Renegade

Emily's POV

12 hours without talking. We had rented the silver sedan just after noon, and now it was just past midnight. Having just gotten my license, I had offered to drive, but Griff wouldn’t hear it. After the first two hours of silence, I had tried to start a conversation, but he seemed so angry and bitter that I wasn’t sure whether I wanted him to respond to me. But after twelve hours, I was about ready to die from boredom. And the worst part? We still had three hours to go.

I felt like I had lost the Griffin that I had met in Gibraltar, always smiling and joking around, feisty to authority and rebellious. The person sitting next to me in the driver’s seat was a broken, depressed version of the guy he used to be. I decided that Griff needed to smile.

“That’s it,” I spoke into the humid silence that filled the car, “Griff, you have to talk to me at some point. We’ve been going for a solid twelve hours now. What’s up?”

For the first time since we had talked on the bench in Rome, Griff opened his mouth to speak, saying,

“Emily, I’m sorry if I’ve been distant, but I’m still a bit shaken up.”

Yes!, I thought, Something to talk about!

But then I felt horrible, realizing that I was getting excited about the fact that Griff was emotionally damaged. Then again, I had been waiting for a conversation topic for literally twelve hours. At this point, I was ready to talk about anything.

I glanced over at him and when the streetlights lit his face, I was very surprised to see a tear welling up in his emerald eyes. As I continued to stare at him, and as he kept his eyes locked forward, the tear feel silently down his right cheek, tracing a path through the thin layer of dried sweat that had accumulated on his skin, eventually dropping off of his face and falling onto his shorts.

“About the fight, about Nico, or about…the ship?” I asked gently. In asking the question, I had found my answer. Of course he was still shaken up about the ship. He hadn’t been able to save the kid, and I guess that had gotten him at a level much deeper than I had thought.

“Griff, you know that there was nothing that we could have—”

“We could have been faster!” He screamed, keeping his eyes locked on the road, furiously wiping the tears from his eyes, “We could have noticed Thorn as soon as he got on the ship, Emily!”

I was silent from shock. I hadn’t meant to get Griff on a shouting spree, but now he was glaring at me, his eyes veined with red, angry tears spilling down his face. In the yellow-white light of the streetlights, he looked even scarier.

“He had his whole life ahead of him, Emily! Middle School, High School, College, Marriage, kids of his own! And we…we could have…we could have…”

He didn’t even finish his sentence. He just pulled over to the side of the road, put his head in his hands and cried. His head rested on the top of the wheel as he sobbed, letting out all of the stress he had held back over the past three days. And it was the most awkward moment ever.

I mean, what am I supposed to do? Here I am, sitting two feet from the guy, but I don’t want to pat him on the back and tell him the world’s going to be rosy! That’d just be weird, and untrue. We both knew we had more fights ahead of us, but we hadn’t prepared for the stress and reality of it all.

“Griff,” I started, “You have to keep going. We have to keep going. We have a job to do. You have to be strong, Griff. I know it sucks, but you know you couldn’t have done anything more to help the kid. You have to let go. And if you can’t let go, let it drive you.”

“What?” He asked, momentarily pausing his sobs, “What do you mean, ‘let it drive you’?”

“Let the anger, the fear, the sorrow, let it push you to find him, Griff,” I couldn’t believe I was telling him to get angry and go into a determined rage, but that’s what the guy needed. A good dose of Roman sense of duty and determination.

“You have to push past the sadness and focus on the goal,” I reminded him, and he stared at me in awe. Then, he tightened his jaw and said,

“Good point. We need to deliver this package. Then, I find Thorn.”

He looked at me, and amended, “We find Thorn.”

I smiled at him, but he just looked at me as if he couldn’t bring himself to smile. Like he was only being as polite as to not cry in front of me again. I hoped he would pull through this, because I couldn’t take it if he was this sad all the time.

He turned the key in the ignition and got back on the highway. At half past midnight on a Tuesday, there wasn’t much traffic on the highways, so we finished the three-hour leg of the journey to Berlin in just over 90 minutes, checking in to a 24-hour motel at just past 2:00 in the morning. We didn’t even need to speak German, because we looked so tired, the elderly motel owner showed us to a room and grunted in broken English,

“Pay in morning.” We thanked him tiredly and flopped onto the twin beds, falling asleep instantly. Luckily, we were too exhausted to have nightmares.
_______________________________________________________________________

The next morning, after paying the poor elderly landlord a couple of extra Euros, I dug through the backpack and dug out the directions. We found the square that held the massive Brandenburg Gate. The thing looked like a massive Roman temple entrance, which I liked a lot. We were instructed in Nico’s letter to meet at the Starbucks a block from the gate. Luckily, the motel wasn’t more than two blocks from the Starbucks, so it would be an easy escape if needed.

We picked up a couple of coffees and found seats at a table near the back of the café, facing the door and the rest of the store, with nothing behind us but a wall. A good table for surveillance. After about fifteen minutes of waiting, a man in a grey suit and slacks walked through the Starbucks entrance. He looked directly at us, and something in my brain told me he was the “client.”

