We stayed like that for a while, just lying together quietly until I heard his breathing deepen and he fell asleep.
I watched the stars, much brighter out here in the middle of nowhere and felt the weight of sleep pulling at my eyes but I tried to fight it off. I didn't want to miss a second relishing in the fact that Travis was here with me and not six feet under or in a ditch somewhere. I half expected it all to be a dream.
Travis suddenly jolted awake, his whole body twitching and I jumped from the surprise. I put a hand to my chest and tried to even out my breathing which had spiked.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"Huh? Yeah," he said, rubbing his eyes. "Weird dream."
He didn't explain anymore and I didn't question it. Instead, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. It was 3 a.m. I hadn't realized so much time had passed and despite that, I didn't want to move.
"We should get you back," he said and uncurled me from him to stand as if he knew I wouldn't move on my own. "Before everyone wakes up."
I scooped the items I had discarded in the grass earlier and sat up. "Then what happens? We can I see you again?"
Travis brushed some dirt off his pants, the silence hitting me hard.
"Travis?" I asked, standing up and fidgeting with my fingers as I tried to keep my nerves at bay.
"Don't know."
I clenched my jaw as my stomach dropped.
"I'll be around, okay?" he said, grabbing my hand gently. "I got your back, babe," he teased, wiggling my arm slightly with his own.
I looked at our shoes, not ready to face him and say goodbye. I only just got him back.
"What do you need me to do?"
Travis let go of my hand and headed towards the bike. "Don't tell anyone about tonight. You can do that, right?"
I nodded.
"And do what you've been doing. Any heat you can take off us, the better."
I nodded again as he held out the helmet. Right as I was about to grab it, he pulled it back towards him and out of my reach. He was looking at the ground, a hard and calculated look on his face.
"I'm serious about not telling anyone," he looked up at me with hard eyes. "Not everyone thought it was a good idea I come here."
I tried not to react. It wasn't the news that I was trying to keep a blank face towards. I was working for the enemy currently trying to arrest them. I couldn't blame all of them, especially with their experience with dirty cops. It was the fact that he was falling back into the Travis that I originally saw when we arrived. The one that looked like he didn't understand the concept of a smile.
"You can trust me," I reassured.
When he held the helmet back out to me, I grudgingly took it and I strapped it on. I got on the back of the bike and held onto Travis, my mind screaming at me the entire time to just stay in the field with him and not have a care for the rest of our days.
Without a word, Travis started the bike and we were off, much faster this time and I held on tight. I didn't pay much attention to our surroundings this time. Instead, I kept my arms around him and leaned against him, trying to savor the rest of the time I had.
He came to a stop about a block from my hotel all too soon.
"I can't go closer without a distraction," he explained.
I got off and handed him my helmet and at the same time he offered me my phone. I grabbed it from his gloved hand, every trace of who he was covered, and offered a small smile in his direction but I didn't know if he was looking at me or not. I turned and started walking away but Travis' hand latched onto the back of my jacket and pulled me back.
I was pulled up against his leg as he remained on the bike and both of his hands went up to cup my face.
"Please be safe," he said quietly, brushing a thumb along my cheek.
I wanted to tell him to do the same, or that he was the one out of the two of us that really needed that lecture, or that I didn't know what I would do if something happened to him again but I figured that I could tell any of that to him one hundred times and each time it would go in one ear and out the other. He didn't seem to worry about being safe if someone he cared for was hurt or threatened.
So I just nodded.
He let go of my face and hesitantly, I turned around to leave. His engine started back up and with a glance behind me, I watched as he sped away. I bit my lip as I walked back to the hotel, trying to keep my emotions in check. I wanted to scream, yell, and cry in both sadness that I had to leave him and happiness that he was okay but I couldn't do any of those things without questions being asked. Instead, I kept my head down as I entered the hotel and went straight up to my room.
I couldn't sleep when I got back to my room. Everything felt more alive in the field with Travis which didn't make much sense to me since we were just lying there. Here I was, hours later lying in my hotel bed and it felt like torture. My phone wasn't interesting, watching television seemed pointless. After a while, I stopped and got up to shower and get ready for the day.
