REID
We’d traveled halfway across the country to this chick, and she turned me into some dude on the front of a romance novel. I’d just buzzed my head last week. Good thing she didn’t want me in pigtails. Who was she hoping was under the helmet, anyway?
Santos elbowed me as we passed the last of the lunch tables. “Man, you look good in long hair. Add a couple dreads and eye makeup and you’d make one helluva Captain Jack Sparrow.”
“Shut it.”
Santos gave me a shove, and we moved closer to the entrance of the school.
She had to be able to see me in order to change my appearance, so I had naturally looked around for her. But a hot girl had caught my attention fi rst. And then I’d realized the hot girl and Josie were one and the same.
Josie still had the strawberry-blond hair and green eyes like she did when I had a crush on her a couple years ago, but she’d defi nitely grown up since we’d last seen each other.
Cheekbones and curves. Boots and a Star Wars tank. Alluring in every way imaginable. Damn.
I’d made sure she wouldn’t recognize me. It was easier that way—for now.
Well, seeing as how she’d Pushed my new appearance, I guess that answered the question of whether she possessed abilities or not. And from the way she’d grabbed her head as I passed by, she likely wasn’t a stranger to the sickening eye pain and wicked headache that came with the talent. I needed to talk to her in private, preferably before she thought she was going nuts or accidentally hurt someone. Or someone hurt her on purpose.
Most of us knew who her family was and what had happened, but I’d had an inside look. It wasn’t pretty. The worst part was that Josie had been kept in the dark. She didn’t know about…anything.
Her safe little world had to be disrupted, and I was the one chosen to drag her into hell. It was my responsibility to keep her alive and in check. Her life depends on me. My throat felt dry. She didn’t deserve this, but she also didn’t have a choice.
She was exactly where Nick had been two years ago—and look how well that had turned out. Sweat beaded on my brow at the thought. Josie’s brother’s death had destroyed a lot of lives.
I shook her and Nick’s faces out of my head as we entered the second set of doors into the building and approached the security guard. The lack of windows coupled with two stories of concrete resembled a jail more than a high school. The sterile cleaning-supply smell didn’t help the illusion.
“What’s your business, gentlemen?” the security guard asked, holding a metal detector wand at his side. “Arms out.” Add the guard, and it felt kind of like a prison, too.
The knife I carried in my boot and the cool metal of the M9 Beretta pressing against the small of my back disappeared. Not a big deal. I could Push one of the weapons into my hand, if need be. I lifted my arms out to my sides, my helmet hanging from one hand. “Checking in at the office, sir. Registering as new students.”
The wand made an outline of my body in the air. Without words, the guard waved me on, and then Santos stepped into my spot and cocked his head toward me. Santos couldn’t Retract, so I made his HK45C, the Navy Seal–inspired pistol, vanish. Like me, he could Push a weapon if and when he wanted to. The wand waved around his body. The guard gave a nod and said, “Welcome to Oceanside.”
Santos tucked his helmet under his arm. “Thanks.”
“I’ll do the talking. You have the paperwork, right?” I said once out of earshot of security.
“Yep. Sorry you have to do high school again. Sucks. But on the plus side…” Santos nodded to a girl passing us. “Hey,” Santos said. The girl giggled.
“Hopefully this is a short-term stint. Besides, I’m not worried about my grades this time around. ”
Santos smiled widely. “You graduated a year early. I don’t think you had to worry about grades the first time.”
“It was easy; I didn’t have any of those distractions.” I nodded my head toward the giggly girl walking down the hall. Santos took another few seconds to admire her again.
“While you were cheering the home team and chasing girls on the playground, I got to run with knives,” I said.
“Sounds like a badass school.”
Santos hadn’t gone to school in the Denver Hub like I did. It was a different experience. “There were no football games or dances. It was nothing like a public school or privateschool—unless it was Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.”
I laughed at the thought of having Wolverine’s hair. Good thing Josie wasn’t envisioning Hugh Jackman when I pulled up.
I hadn’t been in “school” for more than two years. It’s not like we’d be here, sticking it out, till the end of the semester. Extractions rarely took long. And I’d single-handedly managed a dozen of them. The protocol was the same. Approach the target. Determine if he/she possessed Oculi abilities. Establish trust. Assess if the target was Resistance material. If they weren’t…Yeah, that’s where this job got interesting. I didn’t want to think about what would happen to Josie if she didn’t agree to come along peacefully.
“Yo,” Santos said. He lobbed his helmet over a streamer hanging from the ceiling like he was shooting a two-pointer. “You do realize this girl is going to hate you, right?” He hustled to catch his substitute basketball and jump-shot it over the next streamer.
“Yep.” She would despise me, and I didn’t like it, but I had to put any feelings aside, because there were more important things at stake.
Santos caught his helmet and faked it to me, then tossed it up again. I’d known Santos about two years. He’d had my back on several occasions and vice versa. He was, is, one of my few friends. But even now, he didn’t know the details of how I knew the Harper family.
We passed a bank of glass surrounding the library. All computers, few books. I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass. Santos was right—hello, Jack Sparrow. A new day, a new face, it felt like.
Santos was one of the few people alive who knew what I’d looked like before the incident two years ago. My change in appearance was the Resistance’s form of a witness protection program. Appearance changes didn’t happen unless it was absolutely necessary due to paperwork and identity shit. I didn’t mind looking different, though. It was all in an effort to keep me safe. And being alive was always a nice perk.
Even with different looks, I was still in danger, and the same held true for Santos. Such was the life of a trainer for the Resistance. Until my trainee was ready for the Hub or life in general, I was also his or her protector. Always on the lookout. Never off duty. Potential death was just another occupational hazard.
I’d already killed more people than I’d ever be okay with. And their friends would be coming after Josie. Soon.
