Going Rogue (22 page)

“I think so,” I said. “Just needed to have a psychotic breakdown, that’s all.”

“I highly recommend them.” She grinned at me. “Next time, though, definitely break something. Otherwise you just look like an amateur.”

“Noted,”I said. “Maybe smash a plate?”

“A plate, maybe a few glasses if someone else will clean up the mess.” Roux’s eyes gleamed wickedly in the dark room. “I’ll show you a few things when we get back to New York.”

“So you’re not mad that we had to leave?”

“What, and leave behind a bunch of people who called
me names and two parents that wouldn’t know my name if they saw it on my birth certificate?” Roux rolled her eyes. “The world’s bigger than one city, right? It’s just nice to be doing something for once, rather than sitting around and waiting for someone to do something to
us
.”

I smiled back at her. “So it’s better than SAT prep?” I teased.

“So much better.” She laughed. “At least
this
will be useful in life. C’mon, let’s go eat. There’s cheese!”

After she left, I went into the bathroom and washed my face and brushed my teeth using one of the new toothbrushes that was laid out next to the sink. The water was surprisingly cold and it made me shiver, but it woke me up, too, and I finger combed my hair before padding down the hall and into the kitchen.

Ryo, Élodie, Roux, and Jesse were all around the large wooden table. There was a French press in the middle of the table, half-full with coffee, and some bread and cheese and cold roast chicken and figs. “She’s alive,” Ryo said when he saw me.

“Nice hair,” Jesse added, winking at me. I had it coming after all the grief I had given him about his curly hair, though, and I smiled a little as I slipped into the chair next to his.

“Sorry about …
that
,” I said, waving my arm back toward the living room. “I was just tired. And stressed. And pissed. And I won’t kill you, Ryo.”

“I wasn’t worried,” he said. “And don’t sweat it. No one’s dead, so it’s fine.”

“You should have seen me after our last debacle,”
Élodie said, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. “Ask Ryo, I was a mess. But then
he
fell apart after—well, we are getting ahead of ourselves.”

Roux shoved some cheese at me. “So good,” she said, her mouth full. “Try it.”

I took it, then poured some coffee into a chipped china teacup. It was strong and hot and made me feel more like myself.

“I know I asked this earlier,” I said, “but I probably missed the answer if there was one. What do you
do
? Who are you?”

“We should wait for Ames before we explain,” Ryo said. “He’ll be here soon. It’s somewhat easier to explain with him here.”

Élodie laughed under her breath and said something to Ryo in French before grinning at him. He smiled back, but what was surprising was that Jesse smiled, too.

“Wait, Jess,” Roux said. “Did you understand that?”

His eyes widened in realization. “Wait. No. Wait, say something else in French again.”

Élodie rattled off a string of words that I didn’t understand, but to my absolute amazement, Jesse responded in perfect French. “Holy shit!” he cried, then looked at me in surprise.

“You speak French?” I cried. “Since
when
?”

“Since I don’t know!” he said. “I mean, I’ve been learning French since kindergarten, and I know that I like to go with
mes amis
to
la plage
and drink
limonade
, but I thought it was just stupid things like that. Wow, my expensive education actually
works
!”

“Drink lemonade with your friends at the beach,”
Élodie scoffed. “Tell me, do you see a beach around here? What do they teach you in those textbooks?”

Jesse was still laughing to himself, though, not listening to Élodie at all. “I can’t believe it!”

“I wonder what
I
can do if Jesse can speak French,” Roux mused. “Does anyone have a ninja star I can throw?”

“No,” we all said immediately, but it did nothing to squash Roux’s enthusiasm for Jesse’s newfound talent. “You should totally take AP French when we get home,” she told him. “You’d smoke everyone in that class.”

“Good plan,” I said. “Now I have a non–language related question. How’s Ames going to get in the front door? He can’t crack the lock.”

“Of course he can.” Élodie shrugged. “We all can. It’s easy.”

“Easy?” I cried. “I almost lost a finger trying to get that thing open! I’ve been practicing for nearly six months and it was still difficult.”

“Ames made a tool that makes it simple,” Ryo said. “And besides, that’s how we know someone is worthy of getting in. If you can’t do the lock, you don’t deserve to be here. Lucky for you, you passed the test.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it,” I said. “More like blood, sweat, and tears. Literally.”

“Well, that sounds like a party!”

