"Laurie," a voice whispered.

I cracked my eyes open and turned my head groggily toward the bedroom door. "What?" I murmured to Harrison. My eyes weren't awake yet and the only reason I could tell it was him was by the nickname no one else was authorized to use.

Harrison made his way farther into the room and shut the door quietly behind him. "Cal, Zach, Blitz and I are heading out to the library," he said, still whispering. "Jinx is going to work. Lautaro, Quinn and Lucky are up on the roof."

"Shit," I said, starting to throwing the covers off myself to get up, but warm hands clutched tight around my left arm stopped me from moving so quickly.

"I think you're a little preoccupied," Harrison noted, nodding down to Adira.

I glanced over at her too. She was fast asleep, blonde hair loose around her face and spiraling out around the pillow, both hands wrapped around my bicep and her nose blowing soft warm breaths against the skin.

I suddenly remembered last night. Adira had hit her head on the end of the coffee table while she was dreaming. There was blood. It was pretty bad. That was around 4:30 in the morning, and Jinx said we could just sleep in her bed for the rest of the night while she got to her internship early for once.

"Shit," I whispered.

"Shit what?" Harrison narrowed his eyes. "Shit like you forgot your gun to training, or shit like you did something you weren't supposed to?"

I carefully maneuvered myself to scratch the back of my neck. "Um..."

"Axel."

"Get your mind outta the gutter Harry it's not serious enough to call me that. We just sorta... ended up all tangled together."

"If I wasn't too tipsy I remember you guys starting all tangled up together too."

I looked down at her again. "She doesn't like me like that." I spoke quietly.

"Hold up, she doesn't like you like that?" I glanced up at him and he actually looked kinda pale. "Laurie, you don't like her like that either, right?"

I shook my head.

"Because you can't."

"I know."

"Because Blitz will beat you if you do. He's moved in on older brother territory since she didn't shut up about you that month you were gone."

"I know, okay? I know. And I've got a lid on it, I promise."

He squinted his coffee-brown eyes at me. "Yeah? Take the duvet off your legs."

I hesitated for a moment, and then reluctantly peeled off the orange comforter to reveal our legs locked together too, and then guiltily looked away.

My best friend licked his lips and shook his head. "I pray you know what you're doing Laurie," he whispered.

"I do," I insisted, "I'm just helping her sleep." I put the blankets back over Adira's and my feet.

Both of us watched her chest rise and fall quietly and her eyelids occasionally twitch.

"Just let her sleep," Harrison said, crossing his arms. "James is staying to look after Owen. You stay too and watch the phone lines. We'll be back in two maybe three hours. We have the ear pieces and our backpacks. And the other guys are just a couple floors up." He smiled a little as I tried to sit up more without waking Adira still clinging to my left arm. "She really likes you, huh?"

I shook my head. "Harry—"

"Oh right. 'It's not like that.'" He rolled his eyes and shook his head at me. "Whatever you say." He turned around to leave the room. Just as his hand reached out to grasp the doorknob he twisted back to me. "Maybe she doesn't like-like you. But she sure as hell needs you." He smiled down at the girl clinging to my arm. "And that's pretty damn special."

-

"Oh fuck me," Quinn groaned, laying his head down on the carpet.

"How hard?" Jinx asked at the same time as Harrison spurred, "pick the time and place."

Blitz grinned and moved his black checkers piece over Quinn's last white one and then pumped his fist in the air. "Magic!" He cried.

"My turn," Lautaro jumped off the coffee table and galloped over to the two agents lying on their stomachs on the carpet in the living room. He shoved Quinn onto his back. "And I'm going to beat you good Ackley," he said to Blitz.

"10 quid you don't."

"Deal." The two agents began to reset the checkers board.

Percy the cat started rubbing his chin on Quinn's socks where the Iraqi lay collapsed in defeat.

Jinx was back in her corner typing on her laptop, a pencil clasped horizontally between her teeth and notebook in her lap. Her feet were stretched out in front of her, a rainbow sock over one foot and one with chickens on the other.

