I swallowed as I stared down the cold metal barrel of the gun. My eyes flickered between the weapon and Jasper.

This man was not Emrys. He would not miss.

"Tell me, sweetheart." The metal grazed a lazy line across the bottom of my chin. "Why should I keep you around?"

My chest rose and fall. "You tell me. I know I sure don't want you to keep me around."

"Mm. Defiant, still. That's what I like about you. You don't lose your fire."

The gun went on top of the dashboard and Jasper took his hands away from it. I breathed a little easier, for a millisecond.

"The Hoods are leaving overseas next week. It seems that Papa Hood's been frightened enough to tuck his tail between his legs and flee. Before they go, I want you to extract every last piece of information from them."

Jasper turned to look at me, the threat in his eyes and voice unmistakable. "Or I'll do it myself. Am I clear?"

"Where are they going?" I heard myself ask.

Jasper shrugged. "Australia. England. The Bahamas. Some place they believe I won't be able to touch them, I presume. It doesn't matter. If you get what I want, they'll never have to see me again. It's entirely up to you."

Trails of sweat began to coat my palm. Kaylan.

I had to interrogate Kaylan.

The door at my side opened, smooth and soundless. Already Jasper was looking away from me, perusing his smartphone, mind somewhere else.

"Now go. I have other business to take care of."

I looked around at the empty warehouse. "You brought me here just to ask me to walk home?"

Jasper's voice was blunt. "You ran away from home just to fail your first and only mission?"

I bit my lip to force down the angry retort that was on the verge of rising.

I had been doing fine. I'd found my brother's tape, fought off Storeroom Stalker two times, and had already decided to find out more about Kaylan, whose family, judging from my brother's message, was undoubtedly related to my mission somehow. But the moment Jasper had showed up, everything had turned into a rapidly unraveling jumble of a mess. He'd completely taken over, politely but firmly shoving me aside, relegating me to no more than a puppet sidekick for him to strum the strings whenever he felt like it.

Well no more.

I was going to take it no more.

"Fine," I snapped, and I got out of the car.

He likes fire? Well now I was going to give him a hell lot of it.

|*|

The dial tone on the other side was steady and did not reflect the erratic pulse of my heart.

"Hello?" The voice was deep and raspy, like someone who had just woken up. I let out a shiver as a not unpleasant tremor ran down the length of my spine. The clock on my bedroom mantelpiece showed 9:07 pm. I hadn't expect the bad boy to sleep so early.

"Hey. It's uhm, Hayley. You - were sleeping?"

The drawl was muffled, like he had buried his face into his pillow. "Afternoon nap."

I couldn't help the laugh. "Your afternoon nap lasts until 9?"

"It was a late afternoon nap," he muttered, sounding almost petulant.

"So you skipped dinner?"

"Parents aren't at home anyway. There is no dinner."

I felt a sudden pang of something close to sadness. For all his tough image and broody stares, he couldn't quite hide the hurt in his voice whenever the mention of his parents' indifference came up.

"You should get dinner. Chinese take out or something."

There was the rustling of bedsheets. "Hearing your voice is enough."

Ayyyyyy -

Now I know how that girl feels. It was in the way he said it, sleepy yet firm enough to show me he was wide awake, and certain of what he had just said. I coughed, and pretended I did not hear.

My heart however, was thumping just a little faster.

"Can we talk?"

"About what?"

An hour before this phone call, I'd been agonizing over just how to approach the subject matter. I'd concluded that there was just no way around it.

I was part of a criminal empire. His parents were part of a criminal empire. And that was it. That was all there was to it.

"About your parents. I need to know what they know," I said outright.

Silence.

"You're telling me to give my parents up?" I couldn't tell what he was feeling.

"You guys are planning to leave, aren't you? For overseas?"

Another heartbeat of silence. His voice was surprised.

"I didn't know that."

"That's what Jasper told me." The moment the words left my lips I winced.

"Jasper," he repeated. "Your fiancé."

"Yes."

"The one who tried to take my thumb off."

I closed my eyes. "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault."

