by Driza, Debra
Unaware that I wasn’t worthy of his Ferris wheel confession.
He looked so innocent, with his long eyelashes resting on his cheeks. And so very kissable, with his lips softly parted.
The mattress squeaked as I climbed out of my bed, but Hunter still didn’t move. Carefully, I sifted my fingers through his hair, relishing the silken feel of the strands. He breathed deeply, but thankfully didn’t stir.
I knew I shouldn’t be touching him. No, I didn’t deserve to touch him. What I should do was send him home, where he would be safe. My hand wavered hesitantly, before I gave in and traced the curve of his cheek, the rasp of five o-clock shadow on his jaw.
His eyes flew open, and his hand shot up.
Threat detected: Feint back.
My body started following the android command and then I remembered—this was Hunter. With effort, I forced myself to relax and let him tug my hand over until my palm covered his mouth and I felt his lips press a soft, feather-light kiss to its center.
My other hand braced me, flat against his chest, and beneath it, I felt his heart race. As if momentarily hypnotized, I lowered my head to his, slowly, like the invisible line that connected us together was shortening and I had no choice but to obey its pull. I didn’t know how long I’d been imagining this kiss, and even though I knew deep down doing this was woefully inappropriate of me, I wasn’t able to reel myself in.
He turned his head to the side at the exact same moment the red words flared.
Human threat detected.
A muffled clang of metal came from outside the window.
I stiffened, yanked away, and straightened just as something rapped at our door.
“Housekeeping.”
“Come back later,” I hollered, my face flushing. Even the arrival of the worker couldn’t mask the fact that I’d just been rejected. I walked over to my bag and started packing it, keeping my back to Hunter. I couldn’t meet his eyes. Not now.
“Mila?”
I moved a few things around in my bag, making sure my hands stayed busy. “Mmm-hmm?”
“Turn around and look at me.”
I stopped, hands buried. Then, steeling myself, I turned to face him. “Yes?”
He pushed himself up until he sat on the bed. “Don’t feel weird. I just—you’re clearly going through some things right now. I don’t want to feel like I’m taking advantage of you.”
While I stood there, absorbing his words, he smiled. “There’s no reason to rush into this. We’re cohabitating, you know.”
A wave of relief swept through me—he wasn’t rejecting me, he was just being a gentleman—but I still felt pretty humiliated and ashamed.
Because I was totally taking advantage of him.
“I’m going to run to that internet café and grab us some coffee,” I said, my voice wavering a little.
“Sounds good. I’ll hit the shower while you’re gone.”
Hunter pushed back the covers and stretched his arms overhead, the hem of his shirt lifting and revealing a thin sliver of perfectly cut abs. I felt a surge of heat rush up my neck and averted my gaze, cursing myself inwardly for acting like such a dork. For goodness’ sake—I was an android, not some real teen girl raised in a convent. And they were just muscles. Rectus abdominis, transverse abdominis, obliques—see, I could even name them all, and knew their functions. Everyone had them—no big deal.
I swallowed hard. Yeah, right. Tell that to my stupid traitorous imagination.
Hunter rose and grabbed his duffel from where he’d stashed it under the bed, and carried it toward the bathroom. Then he paused, surrounding me with the sweet-musky scent of sandalwood and soap. “Good morning, by the way.”
“Good morning,” I said, holding back a dopey, breathless sigh.
He turned to enter the bathroom, whistling a little, when I realized I had something important to ask him.
“How do you take your coffee?”
“Surprise me,” he said over his shoulder.
Oh, yeah, I could do that.
When I stepped outside, another beautiful Virginia Beach morning greeted me. The sun blazed low over the ocean like a golden ball, spreading sparkling reflections off the water and looking almost close enough to caress the distant waves.
Nine minutes later, I ducked into the internet café. It was long and narrow, with rows of computers at individual desks arranged neatly along walls painted with graffiti-style art. The bitter aroma of coffee wafted from behind the circular counter in the middle.
I should get the coffee and head straight back to the room, but the computers were calling to me. No matter what was going on with Hunter, Holland was out there, and I needed to know what details he’d leaked to the public, if any. The one thing that had kept me from all-out panicking so far was the fact that the general had a giant ego. Creating a true APB for me would involve admitting to his superiors that he’d allowed their top-secret, billion-dollar experiment to escape. Again. I was willing to bet he’d keep that information locked away for as long as possible, and send his men to find me in a clandestine operation.
But I needed to know for sure.
I settled into a brightly upholstered chair on the far left side of the desk housing the computer and performed a quick scan of the café’s occupants.
A group of three high-school boys, laughing and nudging one another as one of them pointed at the monitor. A middle-aged man, dressed in sagging jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, being nagged by a similarly middle-aged woman on his right. A young girl, alone in the back corner. And the twentysomething guy behind the counter.
Weapons scan: No guns found.
None of them looked remotely interested in me.
As I reached for the keyboard, an odd eagerness pulsed through my fingers. Behind my eyes, a red light blinked to life.
Open ports?
My body tensed as I remembered. In order to get Mom out of Holland’s secure underground compound, I’d had to communicate directly with the computer that held me captive. Machine to machine.
