Nope, still nothing.
Wracking my brain, I wished that I could phone Giselle when we landed, and ask her to help me through this. Bile rose in the back of my throat, coating my tongue. Between the grief of losing my mentor, and the fear of what was happening. I could barely breathe.
It took everything I had to still my mind and look at this in a more logical way.
I was going to see another Tracker—he would help me. Jack Feen would know what was going on. He had to. Clinging to the faint hope that a man I’d never met would be able to solve a riddle I didn’t understand, I left the privacy of the bathroom and went back to my seat.
I didn’t look at the pictures again, couldn’t. Because if I no longer had the ability to Track, I had no idea what I would do with my life.
From my seat, I listened to the conversations around me, an attempt to subdue the panic in my heart futile. Until I heard a voice I recognized. The kid in the red hoodie, the one who’d come in last and slumped down into his seat. Agent Valley was just leaving him and heading back to his own seat.
Kyle, that little bastard was on the plane? Here was the distraction I needed.
Jerking to my feet, I stumbled all the way to the black line, hesitated, and then strode over it. Agent Valley and his partner threw themselves at me, and with a roundhouse and two swift front kicks, I dropped them one right after the other. Hunched in his seat, Kyle seemed oblivious to what was going on. The agents were pulling themselves to their feet, and the flight attendant was standing against the far aisle, her eyes bugging out, her hands twitching.
Kyle’s hoodie was down, and his ears were plugged with headphones. Perfect, he never even saw me coming, the cocky little shit.
I reached down and clamped a hand over his shoulder, digging my nails into his scrawny frame. Letting out a yelp, he looked up and paled. I dragged him out of his seat and back to my area of the plane while he begged and pleaded.
“Rylee, I’m sorry, I just couldn’t keep something like this a secret! A huge government cover up! Please, listen to me, I didn’t mean to get you in trouble. I wouldn’t have come to your place or taken the papers, but I couldn’t get back into the FBI files, they blocked me after I hacked in . . . you had the only proof that the government knew about supernatural beings—”
“Shut the fuck up,” I said as I reached the black line and tossed him over it.
He scrambled backwards until he was pressed against the far wall, sweat beading up on his forehead.
“Please don’t kill me.” He whimpered, a tear trickling out the corner of one eye.
What an idiot. “I’m not going to kill you.”
“You aren’t?”
“No, but I’m going to make sure you never do anything so goddamn stupid again.”
The throb of his Adam's apple as he attempted to swallow was almost comical. More than that, he was giving me an outlet for my own fears. Sure, it wasn’t fair, but the kid deserved at least an ass-kicking for double-crossing me. If he’d been an adult, it would not have gone so easy for him.
The two agents nearly tumbled over themselves in order to place their bodies between me and Kyle.
“I’m not going to kill him,” I said, one hand resting on my hip. “The shit had the nerve to play me. I can’t let that go. You know what that would do to my reputation?” I was completely making this part up. I had no idea if I even had a reputation, nor cared if it was affected in any way if I did have one. However, they didn’t know that.
Agent Valley cleared his throat. “And what do you have in mind for him?”
“Well, he works for you now, doesn’t he?”
The FBI agent nodded once. “Yes, he is far too talented to be left out on his own. We might as well make use of his particular talents.”
I smiled; Agent Valley’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, I’m thinking I will make good use of his talents too. For free, for the rest of his ever-loving life. Got it? He will be my personal hacker in everything I do; he will work for me pro bono until I deem he’s worked off his debt, if that time ever comes.”#p#分页标题#e#
Kyle scrambled forward on his knees. “I can do that. I can.”
Agent Valley’s eyes narrowed further, to mere slits. “You aren’t going to hurt him?”
Again, I smiled. “Oh, I never said that. I just said I wouldn’t kill him.”
8
My fingers gripped Alex’s collar as we stood in the pouring rain arguing with Agent Valley. Kyle slinked off with the other agent, still rubbing his ass from the full on over-my-knee spanking I’d given him with the flat of my sword. That made me smile. He wanted to act like an idiot child, so I’d treated him like one.