Eye of the Sh*t Storm by Jackson Ford (most romantic novels .txt) 📕

FIFTY-SIXReggie

There is video.

It’s not very clear, the footage jerky and amateur. It doesn’t show Teagan’s face – whoever took it was standing some way behind her, at the bottom of the storm drain slope on the south side of the homeless camp.

Teagan told Reggie she’d taken care of the phones, but she must have missed one. The video captures her standing alone, facing down the flood.

And it captures the moment when she stops it.

Unseen spectators yell in disbelief as it happens, their voices failing to be drowned out by the roaring of the flood. The camera tilts sideways, drops, as if the person filming can’t keep it steady. Then it refocuses, zooming in on the wall of water. Reggie watches it in silence. On the other screen, Moira Tanner stares at her. Her face expressionless.

It’s now almost 2 a.m. The video is already spreading. Hundreds of thousands of views already, increasing by the second. It’s on every platform. The first news stories have begun to appear. The memes. The hot takes.

Reggie isn’t sure if Teagan knows yet. She suspects not. The poor girl could barely stay awake.

Annie is still alive. Just. Small mercies, Reggie thinks.

After Teagan and Africa found them, they loaded Annie into the back of the van, and drove like hell for Cedars-Sinai Hospital. Reggie called Moira on the way. Give her this: the woman acted fast. She didn’t ask questions, just told them to drive faster. By the time they got to the hospital, there was a full team waiting for them at the ER entrance.

They whisked Annie away. Nic was admitted, although a cursory check from an ER doc showed that nothing he’d suffered was life-threatening. Africa insisted on having Reggie checked out, but aside from exhaustion and a fuzzy hangover from the drugs, there’s nothing wrong with her.

Nothing physical, anyway.

She and Africa gave Teagan a ride home. The girl nodded absently when Reggie said she was going to speak with Tanner. She kept passing out, her head tipping forward onto her chest.

The office in Carson is the same as before. Unchanged. It feels wrong – China Shop, the world it operates in, has been turned upside down. Such a series of events demands chaos, broken walls, physical damage. But there’s none.

Well, except for her chair. Another one gone, she thinks bitterly. Moira had acted fast there, too. Reggie doesn’t have the faintest idea how she managed to conjure up a motorised chair from the other side of the country at one in the morning, but she did. It’s not nearly as nice as any of Reggie’s previous chairs, but she’s certainly not complaining.

The video ends. An invitation to watch multiple reaction videos pops up. Reggie grimaces, closes the window. Africa stands behind her, silent, body as tense as steel wire.

“What’s our play?” she says quietly.

Moira’s voice is as calm and still as a frozen lake. Never a good sign. “We have assets in Moldova and Macedonia. They’re already working to spread as much confusion as they can online – it’s surprisingly easy to muddy the waters. In a way, I suppose we got lucky – there’s the just the one video, for now, and Teagan’s face doesn’t appear on it. Also, I wouldn’t call the eyewitnesses exactly… reliable.”

Reggie wants to tell her that just because the people under the freeway were homeless does not mean they’re unreliable, but she holds her tongue. Right now, that would be less than helpful.

Moira says, “Tell me everything.”

Reggie takes a deep breath, and does.

The Legends. The Main Street Bridge. Leo. Teagan and Annie dropping off the radar. All of it. The only part she leaves out is how Africa lied to Moira – she can read the coldness in the woman’s face, the lack of emotion, and she has a sense of what’s coming. Throwing him under the bus would not help anybody.

When she’s finished, Africa clears his throat. “Mrs Tanner – that woman, the one who took the boy. They cannot have gone far. I will take Teggan and—”

“You will do no such thing.” Tanner’s voice is a deadly whisper. “As of now, Teagan Frost is off the board.”

Reggie’s blood turns to ice.

The deal Tanner had – has – with Teagan is brutal in its simplicity. Teagan works for Tanner, and Tanner does not hand Teagan over to the government departments who want to cut her open and see what’s inside – the departments run by people who think she is more useful to them dead than alive. Teagan is not supposed to reveal what she does, to anyone, ever. Especially not on video.

“You can’t do this,” Reggie says.

For the first time, a flicker of annoyance crosses Tanner’s face. “For heaven’s sake. I said she was off the board, not in custody. Although it’s going to take every ounce of political capital I have to keep it that way – every subcommittee and review board in Washington with security clearance will want to burn me alive. And until I can pacify them, I don’t want Ms Frost near any sort of operation. At all.”

“What will you tell them?” Africa asks.

Tanner appears to weigh her words carefully. “That she’s an asset. That she saved lives. That she is the one individual with extranormal abilities who we can control, and that that means she will be more useful in the field. And she should consider herself damn lucky. If this had happened a year ago, she would already be on a plane to Texas. But things are different now.”

Her eyes find Reggie’s. “There’s a very good chance my intervention may not be enough for my superiors. They may want to take a different route.”

Reggie lifts her chin. “Those people, the ones in the camp – they’re alive because of Teagan. If she hadn’t—”

“It doesn’t matter. Don’t you understand that? We are fighting a war here, and right now, Ms Frost has made it exponentially harder for us