The Vigilante's Handbook (Misfits #1)

Twenty Four: Are We in Agreement?

Miguel, Stitch, and I found the others a mile toward town. The path was at least somewhat familiar to Miguel and me, as we had traveled it once before and only a few days ago. For Stitch, it was a new experience and probably one he wouldn't remember come morning. Most of the trip was spent making sure he stayed conscious. Even then he had to be supported by either Miguel or me, sometimes both when the forest floors turned rocky and hazardous.

The scouting party looked as exhausted as we felt. They must have been hiking through the woods for hours now.

As they came into eyesight, I shot a terrified look at Miguel over Stitch's head. Lucia was going to be pissed. His gesture for me to take a deep breath and remember we did everything we could do, but it did little to quiet the terror building in my stomach. Lucia's anger was the only thing I could think about since we left the remains of the RV.

Well, one of two things.

First, I worried about what would happen if we didn't find our team. What if they returned to the motorhome to find it destroyed? Would they assume we were dead or that we had caused the destruction? Worse, what would happen if Julien and the others hadn't left yet? Lucia and the rest of the team might believe that I didn't care about this game, and they would be right. But I was legally obligated to care about them now that they were my team. I take care of my misfits.

But the bigger issue was obviously how Lucia would deal with us abandoning our home base and going strictly against her orders. There was no way to spin that scenario where she didn't get unbelievably mad at us. Especially after my little act of insubordination yesterday.

As we stumbled toward them a hiccup of relief left my lips. "We found you!" The words were accompanied by the panic-inducing feeling of tears burning at the edges of my eyes. Keep it together, Anna. They can't know that you aren't a stone cold superhero.

Lucia had the grace to not yell at us. When she asked about what happened, her tone was perfectly molded to be professional and concerned. Maybe she was finally figuring out this whole being in charge thing.

I explained as best as I could, but halfway through the burning returned to my eyes. It was hard enough to explain Julien and Mona's betrayal when they were my boyfriend and my best friend, but telling the others that their friends had done this too was nearly impossible. There was no way Cody or Foster or Ariana were going to believe Evan took part in it. Lucia wouldn't believe her cousin would work against her. They wouldn't trust me over the people they had cared about for years.

But the strangest thing happened.

They believed me.

Cody was the first to step forward to help, literally. He took the slight weight of Stitch from me and helped prop him against a tree, beckoning Foster to make sure he didn't fall over. I noticed that Ariana was still wary of going near Stitch, but I couldn't blame her after he accidentally shocked her. I was on the receiving end of his gift earlier, and even when I was just feeling the last dregs of his energy it hadn't been pleasant.

Lucia gestured for all of us to sit down, but she didn't say anything. I feared she had gone as mute as Miguel, especially when she looked to him with an unreadable expression on her face.

He nodded in response with a final tip of his chin over his shoulder in the direction we had come from. He was easier to read than her, maybe only because I had years of practice. Diego was his cousin too despite the rumors I tried to spread. It hurt him as much as it hurt her.

Since she wasn't saying anything and no one else was volunteering to fill the silence, I took it upon myself to start the conversation. I had never been good with peace and quiet anyway. "It didn't feel right. Fighting them I mean. And we didn't even get into the fight really. Just Stitch and me trying to stop them."

She still didn't say anything.

"I won't do that again. I don't care if your orders are to invade their home base and get revenge. I don't care that the academy decided that you were in charge. Understand? I don't care." I carefully enunciated each harsh word. I was beginning to understand how Lucia worked. That meant I was beginning to understand how I needed to act to get her to listen. She was always too harsh, so maybe this was the only way to get through to her. "We can't do what they did."

"We didn't find their camp anyway," Foster offered. He was propped up against a tree on one side of Stitch while Cody sat on the other so the kid was sandwiched between them. "Even if we wanted to fight, we couldn't."

"And we don't want to." It felt like a monumental moment, having Ariana agree with me. Especially after she had called me the enemy when we were walking into the auditorium back at Paramount Lake. Her vote of confidence went a long way on our team. She didn't usually pick sides unless it was her own. If I was an exception to the rule, the situation was worse than I thought it was.

She continued, "They aren't the enemy, and going to war against them will do nothing."

"So we're in agreement?" I asked. There was supposed to be something final and diplomatic about my words, but the exaggerated upturn at the end of my sentence made my surprise obvious. I had rallied my peers at the Academy to a cause plenty of times, but they had never known it. This time they knew exactly what they were doing and they were still doing it.

"Agreed," Cody answered with a sure nod that Foster copied.

I could count on Stitch's vote whenever he fully regained consciousness, and Miguel hadn't raised any objections, which was as good as a yes from him. The only person who hadn't cast lots yet was Lucia, and she was the deciding factor.

After all, she was our leader. Even if I had just said that didn't mean crap, going against her would mean reforming this group dynamic that we had just begun to get comfortable in. That would be a lot of nitty gritty work that we could avoid if she was smart and gave me the right answer.

She took a deep breath in through her nose, held it for a second, and let it out. "Where do you propose we start?" I could see the deep tiredness in her eyes when they met mine. "I'm out of ideas."

"I told you earlier, there are other ways to win. We need to prove to the Academy that we can be-" I stopped myself. I had a good thing going, and I wasn't going to mess that up. "We need to prove that we can be vigilantes. And what do vigilantes do best?"

"Fight crime," Foster added helpfully.

"Exactly. If it's not what the academy wants us to do, they'll let us know. There's no harm in trying. We've trained for this our whole lives. Worst case scenario is we waste a day but get some real world experience for our resumes."

"We don't really know how to fight crime," Lucia argued, but there was a resignation in her voice that told me she was only playing devil's advocate. "We know the technical stuff, but how do we start?"

"That's easy." Stitch must have stirred awake a few minutes ago to be putting together simple sentences now, but no one had noticed until he spoke up. "It's like all of you are stupid. How did you make it into Paramount Lake anyway? All we need is a police scanner and a change of clothes."

Our kids are officially going to fight crime and kick some butt! And I'm sure that will definitely not include lots of shenanigans and problems. How do you think the team is going to do in the real world of crime fighting?

On a crazy note: I forgot to thank y'all for 10k reads in last weeks update and this week I get to thank you for 12k!! That's huge! I can't believe so many people have read my dumb superhero- er, I mean, dumb vigilante story!

Thank you all so much and enjoy!

m nicole