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

Must be fun to go kayaking here. Maybe, after this shitstorm is all over, I’ll come back and do that. Someone must have set up a business renting canoes to jackasses like me. It might be fun to row row row my ass down the river in the middle of a city, just me and a six-pack and my headphones.

Leo yells. Points, his hand twitching.

We’re just coming around a sharp bend in the river, and what Leo is pointing at is a sign. Massive, bright green, neon. It’s maybe two hundred yards away, above the west bank, and it brings a huge smile to my face.

Give Nic this: he picked a good target. You’d have to be blind to miss it. You can probably see it from space.

“All right!” I hold up my hand for a high-five from Leo, but he ignores me, limping even faster towards the sign.

“Not cool, man,” I mutter. But I follow.

The bamboo groves are more numerous here, and it’s getting hard to find a route between them. It looks like we can get up the slope in a little gap just ahead of us. There’s a flood barrier at the top, but we can slip around it if—

Wait.

“I’m hungry,” Leo says. “Can we get cheeseburgers when we meet your friend? Hey – come on!”

“Just a second.” I look back towards the bend, squinting, focusing my PK. It’s like trying to start a car on a cold morning, but I get there.

Someone’s coming.

So? It’s not like the river is your own private walking path. There must be a bunch of other people who use it.

I feel lightheaded all of a sudden. Woozy. Like I’ve had too much whiskey. It’s… different from the meth hangover, somehow. Fluffy, instead of actively awful. I blink hard, try to shake it off.

It might be one of the team – I’m pretty sure either Africa or Annie would have tried the river, sooner or later – or the cops. Maybe even the one that caught us outside the fence. But it’s just the one person – I’m pretty sure the cops wouldn’t come alone. Whoever it is is moving fast.

That’s not what worries me though. I can’t sense the person themselves, but I can feel what they’re carrying. It’s a twitch at the edge of my mind, like you might get if a gust of wind rippled your shirt collar. Whoever they are, they’re carrying a hypodermic needle.

A big one.

Before I can act on this, a voice calls out my name. And my mouth falls open.

“Teagan? Are you there?”

It’s a male voice. Clear, calm. German accent. A voice I know.

As I watch, staring in stunned silence, the speaker steps around a clutch of bamboo.

He’s in his early thirties, with an artfully messy spike of blond hair over a clean-shaven face. A pair of aviator shades sit perched on his forehead. He wears a well-cut dark suit over a white V-neck T-shirt. Despite the dirt, his leather loafers are immaculate, and his ice-blue eyes shine with a hot, bright energy. When he sees me, his face splits in a huge smile. “There you are,” he says.

I last saw him in person during the quake. On his private jet at Van Nuys Airport. But I’ve seen him since, in my most private thoughts. Even though I knew I’d probably never see him again.

And yet, amazingly, impossibly, here he is. In the middle of the LA River. Right in front of me.

Jonas Schmidt.

SEVENTEENReggie

Right when Reggie’s day couldn’t get any worse, Annie’s camera starts to glitch.

She’s on the 2, the part of the freeway that crosses the river, looking south, when the feed goes black. “Annie.” Reggie says, frowning. “Check your video.”

A hiss of static. “Shit, hold up.” There’s a rustle of fabric. “Looks OK to me. Can you reboot it?”

Reggie does so. Still nothing – the same black screen. There are no error messages, and the connection looks good. The audio’s still fine – Reggie can hear Annie’s phone in the background, beeping with texts. Annie hasn’t been idle, reaching out to several of her contacts, trying to see if there’s anybody in the Glendale area who might have seen something. So far, she’s come up empty.

For the thousandth time, Reggie scans their systems. Nothing. She has run multiple threat detection packages, looked in every nook and cranny, and she can’t find evidence of an intrusion.

Africa’s feed is crystal clear. “I have finished checking the park on the west side of the river,” he says. “She is not here.”

Reggie’s eyes flick to the map on one of the other screens. “We’re going to need more boots on the ground. Africa: head back to the storage unit. See if you can get the LAPD to help with the search.”

“They may not listen,” he rumbles. “They are already not trusting us.”

“Make it happen,” she snaps. “Annie: head south and check the Atwater area”

“Why Atwater?”

“She might have tried to pick up transport – she’s more likely to get a cab or an Uber there than in Silver Lake.” If the girl is even able to call an Uber. Reggie can’t get a bead on her phone. It’s that, more than anything else, that concerns her. She should have been able to trace it even with the device turned off. The only way it would go dead on her is if the battery was removed, or the phone destroyed.

“OK,” Annie says. “But I’m pretty sure—”

There’s a hiss of static, then nothing.

“Annie, come back?” Reggie says. She reboots everything yet again. No connection, to either audio or video.

Annie’s comms are dead in the water.

“Shit.” It’s said quietly, under her breath. If she makes it any louder, she won’t be able to control her temper. And if that happens, then tonight will go from bad to catastrophic.

China Shop is an experiment. A team designed to handle black bag jobs that other teams aren’t able to handle, and to