“Anyway I was fucked up when I was discharged. Spending days in Silicon Valley, going where the government dispatched me to offer my expertise on the latest war tech and I spent my nights drinking. One night there was this big motherfucker getting drunker than me. He looked worse than me, too, and some guys were giving him shit.”
“Jeremiah to the rescue?”
“Something like that,” I grinned at her. “He could’ve fucked them up if he wanted to, but he was punishing himself, I could tell. So I intervened before anyone got really hurt. That big fucker was Gunner, our VP.” Me and Gunnar, we saved each other from our grief and in the process became brothers. “Lasso came to retrieve him a few days later and the rest is history.”
She smiled and swigged on her root beer. “I’m glad you have them, then.”
“What about you, who do you have now?” It wasn’t the slickest way to ask if she was seeing anyone but then, I never claimed to be slick.
“I have me and that’s all I need.”
“Dammit, Vivi. Come on, just talk to me. You’re here now, just say what you have to say.”
She stood angrily. “I didn’t realize it was such a problem that I tracked you down, Jag. Believe me when I say I won’t be making that mistake again.” She bent over to pick up the discarded bottle, giving me another long look at her ass.
“I didn’t mean it like that, girl.”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about me. It was just a temporary bout of insanity, that’s all. Take care of yourself.” She turned away quickly, this time but she held herself tall. Strong. Dignified.
“I’m sorry, Vivi. I want to help you if I can.”
“You can’t. But thanks.”
This was getting damned frustrating. “Then why in the hell did you track me down if you didn’t want my help? Or don’t even want to talk to me?”
She sighed and turned around inside the doorway of the camper, her pose highlighting her body magnificently. “I thought maybe you could help me, Jeremiah. But we’re different people now, a fact that only occurred to me after I got here.” Another annoyed sigh exploded out of her and she raked a hand through her wild blue hair. “I’m sorry I interrupted your life.”
She disappeared inside the camper and she didn’t come back out again, effectively dismissing me.
“You could have offered me a root beer!” I tossed back at her as I walked toward my bike.
I would go, for tonight. But this wasn’t over. She needed my help and she would get it.
Chapter Six
Vivi
The sun hadn’t even come up yet when one of the ten thousand alarms set up on my phone started to blare. Literally it blared right in my fucking ear. The foghorn sound I’d assigned to…“Shit!” I sat up in the tiny ass bed and promptly fell to the floor, reaching on the bed for the offensive sound that meant someone was in my New York apartment. Again.
The video feed showed a man. Tall and white and bald with a tattoo on the top of his wrist very similar to the other intruder’s. If it wasn’t the same person, they were definitely from the same criminal organization. He was sloppy though, not as professional as the other guy. Bald Head was clearly a hired thug, the way he stomped through the place, overturning pillows unnecessarily and displacing lamps. It wasn’t just careless, it was also stupid as hell because he left fingerprints and DNA everywhere. On top of all that, the asshole was too late.
The decoy electronics were already gone which meant it was time for extreme measures. Measures I’d put in place when I first bought that place a few years ago because deep down every hacker knows this is likely to happen to them. The smart ones, like me, are prepared for the worst. And though it physically hurt me to do it, I flipped the kill switch that activated magnetic strips placed throughout the unit, effectively killing all digital devices that crossed them. Including the intruder’s cell phone, a fact which gave me the delight of a three year old eating chocolate ice cream for breakfast, as I watched him try in vain to make call after call.
The deadbolt locks engaged on the doors and windows, leaving him trapped inside while the silent alarm triggered the police who would be sent the code to disarm everything. On site. He was fucked and even though it meant I wouldn’t get any information from him, I was glad someone would pay for something.
The appearance of this bald guy really threw me, though, because it seemed like two separate attacks. Two different intruders. “Whoever you are, you should have done your homework, asshole.” It brought me entirely too much enjoyment to see him running around my place in search of an exit, but nothing topped his expres
sion when he heard the sirens. It was always a good day when I found something that made me smile, at least that was what my shrink used to tell me.
A noise outside drew my attention and I muted the video feed while I stood slowly, eyes closed to hear where exactly the sound had originated. My fender faced the road and I was situated on a dead end road to make sure I could hear any cars drive up and I hadn’t heard any. Then I heard it, the snap of the twigs I’d spread around the camper for just that purpose, so I grabbed my knife.
The side window on the driver’s side slid open and I tiptoed over, grabbing the cotton covered arm that had invaded my space. “Think real carefully about your next move, asshole. If I don’t like what you have to say, I’ll split this vein open and watch you bleed out before you get your arm away from me.”
“I knew you were in trouble.” That voice was familiar. Too fucking familiar.
“Jeremiah? What the fuck?” I wasn’t in the mood for his games and last night he made me feel like shit for reaching out to him, making me regret that the idea had ever occurred to me in the first place. “Why are you here?”
“I told you to call me Jag.” I could hear the smile in his deep voice and it only pissed me off even more.