You Won't See Me Coming Read online

  I stare out the window as we pass a small movie theater, a bodega, and a sushi restaurant before Luke turns right onto Eleventh Street. My hands immediately begin to tingle. I vigorously shake them out before the anxiety can crawl any further up my body, crippling me and stealing my strength. I lean forward in my seat, feeling beneath the metal and leather until I find my loaded Glock 22, ready for a gunfight. I pull out the magazine, quickly scanning the fifteen bullets before reloading. We’re expecting Fernando’s people to lure Harper into a car closer to the café, but these guys are crazy. It’s not like they haven’t shot at civilians in broad daylight before.

  “Let’s go over the game plan again,” Luke says as he pulls up to a loading zone near the dorm’s exit. “She hasn’t heard from you in over a year. I’m still afraid it won’t be as easy as just, ‘Hey, remember me? Your long-lost best friend who disappeared off the face of the earth? Just happened to be strolling by your dorm. Want to get into my car with this guy who looks a little bit like Luke Weixel? Oh wait … it is Luke Weixel?’”

  “I know her. She’ll be so excited to see me she won’t care,” I answer and stare at the double doors of the residence hall, waiting for Harper’s face to appear. “Harper trusts me. If I tell her she needs to get into the car, she will. She is the least of my worries right now.”

  I look in the mirrors of our car, searching for signs of Fernando’s people. There’s a white van parked across the street. I search for a driver or passenger. There’s none. A dark four-door car is parked half a block away, a guy dressed in a suit in the driver’s seat. He’s reading the paper and smoking a cigarette, completely ignoring us. Looks like just a driver, waiting to pick up a passenger. At least I hope.

  “You see the van?” Luke asks, looking in his mirror before opening up the center console and checking for his own weapon.

  “I do. There’s no one inside,” I answer, studying it closer. I see a white and orange piece of paper tucked beneath its windshield wiper. It lifts and flaps, pushed up by a gust of wind. “They’ve got a ticket. Looks like it was parked there overnight. You’ll have to watch it when I get out of the car to get Harper, okay? Make sure there’s no movement. I’m sure Fernando’s people are waiting closer to the café but there could definitely be a second team ready to take her on this block.”

  “I know,” Luke says, his face falling at the reminder of just how dangerous this morning could get. His chest rises beneath his puffy coat and I suddenly wish we still had access to CORE’s walk-in closet of bulletproof vests. The Black Angels didn’t leave us any. Probably because they thought we’d just need guns to defend ourselves. The plan was to keep us hidden, not have us go on missions in the middle of Manhattan.

  I glance at the clock as the digital numbers change to 8:02. I check my mirror again, my lips pressing together between my teeth.

  “Someone’s coming,” Luke says and I look back up at the double doors as a figure walks away from the elevators. As it gets closer, I see long, wavy blond hair. And as she circles the front desk, I see her fair skin and can almost make out her hazel eyes. Harper.

  “It’s her. Let’s do this. And fast,” I command, pulling down on my baseball cap and shoving the gun into my pocket. I pop open the passenger door and step out onto the snowy sidewalk. “Keep all the doors unlocked.”

  I slam the SUV door before Luke can reply to my instructions and look up and down the block. It’s empty. I look through the glass doors as Harper stops in the lobby to zip up her puffy red jacket and pull down on the strings of her knitted white hat. Just the sight of her warms me for a moment at my freezing core. God, I’ve missed her so much.

  Harper runs her gloved fingers through her hair before pushing open the door and bounding out into the cold.

  “Harper,” I say cautiously as I walk closer to her on the sidewalk. Her face turns toward mine, her eyes flashing with confusion then recognition then pure joy.

  “Holy shit. Reagan?” Harper squeals and runs toward me. She all but jumps into my arms, her hair flying and getting caught in my mouth. She pulls away, cupping my cheeks in her hands. “Oh my God. What are you doing here? Where have you been? And what the hell have you done to your hair?”

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Bullets whiz past our heads, shattering the glass door behind us. Harper lets out a piercing scream, her hands clinging to my arms as she instinctively tries to pull us down to the ground.