We all turned to see a guy walking through the living room into the kitchen, a huge grin across his face and a motorcycle helmet under his arm. He wore a leather jacket and his boots were heavy on the parquet floors, and he had
the sort of flushed cheeks that made him look like he was perpetually embarrassed or pleased.

“Oh,” I heard Roux murmur behind me.

“Howya?” He nodded at Ryo and Élodie, dropping his helmet down on the table and giving Élodie a kiss on the top of her head before doing the same to Ryo. “Someone said something about blood? Who are these strangers? Why haven’t we boiled them in a pot yet?” He winked at me. “Just kidding. I’m a vegetarian. I only eat my enemies. For breakfast.” His Irish accent was broad and deep. Roux hadn’t stopped looking at him.

Ryo gestured to me, ignoring the guy’s bravado. “Ames, this is Maggie.”

Ames’s face split wide open in a smile. “Maggie,” he said. “We’ve heard so much. How’s high school? Waste of time, yeah?”

“My own personal hell on earth,” I said. “I’m sorry, how do you know I’m in high school?”

“We were waiting for you to explain, Ames,” Élodie said, patting the chair next to her. “Way to take your time, by the way. We love waiting for you.”

“You know what I like best about you, Él?” Ames said, and Élodie wrinkled her nose at the nickname. “You use sarcasm to hide your true emotions. It’s so human.” He looked at Jesse. “You must be the boyfriend. Falling in love with a criminal, yeah?” He winked at Jesse in a knowing way. “It’s great craic.”

Jesse looked a bit confused but still shook Ames’s hand. “Hey,” he said.

“I’m Roux,” Roux said, offering her own hand, and the Ames Charm Tour came to a halt when he took her hand in his. The two of them froze for only a second, but it was clear that something had changed in the room. Roux’s shoulders, which were always somewhere around her ears due to her constant nervous energy, fell a little, and the blush in Ames’s cheeks grew a little, along with his smile.

“
Enchanté
,” he said to her. “I’m sure.”

Roux grinned, but it wasn’t her normal smile. It was the smile she got when someone paid attention to her, when they noticed her. It was real and warm and I almost felt like I should look away, like Roux and Ames should have this moment for themselves.

Ryo, apparently, felt differently.

“So you’re here,” he said. “Finally. And Maggie’s here, along with her two rogues. Can we please get to work?”

“Right,” Ames said, plopping down between Élodie and Roux. “So. Maggie. We heard you almost got shot. Good work not dyin’.”

“Um, thank you?” I said.

“About that,” Jesse said, his hand cupped around his coffee mug. “So we’re all cool just sitting in front of these large windows?” He pointed at the arched windows that lined one of the kitchen walls. “No one’s worried about a follow-up attack?”

“They’re bulletproof and tinted,” Élodie said. “Please do not worry.”

“Yeah, no offense,” Roux said, “but I’ve heard that before. Let me guess: the Collective put the windows in. Because if so, that won’t make me feel any safer.”

“The Collective,” Ames scoffed. “You still trust them after all they did to you?”

Roux and Jesse both looked at me, and I took a deep breath.

“I don’t know what to believe,” I said, “but it would be a lot easier to figure out if you told me what we were doing here and who you were.”

Ryo, Ames, and Élodie all looked at one another. “We used to be part of the Collective, too,” Élodie said. “Until they tried to turn us, then erased our identities.”

I felt both Roux and Jesse look at me.

“And some other things,” Ames added, pulling off a piece of chicken with his fingers.

“Care to elaborate?” Jesse asked.

“It’s complicated.”

“You know what’s
complicated
?” I said. “Flying all night to Paris after someone opens fire on your family.
That
’s complicated.”

Ames grinned and pointed at her and Élodie. “You two, you love to make it all woo-woo-y.”

“Well, it’s not like we explain it that often!” Élodie protested. Her hair was in her face, and she twisted it back into a hasty bun. “We don’t have open membership, Ames.”

“Can we back this up a moment, please?” I interrupted them. “Let’s go back to that ex-Collective part.”

“That’s the best part,” Ames agreed, then popped the chicken in his mouth and leaned so far back in his chair that I was afraid he would fall.

“I’ll start,” he said. “They recruited me when I was in
high school in Dublin, said I had a gift for mechanics and locks and such.”

I tried not to bristle with jealousy.

“And then when I turned eighteen, they wanted me to go further, do more dangerous things.”

