Chapter 24 Keep Our Eye on the Prize, and Go Forth and Murder
Keep Our Eye on the Prize,
and Go Forth and Murder
We spared only a quick second for Griffin and I to goggle at each other before he and I hopped out of Clyde and ran to the armored truck that was now idling behind Bonnie.
Bobo barked in the back seat of Clyde until I sent him a telepathic, My good boy silenced immediately.
We joined Brady, Hunt, and Layla between the passenger’s side of the truck and the roadside foliage so we’d be somewhat concealed while we figured out how in the actual fuck it was that our lie-rents were in a freaking armored truck.
The passenger’s-side window was already rolled down, anticipating our arrival.
The man behind the wheel was strapped into a bulletproof vest and wearing polarized sunglasses that reflected our faces as he leaned across the seat so we could gawk up at him; the truck was tall enough to warrant a step bar.
“Dad?” I sputtered, momentarily overlooking how he wasn’t my dad at all. He was a geeky nerd who loved science more than was reasonable, average in just about every way but his intelligence. And now he was playing soldier …
“Yes, honey,” my dad said. “It’s me.”
As if I wouldn’t recognize him. As if that’s what I meant.
“Dayum, Reece,” Layla said, also overlooking the lie-rents’ long list of aliases. “Didn’t know you had it in ya.”
My mom’s head peeked around my dad’s. “No time for chatting.”
She was similarly outfitted, her hair in a tight, severe bun against her nape, a style I’d never seen on her.
“Climb in the back,” my mom barked at us. “And hurry.”
“No, we’re gonna take our own cars,” Hunt said.
My mom frowned, lines creasing either side of her mouth. “Don’t be stupid. This truck’s armored. It’s bulletproof.”
“We know what ‘armored’ means,” Hunt said. “We need our own means of getting the hell outta here once we’re done.”
My mom’s frown deepened. “You still don’t trust us? After we showed up like this for you all?”
Hunt shrugged. “Could be all a show.”
Damn right it could. Some of my awe at the radical change in my lie-rents’ demeanor drained.
“Be smart, son,” my dad said to Hunt.
Of course, Hunt wasn’t his son anything. But then, none of us were any of their actual children, so it made no difference.
Brady shored up next to Hunt and crossed his arms. “We are being smart.”
Celia’s head crowded behind my mom’s. “Come on, Brady. We can talk it all through later. Right now, we need to move. Get in the truck.”
“No,” Brady said. “We’ll be right on your tail.”
“After you give us some guns,” Griffin said. “We’ll take two each.”
“Who’s to say we have that much firepower?” my mom asked.
The five of us merely stared back at her.
“Fine,” she said with an irritated tsk. “Make your assumptions.” Then, mumbling angrily under her breath, “And don’t listen to us when we’re trying to save your asses.”
The back doors of the truck popped open to reveal Orson and Porter, also dressed in dark tactical gear, with guns strapped to vests, and holsters all over the damn place.
“Did you guys rob an armory or something?” I asked.
“Valid question,” Layla said.
“We didn’t rob anything,” Porter answered. “We’ve known about the perils of the situation a lot longer than you have.”
“Don’t remind us,” Brady said grumpily.
“We’ve been planning for contingencies.”
“We just hoped it’d never come to this,” Orson said, with a heavy look at all of us before sticking on Griffin.
Alexis was seated atop a bench that lined the wall of the truck, her sunglasses perched across a slim thigh.
As outfitted for a fight as the rest of them, she sat with a straight spine and one leg femininely crossed over the other.
She alone appeared implacable, like the whole bunch of us weren’t about to charge headlong into a fight we definitely weren’t prepared for, no matter how many guns they had.
The kind of money Magnum had? It could probably buy the entire world’s armies and a nuclear arsenal all his own.
Porter and Orson began handing over a revolver for us each, along with a weapons holster that looped around our waists, and spare magazines of ammo. Griffin had demanded two guns for each of us; we got one. It was still more than we’d counted on.
“Where’d you hide all this?” Layla asked while she fastened her belt, patting the Velcro tabs to make sure it wasn’t going anywhere.
“We have our ways,” Porter said enigmatically.
Layla snorted. “You can’t exactly hide a whole armored truck easily.”
“There’s no time for this,” my mom snapped from up front.
There was no partition separating the driver’s area from the back, suggesting the lie-rents had even had time to modify the vehicle.
“You really should get in the truck with us,” my mom said. “It’s the safest move.”
“Safe?” I chortled. “Like anything about this is safe.”
“She’s got a point there,” Orson muttered under his breath.
