The Bulletproof Boy Read online

  When Rodriguez pulls the car into the parking lot of a derelict-looking building, I frown and lean forward to check if it’s the correct address.

  “This is M. Williams Flawless Design?” I ask in stupefaction. “What self-respecting architect would do business from a place like this? That’s a cross between a toolshed and a—”

  “Crack house?” Rodriguez supplies cheerfully. “I should know. It reminds me of my childhood. I’m getting warm and fuzzy feelings inside, man. I bet it smells just like my mama baking cookies on Christmas Eve in there. Let’s go!”

  As I watch the large man unlatch his seatbelt and pull his gun out of its holster as he moves toward the rundown shack, I shake my head slowly. If someone had told me thirteen years ago that Little Ricky Rodriguez would grow into such a badass, I’m not sure I would have believed him. I don’t know anyone quite like my eccentric friend, the detective.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I am not sure what I am expecting to find at the mausoleum, but I feel slightly unprepared. I’m still wearing the same torn, dirty jeans that I used to walk across the desert, and I feel disgusting. My sunburn certainly isn’t helping. Since someone put a computer in my hands earlier today, I haven’t had anything to eat or drink, and I’ve been typing constantly. I haven’t really been focused on anything or anyone around me. I believe that’s why it’s called an addiction.

  Now, Zack and Luciana are chatting in the front seat and cracking jokes. They are both armed with weapons, and I’m still just holding my laptop. What am I going to do, hold it up as a shield? I feel more than a little pathetic. Maybe Luciana was right, and I’m just not cut out for field work.

  I’m a little worried about Cole heading off to that architect’s office. He did not seem happy to be here—he was quieter than usual and very tense. I watched him in Rodriguez’s car as they drove away, and he saw the hard set of his jaw, even under his fake facial hair. I feel so guilty for dragging him back into the world with me. Maybe I should have put his needs first, and stayed in the tank so he could get some rest and heal up.

  But in that time, the body count could continue rising.

  The problem with making decisions is that you’re never really sure if you’ve made the right one until long after the plan has been executed, and you can finally start to see the longer-term repercussions. On a day like today, I am second guessing myself every minute.

  I’m just a girl with a computer, used to living in a virtual world, but these are real people in the car with me—people I care about. If my intel is bad, it could risk their lives. Luciana is driving this scary, black SUV while Zack polishes his gun. I have mostly just been sitting here, hoping this day goes well, and acknowledging to myself over and over that I do not feel ready.

  But I am not even sure exactly what I am not ready for.

  Soon, I find out.

  We have to navigate some rush hour traffic to get to the cemetery where Jeremy’s mausoleum was built, and I spend all this time on my computer. Zack and Lucy chat a little, but I don’t really get involved. Until we arrive at our destination.

  Putting my laptop down, I grab my gun out of my purse, determined to be of use. I haven’t ever really cared whether my friends thought I was tough or cool, but I respect Luciana and want to be involved. I would be deeply embarrassed if I led them to useless information, or if I became a detriment now. The sunburn is embarrassing enough as a display of my incompetence.

  But as I move to exit the vehicle, she halts me.

  “Stay here, Agent Shields,” she tells me, all professional. She is no longer Lucy, my friend. She is Agent Lopez, my boss. As the former is fairly knew, I haven’t learned where to draw the line yet, and when to listen to her. To err on the side of caution, I close the car door with myself inside.

  “I’m going to check out the cemetery and search for the mausoleum. Zack, I’ll radio you if I need help. You protect Agent Shields.”

  “That’s my job,” he says enthusiastically.

  It is only when Luciana has left the vehicle and disappeared from view that I realize I have been left alone in the car with Zack. When he gets out, and moves to sit in the back seat beside me, I swallow, dreading this conversation.

  We sit in awkward silence for a few minutes, both of unsure of what to say.

  Finally, he begins. “This is a practical joke, right?” he asks me.

  I turn to look at him with a question on my face.

