Pretty Fierce Read online

  “Kaia, are you freaking crazy?”

  Shifting through gears like a NASCAR pro, she cut the wheel at the last second, and we slammed onto the dirt, then bucked over some uneven slabs of broken concrete. The wheels crushed the plastic kiddie chairs in the neighbors’ backyard, and someone screamed, but Kaia gunned it. I closed my eyes, grabbed the handle above the door, and held my breath as we raced toward Caroline Street, flying over the curb and onto the road. Thankfully there were no cars in sight.

  “Are you okay?” Kaia asked me, her eyes on the rearview mirror.

  There was a massive lump on her forehead—yellow and purple around the edges—and she was bleeding. Not a lot, but still. My gut clenched with a mixture of terror and anger and fear—a combination I only ever experienced when my foster father made his unscheduled appearances at our backdoor—and I felt the insatiable need to punch something. Had that squirrelly-looking guy back at her house done this to her? And whose blood was all over the kitchen floor?

  Kaia wrenched the wheel to the left, and the tires squealed. It made no sense whatsoever, but she looked kind of…excited.

  “What the fuck is going on?” I asked.

  I don’t usually swear, but extreme situations call for extreme language. Like when you walk into your girlfriend’s house to find her staring down the front sight of a shotgun with her foot pressed against some guy’s jugular. Now we were flying down a local road at sixty miles an hour, and I had blood all over my shoes—my only good shoes—and no clue where we were headed. If that weren’t disturbing enough, the sight of Kaia wielding said shotgun had kind of turned me on.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But we have to get out of here.”

  There was a sudden noise, like a car backfiring, and my side-view mirror shattered.

  “Shit!” Kaia shouted.

  She jammed the wheel to the right, taking the ramp onto Route 17 at the last second, nearly flattening a twenty-five-miles-per-hour sign in the process.

  “What the hell was that?” I demanded.

  “They’re shooting at us.”

  She said this calmly, leaning forward over the wheel.

  “Shooting?” My voice cracked in a very unmanly way as I slid down in the seat until my knees hit the dashboard. “Who’s shooting?”

  “The guys in the SUV.”

  “Who’re the guys in the SUV?” My voice was not my own. I sounded like SpongeBob SquarePants. “Why are they shooting?”

  “I don’t know,” she said through her teeth, as if my questions were annoying her. “Just stay down.”

  Really? Really? Was it too much to ask her to tell me why I was being shot at? And did she really think she needed to tell me to stay down? What am I, stupid? I may have spent some time in and out of the hospital but never for a gunshot wound, and I didn’t feel like starting today.

  Kaia’s eyes narrowed as she glanced at the rearview mirror. “Damn it. That’s not even the same SUV I saw at the house. I guess Picklebreath was right.”

  What, the hell, was she talking about? For the first time it occurred to me that maybe Kaia wasn’t entirely there. Did she have a concussion? Considering the egg on her forehead, it was definitely possible, which meant she probably shouldn’t have been behind the wheel of a car, let alone driving it at ninety-five miles an hour.

  I imagined reaching over and taking the wheel, easing the truck to the side of the road, dialing 911. Maybe we’d spend the weekend on her couch while she recovered. I’d bring her french fries and coffee ice cream—her favorite disgusting snack—and we’d curl up together to watch a Walking Dead marathon. Perfection.

  Another shot rang out. And I remembered the blood at the house. The man on the ground. The knife near his hand. And the gun. Kaia and the gun.

  My pulse pounded in my ears. I watched the sky rush past the window as Kaia swerved the car in and out of traffic, inching the speedometer up and up and up. There was another blast and I bit down on my tongue to keep from screaming.

  Suddenly, Kaia slammed on the brakes, downshifted, and spun the car in a complete 180. The greasy pizza I’d scarfed earlier shifted inside my gut. It reminded me that we were supposed to be meeting Brian and Grace for a double date at the movie theater downtown. I’d so been looking forward to the free popcorn my friend Hunter, who worked there, would slip us. Brian and I had this whole plan to get our girlfriends to bond so we could hang out more. But I guess that was no longer happening.

