Lennon looks around, her eyebrows tipping together, and she immediately bundles her hair into a bun and stands in front of me.
“Lennon, I just thought we should go before the roads get clogged.”
“Yeah. Let me give my mobile number to the DOC’s officer and then we can.” Her eyes are full of a cosmos of colour as she waits for me to walk her to where the group of workers stand. There’s no real need for us to do this, Lennon wrote all her contact details, plus King & King’s on the forms already.
“Lennon,” the team leader calls, interrupting us, a mix of concern and disbelief on her face. The woman’s attention keeps swinging between Lennon and the tablet she’s holding in her hand.
“Yeah?”
“Sunshine, get your ass out of here. Plugging your name in the system and our location has been pinged through the DOC’s mainframe. And I’m sorry, but it’s triggered a landslide. You’re a wanted fugitive.”
Lennon reaches out to placate the woman. “My lawyer sorted it out. Apparently, lodging a claim to sue the government designates me as a criminal for some inane reason.”
“Nah, nah… look here.” She turns her tablet, and Lennon stretches up to read the screen where the woman is pointing. “Precinct nineteen issued a new warrant as of four minutes ago. Already signed by Judge O’Harrigan. All force necessary has been tagged, you are to be taken in alive. Any person assisting you is essentially a casualty.”
“O’Harrigan is meant to be at Desert Rose,” I hiss, absolutely fucking furious that once again we’ve been let down by the system.
“I bet he’s signed a stack of blank arrest warrants for them, Noah. Get someone to check he’s still locked up. That’s all we need,” Lennon adds. Her suggestion has me firing off an urgent email to the Alliance.
I lock my body down and hold back the roar inside when the woman tugs Lennon forward for a friendly hug. My head is caught up on the latest threats ensuring I read everything as a danger, but Lennon waves her hand for me to hold on to, sensing my freak out. Her touch helps, but I’m still wound up too tight.
I can see and feel she’s okay, but I’m still struggling. And Lennon knows, she leans against me, acting like my anchor.
The woman waves her hand about, but now I’m not reading it as a threat. “Yeah, well let me be your guardian angel—not only has it been reinstated, a team has been dispatched to collect you. I’m so sorry, Lennon. This is my fault. When I did the forms, I added your details, and by the looks your name is flagged in the system. Considering you ain’t got no kids of your own, I’d be suggesting instead of trying to figure out why, you get your sweet ass in that car and go. I’ll clean up the mess I’ve brought on you.”
“Gabriel!” I call out, not as wild but still on edge. “We need to leave!”
In an instant, his whole focus changes. Without questioning me or the situation, he takes a running leap over the dead weeds lining the front of the property and is in the car before Lincoln and Valak are back outside.
“What’s going on?” Valak snaps impatiently as he runs over.
“A new warrant has been issued from fucking precinct nineteen! We don’t need any more confirmation that the two groups are the same. This is complete bullshit,” I spit, getting more fired up than Gabriel did back at the Alliance.
Valak takes a step closer to Lennon and sweeps her into his arms. I wouldn’t dare, she’d argue she has a capable pair of legs, but with Valak she’s different. No less or more loving, he just brings out parts of her none of us do.
Hopping in the back seat with Valak and Noah, Gabe drives us. And he goes for straight up crazy, reversing up the street, his horn blaring in warning. At the first intersection, he cuts across traffic and guns it.
“I’m calling for backup. Bullard won’t be enough,” Lincoln says stoically while Valak opens up Lennon’s backpack and passes over her gun and a knife that she slides into the side of her Converses.
“Hear me out,” she says, interrupting everyone’s panic.
A rumbling of soft growls gives her courage to go on. “Let Noah, Val, and me out. We’ll find a safe place to ride it out, or at least have more room to fight if needed, while you and Lincoln lead the assholes out of here.”
“Sounds good in theory, Len, but you remember we’re not fucking splitting up again. We all decided, we weren’t doing that,” Gabe all but snarls at her.
I can feel her tension, we all can.
I decide to try my hand at negotiating, going for her beautiful tender heart too. But I’ll use anything at my disposal to keep her safe. “Well, perhaps since Gabe impressed us all so much today, we should let him be the man of the moment,” I suggest, my tone dropping to the one I know she likes, no nonsense, slightly abrasive. “If he says we stay together, it looks like we are.”
“I fucking knew you were hot for me, Noah Teo! Playing hard to get, and all that shit.” Gabe laughs, feeding off me, playing it up as he usually does in stressful situations. Intentionally, I wait for him to look back at me in the rear vision mirror before I wink at him.
We all surge forward as he stomps on the breaks. I think it’s because of my obvious invitation for him to flirt more, until I see the spikes laid out on the road.
“How the fuck have they got here so quick?” Valak yells as he reaches down under the front seat and comes back with a man-sized bullet-proof vest which he unceremoniously shoves over Lennon’s head.
Once done, he reaches to the centre console between the driver and passenger seat and lifts the top of the compartment up, providing a makeshift shield for Lennon to hide behind.
“The top of the compartment is actually fortified, provides a little extra protection so you can sit here and aim out the back window. Lock it up, Gabe,” he instructs his brother. Once the lid is secured, he points to Lennon.
