by CD Reiss
“Call me Cassandra.”
He smirks and slaps the door closed. The cracking rain goes back to muffled tapping. I am alone with plenty of room in my car, the air thin enough to breathe.
In the rearview, I see him canter across the street and get into the taxi.
It’s not until he’s gone that I wonder what just happened.
6
KEATON * FOUR MONTHS LATER
I couldn’t forget the FBI agent with the raven hair and the fog-grey eyes. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t look into her background, but I’d lied. I distracted myself with work for the first week, then in a moment of weakness, I uncovered whatever I could, devouring information so I could build a woman out of meaningless details.
I stayed in San Jose until I couldn’t anymore. As soon as I crossed into Barrington, I knew I would see her again.
I’m worried about how intrigued I still am by her. She’s as harmless as wolfsbane, with its innocuous-looking purple flowers. Touching it with a paper cut can kill a man. Or not. It’s a risk I’m not willing to consider. She can derail everything.
I’m not worried about the feds. I thought about moving out of the dark long before the FBI connected Keaton Bridge to Alpha Wolf. I’m prepared for the switch. Nor am I worried about her threats. They have the hollow ring of a prop sword on fake armor.
I won’t mistake Cassie’s vulnerability for weakness or her silence for lack of interest. She hasn’t gotten what she asked for. She’ll make sure she comes for me to get the link. I’ll find a way to give her what she needs without giving her what she wants.
The taxi speeds over the empty road, rain splashing everywhere. The layer of water on the windows marbles everything into a moving grey mass, but the driver speeds along as if he can find Barrington by smell.
I’ve dissected my last contact with Cassandra dozens of times since leaving. She’d turned skittish in her car, like a tamed horse who only remembered her wild past when cornered. Her domestication cracked, and something unruly seeped through. Something sexy and musky. Her sweet steel smell and the soft sound of her voice is stuck to my senses, latching on like a puzzle piece.
I’m sure I’d fancy getting the girl with the long sable hair to scream my name. I’m sure her sexual obedience would be more satisfying than any other woman’s.
By the time the cab pulls off onto a long road, the beating rain has slowed to a thick drizzle. The factory’s details are shrouded by the mist and the setting sun. Three cranes surround it, ready to remove the roof so the equipment can be dropped in.
The guard at the factory entrance sees me in the backseat and knows the driver because everyone knows everyone here. We’re waved past the gate and navigate the delivery trucks, then a flatbed with a ten-meter-high wooden box with QI4 stenciled on the side.
I pay the driver and hop up on the loading bay. I know the man with the clipboard and the woman operating the forklift. I know the name of the architect who points at the doorframe. They wave or nod, but they’re afraid of me. They don’t ask questions and I offer nothing. I’m a ghost, and I like it that way.
The room is cavernous. It’s a fucking circus. Forklifts and boxes. Drones stringing cables across the ceiling. Robots being assembled by robots. Sparking arc welding behind screens and the shouts of men and women with clipboards as they check their punch lists.
A male voice breaches the din. “It’s done!”
“Yes!”
That’s a woman’s voice I recognize, and I hitch my attention to it. Harper Barrington sits on a wheeled dolly, staring into a screen. Headphones arc over her blond hair, and six of her phalange knuckles are wrapped in white hacker tape.
I hop on the dolly as she pushes headphones off her ears.
“Hey, K,” she says as Taylor Harden hops onto the dolly in trousers and a jacket. They high-five and kiss longer than I find appropriate.
“Hello, Alpha,” he says when he’s done.
“Hello, Beeze.”
Harper shuts her console. “We can do the second half tomorrow.”
“Does she even work here?” I ask. “Shouldn’t she be in school?”
“Get someone else,” she says. “See if I care.”
“Winter break.” Taylor hops off the platform and calls to me, “You have to see this.”
I join him as he takes me across the concrete floor. It’s been sanded down and shined. Masking tape outlines the equipment and wall placement.
“We’re doing it,” Taylor says. “When I saw this, I said damn. We’re really doing it.”
He bursts out onto the loading dock, where a forklift picks up a pallet of nondescript boxes. It’s already cold, but colder air comes from the open back of the truck. SysCo is printed on the side.
“This is it!” Taylor’s breath is smoke and his jacket flutters open in the wind. “This is when I said holy shit.”
“It’s a refrigerator car? A food delivery?”
“When I dreamed about making it, I thought about this. Being so big we needed a cafeteria.”
“We need a cafeteria because you wanted to buy a factory in the middle of nowhere.”
He doesn’t even hear me. He’s lit up like London Bridge.
A crane lowers a pizza oven onto the dock. We jump to ground level. He knows me well enough to walk toward the river, where there’s less noise and confusion. We stop under the shelter built to protect equipment from the elements.
I make him nervous. His life is built on quantum circuits and the software that makes it feasible. If the law finds something on his partner, his life’s work is in jeopardy.
“The FBI,” he says in a more somber tone. “Have you heard from them since they brought you in?”
I’d told him about the interview, and he hasn’t brought it up since. Now he has to. This is why we’re by the river.
“I would have mentioned it.”
