Vicki sent them home – well, back to the motel – with a sack dinner for the two of them. Red unpacked it on top of the desk and found roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and broccoli cooked with garlic, butter, and caramelized onions.
“Jesus,” Rooster said, taking a bite of a yeast roll that was still warm. “Why doesn’t she open her own restaurant?”
Red chuckled and laid out the paper plates, napkins, and silverware Vicki had sent along. “I asked her the same thing. She said her knees would be the death of her if she was on her feet that long every day.”
“I hear that.”
The sat down on the end of her bed and ate in front of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. For once, the food they were eating tasted as good as the food on TV looked.
Red swallowed a bite of broccoli and said, “Um–”
He said, voice heavy, “I know what you’re gonna say.”
“No you don’t,” she said, automatically.
He sighed. “You wanna talk to me about the bake sale. And the meeting after it.”
She set her plate aside and turned to face him fully.
He dragged the tines of his plastic fork through the potatoes, turning them over and over, a deep groove pressed between his brows.
“Okay,” she said, feeling bolder than last night. Maybe bolder than ever. “Let’s talk about it.”
His jaw clenched, tendon in his throat leaping.
“I know you’re worried about being in public. We’ve already talked about this. I know.”
He took a deep breath, held it, let it out slow. “I just…” He set his plate beside hers and linked his hands together between his knees, clenched them so tight his knuckles turned white.
Her stomach sank. “We don’t have to.” She rested her hand on his shoulder, and he leaned into the touch. “We can just keep waiting for the truck.”
He waited a beat. Long enough that she thought he would nod, and say that was best, that he was sorry, but their lives were always going to be this way. That’s just how it was.
But instead, he said, “I want you to have the things you want.”
“Rooster–”
He turned toward her, eyes wide, worried. He was trying. He was showing her his fear, and trying to work through it. “We’ll do it. Just…just be careful. And smart. Okay?”
She dropped her head down onto his shoulder and smiled. “Okay.”
*
Spence peeked one last time through the window, then pulled the blinds and came to join them at the table.
There were seven of them total. Jake dealt mostly with Ramirez, because she was his second in command and he’d entrusted her to handle the daily inquiries of the others. Spence he knew, to an extent, but the others – Jones, Flannagan, Esposito, and Farrell – were just faces and files. Tonight, those faces didn’t seem to belong to men who thought too highly of his leadership.
“I don’t get it,” one of them – Jake thought it was Flannagan – said. “We know where they are. You’ve made contact. Their vehicle is locked up downstairs, so they have no way to flee. Why haven’t we made our move yet?”
“Yeah,” several of the others chorused.
“Palmer’s not even our objective,” Esposito said. “He’s completely expendable. We can take him out, apprehend Russell, and be back on schedule.”
“I gotta say, boss,” Spence said, shrugging apologetically. “I don’t disagree with them.”
Jake looked to Ramirez, and she arched a single brow. Asking, waiting to see what he’d do, but not pushing in either direction. At another time, he might have found that helpful. Right now, he could have stood someone in his corner.
He kept his tone calm, authoritative. “Russell is much more dangerous than any of you are anticipating. Palmer is a Marine; he’s heavily-armed, twitchy, and just looking for an excuse to shoot someone. But that’s nothing we haven’t all dealt with before in active combat. No, Miss Russell is a whole different breed of dangerous, and I won’t make a move until I’m sure we can do so successfully, and without putting ourselves at serious risk.”
“She weighs a hundred pounds,” Jones scoffed. “What’s she gonna do? Sneeze on us and give us colds?”
The others chuckled.
And that was when Jake realized that his team, except for Ramirez, had no idea what they were up against.
He surveyed them all, let them get twitchy and frustrated. Then he opened up the file he needed on his laptop, spun it to face them on the other side of the table, and clicked Play.
He’d watched the video himself at least a dozen times, squinting tired eyes, pitching forward in his chair until his nose almost brushed the screen. Hunting for any clue that would tell him how Russell had pulled off the impossible: a gas line, a bit of plastic explosive, even an oil-soaked rag. He’d been over it again and again, and so far, he hadn’t been able to explain the bright fire that blazed to life in her palms.
And then there was the way she’d touched him. Healed him.
He listened to the cellphone video’s familiar sounds, watching the team go from bored, to intrigued, to a blend of doubtful and put-out.
Esposito spoke first, covering his reaction with anger. “Why haven’t we seen this?”
“I thought you had. It was a part of my briefing packet.”
Spence gulped audibly, eyes still glued to the laptop screen. “That’s fake, right? I mean…it’s fake. It has to be.”
“How is she doing that?” Jones demanded.
Ramirez snorted. “The only reason any of us is even upright right now is because we pop weird experimental drugs every day. But you all draw the line at the fire girl?”
“Could we, like…hit her with a fire extinguisher?” Spence asked.
“Ruby Russell,” Jake said, raising his voice to silence them all, “is what we’re referring to, loosely, as an individual with heightened abilities.”
“Understatement,” Flannagan said.
“It’s a working title.” He cleared his throat. “The point is: this isn’t a simple arrest.”
“Then what is it?” Jones said.
Jake turned the laptop back around and pulled up an image: a diagram of the VA center. “We’ll make our move tomorrow,” he said, and detailed the maneuver he’d spent three hours meticulously planning.
Everyone left the meeting muttering under their breath, shaking their heads. They’d been unhappy at the outset, and they still were – but now it was fear, rather than boredom, driving their attitudes.
Ramirez stayed behind, statue-still in her chair. When the others were gone, and their voices had faded, her gaze snapped from the computer screen to Jake’s face. “I know what you’re doing.”
“Of course you do.” He took an ounce of childish satisfaction in biting back, short-lived and pathetic though it was.
She smiled, slow and sharp, and there was something feline in the expression. “Your recon. You’ve been looking for a reason to apprehend them.”
He scowled at her. “I have my orders. That’s reason enough.”
“Yeah, but you don’t like the orders. You’ve been trying to convince yourself the kid’s a monster, and the guy’s a whackjob. That they’re a danger to society.” She shrugged. “You want to believe that it’s right. But you don’t, do you?”
He stared at her a moment, the infuriating curve of her smile, the way she was amused by all of this. “Were you this smug in the Army?” he asked, and the smile dropped off her face. “Did you drive your CO up the wall?”
“No,” she said, getting to her feet. “I was a model soldier,” she said over her shoulder as she went to the fridge, and pulled out the box of injections. Her fingers shook a little as she worked the clasp.
Jake knew that everyone on the team had received a medical discharge from the Army, but he had no idea what sorts of injuries any of them had suffered. He wanted to ask her, suddenly: what was it for you? Which part of you starts to fail when you wait too long between shots?
But he wasn’t that much of an asshole.
He took a deep breath and said, “Okay, I’ll bite. Yeah, I have my concerns. What’s your take on it?”
She rolled up her sleeve, applied the tourniquet with her right hand and her teeth, and gave herself her nightly injection. Only once she’d snapped off the band and put the box away did she turn to face him, rubbing her upper arm with her opposite hand.