  Outside the car there was a deafening screech and a prolonged crunch of metal. The scent of burned rubber filled my nostrils, which didn’t help the I’m-going-to-toss-my-lunch feeling rising up inside my throat.

  “What’re you—”

  “Oliver, I love you, but not now.”

  She hunched over the wheel, eyes fierce, jaw clenched, and gunned the engine again. Tires screamed. Kaia slammed the wheel to the right, and the hood of the truck dipped so drastically I was sure we were diving off a cliff, but in the next second we bumped up again on flat road.

  One of the first things that had attracted me to Kaia was that she didn’t give a crap about the superficial stuff the other girls at school were obsessed with. She was a tomboy. She could skateboard. She liked to run and bike and could do as many push-ups as me. She never wore makeup and laughed at gross jokes and could eat like a truck driver. And now I could chalk up another talent to the growing list. The girl could drive like a mofo.

  I sat up a little, dying to see where we were, and tried to catch my breath. She took an off-ramp onto a smaller highway with fewer cars. I looked behind us. Smoke billowed toward the sky in the distance, but there was no SUV in sight. Thick trees lined the road, their leaves fluttering in the breeze. Kaia let out a breath and leaned back in the driver’s seat. She reached up to touch the gold locket she always wore around her neck—the one with the tiny pictures of her and her dad inside. A raindrop hit the windshield, and I flinched.

  My throat was so jammed with questions I couldn’t seem to make my voice box work.

  “Oliver. You’re staring,” Kaia said, with the wry smile I was so used to seeing. On, you know, a normal day.

  “I…I don’t…are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  She was silent. Raindrops battered the windshield in sporadic waves, as if we were driving though bursts of gunfire and not under steel gray storm clouds.

  “Yes,” she said finally. “When we get there.”

  “Get where?”

  She looked over at me, and her eyes softened. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  chapter 3

  KAIA

  I don’t think I breathed again until I saw the small, wood-shingled garage appear around the bend in the dirt road two hours later. A moment after that, I exhaled.

  The house was still there. After everything that had happened this afternoon, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out I’d dreamed this place. Or that I’d forgotten how to get here. Thankfully, Oliver had stopped talking, except to mutter the occasional “Where the hell are we?” or “Robin is going to murder me.” He’d already texted Brian to tell him we weren’t going to make it to the movies—it was so cute he thought that still mattered—and now, he sat forward in his seat to squint at the uneven green siding. I brought the truck to a stop, picked up my phone, and tried Bess again.

  Voice mail.

  I tried Henry.

  Voice mail.

  Gritting my teeth, I ended the call.

  “Get out,” I said.

  I’d gone Alpha Girl. Maybe it was because I was going to have to tell him the truth, and this was my psyche’s way of putting up defensive walls for the inevitable screaming match and breakup. Oliver and I had never fought before, not once in the year we’d been together, and the idea of starting now made my heart hurt. At least my bossiness seemed to be working on him. Withou
t question, he got out of the truck.

  I grabbed the German’s bag from the truck bed, then tromped over to the garage and yanked the rickety old door. It let out an ear-piercing shriek as it yawned open, metal scraping against metal. The car was still there. A 2010 Honda Accord, black. There were thousands of these on the road, so it was perfect for blending in. I glanced at the stack of license plates in the corner. Twenty different states represented. I could deal with that later.

  “Kaia?” Oliver ventured, hovering off to my right.

  There was a catch in my chest.

  “Inside,” I said.

  He made an impatient noise as I walked past him. My face was on fire, and my eyes hurt from not meeting his. I retrieved the key from behind the shingle fourth from the bottom, under the second window. The sight of the Thor key chain almost killed me. Dad. I opened the door.

