Page 6 of Stolen Omega

My partner whistles as we go, a grating, high-pitched sound that makes me wince.

“I’m guessing things went well with Anna?” I ask to kill the noise.

He smiles. “Yeah, she still wants some. That woman is a stone-cold bitch, but she’s a wild cat in bed.”

I roll my eyes after I alter course to avoid a bumpy patch of carpet. “Great.”

“I owe you one,” he adds. “Seriously.”

“Good to know.” I’m sure that’ll come in handy later.

It never hurts to help someone. Even if it’s a bit of an inconvenience, it’s nice to be nice, and it makes it way easier to ask others for help, too. It didn’t inconvenience me at all to switch places with Dave last night, to be Zelena’s night guard so he could have a night off and chat her assistant up in the hotel bar. And it wasn’t that hard to let him trade places to see Anna again, either.

Dave goes back to whistling, and I concentrate on leading the way forward.

We stop at the last set of doors before the exit, and I contact Castle, the oldest member of Archer’s team, who’s out at the van, waiting for us.

“We’re a minute out,” I tell the old man.

“We’re all clear,” he chirps back.

Perfect.

It wasn’t always this easy.

Ever since Zelena decided on this new, creative way to get from place to place, moving her around has been a lot less intense. It’s not the same whenever Anna slips on a wig, a long coat, and dark glasses, and we take her out to the tour bus, acting as if she’s the real deal. She works well as a decoy at a distance, but sometimes we don’t even use a decoy, leaving the waiting fans and press thinking we must have slipped her out of an exit they don’t know about.

They don’t pay too much attention to the equipment being loaded.

That might change if we’re not careful.

I open the door and we step into the loading area, where roadies are waiting to finish their job.

My stomach churns as I let go of the handle on the case.

I hate this part. Turning Zelena over to the roadies always makes me nervous.

I’ve got no visual on her once they take her down the exit ramp to secure the case in the back of the van. Castle rides up front with the driver. The hotel’s a twenty-two-minute drive away, and we’ll be at least eight minutes behind while we load our fake celebrity into the tour bus.

“Careful,” I warn Blue, the head roadie, as he puts his hand on the handle I just let go.

The big guy growls lightly at me. “You don’t need to tell me every damn time.”

Yeah, I probably don’t, but I can’t help it.

His right-hand man, Graves, takes the other handle, shaking his head at me.

“We’ve been doing this shit way longer than you, dude.”

At least twenty-years longer, but that doesn’t make any difference to me.

I don’t care how long they’ve been doing this for other artists.

Zelena is the only one that means anything to me.

Even so, I know when to stand down. “Okay, okay! Don’t break a hip trying to make a point.”

Holding up my hands, I back away.

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