While Molly was looking for that often-elusive way to untangle from an awkward social situation, the kind where you get to know somebody too well over too short a time and you didn’t want that magic to end, Robert had kissed her.
It was a simple kiss, gentle, a little bit of tongue, but her mouth had fallen open in surprise.He’d gone a little further then, and before he could gettooforward (and oh, it had been so long, and she’d been so willing), he’d stepped back.
“We okay, then?”he asked.
She’d nodded, still speechless.
“Good,” Robert said, kissing her forehead this time.“When you and my brother are all finished with this super-secret mission of yours, I sure would love to see you again.”
She’d stared at him, suddenly seeing the appeal of Liam, whom she’d almost thought too plain for their Josh, and blurted, “You know my hair is really red.It’s wild.I have no idea how long this pressed straight blond thing is going to last.My brother will kill me if I don’t dye it back.”
Robert grinned.“I can’t wait to see it, Molly girl.”And in spite of the fact that Chuck and Carl called her this all the time, this was the first time it had ever sent a thrill down her spine, and she’d almost wept with the awesomeness.
The next day during brunch, before they’d run off for the train station, he’d caught her hand and told her, “I meant it, last night.You come back.We’ll see London right.”
And even though, like Josh, she’d had a lot of chances to explore Europe, she couldn’t imagine having seen London like she’d see it through this man’s eyes.
So here she was—she and Stirling had avenged their foster parents, her little brother had found the quiet artist geek of his dreams—and she adored them both—and Grace and Josh, whom she loved almost as much, looked like they were going to live, and that hadn’t been a given for either of them at different times over the last five years.
She had so many amazing uncles and a big sister in Julia and best friends, and now, after whining about it for two years, she had a prospect, areallylovely prospect, to date, and she was surrounded by the one truly stupid thing she’d ever done in her life.
Cocaine.
She felt like this was some sort of test.And it wasn’t even like she was tempted, but just to have this shit all around her was terrifying.
Chuck spoke in her ear.“How we doing, Molly girl?”
Not Robert, but, well, Chuck was pretty solid as a big brother/uncle, so it did have some warmth in it.“Almost done,” she whispered.“I’ve got one more charge to set—”
Lucius’s panicked voice intruded.“We’ve got a swamp glider coming in.It’s going to pass me right up, but someone must have sounded the alarm—”
“Shit!”Hunter swore.“We’ve got soldiers coming in this way.Chuck, grab a gun and get out front.”
“Me and Grace will blow the warehouses,” Molly said hurriedly, “and Chuck said something about getting the processing center too.”
“I’ll get it,” Grace said.“Molly, ten minutes—go!”
“Everyone off comms!”Hunter ordered.
And the next eight minutes were a blur.
Molly knew it was eight minutes because she’d set her watch the minute Grace said ten.Her body was prime and muscular and fleet; she managed to scramble around her warehouse and then finish Chuck’s while Grace finished his structure and went to the processing center too.The humid darkness around them was filled with gunshots and swearing and the occasional scream, and Molly, while surprisingly experienced in things like this for someone who didn’t have a drop of military aspirations in her blood, worked hard to keep her thoughts focused and professional as she set Every.Fucking.Charge.
It felt like a hundred—in reality, it was only six.
But her watch said eight minutes, so since she couldn’t use comms to check on Grace, she used the shadows to hide her sprint toward the long narrow building that had the tables in it where the product had been boiled, condensed, processed, cut, and bagged.Chuck had been going to do that one.He knew how to set the blasts so all the open powder on the tables didn’t get aerosolized, becoming a mist of stuff nobody wanted to breathe.
But Molly was thinkingtask.She wasn’t thinkingconsequence.
And there she was, thinkingtask-task-taskand alsotwo minutes, a minute fifty-nine, a minute fifty-eight, task-task-task, a minute fifty-seven—
When the processing building went kaboom, and Grace hollered, “Masks on, people!”
And Molly closed her eyes, pulled her hat down over her face and mask, and dropped to a crouch to avoid the rolling cloud of frosty death.
Most of her safeguards—her clothes, her posture—protected her from the bulk of it, but she still felt the tingling on the skin of her ears, the back of her neck, through the knees of her camouflage cargo pants.
She was alert enough that when Grace flew toward her, grabbed her arm, and practically dragged her through the forest until they had cover, she could stand and assist in her own defense.
