Primal Bargains

by Raleigh Davis

  I do, but some of these dresses seemed specifically designed for a direct hit on my self-esteem.

  “What about this one?” Gina has a steel-gray silk sheath on her arm. “For Miss Victoria?”

  It looks kind of plain, but once Victoria has it on, she transforms it. The gray of the dress echoes the gray in her eyes and makes the green look otherworldly. Her skin picks up the sheen of the silk and glows with it, while the simple lines skim all her best features.

  She’s so beautiful. I’m so glad she could come with me, and I’m so glad she’ll be at the gala with me wearing this.

  “Wow.” Victoria is looking in the mirror, her expression stunned. “This is… Wow.”

  “We’ll take it,” I say.

  Victoria’s mouth compresses. “Do I have to take it off?”

  Gina clears her throat. “Well, we can hem it for you and press it. And you might want a garment bag to carry it in.”

  I raise my glass. “And you don’t want to spill champagne on it.”

  Victoria takes off the dress, but she isn’t happy about it. When she flops back down on the couch next to me, back in her old clothes, she says, “What about you?”

  “We’ll find something.” But I’m not so sure it will be as perfect as that dress is for Victoria.

  Gina comes back with a dress in a garment bag. Two garment bags, actually. “This one just came in. We haven’t even put it out on the floor, but I think it will be exactly what you need.”

  When she unzips the bag, a fall of red velvet spills out. The kind of red velvet that’s dark as sin, meant to be worn by a king’s mistress. It’s way too sensual for the queen.

  “That doesn’t look like my kind of color.” I was thinking something cool, like navy blue. Or a nice green. Not something that flipping… sexy.

  “Just wait.” Gina pulls it free and shakes it out. The dress is a simple column of red velvet, nothing to distract from my curves. The back is gathered at the neckline, creating a sort of short train.

  But the neckline and shoulders are what take my breath away. It’s a golden jeweled capelet, like a necklace except for the shoulders. The capelet is almost like the shrugs I knit, if I could use pure gold and jewels instead of yarn. The dress is gorgeous and unique, and I’m terrified that I’ll look awful in it.

  I want this dress. I want to look like a goddess in this dress.

  “Yes?” Gina asks.

  I can only nod.

  Once it’s on, I hold my breath as I make my way to the mirrors. Please, please, please.

  When I see myself, I exhale so fast my lungs burn. My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

  My hair is… it’s glowing. The red in the dress has picked up and highlighted red notes in my hair that I never knew were there. My skin looks as soft and alluring as the velvet, and the golden jewelry on my shoulders makes my eyes look like a lioness’s.

  I can’t believe it’s me in the mirror. And I don’t even have my hair and makeup done.

  “I don’t even know what to say.” I spread my arms wide. “How is this dress that amazing? Did a wizard sew it?”

  Victoria shakes her head. “It’s you, not the dress. It wouldn’t look that way on anyone else.”

  Gina nods, looking smug. “I knew this would be perfect.” Suddenly her expression clears. “I mean, do you like it?”

  I hug myself, feeling the heavy nap of the velvet under my palms. “I want to live in this dress. Eat, sleep, and work in it—I want to be buried in this.”

  “I think that’s a yes,” Victoria says dryly. “Should I snap a pic for Gideon?”

  “No.” I turn to stop her. I don’t know why, but I’m suddenly feeling very superstitious. “He can’t see it until the night of.”

  Victoria lowers the phone. “Okay. I guess we’re done then.”

  I look back at myself in the mirror. “I should probably take this off.”

  Both Gina and Victoria laugh at my glum tone.

  “We’re not done,” Gina says with a gleam in her eye. “There’re still shoes to pick out. And we have a full-service hair and makeup salon here—perhaps you’d like to try out some styles and looks with your dresses?”

  She wants us to play Cinderella all day? Victoria and I exchange a glance like we can’t believe our luck.

  “Sure,” Victoria says.