What I was really itching to get my hands on was the video tape that I had watched previously showing Travis entering the building, where he presumably died in. But that would be with all of our other files and yesterday, Dylan and Owen had sent out a message to everyone letting them know that they had booked one of the conference rooms for us to work. You had to have a key to get in there and had I not been on house arrest yesterday, I would have gotten mine when everyone else got theirs. Instead, I was locked out and couldn't exactly pop up at Dylan's room at 4 a.m. begging for the key without him asking at least a few follow up questions. I had to wait.
The shower did nothing to perk me up but a glance at my phone said the hotel would be serving breakfast downstairs so I headed out.
To my surprise, Elle and George were already downstairs huddled together at a table with Josh who had a laptop in front of him.
After getting coffee and a muffin, I sat down at an empty seat with them, waving.
"You're up early, Carson," Josh said, not looking away from the laptop but nodding his head to acknowledge me.
I haven't gone to sleep yet.
"Yeah," I said.
"Damn," Josh said, clicking through something on the computer screen.
"I know," Elle said from her seat next to him, practically on his lap from trying to be in front of it as well. "Cool, right?"
She reached over Josh to get to the keyboard, "Try..." she said, her words drowned out by her typing her thoughts.
"What are you guys doing?" I asked, scooting my chair close to see the screen.
They were researching property records.
"0" results for "Taylor, Annabeth"
A chorus of groans.
"Look at this, Carson," Josh said and clicked on another tab they had open. It had pictures of a giant Victorian style house on it.
My eyes perked up at the sight of it. "That's beautiful."
Another set of groans followed and I looked at them curiously. Did they not think it was pretty?
"It's not registered to any alias we know but we were hoping maybe if you saw it, it'd look familiar to you because I mean, it looks big and it looks bad ass. I could see a gang hanging out there," Josh said and I muttered a sorry into my coffee before he continued on talking. "That's what they've been doing yesterday while we were grounded. Trying to find the houses."
I nodded.
"We already looked up this stuff but Josh said he needs to see it with his own eyes," Elle said rolling her own eyes dramatically.
"So you don't know where they live?" I asked.
"We have possible places just based on size," Elle said and took her voice down to a whisper, leaning further over Josh who was still trying to type so she could talk to me. "But we can't find anything in Casey's name. We can't even find any transfers out of his name to someone else when he died. Isn't that weird? And not even any of the other names we have, how is that even possible that they don't have one thing in their name?" she asked, eyes going wide. "So we think maybe it's under some lower member's namesâ"
"Which is stupid," Josh interrupted. "Because what if something happens to them? They're low members for a reason...I don't buy it."
Elle leaned back in her seat with a groan at Josh's stubbornness and George laughed.
Josh quickly typed Travis' name into the search bar and my heart jumped.
"0" results for "Miller, Travis"
I let out a breath of relief that merged with his deep sigh.
Josh grabbed a sheet of paper that George had in front of him and looked it over again. It was a list of all the names they knew, dead or alive.
"We were working on this yesterday, you're not going to miraculously have a search result," Elle argued.
Josh ignored her and continued to type in "Casey Cameron"
"You already tried him," she pointed out. "Like five times."
"Yeah but not without the comma."
"The site clearly says last name, comma, first name."
He defiantly pressed enter and unsurprisingly, got no results. Elle sat smugly in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. Josh shut the laptop, pushing it away from him and tore into his croissant.
George took this time to speak up. "Are you sure they took you to a house, Lacey? Not some campground or abandoned building?"
My eyes snapped to him. "Yes," I said, recalling the multiple houses Cameron had us go to.
The guys made it sound like they were moving from small house to small house every time it got ambushed just so Cameron didn't have to live in the Casey house but there was definitely a Casey house, that I was sure of. "Have you tried the Dacostas?" I asked.
George pushed a sticky note towards me with a few addresses scratched onto it.
"Dylan and Owen have had these listed as possible locations. We're going to start investigating to see which one it could be hopefully without any altercations," he said and his eyes traveled to my neck for a second.
"Let me see them," I said with determination, opening up the laptop and pulling the list of addresses closer to me. "I know what it looks like."
Just as the computer was waking back up, all of our phones went off. Josh pulled his out so I didn't bother to rush to check mine.
"Owen's ready in the conference room," he said and shoved the rest of his breakfast in his mouth. "Hold that thought, Carson," he said with his mouth still half full.
Josh grabbed the laptop and I took my muffin and coffee with me, following everyone to the conference room.
