by Rachel Caine
It took long, slow minutes before she was better—or better enough to go back to the car, get in, and keep control of the still-high flood of emotion on the drive home. She didn’t quite freak out again when Pat asked, “Can you tell me exactly what happened after you left the house?”
She swallowed, tasted something metallic and dry in her throat, and wished she had water. Suddenly, she was burningly thirsty. “I got the thumb drive decrypted. I went to work. I closed up the building. Two men tried to jump me as I walked to the car.” Stripped down to that, it didn’t sound so bad, did it? “I got away.”
“One had a knife, one had a stun gun, you had a baton,” Patrick said. “Good thinking, breaking the window. Did you recognize them?”
“No.” She had, she realized, never seen their faces. “They wore ski masks. But they were professionals at this kind of thing, seemed like.”
“Do you think they know you have the files from Graydon?”
That was a perfectly reasonable question, but Bryn shook her head. “I don’t see how they could know that. Pansy Taylor is the only one who knows, besides the two of us and Joe.” It went without saying that neither Joe nor Pansy was going to talk. “Unless—” She had a sudden, blinding flash of the file that Zaragosa had given her at Pharmadene, with the tiny embedded tracking chip. “Unless they LoJacked the drive.”
She looked sharply at Patrick, who glanced back with the same alarm. “Do you have it?” he asked her.
“No,” she said. “Pansy has it. She gave me an unencrypted copy on a second device. Jesus.”
He whispered something under his breath in a language she didn’t even remotely recognize, and hit the hands-free call button on the car steering wheel. It took an agonizingly long moment for the call to go through, and of course, when it picked up, it was an automated message. Patrick waited through it impatiently and, as soon as the beep sounded, said, “Manny, Pansy, if you haven’t checked the thumb drive for trackers and bugs, do it now, right now. Call when you know. McCallister out.”
“You know, if I gave them something with a tracker in it…”
“Manny will freak the fuck out,” Patrick said grimly. “And move. And it may be days before we hear from him.”
“If ever,” Bryn said. She felt a rising tide of panic again. “He’d know I didn’t do it deliberately. Won’t he?”
Patrick visibly composed himself, and relaxed the tense muscles in his arms and back. “He won’t blame you,” he said. It sounded confident, but it was a lie, and Bryn knew it. “Pansy will calm him down.”
“Patrick, if they came after me, they must have gone after them first.”
“Address,” he said, after a short, dark pause, and when she gave it, he headed in that direction.
Chapter 10
The warehouse looked just the same to Bryn’s eyes, only now, at night, it was lit up like a spaceship. Manny must have paid a fortune, not just in electricity, but in halogen bulbs. Patrick drove up to the gates and got out to show himself to the camera.
Nothing happened.
Bryn tuned the radio to the AM channel she’d used earlier, but there was nothing but static. No voice, even an unfriendly one, to indicate there was anyone at all inside the warehouse.
Patrick pressed the button on the control panel and said, “Manny, I know you’re in there. Let us in. Please.”
Nothing. Not a whisper. Bryn got out of the car, too. There was little traffic this time in the neighborhood, so it was quiet enough to hear the low-level buzz of the lighting.
“Those two couldn’t have gotten in here, even if they did find the place,” Bryn said. “It’s Fort Knox.”
Patrick slammed his hand down on the control again. “Manny! Answer the goddamn radio now or I’m calling the police and telling them there are shots fired and a hostage situation inside. You can try to explain it to them.”
The static went on, and on, for what seemed like eternity, and then the speaker clicked and Pansy’s voice said, “I’ll meet you at the gate, Pat. Stay in the camera’s view.”
It took about ten minutes, and when Pansy came out, she was driving a big SUV, something with lots of power and thick, bullet-resistant glass—it looked like it was on loan from the Secret Service, or (more likely) a South American drug lord. Pansy was tiny in comparison when she hopped down from the cab and walked over. She was wearing a holster clipped to her blue jeans waistband, but it was empty. She held the matching semiauto pistol down at her side—ready but not threatening.
