Chapter 14 Kathryn
Kathryn
I’d had the best orgasm of my life while fully clothed. That was a surprise. Then again, everything with Darla was intense. My body was still humming with pleasure from coming five minutes ago, but already I was craving more of Darla’s touch. But this wasn’t the time or the place.
I took a quick shower, then realized I had a bigger problem.
“We need to go shopping.”
Cassie and Darla looked up from whatever they were staring at on Darla’s laptop.
“Shopping?” Darla sounded like she’d never heard the word before. “For what?”
“I can’t keep wearing the same few outfits,” I said. “I need to replace some of the clothes that got blown up with my condo.”
“Can’t you just order some?” Darla asked.
“Not if I want them to fit properly. I need to try stuff on. I go between sizes depending on the brand.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Darla said.
“All of my clothes are gone,” I said. “I’ve got three pairs of underwear, one of which I’m wearing. I need to go shopping.”
“I love shopping,” Cassie agreed. “I’ll go with you guys. It should be fine with three of us there, don’t you think Darla?”
Cassie was a pretty blonde with pouty lips and a fit but curvy body. Darla had mentioned that they’d been stationed together for a while and had become pretty good friends, which was why when Darla moved to Seattle and applied for the job at Sapphic Security she suggested that Cassie do the same.
“I don’t know why, but you look so familiar to me,” I said to Cassie when she noticed me staring at her.
She rolled her eyes, but I had the sense it wasn’t at me.
“I look a lot like my father. He was the quarterback for the Seattle football team for many years, and now he anchors the national football games on Monday nights.”
“Your father is Anson Weatherby?” I asked in surprise.
“Yeah.”
“He must be excited that you’ve moved to Seattle then,” I said.
I kept up with enough sports to know that Anson had stayed in Seattle after his retirement.
“I’m not sure if he even knows where I live,” she said dismissively, telling me there was more to that story. “Are you guys ready to go shopping or what?”
Taking the hint to change the subject, I headed out to the car with my two bodyguards. I really wanted to go to the mall, but they immediately nixed that.
“We can go to one store,” Darla said firmly. “It has to have at least two exterior exits, and we just go in, get the necessities, and come back out, okay? No dawdling.”
“Let’s go to Target then.”
***
“What is this place?”
Cassie and I looked at Darla’s stunned expression with amusement.
“Are you saying that you haven’t been to a Target before?” I asked in astonishment. “Ever?”
Darla shook her head, her eyes darting back and forth like she was afraid she was going to miss something important.
“No. I grew up in a town so small we had to drive thirty minutes to get to the closest Walmart. And other than basic training, all my assignments were overseas. I’ve never seen a store that has so much nice stuff all in one place before.”
Cassie was rolling her lips in, trying not to laugh as Darla grabbed a throw pillow with a colorful geometric panel from an end cap. “I need this for my apartment.”
She grabbed a second one. “I’d better get two.”
We wound up spending nearly two hours at Target, visiting every aisle in the store. I picked up a couple of pairs of jeans, some dressier black pants, a handful of shirts, and two sweaters as well as underwear, pajamas, and socks. Meanwhile, Darla picked up multiple items for her apartment.
“How long have you lived there?” I asked, eyeing her cart. It was full of things that anyone who lived on their own would already have.
“Six months.”
“And you’re just buying a frying pan?” I asked incredulously.
“I mostly eat out,” Darla replied. “Ooh! A dish drainer! I need one of those.”
“Please tell me you have a shower curtain,” I said.
“The shower has a glass door,” she said. “But I could use one of those absorbent mats, so I don’t have to put a towel on the floor while I dry off.”
“I’m surprised you have towels,” I teased.
“Bella had a couple extra ones from when she moved in with Lucy.”
“Oh my God.” I pointed to the towel aisle. “You’re a grown up now, Darla. How about you buy some towels?”
By the time we checked out, we had two carts full of items, most of them destined for Darla’s apartment. After stuffing our finds in the back of the SUV, we drove across the parking lot to another new discovery for Darla: Chipotle. I’d never seen anyone so enthused about a burrito bowl in my life.
“What’s next?” Cassie asked as we finished our meal. I could tell by the way that Darla was staring at the menu that she was thinking of ordering more food.
“We should probably head back to the house,” Darla said regretfully. “Lois is going to stroke out if she finds out how much time we’ve spent here and at Target.”
