Special Episode: Surrender (Part I)
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
Ralph lifts his smiling eyes to Calla as she drops into the passenger’s seat of his car. The shadows that dance over his face catch softly on the upturned corner of his mouth, on the sharp line of his jaw.
“Hey,” he murmurs, leaning over to kiss her.
Calla runs a caressing hand through his tousled blonde hair as she kisses him back, then gives his lower lip a hard bite. Ralph’s breath catches softly in his throat, a staggered and sharp little inhale she hears over the quiet music he’s playing.
He gives her a shy smile when he draws back, his fingers messing with the leather bands around his wrist, his green eyes very wide.
“Hey,” Calla laughs adoringly.
“S’nice to see you,” he says, sounding and looking a little dazed, his smile irrepressible. He hastily drags his gaze off of her, then lets out a helpless laugh. “Shit, aren’t you beautiful? It’s too much for me, sometimes. Honestly.”
Calla breathes out another laugh. She can hardly bear that adorable expression on his face. Her eyes dart up to the rearview, then stop when they catch on something surprising in the back seat of the car.
Right next to Tycho, who’s dozing gently with her nose on her paws - there’s a painting. Done on canvas, unframed. It doesn’t look like Ripley’s work, and he’s the only painter friend of Ralph’s that Calla knows of, so…?
“Why do you have that, Ralph?”
He hesitates, runs a hand over his face, and adopts a warning tone of voice. “Don’t you laugh, but-”
“Oh, good,” Calla giggles happily.
“-someone who owes me money is trying to be an artist, or whatever, and he didn’t have the cash to pay up. So I told him I’d take that painting instead. Settle up his debt that way.”
Calla stares at Ralph as this slowly sinks in, caught entirely by surprise. He looks over his shoulder at the painting, his grey-green eyes roving slowly over its surface.
“I thought it was pretty good.” His gaze flits back to Calla, searching her face. “Thought… you might want it?”
Calla had looked back at the painting, too, but now her startled eyes dart to Ralph. “What - are you serious?”
Ralph wordlessly reaches back to get the painting, then offers it to Calla.
She takes it and tilts it so that the moonlight spilling in through the windshield reveals more of the details. It’s an abstract piece, with a tiny signature at the bottom corner.
Many small, neon-bright squares of melting color are scattered across the canvas, obscured by a dreamy, swirling veil of silvery paint on top. Like bright pixels, shining through a window frosted by the rain.
It’s very beautiful, but what’s even more immediately striking about it to Calla is that Ralph still has yet to see her bedroom at her grandparent’s house, but this would fit right in there. If Calla had seen this on a job, she probably would have stolen it to keep for herself. It’s just her style.
She’s having trouble looking at Ralph all of a sudden. Her face is all hot, even though the windows are rolled down.
“How much is it worth?” She looks up in alarm as soon as the words leave her mouth, realizing how that sounded. “Wait, no, that’s not - that came out all wrong!”
Ralph lets out a snicker of laughter, affectionately folds his hand around the back of her neck, and strokes her softly with his thumb. “That would be your first question, you fucking thief. You’re already dialing your black market fence, aren’t you?”
“No, stop it!” Calla laughs, holding the painting tightly. “Something tells me that the market value of this painting by a completely unknown artist wouldn’t even come close to clearing up his debt with you. If it has no monetary value, and he owed you a lot of money - which I assume he did if you went to go see him personally - then what actually happened is that you paid handsomely for my painting, and this is a very expensive gift! That’s what I meant! So how much does he owe you?”
Ralph shrugs, all innocent. “Technically he doesn’t owe me anything, because I agreed to take the painting instead. We’re square.”
Calla waits in silence until it’s abundantly clear to Ralph that he’s not going to get away with that answer.
“Can’t really define the value of art like that, can you?” he tries, and Calla lets out a choke of exasperated laughter, shoving his shoulder. “Would you believe me if I said that I didn’t really think it over before I did it?”
“I’ve met you, so - no, I wouldn’t, not at all!”
Ralph lets out a helpless laugh. “Should’ve known I wouldn’t get away with that one.”
“Ralph!”
“Alright, alright - so what, Hellcat?” He gives her another quick, shy smile, then quickly gets his gaze back on the windshield. “Who the fuck cares? I wanted you to have it. Do you like it?”
Calla drops her gaze to it, following its beautiful, dreamy brushwork with her eyes. She bites her lip, and nods.
