Chapter 35 Jagger #2
“Jagger?” The soft lilt of her voice has me instantly stopping in my tracks and turning to her. “Where are you going?”
I lift my hands and sign, “To figure out whose house this is.”
“Can I help you?”
She looks so hopeful as she waits for my answer, and I know I could deny her nothing. I beckon her over and snatch up her hand the second she’s close enough.
“Hmm. No pictures of family on the walls,” she says as we walk down the hall, noticing the same thing I had. We start in a bedroom, the closest to the kitchen.
She lets go of my hand and starts opening drawers. I check the wardrobe, then look under the bed. I’d already checked them last night, looking for anybody hiding here, but this time I’m looking for a different reason.
She plants her hands on her hips with a frown. “It’s empty. A spare room, maybe?” I shrug, and she follows me to the next room, the one I slept in.
When she looks at the messy sheets, her cheeks darken, and she scrambles to make the bed. Amused, I help her until it looks better than it did before I climbed in it last night. After that, we look through the room.
“These drawers have clothes in them,” she says. I move over to the dresser, and we look at what’s inside. It’s filled with a variety of very basic clothes. Sweatpants, T-shirts, boxers, and women’s underwear. Even some sports bras.
Wren pulls out several pairs of yoga pants and starts looking them over in more detail, reading the labels.
“That’s strange,” she mumbles. When she doesn’t say anything, I grab her hand to get her attention and raise my eyebrow in question. “Oh, it’s just that they aren’t even all the same size. There are four pairs here, sizes small, medium, large, and extra extra large.”
I frown as she shows me the labels. Strange indeed.
After putting the clothes away, we look in the other two bedrooms and find one empty and the other with clothes similar to the first room. Near the end of the hall, I find a tiny linen closet filled with towels, a few backpacks, paper towels, toilet paper, and some cleaning supplies.
“You guys find anything?” Sly asks as I close the door.
I shake my head as Wren fills him in. “Just some clothes, but they were in different sizes, like they didn’t belong to the same person.”
“Something about this place is off,” Sly says, and I nod in agreement.
“Hey,” Pete calls as he and Dex join us in the hall. “Want us to go get some real food?”
“I’m actually wondering if we should leave. I don’t feel safe here,” Sly says, his eyes darting to Wren’s in concern. I nod in agreement.
“Where will we go?” Dex asks.
“A hotel, I guess.”
“Can we at least get some food on the way? I’m still starving,” Pete complains.
Sly rolls his eyes but agrees. “Fine. Let’s pack and get out of here.”
Dex steps forward and swoops Wren up into his arms, yelling, “I’ve got everything I need!” She giggles, and I swear to God my heart literally leaps in response. I love seeing her like this. Happy and without fear.
He carries her into the room they slept in with Sly on their heels, telling us over his shoulder, “Grab your stuff and let’s get out of here.”
Pete moves into the room he slept in, and I do the same. My stuff is mostly packed, I just grab my toothbrush, toss it in, and zip up my bag.
As I step toward the bedroom doorway, the front door loudly bangs open down the hall as a stranger's voice calls out, “Rise and shine! It’s time to go!”
Dropping my bag, I pull my biggest dagger from my thigh and sprint down the hall, ready to stop them from getting anywhere near my girl.
As I charge into the living room, I see a brown-haired man walking toward me. I don’t stop to ask questions; I just pull back my knife and throw.
“Shit!” His reflexes are fast as he dips his upper body to the side, and it narrowly misses him, instead sinking deep into the door. “Dude, what the fuck was that for?”
He asks it like we’re friends, but I know I’d remember his face. He’s got that all-American boy next door look with blue jeans, a plain tan T-shirt, and a brown bomber jacket. His brown hair is styled in such a way that it looks somehow both messy and perfectly in place.
I pull out another dagger as I charge him with bared teeth. I won’t let anyone take Wren from me. I don’t know who he is, but it doesn’t matter. It’s the five of us against the world right now, and that makes him my enemy.
He swears, yanking a gun from his pocket and aiming it at me, but I don’t slow. He pulls the trigger, and I hit the floor, muscles seizing as a bolt of electricity rips through me.
That fucker tased me!
“Jagger!” Wren screams my name, and as I lay twitching on the floor, I watch in horror as she yanks herself out of Sly’s hold and charges toward my assailant.
She seems to turn feral as she launches herself onto his back, and he drops the taser, his hands flying up to stop her from choking him.
“Stop!” He yells through her screaming as he squirms under her hold.
I continue to twitch on the ground as the other three surround the stranger, looking for an opening to get Wren free and take him down.
“You shot him!” she screams as she, rather adorably, hammers her fist into the back of his shoulder, something he clearly doesn’t feel.
“He was going to stab me!” He exclaims, as if his actions were justified.
“I’ll kill you!” she screams again, and my eyes widen at the venom in her voice. I didn’t think I could love her any more than I do, but watching her try to avenge me makes my heart swell with love for the little banshee.