“Not comforting.”
He doesn’t believe me. Or more accurately, he believes I’m telling the truth, but doesn’t believe the truth is mine to tell.
“They were fishing,” I say. “I don’t have what they want. I told you this.”
He looks away, then back at me. “Okay, listen. Here’s the thing. I can’t…” He takes a deep breath. “I can’t take risks right now.”
I cross my arms, trying not to laugh at him. He was never half the risk taker he fancied himself.
“Is Harper all right?”
“She’s fine. Thanks for pretending you care.”
“I do care.” I have to jump in front of this, because this idea that I don’t care about him, and the love of his life by extension? It bothers me. “Tell me what you’re off about, would you? I don’t have all day.”
“We have a cash flow problem.”
“How much?”
“Hundred.”
He means a hundred thousand. It’s not much in the grand scheme of our investments and liabilities, but moving that amount around to cover it won’t be easy.
“Don’t we have accountants?” I ask.
“They can’t pull it off a money tree. All our shit’s tied up.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“With what? Bitcoin? No.” He can’t look at me, or he won’t. He’s doing it on purpose.
“Why not?”
Finally, he looks me in the eye. “Dude.”
“Wanker. I set you up clean.” The end of each word is clipped, but I keep my voice low. I don’t want to alarm him, but he needs to trust me on this.
He closes his eyes for a second as if gathering his own patience. “I know, but… Harper says there’s hacker chatter about you. Kaos’s people aren’t happy you’ve gone legit. And on the one hand, fuck them. On the other hand, it creates a vulnerability we have to shut down.”
“They have no idea who I am.”
“Dude, I don’t even know who you are.”
Taylor used to be an impenetrable wall of ambition. Once he met Harper, he started saying what was on his m
ind whether it serves his goals or not.
“We’ve been friends since you got your first boil,” I say.
“You dropped into New Jersey from nowhere.”
“London’s hardly nowhere.”
“Do you remember the time Mrs. Denver was calling your name in the cafeteria? She kept calling and calling and you just ignored her? Everyone turned around but you and the girl you were talking to. Denver was just, ‘Keaton! Mr. Bridge! Keaton! Keaton Bridge!’ I had to kick you.”
“I was obviously distracted by the bird.”
“No, I thought about this a lot. There were other times. The time you had to sign out of class early and you wrote a D instead of a K.”
My throat closes. There are some things I don’t talk about. Not with my best friend. Not even with those in my family with the same secrets. There are things that are off-limits, but if I tell him that, he’ll know by deduction. Taylor’s no dolt. In fact, he’s brilliant enough to get me killed.
I step out of the shelter. The rain’s slowed. “Reliving the glory days has been fun.”
“You didn’t know yourself by that name,” Taylor continues. “Keaton Bridge isn’t your name. It’s what it is, bro.” Taylor’s words come from far away, and I hang on every syllable. “It’s cool. You’re a mystery man. Cool. But maybe the FBI showed up here for a reason.”
“You have nothing to worry about. The fed will never be a problem. Ever.”
“And Kaos?”
“He’s not your concern.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“I’m not here to comfort you.”
“Why are you here?”
I answer by putting a hand on each of his shoulders and looking him in the eye. I’m here for him, but I can’t say that. He’d never believe it.
“I have this,” I say.
He looks at me in a way meant to threaten. I love him, but he’s a knob if he thinks he can scare me away from disappearing.
7
CASSIE
The club restaurant is crowded with Doverton’s élite. Heavy silverware clinks, and voices are dampened by the damask curtains with a rose pattern.
The busboy takes our dinner plates.
Frieda has one eyebrow that fades in the center of her nose but doesn’t disappear. Where most women would remove the connection, my friend owns it. She tweaks the shape of her brow to beautiful, subtle arches, and can raise one or the other to express a question or doubt, but with the dark line connecting both sides, every expression comes with an undercurrent of strength.
Her dark brown hair is pulled back and parted in the middle. Her gold hoops swing back and forth when she shakes her head. She’s a year behind me at the bureau, and the only other woman agent in the office.
“You see that factory? They’re building so fast.” She slides her thick black glasses to the top of her head and picks up the check.
“Barrington loves it.”
“I don’t trust these California guys.” She puts down the check and picks her bag off the back of the chair. It’s basically a leather sack Santa would find quite roomy. “Of course, you knew. You’re always so on top of it.”
It’s my turn to pick up the check while her hand is frozen in her bag as if she’s found a a prize at the bottom of a cereal box.
“Yeah. Besides being one of the absolute worst, I mean best, hackers in the world, he’s so cocky about it, I want to slap him with an indictment just for smirking.”
My wallet’s out before hers. We drop our credit cards on the tray and the waitress whisks it away.
Frieda puts her elbows on the table and circles the air with a finger. “What was this that happened to your face just now?”
“What?” I have no idea what my face did before she asked the question, but it’s turning red once she does the circle-thing.
“This glint when you say ‘smirk’ like you have a picture in your head.”
“Of course I have a picture in my head.”
“And you like this picture?”
I shrug, but she knows me. She raises that one gorgeous eyebrow, one side higher than the other, and tilts her head.
