Annabeth:
I logged into my work computer and surfed through the files.
The macbook Percy found on our last assignment was sent straight to the labs. Every bit and piece of it had been examined, and it was locked away in a secure facility for safe-keeping. Yesterday, the files were put up on my security level access, and I quickly snapped them up. I went to a folder called lists and read it.
Henchman List
Safehouses
Wanted List
I pressed "Wanted List" and sent it to the printers on B-1 to be delivered to the house. For now, I had plans. And reading a wanted list would take up that valuable time.
I went to my chat box and pressed Noah's name.
Annabeth: What are you doing?
It took about five seconds to get a response.
Noah: Pretending to work. Bored out of my mind. You?
Annabeth: Thinking of things to do…
Noah: We're not going to see This Means War for the third time, are we?
I smiled to myself and laughed.
Annabeth: No, I was thinking more of going to the beach. It's a great day for it really.
Noah: When I offered that last week, you said it was too cold.
Annabeth: But it isn't now, which is why we should really go today.
Noah:…..
I groaned.
Annabeth: Oh crap, you're going to make me beg, huh?
Noah: Maybe….
I looked through the glass walls and saw Noah. He smiled and shrugged, as if to say it was just business. I wanted to be mad, I wanted to be furious. I wanted to hold it against him for months and months until he got down on his knees and reluctantly apologized. I swear to you I really did.
But I just smiled at him and went back to the computer screen.
Annabeth: Alright, fine. Pwetty, Pwetty, Pwetty please, come with me to the beach *puppy dog pout*
I looked over to see Noah snicker.
Noah: As long as you make up the excuse.
XXXXX`
I looked at my toes as I sat on the beach recliner. With a new friend I had made, Crissie, had gotten a pedicure. My toes were painted a light red, which I now realized matched the bathing suit I had changed into.
I pulled my wet hair out of the ponytail and pushed it back into a sleeker one. I found myself using the reflection of my shiny beach bag to watch Noah.
It was four o clock, and we had just gotten out of the water. The North Carolina sun was already starting to set, and I was still trying to figure out if Apollo was running early today for a date or if my watch was wrong.
While I was still thinking about that, I heard Noah's voice.
"Hey, delivery for you. Just came in," he handed me an envelope with just the words "Annabeth Chase" printed on it.
The wanted list.
I had forgotten about it completely, even though I had been thinking about it for weeks now.
Noah had seemed jittery on that job, and Noah Harrison wasn't ever jittery. Even though I had known him for a short time, I knew he was never nervous when it came to work. It was what he knew best, what was something that would always be true. And that was why I knew something was up.
I spent hours thinking about what made him suddenly nervous, and I figured it had to be the computer, something was on there he knew about.
"Thanks, Noah," I took the envelope.
"So, what's in there?"
"Boring work stuff, going through some off the files of that computer we snagged. You know," I shrugged like it was nothing, and he watched me for a moment or two.
"Yeah," Noah sat down and reached for his kindle.
Percy:
"Good night, Noah," Annabeth yawned as she went up the stairs. I nodded and pretended to be more interested in the computer report I was reading.
I breathed a sigh of relief when the bedroom door closed behind her, and I instantly went to the opened file on the coffee table. She had read most of it on the beach and slid it back into the envelope when it came time to come back inside. She had set it down on the coffee table after getting a shell stuck in her foot and forgot about it, to my luck.
She had been trying to piece everything together for days, and I couldn't take much more of it. I had been trying to cover all of my secrets, but I didn't know which one she was near uncovering. I even had to buy special contacts that I could sleep in so she wouldn't see that my eyes were really green. I now had to have a stash of brown hair dye hidden under my bed so she won't see my hair turning black again.
And the moment I started hiding things in safes in hidden safes, I knew I had to something about this.
I carefully pulled out the papers and turned to the page marked with a post-it that Annabeth had stopped at.
I went through pages and pages, seeing Agents I knew and bad guys I had come across before. And then finally, I got to the last page.
"And here we go."
As I had guessed, there was a picture with the name Percy Jackson at the bottom. It said everything the picture I had found said, and I was disappointed to see that it too didn't have the reason I was wanted. I looked around the room. I had powered off the house cameras, but I wanted to be sure that Annabeth hadn't planted anymore.
I slowly and carefully ripped out the paper, making so that you'd never know it had ever been there.
I mentally started writing my email to Anna about how we needed to cover this up when I went outside to the outdoor fireplace.
I started the fire slowly and threw the photo in. I watched it crumple up as it burned and the ashes started to fly up into the air.
"Good bye Percy Jackson."
XXXXX
I went to my closet.
"I knew I should have done laundry yesterday," I mumbled as I looked through the clothes in my closet. I could find pants and everything else in abundance but no shirts.
I had taken a shower to get the smell of smoke off me, and I had spent almost half an hour cleaning up to make it unnoticeable that I had burned the photo. I had even taken the time to write an email to Anna about who was in those files.
I reached up on the top shelf of my closet and picked up an ugly old tee shirt, sending pictures falling all across the door.
I groaned as I knelt to the ground to pick them up.
I felt sick as I looked at the pictures.
The first was my mom holding me as a little infant. There were a few more with me as a little kid, showing how I lost my first tooth and all that. Then I got to the really painful ones, Camp Half-Blood pictures. The one that hurt the absolute most was a picture from when I was sixteen.
Annabeth's long blonde hair had been braided by Juniper after losing a dare. Grover was wearing a "New York City" baseball cap and jeans, which I'm pretty sure was like his uniform for every day. I had my arm around Annabeth, and she smiled brightly in between us.
Unlocking the safe, I shoved the pictures inside.