Owen stood outside of the door with two card keys in his hand, waiting for me and Josh. He held one card out to Josh and just as he was about to grab it, pulled it back. "Don't make me regret giving this to you."
Josh looked at Owen like he was crazy. "We were attacked. We're the victims here. Besides, Carson can identify the Dacosta house so..." he said cockily and swiped one of the cards out of Owen's hand before walking in.
Owen handed me the access card. "Can you? You've been there?"
I nodded, thankful they were using me for something other than identifying Casey things. Walking in, I followed to where Josh was since he still had the computer and was currently trying to hook it up to the projector they had. The tables were all pushed together in a line to face each other and most everyone else was already here.
I took a seat next to Josh and once everyone was seated, they closed the door.
Dylan and Owen were seated at the front of the table, near where the projection screen was.
"Josh said Lacey knows which house is the Dacostas," Owen said to Dylan and everyone's eyes flew to me. There was a shift of energy in the room, hope and excitement as they watched the projection screen reflect what Josh had on the laptop. I wish I could have joined in on their excitement. I felt like I should have. But I was running off too little of sleep for that and I still felt drained like I had this morning. It was like I had a Travis hangover.
"I thought I told you guys that a long time ago," I said absentmindedly, too tired to hold my comment in.
If they knew, no one said anything and Josh pushed the laptop towards me, scooting his chair closer to me to see the laptop like it was going to show him things sooner than the projector or something.
I started searching the addresses they had written down on the paper. By the second one, I was starting to doubt that they had the right ones. Maybe I wouldn't be helpful after all.
"Did you search the records on these things?" I asked as I typed in the third one and suddenly it felt like I was transported to three years ago. I could see my fingers resting on the keys of the laptop but I couldn't physically feel any of the pressure. It was like I had gone numb. "Oh."
"Oh?" Josh asked, grabbing onto my shoulders and shaking me out of excitement.
I stared at the large, ornate house where half of it was blocked by the concrete gate surrounding it. "Yeah. It has the same gate."
"Are you sure?" Dylan asked me, staring at me. "Did you see this exact house?"
Yes, Cameron threw me over that gate when we were breaking and entering. I could see the same tree we camped out on in the picture, the branches reaching out over the gate.
"Yes, before Sterling shot me," I said instead.
"Wasn't it dark?" he asked, almost challenging. "Are you positive?" I tried not to take his words to heart. If he was going to send people to investigate where a gang was held up, right after they attacked two of us, he had to be sure.
But after your boyfriend was kidnapped and you crawled around in the house's ventilation to get to him, you tended not to forget a house.
I pursed my lips to the side. "I remember where I got shot. This is the address."
Owen wrote the correct address down. Everyone started talking among themselves excitedly and I leaned back in my seat, staring at the house. Josh gave me a thumbs up and I could tell he was thanking the heavens I was his partner right now.
I took a sip of my coffee, trying to wake up.
"Take a look at these Casey houses now," Dylan said and passed me the houses they had in mind. A cough threatened to spill from my lips right as I was swallowing the coffee and I had to force it down, feeling it scorch my throat the whole way down. I held in a grimace from the pain.
"Don't you think with how the Dacostas are behaving, we should just focus on one at a time?" I asked.
Owen shook his head, "We want to know as much as we can as fast as we can. If we're not faster than they are, they'll rebuild."
"I thought you guys didn't have any leads in the Casey's names," I stated.
"We don't," Owen started.
"It's the size of the houses that we're looking at for the Casey's," George finished and I nodded, remembering the house from earlier that Josh showed me. "The house on Timber is a no-go, she already looked at it," he added for everyone.
Dylan nodded and crossed something off the sheet he had. A stack of papers were pushed down the table to me and slowly, I looked down to see it was print outs of different houses with the address and owner highlighted.
I tried to keep my jaw as still as possible as I looked at the first unrecognizable house and flipped to the next one, not wanting to give anything away. I was suddenly thankful for the Travis hangover and no sleep.
"How are there houses this size in this dump of a city?" Josh said, looking over my shoulder at the pictures as I flipped to yet another page and still nothing.
It wasn't until I flipped to the fifth page that I saw the house they were all looking for. Cameron's house. I skimmed over it as nonchalantly as I could, trying not to alert Josh who was too close not to notice if I gave anything away even though I could hear my heart practically trying to beat its way out of my skin.
