by Edie Harris
She knew Beth missed her, had maybe even needed her while she healed. But Gillian hadn’t been there, because the Labs were her priority. Normally, her conscience wouldn’t twinge one bit; this wasn’t simply a job, but her life’s work, and what she did in the Labs was the foundation on which Faraday Industries earned not only its money but its reputation. Still...
Frowning at her primary monitor, Gillian settled her glasses higher on the bridge of her nose. Everyone thought Tobias was the loner of the family, but her quiet older brother had never let more than a few weeks pass without checking in on the rest of them, usually in person, though he’d respected Beth’s need for solitude when she first quit the business. It was Gillian who played the hermit. If she was away from her work space too long, she grew twitchy, and even though she loved her siblings, she didn’t have the patience for other people, not for extended periods of time.
And besides, Tobias wasn’t alone anymore. He had Chandler. During their Circle of Trust confab, Gillian had seen how he touched her, how she leaned into him—how they were a unit. Envy jabbed at Gillian’s midsection. She might not be a people person, but there was a part of her that wondered what it would be like to be a one-person person.
To a certain extent she already was. Sure, there were a few hundred employees on the sprawling Labs campus most days of the week, and technically Gillian was their boss, and yes, she had meetings all the damn time with various managers who did most of the actual oversight, but she only had one friend.
Except Theo Rochon wasn’t really a friend. He was her handler, the man whom the FBI had assigned as her twenty-four-seven watchdog as soon as the invisible drone she’d developed was shopped to the Department of Defense two years ago. Ever since, Theo had been her shadow, an enemy who’d morphed over time into someone who, when she didn’t see him, she...missed.
He hadn’t yet swung by to say goodnight. Any minute now, though. She shifted in her ergonomic rolling chair, one bare foot tucked under her leg, and leaned closer to the computer screen as she started minimizing windows and sending the helicopters she’d flagged for follow-up into a separate desktop folder. Theo didn’t know about Adam’s disappearance, and he certainly couldn’t know about the helicopter. His loyalties were to the government, after all, not her.
He wasn’t part of the Circle. And that sucked.
Tweet-tweet.
Gillian froze, hand hovering over the wireless mouse. No. She’d misheard. That sound hadn’t occurred in forty-six days—the last time Adam had sent her a message through their encrypted thread housed on the private family-only server.
Granted, his last message had been a single link to something called “cat-bounce dot com,” subject line Make It Rain. Because her little brother hadn’t bothered to mature past age twelve.
Swallowing hard, she drew the cursor to the shrimp-emoji icon in the lower left-hand corner of her screen, and paused. What if she clicked on it and there wasn’t a new message waiting for her? What if she just wanted to hear from Adam so badly, to know he was okay, that her fatigued brain had manufactured the birdlike notification sound?
“Stop being a pussy,” she whispered to herself, and double-clicked the shrimp.
NEW MESSAGE FROM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL OZ.
Yup. Twelve-year-old.
Heart racing, she opened the message, subject line GoPro: Desert Edition, scarcely believing Adam had made contact. Her lungs ceased to function when the video popped up to fill her entire screen.
“Heya, Gilly-Bean.” Adam’s scruffy, dirty face smiled at her through the camera—the camera someone else was holding. “Bet you didn’t think you’d hear from me, but I gotta admit, it’s not really me doing the talking, okay?” He nodded toward whomever held the camera, overlong brown hair falling into his tired gray eyes. “I’ve got a list of demands from my pals here, and you’re the only one who can fulfill those demands.”
