Page 122 of Ricochet

Movement caught out of the corner of her eyes. Colin and Deacon were on the ground, the far side of the yard, beating the hell out of each other like they were in high school.What the hell was going on?

She locked eyes with the woman from the driveway then the Bronco raced down the street. The passenger door flew open for the grenade-launching woman to jump in. She hung out the window and laughed. “Your brother says never to make him call us again.”

Then car keys skittered in front of Adelia as the Bronco door shut and peeled wheels.

Javier called Mayhem?For what…what the hell was that? A hit on a safe house? Delta’s safe house! She was halfway off her knees when her peripheral vision caught Deacon and Colin. Their attention was back on her, and they raced her way. “Shit.”

She grabbed the keys and—

“Go, go, go,” Colin shouted.

Or was that ‘no, no, no’? Adelia didn’t care anymore. The ladies behind Mayhem handed her a distraction and a getaway vehicle.

Adelia hauled ass toward the car and threw herself into the driver’s seat, her hands hurriedly slapped for a place to insert the key.

It was like a knob. Simply a circle that said start. “Well, what the hell. Start!” She pressed the button while jamming the brake, and the engine roared to life. “Hell, yes!”

Adelia blindly pushed a paddle shifter for reverse, and not making it all the way intothe street, half way circled through the grass, rumbling over the curb, and bounced down onto the street before she smacked the shifter again and sat upright, pressing her foot to the floorboard as the gas pedal made this baby burn rubber.

“Yes! Yes,” she cried while gripping the steering wheel and trying to contain a fishtail.

Her heartbeat galloped, and the adrenaline high was a spike likeshe had never known. She wanted to call Javier, wanted to talk to Colin. Adelia needed her connections—then realized how alone she was again.

Turn after turn, she worked her way out of the neighborhood and into the city. She had nowhere to go, no one to trust, and no idea what to do next. Minutes ticked by, and her full fuel tank slowly started to show how aimlessly her time had been spent.

Finally, Adelia stopped at a gas station and put the car in park. She let her fingers trace the detail work with the stitching and thick fabrics mixed with rich leathers. She played with the roof that opened and closed and listened to more radio stations with different music than she knew existed, wondering how small her world was and how much smaller it would’ve been if she had never left the tinyvillage in which she had been born.

The glove box had a manual that was thicker than most textbooks she had in high school. The car could send a text message for her. It could read her emails aloud. It had games, and if she gave it a credit card, and if she was in the right state, it would even gamble for her, play the lotto. If she had kids, they could watch movies. Her butt could be warmedin the winter, and the car started remotely. She could even program it to say good morning to her. There were multiple options for greetings.

But what she wanted to do was show this to Colin, joke about it with him, laugh, and hold his hand. She wanted to see his smile and watch his blue, blue eyes. It didn’t have to be this car. If they had left her the Bronco, she would want the same thing.The trimmings and trappings of luxury items weren’t much if she didn’t have him to share them with.

Adelia turned the car off with the touch of a button and went inside to use the restroom. Her fingers were crossed that it would be clean, and her stomach growled loud enough that she hoped it would be busy enough that sliding a granola bar in her hoodie sleeve would be possible.

The automaticdoors slid open as she walked in, and not that it probably mattered, but she kept her head down when she saw the security camera. It wasn’t that she cared about the cashier or a problem with shoplifting, but she didn’t know how well the people who were looking for her could tap into technology. She had watched enough TV to know that facial recognition through video cameras was possible, at leaston TV shows.

Crossing her fingers worked, and the bathrooms were clean. There was enough foot traffic and distractions that she was also able to grab a granola bar. Magazines lined the racks as she headed out on one side. On the other side was a stack of daily papers.

Gloria Astor’s smug face covered most of them. Adelia couldn’t walk by without sneering. But it was the headline that killedher. Humanitarian of the decade. “The decade isn’t even over.” Disgust ripped through her as she picked up the closest national paper.

If the headline wasn’t enough to make her sick, the copy made bile slosh in her stomach. It was as though the Astor family PR machine had gone into overdrive. Praise upon praise was lauded on Gloria for all she had done for human rights, especially for young women.

Adelia wanted to scream. It wasn’t just a farce; it was a lie, more than a lie, a slap in the face of everyone who actually was doing excellent work. And she was accepting an award for her efforts…tonight.

Suddenly, Adelia wasn’t lonely or hungry or missing her man. She was a woman who had one last job in her before all the plays that were already in motion—Mayhem or Titan or whoever this Deaconfellow was—fell into place.

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