My hand slowly went down to the corner of the page, ready to flip to the next as I tried to memorize the street name. Asherby. Asherby. Asherby.
If I had the street name, I could just roam that until I found the house.
It was owned by a woman. Knowing I didn't have a lot of time, I looked at the last name trying to commit Martinez to memory.
Martinez. Asherby.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
I flipped the page.
Relief filled me as Josh continued to hang out my every movement, in case I had a break through and people kept having their own background conversations.
"Hmm," I said, biting my lip as I came up on the last page. "I've never seen these places...but they moved me around a lot. I wasn't really let in on their inner workings or location," I said with a defeated sigh and pushed the papers away from me. I picked at my muffin, looking disappointed. "Sorry."
It felt like my heart was taking a mallet to my chest, just trying to break its way out. I picked more at my muffin, trying to even my breathing.
"Don't worry about it, you've already saved us time with the Dacosta house," Owen offered with a smile.
I nodded, trying to bring as little attention to me as possible.
Dylan grabbed the laptop from us and started looking up more information on the Dacosta house. He started going over ideas out loud about different ways to investigate it and to be honest, all of them sounded doable to me. The Dacosta gang didn't sound like the most intelligent to begin with but maybe that was just because I was used to listening to the opinions of Travis and everyone and they never really spoke highly of Sterling and his minions.
"We can have Lacey and Josh over on this road," Dylan said, catching my attention as the computer mouse showing on the projector screen ran over a map surrounding where the Dacosta house was. "...with me."
Josh groaned. "We don't need babysitting."
Dylan ignored him and continued plotting out where everyone could be, just sitting in cars and waiting. We were supposed to take a list of every car and person that we saw walk or drive past us. This was not going to help my Travis hangover at all.
Just then, one of the members of the team that had been missing walked in, letting the light from outside the small conference room pour in for a second before enveloping us in the dim room again. Isaac stood near the front by Dylan and Owen not caring that one, he was talking on his phone and two, that he was late.
But instead of getting angry, Dylan and Owen just waited and when Isaac finally hung up, they both looked at him expectantly.
"What'd they say?" Owen asked.
"There's some kid that got checked in this morning, really torn up. Whoever did it wasn't going easy on him. He woke up asking to talk to us," Isaac answered.
"Did he say anything about the fire alarm last night?"
My mouth acted on its own before I could stop it. "What?"
"We think they might know where we are. Or trying to scare us off," Owen answered.
"Someone asked to talk to us?" Josh butted in. "I thought no one was supposed to know we were here."
Dylan shot him a pointed look. "We let a few of the staff members at the hospital know, just in case anything pops up that could be related to gang activity. Okay, change of plans. Isaac and I can-"
"Actually," Isaac interrupted. "The kid requested to talk to Carson."
All eyes turned to me and it was like my heart had ditched the mallet and had a battering ram now, trying with all its might to bust out and spill its guts.
"Me?" I asked, not even needing to fake my surprise. Who would want to talk to me?
Dylan eyed me warily and Josh looked like he was trying to contain a fist pump.
"Have you talked to anyone since you've been here, Lacey?" Owen asked.
"No," I lied. One of my hands went up to run along the bruises on my neck. "I mean, not really."
Owen's eyes followed my hand and he nodded.
The room was silent for too long and I tried to figure out what was going on. I knew why the fire alarms went off last night and it wasn't due to anyone trying to drive us away. So why was there a person in the hospital asking for me? Was it someone I knew?
"You got this?" Dylan asked Owen, who nodded like it was no big deal. Dylan stood up and grabbed his things before looking over at me. "Lacey. Josh," he said before turning to exit the room. "Let's go."
Josh practically rushed out in front of me, eager to beat me out the door and be the first one to Dylan in the lobby, even though I wasn't trying to race him. "Don't make me send you back in there. The kid asked for Lacey, not you," Dylan said to Josh who seemed unaffected by Dylan's words. "I'm only bringing you so you can get experience."
"What are we doing?" Josh asked as we entered the parking lot. I threw my empty coffee mug in the trash can and followed after them. Dylan left Josh's answer hanging in the air as we entered the car, me opting for the backseat.
Dylan seemed deep in thought as he drove off and for the first minute or two we rode in silence.
"He may have heard of you from friends as someone who survived getting attacked," Dylan addressed to me, glancing at me in the rear view mirror. Getting attacked?