“Whatever,” I say. “Where are they with that check?”
“Tell me something about him.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Anything. Just to pass the time.”
I’m not going anywhere until the check comes, so I might as well just spill it. “British.”
“Oh, and an accent?”
“Yeah. But he’s been living here since he was sixteen.”
“Some people don’t shake it so easy. Tall? Short?” She slams the last drop of cola and places her glass in the condensation circle on the tablecloth. “Tell me.”
“Tall, I guess? Six four?” I slide my own wine glass onto my own grey circle, matching hers. I don’t know why I’m equivocating. “Really, really beautiful, to be honest. Like a jaguar. Not the car.”
“I like this picture you’re painting.”
We get the check back and sign on the dotted lines. I’m uncomfortable talking about how I felt around Keaton.
I stand and grab my bag and coat. “I like the picture of him having information I can use to get one up on Ken.”
Frieda snorts and throws her twenty-pound bag over her shoulder. “I like that picture too. Ken is one hundred percent bro.” She drops bro like most people drop shit. “And he has a sneaky face I don’t like.”
“His face suits him. And he’s going to be the one moved to CID unless I can find something to leverage to my advantage.”
CID is the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division. My dream job. I’ve been passed over four times.
“Can you leverage Mister-Not-The-Car?”
“I can’t,” I say right away then stop, because I’m flooded with distracting pictures of ripped sheets and knotted bodies. “He’s an asset. Off-limits.”
“Ah. Well, then. The cat must disappear back into the jungle without you.”
She yanks one handle of her hobo bag over her shoulder and opens it, digging for her keys as we walk through the bar. She spends half her waking hours with her arm buried to the elbow. She stops in front of me in the middle of the half-empty, post-dinner-seating bar area to rummage for her keys. There’s a football game on the TV, cheers and groans in the air, laughter and clinked bottles. Our team must be winning.
I know exactly where my keys are, but I wait with her, watching the TV as the next play is set up.
In the tense silence, a voice breaks through, and I’d know it even without the British accent. I scan for Keaton and find him when the guy in front of me leans over to talk to the woman next to him. The British businessman/tech giant/hacker sits at the corner of the bar, ordering a drink.
Keaton looks calm, almost serene, more the threatening villain than I ever thought possible.
“Got them!” Frieda exclaims to a jingle of keys.
The play completes. The crowd cheers. Keaton’s drink arrives.
She pulls me forward. “Let’s go.”
The man next to Keaton gets up, and our eyes meet. Keaton looks right at me, picking up his glass and tipping it in my direction. I’m frozen still, shot through with hot steel.
I can’t turn away. He’s half in shadow, one foot on the floor and the other tensed against the rail of the stool, holding me still with his gaze where most men would have bored me already.
Frieda snaps her fingers in front of my face. “What are you looking at?”
She follows my stare to him just as he puts his drink on the bar as if he’s not relieving his hand of weight but making a statement about who he is and what he intends. Everything about him is calculated and deliberate.
“Let’s go,” I say.
I don’t want Frieda to see him. She won’t approve, and I’m just not in the mood for it. She’ll ask me to make sense of the way I feel around him, and I know I don’t have an answer for it.
What do I want out of Keaton
? He’d refused to get me into Third Psyche four months ago, and he won’t do it now. He’s not going to do anything but make me feel unsure and vulnerable. He’s going to set off alarm bells and a war between heart and head.
Nobody. No one needs to be all liquid under their skirt. No one needs to feel their heart pound or feel the air press up against them.
A guy in full team regalia tries to sit in the empty stool but makes the mistake of looking at Keaton first. I can’t see what passes between them, but the guy, who has tattoos up his arms and a goatee, holds up his hands as if he’s sorry for causing offense.
Keaton puts his fingers together and points all four at the seat as if to say, Are you sitting or not?
“Are you coming on or not?” Frieda shouts over the growing din before the next play.
Who needs to feel as though they’re being devoured by a man’s seven o’clock eyes, a four-course meal for a hungry jaguar. Who needs to be touched by a man shrouded in mystery? To fall into the music of his voice?
I am a federal agent. I have a law degree. I worked my ass off to get this far and I’m not jeopardizing it with an untrustworthy businessman.
Do you want to go to CID or not?
If I want to get this done, I’m going to have to stretch my values thin.
Frieda’s looking at me as if I have lipstick on my teeth. “Is this Mister Smirkypants?” She jerks her head in Keaton’s direction. Her voice is flirtatious, as if she’s trying to pack a hundred syllables worth of yowza into one word.
“How did you guess?”
She draws the same circle in the air as she did over the dinner table. My face gives me away apparently. Somehow, that’s enough for me to know I’ve already made a decision.
“I’ll see you later,” I say.
“You going to be all right?” Yowza off. Concerned friend on.
“Yeah.”
“Call me.” She holds up her fist, and we bump.
“I will, my sister-in-the-law.”
She hugs me and heads for the exit.
Taking a long, deep breath, I stride over to Keaton. That happened so fast, I have to take my steps slowly before standing by the barstool he’s saved for me.
