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Anger surges and my fight reflex kicks back in. I don’t stop flailing my limbs and trying to land a hit. I want to hurt someone. It’s a dark feeling, one I don’t want to encourage in my normal life, but for now, it could be the difference between life and death. I take my hands off hers and claw at her face. I manage to get her focus off the laptop and then I remember.
I’ve been an idiot this whole time.
I manage to fish the taser out of my pocket and with all my might, I suddenly swing my legs and throw my weight, pushing into her, getting her off balance. I point the taser at her and fire away, hoping that some shock made it through her neoprene suit, at least enough to get this laptop away and me safely back in the car.
Miraculously, she lets go of me, slumping into a black pile on the pier.
I drop the taser with its leads still in her and keep heading for the helipad. There’s still not the faintest sign of an inbound aircraft, but there are more mercenaries crawling up out of the water. I stop just shy of the “H” marked in a circle as four of them stalk towards me, dripping wet. I chance a glance over my shoulder and can just see Ainsley in the light from a nearby lamppost, crouching behind the shot-up car, reloading her pistol.
A fresh wave of fear rushes through me and I shiver in the frigid air. This feels like an ambush. There might not even be a helicopter coming. Someone could have hacked that whole secret messaging system and lured us here. This feels like a total mistake.
There are two choices and it’s up to me to decide. I can trust that I’ll be able to hand this laptop over soon or I can run back towards Ainsley and we try to get out of here. I don’t have a radio. Ainsley’s still holding her end of the pier. Everett’s at home. No one is going to decide for me or come make this better. I’m on my own. I have to make my own way forward.
I can do this. I haven’t studied martial arts since sixth grade, but thanks to adrenaline I’m mildly confident this is going to work out.
I take a boxing stance, planting my feet and raising my fists, and wait for the first all-black mercenary to charge me. A blast of freezing cold air and a hint of sleet whips across my face, causing me to squint my eyes. I try to anticipate which of the four figures are most likely to be the one that injures or kills me. I decide to go down swinging at the shortest one and just as I lunge towards them, there’s a rapid popping sound and all of them suddenly crumple to the ground.
The icy wind picks up faster and faster and I hold my hand up trying to brace against it. A massive dark shape drops down onto the helipad, then lights come on. It was never wind, it was all air being pushed away from this black, soundless helicopter.
A door on the side slides open and a man in a dark suit and black-framed glasses steps out. He undoes his jacket and pulls a handgun out of his shoulder holster, aiming it just to my right.
“Come on!” he shouts.
The rotors are still spinning and I shield my face with my arm to try to get enough space to breathe as I approach him.
“What’s the passphrase?” the guy yells.
“It’s snowing in the Black Hills!” I shout, then wince in pain. My throat feels like someone ran a sander over it, then hit it with a mallet.
He nods and plugs a device into a phone, setting it on the seat of the helicopter. “I’ll cover you. Put in the prints and get out of here.”
I drop my coat and unwind the ace bandages Ainsley wrapped around me, grab the laptop from behind my back, and set it down next to the device, ready to scan my fingerprints the moment the screen lights up.
Out of curiosity and concern for Ainsley, I make the mistake of looking over my shoulder. The pier is still crawling with mercenaries. There must have been at least a dozen more that have emerged.
“Focus!” shouts the guy and I shoot him a scathing glance. I get the fingerprints in and watch the screen unlock, then flood with files.
“Can I check the contents?” I ask him, shouting through the pain of my injured throat.
“Of course not!” he barks back.
I steel myself to raise my voice over the noise of the rotors.
“I need to see what Adam Lourden put on there.” I want this for Everett, for him to have closure that his dad did the right thing in the end.
“No way,” says the guy. He slides the laptop over, shoves me out of the way, and is about to slide the door closed, but I grab it and pull back, fury fueling me with unnatural strength.
“What about my dad, what about Henry?”
The guy shakes his head. “Henry Milenna is dead to you.”
He slams the door shut and I have enough common sense to rapidly get off the helipad.
Ainsley is making her way towards me and I run towards her, angry yet relieved, upset but content. When the final answer is the final answer, that’s what you have to live with.
Everything is noise and chaos as Ainsley shouts into her earpiece and fires her gun at the same time. I crouch down next to her.
“We still need to get out of here,” she says. “I bet some of these guys would love to take you hostage. We’re pretty pinned down though and the car is totaled. I mixed up the cars like an idiot and left the bulletproof one at the house.”