If not for Annabeth finding them, it was so I couldn't find them.
Annabeth:
I reached for a tissue as I read the new text from Noah.
Feel better, Annabeth. I don't think I can handle how boring work is without you for much longer :D
I smiled as I wrote back.
Thanks, Noah. Do you know where any cough syrup is?
It took only a few more moments before I got a response.
In my room, should be in the medicine cabinet. Not sure though. Might be out.
I thanked him as I got off the couch and pressed pause on the Chick Flick. I went up the stairs slowly and I hesitated before finally going into his room.
I had gone in his room a lot, usually snooping, and it felt really weird to go in without having to hack into the security system.
Finally, I pushed the door open and was surprised by how clean it was. Noah was known for being messy, and I sometimes thought he had a secret room he really lived in instead of here. He kept things clean at home, even when he was cooking. If it's official, he keeps everything spotless, but, if not, it's a huge mess.
I walked through the room and straight towards the bathroom. I carefully opened it and found myself looking through the names.
Eye drops. Tylenol. Four bottles of nectar and five squares of Ambrosia. Nyquil PM. Motrin (Why the hell does he have motrin?). And Cough Medicine.
I reached for it and made a pack of daily contacts fall to the countertop.
I picked it up and found myself reading the post-it on the back.
These should fit you perfectly, Noah. Too bad. I miss your green eyes.
-Anna
Green eyes.
He has green eyes.
He has green eyes?
I put the contact box up in the cabinet and closed it quietly. I brought out my cell phone as I carefully left the room, worried for cameras out of habit.
"Hey, Annie. What's up?" Windal answered on the third ring.
"Any news on Noah?" I asked hopefully.
"Nothing, sorry, Annabeth."
"Well, um, I found out his eyes are green, if that helps," I told him.
"Are you okay, you seem like you're about to cry, Annabeth."
I considered lying to him, I considered lying to my best friend. I was about to cry honestly, and it had nothing to do with my burning throat from the cold and it had everything to do with Noah. During the short time I had lived here, I had grown fond of him. Then I grew attached to him, not wanting to be away from him. And then I started to love his quirks that had first bothered me, like how he talks to himself or how he never tells me anything about himself or how he could be a complete idiot sometimes.
I become close to Noah, maybe even closer than I was to Windal. Noah and I understood things that others just didn't seem to understand, and, if I ever wanted blue Oreos, he was the guy to go to. I trusted him, even though he didn't trust me enough to tell him about his life.
"I think I might like him, Windal," I finally answered.
"Well, I know you like him. You said you were pretty good friends."
"No, Windal, not that kind of like. The other kind. The annoying kind. The kind that got you a daughter."
"Are you telling me that Annabeth Chase has a crush? The same Annabeth Chase that thought hearts are supposed to beat not to think?"
Ever since Percy had gone missing, I had dislocated myself from my heart. I had taken my mother's advice and learned how to use only my brain to think. During college, the fraternities had a war on which one could get me to fall in love first. And they all ended up losing and having to jump into a freezing cold lake, completely naked.
"I know, I know."
"And to guy who you know nothing about. And you hate not knowing everything. You must be in hell right now," Windal continued.
"Yeah, I get it. Thanks for rubbing it in. Completely necessary."
"No problem, happy to do my duty. But this is pretty serious. I have to dig deeper, I can't let my Annabeth go in this thing blind.
"Thanks, Windal."
"Just concentrate on getting better and try not to work. You need rest."
XXXXX
I tried not to work, I promise you I really did. But, three chick flicks and ordering a pizza later, I found myself staring at my laptop as it beckoned me towards it. Eventually, I reached for it and logged in.
First, I read through my emails. There was one from Anna, informing me on a mission I might be interested in.
After that, I checked my calendar for the week and found that an operative from California was flying in next week to talk about the man we had stolen from last time.
I rechecked the watch list and found the same old people on there.
I even checked in on Grover and Juniper to see that Grover was working and Juniper was taking care of the toddlers, who also had a cold.
And then I pulled up the files from the computer we had stolen on our last mission.
They were the same as before, annoyingly so. I used a search engine on the Henchman list, seeing if they were already locked up and found that five of them were. I checked through the safehouse list and saw that the agency had people already watching it and that none were near to me, which kinda sucked. I kept going, file after file until I reached the 'Wanted List' again.
I had read it before, but I decided to go back through it.
And then I noticed something I hadn't seen before.
It said I was on page one of seventy.
But the booklet I had only had sixty-nine pages.
I scrolled down to the last page and gasped.
There was a picture of a boy, about eighteen. He was in a park, taking a breathe and pulling earphones out of his ears. His black hair was shaggy and falling into his eyes in an adorable way, the way that Percy used to.
I read through the name and felt my heart stop.
Perseus "Percy" Jackson.
I stared at the computer screen, my heart eating like I was running a marathon. I was trying to tell if I was dreaming or if this was really happening, and I wasn't sure which one I wanted it to be. My eyes quickly ran over the description.
It stated his age at the time of the photo, eighteen. It told me his height, eye color, and hair color, which were all things I already knew. The reason he was wanted was blank, stating it had been lost during the transfer to electronics.
He was wanted dead or alive, whichever as long as they got their man.
I had heard it a lot of times, usually with Henchman who had gone rogue, either starting their own evil operation or going good. If they were captured alive, they were slowly tortured until they wished they had been killed first and were eventually killed after the need to keep living had long left.
Either way, Percy was dead.
Then the page disappeared, gone from the file and it took me right back to the page before, about an elderly man named Jenkins.
It was just gone, like it had never existed.
But I knew it did.
