Power Play (Book 2)

Chapter 2: Big Gun

Winning Choice: “I’m a librarian, and you’re overdue.” (From willd20a)

Author Note: Thanks so much to everyone who submitted ideas for Brandon’s line. There were some great serious ones, funny ones, and powerful ones, but wild20a’s suggestion was not only really popular but fit with Brandon’s wisecracking personality.

Recap: Brandon just finished raiding a government facility to steal information and generally mess up the place. They try to delay him while escaping with a hard drive of critical information, but Brandon intercepts the helicopter and takes the hard drive and the man carrying it…

Maybe I’m just being mean, but I lean down close, my face inches from his. “You can’t run from me,” I growl at him. “You can’t hide. I’m a force you can’t control, and I’m going to take all of your power away.”

He licks his lips and swallows hard. “Who… who are you?”

I tell him, “I’m a librarian, and you’re overdue!”

The look of total confusion on his face right before I knock him out is wonderful. Inside the briefcase is a solid state hard drive, all dark and sleek looking. I take it out of the briefcase, which is probably loaded with location trackers, and drop the case next to the unconscious courier. 

Feeling rather satisfied with myself I leave him in the alley and fly off to my… base.

###

Daylight peeks through the curtains of my cruddy apartment and finally wakes me up. I’ve never been able to sleep with light in the room. In our house we had these heavy curtains that went all the way to the edge of the window and blocked out everything. It could be high noon and our bedroom would be as dark as the inside of a bank vault.

I miss our bedroom, and not just for the curtains. I miss holding Nicole, all snuggled up under the covers. I miss the smell of her hair. I miss her hogging the covers. I even miss that lumpy old mattress we had been talking about replacing for the past year and never got around to.

I miss waking up and seeing her face.

My stomach grumbles. Fortunately I don’t need much sleep anymore, but on the flip side of things I need a lot of food. Grabbing a few energy bars and a half gallon of milk I plop down on the rickety kitchen chair to think.

This place is a dump, but it’s cheap, on the top floor, and the landlord takes cash and doesn’t ask questions. Since I only have the money I’ve been able to scrape together and steal from assorted lowlifes, I can’t afford to be picky. If I tried to use any of my debit or credit cards I’m sure I’d light up every law enforcement computer for a hundred miles in every direction, and even then I’d be my accounts are locked out already.

Unfortunately it makes a rather poor base of operations, aside from being depressing. The hard drive I stole last night is encrypted so isn’t any help. I put it in the giant duffle bag with the others for when I track down Tyler again. If I have to leave in a hurry I don’t want to be rounding them all up.

There aren’t any more NSA bases I know about, so I think it’s time to shake things up and hit them on another front. Do something big enough and they won’t be able to ignore it. Something to lure them out in the open and keep them off balance. The question is what to do.

I mull over the problem, but my mind keeps returning to Nicole. She’s the thing I want most right now, but my clues there are zero. Doughnut. Nada. I catch myself crushing the milk carton in my grip and force myself to relax before spilling it everywhere.

Screw it, I’m going back to the house. I haven’t been there since I connected with the trio, as Tyler and crew figured it was probably bugged, wired, and alarmed to the hilt. If using my ATM would alert every police office in a hundred miles, going home would probably alert every human with a badge in this hemisphere. But there were a few things I wanted, and I’m wicked fast, and one trip wouldn’t hurt. I could be there and gone before anyone could react.