The code, glimmering into being—an endless stream of numbers, symbols, letters.
A roar that slithered into me, a presence all around me, one I could reach out and touch without ever moving my hands.
The portal, bursting open under my command.
Open ports, I thought with more conviction.
A roar of energy as a connection was formed, and just like that, a door in my mind flew open. Like a vacuum sucking in air, colors and information burst inside. As if the information had been lying in wait this whole time, hoping for an opportunity.
A spark ignited, deep in my chest. A tiny thrill of excitement.
This time, all of it so, so simple. Like my body, my brain, had been born for this, had been craving this very thing without me even knowing it. Strands of code rushed through my head in glimmering streams, without any of the terror from before. Instead, I practically buzzed with an awakening power.
With ease, I separated the strands, searching for a name.
Mila Daily.
No news reports, nothing that looked ominous. I didn’t even see a record of my enrollment in Clearwater High—how had Mom managed that?
On to the next name, then, the one on my phony passport: Stephanie Prescott.
Nothing.
Nicole Daily.
Nothing.
Feeling my shoulders lighten with each nonproductive search, I decided to search one more name.
Lucas Webb.
My proctor-turned-helper back at the compound. I never would have escaped without him, and how had I repaid him? By getting him shot in the leg and smashing up his classic Camaro, which Mom and I had “stolen” with his help for our getaway.
Lucas. Whose parting words to me had been, “I think you make an excellent human.”
I angled my head away. Surely Lucas was okay. We’d been careful to cover our tracks, to pretend that he was a hostage.
He was fine, he had to be. The alternative was t
oo awful to even consider.
I cross-referenced with MIT, and found him almost immediately. I felt a jolt of recognition in my chest, a flicker of warmth, when I pulled up his college photo. His disheveled hair had actually been tamed, but the shirt was a little rumpled. No smile, just an intense stare into the camera.
His bio flashed before me, and I zeroed in on his mother’s name:
Joanna Holland Webb.
Holland. So, Lucas really was General Holland’s nephew. And even though I’d guessed, back at the compound, shock still held me captive. If anything, the confirmation only made Holland more of a monster. What kind of man designed an elaborate test that revolved around his nephew being tortured?
I shivered, the memory of the wrench in my hand all too vivid. Not a pathway I ever wanted to explore again.
I searched for anything postdated from the time I’d escaped the compound, hoping for some shred of evidence that he was okay. Anything to stem the guilt twisting me into knots.
And I found it. A single tweet, short and vague. I met an excellent human.
An inadvertent smile tugged at my lips, and my lungs collapsed with relief. A signal—the same words he’d told me, back at the compound.
Lucas was okay.
I slumped into the chair, my lips moving in a silent thank you.
Straightening, I searched Washington, D.C., and the date of Mom’s death, pushing away the feeling of anguish that suddenly stabbed at my core.
A headline shimmered into view.
Woman found murdered in downtown D.C.—witnesses questioned.
As I sat bolted to my chair, I processed the rest of the article:
An unidentified woman’s body was pulled from the Potomac early this morning. Preliminary reports indicate the woman was in her mid-to-late thirties, Caucasian, and suffered from multiple gunshot wounds. Several locals near the area where the body was recovered claimed they saw a young girl, with short dark hair and between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, leaving the area under suspicious circumstances, wearing a blood-splattered shirt. Authorities are trying to track down more information.
A sketch materialized. A drawing of a face. My fingers pressed hard on the keyboard. A drawing of my face. And a surprisingly good one, at that. Apparently the transient I’d traded clothes with in the wee hours of the morning near the Potomac had a good eye for detail.
The wide deep-set eyes, the strong curve of the jaw . . . even the smattering of freckles. For anyone who knew me, that sketch was easily recognizable. The words accompanying it were even more ominous. I was the lead suspect in Mom’s murder. That was outrageous. Of all the—
A heaviness pushed against my ribs, filled my chest like hardening cement. Because while I might not have been holding the gun that shot Mom, there was no doubt she was dead because of me.
Holland might not have released that sketch, but I felt his peppermint breath burning down my neck all the same. And now that the police had this much, what if someone recognized me and reported in? What if it got back to someone in the military other than Holland—someone in the military who knew what I looked like, outside of his lackeys? Well, not the military, exactly—but SMART Ops. The clandestine unit that dealt in artificial intelligence and cutting-edge research. The secretive military group headed up by a man who was more than willing to sacrifice lives in pursuit of his twisted agenda.
I braced myself against the hatred that burned in my heart, waited until my skin no longer felt like it would split down the seams. One thing was for sure—the investigation had started. Mom’s body had been recovered, which meant a medical examiner, fingerprints . . . Sooner or later, they were going to uncover her real identity. And when they did—
Any fleeting thoughts of flying under the radar with Hunter for a day or two flew out the window. I had to find Richard Grady. Now.
In less than a second, I’d discarded thousands of Gradys through an advanced search. None of them relevant. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for, but the facts sped through my head at lightning speed.
