Archer
M inka paces. Paces. Paces. Muttering under her breath and flexing her hands.
She has an entire argument with herself, grumbling and swearing, gritting her teeth and angrily whipping loose hair off her reddened face.
When her pacing takes her to the corner of the building beside the diner, she turns and comes back this way.
And all along, I stand guard, arms folded, shoulders back, and ears pricked for so much as a fucking whisper from Sophia Solomon. Because Minka ain’t ready to make nice yet.
“When you’ve walked away the anger, we can break it down and discuss it.”
“I don’t want to walk away the anger! I want to punch her in the freakin’ face.”
“Well…” It’s cute, in a way. Adorable, actually, that she’s ready to destroy the most powerful fucking enemy I’ve ever known. And really, the only reason I’m able to call it cute is because Soph’s soldiers aren’t here to fight us.
They’re here to stop Minka from starting a war.
“I don’t think you’re gonna get a chance to punch her in the face, Minnnnka. She’s kinda protected, and you’re not sneaky.”
“She’s gotta sleep sometime.”
“Yeah,” Jay snickers, hovering close by and doing his duty: securing his wife’s enemy.
“Except I don’t have to sleep. It’s a long story.
Have you ever seen a case where a man was shot in the head and lived to tell the tale?
” He fists sour worms and shoves them into his mouth.
“I’m still totally normal, too. The bullet caused no harm, except to my sleep. ”
“Sure, Bishop. Totally normal.” Chuckling, I step in Minka’s way. “You’re not gonna get a chance to kill her in her sleep, babe. What’s your next plan?”
“She likes to eat.” She looks up with bright eyes that verge on crazy. “Remember that case we had recently? With the poisoned pie?”
“No pie for my wife,” Jay laughs. “Noted.”
“Archer,” she whines. “She cooked up an entire emergency, all so she could violate Aubree’s wishes and strap a fucking neuro headset thing to her brain.”
“I mean…” Again, Jay interrupts us with a grin. “If she were actually able to read minds, she’d have seen this coming, no? She would have known. Which, in itself, is the experiment.”
“Bishop, you need to back the fuck up.” I grab Minka’s arm in one hand and push him back with the other.
“I swear to Christ, she’s got a whole bunch of homicidal rage bottled up.
I’ve been managing it for over a year now, but there’s gonna come a point where she explodes, and I won’t be able to clean up the mess before it hits you. ”
“Stop speaking about me like I’m not right here!” Minka tears free of my grip and goes back to pacing. “This was dirty, even for Sophia. It was underhanded and erosive to the foundation our friendship was built upon.”
“Babe—”
“Lying is shit between friends! I could respect her before. She annoyed me, and the audacity, something she was never lacking , irritated me. But at least she was honest in everything she said and did.”
“She wanted to see you, Mayet.” Despite my warnings, Jay slowly approaches. “We had this wedding to come to anyway, and she figured bringing you could be f?—”
“She wanted to see Aubree!”
“Well… sure. She wanted to see Emeri, too. But you gotta recognize she doesn’t understand this. She’s logical, like you. She’s all about numbers and data and having proof and avenging people who’ve been wronged. Like you.”
“Hey!” I snap out. “We don’t fucking talk about that in public, asshole.”
He raises his hands in surrender, but he looks past me to Minka. “You and Soph are so fucking similar, it’s wild. But then she finds out about Emeri, and that’s not something a logical mind can process or accept.”
“No one is asking her to accept it! No one is even asking Sophia to interact with Aubree. They live completely separate lives.”
“But Emeri exists, and because she does, Soph is compelled to understand her. She’s not always honorable, Mayet. But she’s never harmful.”
“Not harmful? She’s a hired gun, Jay! She’s a weapon, and her body count has nothing to do with men who’ve visited her bed.”
“As. Are. You,” he sneers. “And only ever to protect those who’ve been wronged. You’re the same fucking kind. She’s just louder, which annoys the woman who doesn’t particularly like noise. You,” he adds with a chuckle. “You’re that wom?—”
“I know who you mean!” Furious, she wraps her hand around my wrist and strides toward the diner.
“We’re leaving. Aubree!” She draws her best friend around—the one who similarly paces, under the watchful gaze of Tim and Corey.
Jesus, these men are trained well. Then she circles her free hand in the air.
“Pack it up. We’re leaving. Turns out we’re gonna get home by dinnertime after all. ”
“You have no ride.” Soph waits in the diner doorway, her shoulder pressed to the frame, one foot kicked over the other. “There are no for-hire cars in this hillbilly town, and his,” she nods toward Felix, “plane already left.”
“So we’ll call it back.” Minka snatches out her phone and unlocks the screen. “We’ll call a cab. Easy.”
“You could try. But I suspect you’ll find your phone isn’t working very well all the way out here.”
“What—” Minka studies her screen. “No, I?—”
“And yours.” She meets my eyes. And since she’s a master fucking manipulator, she looks to Micah, too. “None of your phones have reception. That’s so weird, huh?”
“I do!” Fletch marches closer and presents his phone. “I’ve been texting my daughter.”
“Because I’m a generous person. I’m not cruel, and if someone attempted to keep me from my children, I’d end their lives in a heartbeat.
You can call and text her, but you’ll find the rest of your phone similarly disabled.
” She clicks her tongue, bringing her gaze back to me.
“So odd that you would find yourselves unable to communicate with the outside world so suddenly, right?”
“Fix it, Sophia.” Minka shoves her phone into her back pocket. “Fix it now. Or Fletch will simply call his daughter and have them order our plane back.”
“Sadly, that won’t work either.” She pastes on a fake-apologetic expression and tilts her head to the side.
