“Let’s review,” he said aloud as he changed clothes and made a quick dinner. “Condo’s clear in the morning, new neighbor arrives and neither she nor the condo can be probed.” He paused a minute, then smirked. “And didn’t that sound kinky.”
He took his plate out of the microwave, added some seasoning, and headed to the massive, multi-screened workstation in his office.
“Background search.”
The thought of the pizza she’d ordered made his mouth water. He was stuck with the spaghetti he’d heated up. Good, but not pepperoni.
An intriguing woman, who liked fully loaded pizza—he’d smelled the marvelous blend of meat and veg—moves in and happens to be null. Coincidence?
And I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn for sale.
He pushed his plate aside after only a few bites. Maybe he’d make pizza this weekend.
He pulled up databases and entered information. Doctor Brennan. He’d gotten the spelling from the desk register.
“Let’s see what we can find.”
Two large pizzas, plus breadsticks. All for one slender woman? He didn’t know many women that petite who could, or would, put away that much pizza. Was she having company?
Maybe it was a shack up situation.
His whole body tensed, and he looked down to find his right hand fisted over the keyboard.
Crap. So, yeah, his reaction to her had been visceral, but what she did in her bed—or out of her bed—was none of his business unless she was a magical danger to his city. His territory.
If that was the case, then he’d deal with it, and her, accordingly. For now, he would look into her past.
A simple Google search turned up scientific papers, and well into the fifth page, brief mentions in obscure geological journals. He opened a second search, on a secure database.
The adepts weren’t, as a rule, techno-geeks. He was the exception. The Council had created a rudimentary database for themselves, but it had been useless. Aiden had gotten his hands on it, and he’d made it sing. Now the database could accurately assist in the identification of problem beings, utilization of illicit magic, and tracking of repeat offenders.
She didn’t show up there. Either as a simple Gifted, or as a friendly or unfriendly Crossover, nor as one of the Fae, good or bad.
“Not that we’ve got a handle on all of those, by any means,” he told the blank screen, “but it was a place to start.”
She could be anything, or nothing, and still not be in the database. It wasn’t that good yet. However, ruling things out was just as important, in most cases.
“Just as null as the brown persona you’re trying to project.” Simple things popped—birth, college, a few awards, grad school—but nary a traffic ticket or border crossing until five years ago, when she’d started globetrotting.
The last database tapped info from the government, courtesy of his security clearance. However it only gave him a lost passport application for Doctor Cait Brennan from four years ago, a visa for Turkey from two years ago. Another blip was a Social Security address change to Four-A, from somewhere in Topeka. He turned up no previous address before that.
“That’s absolutely not right,” he groused.
An hour later he rubbed his eyes. In spite of the twelve hour sleep, he was still overextended from his install and the subsequent fight, yet here he was burning the midnight oil, data searching on his neighbor.
He should stop now and do his requisite magical sweep of the area, as he did every evening. It was late. It was better to wrangle this kind of info search when the mind wasn’t slagged from a sleep schedule gone wonky.
But he couldn’t let it go.
Aiden was four levels down in the data, scoping drivers’ license info, when the second vision hit him.
Chapter Five
Aiden grabbed his head as he was flung back in the seat. Images bombarded him.
Cait—it was Cait—but…that wasn’t right…she was in the strange, sexy uniform from the first vision, like something out of Star Wars, but now she was blonde and green-eyed.
She stood, posed like a movie poster or old-fashioned romance or adventure novel, weeping in the arms of a too-perfect man who dressed like a pirate.
The images changed again.
Blood and gore covering white, white walls. Rods of iron impaling flesh.
Who is it? Who’s dead?
He wanted to scream the words, but his throat was locked just as his mind was locked into the vision.
Every muscle in his body was taut. He willed them to relax, to let go, let the vision come. Fighting it physically would leave him worse off than if he just let it happen.
Cait rising over him, eyes closed and body arched in sexual surrender.
Cait lying dead by the Potomac, his own body submerged in the water nearby.
The visions let go as swiftly as they’d come. Their sudden withdrawal left him gasping for breath.
“Good gods and all the saints and guardians.” He panted the words, half epithet, half warding prayer. He freakin’ hated visions, and now he’d had two in one day. “What the hell was that?”
He started to get up, but dizziness overwhelmed him. He leaned forward, head between his knees. Last thing he needed was to pass out now.
Aiden drew in long, deep breaths to calm his racing heart. After a few moments, he eased upright and checked his body’s signals. There was the plate of spaghetti, abandoned on the desk. He’d done a thirty-hour install, fought in Richmond, endured two major visions and hadn’t properly refueled.
His blood sugar was dangerously low. He’d burned the candle at both ends until it was melted down to nothing.
“Idiot,” he growled. “It ain’t your first rodeo, cowboy. Been at this long enough to know better.”
He needed to write down the details from both visions, make sure he didn’t lose anything in his fatigue, but if he did that now, he’d fall flat on his ass and be worthless. Hell, he was already there. He grabbed the plate, and shoveled in the cold pasta and equally cold sauce.
