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

everywhere. The jacket is open over a grey shirt, buttoned at the collar and open at the bottom. Enormous black shades sit propped on her forehead, and she’s rocking thick dreads which go all the way down to her waist.

She moves to close the door. As she does so, one of the guards outside turns towards to her, his eyebrows raised, as if questioning her decision to be alone with me. She doesn’t even look at him. Just shuts the door, then leans against it, arms folded.

Studying me.

I don’t happen to like being studied. “And just who in the fuck are you?”

“I’m Pop,” she says.

I blink. “I’m sorry, what?”

She shrugs, as if she’s used to this reaction. “It’s short for poppet.” She has the faintest hint of accent – Haitian, maybe, or Jamaican. Annie would know, for sure.

I grit my teeth. If they’ve hurt her…

“Where are my friends?” I say.

“We’ll get to that.”

“Now would be good.”

She scratches her chin. It’s a quick, precise movement with the index and middle fingers of her right hand. Scratch-scratch. Arms back to folded. Her eyes never leave mine.

The silence goes on for a little too long. I’m about to speak again when she says, “So. Superpowers, huh?”

I’m about to deny it, the reaction automatic. But fuck it. It’s not like she doesn’t know already.

I reach out with my PK, grab her glasses off her head, and float them over to me. Slipping them on without touching them.

I expect her to jump. Snatch at them. She doesn’t move. Instead, as the glasses settle onto my face, she gives me a single nod. “Nice.”

“You’re welcome,” I say, feeling like I told a joke where the punchline didn’t land. It doesn’t help that wearing dark glasses in a dark room is a dumb idea – there’s a reason Pop had them propped on her forehead. I have to stop myself from taking them off.

Pop’s wearing a watch – a big chunky Casio. It beeps softly, and she glances at it, then reaches behind her and raps on the door, still looking at me. Robert sticks his head in, and she whispers a few words to him. I’m guessing they’re along the lines of, So far so good, make the call with the codeword that prevents everybody getting murdered.

Man. Why couldn’t my parents have given me super hearing?

Robert shuts the door behind, and Pop turns back to me. “How is it you do what you do, exactly? Where’d you learn that?”

“Where are my people?” I say.

“Was it gamma rays or something?”

The sunglasses are getting to me. I reach up, prop them on my forehead. A petulant thought: You’re not getting these back. “Where. Are. My people?”

“And you’re like a crime fighter? LA’s finest?” Scratch-scratch. “What I don’t understand is what you’re doing returning to the scene of… well, not the crime, but you get what I mean. We had people all over the city looking for you, but I didn’t exactly expect you to come back to the bridge. I put a couple of the boys there just as a precaution, and then your friend walks right past us. And what’s with the kid?”

“Touch him and I’ll tear your face off.”

Her expression doesn’t change. In a weird way, she reminds me of Tanner.

“Just so you know,” I say, putting a confidence into my voice that I absolutely don’t feel, “I work for the US government.”

She says nothing.

“All hell is about to come raining down on you. But I tell you what. You let me go right now, me and my people, and we walk away. I’ve got bigger shit to fry than your little biker club.”

Pop laughs. It’s a genuine sound, almost sweet, like a little girl’s laugh.

“Something funny?”

“No, I just like the fact that you called us a club. Most people talk about motorcycle gangs.”

“Did you not hear the part about the US government? I’m serious, man. I’m talking special forces, Black Hawks, extraordinary rendition. Fucking drone strikes. Your day is about to get a lot more complicated.”

“So the US government is going to let someone like you get taken by people like us? Where are these special forces, exactly? Where are the men in black, coming to take us to Guantanamo?”

“Probably on their way.”

“Maybe. But then, if I’m the government, why am I letting someone like you just wander around the storm drains? Especially after what you did to us before.”

“You can ask them when they get here.”

Pop sighs. Then she walks towards me, footsteps reverberating in the tight space.

I blink at her. “What do you think you’re—?”

I don’t get the rest out, because she slaps me.

It’s not a hard slap. Just deliberate, precise. And here’s the thing about slaps: a punch will make you bleed, but a good slap will make you cry. You can’t help it. It’s a blunt strike to the sinuses, and your eyes will water a little no matter how much you try to stop it. Punches hurt your body. Slaps hurt everything else.

I snarl, grab the first thing my PK touches – a loose metal bracket hanging on the wall. Then I rip it off, and send it hurtling towards Pop. Before it can touch her, she slaps me again, backhand. Stars explode in my vision, and my grip on the bracket goes fuzzy. It bounces off Pop’s shoulder, and she doesn’t even flinch.

“Do that again,” she says. “See what happens to your friends.”

I sniffle like a little kid. I can’t help it – my sinuses have swollen up, my cheeks hot and stinging. I glare at Pop, hating how small I feel.

“Your story doesn’t fly,” she says. “Either you don’t work for the government, or you do, but you’re trying to go behind their backs. Doesn’t matter to me – you can talk all you want, but we’re still gonna do business.”

“Do business?” I get out. My voice feels thick, foreign, like it belongs to someone else.

“Why not? If everything were just a business transaction, the world would be