“Can I go and shoot some real bad guys now please?”
“Absolutely not.” He takes my wrist and leads me back to the office, telling Luca about me apparently amazing shooting skills.
He shrugs. “It’s just a gun.”
“See?” I tell him.
“You’re bugging me,” Shayne murmurs.
“How so?”
“You’re bloody cocky.”
I smile at him innocently.
“I have handcuffs, you know,” he warns me.
“Please, feel free to use them. I’ll rip them to shreds and you know it,” I say quietly, locking his gaze. He sighs and stomps away. That didn’t go so well: I was supposed to make him like me, not make him hate me even more.
“You think you could get out of handcuffs?” Luca asks me, unbelieving.
“Of course.”
He snaps his cuffs around one of my wrists and a pipe on the wall.
“What’s in the pipe?” I ask him warily.
“Nothing, it’s an old one,” he shrugs. I smirk and unhook my new gun from my belt, shooting the cuff that’s not on my wrist.
“This could make a nice bracelet,” I muse, holding my wrist up so he can unlock the remaining link.
“If you were kidnapped they’d take your gun off you,” he points out. I shrug and hand him my gun. “And your knife.”
“Here,” I say, giving him the pocket knife and my set of handcuffs. He hooks them around my wrist and to another section of the empty pipe, seeing as I blew the other piece to smithereens.
“Try and get out of that,” he says, smirking. I glance around the suddenly full room. The gunshot made people rush in here. I shrug and take a granny clip out of my hair with my free hand. I shove it into the lock and twist and turn until the cuff unlocks with a clink.
“And after I’ve done that I would proceed to kick the shit out of the moron who handcuffed me to a pipe,” I tell Luca, a huge grin on my face. “Hopefully getting Sid back in the process.”
“Where d’you learn to pick locks?” he asks, looking surprised and amused.
“Can’t remember.”
“Who’s Sid?” he asks warily.
I take my gun out of his hand and cradle it in my palm.
“You named your gun?”
“Of course.”
“Psycho,” he mutters, smiling at me fondly.
“I like her,” one of the spectators says, coming over to us. He’s tall, really tall with chocolate coloured skin and a jet-black army crop hair style. He looks terrifying, but his eyes twinkle with kindness.
“Thank you,” I smile up at him. I really do have to smile up at him, craning my neck. He must be about 6”5… Seriously.
“I’m Leevens,” he offers.
“I’m Lila,” I reply.
“Welcome to…Well, the agency,” he falters, shooting a dark look at Luca.
“For the last time, it was not my idea,” Luca mutters. I don’t comment.
“That was pretty impressive,” Shayne says, a sly look on his face.
