Rose
NYSA Headquarters
"Jesus, Rose!" Karma sighed after I'd told her the whole story. "You really screwed up. You should have just dumped him the first time!"
"That wouldn't have changed anything, you know. He had to have been onto me for months now. How else would he have gotten that ring?" Karma had her head in her hands.
"You do realize that you just put the whole agency at risk, right?" I nodded, ashamed. Karma sighed again. "Okay. We can fix this...somehow. Did you have the ring on you when you came to headquarters?" I shook my head.
"No, I destroyed it, and—oh. Oh, shoot." I remembered that I hadn't had the ring on my finger at headquarters—but the day Austin left, it was in my pocket the whole time. I put my head in my hands.
"Rose." I looked up, knowing Karma must know how ashamed of myself I am. "Well, headquarters security is programmed to not show up on tracking devices. You must have been here for a few hours, at most, so all that would show on his end is you hanging out in an abandoned bar."
I nodded. "But why would he track me? He must be part of some other group, right?" Karma took a deep breath.
"That could be accurate, yes, but what other agencies do we know of? I mean, the government would definitely be against this, right?"
"He couldn't be part of the government. His family is completely anti-politics. And, what I'm guessing, is, his family has nothing to do with this."
"You don't know that—you almost married the psycho."
"I hate when you're right."
"I'm always right." Me and Karma ended up naming groups that we knew of, and somehow it escalated and we ended up saying things like "avengers" and "cliques", but we had no idea what the real reason could be.
We sat in the hallway thinking about different groups when one of NYC's secondhand assistants came storming out. Nobody liked this particular secondhand assistant, especially since he was extremely bossy. "Girls!" He let out, exasperated. "Do you have any idea how serious this meeting is? It just ended! What was I even talking about?"
Karma answered for him. "A special hovercraft board that allows it's user to swiftly escape in the case of an emergency during a mission." The secondhand assistant, Rage, blinked, while Karma smiled. "I payed attention in the first half. You kind of started repeating things." Rage folded his arms.
"Girls, this is serious! You mustn't be running off at random times, especially when we have a mafia on the loose trying to track us down. Now, listen to me when I say—" Rage continued talking, but me and Karma gasped and looked at each other. The mafia. We jumped up and ran back to Karma's office while Rage continued talking. When we were already halfway down the hall, we heard him call after us. "What did I just say?"
In Karma's office, she grabbed the file that was on her desk and began to look through it. "It says here that the mafia is a suspected family business. Our previous guess could be right; his family could have something to do with this. In fact, he tricked you, so why not them, too?"
I nodded in agreement. "That's true. Besides, he doesn't have any younger siblings, so everyone could be part of it." Karma nodded now, too.
Suddenly, my wristband beeped.
Winchester
Hendford Mansion, Hamden, Connecticut
In the morning, I wake up to a grumpy Emma Ryker. I walk downstairs with bedhead that, I suppose, I'd just fix later, but first I'd make breakfast since I was hungry. As I cooked the bacon, I saw Emma coming down the stairs with something in her hands. I didn't think anything of it, so I filled the plates with food and began to eat. Emma sat down at the table, and I sat across from her in case she tried to escape.
"Here's how this is going to work," I said, "whenever we go out in public, I'll have to be there to accompany you. At the mansion, you can wander off and do whatever princess-y things you want. Got it?" Emma shrugged in agreement, and I went back to eating my food.
When she finished, she washed her dish and put it away before looking at something in her hands. I narrowed my eyes and saw my wristband—my eyes widened and I stood up. "Where did you get that?" I asked seriously.
Nonchalantly, she answered, "On the floor outside of your door. What is it?" I was supposed to be a bodyguard, not a spy. I clenched my jaw.
"It's...it's my watch. Give it back."
"Why was it on the floor, then? Hm?" She expected an answer.
"It probably fell off."
"Interesting. What's so special about this watch?"
"There is nothing special, it's not worth anything. It's useless, really, so you wouldn't want it."
"Hm. Well, if it's useless, I guess there's no downside to me throwing it out—" She went to toss my wristband in the garbage, but I immediately lunged for it and grabbed it out of her hands. Shocked, she looked at me and then the wrist band. "Let me ask you again. What is so special about that watch?"
I took a deep breath. "You have your secrets," I say, "and I have mine."