From the corner of her eye, she sees Ralph break into a radiant smile. He trails a hand softly over her buzzed hair, then gently knuckles her chin.
“Then it was worth it,” he says softly.
Calla looks up at him, her heart fluttering and smoldering like a butterfly with fire for wings. She can feel the intensity of her stare, and she’s powerless to stop it.
It makes Ralph shy after a moment. He turns to stare straight out through the windshield, rests his wrist on the wheel, then gruffly adds -
“Besides, what else was I gonna do? Run a broke art student down for money he doesn’t have? The fuck do I look like, a landlord? And, I mean - he definitely didn’t have it. Dude burst into tears the minute he opened the door and saw me standing there. I’m not even joking. That happened.”
Calla bites her lip, fully aware of how desperately uncomfortable and stressed out Ralph is when people cry around him. It’s a struggle to hold back her laughter as she tries to picture what his face must have looked like when this all went down.
“Sounds like that guy is going through a lot,” she manages unsteadily. “I bet he was pretty happy that you ended up liking his paintings so much that you decided to take one and clear his whole line of credit with you.”
“Got him to stop crying, anyways,” Ralph says, sounding so immensely relieved that Calla barely catches her laughter before it can escape her.
Then suddenly she grows serious, her smiling falling. She narrows her eyes at Ralph in suspicion as something troubling occurs to her.
“This surprise gift isn’t because you did something bad and you’re trying to soften me up before you tell me, right?”
Ralph looks over at her, startled and taken aback. A flicker of sadness shows itself in his sage green eyes.
“Man,” he murmurs, winding an arm around her. “Your ex really did a number on you.”
Calla snuggles into the warmth of his body, secretly relieved, feeling a little guilty for asking. “Good thing you’re willing to put up with it.”
“I’m not willing to put up with it,” Ralph says firmly, his voice dropping to a low growl. “If I ever cross paths with that guy, he’s getting stomped. Only reason I haven’t hunted him down already is because you told me not to. You know that.”
Calla smothers a startled burst of giggles behind her hand. “I meant that you’re willing to put up with the - the way it made me!”
“Oh.” Ralph draws back, his eyebrows furrowing in surprise and confusion. “Being with you never feels like putting up with anything, though. Pretty much the opposite. All the way the opposite.”
Now it’s Calla’s turn to draw back in surprise. She lowers her head, smiling hard to herself, desperately looking for something to say.
“Are you gonna let word get around that the Warlord is willing to accept artwork as payment?”
Ralph breathes out a soft laugh through his nose. “That’s one way to build a collection, I guess? I dunno. I don’t really know shit about art.”
But he has an innate instinct for it, and a natural eye. Based on the painting he chose for her. Based on the photos he himself has taken, which Calla loves much more than she’s told him.
She looks at the painting again, then lifts her adoring eyes to Ralph. “Thank you, baby. I really love it.”
He begins to smile, then stops when she adds - “And that was really sweet of you, to go so easy on that guy.”
Ralph hisses angrily, and Calla giggles, leaning across the car to nuzzle her nose into his before he can argue with her.
Whatever answer he was about to give her is lost as he eagerly leans in to accept the kiss she wants to put on his mouth. She buries her hands in the softness of his blonde hair, melting against him as he locks his arms around her - then sits back suddenly, realizing.
“You’re here,” she says, startled.
Ralph’s brow furrows in confusion. “I - yeah?”
“But you texted me - didn’t you say you couldn’t get out of work tonight?”
“Oh, right.” Ralph hesitates, choosing his words. “So - I had already solved the puzzle to get the time and location for our date tonight-”
“Yeah, how, by the way?” Calla shakes her head in disbelief. “It took me forever to make that one, I tried to make it so difficult!”
“Oh, did you?” Ralph instantly looks relieved. “Cool. Makes it less embarrassing that it took me so fucking long to figure it out.”
Calla lets out a laugh, but for a moment she can only stare at him incredulously.
“Are you telling me you drove all the way here just to prove you solved the puzzle, even though you’re too busy to stay? No, come on. I don’t buy that. What’s really going on?”
Ralph hesitates. He reaches into the backseat to gently pull Tycho’s broken ear between his knuckles. She sighs softly in her sleep, snuggling her face into his hand.
“I do have to work, but I didn’t want to cancel our date,” he says slowly. “And I thought - maybe…”
He stops there.
Calla watches him intently, a flame of curiosity catching in her chest. Adrenaline, too, although she doesn’t know why yet. There’s some dangerous glint in Ralph’s eyes as he sits there silently, looking at her.