  “We’d love to,” I say. And then we clink our champagne glasses as we wait for the shoes to be brought in.

  Chapter 32

  “You’re seriously not going to tell me about your dress?”

  I realize I’m whining—a touch—but Tess is refusing to even drop a hint about what her dress looks like. I never cared much before what my dates wore, but I’m finding that I’m desperately curious about what Tess picked out today.

  “You’ll have to wait.” She tilts her head and smiles like she doesn’t even care about my pain. She’s just walked into my office after being gone all day, and I have to admit I was concerned. Gage had a team following her, just in case, which she didn’t know about, but I still worried.

  I narrow my eyes. “You don’t have any shopping bags. Did you not buy anything else?”

  She wrinkles her nose. “The rest of the clothes there wouldn’t have worked in my job. I can’t be wearing five-thousand-dollar pants when I’m in some attic crawl space.”

  I was thinking more that she could wear them if we went out somewhere, but I don’t bring it up. We’ll start with the gala and go from there. Besides, if the thief tries again while I’m gone…

  “Next time buy more stuff,” I growl.

  She kisses me as if she finds me too funny. “Right. Next time.” It’s casual, but underneath there’s an odd hitch to her voice.

  “Yes,” I say firmly. “Next time. Once this is done…” I reach up, stroke her hair.

  “Did Gage find anything else?”

  I shake my head. “No. But something will come up. It has to.”

  She bites her lip and steps away. “But what if it doesn’t? What if you never find this person? What if you never decode the notebooks? What if all this is never resolved?”

  Something cold and dreadful creeps into my chest. “It will be.”

  Her expression hardens. “But if it isn’t? Are you going to stay here forever, guarding this thing?”

  I sense she’s not angry exactly, but she’s working some things out. Like our future together maybe. It’s a fair question.

  “I’m going to the gala,” I say carefully. “I’m not a hermit.”

  “And if I wasn’t going?”

  “I didn’t want to go before I met you,” I point out. “It was only something I was going to endure. Having you there will make it… good.”

  She bites her lip. “And after the gala? What happens after that?”

  “What happens is we come home and keep on with what we have. If you want.” If she doesn’t want to, I don’t know what I’ll do, so I don’t let myself think of it. “I’m not going to let this person, whoever they are, determine how I live my life. Or yours.”

  That’s what she needs to hear, I think. That’s what she’s been angling for—reassurance that no matter what, we have a future.

  Her chin starts to tremble. “I had so much fun this afternoon, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Then I got to thinking about what’s going to happen next, and there were no good answers.” She sucks in a shaky breath. “It’s just that I’ll be done soon, and this entire situation may never be solved, and I…”

  I pull her into my arms, kiss her hair. “What’s going to happen is,” I say forcefully, “once you’re done installing the security, you’re not going to worry about it ever again. It won’t touch you, I swear.” I’ll keep it separate, isolated, walled off. The same way I kept our role in Ira’s death walled off from Raven and Morgan. I held that secret for years. I can hold this off forever, for Tess. “The only thing you’ll have to worry about it is how I’m going to make you happy. Which is going to be my main focus
going forward.”

  She presses her face into my chest. It feels so good to be able to be her comfort. “It sounds too good to be true.”

  “It’s not.” I run my hand down her back, savoring the warmth of her skin through her shirt. “I’ll make it true.”

  “I’ll have to move out of the cottage,” she says. “I can’t keep staying there.”

  “Of course.” I’m planning for her to spend most nights in my bed, so that’s fine with me. If she wants to keep her apartment, I can pay the rent, but I’ll work up to suggesting that.

  “And I won’t be at your beck and call anymore.”

  “Nope,” I say mildly. I don’t like the idea of that, but I’ll adjust. Besides, I’ve been neglecting my own work since she arrived. I can’t give her everything she’s ever wanted if I’m suddenly broke.

  “And I’ll need time to spend with Victoria and my other friends and my family. My mom is already worried about your paying for the house, and Victoria thinks I’ve abandoned her.”

