29 - Peyton
PEYTON
“And I’m telling you, cereal is not part of ‘breakfast for dinner’. That’s just not a thing.”
Ripley rolled his eyes at me, than jammed the spoon back into his smirking mouth. He was making overly loud crunching noises now. On purpose.
“Eggs, yes. Pancakes, waffles? Absolutely. Even toast,” I conceded. “But cereal…”
“Cereal’s one of the main food groups now,” Ripley said, matter-of-factly.
“Is not.”
“Is too.”
God, it was like fighting with an older brother! Only he wasn’t a brother at all. He was this shirtless, tattooed monstrosity, whose biceps and triceps flexed every time he brought the spoon back and forth to his mouth.
That, plus I was about three bites away from jumping his bones.
Swallowing my frustrations, I pulled the box from the table and began reading it aloud.
“Sugar. Sodium. High Fructose corn syrup…” I laughed. “This shit’s on the bottom of the food pyramid, I’m sure.”
“Nah, it’s at the top now,” he teased. “They inverted it. Look it up.”
The lights overhead flickered, momentarily. Ripley’s eyes shot upward, as he paused mid-bite.
“Cereal is poison,” I pressed. “Admit it.”
He shrugged. “Not if you put fruit in it. Then it becomes healthy.”
We were alone for once, our villa surrounded by the darkness outside.
The others had waited a few hours after sunset before sneaking off on different missions.
Colson was meeting a local about setting up new identities.
And Theo needed some hardware, to build something he called a ‘partial leak trigger.’
Right now, it seemed, insurance was all we really had.
“Do you know how they process these grains?” I shook the box at him. “They get bleached down, then extruded into—”
The lights flickered again, and this time they threatened to go out. Ripley set the cereal bowl down immediately.
“That’s new,” he murmured.
“Hey, it’s Belize,” I shrugged. “Maybe someone plugged in a curling iron.”
Then something popped… and the lights did go out.
“Stay here,” he ordered.
“I am not staying here.”
The look he gave me was deadly serious. “Peyton—”
“I’m not kidding,” I reiterated. “You’re not sidelining me during my own crisis.”
He grunted like a bear. Again, it was sexy.
“Fine. But stay behind me.”
A huge arm crossed my body as he crouched low, stepping in the direction of the beach. Ripley moved like a cat, stalking its prey with predatory focus. We were halfway to the doorway when we heard it: an unmistakably insect-like, high-pitched, whine.
The drone was ink-black, with tiny red lights. It passed low, buzzing right by the villa.
Too low.
Ripley unleashed a creative stream of curse words, under his breath.
“INSIDE,” he said, pushing me back. “We need to—”
The living area window exploded inward with a tremendous crash. I spun around too late to avoid the shower of glass, but quick enough to save my eyes.
Before I could recover, I felt an arm hook around my waist.
“Got her.”
I whirled on a man dressed all in black. He wore a headset and goggles, with thin layers of body armor pulled over gloves.
Instinctively, I elbowed him as hard as I could in the face.
When he didn’t let go, my hand grabbed something else…
something hard, and smooth, and full. I recognized it halfway through my swing: the bottle of rum we’d been drinking the night before.
It was only half-empty, and shattered spectacularly against the man’s face.
There was a crack of teeth. Multiple teeth.
“FUCKKK!” he spat, through a gurgle of blood.
I was still holding the jagged end of the bottle, so I shoved it back in the direction of his face. Lines of blood appeared, accompanied by more screaming. For some reason, I thought I’d feel fear, or guilt, or revulsion.
But I felt none of those things, so I pulled back and stabbed forward again.
My attacker’s grip loosened momentarily, and I pulled myself away. There was no way I was being taken; not now, not ever. Donovan Prescott had owned me once already, or at least he thought he did. But that was long since over.
And I vowed I would die before that ever happened again.
“Get her!”
The man to my left rushed in, and I stomped his foot as hard as I could. There was crunch and a scream, as if I might’ve broken something. But his arms still made their way around me, pinning me to the wall.
“Peyton, DUCK!”
I let myself go utterly limp in his grasp, my body dead weight.
It was just enough to slide downward, in the direction of the floor.
Something passed over me, a split-second after I got out of the way.
That something was a table leg. The assholes crashing through the window and smashing the furniture apart had so thoughtfully provided it, and Ripley had taken them up on their offer to introduce it to someone’s face.
The sound of thick wood thudding against a skull was a little bit frightening, but also relieving. It meant we were winning. It meant we were—
CRACK!
A fist suddenly connected with my face. My jaw moved sideways, in a really weird way. I was left standing there, holding it, counting my teeth with my tongue. Looking back at the guy who’d just struck me.
Ripley saw the whole thing.
Something in his face changed.
Oh shit…
Rage ensued; unlike anything I’d ever seen or even imagined.
Ripley didn’t just pounce on the guy who’d hit me, he lifted him into the air before body-slamming him to the ground.
The noise he made as the air was forced from his lungs didn’t sound human at all.
Neither did the sound of Ripley’s fists as they connected, again and again, with what remained of the guy’s face.
“Hey…” I muttered through my sore jaw.
He was on top of the attacker now, straddling the man, pinning him down. Ripley’s fists moved in opposite circular arcs, like great windmills of destruction. Every time they fell, they brought even more damage and destruction. I was hypnotized by arcs of blood, as his white knuckles turned red.
“Ripley!”
He spun at the waist, whirling back to check on me. His expression didn’t even look human anymore. It was purely feral, animalistic. Without a word, he went back to pulverizing what remained of the man’s face.
“Ripley, STOP!”
It was my pleading that finally snapped him from his trance. I saw his eyes change. Reluctantly he stood up, blood dripping from the tips of his fingers.
“Let’s go!”
We ran. Out the back door and around the house, skirting the beach, sticking to the cover of the trees.
The jungle swallowed us for a while, until the buzzing of the drone returned.
As it grew louder and more pronounced, we paused beneath a giant red mangrove, holding our breath until it skimmed by.
“Do you think that drone has infrared cameras?” Ripley asked, not even out of breath.
The look I shot him was absurd. “How the hell should I know?”
“Fine. Keep up with me, then.”
He bolted away and set the pace, sprinting so far ahead of me down the beach my feet felt like they were flying. Somehow, my legs kept up. My muscles didn’t cramp. I stayed with him for over a mile, until finally, mercifully, he pointed to a small shack at the end of a short, decrepit dock.
The door was locked, but not by much, and not for long. A toddler could’ve shouldered it open.
“Inside, quick.”
My heart was still beating out of my chest as the door closed behind us.