Red Handed (7 page)

Ryan chuckled again, and again I felt the warmth of it.

“You're in a dark alley,” Allison said stiffly. “You're alone. You have no weapons. A group of Outers stumble upon you, and they obviously want your blood spilled over the dirty concrete. What do you do?”

Everyone went quiet. The air became heavy with tension.

“Why don't I have weapons?” I asked just to be difficult. She was trying to trip me up, I knew it. There had to be a right answer and a wrong answer, and everyone was waiting to hear which one I'd give. While a small part of me wanted to give the wrong answer so I'd (hopefully) be sent home, a big part of me wanted to give the right answer and knock her off her I'm-so-superior throne.

“You just don't!”

“Not even a barrette from my hair?”

“No,” she barked.

More chuckles. Not just from Ryan.

“What about a rock from the ground?” I asked.

“No! Nothing. Just you and the men.”

“Are they armed?”

“Yes!”

“Are they tall or short?”

“Tall! Stop stalling. What would you do?”

“Look, I'm not stalling.” And I wasn't—anymore. I think I knew the right answer. There was no way in hell I'd be caught in a dark alley with no weapons. But I didn't say that. “I'm just trying to get a clear picture of the situation. As to what I'd do, well, I know what I
wouldn't
do. I wouldn't fight them since they're tall men who could probably beat my bones into powder.”

When I didn't continue, Deep Voice prompted me. “So what
would
you do?”

I shrugged. “I'd memorize their physical descriptions if possible, maybe grab something from them, a piece of clothing, a wallet, so they could be tracked later, and then I'd run like hell.” Cowardly? Maybe. But staying alive was a little more important than looking brave.

Allison snorted. I guess that's the answer she'd wanted to hear. “Would you smoke a Snow Angel while you were at it?”

Before I could reply, Mia said, “I want her. She's just what this place needs. Logical, passionate, and determined. And like I said, you can kick her out if she doesn't work.”

Deep Voice sighed. “I knew you'd say that. But I have to agree with the others. The drug use…if she were to cause any of the others to become addicted…”

Sweet Voice piped in. “This is a stressful program and an addict almost always caves during stress.”

“How many times do I have to say it? We'll test her. Every day if necessary. Until she fails, let's give her a chance. People with passion don't come around often, and how many of you can claim to have led perfect lives?”

“Mia—”

“Boss, she's got what it takes. I know it, and you know it. A chance is all I want for her.”

Silence. I imagined them staring each other down—because I didn't want to think about how their words were making me feel. Half-elated, half-beaten down.

“Well, it's settled then,” Deep Voice finally said with a sigh. “She stays.”

In the next instant, my blindfold was removed. Light pierced my eyes, and I had to blink against the blinding brightness. Several strands of pale hair fell over my face. I blew them back.

With a quick jerk, my hands were free, and I was able to reach up and scrub. The action hurt. My shoulders screamed in protest, and my hands trembled wildly.

I didn't show a single ounce of my pain, though. I wouldn't let these people see any hint of weakness after they'd stripped my past bare and made it fodder for everyone in the room. Only one person here seemed to want me. The only other time I'd felt this low was when I sobered and recalled the way I'd treated my mom that day at school.

What I hated most, however, was that they were right. I
could
start using again at any moment. I always had in the past. I liked to think I'd resist no matter what, but…

Finally my vision cleared. I was unable to control my reaction as everyone came into focus. I gasped, shock pounding through me.

I was in the center of an all-white cell. There were no exits. Lights hung from the ceiling, glowing, illuminating. A table circled me, pinning me in except for a small gap by the door. At each section of the table was a human. And there were fifteen of them.

Roses stood beside me. Ryan, who looked as sexy as I remembered, was watching me with grim determination and…admiration? His dark hair was rumpled, and his bright blue eyes were fringed by feathered black lashes.

My stomach tightened at the sight of him.