James and I were sitting beside each other with our backs against the apartment door. I was watching him try to hack into Basilone's bank records to find out if the Italian was associating with any other powerful group who could also be in on the bombs and might want some for themselves. The redhead was smaller than Axel, definitely didn't emit as much warmth, and smelled more like raspberries. But he was a friend. And hungover.

Lautaro and Harrison were leaning up against the far back wall between the door to the bathroom and Jinx's bedroom door. Axel, Lucky, Zach, Cal, and Owen were leaning over a printed layout of the library that Basilone was targeting in two days. It was weighed down by our handguns and Owen's whiskey bottle on the kitchen counter. Cal had made Owen get up and see if he could walk around, which he barely managed to do and now was gripping the end of the counter with porcelain-white knuckles. Lucky was sitting cross legged on top of the counter with his back resting against one of the cupboards and sharpening his ninja stars. Yeah. Apparently ninja stars actually exist.

Axel's hair was stained darker from rinsing it off in the kitchen sink earlier since Jinx said she wasn't paying extra on her water bill for everyone to have a shower. Like the other agents around him he was pointing to various spots on the library blueprints, planning out the routes we were going to take during the mission in around 54 hours. Even from where I was sitting I could be mesmerized by the way his eyes swirled between pine tree-green and basil-green and then to a soft bronze rimmed with tawney and russet.

"Stop staring," James whispered to me, not taking his eyes off the laptops he had balanced on each knee.

"I've caught you doing the same damn thing Strider."

"Axel ain't my type. He's stupid cute, but not my type."

"I meant with Owen."

At that he switched his eyes back to the left laptop and watched the logarithm he had created cut through the Bank of Italy's security systems.

"This is very risky," Cal took his elbows off the blueprints and rubbed down his face.

"The police are on high alert," Zach said. "So much as a minor quarrel is going to attract attention. We have to be discreet as possible."

"Yesterday when me and Blitz—"

"Blitz and I," Jinx corrected.

"When we were out," Harrison started again, "I overheard people saying it's the start of another 9/11." He wound his dog tags around his fingers.

"That's what the media is saying too," Jinx let her hair down from it's low bun and ran her hands through the thick dark tangles. "Fear is a wildfire nowadays. A small spark and there's rampaging panic and worry. People know a hospital can't blow up itself, there's nothing inside that could physically do it, so they know that someone must have planned it. And the mystery itself is only fueling the fear."

"Which only proves how we gotta Ocean's 11 this shit," Quinn said, rubbing Percy's cheeks.

"So what, we all slam our shot glasses down in unison and pray we don't get blown up?" Axel asked.

"I like that plan." Blitz kinged himself in the checkers game.

Jinx giggled. "Your Director must think you guys are a lot more professional than you really are."

"The agency is pretty prestigious. It's been around for a while," Lautaro said.

"Remember Lee Harvey Oswald?" Harrison asked Jinx.

"Of course, since I was alive in the 60's," Jinx adjusted her glasses at him.

"It was our agency who brought him in."

"Congrats, you got the wrong man."

"Uhhhh—"

Jinx flicked his pencil around her fingers casually. "He didn't kill him."

"Then who did?" Harrison asked her. "Castro?"

She tilted her head. "Maybe."

Harrison stuck his tongue out at her.

"Oh very Jason Bourne," she fluttered her eyelashes.

"Bitch, I'm Bond."

Axel snorted. "Pretty sure James Bond doesn't get arrested, uses, or falls out of windows."

Jinx started laughing while Harrison pouted like a two year old and not a 20 year old. "And what makes you special Miakoda, huh?"

She managed to curb her laughing. "Uh...I've survived."

"Survived what?"

"My incredibly boring life."

"How low are your standards?"

"China," she replied evenly.

"Fine, I change the question; what makes you tick?"

Jinx blew air out her mouth. "I spend my weekends in a worn-out t-shirt binge-watching Netflix shows and eating jam out of the jar, my evenings procrastinating responsibilities and choosing to bask in ignorant bliss until legitimate fear pulls me out and I'm left with three hours of sleep and caffeine-boosted notes the next day. Awkward when I talk to people, too anxious to engage in conversations voluntarily and I have the weekly emotional breakdown."