He must have sensed my confusion. "If the fire alarms were messed with last night by one of the gangs to send a message, this might be a message. We need to stay alert. This could be the kid who did it. We've seen it before. The gang intimidates younger kids and forces them into doing things they don't want to do so no one from the gang gets caught, just some random nobody."
But it wasn't a message. Travis just wanted to see me...
"So if he heard about a Lacey Carson, who was kidnapped before, he could feel safe talking to you. We'll have to see what he says when we first get there. If he's friendly or not, that is."
"How old is the kid?" Josh asked.
"Don't know," Dylan answered. "But if it's friendly then we're coming at the right time. Josh, you can help me question him. When these things happen and they're in the hospital, they're disoriented and scared. We need to assure them that everything is going to be okay and to tell us any information they can. The more we can squeeze from him the better. If he's angry, we can tell him he can help us out by joining us but we need all the information we can get and that he needs to cooperate or everything he went through will be for nothing."
I cocked my head to the side slightly as I listened to Dylan explain the procedure to Josh. He was speaking very uniform, like he'd done this multiple times and it was like saying two plus two equals four.
"What if he doesn't know anything?" Josh asked.
"If you push them enough, they'll spill. Especially if he just woke up. In things like this, you want to get there as soon as possible, before he's had time to talk to others or think over anything."
I bit my lip and looked out the window, and uneasy feeling looming over me.
"Lacey," Dylan said and my eyes snapped to the rear view mirror. "If he's scared, I want you to tell him about how you went through the same thing and you turned out being the one hunting the gangs now, okay? We need to show him that there's a way to get on top of these things so he confines in us."
"Do you want him to join?" I asked.
"We need information and this kid is our biggest lead right now," Dylan said.
Dylan wasn't looking hard enough.
"What if he's not friendly?" I countered, wanting to change the subject.
"We promise that kid anything his little heart desires to get him to tell him what we want and then we leave," he said as he pulled into the hospital parking lot.
I trailed behind with Dylan and Josh in front of me. Dylan asking random receptionists which way to go before we stood outside of the room.
"Ready?" Josh leaned down and whispered to me.
I didn't say anything, but followed Dylan as he opened the door to the room. He explained who we were but I was busy observing the boy in front of me.
He had to be about 14 or 15 years old. He had bruises all over his face and stitches in his left eyebrow. His right arm was in a cast and he had his shirt off, showing some medical tape covering parts of his abdomen, which was also covered in bruises. His eyes were wide with fright as Dylan spoke.
"Andrew," the kid said shakily when Dylan asked his name.
"Okay, Andrew, I'm just going to get right to it. Did you have anything to do with pulling the fire alarms at the hotel last night?"
"What hotel?" Andrew asked, eyes flying over to me.
"Playing a prank maybe? Dared by your buddies?" Dylan continued.
"No, what's going on?"
Dylan relaxed and smiled a little bit. "If you did, it's okay. We're not here to hurt you or anything. We just want to know what happened."
"I don't know what's going on," Andrew said, panicking slightly. "I was walking home from my friend's and these guys just jumped me out of nowhere."
"Who?" Josh interjected.
"I don't know, it was dark. I couldn't see what was going on but they told me to ask for Lacey Carson when I woke up. That's you, right? Please tell me that's you. I don't want them to find me again," he practically pleaded to me.
I snapped out of my haze. "Yeah."
"They told me to tell you something."
"What?" Dylan prodded but Andrew's eyes stayed locked on mine.
"They said: tell us where he is," he said, looking like he was trying so hard to recite the simple sentence just perfectly.
I looked at Andrew carefully, trying to understand what that was supposed to mean. This was the second time someone was asking me this. I saw Josh glance at me from the corner of my eye. Did someone think Travis was still alive? He didn't seem worried last night.
Dylan started asking Andrew an onslaught of questions relating to who, what, where, and when.
Andrew started panicking even more. "I don't know anything!"
"If you tell us, we can help you. We can use the information you give us and help track down the guys that did this to you. Lacey here went through the exact same thing. She ended up getting shotâ"
"They shot you? Oh my god," Andrew said, running his good hand threw his hair. Dylan looked to me to confirm but I remained silent, taking in Andrew's face. Instead, Dylan continued himself.
