31. Diego

Iwas a little thrown off by my friend's surprise appearance, but I couldn't say it was entirely unexpected. Guy was one of the best hackers in the world. The fact that he was watching all of our aliases for activity really should have been something I considered.

Roni looked like a deer in the headlights when she saw them all standing around and as I introduced them. I was surprised, however, that she knew Natalia, although I shouldn't have been. As big as Washington was, it was also pretty small. Everyone in politics knew or knew of each other.

"Looks like you've done a lot. Why don't we go walk a perimeter around the camp? Roni and Christine, why don't you guys work on cooking up something to eat while we wait on Abbi to hopefully bag us some fresh protein?" Wells suggested.

"If that didn't sound like the least physical job here, I'd be calling you sexist. But I'm exhausted," Christine said with a wink.

Roni nodded, and together she and Christine went into the house.

"All right, don't bullshit me. Why was the whole team tagged in for this? We were doing okay out here on our own," I said to Wells and Mendez. They were to my right and left as we walked a perimeter around the front of the house where it faced the woods.

"What, you can't just be happy to see us?" Mendez teased.

I gave him a sour look. "I said no bullshitting." I turned to Wells, because I could count on him to give me a straight answer. "Why the whole team?"

His face was serious, his jaw set like he was about to deliver some terrible news. "We all took the vote and decided we'd like you better breathing, and Christine got the jet ready. Your burner was off, and we had no other way to reach you quickly. We didn't know if you'd found yourself in trouble or not and couldn't wait around to find out. Don't understand the resources the Geneva Project has. They're referring to themselves as the movement for radical governmental change, and they're growing quite the following. They've set up a legit charity and asked youth to donate toward a better government and better world."

I felt my face drain of color, because I could already see where this was headed.

"And of course, people from all over the world have donated. They've got stacks of cash now, and let's just say their mercenary team has grown exponentially. The four Boeing B747-8s they've acquired is proof enough. You know what else was on that plane? Canines. They've got dog teams to try to sniff you out. "

"Fuck," I groaned.

Mendez clasped a hand on my shoulder. "We've got your back. We'll take some time to add additional security measures to the woods, trailcams, and small traps. From a defensive perspective, it's better if they approach us by the cliff path. They could only come up two by two, and they'll be much slower going up a steep path like that. It will give us time to prepare."

With four Boeings they could easily have a hundred and sixty men, all armed to the teeth. With all twelve of us, we stood a better chance than just the two, although we were still completely outnumbered. What was worse was this wasn't a foreign country where we'd do our damage and disappear into the night. It would be an absolute nightmare if what was likely to become a bloodbath became public.

"If I were them, I'd divide into two teams. One to come up the path and distract us, and a second team to attack from the rear and catch us off guard, trapping us between them," Mendez added. That was my fear as well, which was why I'd started showing Roni how to defend herself with both of my guns, and she taught herself bow and arrow. If we got split up, at least she wouldn't be defenseless. Although I'd hoped that Geneva's resources would be much smaller. Hearing that they had a small army was sickening. If my friends hadn't shown up, we would have been completely outgunned. Now it was twelve to one.

I frowned. "So we need a defensive game plan. A certain number of traps for the wooded area, a certain number for the upward path, and then we need to divide into teams to defend each side."

Wells interjected, "I think the best way to do that is to give the whole group a tour of the surrounding landscape. The best places to hide, the best high points to defend from, and set a rendezvous point."

He was right.

"We'll start a tour first thing in the morning, split into two teams and canvas the few surrounding square miles, and then switch out for the second team. We shouldn't leave the camp unguarded."

They nodded their agreement. Tonight we'd finish getting set up, we'd have a good meal, and we'd talk strategy and teams. I'd pick Guy's brain for everything he'd uncovered on the Geneva Project, and then we'd take everything from there.

We returned back to the camp, and I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly it had transformed. It had been maybe an hour. Already one tent was up, with the portable camp stove inside. We wouldn't fire it up until the evening so that the night sky would help hide multiple fires. The second tent was almost done.

There was a new large pile of wood that was stacked next to what I'd already cut and a larger pile of kindling.

Wells and Mendez headed toward the tents, and I headed to the cabin. Before I walked through the door, I stopped short. The women's voices carried to me.

"So you and Jones really hated each other?" Roni asked. I had a feeling she was interested in that line of questioning because our past was just as complicated as Jones and Jasmine's was.