  “No, stop,” I yell and yank her body up, pushing her hard toward the SUV. “Harper, get in.”

  “What is happening?” Harper screams as I frantically pull open the back door.

  “Get in,” I shout, shoving a still shrieking and struggling Harper into the backseat.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Shit. I can hear the unmistakable buzz of a bullet flying centimeters away from my face as I climb into the front seat and slam the door.

  “Go, Luke, go,” I say, pounding on the front dashboard as Luke peels down the street.

  “Luke?” Harper yells, her mouth hanging open as her head swivels between her two nearly unrecognizable friends. “Reagan? What. The actual. Fuck?”

  Bang.

  A bullet hits the back of the car, causing Harper to scream and dive down onto the backseat.

  My head whips around and behind us is the once passenger-less white van barreling down Eleventh Street, a guy with a gun hanging out the window, ready to shoot again.

  SIX

  “The van. Damn it, I should have known,” I yell as Luke floors it down Eleventh Street. “They’re reloading.”

  “Oh my God,” Harper shrieks, her voice muffled by the leather seat her entire face is pushed against.

  Luke blows through the red light and makes a wild left-hand turn, driving south onto Third Avenue, the white van practically on our bumper. A cabbie leans on his horn as he’s forced to slam on his brakes, his yellow cab skidding on the slick roads in the middle of the intersection, just feet away from a collision.

  “Jesus Christ,” Harper screams, still curled up in the fetal position in the backseat, both hands covering her head. “What the hell is happening? Where are we going?”

  “Harper, just stay down,” I yell, turning around in my seat to get another look at the shooter. He’s wearing a baseball cap but still, I can tell he’s young. Maybe even our age. My eyes tear away from his face and watch as he reloads his pistol, just waiting for the chance to shoot again.

  “Luke, you’ve got to lose them,” I say, my voice exploding as I turn back toward him.

  “What do you think I’m trying to do?” he hollers back at me, his foot pushing down on the accelerator as our car races down the lightly trafficked Manhattan street. The lights are green at the intersections of Tenth and Ninth Streets, but I can see a few cars and yellow cabs stopped at a red light ahead. Despite the halt in traffic, Luke continues speeding toward the red light at the Eighth Street intersection.

  Please turn green. Please turn green.

  I spin my head around in my seat; the van is still half a car length behind us. When I turn back around, the light remains bloodred. The traffic, unmoved. And so is Luke’s speed.

  “Luke, Luke, Luke,” I say as I clutch the bottom of my seat with both hands.

  “Hang on,” his mouth pushes out as the SUV jumps the sidewalk, forcing a woman carrying a tray of coffees to jump out of the way, brown liquid pouring down her coat.

  “What are you doing?” I shriek, my nails digging into the leather seat.

  “Hold on,” he yells, barreling the car off Third Avenue and down Eighth Street. Cars immediately begin honking their horns, drivers wildly waving their arms or turning their wheels to get out of our way. We’re going the wrong way down a freaking one-way street.

  “Luke…” I begin.

  “I know, I know,” he says, checking his mirrors as I check mine. They’re still behind us.

  “Shit,” I say under my breath as the engine revs and Luke pushes the car faster and faster down E
ighth Street. I turn around in my seat. The gun is reloaded and in the passenger’s hand, poised for a chance to take another shot.

  “Oh no,” Luke says, whipping my body back around. A big truck has turned off of the next street, our grilles barreling toward each other.

  “Oh Jesus,” Harper cries out, lifting her head from its crouched position to see what all the fuss is about. The truck flashes its lights and blares its horn one, two, three times. The driver’s face contorts down at us in shock. But still, he drives toward us.

  “Hold on, hold on,” Luke instructs through clenched teeth before swinging the car toward the right and jumping a high curb, steering the SUV back onto the sidewalk. Without a seat belt on, my body slams against the door and my head knocks against the thick glass window; my skull and shoulder both immediately radiate with pain.

  The truck’s horn is still blaring as Luke pulls around it, skidding on a patch of ice as he steers the car back onto Eighth Street. Still going the wrong way.

