Rage and Ruin | 2

3 | 2

J A X O N

      I sat in the back of the car, eyeing Delphinium resentfully; she'd gotten the front seat before I could.

      She glanced back at me with a smile spreading across her face. "Having fun back there, Jaxon?" I crossed my arms and looked out the window.

      The scenery passed us in blurs of color as we traveled deeper into the city. The buildings got taller, crowds got bigger and the streets became more blocked with traffic. So many yellow taxis had passed us by that I'd lost count.

      "Johnson said that it was on Fourth Avenue," Delphinium said to no one in particular. "We're getting close."

Earlier, Jake had gathered Delphinium and I for another job. When we'd been interrogating Johnson in his home, he'd told us about the Club's new lieutenant, Claudia Smith, and how she ran a tattoo shop on the side. Jake figured that she'd be his best bet for finding Hundsen's location so we were headed there now.

According to the plan, I was going to go in there, invisible, and search her desk for any sign of correspondence with Hundsen, anything that would give away where he was hiding. Hundsen clearly trusted her enough to make her his new lieutenant, so it was likely that he'd even tell her his current location. The letters had to come from somewhere.

"I wonder what she's like," I mused out loud, "This Claudia woman."

"If she's anything like Orozco was, then we might be in for a wild night."

"I'll be in for a wild night," I corrected her. "You two have it good, just waiting for me to come back out with the information. I'll be in there, risking my life, having close encounters with death-"

"Oh please," the assassin remarked, "I'm here to protect you from anything bad happening. If Claudia does anything threatening towards you, I'll step in."

"If you're the one protecting me, I'll need to watch my back," I teased her, pretending like she wouldn't be able to handle it.

"Keep it up, and you really will."

I rolled my eyes and scoffed. "We all know that I don't need to be protected anyway. I can handle it by myself."

"We saved your ass from the Club," Jake reminded me with his usual cold arrogance.

      "That was an abnormality," I told him, "A one-time occurrence."

      "And the hotel in Boston?" He was referring to a time before we were both taken by Hunt and the ONNT.

      "What happened then?" Delphinium asked curiously, wanting to hear the rest of the story.

       "We don't need to relive all my past failures," I pointed out.

       "There's not enough time for all of them," Jake cut in. I narrowed my eyes at the back of his head.

       "I like to keep myself humble."

       Delphinium chuckled. "Yeah, right." I frowned. I was very humble.

But then she said, "Wait, where are we? This isn't near Claudia's shop."

As I looked out the window, I saw that we'd turned down a dark street that looked a bit less put-together than the ones we'd been on. Since the sky darkened overhead, the street lights were turned on, casting an eerie yellow haze over the place. The street became narrower, making it feel like the buildings were closing in on either side.