"I don't know that I would call it hate…but it was definitely complicated. He's my best friend's older brother, so he was off-limits. But we both had these feelings for each other that we couldn't act on. It turned to resentment and harsh words for self-preservation. We made a pact we wouldn't act on our feelings to protect Mary—and from there it spiraled out of control." There was a pregnant pause. "You've got to share with the class—are you asking because you and Garcia are high school enemies?"

A long silence followed before Roni responded. "I think so. I think in some sense I wanted him back in high school, but I had this overwhelming need to be perfect. Call it pressure from a dad who knew he was going to run for president one day. Diego—I mean Garcia—he had that same drive, too, and there could only be one best in class, one valedictorian. So academic rivals were born, and it quickly turned ugly." Her explanation wasn't anything new; she and I had already touched on the subject.

"So you've put all of that behind you, then?" Christine asked.

"As if! You can't put that type of competitiveness aside completely. I'd know, Strong and I have tried," Abbi commented.

Roni hesitated. "I mean, yeah…I think so." Another pause. "In the beginning, it was really difficult. Like really, really difficult. You can imagine I have some trust issues, and he might be responsible for some of that, but also a cure in a way?" She didn't sound so sure of the last part, but she had me really intrigued. If she thought my current and future actions could heal my past ones, then spank my ass and call me Dr. Garcia.

"Okay, that sounds like a lot to unpack. Walk us through it."

"Well, he was my first lesson in ‘you can't trust everyone you meet.' I'd had a sheltered early childhood. I think my dad always knew he was going to run for office. Everyone around me would walk on eggshells or avoid me completely. The early years were a weird combination of avoidance or shielding. My dad always put pressure on me to be perfect and not to let the world see where my armor was the weakest. Then Diego came into the picture when I started high school. The day we met, he made me feel like an idiot. He scored higher than me on a test by one question." Roni sighed. "It's super childish, I know…but I couldn't stand the thought of someone doing better than me—so a rivalry was born. I think back then he got off on the idea that he could show a spoiled girl that she wasn't all that. It was a lesson I desperately needed, although I couldn't see that at the time."

"You said he caused some trust issues?" Christine pushed. I felt guilt rush through me, because I had a feeling I knew which incident she was going to bring up. "And what about now? How do you think he sees you?" Her tone turned to teasing.

Another long pause. "Yeah. He left me an anonymous note in my locker, making it look like a love letter from a secret admirer. I was so distracted and overjoyed at the idea someone might like me that I did very poorly on two tests, and I didn't pay attention during a lecture and looked stupid when the teacher called on me. I found out two weeks later from another girl that they saw Diego slip the note into my locker. I confronted him, and he venomously denied it. I compared the handwriting on the note to one of his assignments I managed to swipe from a teacher. The girl was right; he pranked me just to screw with me."

There was a stunned silence, and I could almost feel the judgment of my friends through the door.

"That doesn't sound like Garcia. He's always the one seeking the moral high ground," Jasmine commented.

"I'm not here to change the way you think of him. I know now that he's a good guy. Maybe we just brought out the worst in each other, but it's different now. We've worked as a team to stay alive. To be honest, in hindsight I'm thankful for the lesson. It prepared me for my time as the daughter of a politician. I didn't have to learn the lesson the hard way for the world to see or embarrass my dad in some way. I did it in the middle of high school that I left halfway through anyways." She paused. The seconds ticked by for so long I wanted to crack the door open and take a peek. "Neither of us are perfect. I know that now. But if I can learn to trust him with my life, I can learn to trust others. Not everyone in my life is out to sell a story and make money off my pain and embarrassment, and some people deserve a second chance."

"I get what it's like, living in the public eye—your flaws making headlines for others to comment on. I'm glad that Garcia was able to teach you that there can be safe people in your life and that some people deserve second chances. That's one of the lessons my on-staff psychologists tell victims when they come to us seeking help and resources." I knew I could count on Christine to bring Roni into the fold.

Christine and Roni were a lot alike in some ways. Growing up in the public eye could be enough trauma for a person, blasting their issues and insecurities for the world to see. Wells, Jones, and I had another thing in common; we were all shitheads in school.

"Learning that people can redeem themselves is a tough lesson to learn, especially when you don't get to ease yourself into it," Jasmine added. It took Jones a while, but he and Jasmine put their bad blood behind them, and they were much better for it. They were engaged and loved their quiet life in the mountains.

"Yeah, I'm learning that," Roni mumbled.

I chose to make my entrance then, because how much longer could I stand here and listen in like a creep without being caught?