“We’ll follow you,” Brady said in a tone that also added, End of discussion.
Despite the hurry and danger, which mounted every second we were out on the road where anyone could spot us, there was a pregnant pause that invited someone to say something momentous before the farmload of shit really hit the industrial-size fan.
Brady said, “If you’re expecting gushing thanks, you’ll be disappointed. You’ve still got a whole hella lot of making up to do for all the lying and standing by while we got killed. You coulda at least told us we’d come back so we wouldn’t think we’d lost each other for good, ya know.”
Celia stood behind Porter, who was crouched, and smiled sadly. “We know. We really do. We want to make it up to you now.”
“That’s … new,” I said, my thoughts tumbling unbidden from my mouth.
Celia’s smile turned upside down. “Yes, well, we can’t go back and change things. We can only do our best now.”
I nodded with recognition. Our best is all any of us could ever do.
“We’ll do all we can to help you,” Orson said. “As much as we can.”
“Are we sure Magnum’s there?” Hunt asked.
“Confirmed,” my mom said. “As of five minutes ago, he was in his office. But he knows we’re coming.”
“What? Why?” Layla said.
My mom’s smile was taut and brittle as she lowered herself onto the bench seat beside Alexis. “Magnum knows everything. Things he shouldn’t be able to know, he still finds out. You all need to be prepared. Things might not go as we hope.”
I gulped.
She sought out my gaze from among all the others. “We really do love you. No matter what you think of us, please know that. Our love for you was never a lie.”
Alexis uncrossed her legs, leaned her elbows onto her thighs to seek out Hunt’s gaze.
Her hair was tied back, an absolute first for the woman with the long, silky black hair that always cascaded around her shoulders.
“Our caring for you is what made us go on the run with you in the first place, to move here, to Ridgemore.”
“Where we thought he’d never find us,” Porter said with a grunt that suggested, How could we have ever been so naive?
“We already knew Magnum was a formidable opponent then,” Alexis continued. “We just didn’t understand exactly how terrible he’d be to have as an enemy.”
My mom and Alexis started strapping in to seat belts. The time we never had to begin with was up.
“Before we go,” I said. “Show us how to use the guns.”
We were no strangers to weapons, but only the kind that didn’t require a license to own, which we couldn’t get. It wasn’t as if our lie-rents had ever taken us to the shooting range to prepare us for such a cataclysmic event, even though apparently they’d gone aplenty, all on their own.
Of all our ’rents, Orson was the one I would have pegged as the least inclined to violence. Yet it was he who leaned forward, drew his weapon, and ran us quickly through the basics with swift, sure slides and clicks. A total pro.
A minute later, Orson was joining Porter in rising, readying for our attack on the institute.
“Wait,” I said urgently. “How many Magnums are there? Is it just the three left?”
“What?” Celia asked, while the others just looked at us, confusion all too clear upon their faces. Even my dad swiveled from the front seat to stare.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Hunt’s brow furrowed. “You really don’t know there’s more than one Magnum?”
“You’re not just lying to us again?” Brady added.
“No, we don’t know,” Celia told him with angry, wounded eyes, though Brady’s accusation was fair, obvi.
The ’rents exchanged exasperated looks.
“Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” Porter was saying. “If that wasn’t Fanny in Joss’s room, we need to rethink things.”
“There’s no time for that,” Alexis said. “He knows we’re here. And he knows why.” She left the rest unsaid.
The ruse was up. We were exposed. There was no going back.
“So forward we go,” I said.
Griffin’s hand settled at the small of my back. “You do know about the others with powers locked up in some underground facility though, right?”
They exchanged another look before Orson, with pursed lips, finally nodded.
“We know.”
“We get them out too,” Griffin said.
“No,” my mom said right away. “There’s no time.”
“We’re not leaving them there,” Hunt said.
“It’s too risky,” Celia insisted.
“Then we’ll get them out,” Layla said, and then, just for us,
My dad revved the engine a little. Hunt and Brady turned and started toward our Mustangs.
“I … I hope you all make it through this,” I said, surprising everyone there, especially myself. “I’m really angry at all of you. Like, totally livid. But I don’t want any of you to die.”
I hadn’t known it to be true until the words were out of my mouth.
“Yeah,” Griffin added, but then said nothing else.
Layla just stared at the lie-rents. And Brady and Hunt, though surely they heard me, didn’t return to the back of the truck.
From the front, my dad said, “Let’s just get through this and then we’ll have a chance to talk everything through after. We’ll do right by you guys, you’ll see.”
Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t.