🔍 Silver Tongue (Slow Updates) 🔎

I've Been Fired...Surrounded By Water

It's hard to care about a termination email when you're flying over the Atlantic. I'd been gone all of two days, but since I hadn't logged into my virtual work account in those forty-eight hours, apparently that was all the cause they needed. I hadn't liked the job, but working from home was ideal for a recluse.

Former recluse, I guess I should say.

The seaplane was much more spacious than I'd thought. Six seats in the back, and cargo room for plenty of luggage, not that I had any. Charity had given me a plain brown clutch that held a fake passport, some cash and an encrypted cellphone. I suppose I should have considered myself lucky that I was allowed those.

Patience piloted the thing, while Charity and I sat across from each other, the woman looking through more than at me. She was a pretty platinum blonde, with purple highlights in her hair, held back with a pair of sunglasses with wide lenses. She had the irritating quality of looking amazing in a pair of tattered jeans and a t-shirt while not trying to look amazing. Like I could be wearing a Bottega Veneta original, but standing next to her, I'd still be wallpaper.

We began our descent to land – or dock, whatever these things did – in a Mexican city called Tampico. All I'd ever known about Mexico was Cancun and drug wars, so given this wasn't Cancun, I, for one, had no idea where we were headed and two, wasn't too thrilled about being a part of a narcotrafficking documentary.

Probably another reason why being fired as a call center clerk hadn't bothered me too much. My mortality had come front and center.

Despite my last name, Caceres, and the fact that I'm Hispanic, I don't know a lick of Spanish. My paternal grandparents were from Guatemala, but our dad had always wanted us to 'be American,' so he'd never taught us. I'd always meant to get to it eventually, but every time I got a dirty look for not knowing Spanish, it just fueled me to be ornery and not learn just to spite it all. Besides, part of 'being American' is that is everyone learns English to make it easier on you.

Well Emily, this is what being ornery gets you.

Tampico was the last place Virtue had heard from my brother, so here is where they planned on setting up shop. The other members had established a safe house outside the city, but we'd be housed elsewhere. I'd only see the others out of necessity, I'd been told, some spy thing having to do with compartmentalizing information and whatnot.

I'm not sure what I was expecting of the city, but it wasn't a thriving metropolis, with skyscrapers slicing through the air, that's for sure. In the movies, the drug lords live in a rundown mansion, in conditions only slightly better than the poor souls around them. Between the sleek, modern buildings and the nice cars zooming down the well-maintained roads, this looked like a pretty normal place to live.

"The violence is usually restricted to locals," Charity yelled over the engine, stroking a strand of hair from her face. "The worst you have to worry about is being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

I smiled and nodded, not in the mood to scream a response. I imagined that I would be in a lot of wrong places at the wrong time hanging around Virtue. That didn't even include the fact that there were even odds someone would mistake me for a local. Not that Patience or Charity would need to worry about that.

We eventually skirted to a stop, the plane wobbling on its wheels. I kept expecting the water rudders to scrape against the ground, but Patience brought us to a smooth stop.

Charity unbuckled her harness and smiled at me again. God, she was irritatingly pretty. "For this role," she said. "Patience is my bodyguard and you're my agent. Don't worry, they won't speak to you, they rarely ever address the help." She pulled the peach-colored frames down over her eyes. "Just follow my lead."

I folded my arms. "Why can't we be partners?"

She snickered. "We can't be equals, because there's only one bodyguard. Then they'd ask questions. And I'm running point because, besides being more qualified for this sort of thing, you don't speak any Spanish."

It didn't matter that she was right; to use such a matter-of-fact tone was uncalled for. I got the impression I wasn't going to like her. "What makes you think I don't know Spanish?"

She shrugged. "Reconnaissance. You think we just pulled you out of that house without learning what we were getting from you? We're much more thorough than that."

"Touché," I said.

Yeah, I definitely wasn't going to like her.

As the portable stairs were adjusted to the height of the plane, Patience half-crawled towards the plane's hatch, tossing me a smirk, before opening the door and stepping outside.

Charity snickered...again. If she kept doing so, I was going to make her eat those sunglasses. "Careful, girl," she said. "You're here to save your brother, this isn't an episode of the Bachelorette."

Bitch.

I glared at her as she followed Patience through the door, making me hustle after her. The humidity didn't wait for me to come to it, however, it invaded the plane. I shrugged off the pea coat and joined the other two.

I sneezed, just as the hand of an airport worker in overalls reached out for mine. It wasn't oppressively hot, but I started sweating like crazy. Tampico in September wasn't close to the brisk fall of D.C. Not by a long shot.

As the worker in a dirty jumper guided me down the stairs, I held my other hand over my eyes, wishing I had my own shades. The sun reflected off every metal surface: the stairs, the plane...

...the gun in Patience's holster.

I should have been happy that they were prepared, but I couldn't help but wonder for the hundredth time exactly what I was getting myself into.

Something nagged at me in that moment. It had to do with Ivan, I was sure, but I couldn't hold onto the thought. I hated when that happened.

As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I grimaced. My wandering mind left me lagging several feet behind my escorts, so I scampered after them, huffing as I caught up. I'd done more running in the last two days than I had in the last two months.

The airport itself was a tiny thing, only one commercial airplane on the runway, with a line of people making their way towards it. It was a mix of locals and foreigners, some of whom tripped over suitcases trying to get a glimpse of Charity. There were no customs officers hanging around, which was disappointing because I wanted to try out the fake passport they'd given me.

In place of that, I tried to fit the image of an agent, swiping through apps on the phone they'd given me, as if I were truly busy. The President's tweets weren't going to read themselves after all.

"Ms. Garcia," Charity said. "Give our escorts a bonus, would you?"

I looked up, so caught up in Twitter, that I hadn't realized we'd cleared the airport. At the entrance, a gold, Audi R8 waited for us at the curb. Patience was holding the rear door open for Charity as she ducked inside.

I really needed to work on my situational awareness.

I reached into my purse and pulled out three of the green pesos. I had no idea if two hundred pesos was a good tip or a bad one, but the odds I'd see these guys again was nil anyway. They smiled and nodded, before chatting among themselves and leaving us alone, so I guessed I did good. I snapped the clutch shut and jumped into the car.

When I saw the man at the wheel, I nearly pissed my pants.