  Inside, the house was cool and smelled of wood and dust. I dropped the bag and flicked the light switch. The overhead fixtures buzzed and illuminated the modest living room/kitchen combo in soft, yellow light. Oliver walked in behind me, his heavy steps making the floorboards groan.

  “Close the door,” I said.

  He did, with a bang. “That’s the last order I’m going to take until you tell me where the hell we are and what’s going on.”

  “We’re in Fredericksburg, South Carolina, about half an hour’s drive from the Tennessee border.” I dropped my backpack on the kitchen counter and opened the first cabinet. Canned food. Soup. Vegetables. Peanut butter. Boxes of crackers. I pulled one down. It didn’t expire for another year. I shoved the crackers and peanut butter into my bag.

  “No, I mean, I know where we are. I can read road signs.” Oliver sounded exasperated. “But what is this place? Some kind of hunting cabin?”

  It was a fair assumption, considering we were in the middle of the forest and there was a gun case on the living room wall, locked, though the key was also on the key chain in my pocket. Inside the second cabinet, I found a silver box that contained passports. Five for my mother, three for my father, one for me. Mine included a picture of me at twelve years old and proclaimed my name to be Jessica Martinez. I took it and pushed it into my back pocket.

  “This is a safe house,” I said. “My parents set it up in case something like this ever happened.”

  A wide drawer contained a set of leather-sheathed hunting knives. I picked one at random. I really hated knives—didn’t love the idea of having to be close enough to my attacker to use one—but my mother would have told me to take one just in case, so I did. Oliver eyed me warily, and I felt a thump of self-consciousness. I’d never been a girly girl, a dress-wearer, a high-heeled lip-glossy chick like 80 percent of the girls at my school. And I knew that Oliver liked that about me. But now he was seeing a side of me I’d managed to keep hidden all this time—my commando mode. I didn’t even want to know what he was thinking as I shoved the knife into my waistband.

  “Wait. A safe house? Like in spy movies?” He laughed nervously. “Kaia, you said your parents were insurance adjusters.”

  I shot him an apologetic look over my shoulder. His face fell. In the next cabinet, I found the money. Stacks of it.

  “What the…?” Oliver walked to my side. “Where did all that cash come from? Is that yours?”

  “Yep. Technically.”

  I didn’t count it. I quickly took the stacks down one by one and pushed them into the bottom of my backpack. Those were my practical parents for you. Always prepared. Thank you, Mom and Dad.

  Oliver grabbed my wrist, not so hard it hurt, but firmly. He meant business. Unfortunately, his touch made me want to huddle against him. For the last year, the warm curl of Oliver’s arms was the only place I’d felt safe. You’d think that after losing both my parents on one day, I’d be afraid to love anyone else. That was how a lot of people react to loss, right? By shutting down, constructing walls around their heart. But not me. I’d gone the opposite route. When my parents disappeared they’d left me with all this love to give and no one to share it with. The moment I’d met Oliver, the moment I’d looked into his eyes and realized that he saw me, that he understood me, I was a goner. I’d never had a real friend before, let alone a boyfriend. All my life it had been no one but me and my parents, with occasional guest appearances from Uncle Marco. Not a soul had ever spared me a glance, let alone a look like that.

  And he was so kind to me. So patient with my insomnia and my exhaustion. So willing to hang out at my house watching movies when his popular friends were throwing their popular-people-parties that were probably way more fun. He gave me everything, so I gave him everything right back. Including my heart. And now, I was going to have to leave him behind.

  “Kaia, I swear if you don’t tell me what’s going on, my head is going to explode.”

  I swallowed my fear. There was no getting around this. He deserved to know why I’d landed him in harm’s way and basically kidnapped him and dragged him out to the middle of nowhere. He deserved to know why I was going to have to break up with him.

  “Okay, but I need you to listen, because I’m only going to say this once.”

  Oliver stepped back. He crossed his arms over his chest, which made his muscles bulge, which was really unfair because he knew how much I loved his arms. But I also loved his back. His legs. His hair. His eyes. All of him.