“See, Felix’s plane no longer has clearance to fly, and should it ping any tower, anywhere within the continental US, it’ll be considered a threat to national security and stopped, by any means necessary. ”
“Sophia!”
“Besides, you don’t actually know the coordinates of where we are right now, so even if you tried, you wouldn’t be able to direct your recovery operation effectively, since ‘ Bumfuck, Idaho ’ isn’t very specific.
“All this because you want me to wear a friggin’ helmet?” Aubree snarls. “Seriously? Give me the damn thing and let us get this shit out of the way.”
“You will not wear her fucking helmet.” Minka snaps. “She’s not a lab rat, Sophia. She’s not a toy. And she’s not for you to test. She’s a human being who has a right to share, or not share, her gift however she sees fit.”
“I’m done with her anyway.” Soph waves her off with a playful smile. “If she were legit, she would’ve known what I was doing from the start. The fact that she let you get on the plane means she’s a fake.”
“Sophia!”
“She’s intuitive,” Soph shrugs. “She’s smart, which means she observes those around her and guesses correctly at a rate slightly higher than average. That’s not reading minds. It’s luck.”
“So I guess we’re done then,” Aubree counters. “You revealed me for the fake I am. Time for us to leave?”
“Find us a hotel please, Archer.” Minka turns and meets my eyes. “Just for one night. Give us a chance to figure out our next move, and give Debbie somewhere to rest. Then we’ll go home tomorrow.”
“Oop. Sorry.” Soph scrunches her nose. “There are no hotels available either.”
Slowly, homicidally, Minka turns. “Why not?”
“There’s this wedding in town tomorrow, and I don’t know if you know, but almost every single human I’ve ever met is here for it.”
“Oh, hey!” A woman stops on the other side of the street, with wild, curly, blonde hair and a little boy on her hip. “Hey, Soph!”
Smug, Soph waves.
“No hotels,” Minka growls. “No cell service. No cabs. That’s what you’re telling me?”
“But we have the bus,” Jay inserts playfully. “Fully decked out with a banging sound system, cruise control, icy cold air, and, when we’re under the right satellites, free Netflix. Also, we counted beds, and it turns out, we have enough.”
“I’m not sleeping on your bus! I’m not playing this game. I’m not staying in this fucking town, because you brought us here with a lie.”
“You wouldn’t have come if I told you the truth.”
“No shit, Solomon! Because you’ve wasted our time, got Cato assaulted, stressed an expectant mother, red-flagged Felix’s plane, so now we’ll never know if we’ll be shot out of the sky in the future, and you fully intended to violate Aubree’s right to privacy.”
“Oh, cool,” Cato drawls. “Consent matters again?”
“Shh.” Raquel makes a slicing motion with her hand in front of her throat. “I can’t defend you from this many angry chicks at once, kid.”
“Come back into the diner,” Soph grumbles. “Eat your food. Hang out. We’ll sleep on the bus tonight, since I can’t clear Felix’s plane fast enough to bring it back right now anyway. Then tomorrow, we’ll take you to the airport and you can go home again.”
I look across our crowd and wait for Tim’s silent response, a gentle nod of his head, and his hand going out to tug Aubree against his side.
Then I go to Felix for his, and Micah’s next.
If this is chess, then Soph’s got us in check, and there’s no way in hell any of us are letting the girls sleep on the street tonight.
Finally, defeated, I drag Minka around and force her to lean on me just long enough to regulate her breath.
To calm her temper. I massage the back of her neck, and when the bulk of her rage subsides, I tilt her head and search her eyes.
“None of us have eaten since Copeland, so if you’re about to throw hands, you need to eat first.”
“If we sleep on the bus, I can kill her with her own pillow.”
I cough out a soft laugh and steal a fast, dry kiss. “That’s the spirit. I’ll be your lookout. Come on.” I tap her butt and meet Jay’s eyes in warning. Because if he doesn’t move Soph out of the fucking doorway, she’s gonna end up with a busted rib.
Chuckling, he slings his arm over Sophia’s shoulders and walks her inside and back to the plate she left behind, and though Minka’s bag remains on the counter, I steer her to Aubree and Tim’s table and pull a chair out.
“I’ll get your things.” I press on her shoulder and force her to sit, then dropping a kiss on her temple, I wait for Tim’s eyes to make sure he’s on guard.
Catch her if she starts running with a knife.
Turning, I stalk back to the counter. “You’re a pain in my ass, Solomon.” I snatch up the case file, shoving it into Minka’s bag and closing the zipper at the top. “There were so many other ways to do this.”
She tears a curly fry into pieces, placing each morsel on her tongue and smiling like none of this is a bother to her at all. “I have no regrets. I get a weekend with your doctors.”
“You get an afternoon, a long night with one eye open, and a tense drive back to the airport. Unfortunately for you, you’ve fractured a working relationship I never liked anyway.
Every time you called my wife, I sprouted a new gray hair.
” I snag Minka’s bag and the plate the server sets down in front of Jay.
“My life will be a helluva lot more peaceful now that I don’t have to worry about whatever bullshit you two are cooking up together.
” I meet Jay’s dark stare and tip my chin. “Thanks for the burger.”
Spinning on my heels, I lock eyes with Mayet and hate that beneath the rage is a woman hurt.
Minka Mayet so rarely wants friends, and this is further proof, in her eyes, of why she shouldn’t bother.
“Eat up, babe.” I walk back to our table and set the plate down in front of her. “Those pod-looking beds on the bus look pretty good. They’re private, so we’ll shut everyone out and bide our time ‘till our flight tomorrow.”
“Oh, damn. She’s leaving!” Cato bounds up from his chair and skids toward the diner door. “Eliza! Don’t leave, girl. I’m not done talking to you.”