May Contain Spies: A Spy Thriller (Meet Abby Banks Book 1) (8 page)

Marco turned toward the large stainless steel desk behind him and snatched the laptop off its surface. He spun back around, holding the laptop in one hand and gesturing at its screen with his other hand. “You see this red dot. That’s the package,” he pointed at me, then back at the screen. “These two blue dots are Chloe and
you
,” he added, spitting the last word out like a piece of sour candy. “See anything else interesting?”

The screen itself was an overview that reminded me of those maps you see at the mall. There was a small rectangle in the center with two blue dots, a red dot, and a green dot. But, from the looks of the screen, there was another passageway directly behind Marco.

“So there’s a trap door behind you?” I blurted out.

Marco glanced at me once more before narrowing his eyes at Stephen. “Which one of you is the secret agent? Because it sure seems like the package is the brains of the operation.” He threw his hands up in the air, flinging the laptop back on the desk as he did so. “Why that idiot son of mine sent you to protect the package is beyond me.”

“Wait… are you saying what I think you’re saying?” I asked, looking over at Stephen.

“Yeah, he is,” Stephen said through clenched teeth. “That’s Donovan’s dad.”

“I’ll thank you to not compare me to my son,” Marco said as he punched a command into his keyboard. “If you’re the kind of person he sends to thwart Gabriella de la Mancha, then I never should have gotten him that job as handler.”

“Look, sir. You don’t have to like me, but I’m very good at what I do. I’ve never failed a case before,” Stephen said, moving just a little closer to Marco.

“You’re, like, twelve. You’ve had all of one other case. You couldn’t even save one girl without falling in love, and after months of therapy, my idiot son decides your first case back should be to guard another young girl.” Marco pounded his fist on the keyboard, and a door opened up in front of him with a whoosh.

Stephen turned bright red and a tremor ran down his spine, visibly shaking him. If I hadn’t been staring at him, I probably wouldn’t have seen it. That meant it was probably true. Not only had Stephen only had one case before, but he’d fallen in love with the girl. Wasn’t that one of those cardinal rules of spy club? Don’t fall in love with the girl?

Oh my god. I was the rebound girl.

“I’m sure he’ll do fine Marco,” Chloe said, and her voice made me jump. I’d totally forgotten she was there.

“Of course he will,” Marco snarled, shoving us through the door. “Because you’re going with him.”

“This was not how I expected my day to be going,” Chloe said as I followed along behind her in the dimly lit underground passageway. Red lights lit up the sections as we moved so that about ten feet on either side of us was illuminated and the rest of it was dark. It made me glad that Stephen was behind me. If something came to kill us, it’d either get him or Chloe first, which, I suspected, was why I was sandwiched in the middle.

“You didn’t expect the store to get blown up? Shocking,” Stephen mumbled under his breath.

Chloe wheeled on him, fixing him with a gaze that made my blood run cold, and it wasn’t even directed at me. Stephen stopped, his left foot moving slightly in front of him so he was poised on his feet. His hands moved just a fraction of an inch, edging upward into some kind of fighting position.

“No. I hadn’t expected that either,” Chloe spat, her eyes running up and down his body. Taking the entirety of him in. “But I, especially, hadn’t expected to be carting around you and her,” she jerked a thumb at me, “through a sewer all day.”

“Sorry,” I said with a nervous glance back down the corridor. I wasn’t sure how far we’d come or where we were exactly, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t far enough away from the bad guys. “Maybe we should keep walking anyway though.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,
package
!” Chloe snarled, her eyes narrowing into slits.

“Fine,” I said, putting my hands up in front of me in a conciliatory gesture. “What do you suggest we do?”

Chloe sighed and hung her head before turning back down the corridor. “We keep going,” she droned. She trudged forward, shoes scraping on the rough concrete of the tunnel.

“Maybe we could play a game?” I offered, unsure of what to do. Chloe’s attitude was getting me a little upset. I mean, she was supposed to be protecting me so she was doing her job. But, I mean, I don’t know, wasn’t this supposed to be fun? Everything I knew about spies told me that their jobs were fun. At least they seemed fun in the books I’d read.

