Locked Up

“So is this your first time?”

I looked at the very attractive girl who I wished was still a stranger and only just held back a scream.

“Nope,” I said as nonchalantly as I possibly could in this situation. “Yeah, no, breaking into a very restricted abandoned military testing site with a random stranger is a Saturday staple for me,” I said this with as much malice as I could muster and somehow her face still broke into the laziest smirk I have ever seen. Unfortunately, it only drew me to her more.

“Really?” She asked, looking me up and down with what I could only assume was her least subtle way of subtly flirting with me.

“No! Absolutely not! Are you kidding? What part of me makes it look like I belong here, or that I’ve ever been in handcuffs before?” The look of pure glee grew wider in a way that I knew I shouldn’t have enjoyed. “Don’t answer that! No, I’ve never been in an interrogation room before, I’ve never been in a police station, I’ve never even been in this city before, so yes! This is my first time!” Surprisingly she went quiet after I finished screaming.

I’m not claiming to be a white-dressed innocent virgin school-girl who has never done a wrong thing in her life, far from it. I’ve done bad things before, illegal things, plenty of times. The only difference is that I’ve never gotten myself, or anybody else caught. 

Right now I’m just trying to figure out what I’m angrier at her about, getting me into this mess in the first place, or letting me wind up here.

“Well as long as we’re going to be spending some time together, my name is--”

“Nope!” I cut her off mid-sentence, shackled wrists stretched halfway across the table intended for a handshake. “No thank you, I do not want to know your name or anything else about you. You having a name makes this real and there is nothing else I want more desperately than for this to not be real.” She had the courtesy to at least look hurt at this point. She nodded once, curtly, and pulled her hands back to her lap. Something changed in her eyes. The mischievous spark was replaced by something else and I hate to admit that I was sad to see it go.

We sat in that silence for a long time. Longer than I would have liked and I actually almost started to regret what I had said to her. Almost.

“Listen, B or X, or whatever ridiculous letter it was that you told me to call you, I’m sorry that we ended up in here. If I had it my way you’d be in handcuffs somewhere very different, but that’s a matter for another time. The thing is, you were the one who took the job. You read the terms and risks. You knew exactly what you were getting yourself into and the possible consequences that came with it. You cannot put all the blame on me. It takes two to tango and even more to run a job this big but you were all I had to work with.” 

That something now sank deep into my heart as her eyes locked on mine while she spoke. This. This is why I worked alone. My heart was a liability I could not often lock away. It took everything in my power to keep it, and other parts of me at bay. The even worse part was that I knew she was right. I had read the contract on the web board and knew that this was it. I sent my application, my criminal resume, my credentials, whatever you wanted to call it, then hacked the site so that no one else could go for the job. Cruel to this girl and risky as all hell, but this was what I had been looking for for a lifetime. I couldn’t let someone else get their hands on it.

“Tell you what, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll give you some fake name, the same one I’ll give to them. At least some of your reality will be suspended. We have to be able to refer to each other if we’re going to get out of this.” She looked at me even deeper somehow, searching for an answer I wasn’t sure I was ready to give. Some time passed before I spoke.

“It was Em.”

“What?”

“Not quite a letter, but barely a name. They call me Em.”

“Well then, They Call Me Em, nice to meet you. I’m Strider.” The smirk had returned full force to her face and my stomach did things that I pretended it did not.

“Oh my God I’m going to go to prison with a Lord of the Rings nerd. I’m going to die in here.” I could no longer contain my laughter and Strider's face turned the lightest shade of pink while she struggled to hold on to the last of her cool.

“Hey! Don’t judge my fake name, it’s not like you gave me very much time to think of it!”

“As long as you don’t call me Arwen we’re fine.”

“And you call me the nerd!”

“Keep it in your pants there, Water Strider. What exactly is your plan to get us out of here? I assume you do have a plan… correct?” She looked obviously miffed at my teasing but the resigned face told me that I’d hear more about it later.

“Lucky for you this isn’t my first time. We’ll play their song and dance, tell them what they want to hear, be what they want us to be and we’ll be out of here in no time. You just have to tell me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Men or women?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you have a preference for men or women? You’re obviously into both, I’ve seen you eyeing me all night, and that first officer certainly got his show earlier so which is it?”

“ I can’t believe this. Don’t flatter yourself.”

“This isn’t me coming onto you yet I just need to know if you can handle the male detective because I certainly don’t want to.” Well then. At least I knew for sure which team she played on and it looked like the softball one.

“I don’t prefer men but I can certainly handle one.”

“Excellent. Em, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”