Bridget Wilder #2 by Jonathan Bernstein

Author:Jonathan Bernstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Meet the Parents

Irina shoves Strike away and slaps the arm she didn’t wound with her arrow-shooting gun thing.

“Fourteen years,” she says.

“I wish it had been longer,” he replies.

They don’t want to. They totally don’t want to!

I remain sitting on the gargoyle, watching the awkward interaction between my biological parents.

“You deserve so much more than an arrow through the arm,” snarls Irina. “After what you did to me.”

Strike’s mouth falls open. He slaps a palm against his forehead. “What I did to you?”

“I was a naive, trusting immigrant girl,” she yells. “You left me alone. You took off without a word.”

“You lied to the new management,” Strike shouts back. “You told them I was a double agent.”

I stare at Irina. “You left that small part out when you were telling me the story of your life.”

Irina squirms. “It happened so long ago. I don’t remember every little detail.”

Strike’s face reddens. “You turned on me to save your butt when the new bosses came in.”

“Well, it didn’t work,” Irina snaps. “They never trusted me, not for a minute. I was always in fear for my life and that of my beautiful baby’s.” Irina reaches out to touch my cheek. I turn my head from her. Suddenly, the thought that I have inherited Irina’s lying gene is filling with me horror. The lines start to connect.

“If you hadn’t lied about Strike, the CIA wouldn’t have sent him away,” I say. “He would have known you were having a baby. He would have known about me.”

Irina bows her head so her hair falls over her face and I can’t see her expression. I hear her murmur, “That’s a lot of ifs. You don’t know it would have worked out like that.”

“You’re sure you want to give up hurting people for a living, Irina?” says Edward from underneath the gargoyle. “You’re so good at it.”

Strike sits down next to me and puts his non-wounded arm over my shoulder. “Irina and I have our differences, Bridget, but you can’t blame her for us not being a family. We were different people. Those were different times. Everybody lied, no one trusted anyone, everybody stabbed everybody else in the back.”

“So how were they different times?” I say.

“Because I’ve never lied to you,” says Strike. “And I never will.”

We both look at Irina. Black tears are dribbling down her pale face.

“Don’t cry,” I say.

“I’m not,” she gasps.

“Tear gas!” yells Strike. He points to the red velvet curtain. A second tear gas grenade rolls into view, joining the first one.

Edward laughs and weeps at the same time. “Your observation that my employees would desert me in my time of need? Care to think again? They were waiting until I had the whole family under my roof.”

Strike throws his elbow over his face.

“Get Bridget out of here,” he tells Irina.

“Bridget’s fought her way out of worse situations than this,” I say as I reach for my box of marbles.

From the other side of the curtain we hear the sound of feet charging toward us.

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