“Are you up for something different tonight?” he asks.
~~~~
Cold night air blows softly against Calla’s face, drawing a pink blush to her cheeks.
That’s where she’s telling herself the blush came from, anyways. But every time she glances at Ralph it gets deeper.
He doesn’t seem to have noticed. His eyes are focused on the dark trees lining the forest road. He’s waiting in the shadowy treeline on the opposite side, where he drew Calla to stand with him. Out of sight of the road, even though he’s got clear eyes on it. He’s keeping very, very quiet.
Tycho is remarkably still and silent, for a little puppy. She’s crouched down by Ralph’s steel-toed boots, watching the road with intent, alert blue eyes.
A pinpoint of light flashes through the trees on the other side of the road, then disappears. Someone in the shadows further down, signaling to Ralph. It must be, because as soon as he sees it, he catches Calla’s hand and strides across the road, directly into the dark forest on the other side.
Calla follows him without asking questions, her heartbeat crashing through her like thunder.
If she closes her eyes, she can still see Ralph sitting beside her in the bar at the hotel they robbed together, his sage green gaze lingering on her face despite his best efforts to stop himself. She can still taste the spice of the bourbon he was drinking, the glass that she took from him. The smoky sweetness of malt on her tongue, and his smoky eyes glowing intimately at her in recognition. With perfect, instinctive understanding that she’s trouble, just like him.
Being the Warlord is the one thing he’s completely unrepentant about. Calla loves that.
The humming, brilliant sparks in her chest, the ones she always gets before she goes out for a robbery - they’re telling her that she’s not just with Ralph. She’s out with the Warlord, tonight. She knows it.
That’s why she didn’t ask why he drove to some abandoned country road that doesn’t belong to Port Sitka or Ketterbridge, then led her directly into the forest.
“There have been rumors that the Warlord was gearing up for a raid,” Calla murmurs, keeping her voice soft. “I’m starting to feel like he brought me along for the ride.”
Ralph looks at her from the shadows, breaking into a small smile.
“Thought you might have fun,” he murmurs, squeezing her hand.
Calla is glad this isn’t a night she went for a dress. She’s in her usual jeans and a stretchy black yoga top, with heavy jump boots and a soft leather jacket and all her piercings in her ears. Some instinct told her to dress right for the occasion.
“I’ve heard that people in this game live in fear of getting raided by the Warlord,” she says. “Heard that it’s like getting hit by an elite tactical unit, if the whole unit had collectively lost their minds.”
Ralph breathes out a soft laugh. “Shock troops tend to be effective, even when they’re as goddamn unruly as mine.”
Calla looks at him curiously. “How do you know all this stuff? I know it’s mostly from experience, but - I’ve always wondered where you started.”
Ralph doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Calla thinks he’s probably not going to answer, so when his voice finally comes out from the darkness again, it’s surprising for more than one reason.
“Read all the warfare books I could get my hands on when I was a kid. Thought passing that information on to my dad might help him keep safe. Learned from the books that rank-and-file soldiers who only just finished Basic don’t actually get to make any important decisions. But by then I was already interested. Not exactly in war, but - in strategy.”
Calla’s expression softens, quickly turning serious. She looks searchingly over at Ralph, but he - seems okay, talking about this. Surprisingly. He did say that he finally told Aiden and Noah about his dad, which really helped in some way he won’t explain. He also visited his dad’s grave, for the first time in a long time. Calla knows that talking to her about it has helped Ralph, too.
It all seems to have come together to bring Ralph into a newfound place of internal peace. Fragile, in its infant form, still growing, but - he just talked about this with only the barest of prompting, and with only a little extra roughness in his voice.
“Warfare books?” Calla asks tentatively, being careful not to push too far. “How old were you when he got deployed, again?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never done any reading above your grade level.” Ralph lets go of her hand and winds an arm around her shoulders, drawing her close to him. “I know that’s bullshit.”
Calla blushes as Ralph leaves a lingering kiss on her temple. She bites back a smile, tucking her hand into the back pocket of his black jeans.
“What does strategy say about bringing a puppy with you on a raid?” she asks, dropping her gaze to Tycho.
Ralph lets out a soft, groaning laugh. “I know, I know, but the boys love the whole wolf rumor thing. Gotta keep ‘em happy, and they think it’s real fuckin’ funny, so. Here we are.”
