“Hi, Sam,” I say, swinging my legs around toward the back of the truck. I let my feet dangle for a second before sliding my body onto the cement floor. My limbs are heavy and tight.
“Reagan … and Luke! You too? Seriously, what the FUCK?” She’s now screaming, the word fuck bouncing off the warehouse walls and wrapping itself around my already-constricted chest. She points her finger at my face, waving it with a fury I’ve never seen from her before. “You’re supposed to be at Langley right now. What the hell are you doing here? Have you completely lost your fucking mind?”
“Sam, calm down for one second,” I say, putting my hand up in the air.
“Calm down? Don’t ask me to fucking calm down,” Sam says, her normally pale cheeks streaked crimson. “Do you have any idea how many Black Angel Directives you’ve broken? Let alone just throwing your training and good old-fashioned common sense to the wind? I can’t even begin to piece together how the two of you got down here, but you stole DC’s truck. They are waiting on that truck.”
“Not anymore,” a tall man with dark, sun-kissed skin, a black beard, and a long black braided ponytail says as he hangs up the satellite phone. “Finally got a hold of the DC team. Their plane had to make an emergency landing in Costa Rica. There’s no way they’re going to make it down here.”
Sam puts her hands on the top of her head and blows air in and out of her body. I look back at the stranger. His body is terrifyingly strong, but his eyes, chocolate brown with flecks of gold, are warm. On either side of his thick lips are deep, half-circle creases that make him look like he’s smiling even when he’s not. He walks toward me.
“You’re Elizabeth’s daughter,” he says, his accent slightly less thick than Eduardo’s. I nod and he smiles. “I can tell.”
“You can?” I ask. “People say we look nothing alike.”
“It’s not your face,” he says and takes a step closer to me. “It’s the way you move. Graceful. Like her.”
For the first time in the last twenty-four hours, I smile. No one’s ever called me graceful or compared me to my mother like that. It’s something I’ve always admired about her. Funny to describe someone who kicks people in the face for a living as graceful, but she is. She sort of just floats. Even the way she fights, her Krav Maga moves are fluid and beautiful. They can do so much harm but look like they take no effort at all. She’s sneaky like that and underestimating her strength has gotten people killed.
“I’m Lazaro,” he says, taking my hand in his, gripping it hard. “But your parents just call me Laz.”
“You know them well?” I ask, trying to place any mention of his name. I’ve definitely heard it before.
“Very well,” he says, placing his second hand on top of mine. “I’ve always wanted to meet you. Heard so much about you. From your parents. From CORE. It’s an honor.”
“Yeah, we’ll see how much of an honor it is when Thomas finds out about this,” Sam says then turns to Eduardo, who is unpacking our bags from the truck. “Eduardo, what is wrong with you? How could you transport these two?”
“It’s not his fault,” I interject and walk closer to Sam. I can feel her burning blood from several feet away. “I knew the codes. I knew the plan. He thought we were the DC team.”
Sam turns slowly to me, her hands now balled into fists, her blue eyes dark and narrowed. “Why did you do this? Do you know how much trouble you’re going to get in? How much trouble you’re going to get me in? Let alone the fact that this is just about the most dangerous city in the world you can be in right now.”
“I couldn’t go to Langley,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm. “I couldn’t just listen. That’s not what I’m wired to do. But more important, I was the original target. People are dying because of me. I need to be here and you know it.”
Sam shakes her head, her eyes fixated on the dirty cement floor. She inhales deeply and quietly says, “If it wasn’t more dangerous to put you two on a plane back to the United States, I’d be doing it in one second. But it’s too late.”
“Plus, we need them,” Cooper says, walking closer to us, a satellite phone in his hand. “The DC team is not going to make it in time. We can’t get Elizabeth and Jonathan off that ranch with just me, you, Laz, and Eduardo. I’m not happy they’re here. Thomas isn’t happy they’re here. But at least it gives us two other bodies that can run intel from the truck. Help us in the field.”
“I’m trained for that,” I say and nod. “And Luke has had military training his entire life. He will do anything and everything you ask of him.”
“Fine,” Sam says, lowering her hunched, tight shoulders. She pulls at a clump of her blond hair before pointing her finger back in my face. “But you will do exactly what I say, do you understand me?”
“Sam, I—” I begin but she cuts me off.