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

forgot to send it over. Not to worry. It can wait until tomorrow.

A thought enters her mind then, one that she had before, but never actually paid attention to. How, exactly, did Darcy Lorenzo of DCA Talent get her number?

“What does it matter?” she says, irritated with herself. She refreshes her email again, then closes the window. She’ll watch a show or two, take her mind off things. If she really can’t stop thinking about it, she can find some test scripts online, or pull up some of her old ones from the Playhouse.

And yet, the thought won’t go away. She gives an annoyed cluck, opens her browser and locates DCA Talent’s website. She should probably read Lorenzo’s bio – it might prove useful later.

Only: the DCA Talent site doesn’t list Darcy Lorenzo as an agent. Reggie scrolls through the list of names, mouthing them: Andy Goldstein, Larissa Schrambling, Sarah Yuan…

The tiny drumbeat of worry in her chest kicks up a notch.

So she’s not listed. So what? It doesn’t mean anything. They might not have updated their site. She could be new at the agency – hell, she probably is, if she’s calling up an old theatre hack like you—

“Enough. Don’t do that,” Reggie says to herself.

But it doesn’t stop her from calling Darcy Lorenzo’s number. Belatedly, she realises it’s a cellphone number. Wouldn’t Lorenzo have called her from an office phone? The landline at the DCA offices?

Her earpiece is silent as the call connects. Jesus, what the hell is she going to say if Lorenzo answers? Hi, sorry to call so late, but I just wanted to see if you really are an agent?

In her ear, there are three gloomy beeps. Then: “The number you dialled has been disconnected.”

Reggie barely registers hanging up.

She’s replaying everything that’s happened in the past twenty-four hours, running through it in her mind.

How someone tipped off the Legends about who Teagan, Annie and Africa were.

How their communications systems were compromised.

How the woman who kidnapped her knew where she, Reggie, was going to be. How she must have been watching the offices, ready to follow Reggie if she left.

“Uh-uh,” she says. Then again, more strongly: “Uh-uh. No.”

But that doesn’t change the fact that someone has been messing with China Shop. Trying to disrupt their operations.

What if a part of that was getting inside their heads? Splitting their focus, making it so they wouldn’t be as effective in their decision-making? So they’d be too fragmented to operate effectively?

Reggie’s mouth is very dry. There’s no way. And yet: didn’t that call plant the seeds of doubt in her mind? Didn’t it help push her to make the choices she did? She can’t stop her mind connecting the dots, even as a sick nausea blooms in her stomach. The call from Darcy Lorenzo was probably part of a coordinated strategy, a plan to disrupt China Shop, the one group in Los Angeles who might be able to—

Do what?

But oh, Reggie knows. Because she’s remembering Darcy Lorenzo’s voice now. And the voice of the woman who held her hostage.

They’re the same.

Only China Shop could retrieve Leo Nguyen. Only they would be able to take him off the board. And so China Shop would have to be disrupted. Distracted. Split. Taken off the board themselves.

There’s no agent. No audition.

There never was.

Reggie’s arm drops. Her fingers slip out of the rings on her cup handle, the vessel smashing on the floor. The sound makes her jerk in her chair, tears an awful cry out of her chest.

“God,” she says, and then she’s sobbing, raising her hands to her face. Her body shakes with hurt and embarrassment – no, not just embarrassment.

Humiliation.

For a few hours, she thought she could do it. She had an opportunity, golden and bright, and she meant to take it. But it was never there. Of course it was never there. How could she have ever thought that someone like her would get to… to…

She has always been the calm centre of the storm. The peacemaker. The professional, the one who gets the job done. The one who holds everyone together. Her job was to lead a team: to be the quiet, still ground that everyone around her could stand on.

No longer. In her pain, in the very depths of her misery, alone in an office she is no longer allowed to work in, Regina McCormick finds something else.

Anger.

Rage.

Slowly, oh so slowly, it dries up her tears. It tightens her chest and shoulders and kills the nausea in her stomach and leaves her light-headed, breathing in and out, focusing on one thing. The face of her captor. The woman who did this cruel, monstrous, hateful thing.

Reggie may not work for China Shop any more. She may be on the outside. But Moira Tanner cannot take her knowledge. She cannot take away the fact that Reggie is one of the most competent hackers on the planet. Someone who can cut through systems security like a katana through paper. Someone with the power to end worlds.

It doesn’t matter whether she helps Teagan and Africa, or does it by herself. She’s not done. She’ll never be done.

Reggie makes herself picture the woman in even more detail. Her face, her voice. And she makes a solemn, calm, quiet promise.

I’m coming for you.

FIFTY-EIGHTTeagan

I’m supposed to be back at home. Or what passes for home these days – my tiny-ass temporary apartment in Pasadena.

I should be sleeping. The deepest, darkest, cousin-of-death sleep, after this unbelievable, monstrous hellstorm of a day.

And at first, that’s what happened. Physically I’m OK – I think. They strapped my knee in a million miles of athletic tape, but the doc who looked it over said there wouldn’t be any permanent damage. Then he looked me up and down, sniffed and told me to get some Adderall from the pharmacy downstairs. Then he gave me a pamphlet for a drug counselling service.

Awesome.

But by the time Reggie and Africa dropped me outside my front door, the meth