She rolls her eyes. “Whatever.”
“Like everyone else in this damn town, I wish I had a quarter of what’s in your head. You have a gift that makes people scared there’s something wrong with them because they’re nothing like you.” Being a child of the Terror, I’m also well versed in taking the brunt of people’s fear.
She rolls her eyes again and I ignore her attitude. “Tell me something you’ve learned.”
I stare at her. She stares at me. When it’s clear I could do this all day, she caves. “Well...did you know if you removed the empty space from atoms, you could fit all of humanity into a sugar cube and that there are things that can travel faster than the speed of light and that light sometimes travels slower than...well...the speed of light?”
I had no clue. “Nope.”
“Now you do, and so do I, so if we run out of things to talk about, then we have that.”
I crouch next to her and realize how weird the smile on my face feels. The first couple weeks of smiling, I didn’t know I was doing it, but now that I’ve been continuing, I notice. Maybe because I’m exerting muscles that have been frozen for too long. “Humans suck and light has traffic issues—I’m keeping up. Any reason for your choice of reading material?”
She squishes her lips to the side as she fiddles with the zipper of her pack. “I was curious if time travel was possible. Stupid, I know, but it was either that or redoing a crossword puzzle I had already done, which doesn’t help much with the itch in my brain.”
“Why time travel?”
She tilts her head as if I should already know and my gut twists.
“Do you wish you never met me?” I ask.
“No,” she rushes out. “Not at all. It’s Kyle I’d like to dissect from my life.”
The peace she always brings unbalances me. I settle my hand over hers, which is fidgeting with the bag. “I’m glad we met, too.”
I look into her eyes for one second. Another. Breanna’s searching my face longer than anyone I have known and it’s not for a battle of dominance. It’s as if she honestly likes what she sees. I hope she finds something redeemable in me, because I like what I see in her.
A thump. Breanna jumps and withdraws her hand from mine. I stand and survey the area. Someone must have dropped a book a few rows over. I’m stupid for letting down my guard in public. There’s a reason why I sought her out so early. “Kyle’s been busy on his phone.”
Breanna beams. “And?”
“I found your picture on his cell, his home computer, and I’ve figured out four of the five people in his group.” It helped that I knew two names instead of one.
She blows out a breath and her shoulders relax. “All of this from one computer virus.”
I nod. Pigpen taught me how to upload code from the internet and how to get it on people’s computers and phones so I have a back door to their network. So far, the code he sent me is complete magic.
Words to live by: never use public Wi-Fi. Protecting our clients means discovering who is after them and almost everyone leaves a digital trail for someone savvy enough to follow.
“You keep surprising me,” she says.
It’s nice to prove to Breanna that I also have a few smart tricks up my sleeve.
“What about the fifth person?” she asks as she stands. “And are you sure you have the correct three other people and can you delete the pictures without them knowing and how will you know you get them all and what if they find out and...”
The bell rings and I risk touching her as I lay one finger over her soft lips. She goes absolutely still and it takes massive amounts of self-control not to tunnel my fingers in her hair and press my mouth to hers.
“Breanna?” I say, and it comes out much lower than I had intended.
She licks her lips. My eyes briefly shut as her warm tongue grazes my finger. She turns red and I’m haunted by images of her doing that again, but on purpose and slower. I clear my throat and continue, “Trust me.”
I lower my hand and she breathes out, “I can do that.”
Breanna: What if this first one isn’t a code? What if it’s the cipher?
I lean against the seat of my motorcycle parked on the side of the road. Next to me is a stranded semitruck full of fine Kentucky bourbon. It’s a cold autumn night, which means this winter is going to be a bitch. My cut is on over my zipped-up leather jacket. My fingers are numb as I discarded my gloves so I could text with Breanna.
In the past month, on this same road in the mountains of the Tennessee/North Carolina border, three other rigs not under Terror Security have met the same fate of two blown tires. Those trucks were jacked of their cargo at gunpoint while the driver had been fixing the problem.
With the black night surrounding us and the occasional flash of headlights from passing cars, there’s an eerie sensation to this scenario. My neck itches, like there’s a scope of a high-powered rifle trained on me.