AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“That, yeah, and it’ll be a different vehicle from the one I drove here. On the GPS system will be the address of a safe house, and Black Inc’s safe houses are pretty good. We hole up there and you and Toby keep working, either separately, or Toby comes to you, to us.”
Emma nodded. “Yes. This whole thing is coming to a head, I can feel it. It won’t be forever. In fact, if you need to get back to your job, I’m sure I can—”
“What the –” Raul reared back, shock on his face. “Andleave you? With violent men after you? No way. Don’t even think about it. For the moment, this is my job. Keeping you safe. I would even if my company objected. But the fact is, for ASI, keeping a friend of Felicity and Hope safe is a prime objective.”
Emma tried not to slump in relief. She’d made the offer but the fact was, she was scared and really happy that Raul was staying with her.
“But –”
Raul’s cell pinged. He checked it and went to the door. “The Black Inc operators are here. I suggest you pack a small bag. Anything you need that we don’t have we can get.”
There was a soft knock at the door and he opened. Two men stood there. They didn’t look like Raul but they had his look. Well-built, competent-looking, athletic. One sandy-haired, one brown-haired. Raul knew the sandy-haired one. “Hey man, good to see you.” He gave one of those manly thumps on the back and held his hand out to the second man.
“Emma, the cavalry is here.” He indicated the sandy-haired man. “This is Eddie ‘Eagle’ Forest. We went through Hell Week together. Fun times. And this is –”
The brown-haired man held his hand out. It was massive and calloused and nicked. And so huge it was scary. In her work she basically used her brains and her hands for keyboarding. But he held her hand gently for a couple of seconds and let it go. “Declan O’Rourke, ma’am. Most people call me ‘Irish’.” He looked down at the ground, at Fake Cop, still out, nudged him with his foot. “What do we have here?” Both men looked at Raul.
“Emma and I are in the middle of something nasty, potentially very nasty. This joker came to the door with a fake SFPD ID, asked her to come downtown to the station house. When I objected, he grabbed Emma and put a gun to her head. But Emma is a super hero and walked up a wall and took him down.”
As one, the two men turned to her, eyes wide.
She blushed. “Um. No. It wasn’t quite like that. I did a parkour run at the wall to break his grip. Raul grabbed him immediately once he was off balance. He was the one who took him down.”
The two men turned back to Raul.
“Nope,” Raul said. “Not even close. She took that fucker down like a boss. She’s a real badass.”
Emma didn’t know how to reply to that. She didn’t feel like a badass at all. Luckily, a noise distracted them all. The man at her feet stirred and Raul kicked him in the head and he subsided.
They were back to business.
“Okay,” said Eddie. “I understand this asshole belongs to SSS, right?”
“Yeah,” Raul said. “I found this together with his fake badge.” He held out a piece of plastic. Emma saw a company ID, with SSS across the top. The same one that had been in the pockets of the two guards where Toby had been held.
“Okay.” Eddie pulled out a plastic restraint from his back pocket. “You got his hands but we’ll need to get his feet. So, we’ll take care of this joker, and dump him on SSS’s doorstep. I’m assuming you don’t want law enforcement involved.”
Emma looked at Raul and shook her head. She didn’t want to have to explain things and would undoubtedly mess everything up and involve Toby. And the police didn’t have any tools that would help. Raul nodded to her and turned to the two Black Inc guys.
“Nope.”
“Okay,” Eddie said again. He didn’t look like he cared that much about calling in law enforcement. Emma imagined that these were men used to looking after things themselves. “So, like we agreed, we each came in a separate vehicle, here are the keys to one of them with the address of a Black Inc safe house in the GPS.” He tossed a fob at Raul, who caught it one-handed. He also tossed a set of keys. “And the keys to the safe house. I’ll text you the alarm code. There’s food in the freezer and a list of local takeout places. Jacob Black said to use it for as long as you need.”
“Not long, I hope.” Raul said and sent her A Look. He wasn’t happy staying here and not going back to Portland with her. Emma wasn’t happy either, but it was what it was. She couldn’t abandon Toby and leave him to deal with this mess all alone. “Emma, why don’t you pack some stuff?”
She looked at him and the two operators. “I’m going to disable all the cameras in the building and in the garage, and in the vicinity of the garage exit. For how long should I disable them?”
The two men looked at each other. “That would be really useful. For maybe forty minutes. You can do that?” Eddie asked.
Raul nodded. “She could turn off the lights in Beijing if she wanted to.”
They turned again in unison to her, eyes wide.
She shrugged. “Maybe notallof Beijing. Just a few districts. So, I’ll turn off the cameras for forty minutes. You might want to tell security downstairs.”
Raul nodded. “He’s one of your guys. BHS.”
Eddie pulled out a cell and talked quietly in it.