“Idiot,” he repeated. “What if she really is a danger, inside your shields now, what could you do if she attacked? Huh? You’d be toast, buddy.”
Three pings sounded from his computer, signaling the end of the latest search, and Aiden scrolled down the screen.
“That’s impossible.”
He scrubbed at his two-day beard, reading the data again, but it didn’t change. He leaned forward, but his head buzzed, and he collapsed back against the chair, willing the food to do its work and replenish his system. “What the fuck?”
Who or what was Cait Brennan, PhD?
He had never, in his entire time working either as a regional adept for the US Magical Council, as an Enforcer Adept, or in any work he’d done for the actual US Government, or corporations, done a deep search and gotten so very little on a mature human being. Kids, sure. Adult, working women with advanced degrees?
No.
Here, there was nothing. A skeleton of data, the mere bones of a life. No one got to thirty, the age on her driver’s license, without making some kind of waves, being on someone’s watchlist or even in a who’s who of some kind, especially since 9/11.
It could have been cleaned. And if it was, it was the first truly “cleaned” record he’d ever seen. There was no other way to have so little data show up.
Still puzzling over it as his system slowly responded to the food, Aiden scrawled the details of both visions on a yellow pad. The second was obviously one hell of a warning. Cait Brennan could lead to his death. Of course, she was going to get the shiv too, if events played out as the vision showed.
That hardly made it better.
Had she killed him, or had he killed her? Mutual strike?
With nothing left and his hands shaking, Aiden made his way to the kitchen. Dumping the empty dinner plate in the sink, he pulled out the peanut butter and a spoon and dug into that. When he felt the protein hit his system, he put it away, then wove
like a drunk to the bedroom.
There was no way he could do his magical scan tonight. Hell, he probably couldn’t light a candle without setting the building on fire. He was charged up, magically, but his control would be for shit.
“So, we rest at DefCon Four,” he joked. He’d blown his normal routine. In true karmic fashion, something had now come along to tell him to kick it into gear. If you let rust creep in, you were unprepared for the appearance of danger on your doorstep.
That got you dead.
Before he’d gone on the latest install form hell, he’d done a region-wide scan. There’d been something near the river by the outgoing boat locks on the C&O canal. He hadn’t pinpointed it. He’d monitored it for two weeks now, as he’d gotten his client ready to go live. No indication that it was dangerous or he’d have said to hell with the install and dealt with it. The levels had stayed consistent. Odd and out of place, but unchanging.
Now, the ever so interesting and potentially deadly Dr. Brennan shows up. Geologist. Water courses. The river.
“No coincidences, Bayliss. Ignorant rookie mistake.” He knew to never, never let go if his radar went off. “Kill the monster when they’re manageable, not when they’re effin’ Godzilla.”
The images of Cait in her odd uniform flashed into his mind. The woman was blonde, but somehow, he knew it was Cait Brennan. The unreadable siren in Four-A.
Uncapping a water bottle, he drained it. “First things first. Sleep.”
He let himself fall face first onto the bed.
He dreamed of dying in the water.
* * *
The next day dawned clear and beautiful. Cait jumped out of bed, headed for the kitchen and pizza. She’d tried to explain the concept to Lance, get him to recreate pizza aboard ship. The result had fallen dramatically short of expectations. And alas, tomato sauce was one of those things that didn’t transition well.
She’d used her portable data scanner to check the building the night before, then set up her security. The scan found no alien source for the blue nimbus she’d seen, nor any other anomalies, so she’d hit the bed and slept like the proverbial dead.
Breakfast in hand, she set her PDA for translation. Cait keyed in her access code, then pressed her thumb to the screen. A minute pinprick tested her DNA as the screen read her fingerprint. The Kith had other words for it, but it was the same thing—a last double check of her identity.
Completing that unlovely little ritual, she danced into the shower, giddy at being on Earth again. It always hit her like this when she’d slept the night in her new place, adjusted to Earth’s gravity, and breathed the air of home.
When the Kith woke her from coldsleep and sent her to boot camp, she’d spent most of it fighting depression and a wicked version of post-traumatic stress syndrome. She’d hidden it from the Kith, from the Sh’Aitan. Every day she woke up, alive and in the service of aliens, she reminded herself that the alternative to boot camp, to being an ST, was being dead and buried under the Twin Towers.
That and that alone, and the prospect that she would one day protect Earth, and if she lived through it, be able to retire—to go home again forever—got her through boot camp.
Now, as an ST, she took her moments and small joys where she could find them.
After another marathon shower, she stood in the office drying her hair. She read the PDA/computer linkup’s news bulletins from around the globe and searched for any anomalies that might mean she’d been spotted—unlikely—or that some crisis had superseded her current mission.
“All’s quiet on the Western front.”
Then five new items popped on screen.
The first made her curse in seven languages, five of which had never been heard on Earth.
“Dammit!” According to the Kith, the Gretzprtica Trader was now admitting that it had dumped not just one Ty-Op, but two. Problem was, they had no coordinates on the second one. Only something to the effect that they were “…pretty sure they’d dumped them on different continents.”