"Yes, and she joined us so she wouldn't have to spend every day worried about looking over her shoulder or getting caught by them again. She wanted to come up on top and that could only happen once she told us everything she knew," Dylan tried to calm Andrew down.
Again, I felt uneasy. I felt like I was the one in the hospital and instead, two agents were in here barely giving any concern to my worries about Travis and focusing on getting information out of me.
"They're going to come back?" Andrew asked, his voice going up a few octaves.
I stepped in front of Dylan before he could say anything else. "No. You're fine. It's going to be okay. We're here to protect you from anything else happening." I grabbed one of the pens and wrote my phone number down on a scratch paper near him.
"Here's my number. If anything else happens, call me and we'll help you out. You're safe now and you don't have to worry about anything. Thank you for your time, Andrew. I hope you feel better," I said and offered him a small smile.
I turned around and Dylan was glaring at me. "Lacey-"
"You're going to scar him, he's just a boy," I whispered, not caring that Andrew was still here.
"Lacey, please leave," Dylan finished with a flat tone. Josh was looking at his shoes and narrowing my eyes at the pair, I stomped out of the room.
Frustrated with both what they were doing to Andrew and having been on the other side of what they did to me when I was in the hospital, I started walking around trying to calm my nerves. I didn't get very far before someone's voice caught my attention.
"Oh my gosh," a girl said from in front of me. "You're that girl." She looked like she had just been rushing around.
I stared at her oddly. She was around my height but looked a few years older and had big chocolate brown eyes. She had her brown curly brown hair pulled back and medical scrubs on.
"How are you?" she asked casually. "My friend told me you were coming back to see that kid and I was trying to wrap up what I was doing to get here in time. I was hoping to get to see you before you left."
"Who are you?" I asked as politely as I could.
"Right. Sometimes I forget that people are usually unconscious when I'm meeting them. I'm Hannah. I worked on your leg and my friend, Eli, worked on your shoulder when you were in here before."
"My leg? You remember that?" I asked, shocked that this girl remembered sewing up my leg from three years ago and not only that but was trying to meet me.
She nodded. "Hell yeah, girl. Everyone remembers you."
I glanced around the hospital and no one seemed to be paying me any attention.
"Not like that, but they all know the story if they were working that night. Girl, I helped get you on the stretcher and that boy looked like he was one thread away from death. I swear the Grim Reaper was hovering over his head just waiting for his chance."
"What?" I asked, leaning in and grabbing her arm. "Travis?" I whispered.
She smiled at me for a second. "We don't ever have people looking like that boy did walk back out of the hospital. He just said make sure she's okay and dipped."
In the back of my head, I waited and tried to prep myself for the inevitable question of 'Is he okay?' that I assumed she'd ask. I tried to working out if I should lie and say he was fine to this random stranger or just continue to pretend he was dead and act sad. Except I've never had to confirm he was dead to anyone.
Surprisingly, her question never came. Maybe with the state she described having seen Travis in that night, she assumed he was already dead.
"It was almost romantic. Mostly crazy," she said and laughed. "I keep telling Eli that if he acted half as romantic as that, maybe minus the blood, he could get a date but he won't listen to me."
I smiled and laughed lightly. It was rare that anyone was actually proud of what Travis ever did.
"I guess I owe you a thank you, for the leg," I said.
She shrugged like it was no big deal. A male nurse in blue scrubs walked up beside her, looking me over.
"You found her," the guy said to Hannah.
"This is Eli," Hannah said, motioning with her hand to point at the tall guy.
"Lacey," I said and grinned.
Eli stuck out his hand to shake and I grabbed it. He had an intense stare and it caused my eyes to drift down to our hands and I noticed a small tattoo on his wrist as he pulled away. It was familiar and looked exactly like the one that was on Travis' shoulder. A tattoo that was very well known to my brain from the amount of times I had to tell myself to stop staring at his shoulders and/or muscles.
"I heard you helped with my arm, thank you," I told him, trying to make sense of what was going on. Why did he have the same tattoo as Travis? I could have sworn that was the same one Travis mentioned he had because he was in the gang. Was this guy part of the Casey gang?
"All in a night's work," Eli said, oblivious to the emotional meltdown going on inside my head.
It was on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to shake him and scream at him What do you know about Cameron Casey? How can I get in touch with Travis Miller? It was becoming painfully obvious the longer I was back in Melkin just how little I knew about the gang the first time I was here. I knew about the group I hung out with, but there were multiple members beyond that. None of which I knew anything about. But considering my uncertainty and our location, I remained quiet.
