After Téa extracted all the information from the devices she yelled out, “I’ve got it. I’ve got it all.” She packed up the valuable information as Max and Tony finished their search. “Gray and I gave us six minutes to get out of here.”
Jessie and her team started backing out of the room. Then closed the door and blew off the handle so no one could leave out behind them.
Chapter 2
The past forty-eight hours had been hell. Most missions were hell and that’s why after every assignment, someone from MEGA-AX1 always chose a place in the good old US of A where no one knew them to decompress. This was a necessary step to feel somewhat normal before everyone went home to their friends and family. Nothing said all-American like this little old town that Gray chose in Alabama. Jessie just wanted to crawl into the comfort of her bed and sleep forever. But she’d let the guys talk her into a celebratory drink at a place on the outskirts of town, Frank’s Bar and Grill. Thank goodness it was early afternoon. She hoped that less people would mean less smoke and less everything else that went along with being in a bar.
Jessie didn’t feel like dealing with onlookers today. Whenever they went out anywhere together, which wasn’t often outside of work, other people seemed to find them a bit intimidating. Although the six of them were wearing street clothes, they still made for an unsavory looking group. And, given that Frank’s was more like a country and western bar, Jessie knew it was going to be nearly impossible to blend in.
When they entered the bar, it was mostly empty, except for a rowdy group in the back left corner and a gentleman sitting at the bar; however, the further inside they went, the patrons started to stare and fall silent.
Jessie knew they looked like a bunch of vagabonds especially since none of them had any sleep over the last couple of days. Jake, Max, and Gray wore two days’ worth of growth on their faces. Lucky for Tony, he had a baby face and couldn’t grow facial hair if his life depended on it. Yet, he still managed an intimidating presence. Actually, all of the guys were intimidating. They stood at least six feet tall with muscles bulging from underneath their shirts with striking sun-darkened skin courtesy of the last assignment. Except for Max, his skin was always a smooth chocolate Mocha. All of them were built like an Adonis. Max and Gray liked to keep things low key, but Jake and Tony were like bulls in a china shop.
After working together for so long, Jessie didn’t think the guys even noticed that she and Téa were women. They treated them like one of the guys. But, unlike Téa, Jessie was more reserved. Jessie, for example, kept her hair tucked underneath her cap and pulled down over her eyes. She would have been content with taking a seat in a private corner to sip on her beer for the next hour. Téa on the other hand was more likely to let her blonde hair down and tell the bartender to turn the music up while dancing on tables. It wouldn’t matter that it was early afternoon or that there was no one to dance with her. If no one else was dancing, she’d dance all by herself. If Jessie were honest, aside from the fact that Téa was sometimes over the top, she secretly admired her spirit.
Jessie put her backpack on one of the chairs, and from her vantage point she had a good view of the entire bar. She took a good, long look at her team and smiled. This group was rowdy, loud, and so much more but they were her family. She wouldn’t trade them for anything.
Téa walked over to the table and swept her snapback off her head. As she shook out her mane of honey-blonde hair, she yelled, “Hey bartender, what’s up with the music in this place? Can you turn the station to some hip-hop?” It was at that moment the gentleman sitting at the bar decided it was time for him to go.
Jake and Max walked over to the bar to order the first round of beers. Tony and Gray walked back toward the tables at the back corner opposite that rowdy group of people.
The sheer presence of Jake and Max had the bartender changing the radio tuner until he found a hip-hop station. Of course, everyone else sat down but Téa. Once she heard Jay-Z’s “Dirt off Your Shoulder” she couldn’t help herself. It must have been contagious because Gray and Tony started rapping the lyrics before getting up to dance and dusting the dirt off their shoulders, too.
Jake and Max got in on the celebration when they got back with the beers. Everyone was rapping and dancing.
As tired as Jessie was, she even found herself dancing in her chair until Gray reached out and pulled her to her feet, “Come on, Jessie. We just saved the world! I think we’re entitled to brush our shoulders off.”
It was probably a weird looking scene, the six of them losing their minds wherever they stood instead of the dance floor.
All of a sudden the group of people on the other side of the bar started shouting out the lyrics, “You got to get that dirt off your shoulder.”
Of course Gray, Téa, and Tony took that as a challenge and screamed even louder, “You got to get that dirt off your shoulder!”
Not to be outdone, the other group got up out of their seats and yelled even louder, “You got to get that dirt off your shoulder,” while moving closer and closer toward the middle of the bar.
Jake, Max, and Jessie joined in the battle, too. It went