A word about TFG's “clients.” Clients can be from anywhere in the world, and can often be what we, on the side of the Gods would call, “badguys.” We tried to avoid meeting with the clients for that specific reason, but this guy looked harmless.

To start, the guy couldn’t have weighed more than 110 pounds, and stood maybe five-foot-one off the ground. He had faded blond hair, hair that used to be sandy-colored, but was faded with age. He had a wrinkly scar that ran down to his chin from his left eye, like a fold in his facial skin.

Something told me he had Greek heritage, but a bigger something told me that he was definitely a German. In his organized look, his calculated walk, and the straightness of his posture I could tell that this guy had never left the Fatherland in his entire life. So how had he come into business with TFG?

Griff stood, nervous, and put out his hand. The man shook it firmly, and sat down in the seat across from us. He laced his fingers together and said,

“Thank you both for coming out on behalf of my client.”

The man had an outrageous German accent, straight out of a comedy movie. He also had a lot of other funny features, but I won’t get into them, because this accent as unbelievable. It was so thick, we had to stop and think to decipher what he had just said for at least five seconds. This was the kind of accent that was developed over years of trying to learn a foreign language and failing, leaving you with only a few words in the language and a crazy thick way of saying those words. Anyways, he continued,

“Unfortunately, he is unable to meet you here in Berlin. My severe condolences to have caused you any inconvenience. He awaits you in Paris. Here are the instructions.”

He handed us a crisp white envelope and stood, but Griff was quick to react.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, just a minute! You’re not the client?”

The man turned around and gave Griff a look of absolute hatred for being so rude as to ask him a question. A look that said,

Kid, if you only knew who I really was you’d be as silent as a graveyard.

“No,” The man snapped with barely controlled anger.

What had Griff done to get this guy’s knickers in a twist?

“I am not your client. As I said, he awaits you in Paris; the instructions are enclosed in that envelope. Good day.”

He clicked his heels as he turned, but Griff being Griff, had to get in one last question.

“Can we at least get a name to tell your client?”

The man turned, but this time, he wasn’t angry at Griff. He just smiled wickedly and answered, without a trace of the outrageous German accent,

“My name is Mr. Otto Field. Have a good day, Griffin Charles Jackson.”

He put a stress on the ‘Mr.’ like it was important, but that didn’t matter. Where had his accent gone? Then, realization hit. That was just an act! He wasn’t really German. And if he wasn’t really German, who was he?

We stared in confusion, and then horror as the man turned and walked away. Suddenly, there was a loud hiss! from the coffee bar, we jumped, jerking our heads to the sound. When we turned back, the man had disappeared. We looked at each other and silently decided never to meet with Mr. Otto Field again. The guy scared us.

“We need to leave,” Griffin gulped in a low voice, and I agreed. As soon as we had made sure nobody else in the crowded café was watching us, we calmly walked to the door. Once we were out, we sprinted as far away as we could, not even caring where we were going.

After about six blocks, we ran out of breath, and I shouted to Griff, far ahead, “Hey, wait up! We don’t even know where we are!”

He turned back and we regrouped, sitting on a bench in the middle of a concrete square.

“Sorry,” He breathed heavily, “I didn’t even realize you were behind me! My fault. Where do we want to go?”

That got me thinking. Here was an opportunity to rest for the first time in four days, to relax and unwind.

“Let’s explore!” I said cheerfully, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see the slightest hint of a smile playing at Griff’s lips.

Yes! I thought, The guy still knows how to smile.

So, we walked around the square, heading towards a public park full of trees. All of a sudden, a huge wave of protesters, shouting about something to do with animal rights, stormed into the square, blocking the entrance to the park. We were enveloped by the wave of people, and I almost lost Griff. Without thinking, he reached for my hand and I took it grasping onto him tightly as we wove through the hundreds of people.

After we had gotten through the crowd, we walked leisurely towards the park, enjoying the breeze. After we had walked around for another 15 minutes, we came across a cheerful old lady, sitting on a metal bench and feeding a group of pigeons at her feet.

When she looked at us, she developed a huge smile, looking at something between Griffin and I, at about waist level. We both followed her gaze to discover that we were still holding hands. We both blushed hard, and Griff let go of my hand. I didn’t want him to, but we were both so embarrassed that I didn’t speak up. The old pigeon lady laughed heartily and returned to her birds, leaving Griff and I standing awkwardly together.

We both laughed out of pure embarrassment, and continued to walk through the park. Despite the nice scenery and the beautiful weather, Griff’s eyebrows had managed to scrunch themselves together in worry and contemplation. He was still thinking about the ship.

“So, Paris, eh?” I asked playfully, and he couldn’t help but smile.

“Let me guess, you’ve always wanted to learn French?” He asked flatly, and I retorted,

“No. I hate the French.” He looked at me with an eyebrow raised, and I smiled, "Just kidding! Jeez, it's like you can't take a joke."

Still grinning, I punched him playfully in the shoulder,.

“Ow,” He grunted without emotion, and I laughed.

I can get the old Griff back, I thought, I know I can.

Notes

Enjoy! This is another long chapter, but I had to introduce Mr. Otto Field, who *hint-hint* will become a very important character later in this fanfic or in the sequel I am planning for this one.