Eli nudged Hannah and motioned with his head that they had to go.
"We've got another patient waiting, I just wanted to try to catch you and make sure you were okay. It was nice meeting you finally face to face, Lacey," Hannah said as they turned and went back the way Eli came.
I waved goodbye to her and headed back towards the room Josh and Dylan were in, not sure what to make of any of that. I fidgeted with my fingers, trying to release some of the energy that had been building up from today's events.
Dylan and Josh were out of the room and walking towards me, one not looking happy in the slightest.
"Good job Lacey, you scared him into silence," Dylan accused. "What the hell was that back there? We had a plan, you stick to it."
I bit my lip, mulling over my words so I didn't say something I would regret. "He was a kid. He still had his whole life ahead of him and it wasn't right to take that away from him just for some information when he probably told us everything he knows. It was just a fire alarm, anyone could have pulled it."
"You don't know that!" Dylan argued, heading towards the elevators.
"Is that what you guys do to everyone you recruit? Target them when they're vulnerable?" I asked as the doors opened and we stepped inside.
Josh put a warning hand on my shoulder but I shrugged him off.
"You didn't seem to have any problem with getting recruited until about five seconds ago," Dylan said and my face fell.
"How does that make you any better than the gangs we're trying to put a stop to?" My fingers started fidgeting again. "You're both preying on the weak, ready to tell them anything they want to get them to come to your side and then what? Then they're nothing special."
Dylan walked closer to me. "Is that what you want? You want to be treated special?"
No. I didn't. But I wanted the information people told them to be held with value and for everyone to be treated like they were telling the truth. Like when I told them years ago I knew where Sterling lived. If Owen and Dylan had been sitting on these possible addresses, they could've checked with me and had the correct one in two seconds. Then today when they acted like I wouldn't have had a clue what the house looked like when I did confirm it. I could have saved them months of time.
Dylan took my silence as a reason to continue. "Let's treat Lacey like she's special. Because she's been here before and because she's done this so many times in the past, she can be trusted to go off on her own without nearly getting strangled. Why don't you tell me what the kid was talking about then, huh? Who are they looking for and where is this 'he'?"
I looked at the ground to stop from snapping at him. "I don't know."
"You guys are the new kids. We know what we're doing," he said in a tone that signaled he was done with the conversation.
The elevator dinged and we exited, following him out of the hospital. I felt Josh hook one of his fingers around my pinky to stop my fidgeting as we walked to the car. He probably thought I was sad and was trying to comfort me. I wasn't sad. I was furious at Dylan speaking to me the same way everyone else always had when I knew for a fact that he didn't even know all of the information.
That kid deserved to have a life. But I didn't want Dylan to throw me off the project. So when we entered the car and Josh sat in the backseat with me and held my hand, I squeezed it but out of anger as I attempted to even my breathing as the smug jerk drove us back, muttering about what a waste of time this was.
When we arrived, I didn't miss the force Dylan used to slam his door. "Everyone's already out. We'll regroup and discuss this later."
"I'm going on a walk," I said, not hesitating as I turned and started walking out of the parking lot, my mouth in a tight line.
"Lacey, wait," Josh called after me. "You're just going to let her go?"
"I don't care," Dylan said. He wasn't usually like this so I figured I'd really gotten under his skin. "She wants to go exploring, she can go exploring. Every agent has to get their ass kicked two or three times for them to learn anyway," he said loud enough for me to hear.
I resisted the urge to reach up to my neck, just in case he was watching me. I didn't want him to know I heard him. He didn't even know why I got attacked the first time. He didn't know anything and he was trying to tell me what to do like I was some child.
I clenched and unclenched my fists. When I was sure I was out of sight from the hotel, I broke into a sprint, heading towards the wall separating me from where I was and Melkin.
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Finally updated, amiright? I know, it took forever. Forgive me. I'm going to try to have the next one out in a few days (fingers crossed) because I have a busy weekend and am excited for the next part!
What did you guys think of it?
Is Josh growing on you or nah? Thoughts on Dylan? What about Eli/Hannah?
You can find me on twitter (@breakawayjs) and tumblr (jschristine) for any extra things!
I hope you liked it! Have a great day and don't forget to smile!