Allison, who looked prettier than ever, was seated next to him. She was frowning at me. Beside her was an older man with thick silver hair and lightly tanned (and slightly wrinkled) skin. He wore a pair of black glasses over his eyes.

On his other side was Sweet Voice. She, too, looked upset.

There were several people I didn't recognize. A woman with long black hair and blue eyes that were so clear they were almost purple. She was beautiful, like a ballerina. Delicate. A woman with brown hair, hazel eyes, and physically perfect features was next to her.

I'd never seen such loveliness in real life.

The rest of the audience was comprised of men. All tall, all muscled, all fierce. All savagely handsome. It was as if everyone in the cell had come to life from a holophoto. And each and every one of them was now studying me as if they wanted to eat me for lunch and spit out my bones.

One by one, they said, “Welcome.” Only a few sounded happy.

Sunglasses splayed his arms and smiled. “They've all welcomed you to A.I.R. training camp, but allow me to do so, as well. Welcome to your new home, Phoenix. For the moment, anyway.”

I wasn't given time to react or learn the names of my interrogators. Immediately after issuing that eerie “welcome”—that wasn't really a welcome with the “for the moment, anyway” attached—Sunglasses motioned for Roses to usher me into another all-white cell, this one empty, devoid of even the circular table.

Roses did as he'd been commanded, the wall splitting open and leading into a hallway that lead into another cell. He deposited me there, leaving me alone and locking me inside without a word.

I stood there, shock pounding through me. How had this happened?

I'd just been recruited for A.I.R. Alien Investigation and Removal. Me. Phoenix Germaine. A troublemaker, a former drug addict, and a girl who was unwanted by her own parents. An agent.

Me
, I thought again. It was…it was…I didn't know what it was.

A.I.R. agents were the elite, the very best. They were tough and respected, immortalized in movies. And they wanted me to fight otherworldly crime, racing through the night and dodging laser beams and pyre-fire?

A little dizzy, I leaned against the padded wall—padded for the crazies?—and slid to the floor. I anchored my head in my upraised hands. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. My mind frazzled with lightning speed, a whorl of thoughts and confusion.

Did I really want this for myself?

I was only seventeen. I hadn't yet graduated high school. How could
I
be an agent? It had to be one of the most dangerous occupations there was. Look at the Sybilins we had fought.

What if I encountered worse?

Was that what I wanted to deal with every day? Talk about stress.

I'd never really considered my future. With my grades, college hadn't seemed possible. With my record, most jobs were out.

“Dear God.” The questions during the interview began, at last, to make sense. Could I kill? Could I deal with pain?

A.I.R. agents fought without backing down, no matter the choice of weapons, no matter the injury inflicted upon them. That was why they were considered the best.

Even the most depraved of predators trembled at the sight of them.

What would my mother say if she knew where I was and what I'd been recruited to do?
Did
she know? She hadn't breathed one word about A.I.R. Did she assume this was simply a boot camp as she'd lead me to believe?

Half of me thought, if she knew, she'd finally be proud of her little girl, trying to make a difference in the world. The other half of me, well, imagined her disappointment at learning her daughter was supposed to kill things for a living.

Which was the right supposition? I just didn't know.

Lost in thought as I was, I didn't realize the wall had split and someone stood there, watching me. “It's a lot to take in, I know,” a voice suddenly said.

I gasped and whipped my attention to the side. Ryan leaned against the side of the doorway. He was frowning, his arms crossed over his chest.

“Yes,” I managed, hating how breathless I sounded.

He stepped toward me, and the door closed behind him. My heart kicked into gear as I hopped to my feet. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see how you're doing.”

“Not so good.” More than the tone of my voice, I hated how hot he looked, how rugged, because he was older than me and probably viewed me as nothing more than a little girl. A druggie, loser little girl at that.

“So…” He closed the rest of the distance between us and stuffed his hands in his pockets. Our gazes met and held, his blue against my brown—a blank slate against…what emotion was I showing him? Confusion? Shock? Pleasure that he'd come to see me? “What do you think?” he asked.