Bryn thought she looked incredibly tense.
Pansy said, “Two men showed up at the gates after you left, Bryn. They drove around, cut the fence, and got as far as the elevator, but they couldn’t hack the scanner. Gave it a damn good try, though. After they left, I looked at the thumb drive, and there was a tracking device built in—GPS enabled. We killed it, of course, but I’ve spent the last couple of hours trying to talk Manny down from running for Belize.”
“They came after me, too,” Bryn said. “But I didn’t have the drive anymore.”
“Then they were surveilling you before you got here. Once they realized we were a hard target, I guess they went for you first.” Pansy sighed and holstered her weapon. “These are not amateurs. If they’re advance for some kind of serious cleanup crew, we’re on the radar now, and they’ll be back for you, and for me and Manny. I’m sorry, but we have to move. There’s no choice.”
“Please don’t,” Bryn said. “I didn’t mean for this to blow back on the two of you—you have to know that.”
“I know.” Pansy looked grim, but also grimly determined. “Look, I like you. I trust you. But the fact is that I made the call to bring you here, let you in, and take something from your hands that compromised Manny, and that just doesn’t fly. Just because he likes you doesn’t mean he won’t walk away. And just because I like you doesn’t mean I won’t let him.”
“Promise me you’ll call when you’re settled.”
Pansy shook her head slowly. “I can’t,” she said. “Jesus, Bryn, Manny’s sliding over the edge with this thing. He’s scared, and I agree. Seven people dead already, plus the three on the video…mercs sniffing around the perimeter…These are not people he wants to mess with. He loves the intellectual puzzle of working with you, but he’s not going to take risks with our lives. Not for you.”
“Wait,” Patrick said, as she backed away from the still-locked gate toward her SUV. “Six months ago, before he started modifying the formula itself, he had a separate drug developed to block Protocols in the nanites. Is it shelf stable?”
“As far as I know,” Pansy said. “There’s a box of it in the back.”
“Then get me the box, and the formula for that, until he feels safe enough to get back in touch,” Patrick said. “It’ll do for now. Please, Pansy. It’s her life at risk, too, and she can’t run.”
She considered and finally nodded. “Stay here. I’ll be back in five.”
Pansy climbed back in the SUV and headed toward the warehouse building at high speed, leaving the two of them bathed in the cold, white lights. Bryn shivered. If her two assailants wanted her dead, it’d be as easy as pie to take a shot out of the dark right now. She and McCallister, both gone in a second.
But they didn’t want me dead, she thought, and it came as a bit of a shock somehow. She really hadn’t thought about that at all until this moment. They came with knives and stun guns as backup, but they started with bare hands. Didn’t they know she was Revived and that bullets wouldn’t do permanent damage anyway? Or was there some reason they didn’t want to do anything fatal, even then?
No, the only logical answer was that they didn’t know she was Revived. They just knew she’d handled the thumb drive, and they needed to know what she’d found. But they needed her alive to ask the questions.
They didn’t need McCallister, though. And if they were a containment crew, they’d rather him dead than a witness. That made her chest tighten up until she felt she couldn’t brea
the. Come on, Pansy. Hurry. The longer they were exposed, the greater the danger to Patrick.
The black SUV came roaring back almost on cue, and Pansy must have pressed a control on the way, because the gate suddenly activated and rattled back before her arrival. She braked, parked, and came out of the truck carrying a good-sized brown box, which she handed over to Bryn; it weighed about fifteen pounds, maybe twenty, and Bryn carried it to the backseat of Patrick’s car.
“Here,” Pansy said, and handed McCallister a thumb drive—the silver one, Bryn thought, from Graydon. Then she handed him a second one, bright red. “The red one has the Protocol-blocking formula on it. The silver one is the one Bryn brought us. We don’t want anything to do with it. We’ve already wiped all the encrypted and decrypted files from our own system. We’re keeping nothing.”
“Pansy,” he said. “Don’t let him run away from us. Not all the way. She needs him.”
