Page 16 of Rescuing Air

“Yes, if you use the best that we have for the mission, I’ll feel more comfortable staying back out of sight,” Lailah answered, reaching out a hand to shake on the agreement.

That woman has learned how to play each and every one of us. She knew it was more important to keep her safe than to deal with Parker, so in an odd way, they both got what they wanted. After they shook on it, Jay grabbed her and pulled her onto his lap where he then bit down on her spot where her shoulder meets her neck, making her moan. “That was a dirty trick, Beautiful. Don’t think I’m not aware of what you just did.”

“Someone has to get you guys to pull your heads out of your asses,” she quipped.

Jay’s response to that was to start tickling her until she was crying and begging for mercy. Then they curled up together and napped the rest of the three hours to Cape Town.

It didn’t take long for us to get settled in at the hotel and pull ourselves together for the meeting. Showered and dressed to impress, needing to act the part of Parker’s assistant, which made me want to punch him all the more while Jay got to be security. The town car came to pick us up, and we hurried to duck inside, trying to stay out of the open as much as we could. If we could do this entire trip without being noticed, it would be the best-case scenario. Thankfully, none of us had many connections with people in Cape Town, making it easier to stay hidden. Parker sat facing us in the car since neither Jay nor I wanted to sit next to him—childish I know, but this wasn’t our first choice to begin with.

“Parker, do you understand what we need to get out of the target?” Jay asked, handing him a tablet that had a picture of the man we were meeting with.

Parker took it and looked over the basics of the man’s life so he knew how to manipulate him best. “Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time I’ve done this. My pop liked to take me to meetings to help me gain control of my powers. I, of course, was a stupid shit, and turned it into a game. This time though, I know what’s at stake and I won’t fuck this up. I’ll prove to all of you that I can add value to this mission.”

I let out a huff of laughter. “Really, you think that if you prove you learned your lesson that we’ll just forget everything else that happened?”

“Fuck you, Micah. You’ve had it out for me since the day we met all those years ago. Now you just have the rest of the group behind you, supporting your hate, giving you free rein to fuck with me. Lailah wanted me to work on fixing things between all of us but I don’t think that will ever happen for you and me. Once you’ve decided to write someone off from your life, there isn’t a thing on this earth to change your mind,” Parker said, his anger edging his words with a bite.

He was right about the fact I never liked him. Something about his attitude always rubbed me the wrong way. I don’t know if there was ever going to be a time that we could say that we actually liked each other. Lately, we’d been tolerating each other just so it didn’t upset Lailah. If she ended up forgiving him, I didn’t know what I would do with that. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to leave her in his care.

“Just a reminder, assistants are seen and not heard,” Parker shot back as he tossed the tablet to me.

“Don’t worry, I can be trusted to play my part. It’s you we’re all worried about,” I rebutted.

Arno Botha, the CFO of the company, was meeting with us, so that proved they weren’t messing around and knew Parker’s family was a big account that they wanted to land. This meant they would do all they could to make us choose them and that played in our favor. The drive to their headquarters didn’t take more than fifteen minutes and after our conversation ended, it was a quiet ride. We had no idea what kind of information we would get from this meeting but I prayed it would be enough to point us toward the next step in this never-ending battle.

We were greeted in the lobby upon our arrival, taken up to the third floor and shown into a conference room. They offered Parker tea or coffee, ignoring us as the help who didn’t deserve the same attention as the man holding the money. I sat next to Parker and set the tablet on the table, pretending to take notes about something as we waited. Jay stood like the military man he was. It didn’t take long before Arno joined us, shaking Parker’s hand then extending it to me as well.

“Thank you for being able to make this meeting on such short notice. We were in the area on other business and it just made sense,” Parker shared as we all got settled.

Arno bobbed his head in understanding as he slid over a folder of information and opened it. “I hope I gathered the information you needed. If not, then it should be easy enough to gather quickly. Now, you said that your company is expanding into the region and you wanted a more local source to stock things for your offices?”

“Exactly. Last year, we opened a branch in Dubai and it’s been wildly successful. We felt it was time to push our reach even further. Our friends over at Aplite said they had a great experience with you and that we should look into your services,” Parker said, slipping that hook into the conversation in a way no one would think twice about.

I watched as a soft glow of purple hung around Parker as he pulled on his power to relax Arno. His shoulders lowered and then his breathing seemed to become deeper, as if he was in a meditative state of mind, completely unconcerned with anything.

“Aplite... yes, they have become one of our biggest clients over the past year. Are you looking to venture into the side of business they are in? Seems odd for a tech company to need those types of supplies, or is tech just the front you use?” Arno asked, his words slurred ever so slightly like he was drunk.

“We partner with many companies, one of them being a large private military group. You know how tech and military always seem to go hand in hand these days. What I want to know is how much can you offer us and if you can get the same things you did for Aplite,” Parker pushed, leaning forward, his gaze never breaking from Arno’s.

Arno frowned as something Parker said didn’t match up with what should have been said. “What exactly did Lord Beelzebub tell you we procured for him?”

“He gave you his true name?” Parker demanded, a worried tone in his voice.

I could see that he was losing Arno with this line of questioning and something needed to be done. “How impressive to be given such a gift in the form of knowing his true name.”

“Yes, after I gave up my first-born son to his army, Lord Beelzebub blessed me with the knowledge that my son would help rebuild this world into something greater,” Arno shared with a smile. “He even said I was supporting them by getting the supplies they needed. Are you starting a second training camp for those injected with the serum? That would be the only reason he would send you to me and give you the proper code word to use.”

All of us froze as Arno told us something more valuable than he could imagine. “Yes, he’s moving the battle up and needs to get more followers prepared. I have a thumb drive here that he asked me to give you so you could put whatever information on there we needed, along with the list of items he’s gotten from you. This way we don’t need to bother our great Lord while he is dealing with the pesky Elementi Knights.”

Arno gave us a lazy drunk smile, holding out his hand. “I am always happy to be of help to our Dark Lord. May his reign over this world be long and prosperous.”

Catching Jay’s eye, he gave a simple nod, telling me he thought this was far too easy. Something else was going on here and I just couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was important to figure it out and fast. Just before Arno was going to connect the jump drive to his computer, he typed in a code and that’s when it hit me.

Grabbing Parker and Jay, I dropped to the ground taking them with me. “Get under the table now!”

They didn’t question me and scrambled to get under the large thick conference table, trying to get to the opposite end from Arno. The world seemed to stop as a small beep sounded and the world exploded around us. I took the flames and wrapped them around us, creating a shield of sorts, burning up anything that tried to land on us. What I couldn’t stop was the floor underneath us from trembling and shattering apart, sending us careening down to the second floor. Dousing my flames since they would do more harm than good, I felt the wind whip around us. Jay used the air to thrust up at us, slowing our fall so when we landed it wasn’t as rough. It also shoved all debris that we could have landed on out of the way, allowing us to survive the bomb with minimal damage.

“We need to get the fuck out of here. I don’t know how it happened but someone leaked that we were coming here,” Jay shouted over the fire alarm as he pulled me to my feet. “If they’ve taken Lailah, there is nothing in this world or the next that will stop me from burning hell to the ground.”