Right Through Me (The Obsidian Files #1)

by Shannon McKenna

  That’s right, big boy. Prepare to suffer.

  But Noah Gallagher’s fierce, unwavering gaze was having a strange effect on her. Ever since she’d gone into hiding, she’d had a sick, heavy lump in her belly. For months it had been sitting there, like a chunk of dirty ice that would not melt. But when she looked at him, that pinched coldness eased. It turned soft and warm and alive.

  It felt amazingly good. Dancing for him, she could actually breathe again.

  For as long it lasted.

  The dance was ending. Caro sank to her knees, arching back in a pose of abandoned sensual ecstasy as the music reached its climax, luxurious fake hair brushing the ground in her grand finale. Dancing had never made her feel so naked before. She was stretched before him like a sacrificial virgin on an altar.

  Take me.

  The pose felt obscene, but only because there were other people in the room. If there hadn’t been, it would have felt right. It would have felt . . . hot.

  The sound of one person frantically clapping broke the silence. Hannah Gallagher, the girl who had hired her. Noah Gallagher’s younger sister, from the looks of her. Caro rose slowly to her feet. Noah Gallagher didn’t applaud. He just stared at her, as if he wanted to leap over that table and pin her down.

  Tension built like an electrical charge. The other people in the room looked up, down, anywhere but at her. Caro smiled brightly. Held her head as high as possible.

  Not fair, to throw a paid performer into the middle of someone else’s big fat faux pas and make her swim in it. Bastards.

  “That was fabulous!” Hannah’s voice was a little too high. “Thanks for a gorgeous dance, Shamira! Happy birthday, Noah! Wasn’t she awesome, everyone?”

  Not one yes. There was only dead silence, downcast eyes, awkward looks exchanged all around. And still, Noah Gallagher’s devouring eyes.

  So what. She’d stay dignified. While running for her life, fighting the powers of darkness, scrambling for money. Even if it involved putting on a scanty costume and shaking her booty for rude or indifferent strangers.

  Or, in this case, one single intense, lustful, smoldering stranger.

  She took a slow, deliberate bow, as if she were in front of an adoring crowd. Taking her own sweet time. Rubbing their faces in it.

  Take that, you rude shitheads. Like it would kill you to clap.

  She didn’t need any validation from these self-important bio-tech-nerd idiots. Just her fee, which she would get whether they liked her performance or not.

  Fuck ’em. She had things to do. Important things. After one more hungry peek at the mouthwatering godking. Lord, he was fine.

  She flash-memorized him in one breathless instant, whipping her gaze away from his face before eye contact could start the inevitable sexual mind-melt reaction. Then she swept out of the room, chin up, shoulders back. A regal sweep of purple veils.

  That was it. She would never see him again. She wasn’t going to feel that hot rush of opening in her chest, ever again.

  Suck it up. Ignore the lust buzz. Sport sex is reserved for normal people. Fugitives do without. And don’t whine.

  Hannah followed her out of the room, and slammed the door harder than was necessary. “You were gorgeous,” she said fervently. “You’re so talented. I’m so sorry they didn’t clap or anything. I’m going to tell them all off. Noah will kill me, but I’m used to it.”

  “I’ll rather not watch that,” Caro said hastily. “I’ll just be on my way.”

  “Oh no! Stay just a minute! You have to at least say hi to Noah. No matter what he says to me, he certainly enjoyed your dance. I’m the villain here. You’re just an innocent bystander. Noah’s very fair that way. And I’m sure he’ll want to meet you!”

  In your dreams, honey. “Let me, ah, change first,” Caro said, backing away.

  “You remember the way to the office? Come back after. I’ll introduce you.”

  The door flew open. A man strode out, not the birthday boy. This one was tall, blue eyed and very built, his thick dark blond hair hanging down to his shoulders. His eyes flicked over her with controlled curiosity and then turned back to Hannah.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” he asked.

  Definitely her cue. Caro took off, hurrying back toward the nondescript office that’d served as a dressing room. She didn’t even want to know what Hannah’s answer might be. Not her family, not her fight.

