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

my sides, my fists are balled tight enough for my nails to cut into my palm. I don’t care how much bad blood there is between me and Annie, if they’ve touched her…

Robert’s smile gets wider. “Good girl.”

“Eat shit, grandpa.”

He actually laughs, then gestures to his right. “Our ride is this way. Come on.”

“What do you want?”

“Nothing to do with me.” He sucks his lip. “Pop wants to talk.”

“And just who the fuck is Pop?”

“The boss.” His eyes bore into mine, and despite his smile, there’s zero humour in them. “And trust me, by the time this is over, you’re gonna know exactly who the fuck Pop is.”

TWENTY-NINEReggie

It takes Reggie a good few minutes to get the story out of Africa.

He is almost incoherent with rage, yelling into the phone. “An electric boy,” he keeps saying, using the words like the most searing insult imaginable. “He touch me and ba! Throw me ten metres back. And Teggan is helping him!”

Reggie’s breathing too fast, her breaths too shallow, her diaphragm clenching. It takes everything she has to slow it down.

Thank Christ Moira can’t hear her. Africa’s on a cellphone connection, while Moira speaks to Reggie over an open comms line, currently muted. Since Reggie can’t type messages, only dictate them, she has to mute the comms line whenever she speaks to Africa. And the longer she mutes it…

As if on cue, Moira speaks into her ear. “Ms McCormick – we’re getting a lot of National Guard chatter. Something’s happened at Dodger Stadium.”

There’s a horrible moment where she thinks Moira is going to ask Africa for an update too. It doesn’t come. “… Um, yes, Roger that. Looking now.”

Reggie long ago built backdoors into the communications networks of the Coast Guard, LAPD, fire department… and the National Guard. She finds it quickly, eyes narrowing as she listens. The voices on the channel are urgent, panicked, talking over each other, dissolving into bursts of static, but Reggie can still pick up on a few words. Lightning strike. Four dead. Six… no, seven injured.

Reggie closes her eyes for a moment. Between what happened at the storage unit, and the garbled story coming from Africa, she’d guessed most of this already – if not the specifics, then definitely the broad outline. But to have it confirmed…

Teagan, what in God’s name are you doing?

But of course, Reggie knows that, too. The girl doesn’t want to let the child – whoever the child is – fall into Tanner’s hands. Or hers.

Reggie hadn’t really thought about it until now – she’d spent so long as head of China Shop that the idea of not being included was almost completely beyond consideration. And yet, Teagan – and Nic Delacourt apparently, God knows how he’s involved – have gone off on their own. Maybe Annie too, although Africa says he hasn’t seen her. Reggie has worked hard to build her relationships with her team, and to be frozen out like this…

“I need solutions now, Ms McCormick,” Tanner barks in her ear. “Is this related to the incident at the storage facility? I’m seeing plenty of weather activity over the LA area – can we confirm whether this was just a normal lightning strike?”

“I… I don’t—” Reggie clears her throat. “I don’t know yet. I’m going to send the team down there, and I’ll see if there’s any camera footage from around the stadium.”

“What about the communication issues with Ms Frost and Ms Cruz? What’s our status on that?”

“Working on it.”

“Maybe we should get some more boots on the ground. Navy SEAL headquarters are in San Diego – they’re not who I usually use, and I’d have to fast-track their security clearances and do some serious arm-twisting, but—”

“No.” Reggie’s voice sounds a lot calmer than she feels. “It’s under control. We’ve got this.”

“A SEAL team might—”

“Right now, we don’t even know if what happened at Dodger Stadium is linked to the storage unit,” Reggie says. The lies come easily, far too easily. “We could be deploying them for nothing. At least let me do some more digging.”

Tanner digests this. “You have one hour. And keep existing communications open.”

A thought flashes across Reggie’s mind. “I’m going to shut down all comms and reboot. It might be some kind of kernel panic that hasn’t resolved.”

On any other night, Tanner would probably have detected the note of bullshit in Reggie’s voice, but not tonight. She has a million things on her mind, and doesn’t have time to process the reasoning. “Fine. Get it done.”

With a sigh of relief, Reggie shuts down all comms systems. Then, raising the phone to her ear, she says, “Did you get all that?”

“Uh-huh.” Africa still sounds furious. He sniffs loudly. “Is OK. They will not have gone far.”

“Right. Look, we need to strategise. If—”

“No.” He coughs, harsh and hard, almost like a roll of thunder on its own. “Before, I did not know what was what. Now I know exactly what to do.”

There’s something in his voice that chills Reggie to the bone.

“This boy is dangerous,” he continues. “He already kill many people. It’s just like before, with the one who can cause the earthquake. What is this boy going to do if we let him keep going for too long?”

“You can’t…” She licks her lips. “We can’t kill him.”

“You not have a problem with killing the other boy. The earthquake one. What is different here?”

“Matthew Schenke,” Reggie says, through gritted teeth, “was a clear and present danger. Whoever this boy is, he doesn’t—”

Africa speaks over her. “I not get surprised this time. Not for this one. I will follow them, I will find them and I will do what I have to.”

“Africa. Stop.” Reggie’s diaphragm clenches again as she raises her voice. She’s working herself too hard, her frail body starting to protest. “Think for a second.”

“I am thinking,” he says. “And this is what Mrs Tanner would ask me to do, if she knew. I tell the lie to protect you Reggie, because