"Moving on," Lucky rolled his dark brown eyes up to Venus and back, and refocused everyone on the library layout.

"When do you stop becoming agents?" Jinx wasn't done with her questions. She put her pencil between her teeth and continued to write with the pen she'd had in her other hand.

Cal stretched his arms behind his head. "We all get out on our 26th birthday," he yawned.

"Most of us," Blitz said, eyeing Owen.

Jinx continued to speak with the pencil clutched horizontally in her mouth. "But the prime of your life is pretty much over by the time you're 26, right?"

Quinn swept loose black hairs off Percy's coat in waves. "Maybe I'll get a ferret when I get out."

"I mean like, most have graduated college by that point and are in serious relationships and plotting the whole marriage or kids thing."

"Now you're just making me feel old," Owen muttered.

"What are your plans for after college Jinx?" Cal asked.

"Well, first graduate in a relatively sound mental and emotional state. Then hopefully get hired by a major newspaper company. Then get a permanent apartment nearby with a stove that works and I can eat something that isn't ramen. And then become a freelance writer and pay off student loans by the time I'm 36."

"Solid," I nodded. "I believe in you."

She smiled at me. "Thanks. You'd be the first. Someone with my background, being a 'poor Indian girl,' isn't very heard of. My parents didn't believe I could move to New York on my own at 16 but here we are."

"Do you not talk to your family anymore?" I asked her, peering around James' laptops.

Jinx was quiet for a moment. "Not supporting your child's dreams is one thing, it's another to discourage them through insults and stereotypes." She tightened her fingers around her pencil until it started to shake. "I know it's juvenile to resent your parents but...I hate getting underestimated and that's exactly what they did.

I talk to my three older brothers but that's it," she continued. "They all live in Idaho on the Nez Perce Indian Reservation, even though that's not actually what we're called. In the 1700s French Canadian fur traders called my people "Nez Perce," which means "pierced nose," but we never actually practiced that tradition. It's just another ignorant generalization that tramples our diverse and ancient culture. We're Niimíipuu." All the boys slowed what they were doing as she spoke. "Basically my family said that a girl with my skin wasn't smart enough for higher education, so I shouldn't even try, that I could never get the grades or the money to actually do something worthwhile. My Dad's a fisherman on Clearwater River and is very heavily traditional. He said, I quote: I "don't belong in the world of white people." She clenched her jaw and looked down at her leather braided bracelets. "I told my parents that I could still keep my cultural and racial identity even in a massive urban environment, that my dream was worth it, and that I could achieve so more than my stereotype says I can. But they didn't listen. So I took all the classes at school I could, even in the summer and on the weekends and at night, and got enough credits to graduate after sophomore year. I got myself scholarship money, worked everyday and every night, so I could come here and eventually go to my dream school —Emerson."

Lucky set down one of his ninja stars. "Damn."

"I take it you guys don't talk to your families either?" She set her pencil down and evened out the strings of her hoodie.

"Most of our families are dead," Harrison said.

"Or in prison." Blitz knocked one of Lautaro's checkers off the board.

"Or deported," Quinn said.

"Or own brothels and force their daughters to work in them," James said, fingers flying over the keyboard and not looking up.

"Or bet you in street races and you eventually end up in the sex trade," Lautaro pouted as he watched Blitz take out half his pieces in one move.

"Rape. Incest. Getting chucked off a boat with weights on your wrists." Owen choked down more whiskey. "Familie can lutsche meinen Schwanz."

Beside me James finally looked up from his computer screens. Even I knew that Owen wouldn't be talking about himself unless he was completely wasted.

"So you spend a lot of time by yourself, huh?" Harrison innocently sipped his beer.

"Yes. People are weird. I prefer memes."

"You must really enjoy your own company then," he winked.

Jinx looked up from her computer screen and glared at him. Then she scooted over to look at me sitting beside James. "Is this seriously the kind of the shit you've had to put up with all this time?"