“Which you probably loved,” Élodie muttered.

“’Course I did!” Ames grinned. “But there’s dangerous and then there’s what they asked me to do. Spying on other members of the Collective, hunting down people who tried to leave.” He shrugged. “That’s not what I do, mate. I don’t turn on friends. When I said no, they tried to kill me. So I ran.”

He told the story like he was describing a trip to the supermarket. Jesse’s posture was ramrod straight next to me, Roux’s eyes were wide, and I realized that I had my hand over my heart.

“Tell ’em your story.” Ames nodded at Ryo. “That’s a good one.”

“I was in Tokyo,” Ryo said, rubbing his hand over his face. I wondered how much sleep they were getting. “The Collective came to me and interrogated me about Élodie for hours.”

“I was in Dakar, in Senegal,” she interjected. “I had no idea about any of this. Things had been so slow with work lately, you know. The Collective said we should take some time, go visit our families. They just wanted to separate us.”

“But you two were already together?” Jesse asked.

Ryo nodded. “Since we were fifteen. We went to boarding school in Paris.”

I thought of my parents and said nothing.

“The Collective recruited us, too, just like Ames,” he continued. “But they said Élodie had turned and I couldn’t get ahold of her at all.”

“They did the same thing to me,” Élodie said. “They said that Ryo had gone rogue, that he had stolen evidence, and they wanted me to help find him. But I knew he had not done anything of the sort.” Her eyes blazed with anger and her fingernails were digging into the wooden table. Ryo must have noticed, too, because he reached over and covered her hand with his.

“So we ran,” Ryo said. “And apparently the Collective didn’t like that very much.”

My mind was spinning at a furious pace, trying to keep up with the story and the connections to my life. “When was this?”

“The beginning of summer,” Ames said.

“Angelo,” I said, and all three of our new friends nodded. “He got you out.”

“He smuggled me out of Dakar,” Élodie said, “and got Ree into Paris.”

“Ree!” Ames snickered, which made Ryo turn red.

“Why do you have to call me that?” he muttered to Élodie.

“Ignore that
sai sai
,” she said, nodding at Ames. “He is an idiot. Angelo should have left him in Dublin.”

“But he didn’t, so the story has a happy ending!” Ames grinned, then looked at us. “So you’re the safecracker,” he said, pointing at me. “What do you two do? Angelo never mentioned that you might be joining our little soirée.”

Roux just smiled at him. “I deal in sarcasm, punching people, and ordering takeout.”

“I specialize in being a civilian who manages to find himself in life-threatening situations,” Jesse replied. “It’s a natural talent. Oh, and apparently I speak French, too.”

Ames, Élodie, and Ryo all gaped at us. “You’re civilians?” Ryo cried. “And they tried to kill you, too?”

Jesse nodded. “Blew up the building and everything, but Angelo got us out, too.”

“This isn’t the first time someone’s tried to kill us, actually,” Roux replied, helping herself to some cheese and bread. “Last year, Maggie had to break into this guy’s safe and he was chasing us but I punched him in the nose.”

Ames let out a laugh and looked at her in admiration. “I’d have
loved
to see that.”

“Stick around.” Roux shrugged. “I come in pretty handy.”

“You’ll never get tired of that story, will you?” I said, and she shook her head and smiled at me through a mouthful of bread.

“Well, we are safe here, at least for now,” Élodie said. “This is Angelo’s home, he brought us here. And the tunnels, of course, they are safe, too.”

“You know about the tunnels?” I blurted out before I could stop myself.

Roux raised her hand. “Can we pretend that some of us haven’t heard about these tunnels?”

“Good idea,” Jesse added.

“You don’t know about the tunnels?” Ames said, looking serious for the first time in our conversation.

“My parents told me about them,” I said, sitting up in my chair. “You’ve been in them?”

Ames took a pencil out of his pocket and started to lightly trace the eraser end across the table. “There’s a network of tunnels underneath Paris. Sort of the flip side of our City of Light, yeah? The tourists love it. But they’re messy and damp and cold. Still, though, fun for the whole family.” He grinned and I saw Roux grin back.

Oh, boy.

“But we use them a little … differently,” Ryo continued as Ames and Roux continued to make googly eyes at each other. There was a soft
lump
sound under the table, and Ames winced and shot Ryo a dirty look as he rubbed his shin.