I had to smile at the reverent way she said ‘Target’.
“Should we drop all your stuff off at your apartment?” I asked, suddenly curious about this place she lived that didn’t have a bathmat or a dish drainer.
“We’d better not,” she said regretfully. “I’ll just want to start putting it all away, and my place isn’t secure enough for us to hang out for long. I’ll just keep it all at the safe house until we finish the mission.”
The rest of the day was quiet. Cassie and Darla were mostly working on their laptops, and I stretched out on the couch and read a book I’d been wanting to get started on.
Since none of us was particularly proficient at cooking, we made a plate of sandwiches and ate them with leftover salad and chips.
Sunday passed much the same, but I was very much aware that Darla and the crew were going to try to break into Xi’s lab that night.
I felt uncharacteristically worried about it.
Worried they were going to find more dead people.
Worried they were going to find genetically altered super shifters under the control of the Chinese government. Worried that Darla would get hurt.
That was a new one. Growing up in a military family, I’d long since learned not to be stressed out about every mission and deployment.
But for some reason, the idea of Darla getting hurt worried me.
I wasn’t worried about the rest of the team, just Darla.
I mean, I was worried about them in an abstract sense, just not personally worried.
“So what’s your plan for tonight?” I asked over a late lunch of boxed macaroni and cheese with canned tomato soup. I really wished that Yuri had come back with us. Or one of his brothers, I’d heard they were all excellent cooks.
“Martha and Lois are going to run comms from the conference room one floor up,” Darla told me. “We already verified that no one on that floor works on Sundays, so it should be safe for them to set up a command post there.”
She ate a spoonful of macaroni and cheese, wincing slightly. I guess I wasn’t the only one missing Yuri’s cooking.
“Yuri’s going to be mopping the floor and keeping watch while Wanda and I go inside. Wanda’s got a scrambler that should open the door and not leave a digital trail.”
“What if it doesn’t work?” I asked.
“We’ll blow off a door handle if we need to,” she answered, “But then they’ll know we were there, so hopefully it won’t come to that.”
“Wanda’s really good at this kind of thing,” Cassie added. “If she says she can beat the scanner, she can. Once we’re inside, Wanda’s going to put trackers on the computers.”
“How?” I asked.
“Depends on the set-up. In some cases she inserts a USB that installs code on the computer, in other cases she connects this little box thing to the wires that allows us remote access to the machine,” Darla explained.
“To be honest, I don’t understand it all, but we’ve done it before, and it works so that’s good enough for me. ”
“And what about you?” I asked. “What will you be doing?”
Her face turned grim. “Looking for victims.”
A few hours later Bella arrived to stay with me and Cassie while Darla joined the team prepping at the Sapphic Security offices.
“You remember where the safe room is, right?” Darla asked as she strapped a holster around her shoulder and then checked the safety on her gun. Once she put on her leather jacket, you couldn’t tell she was carrying a weapon.
“Yes.” They’d shown it to me our first night here. There was a secret door at the back of the kitchen pantry that held a small safe room with its own ventilation system and a bullet proof door.
“If anything happens, you go to the safe room and don’t open the door unless it’s one of the team on the other side,” she instructed. “Don’t hesitate. If Bella or Cassie tell you to go, you go.”
“Are we expecting an attack while you’re gone?” I asked curiously. Maybe she was nervous about us being apart too.
“No, but it’s better to have a plan.”
Behind her back, Bella and Cassie were rolling their eyes.
“I promise I’ll use the safe room if anything happens,” I promised, wanting to reassure her.
“Even if someone’s injured and you think they need medical attention?” she asked.
My eyes went to Bella and Cassie again. There was no way I’d go hide in a safe room if they were bleeding out or something.
“I can’t promise you that.”
Darla sighed. “Okay, I’ve got to go.”
To my surprise, she grabbed my shoulders and pulled me close, giving me a quick, hard kiss in front of her coworker and sister.
“Be safe, mate.”
“You be safe too,” I replied.
Our eyes met and held for a long moment until Bella broke the mood.
“For the love of God, she’s breaking into a lab, not going to war. You’d better get a move on, little sister, before Lois has your ass.”
With a mock glare at her sister, Darla took off, leaving me with the other two agents.
“Did y’all have dinner yet?” Bella asked.
“We had a late lunch,” Cassie said.
“Great, let’s order something from Uber Eats. I’m starving.”