  “I would never monopolize your time.” I totally would. But I won’t, because she asked me not to.

  “I feel like you’re not really listening and just agreeing to everything.”

  I look straight into her eyes. “I won’t lie. I’m greedy. I want all of you, all the time.”

  She shivers and licks her lips. She likes that fantasy.

  “But your loyalty to your family, your love for your friends, how damn good you are at your job are what make you who you are. And I don’t want you to lose any of that.”

  She swallows hard and blinks rapidly. “I… I could say the same about you.”

  She couldn’t, actually. I have no loyalty to my parents, I suspected my friends immediately after the break-in, and while I’m good at what I do, I don’t do it out of any kind of higher ideals. She’s still got me all wrong, but I’ll take it.

  “Well then,” I say, “we’re perfect for each other.”

  She doesn’t say anything, just tucks herself closer to me. Right as I’m thinking I could stay like this forever and to hell with the rest of the world, Rustem comes in.

  I get ready to tell him to buzz off, but then I catch his expression. He looks like something awful just happened. Tess lifts her head as I go tense.

  “What’s going on?” I immediately think of the safe. But there’s been no alarm.

  “Cassian’s here,” Rustem says. “Along with the rest of them. Says he needs to see you right away, looks like he’s… It looks bad.”

  I hear raised voices coming from the main room. It sounds bad too.

  When I come in, Tess and Rustem on my heels, they’re all there. Everyone is wearing a taut, strained expression. Cassian’s is stretched to the breaking point.

  In his hands is a metal box with wires trailing out of it. Something about it—

  “Holy shit.” My pulse hammers through me as I realize why they’re all looking like they’ve just seen a ghost.

  It’s because what Cassian’s holding in his hand should be at the bottom of the Pacific, along with Ira’s car. And Tynan.

  Chapter 33

  “What the fuck is that?” I stab a finger at it, although I already know what it is. It’s my past, coming back for retribution. “Is it a replica? How the fuck could she build that?”

  It has to be the work of the thief, making this… thing to fuck with us. It has to be blackmail, and this is her sick way of telling us she knows what we did.

  Cassian doesn’t say a word, just opens the back panel. There, scratched into the metal, are all six of our names in our own handwriting.

  We’d been so proud of what we’d built we put our names on it. There’s no way anyone could have replicated that.

  “That’s impossible.” I run my hand over my face. “There’s no way anyone could have that.”

  Tess comes up behind me, puts a comforting hand in the small of my back. I don’t shake her off.

  “It’s really it,” Cassian says. “I found it in my office this afternoon. No one saw anything, and the security-camera footage was erased.”

  “This is bigger than the notebooks,” Archer says.

  Oh, it is so much bigger.

  “I don’t understand.” Tess’s voice is clear and sweet, even with the confusion. “What is that?”

  “We called it Drive-Less,” I say, my voice toneless. “A stupid name, but Cassian wasn’t a branding genius yet. It was our very first AI system, at least the first that worked like it was supposed to.”

  Gage snorts. “Supposed to?”

  “But Morgan does driverless cars,” Tess says. “You guys never developed anything like that. Did you?”

  “I do what?” Morgan’s in the doorway, Raven waiting behind her. We were all so preoccupied we didn’t even hear them come in.

  Bishop is furious as he turns on Cassian. “They don’t need to see this.”

  “They do.” Cassian shoves the box into his face. “It’s past time that we told them what really happened. They deserve the truth.”

  “What truth?” Raven’s eyes are wide, her cheeks pale. “What is that?”

  There’s a long beat of silence as the old instinct to hide, to never confess, takes hold of our tongues. There’s no bringing back Ira or Tynan. No point in telling them what will only hurt them.

  Bishop is the first to speak. He stares straight at Raven, his hold on her gaze never breaking.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, almost as if he’s saying goodbye.

  “For what?” Raven asks.

  “Fuck,” Archer mutters, looking up at the ceiling. “Just say it.”