“Bringing your wolf into battle?” Calla giggles softly. “You’re a proper Viking, Raðulfr.”
Ralph lets out a startled laugh, and Calla lets go of him to step around a patch of dry leaves, her heart fluttering at the warm sound of his laughter. Sometimes there’s a slight hiss to it, and it reminds her of the hissing sound he made once when she used her teeth to pull back the waistband of his boxer briefs, then let it snap hard against his thighs. The memory of his expression alone is enough to give her cheeks a scorching blush.
But that’s not the real reason she’s reeling inside, right now.
She kind of can’t believe that he brought her along, that he’s planning to let her see this.
“And what does strategy say about showing off?” she asks, giving him a teasing poke in the ribs.
Ralph turns around to walk backwards, takes both of Calla’s hands in his, and bends to press a kiss onto them as he goes.
“Every man’s got his weakness,” he says, smiling at her from the shadows. “Afraid I can’t help myself.”
Calla doesn’t understand that answer. She furrows her eyebrows and opens her mouth to ask him what that means, but he stops suddenly, staring intently into her eyes.
“You alright with being the Warlord’s girl?” he murmurs, his voice growing serious. “Out in the open? I know you can look out for yourself, but - you know what it means?”
Calla is surprised by the question, but she does know what it means, and her answer. She doesn’t feel the need to question her instincts on this one, not at all. It’s a startlingly freeing sensation.
She meets Ralph’s eyes and gives him a nod, giddy little thrills running through her body.
His face lights up. He stares at her with a smile playing around his lips, his eyes wide and full of moonlight.
He wordlessly places a long, deep kiss on her lips, then turns and leads her out onto a little slope in the forest floor, overlooking a clearing.
The trees must catch and muffle noise pretty well, because Calla didn’t hear anything until now, and the people gathered in the clearing are not bothering to be quiet.
The energy below is - ridiculous. Calla has the immediate impression of the clearing as a haywire electrical circuit, sending erratic sparks and bolts of lightning and pure electricity shooting off in every direction. Except they’re people.
All of them are young, and dressed in dark clothes, but those are about the only uniformities they share. It’s like a carnival. No one is doing the same thing, and everyone is talking at once. There’s manic laughter, people tussling, lighting up, dangling from the tree branches -
They all look up as one when Calla and Ralph stop on the ridge just above them.
Calla recognizes Shawn, now one of Ralph’s lieutenants, recently promoted to second in command. A couple of others, too, she knows work for him. These all must be Ralph’s people, the Warlord’s people.
This is the raid, Calla realizes. Right now.
A zip of sparkling, electric adrenaline runs up her spine, making her shiver inside.
Ralph squeezes her hand, then leads her down to join the others. Striding along slowly, taking his time. All eyes flit to Calla as they make their approach, watching her curiously.
She glances at Ralph, and finds his eyes glowing with pride.
It suddenly dawns on Calla that this is what he meant. He didn’t bring Calla here so he could show off in front of her. He brought her here so he could show her off to everyone else. Couldn’t help himself, apparently. Every man’s got his weakness.
She could almost laugh, but instead she finds herself trying not to blush again. Ralph has always had his own way of paying her compliments, and his way does something to her that nobody else’s has before.
She can practically feel him glowing next to her as his boys all turn to stare at her.
Ralph lets her go and starts walking among his commandos. He greets everyone he passes by name, and they all turn instinctively towards him. He doesn’t have to elbow his way through the little crowd. They part for him, while simultaneously drawing closer to cluster around him. Tycho weaves around by his boots, stopping to sniff the fingers of everyone who reaches down to pet her, shying away from so many voices calling her name, but tail wagging excitedly.
“Hey, everyone,” Ralph calls. Keeping his voice soft, but everyone instantly falls silent to listen. He gazes through all of them, right at Calla, a smile quirking up his lips. “This is Calla.”
He doesn’t say anything beyond that, but suddenly everyone is looking at her like she stands on the same footing with the Warlord, so. Maybe he’s already said some things when she wasn’t around.
She breaks into a smile, gives everyone a little two-fingered salute, then lets out a startled laugh when a crashing wave of wild, enthusiastic greetings in every form comes back to her. She can’t make out one word of all the overlapping noise, but someone in front does a dramatic bow, and the chick who was using a blowtorch lighter on her cigarette fires it up into the air.
Ralph grins, too, then turns to Shawn, dropping his voice to a confidential volume.
“Sitrep?” he murmurs.