  Once inside the empty office, she could still hear them arguing from behind the door. Other people had gotten into the mix. Voices were being raised. Her heart pounded as she peeled off her costume and packed it up. She pulled on her shapeless street clothing, trying not to overhear. She had her own problems. Big nasty ones. Time to cruise discreetly away and let them get on with theirs.

  Makeup pads got most of the paint off. She rolled the expensive dancing wig into its carrying bag, and put on her street wig, a thick brown bob with heavy bangs and wisps curling in around her face to conceal its shape. When she arrived, she hadn’t worn the mouth prosthesis, which puffed out her cheeks and distorted her jawline. She’d figured that the coat and hat were enough weirdness for the client to swallow. But the job was done, and she hoped to God she could slink out unnoticed, so in went the mouth thing. Big tinted glasses finished the look, topped off by her hat with LED lights in the brim, ordered off the Internet to foil facial recognition software her pursuers might use to find her on social media.

  Who knew if it really worked. At least the wide brim kept the Seattle drizzle off.

  Her hands still shook as she pulled on her oversized black wool coat. The foam lining she’d sewn in bulked up her shoulders and hips. She looked sixty pounds heavier, and slightly humped.

  At first, she’d tried changing the way she moved as part of her disguise, but after all the bodywork she’d done in college, she decided that the psychological toll of slumping and shuffling was dangerous to her soul. Inside her frumpy cocoon of foam and wool, she still had her pride and attitude. Hidden, maybe, but structurally intact.

  When she exited the office, she looked like a sketch that had been blurred on purpose. Noah Gallagher would stare right through her even if she were inches away.

  That thought was so depressing, she could barely stand to think it.

  Chin up. She’d had her fun, turning him on. Time for the disappearing act. Eat your heart out, Laser Eyes.

  But disappearing didn’t feel powerful to her. It just felt flat. Empty and sad.

  The route back to the elevators took her right past the conference room.

  Hannah Gallagher and several others were still arguing outside it. If she kept her head down, turned the corner and cut swiftly across the open space, she’d only be in their line of vision for a few seconds. Then it was a straight shot to the elevator.

  One, two . . . go.

  When she was squarely in the danger spot, Noah Gallagher came out the door.

  That was her undoing. She slowed down. Not consciously, but simply unable to resist the temptation to steal one last look at him before fleeing.

  His gaze snapped onto her, like a powerful magnet coupling.

  Oh, God. Oh, no. He strode through the center of the group, scattering them, and followed her. Even with her back to him, his eyes burned through her layered, ugly disguise, a focused point of heat against her concealed skin. She stabbed the elevator button. He was twenty yards away. Fifteen, and closing. Picking up speed.

  He couldn’t have recognized her. In this dreary get-up, she couldn’t be more different from Shamira the sexy dancing girl. She barely recognized herself dressed like this. The door slid open. She lunged inside. No other riders, thank God.

  “Hold the door!” Gallagher called, loping for the elevator.

  Asfuckingif. She punched the close button, and the mechanism engaged.

  Their eyes locked, as the doors shut in his face.

  Her heart was thudding, as if she’d done something wrong and had almost gotten caught. Maybe he was
just wondering who the scruffy stranger was. Dressed like that, she stuck out like a sore thumb in the muted corporate elegance of Angel Enterprises.

  She hurried through the lavish front lobby. Outside, a cab was letting a passenger out. She bolted for it, waving it down.

  Noah Gallagher emerged from the entrance just as her cab pulled away. His eyes locked onto hers again instantly. Even shadowed by the hat, obscured by the dark glasses, through the back window of a cab that was already a half a block away.

  He started running after her. Right out onto the street. Eyes still locked. The contact felt like a wire, pulling tighter and tighter. Then the taxi turned a corner and he was lost to sight. It hurt. As if something vital had been snipped with bolt-cutters.

  Her fizz of excitement died away. The cold lump of fear was back in place.

