Dressed in a navy blue snowsuit better suited for the slopes than work, he planted himself directly in her path, invading her space until she had no choice but to back up a step. “That’s Detective Obie to you, Neo-Luddite. I’m a level three now, whereas you’re...nothing. Right?”
She’d rather bite her tongue out than reveal she’d been busted down yet again to a mere level one. Obie wouldn’t care that it was yet another move in the game her superiors were playing with her. He’d just see it as a shiny new weapon he could club her to death with. “Are you the detective in charge?”
“Don’t you know it’s impolite to address your superiors without looking them in the eye?” With a malicious delight bordering on the erotic, he slapped a hand to the side of her helmet. “Take that thing off and address your superior. Now.”
A year ago she had spent sleepless nights unraveling the diabolical puzzle of who was the monster among them who gutted Cicero women and left them on their front doorsteps in various poses for their families to find. The year before that she’d nearly died chasing down the Lake Shore Drive Cannibal before bringing him in, covered in Lake Michigan muck and sickened that she’d caught him in the act of settling in for his latest snack. Before that, she had unraveled a multibillion-dollar day-trader scheme no one even knew was there, and tracked it down to two high school geniuses and a sick twist of a megalomaniacal teacher working their scam from the school’s innocuous-looking computer lab.
And now...this.
Why the hell haven’t I quit already?
“Are you,” she said while the impotent rage bubbled up, a rage she’d tried to beat down just as vehemently as the rest of the world tried to beat her down, “the detective in charge?”
“You’re so fucking stupid, you just refuse to learn your place, don’t you?” Far from looking disappointed in her apparent brainlessness, Manu Obie looked like he was about to have a private moment in his puffy snow pants. “You don’t even know you’re a goddamn joke, do you? Nothing gets through that thick head of yours because you still think you’re better than everyone else, but you’re not. You’re nothing, Vedette. But even after all this time you still don’t believe that, do you? The only way to teach that fact to an arrogant bitch like you is to rub your snooty nose in it. As much as I hate to be the one to do it...” He trailed off with an excited laugh that revealed what a liar he was before he moved with that not-human, freakish cyborg speed she had forced herself to become accustomed to over the past year.
Contrary to Obie’s claims, Reina was far from stupid. In close-quarters combat there was little an organic body like hers could do to match up with muscles infused with an electroactive network of nanobionics, wedded to bones that were reinforced with carbon nanotube material, making them virtually unbreakable. No, there was nothing a pure human could do.
Unless, of course, she was prepared for it.
It was beyond stupid to tussle over something as unimportant as a helmet. Part of her tucked that fact away in a file marked cringe-worthy even as she executed a simple side-step spin to avoid the meaty hands lashing out for her head. But she figured she could worry about the total lack of dignity at a later date. What mattered now was making a stand—a pointless, no-one-would-care-about-it stand against the petty tyranny encroaching on every aspect of that thing she optimistically called her life. She wasn’t going to trade away her organic chassis just so she could do her job, or worse—so that bionic douche bags like Manu Obie would frigging like her. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to take off her helmet until she was good and ready. At that moment, she decided that if he wanted to try and rip the stupid thing off with her head still in it, then so be it. Not that the department would put him down for her murder. At this point her boss would probably give him a medal.
His eyes bulged in fury as he wound up grabbing nothing but air. Score one for the nothings of the world, she thought grimly. But she had no illusions about surviving the next five seconds without some serious pain—
“Obie! What the hell is your malfunction?”
Freezing as if the December winds off Lake Michigan had turned her into an ice sculpture, it took Reina a moment to turn and look up to the third story balcony. Her heart fell like a satellite in a decaying orbit when she found herself in the basilisk-like glare of the one person she hated almost as much as Manu Obie.
“Edison Wicke.” Reina didn’t bother stifling a sigh. This damn day was making her envy the function that all digitized brains had of deleting traumatic memories from permanent files. “Well. I guess I can stop asking who the detective in charge is.”