"You know that's not true." My voice took on a hard mask.  "Why else are accomplices also charged?"

The hem of my blanket had frayed, and I sat there playing with it for a few moments. Silence, like the buzzing of a mosquito, was all I heard from the other end of the phone. I broke it first.

"So can we meet?"

More silence. Then - 

"You know my doors are always open for you, apple pie." 

|*|

The corridors of the hospital were white and bright and quiet. Holding the piece of paper in my hand I let my eyes drift down, pausing for a second at each room number before moving on. The nurse had directed me to this floor but I had been here for nearly ten minutes, searching for a ward 14-B and not finding one. I was just about to return to the receptionist when I saw it, a room on the left side. It was the last but one.

My hand hovered over the handle. Taking a deep breath, I pushed the door open.

The room was moderate in size, and there were two other patients beside Emrys. Emrys was lying down, watching a colorful children's programme on the telly. He had bandages around his arm, one swollen eye and Band-Aids on several parts of his body. As I walked near his head turned slightly and he saw me.

Instantly his face darkened. He turned away, resolute, his entire body facing the opposite direction. I hesitated, but forced myself to approach him nonetheless. Gingerly I pulled up a stool and sat down beside him.

" . . . Hey."

"How did you find me?" He still refused to look.

"The school. The hospital called to let them know that a passerby saw you on the street, and brought you in. I happened to be at the receptionist, doing . . . stuff. And I overheard."

The "stuff" was me tendering my school transfer letter. Samson - father's friend and the same guy who had ran Keegan Hood's particulars for me - had helped me produce a fake school and transfer letter, going so far as to even promise he would impersonate a school headmaster if a teacher called for verification. All that remained was for me to hand in the school transfer letter, and then leave quietly in a few weeks. Changing school was much easier than dropping out, which was indirectly what I was going to do, since the latter carried a more negative stigma and invited attention.

Emrys' voice was sour. "My left arm is broken. So if you want to inflict maximum pain it's probably good to start with that, yes?"

The comment stung. "Emrys, I - I don't - " I floundered, helpless. "I tried to stop him. I did. But I wasn't strong enough, and I'm sorry."

A lump caught in my throat. "I'm sorry my family did so much wrong against you. I'm sorry my relatives killed your family. I'm sorry my fiancé left you for dead. I'm sorry for so many things, Emrys.

"I'm sorry - for being who I am."

The boy that had used to be my friend said nothing for awhile. "What do you want?"

"I want your help. I want to take down Jasper."

Finally he deigned to look at me, even if it was just a side glance of the eyes.

"You want to take down your psychopathic ninth cousin?"

"Ninth cousin once removed. And yes, I do."

"You mean - bring him to law?"

I gave a wry smile. "I don't think the law can do anything at this point. But I do want to render him incapable of many things. First of which is" - I paused - "hurting anymore of my friends."

"That sounds like some hypocritical crap coming from someone who's trained and bred to kill."

"Maybe I don't want to do that anymore. Be trained and bred to kill."

The bed creaked as Emrys turned around to look at me. He met my eyes, and I let him meet mine. Patient, waiting.

He sniffed. "You'll need others to help you. You can't do it alone."

"Is that a yes?" I brightened.

"No."

My face fell.

"But it isn't a definite no either."

Emrys stared at the ceiling. "I'll think about it. Meanwhile, I'm tired. I need to sleep."

"Right." I snapped to attention immediately. "Of course. Anything you say."

I hopped off my chair. Emrys remained motionless, eyes fixed on the lights above. I took a few steps away from the bed, then stopped, and turned.

Voice small, I asked,

"Am I forgiven?"

Silence.

Emrys turned away.

" . . . Maybe."

I let out a small smile. I'll take that.

|*|  

These days, I felt like a spy. Dodging the corridors, evading William and Leila and Roxy, whipping out of sight the moment they entered my peripheral vision. Not that they were looking for me much now. Roxy made sure of that. The fuse of her temper seemed ever-lit nowadays. Leila looked torn but at least it seemed as if she understood, even just a little. William however was a pure lost puppy, glasses dangling now even more awkward than ever. 

