CHAPTER 1
It was one of those restaurants where the servings were more than you could eat, the music was easy and the tablecloths were white-and-red-checkered. I sat across from a stunning Dominique Bones. It had been five months since the events with Prometheus, and all had been right with the world.
In that time, Dom and I had grown closer. The world wasn’t at risk, and our relationship had had time to flourish.
We found ourselves enjoying an early dinner in one of Chicago’s many downtown eateries owned by the culinary icon Susie James Wicks. I faced an opponent I hadn’t had to defeat since I couldn’t remember when. I’d rather face a fighter in the pit in the heavyweight class than carry the conversation forward.
“What?” Dom asked. “You look like you’re going to be sick. Is it the food? Have you been poisoned?”
“What? No,” I said, shaking my head. “Although in our line of work, I guess that’s a viable option.”
“I thought Blackstone slipped something into your lasagna,” Dom teased.
“How is our friend these days?” I asked.
“Quiet,” Dom answered. “We have Bill on the inside for us, but all his reports are the same. Blackstone is locked up in one of his research labs working on what we can only guess.”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“Of course it does.”
“But Ocelot won’t make a move?”
“It’s not against the law to work.”
“Good point.”
“You’re stalling.”
“What?”
Dom leaned forward and rolled her eyes. “You know what, you’ve been acting jumpy all evening. Are you okay?”
I knew it was time. It was do or die, now or never. Play it cool, play it cool, I told myself in my head.
“Dom,” I started, reaching across the table and taking her hand. It didn’t bother me that both our paws were rough and calloused. “Since we’ve been going out, we’ve been shot at—come to think of it, I actually have been poisoned, and shot. But when we’re together, you feel like—we feel like—home.”
Dom didn’t say anything; she only squeezed my hand tighter.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that—well, I’m not seeing anyone else,” I continued forward, throwing haymakers at an opponent I couldn’t see. Why was talking about feelings always so difficult?
“I’m not seeing anyone either,” Dom said, helping me along. “Jack, are you trying to ask me to go steady?”
“Go steady?” I asked. “Do people still use that term?”
“Well, if you don’t want to,” Dom said, releasing my grip with a sly grin that told me she enjoyed making me squirm.
“I didn’t say that,” I said. “I just want you to know that you’re special to me. I don’t know if we need to put a label on it, but if we did, I’d want you to be my girlfriend.”
“I’m having flashbacks to high school,” Dom said with a smile that was less tease and more shyness. “Yes, Jack Voss, I will be your girlfriend, if you’ll be my boyfriend.”
I let out a sigh that I had been carrying since the beginning of our date. A very real weight had been lifted off my shoulders. The restaurant that had been alive with music, lights and the white noise of chatter from the other tables, suddenly went dark.
Everyone stopped what they were doing, searching for an answer none of us had. On instinct, both Dom and I reached for our sidearms. Training told us not to reveal them until we saw a threat, but we were ready.
To our right, a wall of windows had shown a bustling downtown Chicago scene of shoppers and diners going about their merry way. A moment before, the scene had been bathed in the bright glow of street lamps, passing vehicles, and lights from the insides of other establishments. Now, there was nothing but blackness.
Most people started panicking.
“What’s happening?” a woman seated at the table next to ours pleaded.
A man fumbled with his phone at a corner booth.
A child whimpered.
Dom and I traded looks, reaching for our phones. They were dead.
There was no point in me asking if Dom knew what this was. I could see in her shadowed face that she was as much in the dark about this one as I was.
Then my phone flickered to life. Not just my phone; every screen in the restaurant. Phones, the TVs near the bar, even the portable pads the waiters used to charge customers for their meals. At once, they all turned on.
Adam Blackstone was on every screen with a smile that chilled me to the bone.
“Hello, and welcome,” Blackstone said. Behind him was nothing but a white background. He wore a black shirt. I could only see him from the chest up. “No doubt you’re wondering what’s going on, so I’ll cut straight to the point. I now possess the ability to control everything that runs on electricity. Vehicles, phones, power lines; you name it. This is nothing more than a demonstration to get the leader of the free world at the negotiating table. You’ll get your power back in three, two…”
Like the greatest magic trick ever played, Blackstone disappeared from our screens, restoring them to their normal backgrounds. The TVs switched back on, the lights outside burned to life.
“Oh boy,” I said, looking across the table to my date.
“Not the words I would have chosen,” Dom answered.
A moment of silence fell across the restaurant as the reality of what we had all just experienced set in, and then the explosion of chatter ripped through the room.
Dom’s phone went off at the same time as my own.
“I’m here,” Dom said, pressing the phone to her ear.
Vash was on the line for me. I answered her call. “So, what’s new? Watch anything good lately?”
“This is not the time for messing around,” Vash scolded me. “You know exactly what. Cross is already making a call to the Order to make sure they had nothing to do with this. We need you back here.”
“Alright, I’m on my way,” I told her. I could hear Bubs bark on the other end of the line.
“Hurry,” Vash said before she hung up.
I ended the call as well, looking across the table to Dom.
“Yes, sir,” Dom answered. “I understand. I’m on my way.”
“No rest for the wicked?” I asked.
“Lock wants me to come in,” Dom said with a shake of her head. “This is bad. One man with so much power, Jack—it’s not going to end well.”
“No argument there,” I told her. “Is it strange that I feel calm?”
“No,” Dom told me matter-of-factly. “That’s our job now, to remain calm and level headed even if the world goes to hell in a handbasket. Sorry I have to cut the dinner short when you asked me to the dance.”
“At least you said yes to the dance,” I told her. “Go, I’ll pay for dinner. Tell Agent Lock I said hello.”
“Something tells me he’ll want to bring you in again on this one,” Dom said, gathering her jacket. “Blackstone has a thing for you, remember?”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“‘A thing’ for me? You’re making it weird.”
“Ever since the events at North Sentinel Island, he thinks you two share a bond,” Dom rephrased her words. “If he has a weapon now that can shut down the world, governments are going to get involved.”
“The meteor,” I breathed, thinking back to the hunk of rock that was so paramount to Blackstone.
“You think there was something in the meteor that helped him do this?” Dom asked, standing from the table.
I stood along with her. “I don’t know, but it would make sense. He was going on and on about how he was being spoken to. How voices were telling him where it was.”
“Huh,” Dom said thoughtfully as she walked around the table and leaned in to give me a kiss.
“What?” I asked, taking her in my arms and gently pressing my lips to hers.
“In a strange kind of way, we have Blackstone to thank for bringing us together,” Dom said, reluctantly separating herself from the hug. “If it wasn’t for him, I never would have met you.”
“Matchmaker Blackstone?” I asked, shaking my head. “Nope, don’t like the sound of that at all.”
“I’ll call you as soon as I can,” Dom said, taking her leave. “Be careful.”
“You know me,” I answered.
“Yes, I do, and that’s why I’m telling you to be careful,” Dom said before she left.
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