A bad-tempered snarl escaped him as he flicked a glance toward the rubberneckers. “Vedette, get your ass up here. Obie, you’re dismissed.”
Reina had to give the knuckle-dragger credit. Even he seemed to realize they’d done a bang-up job of stooping to an all-time low. “Boss, she started it—”
Without warning, Edison hopped the warped wooden railing. His black coat snapped behind him as he fell the three stories to land with a crash that made the frozen ground beneath her feet tremble. Reina locked herself into place through sheer force of will, trying not to stare, unnerved, at the crater he’d made in the already cracked and crumbling pavement. Though bod-mods were far from new, it was still an unpleasant shock to have people who looked like regular humans execute thoroughly inhuman behavior like it was no big deal.
But there was no question; falling twenty-plus feet wasn’t human. Nothing about Edison Wicke was human anymore, and she hated him for it. She hated that he was the first cop to get bod-mods, instantly becoming the department’s golden boy. She hated him for meching out his wetware—his brain—with all the latest neurolinks, when he’d proven he already possessed one of the quickest minds on the force when he’d almost beaten her to the punch in catching the Cicero Slasher. And she hated him for solving the kidnapping case that had been taken away from her after her refusal to mech out. In one short year, Edison Wicke had gone from a level three detective to the untouchable level five, the only active level five detective in their department now.
The bastard.
Edison’s breath vapored in front of him in a deceptively calm moment as he straightened to his full height. Then his gloved hand snaked out with that bizarre, inhuman speed and grabbed a fistful of puffy snowsuit. “You embarrass yourself and the uniform in front of civvies, then you whine like a bitter bitch about who started it? Well, guess what, tough guy? I’m finishing it. Get back to the barn and write a report on how stupid you were to pull that shit right in front of me. If a meched-out badass like you feels it’s okay to attack your fellow officers, you’re not safe to be on the streets with anyone.”
Obie’s thin lips curled back in an ill-concealed snarl, and he shot Reina a look that told her he had already completed the mental gymnastics it took for him to lay the blame for this debacle on her doorstep. Then he jerked away, screaming at the droids to let him through.
With Obie already an inconsequential memory, Reina focused on her newest problem. Unlike Manu Obie, she had been aware of Edison Wicke’s existence from the moment he strutted into her precinct, sat on the edge of her desk and introduced himself while snacking on her private stock of pistachios as if he had every right to do so. Already a superstar at his old precinct in Lincoln Park, he’d blown in with a smart mouth that didn’t know when to quit and a track record that was almost as good as her own. In no uncertain terms he’d told her that while he had high hopes of them becoming the best of buddies, he had an ambitious eye focused on being the new top dog, and he didn’t care who knew it.
A couple years ago she had been the undisputed top dog. Now, that was his glorious new position, and it bugged her like a thorn she couldn’t get out from under her fingernail.
“How’s it, Vedette?” He greeted her with a brief nod, while his dark blue gaze traced over the helmet that had so cl
early bugged Obie. “You gonna make like a bobblehead all day, or do you think you’ll be out of there anytime soon? Just curious.”
Reina spared half a second to shoot Edison a glance, but in that half second she took in every minute detail—thick, muscle-bulky shoulders that told her he was as devout in training his body as she was. Those shoulders went with a barrel chest King Kong would have been proud of, and the column of his neck was strong and sturdy. His jaw was much too aggressive for her taste, squared off and jutting out as if daring anyone to take a swing. With a sense of swagger hanging around him like a cloud of amped-up pheromones, it was pretty much guaranteed that taking a swing at Edison Wicke would be the last mistake a person would ever make.
And yet...