  Shit. This was going to hurt.

  “My parents were hired assassins,” I told him, keeping my voice steady. His jaw dropped, but before he could interrupt, I soldiered on. “They were both in the military after college, but then they were recruited by the CIA. They were in a black ops unit that carried out assassinations and kidnappings on behalf of the US government.”

  Oliver backed up until his butt hit the rear of the couch, and he leaned into it. “So, not insurance adjusters, then?”

  “Nope.” I crossed the living room to the closet. “That was a lie. Sorry.”

  “Okay, so that guy back there was…?”

  I grabbed a sleeping bag out of the closet, along with a duffel bag full of never-worn women’s clothes. Clothes meant for my mother to wear someday. Utilitarian stuff like cargo pants, long-sleeved T-shirts, and a Windbreaker. There was a pair of black sneakers with a hot-pink stripe at the bottom of the bag. That hot-pink stripe shattered my heart.

  Mom. She always did love her pink.

  “Are you okay?” Oliver asked.

  “Check his bag.”

  “What?”

  “The guy’s bag. I took it with me.” I walked past Oliver and crouched next to the well-worn leather weekender. Inside were several neatly folded soft shirts, a pair of running shoes, and a Dopp kit. All of it smelled like stale cigarette smoke. In the side zipper pocket I hit pay dirt. His passport and a tablet. I chucked the passport at Oliver, who caught it, and then powered up the tablet.

  “Password protected,” I muttered, and tossed it aside. I was no hacker, and I definitely didn’t have time to figure out some random dude’s password.

  “Dieter Morschauser,” Oliver read. He turned the photo toward me. Shockingly, the man was smiling.

  “Where’s he from?” I asked, rising to my feet.

  “Hamburg, Germany.”

  So this was about the Hamburg job. But how had this guy known where to find me? And why did he think my mom was alive? I swallowed hard, trying to squelch a flicker of hope. Was my mom alive?

  “Why was some guy from Hamburg, Germany…” Oliver took a couple steps toward me and reached for my face. His thumb grazed the spot where the knifepoint had been a few hours ago. A pang of pain. “He hurt you.”

  I went against every instinct and turned away from him. “I’m fine. And he was there because he was sent to kill me.” After he got information out of me.

  “What? Why?”

  “When I was little, my parents quit the CIA and went t
o work for themselves. They became hired guns. High-end hit men.” I went back to the closet and tossed the duffel and sleeping bag on the floor at his feet, then met his gaze for the first time in hours. He looked shocked but not scared or disgusted. That was something, at least. “I traveled the world with them while they carried out their missions. Unless they decided a job was too dangerous. Then they’d leave me behind with my uncle, Marco.”

  Lie. My parents took me with them everywhere. They were convinced that I was never safer than when I was by their sides. And they never would have left me with Marco. If they had, they would have come home to find me eating cheese curls and slugging soda in front of a pirated WWE pay-per-view boxing match while surrounded by pot-smoking gambling addicts with bad teeth. At least when I was with them, they could homeschool me, monitor my Internet searches, make sure I went to bed on time and had healthy food in my belly. Marco would never have known what to do with me. Unless he tried to get me to work a con.

  But I needed to tell that little white lie to support my next, bigger one. It was a lie I had to tell because I didn’t want to talk about what had really happened. I would never, ever want to talk about it.

  “My parents were on a mission last year when they disappeared,” I told him, as if I hadn’t been there. As if I’d seen nothing. “Both of them.”

  Oliver blinked. “Wow. That’s…that’s—”

  “Insane? I know. Believe me, I know. But it was our life. I didn’t know anything different until…”

  You, I wanted to say. You were the first normal part of my life. Ever.

  But I was afraid to say it, because I knew my voice would crack, and I couldn’t be weak. Not now.

  “Anyway, that’s why that guy came after me. To get revenge for one of their jobs.”

  “Kaia, I’m so sorry,” Oliver said, still holding the German’s passport. “About your parents, I mean.”