“Like what?” Stephen asked from behind me. “It’s not like we can play
I Spy
.”

“I spy with my little eye, something red,” I said with a smirk.

“Is it a light?” Stephen asked.

“It is. Your turn,” I said.

“Oh. My. God. Will the two of you just shut the hell up?” Chloe screamed, putting her hands on her temples and rubbing. “Always yapping and talking. Just shut up before I tear out your skulls with my bare hands and leave your bodies in a dumpster.”

“That’s against protocol,” Stephen said.

“I’m going to ‘against protocol’ your face if you don’t shut the hell up!” Chloe yelled so loudly the sound echoed in the tiny tunnel.

“Uh… guys?” I asked cautiously.

“What?” Chloe whirled around to look at me with narrowed eyes, her pink lips twisted in rage.

“What are those?” I pointed at the ceiling behind us where a gaggle of dark creatures scurried toward us.

“Run!” Stephen screamed, grabbing my hand and taking off down the tunnel like a bat out of hell.

That was pretty much when the explosions started. Fire leapt down the tunnel behind us, superheating the air and making it impossible to breathe. Stephen glanced over his shoulder, face stricken in fear, and swept me into his arms. He pressed my body close to his, and I felt the heat of the blaze rush through me as he sprinted past Chloe.

She was facing us, a peculiar device in her hand that sort of reminded me of a remote control only it had one large green button in the center. She was pressing it as hard as she could, and I wondered if it was like a video game controller. You know, the ones when you press the buttons harder, they do more damage to the enemy?

Every single time she hit the button, a piece of the tunnel would explode in a flurry of flame and rock. Unfortunately, the black creatures dodged nimbly by the explosions. If this kept up, booby-trapped tunnel or not, we were going to get overrun.

“Chloe, do we have a way out of here?” Stephen yelled over the din, and I could barely hear him over the ringing in my ears.

“What, do I have to think of everything?” she screamed back at him, now hot on his heels. “Aren’t you some kind of secret agent? Do something.”

“It’s your tunnel,” he said as he flung me over his shoulder, and the breath whooshed out of me. He grabbed something out of his pocket with his now free hand. It was all shiny and silver with lots of flashing lights.

He flung the thing in front of us as far as he could. It sailed through the air, landing several feet away. Stephen dove to the floor, and my breath exploded out of me in a rush as he pulled his body on top of mine. “Down!” he screamed.

Chloe hit the floor in front of us and rolled into a ball with her hands covering her head and neck like one of those duck and cover drills.

The device began to flash with angry red light and started chirping in an angry machine sort of way. Stephen’s hand covered my face, shielding my eyes as he started counting softly. When he reached six, it felt like the world ended. I’d never really given much thought as to what I’d do if the world actually ended, but the wave of heat and smoke that exploded through the tunnel when he counted ‘six’ made me wish I had a backpack full of MREs and an underground bunker in the woods.

A sharp ringing filled my ears making it impossible to think as Stephen pulled me to my feet and dragged me toward the wreckage. I opened my eyes. Through the haze of smoke and rubble, I saw sunlight. Real, live, honest to god sunlight filtered through the hole in the tunnel ceiling.

“I tell you to do something so you blow a hole in the tunnel? Because that’s not going to attract anyone,” Chloe snarled as she scampered over the debris like she was some kind of goat.

“Catch!” Stephen called and flung me bodily upward to Chloe who caught me by the wrist. Pain tore through my shoulder as I hung there for a moment as Chloe fell on her butt and tried to pull me up out of the tunnel. Stephen climbed up the rock next to me.

He reached the top in the space it took for my shoulder to feel like it’d torn from the socket and helped Chloe haul me out into the sunlight.

Toppled cars and blown out store windows greeted me on the surface. High above the buildings, helicopters circled like a bunch of angry hornets after someone kicked their nest. Only they weren’t news or police helicopters. No, these were those army helicopters you see in movies with musclebound actors pointing machine guns out of the side while biting down on huge cigars. Except… I was pretty sure they weren’t actors this time.

