by Tasha Black
The greenery of Cobble Slope began to give way to the urban environment of Glacier City proper.
As McSweeney launched himself comfortably into a long story detailing exactly how his son-in-law had saved almost forty dollars on his purchase of a lawnmower, West slipped his hand onto Cordelia’s knee.
She drew in a breath, but didn’t look down.
Interesting.
He allowed his hand to slide slowly up her thigh, as he watched her face in profile.
She blinked and didn’t open her eyes right away.
As he pushed his hand further still, he saw her front teeth come down on her lower lip.
Oh, good girl, he praised her inwardly, trying to contain his own excitement, though the velvety softness of her inner thigh was boiling his blood with lust.
Slowly he pressed his hand closer still.
She turned to look at him.
Locking his eyes on hers, he gripped her thigh, and let the tip of his pinky finger graze the smooth heat of her satin panties.
Mm, satin, the material struck him as professional compared to lace or cotton. He dearly wanted to see what color the panties were, and whether he could rip them off with his teeth in one try.
Cordelia tore her eyes from his and looked straight forward, her cheeks pink with unsatisfied lust.
His penis throbbed against his boxers in a very human way. If only he could introduce her to this particular part of himself, let her realize that in spite of the prosthetics he was still very much a man. At least his head, heart, and cock were. And weren’t the other parts just the icing on the cake?
He moved his hand slightly to cup her, so that his middle finger could glide across her again.
She bit that lip again and he wished he could kiss her.
She had been so distant, now she was so responsive, so willing to let him touch her. What was happening?
Then her hand came down on his thigh and he didn’t care anymore.
Teasingly, she stroked up and down, avoiding the one part of him that needed her attention.
He sank back into the seat, praying for control.
He closed his eyes and opened them again and noticed something.
They weren’t on the way to Worthington Enterprises. Where the hell was this bozo taking them?
And did West care enough to risk that Cord would stop touching him?
Damn it, his first job was to protect her, and this was fishy.
He sat forward again.
Cordelia immediately removed her hand from his lap.
“Hey, where are we going?” he demanded.
“The office, sir, that’s where you want to go, right?” McSweeney said politely, even though his story had been interrupted during a critical coupon calculation.
“This is not the way to the office,” West snapped.
“You’re aiming to keep a low profile, sir?”
“Yes,” he agreed.
“Well, we get a lot of curious looks every day when we come in. Your employees know this is your car and everyone wants to be the first with the news you’re back. I thought I’d circle around a few blocks and pull in the northwest delivery entrance, if it’s alright with you, sir,” McSweeney said with a smile.
Nice. Very nice.
“Good plan,” West admitted.
McSweeney grinned from ear to ear.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“So did they give him credit for a triple coupon, or only double?” West asked with politely feigned interest.
“Oh, well you’d think that’s the main question, wouldn’t you? But Elton is a planner. You see, he had a three dollar store coupon and he wanted them to apply that first,” McSweeney swept right back into the story in a pleased way, incredulous that his daughter’s husband could be so clever.
West tried to put his hand on Cordelia’s lap again, but she pinned her knees together and squeezed his hand once instead. Then she let go and began gathering up her bag.
They were pulling into the delivery entrance already.
In moments they were out of the car and in the freight elevator.
It had the same thumbprint recognition as the elevators in the main lobby. Cordelia pressed a button, and down they went.
Before West could pin Cordelia to the wall of the elevator and devour her, they had arrived at the lower level Med Pros lab.
The doors slid open to reveal Mallory and a couple of the other lab geeks waiting for them.
“West! C’mon in,” Mallory said, ushering them in.
The lab was as cavernous as ever. But this time, one of the stations had a sterile tent around it.
“Shouldn’t we be in a hospital for something like this?” Cord asked, wrapping a hand around his bicep. It was the prosthetic but he flexed anyway to see if she noticed.
She stared at him with round eyes and he smiled crookedly at her.
