CHAPTER FORTY

After the Storm

I sat in a cafe. I ordered a sandwich with bacon and chicken, cucumbers and red peppers. I looked like Holly, red hair and all while I waited for Rodrigues (the Incinerator) and my sandwich to arrive. When they came, one sat on the table and the other sat on a chair.

He looked unapologetically handsome, but he was trying too hard to match my effortless nonchalance.

“Have you ever had this sandwich?” I asked him.

“I’ve never been to this cafe before,” he replied, looking at me over the rims of his sunglasses.

I took my knife and sawed off a bite. “Try it,” I said, offering the slice on the end of my fork.

He fingered his collar uncomfortably. “I’d rather not.”

“I’m not trying to poison you,” I said with a laugh. “Believe me, if I wanted you dead, I am one of the few people on the planet who could actually kill you and I wouldn’t do it with a sandwich. If that was on my mind, I could have killed you last year with your own explosives. I want to show you something.”

He leaned forward, covering one side view with his hand, and ate the corner piece without any more fuss. I liked him better than Charles already. Not that that was saying much.

He coughed a bit.

“Wasn’t very good, was it?” I asked. “It doesn’t smell good. Like something is wrong with it.”

A server was on me immediately. “Is everything okay with your meal?”

“It’s fine,” I replied, shooing him away. Once he was gone, I turned back to Rodrigues. “Are you okay with an interview? I want to ask you some questions.”

His eyes moved shiftily behind his sunglasses.

“Were you trying to kill Dr. Bobby?” I asked. “Did you know that you didn’t?”

He shook his head minutely. “I wasn’t sure. A lot of things happened at once.”

“You didn’t. His gun malfunctioned and exploded in his face. His wounds were serious and he was not equipped to deal with them in the hotel. He probably would have lived if he had been able to exit the vicinity before the hotel went up in flames, but you didn’t set off the detonator. I did.”

“How was that possible?” he asked, gobsmacked.

“As far as you know, it shouldn’t have been. I offer absolutely no explanation for why it was possible. Try this sandwich again.”

“I just tried it. It was not good.”

I cut off another piece. I had been busy fixing it in my head while we talked. “But I can do anything,” I said, offering him another bite.

He bit into it and his face was priceless. “That’s the same ingredients?”

I nodded and set down my fork. “Tell me about the bombs.”

“They were there to separate the prisoners from the guards, and give me a chance to figure out what Dr. Bobby knew.”

“It doesn’t matter what he knew. He’s dead.”

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“I have his notes,” Rodrigues gloated, momentarily dropping his guard.

I dismissed it with a wave. “Yeah… I hope you enjoyed reading them because I think I’d find them a bit dry. I’m not the least bit interested in what the dead Dr. Bobby thinks.”

“Who are you?” he asked, looking at me like I was an alien.

I deserved it.

I took a deep breath. “If you’re feeling like you might want to live forever, or if you are afraid that you’ll get caught by other people like Dr. Bobby, and have no idea where to hide, I have a place you can go for fifty years or so.”

He looked at me like he didn’t trust me. His guard was up like he had suddenly remembered himself.

I found I was having a hard time staying interested. I couldn’t yet see into the future the way Christian looked around a star, but it looked obvious to me that this man would get bored if there was no one to fight or outsmart.

“I’ve been scouted by a few military groups,” he admitted.

“Oh…” I said. “Did they like Dr. Bobby’s notes too?”

He was surprised. He hadn’t meant for me to piece together that he’d shared those notes with more than one country.

My gaze hardened. This young man was part of the problem. He didn’t work with Dr. Bobby because he was trying to take him down. He did it because he was trying to become the next Dr. Bobby. Now the cycle would continue with them torturing more people to see whether or not they could do the sorts of things Christian and I could do.

“Are you immortal?” I asked, leaning forward.

He nodded powerfully.

I leaned further forward and said, “I wonder how many of your organs you can live without. Are you already missing a few?”

“They’re not going to use me for their experiments,” he said arrogantly.

“Did they promise that? Did they shake on it?” I asked, mocking him.

That was when I noticed the snipers. There were two guns trained on me from across the street. One was hiding in the greenery by the road. The second was in a window above the street.

“Rhuk,” I said inside my head. “Jam their guns. The bullets wouldn’t hurt me. I just don’t want to make a scene.”

“They’re already taken care of,” it whispered.

Out loud, I said, “So, you promised them that you’ll bring me to them and they can harvest all the organs they want from me? That’s why they haven’t touched you yet. They’re trying to use you to catch a much bigger fish. I wonder though, how deep you are in all this? How much have you learned about your own body?”

“I’m immortal,” he hissed back at me.

“Are you?” I said seductively, before forcing a capillary to burst in his eye.

He didn’t squirt blood, but I saw the blood fill the white of his eye. He felt it and put a hand to his face. If he was able to bleed, he wasn’t very far along at all.

“Your boys won’t be able to take me. I’m not like you, and you will never be like me.” I got up.

He tried to follow me, clutching at my elbow like his hand was a vice grip.

How dare he touch me!

“Heal this.” I caused his femur to break. Snap! I almost felt vicious enough to make it break in three places, but I settled for one.

He fell to the floor, screaming.

I got on my phone and called for an ambulance. Then I crouched down next to him. The server and the host were crowding over him. “The ambulance will be here soon,” I told them as they hovered.

He was making such a fuss, he made the perfect distraction. In a moment when no one was looking, I slipped out the front door. I didn’t even pay for the famous sandwich. I glanced at the snipers. One had fired and his gun had exploded in his face. The second one had not fired. His gun had jammed. Leave it to Rhuk to ruin their firearms in different ways. I blew a kiss at a frustrated sniper. Christian was waiting down the block for me.

There he was.

Impressive, like he had been when he first entered my hospital room, except much more so. Now, he leaned against a stone wall and I felt myself feeling envious of whatever he had his eyes trained on. He flicked a toothpick from his mouth in boredom, creating a delicious angle with one corner as his elbow, another as his wrist, and the last as the point of his chin. His eyes flashed with unspoken interest when he saw me.

The secrets were between us now, and though more secrets would inevitably crop up… we would find the answers to them together.

Two men banged heads behind me as I walked. I twirled, saw them crumpled on the pavement, and looked around for more.

“Ick, how many guys did Rodrigues bring with him?”

“So many!” Christian exclaimed, his eyes still flashing. “I had to cause two car accidents on my way here.” He drew me into his arms. “Shall I open a hole in the alley to take us home?”

“Please. The food here sucks.”

As if he were escorting me into a polished hotel lobby, he led me into a bricked alleyway. Behind a dumpster, he opened a hole in the cement, and together we dropped into it without a sound.

THE END