I nodded.

"And it's an all boys spy agency?" She looked horrified.

I nodded again. "No offense guys..." I looked around the agents scattered around me.

"We're trying our damn best," Axel protested.

I gave him a sympathetic smile. "Yeah...but, you guys can be kinda clueless and ignorant dumbasses sometimes. Oh, and," I glanced over at Lautaro, "morning...issues?"

"That was one time," he growled at me.

"Hold it," Blitz swiveled his blond head to me. "Dumbasses?"

"Blitz, you pelted Cal with raw eggs."

"Yeah, cause the git put some in my fucking coffee!" I gave him a look and the Englishman shut his gaping mouth. "Yeah okay now I hear it." He turned back to his game.

Jinx slid her large-framed black glasses back on. "So, did your Director with a capital D give you everything you need? Like as a girl?"

"I don't really need anything special."

"How long have you been wearing the same bra?" Jinx asked next.

"Two months."

Jinx's eyes widened. "Oh come on." She pushed her laptop off her lap and stood up. "I already had little faith in the male gender. Y'all are really trashing the rest of it though."

Harrison apologetically raised the hand that wasn't holding his beer. "Jinx is right. Deerie, we're sorry. For not saying that you could go braless."

Jinx glared at him. "I'll leave you to your twisted fixations while I take Adira to rinse the testosterone off her, 'kay jackoff?"

I stood up, leaving the boys snickering in the living room.

Jinx motioned for me to shut the door behind me once we came into her room. "Why the hell does the US government have an all-boys spy agency? Girls would do just as well. Better, actually."

I shrugged. "They're not so bad."

Jinx didn't look like she believed me as she yanked open a drawer and started rifling through it. She pulled out a black sports bra and tossed it to me. "Thank you," I said gratefully.

"It's definitely no problem. Feel free to take whatever you want. You're smaller than me." She hopped up onto her bed and flopped onto her back while I took off my shirt.

"Do you think of them like family?" She asked me after I'd changed into the bra she gave me and put my black t-shirt back on.

I blinked. "Uh...I dunno."

She sat back up. "Not even Axel?"

Heat bubbled in my cheeks. "Axel is different."

She shoved her hands into the pockets of her large sweatshirt.

I don't think Jinx had worn anything other than big sweatshirts since we'd been here. But unlike me I don't think it was because she was constantly cold. She was probably used to how freezing her apartment was since it was her who didn't pay the heating bill. Or the gas bill. She shied away from us with her body. She made up for it with her words but the fact that she was so opinionated yet she chose to hide behind a laptop to express her opinions to the world seemed to me like a confidence issue. A physical confidence issue.

I glanced about her room again. No mirrors. In her bathroom there was only a small one fitted into a cupboard.

"Jinx," I started delicately, "I have trouble trusting myself. I have trouble even being with myself. Sometimes I don't even want to be in my own head because I hate myself so much. And...I kinda see the same thing in you."

Her glimmering green eyes sparked. "You talking about body confidence? Cause we don't have enough time for me to rant about that."

"Why do you let it bring you down?" I asked her. "You're beautiful."

She ran her tongue over her teeth. "Sure."

"You are."

"Well it's pretty fucking easy for you to say," she suddenly snapped. My jaw actually dropped a little in shock. "Today's definition of beautiful is thin and strong, and I am definitely neither of those things," she said shortly. "Being strong demands confidence and that is extremely difficult when whenever you look in a mirror the next thing you look for is a razor."

I tilted my head and bit my tongue. I was terrible at comforting.

"I've made my peace with the way I look Adira, okay?" Jinx looked down at her hands and the bracelets which cluttered them. "Cutting myself only assured that. I'm...bigger. And even if I was Victoria's Secret-model thin I'm not white. I'm not fucking Pocahontas either. I'm never gonna be anyone's kind of beautiful."

My heart cracked a little. Jinx was so talented. Smart, witty, passionate and with gorgeous green eyes and beautiful tan skin. And she surely wasn't fat either.

"That is not true," I persisted. "Love is way more than looks—"