As I watch him struggle to get her off his back, I realize he’s trying not to hurt her. He could have slammed his back into the fridge or counter, but he’s just been taking her assault and trying to talk her down.
“He’ll be fine, Wren! I just tased him!” Wren suddenly ceases her assault, a frown pinching her brow as she looks over at me. My arm twitches, but I try to give her a little nod to let her know I’ll live.
“Who the fuck are you?” Pete finally asks the question I’m desperate to know.
“I’m Elias.”
From where she’s still perched on his back, arm wrapped around his neck, I watch her eyes widen in shock as she stops trying to hurt him. “Elias?”
“Hi, sweetheart. Miss me?” He gently rubs the arm still wrapped around his throat, and she slowly lets go and slides down his back to the ground.
Wait… Elias? Isn’t that the name of her best friend who ghosted her? I always knew there must have been more to that story.
“You’re the asshole that left her!” Dex accuses, voicing the words I can’t.
Ignoring Dex, he turns to face Wren and smiles gently as he reaches out and cups her face. I bare my teeth and fight through the remainder of the twitching to push to my feet.
I can see the others inching closer, unsure what to make of him, but ready to swoop in and grab her any second.
“How are you here right now? Where have you been?” she asks, sounding half angry and half in disbelief as she grabs his forearms and stares up at him with so many questions swirling in those blue eyes.
“We can chat later, right now, we need to get you all out of here before the feds arrive,” he says, grabbing Wren’s hand and marching her down the hall before anyone can stop him.
The feds? Shit.
We scramble to follow them as Sly seethes, “You led the feds to us?”
Elias sighs, as if answering is a nuisance, oblivious to the fact that a wrong answer could end him. He stops at the very end of the hall, where a painting of a deer hangs on the wall. He grabs the side and swings it open, revealing a digital pad.
What the fuck is that?
“I didn’t lead them here,” he says, pressing his hand to the pad. “You did.”
“What does that mean?” Pete asks right before we hear a loud beep, then the entire wall starts to swing toward us, revealing it’s a hidden room.
“This is an FBI safe house; they knew about your presence the second you opened the door. The only reason they haven’t stormed the place yet is that I sent out a fake signal, indicating it’d been checked.”
A safe house? That explains the lack of anything personal and all the different-sized clothing.
He pulls Wren behind him as he steps into the room, and all our eyes widen as we take it in. The space is covered with supplies and weapons.
Pete lets out a long whistle, muttering, “Holy shit balls.”
The fact that Elias has had his back to us this whole time and has led us to a room filled with weapons tells me he might not actually want to kill us. A tiny bit of tension leaves me as I watch him grab a few duffel bags from a bin and toss them up on the small table in the middle of the room.
“But any minute now, they’re going to realize that signal’s a fake, and trust me when I say, they won’t care what you have to say. You four will be back behind bars before you can blink, and they’ll arrest Wren for harboring fugitives."
“Like fuck they will!” Pete hisses angrily as he grabs a gun off the wall and looks it over.
“Help me fill these bags; we need to move quickly,” Elias instructs us, gesturing to all the weapons and bags.
I’m not sure why we follow his instructions; maybe the fact that he was Wren’s best friend gives him a little bit of credibility. Or maybe it’s the fact that he’s led us into a room filled with weapons without so much as a warning not to use them on him.
Whatever the reason, the four of us quickly start grabbing things and shoving them in the bags. I notice there’s more than just guns and knives lining the walls, so I grab the handheld radios, a couple of tasers, smoke grenades, and some other gadgets that look important.
“Okay, we have enough, we’re exiting here.” He points to a door in the back wall of the room, one that must exit out the side of the house, at the opposite end from the driveway.
“We need to grab our bags,” Dex says, gesturing back into the house.
“Be quick,” Elias says with a nod.
I turn to Sly, and he nods at me, thinking the same thing I am, that we aren’t leaving her alone with him. “I’ll stay,” he tells me, and I run to grab my bag from my room as Pete and Dex do the same.
It takes us mere seconds, since we’d already packed, and as we approach the hidden room, I pick up their conversation.
“Elias, I don’t understand. How do you know all of this?” Wren voices the very thing I’m desperate to know.
“Because I’m one of them.” I freeze at the hidden entrance, as my eyes narrow on him.
“You're an FBI agent?” she asks in shock.
“Well, I doubt I am anymore. Not after what I did.”
Tentatively, she steps closer, placing her hand on his arm as she asks, “Elias… What did you do?”
He hoists the bag higher on his shoulder as he turns to her, his eyes bouncing between all of us before he finally answers.
“I helped all of you escape.”
I don’t even have time to process that before the front door bursts open, and I hear several windows smash in the bedrooms. I only have time to drop my bags and pull a single dagger from my thigh before we’re surrounded by men dressed head to toe in black tactical gear, pointing semi-automatic pistols at us with three giant white letters plastered across their chests.
FBI.
“Hands up! You’re all under arrest!”
To be continued in My Fearless Fugitives…