  “God damn it. They’re still there,” I yell as I look back at the white van.

  Without saying a word, Luke makes a wild left-hand turn onto Broadway, forcing my hands up to the SUV’s ceiling to stop my body from slamming into the side of the car again. Luke’s foot pushes down on the pedal, weaving us in and out of traffic, dodging trucks and cars and cabbies, all doing their best to drive at a reasonable speed in the snow. We must look completely insane. I’m shocked we haven’t heard the sounds of police sirens behind us yet. Someone must have called the cops by now.

  No matter the lane we switch to, the van stays right on our tail. Horns are honking at us with nearly every maneuver, and Harper’s unbelted body slides along the backseat, ping-ponging between the two doors.

  The skin around my chest hums as my heart alternates between clenching fear and pounding adrenaline. My feet dig into the floor, instinctively bracing my body as we race down Broadway, passing Fifth and Sixth Streets, blowing through red lights and giving very little respect to traffic laws. I look back at Harper only to realize she’s watching me from her hunkered down position in the backseat. When our eyes lock, she lifts her head a few inches off the seat.

  “Are we going to die today?” she asks, her voice quiet. Her eyes are so wide, I can see the whites all the way around her hazel irises.

  “No,” I answer and grab for her hand. “I won’t let you die today.”

  Just as the words escape my lips, a bullet strikes the back window, cracking the glass.

  “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Harper screams, pulling her hand out of my grasp and bringing her arms toward her head.

  “Hold on,” Luke says, making a sharp right turn onto Bleecker. Again, going the wrong way down a one-way street.

  “Again!” I yell at Luke as cars lean on their horns, flash their lights, or skid to a stop.

  “Got any better ideas?” he asks as he jumps the sidewalk, nearly sideswiping a woman with a stroller.

  “Yes,” I say, grabbing for the gun in my pocket. The sidewalk is completely clear in front of us. Now is as good a time as any. “Hold the car steady. Harper, stay down.”

  I turn around in my seat, roll down the window, and lean out of the car as far as I can. I point my pistol, but I don’t aim for their windows. I aim for their tires.

  Boom! Boom!

  One tire blows, then another, and the driver loses control. I watch his face as he spins the wheel, furiously trying to keep the van moving forward. But it’s no use. Sparks fly as the van spins on the sidewalk before slamming into the red brick wall of an apartment building.

  “Got him,” I yell as the van grows smaller and smaller in our nearly shattered back window.

  “We’ve got to get out of this city,” Luke says as he guides the car back onto Bleecker and then turns (going the correct way, thank you God) onto Thompson Street.

  “The Holland Tunnel will get us to New Jersey,” I say and plug it into the navigation built into our dashboard. I studied the maps on the drive down to Manhattan and talked Luke through every potential escape route off of this concrete island. The satellite makes quick work of finding what I want and where we are. “We’re only a mile away.”

  “Are we safe?” Harper asks meekly as she slowly pushes her body up from the backseat.

  “We are,” I answer, turning around to face her. “For now.”

  “Great,” she answers, pulling her white knit cap off her head and throwing it on the floor. Her big eyes narrow into slits as she crosses her arms over her chest and leans back in her seat. “So … let’s catch up. You first. Just who the hell are you, Reagan MacMillan?”

  SEVEN

  “So … you’re like a ninja?”

  “You lied to me every single day for a year? Are you sure you aren’t a sociopath?”

  “A drug lord? Like a guy from Breaking Bad?”

  “Holy shit.”

  “I think I’m going to throw up.”

  “Is that why your hair looks so horrible?”

  “No seriously, if we weren’t in a tunnel and running away from men with guns, I’d make you pull over so I could puke.”

  These are just a handful of the responses from Harper as I explained to her who I really am. About the Black Angels. The failed mission in Colombia. How Luke got dragged into all of this. Qualifiers at CORE. Killing Torres in Indonesia. Fernando. Mateo. And why someone is now trying to kill all three of us.

