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

a busy hotel would never work in regular circumstances, but these are not regular times. Nobody’s checking in upstairs any more, or ordering room service – and if there’s a nasty smell coming from the vents at street level, who’s going to complain? There’s so much toxic shit in the air from the quake, it makes the usual LA smog seem like Chanel No. 5.

I didn’t sense any of this when we arrived at the hotel. Wasn’t really paying attention to my PK.

Someone – one of the meth cooks maybe – has hung a fluffy toy of the RV from Breaking Bad on one of the pot hooks. An attempt to make the workplace a little brighter, which is one of the most nauseating things I’ve ever seen. It makes me irrationally angry. How dare these shitbags turn a kitchen – a proud place, a place for art and honest work and good food – into a drug lab? And then make a joke out of it?

I vent some of the rage by snapping all the Bunsen burners, choking off the plastic tubing with my PK, then fucking up the valves on the chemical tanks. Kitchen’s closed, motherfuckers.

There are two meth cooks, and no other guards. Not exactly surprising – when your lab is in a hotel already bristling with your people, putting more than a couple to guard the lab seems like overkill. The main doors in the big kitchen are barred and padlocked, so there’s only one entrance – the door we came through.

I keep my PK on the alert for any guns approaching the lab, but there’s nobody around. It’s a little worrying at first, but then again, why would anybody come check on the lab? If you throw three people off a balcony, and their bodies vanish between you and the ground, you don’t go hunting in the basement.

My gaze lingers on one of the stoves. It’s a Jade Titan, a commercial model with super-powerful gas burners. Man, what must it be like to be in charge of that thing, standing over it with all six burners on full? Steaks sizzling, pasta in the back, sauce reducing. Pastry chef would be melting chocolate in another pot over the boiling water, of course, and there’s no way I’d be able to resist—

I sigh, tapping my fingers on the counter.

I have got to stop doing this to myself.

I never wanted to be a government agent. Still don’t. The only reason I’m doing this job and working for Tanner is because if I don’t, she’ll hand me over to a bunch of scientists who are itching to cut me open and see what I’m made of. What I really want to do, more than anything in the world, is be a chef. To cook, in a professional kitchen, just like this one. I used to have these big plans about using my off hours from my secret agent job to go to cooking school, eventually figuring a way out of this mess and pursuing what I really wanted.

Problem is, it’s not just the threat of dissection that keeps me working for Uncle Sam. There are other people out there like me – other people with abilities. All of them have been bad news. Tanner convinced me that I’m one of the best people to try and stop them. But she also said that I had to commit to it – I couldn’t train to be a chef on the side, not when it would distract me from the mission. And as much as I hated to admit it, she was right.

I’m still going to be a chef one day – I don’t know how, especially since there are very few cooking schools left in Los Angeles after the quake. But for now, I’ve had to put all of it on the backburner.

Backburner. Poor word choice, in this case.

Before long, the guards and the two meth cooks are bound and gagged, thanks to a roll of duct tape Africa pulled from his jacket. Of course he has duct tape. If I suddenly needed, I don’t know, a printout of the Declaration of Independence, I’m pretty sure I’d find one in Africa’s inside pocket, along with coins in ten currencies and a signed copy of Prince’s last album.

He stands over the bags of meth, hands on his hips, nodding slowly to himself. Africa doesn’t like drugs, and he especially doesn’t like meth, on account of his girlfriend Jeannette having been addicted to it once upon a time. I met her once, when she was living on the streets, and she was nothing more than a skeleton.

“This is good,” he says. “Mrs Tanner will be pleased.” He picks up one of the bags, tucks it into his jacket. “We take, we test.”

“We’d better call the cops anyway,” Annie says, eyeing the captives. I’ve already gone through their pockets, wanting to make sure none of them made a covert call before we shut them down. Their phones, walkies, wallets and keys sit in a neat pile behind them on the countertop. “Once the Legends find out we were here, they’ll shut this place down in a second, set up shop elsewhere.”

One of the meth cooks – a guy who looks like Ben Stiller – mmphs behind the tape, as if to agree.

The scowl is back on Africa’s face. “Dina le nokh,” he spits at Ben Stiller. Then, to us: “OK. Come. We can call police when we are in the car.”

He and Annie move to go, but I linger, resting my hand on the counter. “Hey… guys?”

They turn to look at me.

“What if we just took it?” I ask.

Annie screws up her face. “Like… to sell?”

“What – no! Why would you even say that? No! God!” I point to the meth. “We’ll destroy it.”

Ben Stiller growls into his gag again.

“Zip it, Pinkman,” I tell him.

“No,” Africa says, although he looks unsure. “Too much trouble. It’s not part of the mission.”

“But listen, hear me