“This is actually pretty routine. The heavy lifting part was done months ago when we fitted the actuators to the optic nerves. We have a mountain of scans and measurements to make sure the replacement eye is just right. We’ve even done some test fittings. All we’re doing today is basically putting it in place, and plugging it in,” Mallory explained.
“Speaking of ‘plugging it in’, how was your evening with the prince and princess?” West asked innocently.
Mallory blushed crimson and turned on her heel.
“Come on, we’ve gotta get you prepped,” she said over her shoulder as she hurried away.
West winked his one eye at Cordelia and followed Mallory toward the tent.
“This is new,” Cordelia remarked, indicating a rack of small glass containers along the wall. Each one held a different sort of spider.
“Yes,” Mallory said, slowing her pace. “Our materials division has been testing spider silk for use in the new prosthetics. Pound for pound, it’s stronger than steel, and completely flexible. Plus, it’s organic, so we may be able to find a way to produce it inside the body, allowing for repairs without the need for invasive procedures.”
“That sounds promising,” West said, thinking of the ramifications for his own body. Self repairing? That would be nice.
“Is that a black widow?” Cordelia asked, leaning in for a closer look.
West admired the way she lacked the squeamishness so many people pretended to have when it came to creepy crawly things. He had no doubt she would reach in and pick the critter up if Mallory told her it was ok. In fact, she was ten times more likely to marvel over a spider’s web than anything created in this lab.
“It is,” Mallory said. “We’ve got some pretty interesting specimens. Golden orb weavers, bird eaters, even a Darwin’s bark spider.”
She tapped an empty container.
“Looks like the radioactive one got away, though,” Mallory said lightly. “Keep an eye out. I’m sure he’s around here somewhere.”
20
West wondered if Cordelia would still be waiting for him.
As simple as Mallory had made it sound, the procedure still took a few hours. Cordelia was very determined to do as much as she could for the company, picking up his slack to keep the board under control. He shouldn’t have surprised her with this, but she’d given him little choice. He was sure if he’d asked, she would have found a reason to stay no.
But when they emerged from the tent, Cordelia was sitting on a lab stool, three of the scientists gathered around her chatting.
“Cord,” he said and her neck snapped around as if she were a dog, trained to his voice.
Mallory led him to the table where Cord sat, and then very carefully uncovered his new eye.
What he saw was fuzzy at first, like a camera that was zoomed in too far.
West took a breath and concentrated. Mallory had explained that teaching his brain to focus the eye was just like when he had to learn to walk again. Everything was there, but the wires were all crossed up.
Fortunately, West had been in the lab practicing with an externally m
ounted unit, so he wasn’t starting from scratch today. Those first few attempts had been rough - a lot of falling over, and even some throwing up from the extreme vertigo.
But after a few weeks of trying, he was finally getting the hang of it.
Cordelia’s image swam into view.
She looked worried.
She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
He smiled at her, wishing he could make her as happy as she made him.
Before his eyes, she relaxed and smiled back a genuine smile.
“That is amazing,” he whispered.
Cord moved toward him.
But she was moving too quickly. West couldn’t follow her with the new eye.
His eyes were seeing two different things.
He tried to step back, but his head was reeling from the overlapping signal.
He felt the world fall away beneath him, and he landed hard on his ass on the concrete floor.
Cordelia gasped.
He squeezed his eyes closed to block out the looming world. Apparently, he still needed a little more practice.
But a moment later, he felt Cordelia at his side on the floor.
Everything was going to be all right.
She slid one arm under his and helped him up.
When he was standing and they each had an arm around the other, he dared to open his eyes again, slowly.
“That’s better,” he said.
“What is it like?” Cordelia asked him. “Is the vision actually as good as a real eye?”
“Better,” Mallory answered. “It has twice the resolution of the human eye, and greater depth of focus. It’s a lot more complicated than that, but you could think of it as an insanely high end camera. You could zoom in and tell the sex of a fly on that wall over there. If we had flies in here, that is. Which we don’t. But it will take some time for the focus to become natural, as we just saw.”
“So, no helicopter piloting?” West joked.
