“Go to my safehouse. It will have everything you need. Seven minutes out, get to the roof.”
“Roger.”
“And Snow, watch your six.”
The line goes dead, and I pop the phone into my leather jacket pocket.
“Lucy, I can’t run.”
“Like I said, the situation has changed. Do you understand what’s just happened?” I step into the room. “I’ve been marked, so have you. Well, you’ve been markedagain. They are desperate for you to not be breathing anymore. Give me the hard drive.” I hold out my hand.
Owen shakes his head. “No,” he states firmly.
“Do you not trust me?”
He doesn’t answer, instead replies, “I’m not giving this to anyone, apart from maybe a judge,” he states.
“You think a judge isn’t as corrupt as everyone else?” I drop my hand and step into the bedroom. “Everything, everyone is corrupt. Why do you think a judge would be different? We really need to work on our hard drive plan,” I mumble.
Knowing Luca, I question why he hasn’t given Owen more instructions. Luca’s smart, he thinks everything through, so why not this aspect?
“Because I have to,” he snaps. “I have to believe that this is all fucking worth it, Lucy. Because why the hell am I bothering, otherwise? I hold the holy grail of evidence in my pocket. I have to believe there is still something good, someone still good, otherwise what did Jules die for? Why am I trying to make a difference to people like you and me, kids like you and me?”
He glares at me, jaw tight, chest rising and falling too fast, like he’s run headfirst into a wall of everything he’s been holding in. Rage. Grief. Fear.
“I’m so fucking tired of this, this judging. I will hand this fucking hard drive to the judge, or someone else who I trust, and if I die trying, you do it. You give me your word right here, right now, Lucy. That if I die trying, you finish this.”
“Finish it? Who the fuck am I giving it to? You don’t even know yet.”
I’ve no idea when he moved, but he’s standing in front of me now, so close I can feel the heat, the tension rolling off his skin like a storm beneath the surface.
His gaze doesn’t let up. And something in me stills.
“I will.” He says, voice low, but laced in a steel edge. Sharp and resolute. “I will figure it out. So, I need you to say the words.”
The hard drive sits in his open palm, so unimposing and normal looking. Like it’s not the most dangerous thing we’ve ever touched.
“I promise I’ll deliver it if you can’t.”
I step into him, slow, deliberate, pressing my hand over his and curling my fingers around the drive. Mine stay on top, anchoring him, grounding us both.
“But you can give it to them yourself.”
My eyes search his. “Whatever happens, we do it together.” I say.
He nods, once, barely there, but I see it.
I don’t stop myself. I rise on my tiptoes and brush my lips over his.
It’s a quick. Chaste. But it says everything I can’t say right now. That I mean it. That I still am who I’ve always been—someone who keeps her promises.
I’d deliver the hard drive to whoever this judge is, or whoever he deems worthy. And if anything happens to him, if he isn’t still breathing by the end of all this, I’ll make every single person involved pay.
Because there’s one thing that I’ve come to realise in the last day, and that’s Lucy. She’s still very much alive within me and she’s burning with the fire of Kara Snow. And something tells me if I embrace the strengths of who I used to be with who I am now?
Well, the world is in fucking trouble.
22