  “You and Cole. You’re just mad at me about the letters, and you guys decided to prank me that you’re together, as some sort of punishment. But it’s not true, right?”

  His eyes look so hopeful. I stare at him, unsure of how to respond.

  “Sophie,” he says, releasing his gun with one hand and grabbing one of mine. “You said… at the police station a few days ago. You said we might be going home together after all this? Back to our apartment in D.C.? Back to our lives?”

  I did say that. “Zack…” I begin.

  “No,” he says quietly. “Don’t dump me, Sophie. I don’t want to hear it. We were happy, weren’t we?”

  “Sure,” I tell him. “Kind of. You’re a great guy, Zack, but—”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit.”

  “Listen. If Cole really had died—you would have stolen my last few months of communication with him. If he had died… it would have been partly my fault, because you kept me from knowing what was going on with him. In some ways, the only way our relationship worked was by me being a prisoner. And I need to be free.”

  “I screwed up, Soph. I made a huge mistake with those letters, and you know I’ll never do anything like that again. I know how important Cole is to you, and I would never try to keep you away from him—”

  “But you did. And I did. I let you.”

  “Soph,” Zack says, taking my hand. “I know you love him as a brother and only married him for the money…”

  “No,” I tell Zack, closing my eyes. “You know that I’m completely in love with him. I have been afraid, and lying to myself about it for a long time. But I can’t do that anymore, not after all this mess. I can never let anyone keep us apart again. Not you, not me, not anyone.”

  Opening my eyes and giving his hand a little squeeze, I smile at him sadly. “You’re just not the one for me, Zack. You must know that.”

  “So we’re never going home together,” Zack says softly. “You’re staying here, and I’m going home without you. To sleep in our bed alone.”

  “I’m so sorry. You’ll find someone better…”

  “I don’t want anyone else! Sophie, how can you actually be saying all this to me? I may have lied about a few letters, but he lied about being dead. How can someone who claims to love you do such a thing?” Zack rips his hand away from me and places it on his gun, stepping out of the car and slamming the door. He walks forward a few steps, pretending to be vigilant and scan our surroundings. Sighing, I shift uncomfortably in my seat before getting out of the car. I hear Luciana talking to Zack on the radio.

  “…Found the mausoleum in the north west corner, over.”

  “Don’t go in there alone. We’re on our way,” Zack tells her. “Over.”

  “You guys can stay with the car,” she says. “The detective said he’s on his way.”

  Zack turns to me and gestures to the cemetery. “I don’t feel like staying with the car. Fancy a midnight stroll?”

  “Sure,” I say, as we walk forward into the darkness, over the rows of dead bodies.

  “I’m not going to stop fighting for you, Sophie.”

  “Zachary, please. You need to stop. Leaving Cole was the biggest mistake of my life, and I’m not going to leave him again.”

  A voice from behind the gravestones speaks up. “Did you say Cole? As in Cole Hunter?”

  I turn around in surprise, and find a man pressing a gun against my stomach.

  “Zack,” I say softly.

  “Drop your weapon!” Zack tells the man, lifting his rifle. �
��Put the gun down, now!”

  “No, I don’t think so.” Laughing softly, the man shoves the gun into my bellybutton, pushing me forward. “Tell me more about Cole Hunter. Everything you know.”

  “I don’t know anything. I heard that he died.” I can already feeling my insides twist with the impact of the bullet. If he shoots me here, what will it do to me? It could hit my spinal cord.

  The man steps forward, and I am able to see his face for the first time. “I know you,” he says with a guttural laugh that can only be described as a cackle. “You’re the girl with the red shoes.”

  “Fuck,” I mutter to myself.

  When a gunshot echoes through the night, my mind goes blank.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Roddy, we have to get out of here,” I tell my friend as he uses his flashlight to scan through a box of files. “What do you expect to find?”

  “I don’t know,” he answers. “More details about this guy working with Jeremy Brown.”

  Sighing and looking around, I try to ignore the sickening state of the room. “What are these vials?” I ask, nudging a pile with my toes.

