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Okay then.
Heading out the front door, we only have to wait a couple minutes before a black car pulls up to the curb. Ronan opens the door, not bothering to let me in first.
Which means he knows that I’m going to follow him. He knows he has the upper hand, and I won’t run. For some reason, that fact eats at me.
And yet, I still do. I still climb in the car without a sound, despite everything in me telling me not to.
The car doors lock.
“Now that you have me in here, can you tell me what’s going on? Where we’re going?”
“What’s happening is that your parents were very bad people, and we’ve been working on bringing their empire down for quite some time,” Ronan says, his voice void of emotion.
“Who is thiswe?”
“You’ll see soon enough,”
“Ronan, tell me now.”
“We, meaning us,” a voice from the front says.
The driver’s voice.
“And who are you?” I ask as we come to a stop in traffic.
The woman takes her glasses off, whipping out a cigarette before lighting it slowly, taking a drag before she turns to me.
And I see myself staring back.
FIVE
RONAN
I almost feel bad.
Almost.
Sydney’s body goes rigid as her eyes grow wide. A range of emotions run through them, and I can’t help but feel unsure of this. This would be a shock to anyone in normal circumstances, but as someone going through what she is right now, it’s probably so much worse.
“Who the hell are you?” she asks, her voice small. She clears her throat, trying to act tough.
“Jerry,” the woman in front says, taking another drag from her cigarette.
I try to suppress my annoyance with Jerry and focus on what’s happening in front of me. With my aggravation for the other redhead in my life right now, sitting next to me. We weren’t supposed to bring Sydney in yet. She wasn’t supposed to find out so soon.
We were making progress. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless. I knew she wasn’t telling me everything she knows. I just needed a little more time to push her—a little more time to make her trust me.
I should have handled the situation better from the beginning. Instead of coming off strong, I should have been friendlier. When I’m undercover working, I’m always friendly. I’m capable of it, that’s for sure. I should have made her feel better.
But something about that makes my actions somehow seem more sinister than they already were. No matter what, my job has been to lure her into a false sense of security. To trick her. To deceive her trust. But being nicer to her, making her believe I’m someone wildly different than who I really am, seems worse.
But then again, why do I care?
Sydney is a means to an end. We’re here to get information from her and drop her off at home. She won’t be in our lives long. She’s necessary collateral in our mission, which is bigger than every single one of us.
Sometimes, people have to suffer for the greater good. That doesn’t make it okay, and that doesn’t mean you can’t feel horrible about it, but it’s the truth.
The car seems to heat up as Sydney sits in her confusion. Her white fingers twist the bottom of her blue t-shirt, her neck almost as red as her hair as she watches Jerry in the rearview mirror.
