Not If I Save You First

twenty-four | in unity we spy

With my eyes shut, I concentrated on my footsteps. Counting each step throughout my bedroom. I know the entire layout of my bedroom. I know where everyone is positioned in my bedroom. I wouldn't be stupid enough to trip over one of them.

"Who needs cocaine when human emotions can fuck you up just the same," I muttered.

"Jesus, that's grim," Celia whispered.

"All of you shut up!" I grunted. Counting my steps wasn't helping. Every time anyone spoke, it interrupted my counting. I needed silence. Or less people. "Alright, first question. Who is she?"

"The obvious answer is Maya Hawthorne," Grayson said.

"Nothing about any of this is obvious," Little Dean said.

"Donovan Halstead has known Maya Hawthorne for at least twenty-five years. That's not including any years prior to the 1994 experiment," I explained.

I took a black silhouette picture of a girl with a white question mark covering her face. I pinned it to the board above the pictures of all the other assailants and possible suspects.

The team: Donovan Halstead. Our three low level kidnappers–Leo Krasnikov, Maxim Ivanov, and Anton Popkov. Head of the operation–our mystery woman.

"What if the woman isn't Maya Hawthorne?" Little Dean asked. "If it's not her and she's really a victim in this, then we should be looking for other women who could be involved."

"He's not wrong," Celia agreed.

"There's six of us, so why don't we split up the work," Thea suggested. "One group can look into the possibility of Maya Hawthorne being involved. The other can look into other women who could be considered a suspect."

I thought about the probability of that plan working.

If Maya Hawthorne isn't involved with the kidnapping, then there's someone else who is out there with a grudge against the Hawthorne's. There's only one person on the face of the earth who knows who she is.

Donovan Halstead.

If Donovan Halstead doesn't give up who she is, then we're all screwed. Especially Maya and William Hawthorne.

"I've gone through every record we've searched for the past few months. No other females were red flagged," Grayson acknowledged.

"Great," I groaned, flopping down onto my bean bag chair. "Back to square one."

 🂧

Everyone was awake until the next morning. We went through four pots of coffee to keep everyone awake.

Once the sun started rising, we needed to call it a night — well morning. Grayson and Thea sluggishly went to their bedroom. When one person goes down, the others follow like a herd of sheep. Little Dean went to sleep on the living room couch. Celia went across the hall to her apartment.

Archer and I weren't tired. We were closing in on this mission, so neither of us wanted to sleep.

"I'm doubtful of this, but if you're tired you can lay up here," I said, patting the empty spot next to me on my bed. Archer was rotating on a bag bean chair on the floor. He looked painfully uncomfortable, shifting in every direction.

"I'm trying to stay awake, being uncomfortable helps," Archer muttered, keeping his eyes averted from mine.

I rolled my eyes and rested my head on my pillow. My pillows have black and white drawings of the UK flag.

I tightly shut my eyes and started thinking about my life. My mind floated back to when I was with the office shrink. That bitch pulled information out of me like I was a weak and pathetic suspect in a crime. I don't know how she did it, but she got me to open up to her.

She barely said anything. It usually takes Jessica a few hours to get me to admit things.

Keeping my eyes shut I said, "If I wasn't a secret agent, I'd move back to London and go to art school."

Archer kept quiet. Maybe he fell asleep. I kept my eyes shut to maybe get an hour or two of sleep also. If everyone else is asleep, I should get some too.

The feeling of my mattress dipping alerted me from my short lived slumber. I hadn't even fallen asleep, so there was no slumber whatsoever. Just the anticipation that sleep would eventually overtake my body.

Archer's deep breathing through his nose fanned across my face. With my eyes still shut he asked, "Why don't you do it?" 

"When a team of agents and I go barreling through doors to save people, there's a reason why I go through the door first," I said, slowly opening my eyes. Archer's face looked distorted when I first opened my eyes. He's closer to me than I originally thought. Our noses just barely touched. The gorgeous specs in his eyes nearly glowed like a cat's in the darkness of my room. "It's to make sure everyone else walks back out of that door."

"What if you never went through the door at all?" Archer asked, brushing a strand of hair behind my ear. He gently caressed my face before returning it to his chest.

"Then I don't know who I am," I answered, letting the vulnerability slip through my fingertips. "If I never go through that door, then who am I? I wouldn't be Secret Agent Seven of Spades."

"You'd be Ariella Alderidge. The girl who can shoot a gun and wild blades like a master. The girl that has spent her life sacrificing it for others. The girl who inadvertently stole my heart without the knowledge of doing it," Archer whispered.

Before I could acknowledge his sentence, Archer leaned forward and placed the most gentle kiss on my lips. Barely grazing his own lips against mine.

Our first kiss was desperate. He felt that he needed to do it. At that moment he felt it was now or never. If he didn't kiss me right then and there, he'd never have the opportunity to do it again.

Our second kiss was hungry. I was hungry. Capturing my prey like the predatory animal that I am.

Now ... It's humane. Mellow.

I gripped the front of Archer's t-shirt, clenching fists fulls of the fabric between my fingers. I brought his face to mine and connected our lips. Not hungry. Not desperate. Not mellow. A simple action of wanting to feel his lips against mine.

A rush of adrenaline courses through my body whenever Archer's lips are connected with mine. More adrenaline than running in a building where a shootout is happening. More adrenaline than when I'm engaged in hand-to-hand combat and outnumbered during a fight.

I took a deep breath and asked, "It's my sacrifice, right?"