had a chance to take in our surroundings, the kindergartner instructor burst in. She clapped hard once, then rubbed her palms together. A wicked kind of excitement sparked in her eyes. “Well, kids, what nefarious act have you brought for me today?”
Relief and anxiety warred within me.
She wasn’t much older than Shay. Definitely not older than me.
But the young woman oozed unmistakable confidence. Like whatever criminal tasks we asked of her would be no big deal because she’d done thousands before us, and we’d be nothing more than a blip on her radar before she went on to do a million more after we’d gone.
When I glanced at Shay, our ringleader and the one with the deets on her plan, she held my gaze for a moment.
Trust me she seemed to say with a steady look. “Break the FBI seal on frozen investment and bank accounts. Then steal the stolen money back from the thief.”
The woman stared at Shay with a dumbfounded look. Then she whistled low. “FBI, SEC, and FDIC. One multi-leg transfer?”
Shay gave a slight headshake. She pulled out the flash drive I’d given her on the train, then placed it on a narrow worktable that jutted from the wall. “Hundreds, I think. Maybe more.”
The woman kept her assessing gaze locked on to Shay. “That’s a massive risk. We break that invisible crime-scene tape by breaking that freeze, we’re talkin’ federal crime. You prepared for the consequences if you’re caught?”
Shay and I had discussed it. Briefly. The woman meant one felony count for each hacked transfer. Two, if the law counted the federal-level breach itself. “Have you ever been caught?” Has it gotten warm in here? Sweat beaded across my brow.
Rafe chuckled.
The woman shot me an incredulous look.
“I’m a ghost. Let’s see if you can be too.” Challenge lurked under the woman’s words.
Shay eased out of my hold and stared hard at me, then her lips twitched. “Danger. Intrigue. Big-ass payoff for a lot of hardworking people. Think you can handle it?”
Risk federal prison? A six-by-eight jail cell right next to good ol’ Dad?
No one got a guarantee when they stuck their neck out. But someone had to do the right thing. And if not us, then who?
I blew out a harsh breath, decision made. All in. “What the fuck...let’s do this.”
I had no idea how our actions now would settle with me later. But my welfare didn’t matter. We were the only ones who had both the means and the motivation.
But the inevitable fallout?
I hugged Shay tight to my side again and squeezed her shoulder. Some to comfort her, more for me.
Maybe with the talent we’d enlisted, we’d leave no trail. Remain invisible. Protect everyone.
Still, my stomach churned. I’d rocketed so far out of my atmosphere, I struggled to breathe the thin foreign air.
Stop with all the fucking worry. You committed. It’s done.
I pulled Shay closer, into a fierce half-hug.
My girl was a phenomenal ghost herself.
Hopefully she’d teach newbie criminal me how to be one too.