“The two who pulled patrol duty are still up at the road,” Shawn begins, as Ralph lights up a cigarette. “We’ve got two more at the…”
Calla turns away as he keeps going, running her eyes over the motley pack of people surrounding her.
They’re called the Warlord’s boys, but Calla sees girls looking back at her, too, and some people with no immediately apparent gender to speak of. Looks like being one of the Warlord’s boys is more about the spirit of the thing than about being actual boys.
Everyone here looks tough as nails, humming with the same vibrating energy lighting up Calla’s veins. There’s a shifting excitement and restlessness to everyone, fingers being cracked and heels being rocked on.
Curious people are gathering around Calla, filling her eyes with a kaleidoscope of piercings, of inky tattooed knives, fangs, claws. Shadowy faces, glittering eyes. Everyone here looks like they wouldn’t fit into polite society, and like they know it, and like they don’t give a fuck.
Calla’s eyes catch on a familiar face. A lean young man with a safety pin in each ear, another through his septum, and tattoos that climb up his neck to disappear into both his beard and his mess of auburn hair.
“Hey, Bailey,” Calla calls, as he leans around the others to see her.
He blinks in surprise, drawing his head back sharply. He looks bewildered about how she knows who he is, but also instantly delighted, as if this gives him some special designation. He casts a smirky grin around at the others, then spreads his fingers in a friendly wave.
“Hey!” He shoves his way through the crowd to her, ignoring it when someone slaps the back of his head in retaliation. “Welcome to the raid!”
“Why, thank you,” Calla laughs, accepting the fist-bump of greeting he offers her.
She’s inexplicably happy to see that he’s still with Ralph’s outfit, after all this time. She gives him a warm smile, and he blinks hard in surprise, but he returns it.
“Shit, you don’t seem nervous,” he observes, sounding slightly impressed. “Even about meeting all of us at once.”
Calla looks around at the sea of scary-looking people around her, trying not to laugh. She’s baffled and quietly delighted to find herself feeling completely, totally at home.
These are Ralph’s work friends, she realizes suddenly.
The moment this thought lands on Calla, she sucks in a sharp breath and has to fight down an honest to god burst of uncontrollable laughter. Ray the sculptor and his type were the ex’s work friends, and Calla just tried to envision what a meeting between them and Ralph’s work friends would look like.
It’s too funny to even imagine fully, so she lets go of the thought, then lets out her suppressed energy by giving Bailey’s shoulder an excited punch, which takes him by surprise and sends him staggering back a step.
“Nah, I’m not nervous,” she says brightly, half-laughing. “I feel good.”
“You fit right in, don’t you?” Bailey laughs, watching her shift from foot to foot with restless excitement.
Ralph finishes up his conversation with Shawn, then glances at Calla and gives her a beckoning nod with his head.
It was just for her, but everyone snaps to attention, falling into formation with no further prompting. Ralph lets his eyes travel over them, and they all watch him, waiting.
“Let’s go,” he says softly.
Everyone falls in at his back as he turns away. It’s been noisy up until now, but perfect silence descends as the group forms into a tight pack and steals forward into the forest.
Calla walks at Ralph’s side until they crest a little hilltop and find themselves looking at the objective, down below.
It’s a country house, small and shabby and rundown. Out here in the middle of nowhere, situated on the edge of a tiny lake. There’s only one road that leads to it, unpaved and partially overgrown, but deep tire tracks in the mud that suggest a lot of recent activity. There are two big black cars parked outside, and lights glowing in the windows on both floors.
Ralph stops, gazing down at the house.
Moving like a phantom made of many shadows, the Warlord’s boys spread out behind him, Calla, and Tycho on the ridge. Silent, but the haywire energy is rising. Calla can feel it at her back, even with the distraction of her heart hammering in her ears.
“Hello, Rigor Mortis,” Ralph murmurs.
A soft ripple of laughter rises from the line of outlaws at his back. He signals for them to hold their position as he slips his phone from his pocket and starts dialing in a number from memory.
“What kind of fight is this going to be?” Calla whispers to Ralph.
“There’s probably not gonna be a fight.” Ralph hits call, then lifts his phone to his ear, his eyes on the house. “I’m looking for a surrender.”
Whoever he’s calling answers on the second ring, then doesn’t say anything.
“Morty,” Ralph says easily, keeping his voice quiet. “How’s your night going?”
“Ralph,” growls a voice from the other end of the line. “What have I done to deserve a call from you?”