A voice from behind the camera murmured something that caused Adam to glare, and Gillian hated—not for the first time—that she’d never learned Arabic, as Casey and Adam had. Even Tobias and Beth had a basic proficiency in their mother’s native tongue, but Gillian didn’t have a head for languages. “So, yeah, these dudes—whose names I’m not allowed to share—have a contract with Faraday Industries. Seems crazy, I know, but that’s what they tell me. Apparently, we reneged, and now they’re pissed.” One hand lifted to indicate his bruised jaw and split lip, and revealed bloody knuckles and what looked like a broken index finger. “Which explains why I’m here, I guess? Anyway, this ‘contract’ promised them first rights to your invisible drones, and when that left the beta stage and went live in the US, we were evidently in breach with these guys. Now they’re demanding your new project.”
Shit.
Adam shook his head, as though he’d heard her thoughts. “I don’t know how they found out about it. I swear I don’t, but they know, and it’s my life on the line.” More muttering from the man behind the camera, and whatever he said made Adam snap something back in a distinctly unhappy tone. “Apparently, I’m rambling. The point is, they paid someone a huge chunk of change for the drones, and that never happened, so this contract which I have not seen—” that was directed to the cameraman “—defaults to your next comparable development project, which they know is...yeah. So. They’re giving you until the WeaponTek showcase in September to get it to the beta stage, which you then deliver to them in Tangier, in exchange for a still-breathing version of me. They’ve agreed to send a proof-of-life video with a verifiable time stamp every week, to keep you...motivated.”
WeaponTek was only three months away, but that meant three months of Adam’s life in the balance, based entirely on something she absolutely could not hand over to terrorists. Terrorists who knew about the Flying Blind project.
No more room for doubt: Faraday had a mole, and one in deep with the company.
Anger turned her hands to fists as Adam kept talking. “Look, I’m kinda attached to being alive, but hey, that could change, and you’re the only one who has the right to decide who gets your work.”
Oh, God, he’s serious. He was telling her it was, somehow, okay for her to choose her technology over her brother.
She choked on a sob.
“They need an answer within two days. If you agree to their terms, you’ll need to send time-stamped photos of your work progress after every video from us. In their words,” and Adam’s voice darkened to a tone she’d never before heard from her happy-go-lucky brother, “there’s no reason this can’t be civil.”
If she didn’t agree, if she didn’t get Flying Blind to beta by the time she was supposed to go to Morocco for the conference, Gillian alone had forfeited Adam’s life. It went unsaid, but not misunderstood, that if she hadn’t agreed in two days’ time, Adam would be delivered home in a body bag—if they were lucky.
Another sob escaped, this one longer, louder, but Adam’s voice trickled through her anguish.
“It was a mistake to make the visible invisible, Gilly-Bean. I told you it was a mistake.” He smiled, wry and pained and proud—of her—all at the same time. “Hey, tell me something. Did my pretty little niece make it home in one p—”
The camera went dark.
Gillian shouted as the video minimized into the message, her body jerking toward the computer screen automatically. Despite logically knowing that Adam’s message was only of finite length, it was like losing him all over again when the video ended and his face disappeared mid-sentence.
Footsteps sounded in the hall outside her lab, giving her only seconds to minimize the shrimp and come up with an excuse for the tears stinging her eyes and the noise she’d made. A Phillips-head screwdriver sat in the coffee cup of pens and drawing pencils beside her keyboard, and she snatched it, raking the sharp end over the heel of her palm, tearing open her skin and instantly drawing blood.
She hissed before dropping the screwdriver back in the cup, shoving her chair back and sprawling on the floor, her b
leeding hand gripping the edge of a metal filing cabinet.
The door swung open. “G?” Theo’s dark eyes found her awkward form behind the desk and rushed over, concern bunching his brow. “Are you all right?” He knelt next to her, pulling her injured hand from the cabinet, murmuring in sympathy as he examined the cut. “Did you fall asleep at your desk again, cher?”