“I’ll try,” she said, and leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. She hugged Bryn. “Stay safe.”
“You too,” Bryn said. “Both of you.”
The gate banged shut between them, and then Pansy was gone, heading back for the warehouse where Manny would be breaking down the lab, packing it up, feverishly heading for a safe place far, far away.
It might be the last time she saw either of them, Bryn thought. And she’d brought it on herself, by involving them in the Graydon murders.
Patrick touched her shoulder. “Let’s go,” he said.
As they drove away, the security lights around the building clicked off, shrouding it all in darkness, and Bryn thought, Good-bye.
She hadn’t really been prepared to feel so…lost.
Mr. French was standing guard at the front door as Bryn came in, and he gave a happy bark and rushed for her ankles, sniffing with great interest to see where she’d been. Whatever he smelled, it made him growl softly, then sneeze, then sit back on his haunches and pant happily, looking at her with the unmistakable expectation that it was time to pay attention to him.
Maybe that was just what she needed. She crouched down to give him a loving scratch on the head and neck, and said, “Stupid dog.” He slurped her hand, and she felt the pressure inside subside just a little. There was something about his furry, unquestioning, adoring love that made her feel less…alien.
She looked up and found that Patrick was watching her. He looked concerned, but there was something unguarded about his smile. “Do you want dinner?” he asked.
“Why, are you cooking?” That was a joke. Patrick, for all his many talents, was definitely not a chef.
“If you want to take a risk on my ability to heat up an MRE…”
“Not that hungry. But you want to talk about my friends in the ski masks, anyway.”
“I think it’s a conversation that can’t wait,” he agreed. “I’m going to lock up these thumb drives. You said you had one with unencrypted data?”
Bryn had put her purse down to pet Mr. French, and now she reached in left-handed, rooted around, and pulled out the drive. She handed it to him. “It’s video surveillance. You should know what’s on it before you watch.”
“Did you know?” he asked, and searched her face for the answer. “Then I’ll watch it cold. Maybe I’ll see something new. Fresh eyes.”
She almost warned him not to watch it before eating, but then the idea of watching it after dinner probably wasn’t so great, either, so she held her tongue. Patrick was a big boy. He’d seen worse, almost certainly, and he didn’t have her…emotional resonance to contend with.
He hesitated, though, and finally said, “See you after I take a look. Will you be upstairs?”
“I need to change,” she said. “And check on Annie. Patrick—thanks. Thanks for coming to get me. I needed—I needed you.” She stood up, and suddenly the space between them seemed to contract without either of them moving. It was the look in his eyes, and the sudden boil of emotion inside her.
And then Patrick took a step forward, touching-close, and murmured, “Did you? Really?”
She only had to lean forward a little to touch her lips to his and say, “Still do.” It wasn’t a kiss; it was friction, her mouth moving against his. She expected him to lean in, press them close, but he didn’t; it was on the trembling edge of happening, but he just held her there, suspended, not making a move. Her nerves woke up on fire, and she wondered if he knew just how incredibly sensual this felt.
She felt his mouth move. A smile. A wicked one.
“It’s like braille,” he said, “but with lips. I think I like it.”
Mr. French interrupted them with a bark, and if dogs could frown, he did. Clearly, he was concerned with losing her attention, and Bryn stepped back. “I need to change,” she said. “I’ll…see you soon.”
Patrick nodded and watched her go.
Mr. French bounded up the steps before her; her dog, Bryn thought, had learned the house faster than she had. It was a little disconcerting, actually. He ran straight to her room and inside, then back out. He dashed instead into Annie’s room, next door, and as Bryn walked in, she found him sitting comfortably next to Liam’s feet. Liam was still sitting in the armchair, still reading…but he wasn’t the one Bryn focused on.
Because her sister was awake.
Bryn stopped dead in her tracks, feeling a rush of exalted relief that was quickly stopped by a more logical dread…until Annie turned her head and looked her way with a tired, faint smile. “Hey,” she said. Her voice sounded rusty and rough. “Thought I’d never see you again, sis.”
