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“Imagine that,” I said, nodding.
Collings shook his head slightly, looking over at Lo. “Don't 'spose you have any information to share with us, Lo.”
Lo gave him a soft, almost conspiratorial smile, “Do I ever have any information to share with you, Collings?”
“If that ain't the damn truth,” Collings said, gesturing his younger officer toward the car. “Well, you got anything, you let us know, you hear?” he asked, looking at Lo, then at me.
“You're on my speed dial,” I agreed with a grin that, surprisingly, made him chuckle.
“Right,” he nodded, making his way back to his door and slipping inside his car.
“Old friend?” I asked Lo's profile as she watched them drive away.
“Something like that,” she agreed, her eyes still on the road, scanning.
“Right,” I said, rocking back on my heels, knowing the moment was gone. I needed to get back to the compound. “I have to get going,” I said, making my way toward my bike and climbing on. Lo shook herself out of her stupor and made her way toward the side of my bike as well, watching me settle in. “So were you fucking with Collings or do you really have no idea who this was?” I asked, sensing something off about her, but not able to put my finger on it.
Lo took a breath, met my gaze hard, and said in a strong, firm voice, “I have no idea who set off the bombs, Cash.”
I nodded, turned over my bike, and drove away.FourLoIt was Janie.
Janie, my sweet little Jstorm.
She was the one setting off the bombs.
I knew it the moment Lex Keith's name was brought up. Everything fell into place. That was why she didn't pick me up from Reign's house. That was why all the other sites: Chaz's bar, The Henchmen compound, Lyon's place, and Hailstorm all had minimal, if any, actual damage. She was trying to create chaos. She wanted everyone to be scrambling to find explanations for every major criminal organization in the area being targeted.
Shit.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
I needed to find her.
I turned, going into the main shipping container, holding shoes and jackets, then through to the ones holding the living room and kitchen, through again until I got to the barracks. We could have made an attempt to all have our own personal space, blocking off rooms for one or two people. We certainly had the land to expand and shipping containers could be gotten on the cheap. But a large majority of my people were ex-military, they found barracks comfortable, familiar, somehow less stressful than trying to acclimate to normal living conditions.
There were only a few of us women in Hailstorm and while we took the sets of bunks at the furthest end of the room, we shared the space with the men. There was simply no reason not to.
I walked past the empty bunks, moving toward mine which was below Janie's with a growing sense of trepidation. I stopped by the ladder, climbing up two rungs and looking up. Her bed was made perfectly (as they all were), complete with hospital corners. But her books were missing. She always had a pile at the foot of her bed within easy reach when her nightmares that were actually memories came back too strong to let her sleep.
I hopped down, stooping down beside her trunk and flinging it open.
Empty.
“God damn it!” I yelled, slamming it shut, the sound echoing across the empty room.
All my men mattered to me, every last one. They all had their own horror stories; their own reasons they needed to disappear; their own reasons for not being able to leave the life of war and violence behind them. Many were vets, some just streetwise kids who got sucked in early and ran before they could be spit out dead before thirty. They all had little pieces of my heart.
But Janie had a huge chunk of it. Janie was like a little sister to me, or like the daughter I would never have. She was rough and tough and prickly and she wore her intelligence like a shield, but underneath it all was the little sixteen year old girl I came across one night, a girl I had taken in and raised for eight years.
She was... everything.
And she had just bombed five powerful organizations in the course of one night.
There would be repercussions.
People would want payment.
The worst of them would never forgive, the rest would never forget.
And because Janie was Hailstorm, we would never again know the same kind of alliances we had before. We would never be able to enjoy our drama-free reputation again.
But all that, well, it didn't matter. What mattered was Janie. What mattered was the fact that she had planned and orchestrated such an intricate plot and I had somehow not even known she was going off the deep end. That never should have been able to happen. I should have seen the signs. I should have been able to talk some reason into her.
And if Janie was gone, if she packed all her stuff and took off, then she was g-o-n-e. She had the skills to disappear. I taught her how to do that shit. I had coached her on getting off the grid, becoming someone new. She had stood by my side and watched me do it for other people. Christ, had she been planning it all along? Had she been standing up with me, taking every bit of knowledge I could throw around, and cataloging it for later?
A part of me didn't want to think I was that blind. The other part of me, though, knew she was perfectly capable of being that smart and calculated.
What the hell was I supposed to do?
“Lo?” Malcolm, an older man, mid-forties, tall, lean, fit, graying in an attractive way, with the sharpest ice blue eyes I had ever seen, ex-military, ex-private security, ex-PI, ex-everything, came up to me. “What's up?”
Malcolm had shown up at Hailstorm one day at the very beginning after having me screw up one of his PI cases, spitting mad and ready to beat 'that fucking Lo guy' into a bloody pulp. Finding out I was Lo, well, his anger drained, he threw his head back and laughed, and a month later, he was living at Hailstorm and teaching me everything he knew. He was like a father figure to all of us (even though he was only a few years older than myself). And he knew me pretty damn well.