People were running and screaming. A fire hydrant was spraying water up into the air like a macabre fountain. I swallowed. Had we hurt anyone trying to escape? I mean, Stephen had just blown up a city street in what looked like downtown Chicago. Someone had to have been hurt by the blast, or worse… had someone been inadvertently killed because they were trying to save me, Abby Banks? That was crazy, right?

Chloe grabbed me by the wrist and yanked me to the side as something smacked into the ground where I’d been standing with a wet thunk. I turned toward the small green object, about the size of a softball, with blinking green lights that cycled to red in the space of time it took for Chloe to throw me to the ground and shield me beneath her body. An explosion ripped out of the device, throwing us across the ground in a wave of heat that tore a scream from my lips.

I hit the ground hard and stars shot past my eyes moments before Chloe, and a million tons of rubble, landed on top of me. And then the world went dark.

Chapter 8

When I woke up, I was staring at a mauve ceiling which was an altogether strange color for a ceiling. A single bulb hung loosely from a string of black wires on an exposed fixture. It bathed the room in fake, amber light that made shadows sway across the walls.

I looked around but didn’t see Stephen or Chloe anywhere. Where were they? Were they okay? I shook my head. The last thing I remembered was an explosion throwing me to the side. Still, they had to be around here, somewhere, right? I nodded to myself, biting my lip to keep the dread from welling up in me and taking over. I was probably just in one of their super-secret hospitals somewhere.

I sat up, and the scratchy white sheets covering my body fell away into a pile on the floor. Okay, so I was in a bed. It was the only thing in the room. The rest of the room, barring the light above was completely bare, mauve walls and white tile floor. There were no windows either, only a door that looked like it only opened from the outside. At least I was pretty sure that was how it worked because it didn’t have a knob.

I pressed my hand against the mattress as I got into a sitting position and felt it squish beneath my hand. I was still wearing my blood-soaked clothing, which was a little… gross. I pulled at it, and it stuck to my body as I moved.

“Well, at least no one saw me naked,” I said to no one in particular because I was half-sure I was a crazy person and that’s what crazy people did, right? They talked to themselves? “Because if someone stripped me down and put me back in my gross bloody clothes, I’m going to just cry.”

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand as my feet touched the cool white tile. “I might just cry anyway,” I said as I moved toward the doorway, ignoring the bloody sheets next to the bed. At least it wasn’t my blood…

I pressed my hand against the door and pushed but it didn’t open. “Well, who didn’t see that coming,” I said, leaning heavily against the wall and sliding down to the ground.

“So you’re awake,” buzzed a cool female robotic voice next to my ear. I screamed and nearly leapt out of my skin as I threw myself away from the door, heart racing like an out of control rollercoaster.

I spun, one hand clutching my chest, the other held up out in front of me to ward off whatever it was. Only… I didn’t see anything.

“Usually people respond when spoken to. What were you, raised in a barn? And what are you wearing… no this won’t do, no, not at all. No daughter of mine should be wearing
that
,” the robot voice continued.

My stomach leapt into my throat as I realized that the voice was coming from the wall next to the doorway. So there was no one in the room with me, which was— wait, hold up, did she just imply she was my mother?

“Um… sorry,” I murmured, swallowing my stomach back down into place. “Are you my mother? Did I hear that right?”

“Of course I’m your mother,” the inhuman voice snapped, and the modulated sound of it made me shiver. “Who else would save your from those horrible people?”

“The one who killed all those people at the store?” I whispered, the words slipping out of my mouth as I sank to my knees, shaking my head. I was so screwed.

“I
rescued
you from a government cell. Sure, we had to kill a few people, but omelets and all that. You know how it is,” the voice intoned, but I couldn’t quite concentrate on it because it felt like the world was spinning so fast that I couldn’t orient myself to it. If she had me… if my real mother had captured me then I was as good as dead. How could this have happened? How could Stephen and Chloe have allowed this to happen?

“Did you kill Chloe and Stephen?” I asked, almost afraid to hear her answer.

“No,” the voice replied and there was a trace of humor beneath it. “At least, not yet.”

A wash of relief swept over me. Okay, at least my protectors weren’t dead. I shook my head as I got to my feet and put on my best brave face. “So what’s the plan, now?” I asked, doing my best to stand brave. “Are you really going to gut me and steal my heart?”