  “Oh, those are crack pipes,” he says, after a quick glance.

  My foot recoils. “Seriously?”

  “It looks like he wasn’t just an architect, Cole. He was a serious drug dealer.”

  “Well, that explains why he failed so badly at design. A complete lack of focus! I mean, look at these sketches. I could do better when I was ten years old. Did this guy even go to school?”

  Rodriguez gestures behind himself to a degree on the wall as he continues to hunt through the files. “Chances are, his whole business is just a front for the drug dealing. He might be smuggling drugs into the country, and distributing them by putting them into the houses he builds or something. I don’t know, but I’ll figure it out. I just don’t know what the connection to you could be.”

  “Oh, shit,” I say quietly, peering closely at the photo on the wall. “I think I know what the connection is.”

  “What is it?” Rodriguez asks tiredly, following my line of sight. “I don’t have time for more of your complaining about his lack of proficiency in architecture, Cole, so if you’re going to whine about what school he went to…”

  “No, no, Roddy. Look.”

  “Yeah? I’m looking. What am I looking for? He obviously didn’t graduate summa cum laude like you…”

  “Roddy! His fucking name.”

  “Okay. Marco Williams Jr.—what’s so special about his name? Wait,” Rodriguez says, his eyes growing narrow. “Where have I heard that name before? Marco Williams. Marco Williams… Marco…”

  “Polo,” I respond.

  “Loco,” Rodriguez says with a sigh. “Seriously? Marco Polo Loco? The same guy who used to beat the shit out of me when I was twelve? His last name is Williams?”

  “Junior,” I add.

  “He was in juvie for selling meth, right?”

  “Yeah, and he used it too, from the looks of his teeth back then.”

  Rodriguez shakes his head. “I never got a good look at his teeth. I was always too busy getting mine smashed in.”

  “You probably couldn’t tell this, Roddy, but all his buildings are cheap copies of mine. They are also built shortly after the originals that I designed. Basically, he’s been shadowing my career…”

  “Stalking,” Rodriguez corrects.

  “Yeah. I guess when you have no creativity, and your brain is fried by drugs… trying to design flimsy replicas of someone else’s hard work is all you can manage. It’s sad, really.”

  “Well, I’ve seen all I need to see,” Rodriguez says, stuffing his flashlight in his belt and heading for the door. “I can’t wait to bust this guy. I doubt I’ve ever enjoyed an arrest as much as I’m gonna enjoy this one.”

  “Arrest?” I ask him. “If you think you’re going to have the patience to arrest Marco Polo Loco, you don’t know yourself very well, my friend.”

  “I guess we’ll see,” Rodriguez says. “But one thing’s for sure. I sure as hell ain’t getting my face smashed in by no washed-up meth head today.”

  By the time we get to the mausoleum, Luciana is already there, sitting on the steps and smoking. Seeing this slightly lowers my very high opinion of her, and makes me less inclined to encourage her to be Scarlett’s bestie. I don’t want Scar picking up any habits that could make her sick.

  Rodriguez, on the other hand, moves forward and rips the cigarette from Lucy’s hand, before putting it to his lips and taking a drag so long that he nearly turns the entire length of the small cylinder into ash.

  “I really needed that,” he says, tilting his head back to allow smoke to waft upward, out of his chest.

  “Jesus,” Lucy says. “With lungs like that, you should play the flute or the clarinet or something.”

  “My talents are mostly for sucking and not for blowing,” Rodriguez answers as he smashes the cigarette under his foot. Then he frowns. “Wait, that came out wrong. I meant to say—”

  “Where’s Scarlett?” I ask Luciana, and Rodriguez is grateful for the interruption. He always blabbers on and on like an idiot around pretty girls.

  “She’s on her way over here with Zack. I’m not sure what’s taking them so long,” she says in frustration.

  “They are probably arguing,” I suggest. “Have you checked out this mausoleum?”

  “I was waiting for someone to join me,” Luciana says. “This building gives me the creeps, big time.”