Ralph snickers softly, coldly.
“Guess that means you haven’t heard about how two Rigor Mortis boys wandered into my territory and tried to pick off one of mine? Took him out into the forest and threatened to kill him if he didn’t hand over information on me. But I think you do know about that, don't you? Even if you found out after the fact. I’m guessing you wouldn’t have sanctioned that type of lunacy.”
There’s only silence from the other end of the line.
“Come on, Morty,” Ralph says, in a tone like he’s asking him to be reasonable. “You didn’t really think I could let something like that go unpunished, did you?”
“It hasn’t gone unpunished on my end,” Morty snarls, and Ralph shrugs his shoulders, unconcerned.
“Still, you knew to expect this call.”
“Goddamnit - what’ll it take to make you forget about it, Ralph?”
Ralph’s eyes flit back to the house. “Nice place you’ve got near that little lake. What’s the square footage?”
There’s another heavy silence from the other end of the line.
“This can end right there, with that house,” Ralph says simply, breathing out smoke with his words. “Or you can fight me for it, and then it won’t. Up to you. I’m good either way.”
Another pained silence from the other end of the line. No answer. Ralph gives him a moment to say something, but Morty doesn’t take it.
“I know how you like to channel your creativity, Morty. Did you leave any love notes for me to find in your house?”
Calla can almost hear Morty gritting his teeth, but after a moment there’s an answer.
“There’s - there’s a tripwire. Second floor, in front of the door to the office.”
Ralph lowers his phone and snaps his fingers at Shawn to get his attention. “Tripwire. Second floor, by the office.”
Shawn turns and quietly spreads this information among the ranks as Ralph lifts his phone back to his ear.
“That better be everything, Morty. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to be responsible for another one of my boys getting hurt.”
“You’re really taking that house, Ralph?” Morty snaps, clearly struggling to keep his voice under control. “Picking off a worthless little pawn? I thought you knew how to play the game better than that.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Ralph smiles down at the dilapidated, shabby little house. “I’ve been scouting it for a while, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got at least a bishop.”
Morty breathes out a quiet, agonized sound. Calla can almost see him grabbing a fistful of his hair.
“But I know you didn’t send those boys into my turf,” Ralph goes on, breathing out a slow stream of smoke. “And I’m in a real good mood tonight. So I’m gonna do something nice for you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Morty spits. “What’s that?”
“I’m here at your house, right now-”
Morty lets out a sharp, sputtering sound. “Right now?”
“-but I’m gonna give you thirty whole seconds to safely exfil your boys before I send mine in.”
Morty is breathing hard and fast. “What the fuck am I even supposed to tell them?”
Ralph smiles, his grey-green eyes glittering darkly.
“Tell them the Warlord is coming,” he says, and hangs up.
He slips his phone back into his pocket, gazes thoughtfully at the house, then turns to face his people. They all look at their general in rapt attention, but there’s also that wildness to the ranks, a rising tidal wave of frenetic energy that Calla can practically feel building in the air.
“Here there be treasure,” Ralph laughs, breaking into a smirky grin.
His boys watch him excitedly, expectantly.
Ralph tosses his head in the direction of the house behind him. “You want that for your own?”
There’s a quiet, snickering murmur of agreement. A few of the boys are starting to bounce a little, straining to get off the leash. Tycho must feel the rising energy, too, because she stands at attention, panting excitedly.
Ralph lets the silence hang for a moment, then breaks into a shadowy smile again.
“Then it’s yours,” he says.
The quiet finally breaks up into a wave of excited laughter from the Warlord’s boys. Everyone shifts on their feet, stretching out, hyping up, the energy building around them in a cyclonic wave.
Tycho, bouncing from foot to foot with excitement, suddenly sits down, throws her head back, and lets out a long, lone howl.
It’s such a little sound from her little body, but it causes an instant, uproarious wave of laughter from the ranks. More wolf howls split the air as the Warlord’s boys throw their heads back to join Tycho.
The doors of the lake house crash open, and Rigor Mortis men come spilling out in a panic, rushing for their cars. The laughter among the Warlord’s ranks swells as their fleeing enemies drop the bags they’re carrying in their rush to abandon the house.
Ralph turns to face the house, lifts one hand, and gives the signal.
There’s a roar as the Warlord’s boys all launch into movement as one, sweeping past Ralph and Calla, racing down the hill as their enemies scatter and flee.