It wouldn’t have been the first time she’d crashed from chair to floor and gained a few bumps and bruises in the process, all because she had passed out while working late. “Must have,” she said sheepishly, voice rusty with leftover emotion from Adam’s video. “Band-Aids—”
“—are in the top drawer. I know.” Of course he knew. Theo had been tending her clumsy wounds for a long time now. He swiped an antiseptic wipe over the cut, cleaning it, then ripped open a flexible square bandage and gently, so gently, applied it to her palm. His Louisiana drawl was equally soothing to her riled senses. “You’re wearing pajamas already. You decided to stay here tonight?”
She glanced down, taking in her white tank top and yellow fleece lounge pants with penguins on them, and blushed, though she couldn’t have said why, exactly. Theo had seen her like this a thousand times. “Yeah. Who’s on duty tonight?”
“Yuri and Paolo,” he said as he hauled her to her feet with one big, strong hand. “I’ll let them know you’re bunking here on my way out.”
“Thanks.”
Arching a brow, he looked down his nose at her from his considerable six-five height, one of the few men she’d met who actually managed to make her feel petite. “Our run’s at six tomorrow. Don’t make me wake you up.”
God, she hated running. “I’ll be ready.” She nodded toward the door. “Go home, Theo.”
He grinned, perfect white teeth flashing in the dim glow of the room as he backed away. “Go to bed, cher.” With one final wave and a friendly, completely platonic smile, her handler disappeared into the hall.
Gillian waited until she heard the elevator ding and the automated voice inform that the doors were closing before she moved. Lunging for her chair, she yanked it to the desk and clicked open the shrimp, breaths sawing in and out as she typed her message.
VIDEOS MUST ARRIVE ON MONDAY BY 9AM PACIFIC TIME. ONE MINUTE LATE, AND WE’RE GOING TO HAVE PROBLEMS. Send.
Time to get to work.
* * * * *
Life in Death: The Faraday Story
by T.S. Marcus, PhD
(A Comprehensive Examination of
America’s First Warmongering Family)
Library of Congress Classification Number:
EJ3369.V22 T101 2014
Part III: The Business of Bloodshed (excerpt)
[...] In February 1866, family patriarch Richard Faraday sat down with the president of the United States, Andrew Johnson, to discuss what should be done with the massive stockpile of weaponry that had built up following Faraday Manufactory’s decision to stop selling to the Union and Confederate armies in the final months of the American Civil War. By all accounts, Faraday wished to destroy the weapons, melt them down and recycle the materials into the company’s public works production lines—locomotives, shipyards, railways, city infrastructure. The war had torn the country apart, and Faraday didn’t want to play any role in further destruction, only the rebuilding efforts.
President Johnson, on the other hand made an offer to purchase the entire stock, for what at the time was an outrageous price. While the Manufactory—and the Faradays, by extension—outearned any other industrial competitor of that era, the consensus seems to be that it was less the value of the offer than who made it. By the end of the meeting, Faraday had not only agreed to supply the U.S. government with the warehouse of unsold weapons, but signed a contract to continue producing weapons—solely for the government. No private consumers would be able to purchase a Faraday firearm, thus easing Richard Faraday’s concern about the perpetuation of violence.
For many years, this change in policy had a non-effect on Faraday business practices. Manufacturing continued at a fast clip, employment growing apace with industrial demand. The Manufactory expanded to accommodate its market leadership, opening facilities along the eastern seaboard and establishing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they were the force to be reckoned with, when it came to money and power in the healing United States.
Soon enough, other countries came knocking, hoping for a piece of the engineering frontrunner’s pie. Richard’s eldest daughter, Amelia, had essentially taken control of company management, though her younger brother, Marcus, conducted all public-facing business, as females of the time remained widely disregarded as capitalistic forces of nature. The unmarried Amelia had attended medical school and wished to shift the company focus from simple production on a mass scale, as they were in the late 1880s, to innovation, with manufacturing outsourced to vetted contractors and steelworks.
