Page 22 of Fire for Effect

“I’m going to respect her privacy… to a point,” I finally said, unclenching the fists I didn’t know I had balled up on my lap.

“That’s dumb.” Sierra lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “But okay.”

Her sarcasm was not appreciated.

“Are you telling me that you spy on your dudes?” I asked, chuckling.

What dysfunctional hell must that be like?

“I don’t have one, but if I did, I would put a subdermal tracker in him, easily.”

“Yeah, that’s… healthy.” I covered my mouth in a laugh.

“Maybe not, but who gives a fuck? Life is dangerous. We make it more dangerous by doing the jobs we do,” she glared at me like I was some kind of idiot. “If it increases everyone’s chance of survival, then we should violate their privacy. Remorselessly, and often.”

“You’re taking away a guy’s right to freedom! And… stalking!” I was surprised that I’d have to explain this to a grown woman. “Give me liberty or give me death.”

I was quoting the American orator, Patrick Henry. Rarely could someone disagree with such profound words… but apparently Sierra could.

“Bullshit!” She snorted. “Never take the death option. Never go quietly into the good night. Fight tooth and nail, and compromise what you have to so you can stay alive.”

She reached over to take off the parking brake, and the ancient, piece of shit van heaved with the release.

“You’d turn your back on your country to stay alive?” I wondered what she’d say… again, it was a purely theoretical exercise, and she floored me when she somberly placed her hands on the steering wheel.

“I’d turn my back on my own mother to stay alive,” she said, her fists clenched.

That silenced me. What hell had she been through before she joined Cerberus?

“If I’m alive, I can make it up to her,” she said, with finality, as she drove us out of the wheatfield in a depressing silence. “If I am dead, there is nothing.”

Further down the road, just to make sure we were on the same page, I said, “Just tell me if you find something derogatory. That’s it.”

God love her, but Sierra was shit at relationship advice. And if you didn’t lay down the law, and give her very specific boundaries, she’d would find a loophole and do whatever the hell she wanted.

“You’ve got it, boss.” Her cheeky little smile told me that I most definitely didn’t got it.

Chapter 6

I Don’t Speed

Taz

I had this lingering sense of dread in the pit of my stomach. Something was about to go wrong. Like I was standing on a helicopter skid with no rope, peering down at the air between me and the ground.

Griff sounded funny on the phone last week. Angrier. But like he was trying to hide it from me. Like there was so much he wasn’t saying. I kept replaying it in my mind, looking for clues, but always came up empty.

My mother’s voice came at me through the Bluetooth of my helmet as I rode down the country lane.

“Are you on your motorcycle again?” she nagged. “You shouldn’t answer the phone when you’re riding! It’s dangerous! Do you want to end up hamburger on the side of the road? Pull over.”

That was rich coming from Teresa Guerro. She answered the phone all the time while she was driving and had severe road rage.

“What do you want?” I asked, impatiently, as I banked around a familiar dairy farm, the cows huddled together in the corner by a white fence. I was living the Upstate New York bucolic dream – like an old dog, sent to live on a farm.

“Trinity, I wish you would just get a car,” my mother’s critical voice was a thing of nightmares. At least my nightmares. It was the nagging voice that told me I wasn’t enough. That I was too soft, too weak, too young, too reckless… “That motorcycle will kill you.”

I didn’t answer her.

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