There was just something about the guy that made her want to pop him in the kisser and let the chips fall where they may. It had been that way from day one. When he’d transferred to her precinct, his hair had been a careless mess of sun-kissed blondish brown curls that she had to admit made her fingers tingle with the surprisingly strong desire to touch. But once he’d volunteered for the role of Mr. Perfect by getting bod-mods, the thick locks had come off and he now sported one of those neo-Roman, uber-short haircuts any Centurion would have been proud to wear. It was darker as well, though nowhere near as dark as hers, and his deep-set eyes were an endless blue she’d secretly feared would be replaced once his modifications were complete. Fortunately when he’d returned after a month of recovery his eyes were the same, at least to look at. But she’d had the unnerving sensation that every time he looked at her, he could see all the way through to her bra...and beyond.
Were x-ray eyes one of his mods?
With a shrug Reina turned toward the stairs, going out of her way to avoid the unsettling inhuman crater he’d left. “It comes off when it comes off. I didn’t need help, by the way.”
“You’re welcome.” She heard his heavier footfalls right behind her, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from snidely asking why he didn’t jump back up to the balcony in a heroic single bound. “That was a slick move you used on Obie—avoiding him while putting yourself in an offensive position behind him. I even saw your muscles bunch to deliver a quick chop to the back of the neck. Why didn’t you follow through?”
So he’d been watching for a while. Great. Just when she’d thought her embarrassment at being in an undignified situation couldn’t get any worse. “He’s not an enemy.”
“Don’t kid yourself. You don’t have a more dangerous enemy than Manu Obie.”
“Yeah? Then life is officially a breeze.” She reached the landing that led up to the open-air balcony lined with numbered doors. Despite the temperature hovering in the teens, a few of those doors were cracked open so the inhabitants hidden behind the thin panels of steel could watch the show. “Number 303, right?”
“I’d tell you to check your IM screen to verify, but seeing as how you’re an organic, yeah. 303 it is.”
She ignored the reminder that she wasn’t one of them, a member of their elite club, and took her time popping the helmet’s chin strap and pulling it off. She blinked at the glare of morning sun glinting off the snow-covered wasteland that was South Chicago, but it was the sudden buzz in her left ear that slammed up her internal defenses. Soon after the police department’s mandatory bod-mod ruling had been announced, a good friend—and failed military lab experiment by the name of Beowulf—had insisted she get a malware alarm installed. It was an ingenious little device, a tiny, innocuous-looking hoop hanging from the cartilaginous bump that protected the ear canal. But in fact it was an external piece of hardware whose function was that of a tripwire alarm designed to detect invasive online security probes sent her way. It was the only part of her body that could pick up on something existing only in cyberspace, alerting her to a potentially malicious probe. And though such an invasion of privacy couldn’t harm an organic like her, she hated it when it went off. It meant someone was trying to scan her wetware without her permission.
Sadly, she didn’t have to look too far for the culprit.
“The helmet’s a normal one,” she said without looking at Edison. She couldn’t. If she did, he might see the ridiculous surge of disappointment tangling up her insides. “It wasn’t designed to block any of your spiffy security scans or whatever. Which you would have known if you’d simply bothered to ask me. I just kept the damn thing on to piss off Obie.”
There was a heartbeat of silence. “Shit. How’d you know?”
So he was willing to own it, was he? That was something. “I’m a good guesser, Detective. Anything you want to tell me before I go in? Was anyone hurt? What was stolen?”
“No injuries to report, and nothing was stolen.”
With her hand on the knob to 303, Reina turned to look over her shoulder only to discover he was less than a hand width away. Shock ballooned through her, along with a flush of heat she tagged as surprise-fueled adrenaline. Which was all it could be. No way in hell would she get all hot and bothered by a walking toaster. Not even one as magnificent as Edison Wicke.
Resolutely she shoved the unwanted thought away. “No one’s hurt and nothing’s stolen. Why are we here?”
“Inside.” To her surprise he reached around her, placing his gloved hand over hers to turn the knob. “You’re not going to believe what you’re about to see.”
Chapter Two
Impossible. Reina Vedette was so goddamn...impossible.