Gradys, from all over the country. The world. I sifted through facts, searched for holes in stories—Gradys missing big chunks of their lives, which might suggest involvement in a clandestine organization. Gradys from military families. Nothing was ringing a bell, and although only a few seconds had passed, I knew I was operating on limited time.
Finally. I found three possible candidates.
One was a buff blond man who looked vaguely Scandinavian, had worked in Homeland Security, and now lived in Denver.
The next was retired military, a thin man with a receding hairline and puffy eyes who’d gone through an ugly divorce where, in an article, his former wife had blasted him for spending too much time on covert ops and not enough on his kids. Interesting.
But the one who made my heart pound with excitement had been named in a tell-all book by a former government operative as a CIA data analyst, even though according to his online persona, he’d worked for a military supplies company. There were no photos online, either—not a one. In this day and age, an oddity, for sure—and one that most likely wasn’t coincidental. But the thing that really made me sit upright was his grandmother’s birthplace.
Clearwater, Minnesota.
If that was a coincidence, it was one I was willing to gamble on.
His current residence was listed as Knoxville, Tennessee.
I began recording all the details.
“Hey, anyone else having a Wi-Fi issue?” Somewhere to my left, I heard an irritated male voice.
“Yeah, I just got booted,” returned a younger voice to my right. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the teen boys scowling at their monitor, fingers pounding on the keys.
Crap. Maybe my supersecret android method of using the internet wasn’t so supersecret after all. Was I jacking up the Wi-Fi for everyone else? Hogging it, somehow?
Just as that thought materialized, somewhere, in a dim cavern in my mind, I felt a tiny pinprick of awareness. A needle-sized hole, worming its way into existence. I hadn’t opened any new ports, or issued any new commands. I’d never felt that spot before.
So what was it?
Around me, the disgruntled voices were growing louder, as the Wi-Fi refused to cooperate.
Close ports.
In a flash, my mind cleared. The wormhole disappeared. And a loud “Yes!” sounded from the scraggly-haired boy on my right, accompanied by a fist pump.
Apparently, Wi-Fi was back.
“What are you doing?”
I whipped around and faced Hunter.
He dropped his hand on my shoulder. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just that I got a little worried when you weren’t back in the room when I got out of the shower.”
His jaw was freshly shaved, his hair damp and curling at the ends. He looked amazing, but I couldn’t just put off my search for Grady on the basis of cute hair and smooth cheeks. I had to ensure that Mom hadn’t died in vain, which meant that I needed to survive. The only way to do that was to keep moving and stay vigilant.
And the more I stared at him, the harder it was to fit him into the equation.
“I was doing a little more research. On my dad.”
“Did you have any luck?”
I nodded. “I think I may have found him this time.”
Hunter looked surprised, not that I could blame him. “Really? That’s great. Where is he?”
“Knoxville.”
“Tennessee?”
At my nod, he plucked his phone from his pocket. “So we should try to call him, right?”
I shook my head. “There was no phone number listed.” Considering his previous occupation, I doubted that he had a traceable phone at all.
“Then I take it we’re driving out there?” Hunter asked.
I sort of half-shrugged, like, Who wouldn’t want to drive across the country in search of a total complete stranger?
As we stood there, in the middle of the café, I notic
ed one of the teens elbow his friend and nod at us. Fear twined icy tendrils through my body. Why were they staring? Had they recognized me, from the drawing?
I yanked on Hunter’s arm and started for the counter. “Why don’t we grab that coffee I was supposed to get and map out a plan?”
As we stood in line, I knew it may be the stupidest move ever, but I had to know if they were still looking, so I peeked over my shoulder. They were. And when they caught me staring, the middle one’s grin widened and he elbowed his friend again. Then, he proceeded to make obnoxiously loud kissing motions on his arm.
Turning back to study the menu mounted on the wall, I wasn’t not sure whether I should laugh or roll my eyes. I did neither. I just allowed the relief to wash away my fear. Still, even though they hadn’t seen anything suspicious, that didn’t mean my concern had just gone away. There was a picture of my face, circulating out there on the net.
Now more than ever, I had to try to be someone else.
Or flat-out disappear.
Fifteen minutes later, Hunter and I sat on the back of a wooden bench, our feet on the seat, our elbows on our thighs. As we sipped our coffees, I watched the waves roll in and thought about how carefree he’d appeared yesterday as he’d swum in them. Then in the distance, one of the military jets zoomed across the sky, and I hunched my shoulders, my mind reeling back to all the suffering Lucas had gone through because he’d befriended me. Even though he was okay now, the consequences he’d experienced were more than anyone should endure.
I crossed a line inside of myself and made a choice. I couldn’t put Hunter in danger any longer, and now that a police sketch of me was being broadcast online, we were in much too deep.
“So . . .” Staring hard at the horizon, gathering my resolve, I cleared my throat. “I figure you can just drop me off at the bus station.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him snap his head around, his brow furrowed. “What?”
I forced myself to look at him, to keep my voice and gaze steady. “Look, I don’t know anything about this man or how he might react to me showing up on his doorstep. He could be really pissed that I tracked him down. Besides, there’s no point in you giving up your fall break for what might turn out to be another wild goose chase.”