Bryn rushed forward and stopped a foot short of the bed as Liam cleared his throat. “Carefully,” he said. “She’s better, but I felt it necessary to keep her restrained for now until we verify her Protocols are turned off.”
“He means,” Annie said, “until he’s sure I’m not going to go after you and your man with a butcher knife.” Her eyes filled up with sudden tears, and she pulled in a gasp. “Oh God, I’m so sorry, Bryn. I would never have done that—never—but I just couldn’t stop it.”
“I know,” Bryn said, and put a hand on her sister’s cheek. She felt warm, soft, alive. “It wasn’t your fault, none of it. It never was. And we’re fine. The important thing is to make sure you’re fine.”
“I think I am,” Annie said, but she looked deeply uncertain. “Maybe you should keep these things on for a while longer. I mean, I didn’t know. I didn’t feel that I was going to do anything, but I heard your friend leave the hall and it was like I couldn’t stop myself. I got up, got the knife, and just—I was a passenger, Bryn. I couldn’t stop.” She started breathing harder, and Bryn took her hand and held it. Annie squeezed hard. “I hate this—I hate it. I just want it to go away. You know? All of it. I want to go home and I want to go back to my stupid bar job and…I want to see Mom!” That last came out as a wail, and Bryn felt her heart break, again. Annie’s tears were overflowing now, running down into her tangled hair. She yanked against the restraints a little, but more in frustration than any desire to get free, Bryn thought. “Can I see her? Can you ask her to come, at least? To take care of me?”
No, Bryn thought, appalled. The last thing she wanted was more of her family involved in this…horror that had taken her sister. And her. “Maybe,” she lied. “Calm down, Annie. What Liam’s been giving you is making it better. You’re in control now. You’re back to being you.”
“Yeah?” Her sister’s mouth set in a bitter little line, very not the Annie Bryn remembered. “The loser sib who couldn’t figure out how to balance a checkbook? Not much of an upgrade from crazy woman with a knife, is it?”
“Annie!”
“I know, self-pity isn’t my most attractive look, right? But Jesus Christ, Bryn, I was murdered! And they…they…” Annie’s gaze wandered, and Bryn saw the horror of the last few months come rushing back. “…did things to me.”
Liam was still in his chair, and Bryn sent him a quick look. He said, very quietly, “Shall I go downstairs? Perhap
s fix a small meal for us all?”
“Thank you,” she said. “I think she needs something in her stomach, and I’m—” Starving, she realized with a jolt of surprise. “—ready for dinner, too. Liam—thanks for staying with her. Keeping her safe.”
He favored them both with a warm smile as he stood. “She’s a lovely girl. And you, Annalie, were very wise in your choice of sisters, I think.”
After Liam was gone, Annie was quiet. Bryn stroked her hair gently, and finally said, “If you want to talk about it, I’m here.”
“No,” Annie said, with unexpected force. “No, I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to remember. So let’s just…drop that, okay? Cut, print, move on. Damn it. Can you—uh—wipe my eyes or something? Damn, I think I need to pee, too. Man.”
For an answer, Bryn yanked the Velcro off her left wrist and put a tissue in her hand. Annie raised her arm and stared at it, as if not quite sure what it was (or, more likely, what it would do), then dabbed at her eyes with the tissue, blew her nose, and sighed. “Oh God, it’s ridiculous how good that feels. I didn’t realize how tiring it was to be in the same position all the time.”
“Feel any impulse to throttle me with your free hand?” Bryn asked.
“Only a little,” Annie said, “which, considering we’re sisters, is probably normal.”
Probably. Bryn studied her for a few seconds longer, then undid the rest of the restraints. “Hey!” Annie said, and sat up. “Are you supposed to do that? I mean, now? Ow, I’m still wearing IVs. Can I take these out?”
“No,” Bryn said. “But you can roll them with you to the bathroom, unless you have a real liking for bedpans.”