The apartment’s front room was illuminated only by a back window that had a frayed bed sheet hanging over half of it like a curtain. The winter-bright sun streaming in through the uncovered portion spotlighted the chipped faux-wood laminate flooring and once-white walls. The sparse living room furniture was mismatched and well-worn, gathered around a small flat screen TV that had been popular thirty years ago. But none of this was what they were here for. Without a word Edison shut the door, leaned back against it and indulged in his favorite pastime—watching Reina work.
“Well.” Her voice was like velvet, so incongruous with her ferocious personality. The rich texture of it filled every drab corner of the room. “What do we have here?”
“Kids woke up first and found it.”
“How many?”
“Two. Girl and a boy, aged six and five respectively. They’re in the other room with their mom, a Ms. Terra Seldon.”
She nodded to acknowledge she had heard him but otherwise remained silent as she circled the Christmas tree standing askew in the middle of the otherwise-undecorated room, looking as out-of-place as a one-ton pink gorilla. Edison watched her without blinking. He didn’t want to lose even a nanosecond of her movements. She probably had no idea that to him, her lithe dancer’s body was like a mesmerizing symphony of motion. The frictionsuit she favored, as most hardcore slick bikers did, was plastered over her curves like black latex paint, glistening wetly over the small swell of her breasts and firm bubble butt. When he’d followed her up the stairs outside, he’d had the agonizing pleasure of having that heart-shaped ass right at eye level. It had taken every ounce of his will power to not reach out and squeeze it for all its worth.
And when she’d taken off her helmet...
Edison didn’t bother stifling his sigh, knowing that at this distance her organic ears wouldn’t catch the sound of longing. There was just something about Reina Vedette that hit every last one of his happy man-buttons. The blacker-than-midnight hair she kept in an asymmetrical blunt cut swung to one side of the delicate point of her chin, the other side shorter and constantly tucked behind an ear that had a half-dozen glittering piercings. By contrast her skin was the palest he’d ever seen, its fragile beauty unmarred even by the hint of a freckle, and so delicate-looking he had to curb-stomp the desire to touch her to see if she was real.
But as much as he admired the well-constructed package that made up Reina Vedette, it wa
s her eyes that had the power to make him forget his own name. Large and waiflike, they dominated her porcelain-pale face, poetic and glittering like polished jet. He couldn’t resist looking into those inky black pools when she was within a mile of him, a fact of life he didn’t even try to fight anymore. That lack of control was pitiful enough, but it was a real kick in the teeth to admit his fixation was just as insane when they were apart. Little did she know his wetware was haunted by those eyes, so full of turbulent thoughts that he couldn’t stop from obsessing over what those thoughts might be. That was why he’d tried to link with her; it had been as automatic as breathing to try and mesh his neurolinks with hers so they could share their thoughts in a private chat room.
Of course, paranoid freak that she was, Reina saw it as an attack. He saw it as desperation.
And there it was, the hiccup that made her so impossible. For all her vaunted detecting skills, when it came to seeing what was right in front of her, Reina Vedette was as stubborn as a mule and blind as a bat. She didn’t see him, just like she didn’t see the inevitability of the changing world around her.
Whether she saw it or not though, change was coming. And it was coming for her.
“Wow. A real tree.” She leaned in to sniff appreciatively, and he wanted to run a finger down that cute little ski-shoot bump she called a nose. “Call me sentimental, but I love that scent.”
“Sentimental,” he obliged her, then drank up the pleasant tingle when she slanted those inky black eyes his way. “Want to hold hands and sing Christmas carols? I know all the words to ‘Gimme, Santa, Gimme’.”
“I think ‘O Tannenbaum’ would be more appropriate.”
“I’m not singing about shit I don’t even know how to say.” Narrowing his eyes, he went online and did a quick Christmas carol search. “Okay, now I do. Feel like singing?”
She fished a small rectangular item out of a zip pocket and thumbed a button. In an instant the clear crime-scene investigation visor—the same kind he’d used before he’d gotten his bod-mods—sprang from its compact state. “Thanks, I’ll pass.”
A Galactic Holiday Page 2