  She was so sick of feeling this way. She wanted to yell at the driver to circle the block, just on the off chance of catching one last glimpse of Noah Gallagher. To feel something different than that cold, heavy ache in her core. Just for a second or two.

  But she could not have this. Not even a stolen taste of it. She could not let lust trash her good judgment. She had to stay murderously sharp. Constantly on the defensive. Without rest.

  Sexual frustration wouldn’t kill her.

  But there were other things out there that definitely could.

  Chapter 2

  She was gone. He told himself to stop running. Stop, goddamnit.

  Noah forced himself to stop sprinting and slow to a walk. He stood there in the street, panting. Vibrating with the near-uncontrollable urge to keep pursuing her.

  Breathe. Breathe it down.

  Cars swerved around him, horns blatting. He was making a spectacle of himself, standing out in the middle of city traffic. Like he gave a shit about the noise and shouted insults. He just kept staring, trying to follow her taxi with his gaze even after it turned the corner. But even his enhanced vision couldn’t bend light rays.

  The dancer’s bulky disguise—it had to be a disguise—couldn’t fool him, not now that he’d seen her energy signature. Unique to her. Invisible to anyone but him. Unless, of course, that person used cutting-edge visual imaging, similar to the micro-tech implanted in his own eyes and brain to support his AVP combat programming.

  Her energy sig was the most beautiful he’d ever seen. A vivid bloom of color, floating in the air and superimposed over her drab coat. It struck him as intensely feminine, though he’d never assigned any gender attributes to energy sigs before. His hands clenched as he tried to shut down his raging frustration.

  At the speed that cab had been going, he could have outrun it without breaking a sweat. Like a panther taking down an antelope. He wouldn’t even need AVP to access his emergency fuel stores. He could have wrenched the door right off the vehicle, flung it away and claimed his prize, then and there. Nobody on earth could have stopped him.

  He wanted to howl like a wild animal.

  Just his luck that she’d gotten away. She’d saved him from police involvement, legal action, media buzz. Viral fucking videos circulating on the Internet, filmed with the phones of whoever was passing by. And somebody was always passing by.

  The Obsidian Group was lurking out there, watching and listening for them even years after rebellion day. Ready to come down on him, above all, like a ton of bricks. Behaving the way Obsidian had programmed him to behave would put everything and everyone he cared about in danger.

  He would . . . not . . . do it. No.

  Breathe, dick-for-brains. Grab a hook. Go sit in the freezer until you’re capable of at least pretending to be a normal human being.

  A car horn blared long and loud, zapping his combat program into furious play again. He whipped his head around. Fixed the offending driver with a lethal stare.

  The guy flinched, lifting his hands off the horn. He quickly swerved into the opposing lane of traffic to stay well clear of Noah’s highly effective Look of Death, tires squealing as he accelerated away. The other cars stopped well short of him and waited as he strode across the roadway and back onto the sidewalk.

  The combat program was in full swing, measuring and analyzing everything his enhanced eyes perceived, pumping him full of corrosive stress hormones. Everyone he saw was was an enemy, automatically assessed for threat level. The program churned out an instantaneous bare-hands kill plan for each one, urging him to act, move, take them out fast, kill them, kill them now, now, now . . .

  No. Those people are not enemies. They’re ordinary citizens of Seattle going about their usual afternoon business. Step back.

  He would not follow their program. He was his own man. He was who he chose to be. Not Obsidian’s rabid hound lunging on a chain. Fuck that. Fuck them.

  Grab the hook. Grab it!

  He swiftly descended into his most efficient analog, an arctic glacier, a maze of ice caves, blue-tinted and deep. All senses engaged with the biting cold to chill him . . . the fuck . . . out.

  The red haze retreated. The constant scroll of data down his field of vision began to slow down, as did his thudding heartbeat. He was still generating kill plans, but the urge to violently follow through on them was ebbing. Slowly.

  He’d trained himself over the years to function normally in the outside world while simultaneously analog diving. It created a double vision effect, but he was used to it, to the point where he could even conduct a coherent business conversation like that.