  Bishop steels himself like he’s facing a firing squad. “We killed Ira and Tynan.”

  At first denial flashes across both the sisters’ faces. “That’s stupid,” Morgan says bluntly.

  Raven gives a high, wild laugh, as if she’s just heard a joke she can’t believe someone would actually say. “No. No, it’s…” Slowly her face crumples as she looks at each of us in turn.

  I take a deep inhale, preparing to tell the rest. Bishop did the hard part—I can take over. And with Tess listening, I have to be the one to finish this confession.

  “A driverless car was our first big project together,” I say. “Our only big project together. Ira thought it was a great idea, that after all our experience working on smaller AI projects, we were ready to make something groundbreaking.”

  I can still see his face in my mind, so patient, encouraging. It wasn’t even that he gave us full access to his labs and equipment—we had full access to his time and attention, which were even more valuable.

  “We tested it on golf carts,” Gage says, lost in memories.

  “I thought they were radio controlled,” Morgan says quietly. “That’s what Dad told me when I asked, that you’d built a remote-controlled golf cart.”

  I feel Tess flinch next to me. I can’t make myself look at her though, can’t see the expression on her face.

  “No, it was entirely controlled by the computer,” Archer says. “We thought it was great. That we’d solved this huge problem that people had been talking about for years. Decades even.”

  We hadn’t though. We’d only been arrogant and stupid, thinking that we’d created this perfect thing. And I was the most arrogant and stupid of all.

  I clear my throat. “Once the golf cart worked, we were eager to test it on road conditions. So we put it into Ira’s Mercedes and took it out on the road.” I take a shaky breath. “I convinced the rest of them it was ready for real-world testing.”

  “You tested it on the road with other people? People who didn’t know the car had no driver?” The horror in Tess’s voice pierces my chest.

  “We did,” Bishop says heavily. “We were in the car and could take control if needed, so we convinced ourselves that made it right.”

  “There was an on/off switch too,” Cassian says. “Unless you were convinced it was safe enough, you were supposed to leave it off.”

&nbs
p; “Oh my God.” Raven puts her hands over her mouth. “Oh my God,” she says through her fingers.

  “You think they had it on that night.” Morgan’s face is stony, her words hard. “That the car went off the road because your AI failed. And killed them both.”

  There’s no room for doubt there—she’s convinced we did it. That it’s entirely our fault.

  “We don’t know exactly what happened,” Archer says gently. “But we suspect.”

  Morgan looks like she wants to spit fire at him. Raven just keeps moaning behind her hands.

  “Why didn’t you tell them?” Tess demands.

  Finally, finally I make myself look at her. Her expression is both angry and stricken, like she’s feeling Morgan’s and Raven’s emotions for them.

  “Because we weren’t sure,” Gage says.

  “Because we didn’t want to be blamed,” I say. Both those things are true.

  “Because we love you both,” Bishop says. “Like sisters.”

  Morgan closes her eyes tight and shakes her head. In that moment, I feel the bond holding her to us snap. “No. My sister would never do this to me.” She points to the box. “What is that?”

  “It’s the computer we put in the car,” Cassian says. “This is what the AI was loaded on; it’s what controlled the car.” He flicks the switch on the side, bright orange rust flaking off as the switch reluctantly moves. “It was set to On when I saw it on my desk. It’s rusted in place, so… it must have been in that position when it went down with the car.”

  “If it was in the car,” Raven says slowly, “how did it get here?”

  “We think it might have something to do with the notebooks,” I say. “And whoever’s trying to steal them.”

  “Notebooks? What notebooks?” Morgan demands.

  “Ira left each of us a notebook in his will,” Archer says. “They’re encrypted so we can’t read them. We thought they were a puzzle he left us, like he used to—”

  “He never made puzzles for us,” Morgan says.

  Raven shakes her head at her sister. “Not now.”

  “We think they might be more than that though,” I say. “That’s what the intruder was after at my place. My notebook and Tynan’s.”