  “So, your mom,” Harper says quietly in the backseat. “She really is gone? That part is true?”

  “Yes,” I reply as our car finally emerges on the other side of the Holland Tunnel in New Jersey, the light in the car transitioning from black to bright.

  She really is gone, my mind repeats.

  My chest tightens before the nightmare of memories floods my body. I see Mom’s terrified face. The smell of gunpowder fills my nose. Then the sensation of blood, sticky and warm, coats my hands. I shake my head, trying to erase the horrific scene that still plays on a daily loop behind my eyes.

  “She died,” I continue. “Just not in a car accident like I told you in my last email to you.”

  “And the same people who killed her now want to kill me?” Harper says, two fingers pointing into the center of her chest. “This is bat-shit crazy. I don’t understand why they want to kill me. What the hell did I do?”

  “You didn’t do anything,” I say. “My parents killed Santino Torres’s son. I killed his brother. Even though Santino is dead, he promised me this wasn’t over. Before he died, he said he’d find a way to kill me. Hurt the people I love.”

  “This is all so, so insane,” Harper says, taking in a shaky breath and pulling off her fitted black gloves with her teeth. “I just … why didn’t you try to warn me before someone tried to shoot me in the middle of New York City?”

  “What was I supposed to do?” I say, checking the mirrors to make sure no one is following us. “Call you up and explain I’ve been training to be a spy my whole life and by the way, people might try to kill you, so be careful? I didn’t even know it was true. I thought Santino might be bluffing. Saying anything to stay alive. But when he brought you up … I just don’t know how he knew about you. Knew where to find you. I mean Luke and my friends at CORE, I could understand. But you … it’s just proof there’s a mole in the Black Angels feeding them information.”

  “Who do you think it is?” Luke asks as he drives west on Interstate 78 and as far away from Manhattan as we can get.

  “I don’t know,” I say and shake my head, flipping through a mental list of everyone I know at CORE. “It’s obviously not my father. Or Cam. I mean, he wouldn’t have his own parents targeted. But besides those two, it could literally be anybody else. My no list is much shorter than my suspect list right now.”

  “You suspect even Anusha?” Luke asks, his voice surprised. “She’s one of your closest friends. And she didn’t even grow up as a Black Angel.”

  “Exactly,” I answer, pointing my finger at him.
“We don’t really know anything about her. We’ve never met her family. We know nothing about her life before the Black Angels except what she’s told us. She could be a plant. She’s smart enough.”

  “I can’t see it,” Luke says, emphatically shaking his head. “She wouldn’t get so close to you and then do this to you.”

  “That’s exactly what a good double agent would do, Luke,” I answer quietly, the thought of Anusha actually being the mole twisting at my gut.

  “Well, I don’t know how it could be Sam,” Luke says, changing lanes and checking his mirror, using Black Angel–taught maneuvers to see if we’re being followed by any of the other cars on the road. “I’d even trust her with my life, and I don’t know her like you do.”

  “I don’t trust anyone right now,” I answer, turning my face away from Luke and his questions. “All I know is someone I’d die for could be trying to kill us.”

  Luke opens his mouth, perhaps to protest, perhaps to bring up another name, but pulls his lips together and stares straight ahead down the highway.

  The interstate is beginning to fill up, even with the snow. It’s falling faster now, the big, thick flakes lingering on the hoods of cars and collecting on the edge of windows, begging to come inside before sliding off or being pushed away by the wind. The frosty white makes it difficult to see the white lines of the highway, forcing traffic to slow, and I suddenly miss the egg-yolk yellow lines of the two-lane country roads.

  “You don’t think it’s safe to go back to Vermont?” Luke asks after a stretch of silence.

  “No,” I say and shake my head. “Now that they know what we look like, they could do facial recognition with surveillance cameras and track us down there.”

  “You really think Fernando’s people have that kind of technology?” Luke says, glancing at me, then turning his eyes back to the snowy highway.

  “I don’t know but I’m not willing to take that kind of risk,” I say and point at our cracked but not shattered (thank you, Black Angels, for the bulletproof glass) back window. “Are you?”