  He chilled in his ice cave while he made his way back into the office building. Ignoring people’s puzzled stares in the same way that he ignored the combat program’s helpful, detailed suggestions as to how to most efficiently tear them all into small, bloody pieces.

  Yeah. Thanks. Not today.

  He hadn’t had a stress event this severe in over ten years. And right in the middle of an important meeting. Seconds away from signing key documents.

  Hannah’s timing was a balls-on disaster. Everyone in that room, including his fianceé and her stepfather, had seen him chasing a party entertainer out of the building in much the way that a big predator chased down its lunch.

  That was going to be tough to explain. He couldn’t even explain it to himself. He faked normal pretty well these days, for the most part. He did all the normal things. He’d even gotten engaged to Simone Brightman, the perfect woman.

  He had his shit together, or so he thought. He was on top of the bad stuff in his past. He’d left it behind, had not allowed it to define him. Heading down the straight and narrow path to marriage, kids, a house in the suburbs. What could be more normal than that?

  So his reasoning had gone. But he’d obviously been fooling himself. If a pretty dancing girl could knock him right off his rails and get him running AVP hot, right out of fucking nowhere . . . that was bad.

  He was still deep in the shit. Deeper than he’d thought. He groped for the shades in his jacket pocket. Put them on. The extra light shield helped a little.

  He should have talked to Simone about this, but what could he say? He couldn’t tell her the truth about Midlands and what happened there. He couldn’t come clean about his modifications.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket as he waited for the elevator. He pulled it out. An encrypted message on his private line.

  Heads up. yr future father-in-law Batello has dealings with Mayburg Group, a subsidiary of Obsidian. Don’t sign. Asa

  The text message was followed by a series of links.

  He realized some time later that he was blocking the entrance to the elevator. People were sidling awkwardly around him, shooting him nervous glances. They sensed the buzzing bad energy he was giving off. There was once again a personalized kill plan glowing on his inner screen for every single person in his line of vision.

  Batello? How could Noah and his team have missed a connection between Batello and Obsidian, with all their due diligence? And how the fuck did his brother Asa know about it?

  How did Asa know anything about them at all,
after thirteen years without contact?

  His mind reeled. His focus was blasted all to shit. Asa?

  As soon as he could move at all, he followed the first directive in his own damage control checklist. Isolate yourself ASAP.

  Stairwell. He went for it.

  Twenty-four flights of stairs at a dead sprint would drain off some excess energy.

  So would randomly killing someone. Whatever happened first.

  * * *

  It was hard to sit still. The bus lumbered through the University District. Not her first choice for a getaway vehicle, but it had been stopped near the taxi when Caro jumped out. She perched on the plastic seat, vibrating with urgency. She wanted to jump up, run, yell, do something, anything. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw Noah Gallagher staring after her cab as he sprinted down the middle of a busy street, as if the honking cars swerving around him were not even a relevant consideration.

  She almost wished he’d caught up with her. So strange and sexy, to be seen like that. So deeply. Delicious and toe-curling, that a man like him wanted her attention so much he’d run out into traffic to try and catch her.

  It was more fun to think about her fantasy lover than to dwell on the terrifying real issues of her life. But please. She had to stay focused. A psycho killer was after her ass. No one was going to save that ass but her. She was almost certainly being followed, which meant Mark probably knew where she was. She couldn’t swoon off into romantic daydreams. Much less full-on sexual fantasies.

  The suspicion that she was being tailed began yesterday after she’d seen Bea. By now it was as big and heavy as a rock in her throat. There was no one in the bus to inspire mortal dread, just a Goth girl rocking out to headphones and an old lady opposite her. A plaid purse on her lap held a yappy little dog. The dog stuck its head out and eyed Caro balefully, as if it knew something that Caro didn’t.

  She’d seen the guy twice yesterday. Big, tall. Black ponytail, hawk nose, strolling casually about a block or so behind her. He hadn’t looked directly at her, but that meant nothing. The competent ones never seemed to be looking.