Ralph shoots Calla a wide grin, catches her hand, and sets off down the hill after them.
Calla lets out a disbelieving laugh, then starts to run, too.
~~~~
The Warlord’s boys have the run of the place within minutes. The unfortunate Rigor Mortis stragglers limp and crawl and drag each other off into the darkness, rushing after the cars receding into the distance.
One of the Warlord’s commandos - a young woman with a manic grin on her face, what look like old-fashioned welding goggles around her neck, and huge, long-healed burns on her arms - comes downstairs from the second floor with the disassembled tripwire to show Ralph.
“I can make something sick out of this,” she says eagerly, examining the broken-down materials. “Can I keep it, boss?”
“Yeah, but don’t make me regret it.”
Calla points at the disassembled explosives in her hands, unable to resist asking. “Sorry, but - is this type of thing how you got the burns?”
“Oh - yeah. That was a pretty big fuck-up. Messed me up pretty good!” She lets out a bright, wild cackle of laughter. “You should’ve seen the fire, though! I almost burned my eyes tryna keep ‘em open! It was a thing of beauty!”
She bounds off to help the others secure the perimeter, as if that’s pretty much all that needs to be said. Calla watches her go, then slowly turns to Ralph, who shrugs his shoulders, biting back a laugh.
“I figure it’s better to have her working for me than out there in the world doing whatever she feels like,” he murmurs. “No one knows what her name is. We’re not even sure that she knows. Boys call her Flint.”
“Well, I officially like everyone I’ve met so far,” Calla giggles.
Ralph blinks hard, looking startled and delighted at that comment. A small, warm smile plays around his lips, and he twines his fingers into his wristbands.
He hurriedly turns away, then begins walking slowly around the living room, Tycho at his feet, his eyes roving over everything.
Calla follows him around for a minute, then wanders off to explore on her own. She can see that Ralph is looking for something, even if he’s not sure what it is. He’s got his boys searching every room of the broken-down little house, doing a full sweep. He must have had reason to believe there was something here worth taking.
Calla pauses in the back of the living room, gazing up at the ceiling. She’s good at casing places quickly, and her instincts are telling her that the house is structurally sound, just old and dusty. She hesitates, then leaps lightly up onto an armchair.
Ralph glances at her over his shoulder, then does a double-take as Calla puts one foot on the back of the armchair and kicks off of it, leaping into the air before her momentum can tip it over. She catches hold of one of the beams crisscrossing the ceiling, gives herself a little swing back and forth, then swings her feet up and catches the beam with the heel of her boot.
From there she can easily pull herself up into the first-floor rafters. She does, then drops lightly to sit straddling the beam. She dusts her hands off, gazing around.
She glances down and realizes that a few pairs of eyes are on her, including Ralph’s. He’s the only one who doesn’t look startled, and the first one to look away and turn back to what he was doing.
He’s smiling to himself. She catches sight of it even from her perch in the ceiling.
Calla lightly gets up into a crouch and weaves her way among the rafters, doing a visual sweep of the living room from above. Despite the shabbiness of the house, it does have some decently high ceilings going for it, and Calla has a pretty good view from up here.
She moves further along the beam, then stops, narrowing her eyes. Behind one of the couches in the living room, between the back of the couch and the wall - she sees a sliver of light coming up through the floorboards. It’s incredibly easy to miss, with all the lights in the house switched on, but she’s pretty sure…
“Ralph, baby,” Calla calls softly, crouching on the beam above the sliver of light. He looks up at her, and she points to the light switch. “Kill those for a second. Please.”
She thought at the last second to add the please so she wasn’t giving him orders right in front of his people, but realized about the baby thing too late.
But Ralph only smiles a little wider before he flips the light switch, and the living room falls into darkness.
As soon as it does, a visible stripe of golden light shines up through the crack in the floorboards. It traces straight up all the way to Calla, falls across her face where she’s perched in the rafters.
Everyone stares at it for a second, and then Ralph’s voice comes out of the darkness. “This place have a basement?”
“There’s no door to one,” Shawn’s voice answers, sounding startled. “Inside or outside.”
Ralph flips on the lights and snaps his fingers at his guys, already crossing to one end of the couch. His people gather around to help him drag it out of the way.
Calla can see now that there’s a rug that must normally cover this part of the floor. It got jostled out of place at some point during the raid. It must have been covering both the escaping bit of light from below, and the handle of the trap door that becomes visible as soon as Ralph and the others set the couch down out of the way.
