AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Do you think that maybe you could have ended up in a different hotel?”
In, say, New York? I’d only been there a handful of times, but I still recognised that skyline.
“Uh, I don’t know how?—”
“Good morning!” A door slammed against a wall, and I recognised Bradley’s voice. Either he’d indulged in considerably fewer daiquiris than Paulo had, or he’d overdosed on Tylenol and amphetamines. “Who wants to go roller-skating in Central Park? My friend Ishmael invited us.” He gave a dazed Paulo a side hug. “How’s my favourite daiquiri-drinking, unicorn-riding, Macarena-dancing bestie? The concierge is having your pants repaired right now, so they should be fixed by the time we finish our Bloody Marys. Oh, Lady Ramona, you lost one side of your eyelashes!”
Paulo had finally met his match, and it was glorious.
“Wh-what happened?” he asked.
“To your pants? You split the seam doing a cartwheel right before you passed out. Don’t worry, Cherry Divine carried your trophy back.”
“My t-t-trophy?”
“For winning the rodeo unicorn contest. You don’t remember?”
Paulo shook his head and then winced.
“Chill, I videoed it,” one of the drag queens said from off camera. “We can watch the replay before our tap-dancing class.”
I caught a brief glance of Paulo’s ashen face before the phone bounced around and finally focused on the ceiling. The sound of distant retching followed. Lightweight.
Bradley’s face came into view.
“You owe Alex five bucks.”
“Thank you, I already know that. How did you get Paulo to New York?”
“In a helicopter.” What did Bradley do, roofie him? Emmy had trained him well. “When should I bring him back?”
I considered the question for a moment. Paulo was only meant to be in Richmond for five days before he travelled to New York to visit his not-so-secret boyfriend anyway. Without him here, I could spend more time with Alex while Samya, Isabella, and Marisol handled the Craft Cabin. I wouldn’t need to run red lights on the way to breakfast, and I could ditch the damn muumuus for one blessed week.
“Don’t bring him back.” He was somebody else’s problem now. “Drop him off at Davis French’s apartment and tell him to enjoy his extended vacation.”
I’d sure enjoy mine.
14
DASHA
The four of us flitted through the lingerie department like wraiths, guns drawn—me, Ana, Emmy, and Sky. Sky was the baby of the team, Emmy’s protégé, just eighteen years old. Her inexperience showed, but that was hardly surprising. When I was her age, I’d already had four years of active combat experience under my belt. Plus one trip to a juvenile colony—think barracks, a uniform, forced labour—and five years of psychological trauma. I’d lost count of how many men I’d killed by then.
Movement beside a scantily clad mannequin caught my eye, and I lined up a shot, only to hold back as a terrified civilian raised her hands. An employee wearing a department store uniform. I motioned her to stay down, and she shrank back behind a rack of panties. Perhaps I should invest in some less utilitarian underwear? Not that it would stay on for long around Alex, but those dumb magazines Paulo kept leaving in the break room at the Craft Cabin suggested I should make the effort. Maybe something in silk, definitely not pink, but?—
“Three o’clock, behind the mannequin in the see-through…thing,” Sky whispered, and then she sniggered.
A simple trip to the mall had turned into an active shooter situation when a disgruntled employee decided to express his displeasure to his boss in the least subtle of ways. Now the four of us had been tasked with stopping him, using only our concealed-carry weapons plus whatever we could improvise as we went along.
“See-through thing?” Ana said. “Who programmed this sim?”
“Logan,” Emmy told her. “The size of the tits gives it away.”
I’d been dubious about training in a simulation at first, sceptical that it could be anywhere near realistic, but I had to concede that it wasn’t terrible. I reached out to a rack of crotchless panties and fingered the lace. Real. The Blackwood sim was set up in a cavernous building that allowed the training team to overlay real-world props with virtual reality. Some items were genuine. Others were not. The carpet, for example. It looked like maroon pile, but beneath my feet, I felt concrete. Something to bear in mind if I tucked and rolled.
“Ah, shit.” That was Sky again. “Hostage.”
The target came into view, briefly, his face hidden behind the voluminous curls and tear-streaked face of a terrified blonde as he backed toward a door marked “Staff” and disappeared through it. The four of us stacked up outside the doorway, two on the left, two on the right, listening carefully as we planned our next move. Emmy looped the tie from a silk robe through the handle and used it to slowly, quietly pull the door open without putting herself in harm’s way. The blonde’s sobs grew fainter as footsteps faded into the distance.