For all of Amelia’s plans, though, she was thwarted at every turn by Marcus. From Amelia’s personal diaries—which were donated to the Library of Congress under the directive of her last will and testament—it is apparent that Marcus conducted closed-door meetings with foreign dignitaries and industrialists, forging agreements for expansion into European soil that not only circumvented Amelia’s strategic vision, but violated the contract Richard and President Johnson had executed in 1866.
Marcus was able to hide his under-the-table dealings until 1890, when he contracted enteric fever—otherwise known as typhoid—assumedly from the excessive amount of time he spent in the extremely unhygienic Boston neighborhoods frequented by prostitutes. During that time, Amelia kept his appointments and made rare appearances as the public face of the company, when it became apparent that Marcus had “misbehaved,” to quote one of Amelia’s diary entries from those months.
Amelia immediately went into disaster-prevention mode, cancelled the agreements with foreign partners before true production and distribution could begin overseas, and contacted the U.S. Secretary of State, James G. Blaine. From Amelia’s diary:
Today, I was forced to apologize. It is strange, I now realize, that I have gone so long without apologizing, and that I have grown quite comfortable with not doing so. By holding a position of power, I have negated the woman-ness of my form that socially compels me to be apologetic, even given situations wherein nothing I have done necessitates an apology.
Oh, how I have enjoyed this freedom from “sorry”! And now my beloved brother has made it so that a “sorry” was inevitable.
Secretary Blaine was a gentleman, of course—an individual of his stature and political longevity understands the nuance of delicate discourse. He did not force me to grovel, though I will admit, I felt the need to do so (I quelled that need, Diary, never fear). Instead, we together reviewed the terms of Father’s initial agreement and closed any potential loophole a future Faraday—never again Marcus—might think to exploit.
For the next 50 years, we will be held to the highest and most singular of standards: those of the sitting President of the United States, whomever he may be, and subject to his dictates in stocking our country’s armory.
When the Spanish-American War began in 1898, the United States was prepared. The naval battles waged were triumphant in large part due to the technological advances that had been applied to battleship weaponry, courtesy of the newest—and unknown to the public—branch of the Faraday company: the Division of Martial Ontogeny. The DMO was the first department of Faraday Industries to operate solely in the shadows, known only to a particular subset of Faraday employees and certain high-ranking government officials.
Marcus Faraday had no role in the development of the DMO (though he did survive his brush with typhoid), and neither did any other male Faraday. Amelia, with her distaste for apologizing, channeled her drive for scientific innovation into the creation of the DMO—her brainchild, her dominion—and it is from that point forward that the Faradays’ moral high ground began to crumble beneath their feet.
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re titles by Edie Harris, please visit her website at edieharris.com, where you can read free stories, sign up for her newsletter and more.
Look for Thrilled, the next book in the Blood Money series, coming from Edie Harris and Carina Press in October 2016.
No engineer alive can do what Gillian Faraday does in her California lab, and her newest weaponry project is poised to take the tech world by storm. Only one problem: a deadly enemy is demanding the prototype in exchange for her brother’s life.
For months, Gillian has kept this secret, racing to beat the clock and save the youngest member of their family. Her FBI handler, however, knows she’s keeping something from him—something big—especially when Gillian escapes from under his ever-watchful eye.
Agent Theo Rochon can’t believe he’s chasing the woman who has become his best friend halfway across the world. He isn’t prepared for what happens when he catches up with her, or for anger and distrust to turn to searing heat.
Gillian is determined to save her brother, but Theo refuses to compromise his asset’s safety. Together, they set out to finish a dangerous game that can only end in blood.
Acknowledgments
I could not tell these stories without the assistance and support of two invaluable women—my mother, Nancy, and my editor, Kerri. Thank you for your patience and understanding, your editorial knowledge and your challenging critiques. You force me to be a better writer, and for that I am forever grateful.
Also available from Edie Harris
and Carina Press
Blamed: Blood Money Book One
Ripped: Blood Money Book Two
And coming soon
Thrilled: Blood Money Book Four
Locked: Blood Money Book Five
About the Author
