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Fuck. There it was again.
The longer she looked at the various data streams, and the harder she worked at untangling them, the more she started to see something she didn’t want to see. It was subtle at first, a thin web of messages pinging back and forth mainly across Britain. Most of them were encoded, but she could read the headers on a number of them, and they contained a phrase she had not seen in quite some time. Blackbird. Over and over. Blackbird. Blackbird.
“Four and twenty blackbirds, baked into a pie,” she murmured to herself, the old nursery rhyme flitting its way into her head.
“What are you mumbling, girl?”
Angelo seemed to hear everything from inside his office. He was like a one-man surveillance machine in that respect.
Gemma got up, tablet in hand, and went in to see him. Every time she stepped into this room, it was like sending herself to see the headmaster. He had that gravitas, and there was always the impending threat of punishment. This time, though, she found herself wishing she was there to be disciplined. It would be easier than what she was supposed to be doing.
“Angelo…”
“Yes, girl, what is it?”
“I could be wrong, but I recognize these patterns. These communication nodes heavily feature your name, and they’re running through people I’ve had previous dealings with….”
“What is it, girl?”
“I don’t want to say. If I don’t say, then maybe this isn’t real. And if it isn’t real….”
“Gemma!” He snapped her name sharply.
“I think Willow is alive and looking for you.”
She felt sick for having said it, as if forming the words somehow made the whole thing real and concrete.
Angelo looked as grave and concerned as she felt.
“Are you sure?”
“No. I’m not sure. But these message patterns fit her. I know because I was part of making them back before. You know.”
“We are not going to run from the likes of Willow Spencer,” Angelo declared. “I can only assume if she has survived and decided to once more engage her vendetta, that she is doing so with even more viciousness than before.”
“If Willow is alive….” Gemma shook her head. “You’re in trouble.”
Angelo smirked at her phrasing. “I am above being in trouble, girl.”
“I mean, she was ruthless before. For her to still be operating….” Gemma shook her head. “Angelo, I’m worried for you.”
“And not for yourself?”
“Sure, I have a clandestine government organization looking for me, but I’m not surfacing anywhere. I haven’t left this place since we came here. But you, you’re exposed. You have business dealings she knows about. She can do to you what we’ve just done to her. She can find your pattern in the data, and once she does, finding your exact location is only a matter of time.”
“Then we will need to find her before she finds us,” Angelo said smoothly. “Bobby! We have work to do. Thank you, Gemma. You can go.”
“You want me to run more analysis, or….”
“You can go to your room,” Angelo replied. “I’ll call for you when some decisions have been made.”
“Great, so I guess I don’t need to be part of this decision-making process….”
“Gemma…” he growled her name in low tones.
“Going!”
Chapter 4
“We are NOT using her as bait again. Last time we did that, she was almost killed.”
Bobby was very much against Angelo’s plan, unsurprisingly.
“Last time we failed to allow for unknowns. Like the likelihood that she would be shot within seconds of walking into a room, after confessing immediately that her presence there was indeed linked to the setting of a trap.”
“She wasn’t great,” Bobby agreed. “I guess we could train her to be better. Like, she could not give the entire operation away in the first sixty seconds. Though, to be fair, if she hadn’t done that, we would have been caught, probably.”
“I thought you didn’t want to use her.”
“I don’t. I’m just saying she could be better. If she was to be better, which she won’t be, because we’re not going to use her.”
“We need to draw Willow out before she does more damage. I cannot have loose ends, boy.”
“Well, we can’t send Gemma.”
“We can’t send Gemma where?” Gemma appeared, having not gone nearly as far as she had promised she would.
“To catch Willow.”
“Sure you can. She stood there and let me be shot, more or less. I’d be pleased to help you catch her. I’d like her to know I’m not dead. And I’d like you to see that I can be loyal to you.”
“You don’t need to prove your loyalty to me,” Bobby said.
“Maybe not to you. But to him,” she gestured toward Angelo. “He’s not going to be happy until I do something really big.”
“I will be happy when you obey an order,” Angelo glowered. “Go to your room. Now.”
Gemma left with a flouncing sigh.
“We don’t have anything else to use as bait, boy.”