Ralph pauses, then bends down and drags the rug further back.
He opens the trap door in one swift movement, and a shaft of light spills upwards from it, illuminating his face, then illuminating Calla in the rafters.
There’s a collective murmur, and Bailey steps forward to hop down, but Ralph quickly lifts an arm to stop him.
“Me first,” he says firmly. “Just in case Monty has any further surprises for us. And in case anyone’s hiding down there.”
That thought hadn’t occurred to Calla, who freezes in alarm as Ralph drops down into the basement, all by himself.
Calla swings her leg over the side of the rafter, dangles from only her hands for a split second, then drops. She falls directly through the open trap door, which makes it a long drop, but she lands in a neat crouch at the bottom.
“Whoa!” she hears Bailey sputter from somewhere above her. “Holy shit!”
Ralph, who had gone a few steps into the basement, stares at her with his mouth dropped open, his sage green eyes enormous.
“Calla!” He sounds scandalized, but he’s also half-laughing. “What the f- I can’t believe you just did that! Get back up there, there could be anything down here-”
“Yeah, so maybe it’s a stupid idea to go in alone, dummy!” Calla straightens up, panting, and brushes off her jeans. She rushes over to Ralph and seizes hold of his rippy shirt, relieved beyond measure that he hasn’t already encountered some hidden enemy. “And don’t you tell me what to d-”
Calla breaks off, staring past Ralph into the basement.
He doesn’t turn to look with her, but from the triumphant grin returning to his face, he’s already gotten an eyeful.
The Warlord’s boys have been peering anxiously down through the trapdoor, and they all draw back collectively when Ralph and Calla poke their heads up through it.
Ralph folds his elbows on the floor as he looks up to make the announcement.
“Fully outfitted growhouse, full of green,” he says simply. “Goes so far down there, it’s hard to even see from one end to the other.”
There’s a stunned pause, and then a disbelieving shout of triumph. Calla laughs as she’s excitedly hauled out of the trapdoor. Ralph lightly pulls himself up after her.
He leads Calla to the front door as the boys disappear into the basement to take in their find. Calla follows him out into the breezy summer night, watching the frenzied chaos over her shoulder, fighting back a laugh.
“Not a bad night’s work,” Ralph snickers, lighting up a cigarette. “Appreciate your eagle eyes, finding us what we needed.”
“You should bring me along more often,” Calla laughs, meaning it much more than she’s letting on.
Ralph looks at her lingeringly, his grey-green eyes impossible to read behind the smoke, but smiling. He opens his mouth, his head tilted inquiringly to the side, then seems to change his mind and quickly clears his throat.
“Hey, I’m happy to bring you along,” he says teasingly, breaking into a grin. “Shit, I’m happy to be seen anywhere with a dime like you on my arm. You look like one of the seven deadly sins, in person.”
“Wrath?” Calla giggles.
“No.” Ralph’s eyes do a slow, slow drag up and down her body, then stop on her eyes. “Not wrath.”
Calla bites her lip, kind of rolls her eyes, then snuggles her face into his chest, having a hard time meeting his eyes.
He leans down to rest his cheek on the top of her head. She can feel him smiling. Her heart seems to feel it, too.
“Maybe a little bit of wrath,” he adds, after a moment. “It’s all good, though. I - I like it. Don’t know why.”
Calla giggles softly, then realizes her face aches from laughing. That’s been happening a lot, lately. When she’s with him.
“My fuckin’ face hurts,” he suddenly mumbles into her hair, breathing out a quiet laugh.
Calla closes her eyes. That thought she hasn’t been able to put away, the one she’s been trying to avoid admitting to herself - it’s back again, in full force. It gets stronger and stronger with every second she spends in his arms.
“Ralph,” she says abruptly, without thinking.
“Mhm?”
“Will you - will you come see me in Port Sitka tomorrow? I’m sorry, I know you already drove there and back today, but-”
“Nah, I’ll come,” he says immediately, straightening up to smile down at her. “What are we doing?”
“Just come meet me, okay? I’ll text you the time and the address.”
Ralph tilts his head to the side, caught by surprise. “Just like that? No puzzle this time?”
Calla takes a deep breath, then shakes her head, willing herself to trust her instincts, her heart.
“No. Not this time. I’d rather just be sure you’re coming.”
Ralph stares at her with obvious curiosity, but he only nods, smoothing his curled knuckles up her jaw.
“Alright,” he says softly. “I’ll be there.”
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