My brow furrowed. “Help me out here. Exactly what are you asking my opinion about? What I think about you? Or the camp? Or A.I.R.? Or even the entire messed-up situation of being taken from my school and brought here in secret? What about the fact that you let my mom think I got high that night?” I added, anger heating my blood.

“I'm sorry about that. I didn't want it to happen, but I didn't know your past at the time. I didn't know she'd just assume…”

My cheeks burned.

“We couldn't tell her the truth, Phoenix. The rest of the world can't know what goes on with predatory aliens. They'll panic. They'll loot. They'll kill innocent Outers on sight. You can't even tell your mother what we do here. Very few even know it exists. She thinks she sent you to an undisclosed location for tough love drug treatment.”

“Yeah, well, where do the parents of the other kids think their children have been sent?”

“Programs for the gifted, the talented. Whatever fits their situation.”

How embarrassing for me. They were gifted and talented; I was the only loser. “Anyone like me ever been admitted before?”

“No. You're the first. When Mia heard about you, she demanded you be brought in.” Ryan cleared his throat. “We don't have much time. Let's talk about A.I.R.”

A minute passed in silence, and I used very second to think of a witty response. Nothing came to me. “I have so many questions. If I decide to stay here, where will I live? What's going to be required of me? What aliens will I be required to fight, and will I have to kill them
now
?”

“You'll live here, with the other trainees. You'll be required to work hard, demonstrate loyalty and dedication. No drugs. You'll fight…no one,” he said. He shrugged. “Not yet, at least.”

My jaw clenched at the “no drugs” bit. I didn't comment, though. I reached up and massaged the back of my neck. “I don't understand. No fighting? But—”

“You have to learn how to fight before you're sent into the field.” He leaned his shoulder against the wall, and I caught the scent of woods and soap. A wonderful scent. The best I'd smelled so far. Better, even, than Roses.

“This place really is a training ground, then,” I said. “Like that guy said.”

Ryan nodded. “He'll never lie to you. No matter how brutal, no matter how harsh, he'll never lie.”

“What about school? I want to graduate.” There had been a time when I hadn't cared if I'd finished school or not. In fact, I had preferred
not
to finish. But that had been a time when all I'd only wanted was my next high. I wasn't that girl anymore—no matter what everyone thought.

“You'll graduate, don't worry. In a few days, if not tomorrow, you'll be given an efficiency test. If you pass, you'll be allowed to graduate high school early. If not, you'll be required to study after your combat, weapons, and alien classes.”

Great. If I failed the test, my workload would double.
If
I decided to stay.

Tests had never been easy for me. Frankly, I sucked at them. Five minutes after I would turn one in, I'd remember the answers I
should
have given.

“What if I want to go home?” I asked softly.

His lips lifted in a who-do-you-think-you're-kidding smile. “Please, Phoenix. Just please. After seeing what the Sybilins did, you'll never be able to go back to your normal life, doing nothing and knowing you could be doing something to make the world a safer place.”

“First of all, don't assume you know me
or
what I can and can't do.”

“I wasn't finished.”

Eyes narrowed, I waved a hand through the air, a silent command for him to continue.

He tapped the end of my nose with his finger. “Sybilins make some alien breeds look like trained house pets. Believe me, there are much worse prowling our streets, stalking our families.”

“Why haven't I heard about them then?”

“Like I said, we make sure the public doesn't know.”

I didn't respond. I didn't know how to respond. What else was I ignorant about?

“Tell me you don't care about predatory species stalking your family. Tell me that doesn't bother you. Tell me you're happy doing nothing.”

“Listen, I'll do or fight anything to keep my mother safe.” Even though she'd sent me here, thinking the worst of me. A sharp pain of regret tore through me, but I ignored it. Fragile as she was, my mom would not be able to defend herself against predatory creatures. “But that doesn't mean I have to do that here. That doesn't mean this is the place for me. I like the idea of it, sure, but I'm just not—”

“Don't let Boss hear you talk like that,” he snapped, cutting me off. “Kids all over the world would kill to be in your place and you're on shaky ground as it is.”