  “I can see why. The roof is designed all wrong, and these pillars are attached in different places. See? This one is an inch to the left. It could be the fault of the construction workers, but I doubt it. It’s very poorly designed.”

  “It’s not as bad as the crack house we just came from,” Rodriguez says. “It turns out that the only thing M. Williams Flawless Design was any good at was designer drugs.”

  “Really?” Luciana says, suddenly brightening. “Well, we’ll probably find more drugs inside this mausoleum. And I’ll win fifty bucks!”

  “It seems to be locked,” Rodriguez says as he struggles to open the door. “Hello! Anyone in there?” When there is no answer, he shrugs and turns to Luciana. “Can you do some CIA magic and unlock this?”

  “What magic? I usually work at a desk in an office just like Soph—”

  I interrupt her by slamming my boot into the weakest part of the door, causing it to crack open. Luciana and Rodriguez look at me in surprise, and I shrug.

  “Shitty architecture,” I explain. “You just kick it and it falls down.”

  “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?” Luciana asks as she fumbles with the door to push it completely open. But as soon as she does, she lifts her arm to cover her face and begins coughing violently.

  I find my body suddenly petrified with fear. Is there some kind of chemical agent protecting the mausoleum from intruders? I can still feel the way that the cadmium shredded my lungs, each and every time I breathe. I won’t survive breathing any more poisons in my current state. As I watch Luciana doubling over and coughing, I take a step back warily, afraid of being killed in some kind of sick biological warfare.

  But Rodriguez moves forward to place a hand on her back reassuringly as he peers through the cracks in the broken door.

  “Holy fuck,” he says softly, as he covers his own face with his sleeve. “Holy motherfucking fuck.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It takes me a few seconds to figure out if I have been shot. There is a splatter of blood on my arm and my shirt. I rub my hands over my stomach anxiously, where the gun was pointed. Sharp, ice-cold prickles of fear course up my spine and throughout my nervous system. My fingers do not discover any obvious holes in my flesh. I feel no pain other than the acute ringing in my ears.

  “Come on,” Zack says, stooping to pick up an item and stuffing it in his pocket. He grabs my arm. “We gotta get to Luciana.”

  Only then do I realize what has
happened. Zack shot the person who was holding the gun up against my body, forcing him to drop his weapon before fleeing into the darkness. “How did that happen?” I ask him breathlessly, as he guides me swiftly through the cemetery.

  “It’s always so much easier to deal with people who don’t really have any military training or experience abroad. Anything that can happen here, at home, is usually pretty mild in comparison to what I’ve seen,” Zack says.

  As I run behind him to keep up, I feel my eyebrows lift in surprise. Maybe I never really appreciated what Zack went through in Afghanistan. He doesn’t talk about it much, but I know that it haunts him, far more than just the loss of his leg.

  Cole has been deeply affected by his recent injuries, but they can’t really compare to the permanent crippling feeling of losing a limb. Maybe I should forgive Zack a little more easily for hiding the letters and being insecure.

  Or maybe my judgment is clouded by the fact that he just saved my life.

  I don’t know how long we spend running through the cemetery, but my legs begin to feel like jelly and the blisters on my feet start to burn. I have to pause and sit down on a tombstone to let my legs rest for a second, and keep them from collapsing under me.

  “Come on,” Zack says, pulling me up and not allowing me to rest. “He’s still out there, only wounded and not killed. We need to find Luciana and take cover.”

  “Okay,” I say, standing weakly and trying to keep moving. I am not really walking any longer—I am constantly falling and stumbling forward in a slightly controlled manner. Zack is offering me some support, and I feel guilty.

  How can my legs be so weak that I need help from someone who is missing a leg entirely? Zack is surprisingly athletic on his prosthetic, and solely focused on the mission. He even seems cheerful, like he would rather be here, shooting at people than cooped up in our apartment.

  “What was that thing about red shoes?” Zack asks as we keep moving. “I’ve never seen you wear red shoes.”