PE lessons took on another level of boredom. Without Roxy and Leila around, I was left to sit on the bleachers all by my lonesome, watching my classmates talk and play basketball. Since the incident with Donovan each PE class led to one form of challenge or another, some of which I lost ( like the arm-wrestling one, good grief, the boy was an absolute muscle head ), but most of which I won. Today though, I had no appetite to stand up and demonstrate my stand on the whole "boys vs girls" issue. 

Maybe, I thought, as I watched a rare match of basketball that had mixed genders, maybe women empowerment wasn't all about women. Maybe it's time we acknowledge that men too, have not been absolute dickheads in this field, and that there were actually men out there who cared enough to speak up.

I had been raised in a family mostly dominated by the males, where women were, yes, used and discarded aside as seen fit. But out here, maybe it wasn't like that. Out here, I had seen that girls too had their fair chance of doing and achieving things that they desired for, chasing dreams and wishes that, perhaps, in a more backward society like the Blackcroft family or America of the 1800s, would have triggered quite a scandal. 

I watched a blonde scored a slam dunk and both teams whooped. Even the boys.

Maybe a stand like Roxy's was too extreme. Maybe the viewpoint that I had believed so strongly in for the past decade of my life . . . was now meant for a change. 

Maybe instead of women empowerment only . . . it was time for fair equality. For all. Regardless of gender.

My train of thought was broken as the bell rang, signaling end of class. I sat there for half a minute, reluctant to move and leave this period of solitude that had granted me some time with my troubled mind. With a heavy sigh, I got up and jumped down from the bleachers.

My shoelace came untied and bending down, I began to knot it back into place. The hubbub of a lively conversation drifted my way and I looked up - only to knock my forehead into someone else's chin.

"Ow!"

I cringed. Brandy sent me one of her famous death glares. It was a strikingly similar situation to the first time the both of us had met.

"Sorry," I apologized.

Meghan - I'd figured out her name one day in class - tossed her perfectly curled ringlets my way. "Watch where you're going, will you?" she spat nastily.

I raised my hands. "I wasn't even moving."

"Then watch where you're standing, will you?"

What the heck. I was leaving in a few weeks anyway. Crossing my arms, I imitated her posture - hip jutting out, eyebrow raised, mouth pursed. I didn't care if I was getting right, it was the intent of mocking that counted.

"You have eyes, why don't you use them then, to avoid knocking into me?"

Meghan let out a hoity-toity sound and made to move forward but Brandy stopped her with just the raise of a hand. She raked me up and down with her gaze, then snapped her fingers and tilted her chin.

"Uh uh." She shook an index finger at Meghan. "Not worth it."

The three sashayed away. As Brandy stepped over my foot, the heel of her boots caught the aglet, and the knot I had just done came unraveling again. I rolled my eyes, let out an exasperated sigh, and bent down.

"Not worth it," I mimicked to myself, before shooting her a look.

Under the bright fluorescent lights of the gym, I watched Brandy's boots go up and down, up and down on the shiny floor. In turn, so did Brandy's ankle, lifting up and down, up and down in the comfort of her no doubt luxury-branded footwear. They seemed a little loose, and I could see the skin and bone of her ankle rise and fall with each step.

As well as the tattoo, peeking in and out, in and out with each step.

Lift the foot - and it appeared.

Place the foot back down - and it disappeared.

Like peek-a-boo.

A tattoo, resembling that of a mug of beer, outlined in black, with the upper part colored in while the bottom half was left bare.

A tattoo, inked on the area of the skin between the ankle bone and the heel.

A tattoo of the organization I had been tasked to find.

Black and Tan.

I stared at the spot where Brandy's ankle had been, long after the Golden Trio had exited the gym and the doors had stopped swinging.

What. The. Hell?

|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|

Another long hiatus, another burden on my dear readers . . .  

I know some of you have waited a very long while for this one, and again, I can only use the busyness of life as an excuse. This one is for eisakan ! Hope you enjoy it, and keep those comments coming in ! <3

Till next time!