“Maybe they would, and maybe I am.” I scrubbed a hand down my face. “If I stay, will I be able to see my friends?”

“No.” He didn't hesitate, didn't try to lie.

No
.

With a half smile, he bumped my shoulder with his own. “It's not so bad, I promise. You'll make new friends.”

He made it sound so easy, not the nerve-racking chore it was sure to be. That Kitten girl had been nice, I reminded myself, but she hadn't known about my past. She might run screaming the moment she did.

“I trained here,” Ryan said, regaining my attention. “Now I teach here.”

My eyes widened. “What do you teach?”

“Hand-to-hand combat.” Once more he reached out, but this time he tweaked a strand of my hair instead of tapping my nose. Then he moved to brush the strand behind my ear. Before the action was complete, though, he stiffened. He dropped his arm to his side and cleared his throat. He backed two steps away. “This isn't a bad place to be. You might even come to love it.”

What had
that
been about? Why had he moved away? Unsure about everything, I gazed down at my feet. Dirt dusted my boots, and splashes of dried beer stained the tops. “I just, I don't know,” I admitted.

“Tell me what you don't know. I'll help you know.”

I wished I could, but my mind was suddenly blank. Dark. So many emotions coursed through me that I couldn't name them all.

“Do you have a home to go back to, Phoenix?” he asked, showing no mercy.

I bit my bottom lip. My mom had truly washed her hands of me; there would be no going back to her.
She didn't even say good-bye
. God, how that still cut. Even my dad, pathetic coward that he was, had said good-bye.

If I returned, she'd just send me to another camp. And the next one could be a thousand times worse than this.

Here, at least, I would learn to fight, to defend myself and my world.
Can you kill
? I'd told them I could; I knew I could if necessary. But I didn't think I was ready to do it. Not really. I shuddered to think of what that first death blow would be like. Still…“I'll stay,” I said, my tone almost inaudible. I'd stay. For now. If, later, I decided to leave, I'd leave and nothing they said or did would stop me.

Slowly Ryan grinned. “I'm glad.”

When he smiled at me like that, I was glad, too. I gulped, warm, tingling, suddenly needing to be touched. Kissed. I didn't understand my reaction to him, so I quickly changed the subject. “So, um, who were some of those people in there? Like the ballerina?”

“Ballerina?” He choked, his eyes nearly bugging out, and banged his chest with a fist. He cleared his throat. “You mean the dark-haired, violet-eyed babe?”

I nodded, not liking that he called the woman a babe.

His grin grew wider. “That's Mia Snow, the one who fought for you. Don't make her mad and don't let her hear you call her a ballerina. Something happened to her, I don't know what, that's eased some of the hate inside her, but she's still one of the most vicious, temperamental people I've ever met. She kills first and asks questions later.”

And they let the woman around kids? Fabulous.

“The brown-haired woman with the hazel eyes is Le'Ace,” Ryan said.

Ah, the perfect-looking one. The one with features so fine she could have walked straight from a priceless work of art.

“She's…I don't know if there's a word for what she is,” Ryan told me. “She was genetically altered and is stronger, smarter, faster than anyone you've ever seen. She is emotionless and will not disobey her commanders for any reason. If she's told to destroy someone, she destroys them. Age doesn't matter, gender doesn't matter. Background doesn't matter. They're simply dead.”

“Is she even human?”

“No one's brave enough to ask her,” he answered with a grin.

My eyes widened again. Dear Lord. It just got worse and worse.
These
were the people I was going to learn from? “What about the man who asked me all those questions? The one with silver hair and sunglasses?”

A dark blanket descended over Ryan's features, cutting off all sense of amusement. He appeared as emotionless as he claimed Le'Ace was. “That's Boss. He's been around a while and helped start A.I.R. He's in charge of everything and everyone here, and you do what he says, when he says it. No argument. The consequences for disobeying him are always harsh.”