“Riiiiight. Like hell they did.” The Gretzprtica Trading Guild was too easily offended and too intertwined in the politics of the Alliance for the Kith to call them liars to their faces, or helmets, since they were methane breathers.
“Those six-eyed fuckers. They dumped two and were just going to let me clean up the mess. This puts a freakin’ URGENT label on everything. And here I was, thinking it was going to be an easy downside pickup.” She snorted in disgust. “When will I learn not to jinx it by even thinking that sort of thing?”
Irritated now, she went back to scrutinizing the news feed. The next item was a meteor shower where none should be this time of year, visible only in the sky in South Dakota. The third, an elderly former senator from New Mexico who’d fronted a space-oriented committee, was missing.
Fourth was a suspicious, ritualistic killing in Edinburgh, Scotland. She grimaced at that one and decided against more pizza.
Fifth was a report of a marginal improvement in the water quality along the Potomac and in upper part of the Chesapeake basin watershed.
“There’s news,” she said, running the brush through her hair. She flipped the silky brown bob into a pony tail. “All it takes is a wandering Opthoid to clear the water.”
Her credit balance had risen by another huge leap, which surprised her. She got paid monthly, and if she lived to retire, six years from now, it might actually matter.
For now, it was a way to keep score. It wasn’t the end of the month so this was unusual.
Calling up the details, she saw the bonus was from Meena Pal. The memo on the entry said there had been a second live, and, most important, male offspring for one of the ruling queens of the six houses. With the population at seventy percent female, and no male born to a ruling queen in generations, having two princes born so close together was akin to a miracle.
“Congrats and best wishes, Your Majesties,” she toasted the screen with her Coke, grinning at the thought of the sneaky felon who’d weaseled his way into the second queen’s affections, gotten her pregnant, then fled the planet.
It had taken Cait twelve straight hours of talking to convince him he was going back to a hero’s welcome and riches beyond compare, rather than The Hook. He’d been prepared to do anything not to face Meena Pal justice.
She snickered. Her scrawny, unprepossessing detainee produced boy children, so he was being kept like a prize stallion.
She reviewed the meteor shower. Not completely unusual to have an out-of-season meteor spread, but not common.
“Hmmm. Now the details of the nasty demise.” She switched files, scanning the report. “Ugh. That’s disgusting.” The scene brought to mind her mission in The Balkans, the one that had nearly sent her home in a box. In the end, it hadn’t taken her life, just her life as a Marine Corps close air support strike pilot.
At the time it had seemed like the end of everything.
“It is not good to dwell on the past, Cait.” She mimicked Lance’s dulcet tones with a sigh. He said it way too often, and she didn’t need him reporting that the Slip Traveler in his charge was still having trouble adjusting after five years on the job.
But remembering was sometimes all that stood between her and complete meltdown. She was officially dead and buried. She worked for bug-eyed aliens, alongside six-and-a-half foot tall felines who drove starships like Dale Jr. drove a NASCAR track.
“If that’s not crazy, what is?”
She shut the PDA down, but took it with her to the bedroom. Sneakers and a jacket to go with her jeans completed the look, and she had a place for the PDA. She checked the weapons scattered over her person to be sure they were concealed and secure. In front of the building, she caught a cab to Northern Virginia to get her car.
An hour later Cait flew down the road, grinning like a loon with the windows down and the cold air blasting in—Earth air—as she headed for the C&O canal for initial reconnaissance. She loved driving, especially with a manual transmission,
and the Subaru crossover shifted as smooth as glass.
She wanted to get to work, snag the squishy and get on with some R&R. She could take a look first, decide where to get her samples. She had to wait for the last of the maps and her permits to be delivered, thanks to the slow pace of DC permitting. They could have faked the permits, of course, but sometimes it was better to do it the official way, and in DC, it was always better to do it that way. But she could take a first look even without a permit.
“Then I’m going shopping,” she promised herself. Truth be told, having nice things from Earth kept her sane between drops. She had no choice about what she did, where she went, what she looked like or who she could associate with.
None at all. Ever.
Given that, she could damn well make all kinds of choices about the little things.
Two hours later, she went home well-exercised and pleasantly weary. She tapped in the code the guard had given her and parked in the underground garage.
With amusement, she noted that the space marked for One-A, the darkly handsome Aiden Bayliss, held a high-end Beemer sedan.
“Compensating, are we?” she murmured with a grin. Remembering his less-than-slick remark—and his embarrassment—about the shack up made her laugh out loud. A real laugh that bubbled up from deep inside her, rare and unexpected. It felt amazing.
Still, there had been something about him. A clear, knowing and very powerful look in the eyes, a hard set to the jaw. No doubt about it, he was a total hottie, in all kinds of ways.
She got an instant’s image of him, a sword in hand, blocking a descending weapon, fire crackling in the air. It stopped her in her tracks.
Holy shit. Swords? Seriously? Obviously Aiden Bayliss was pinging more than just her hormones. In her days as a strike pilot, when her squadron had called her Mystic for her uncanny intuition, the gift had saved all of their lives more than once.
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