“No. And no motorcycles. And try to keep your eye away from saw wielding maniacs. At least for a few weeks,” Mallory scolded him with feigned annoyance.
He grinned and then looked down at Cordelia. If he concentrated, he could see the flecks of silver in her blue eyes as she looked up at him.
“You’ll need these,” Mallory said, handing him a small bottle of drops. “Keep your eyes moist. God, I hate that word.”
“Thank you, Mallory,” he said earnestly.
She grinned and nodded.
“Cord, do you have that sample?” he asked.
Cordelia slipped it out of her purse without a mountain of girly crap exploding out of it too. One more thing he respected about her.
The powder was in a carefully folded gum wrapper, which Cord handed to Mallory.
“Do you think you could identify this?” she asked.
“Wrigley’s spearmint?” Mallory offered.
“No,” Cordelia said. “There’s some kind of white powder inside. I’d like to know what it is.”
Mallory rolled her eyes.
“You do know we are not a forensics lab, right? There’s not some big science machine we can run it through, like on TV. And things are a little busy at the moment. Wouldn’t it be easier to—”
“It has to do with Dalton,” Cord said quietly.
“Consider it done,” Mallory said immediately. “I’ll buzz you as soon as we know what it is. But I can’t make any promises as to time frame. This is a little out of our comfort zone.”
“Thanks,” West said. “I knew we could count on you.”
“Anytime, boss,” Mallory said with a mock salute.
Before Cordelia could protest, West grabbed her hand and headed out of the lab.
21
West walked the streets of Glacier City a few hours after sunset, wishing Cordelia hadn’t let go of his hand to go to work after he got his new eye.
The fragrant flower boxes illuminated by the soft glow of lampposts in the nicer part of Cobble Slope had given way a few blocks ago to the harsh circles of street lights reflecting off crumbling sidewalks and discarded soda cans.
In spite of the irregular light, his eye was working well. Proper focusing was becoming involuntary, though he still had trouble with depth perception - especially if something was moving quickly closer to him, or away from him.
His thoughts, as usual, turned back to Cordelia. Her responsiveness in the car that morning had told him there was still something between them worth fighting for.
And he was more determined than ever to prove his worth to her, to win her back.
He thought cleaning up the streets surrounding her neighborhood was a good place to start.
The streets seemed to have other ideas.
Everywhere he looked was empty of any activity, save the occasional prowling cat. West’s footsteps pounded a lone rhythm that made him think of the beginning of a horror movie.
He walked farther still, starting to wonder if he was being ridiculous.
Then, suddenly, he spotted what he’d been looking for.
Three young men, one of whom held the chain of an enormous Rottweiler, sat on overturned crates in the mouth of an alley about a block away.
In the neon glow from the pizza shop sign, West could make out shaved heads and bomber jackets, marking them as neo-Nazi skinhead garbage.
They were probably part of the Aryan Dawn, one of the gangs struggling to gain power in Glacier City.
West had been doing his homework, with Jess’s help. The Aryan Dawn was one of three major players in Glacier City organized crime, along with a Ukrainian mafia branch known as the Malina, and one other group, the Grave Diggers - Black, White, Latino, all wannabe gangbangers who dressed like extras in a Snoop Dog video.
The three groups had been coexisting in the city for years - not exactly peacefully, but mostly content to stick to their areas and specialties.
But recently, a new group had moved in. West couldn’t find any info on them, only that they were recruiting heavily, and dabbling in everything, making the existing groups more territorial and aggressive than usual. They were scared, and West wanted to know why.
A car stopped in front of the alleyway, and one of the skinheads approached it.
West closed his old eye and concentrated. This part was still hard, but Mallory was right, it was like focusing a camera.
He zoomed in on the car, until he could clearly see the driver holding out a few bills.
West turned his attention to the skinhead who had just reached the car. West noted that he had a swastika tattooed on the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.
The skinhead took the bills, and then exchanged a few words with the man in the car.
West found himself wishing his hearing were as good as his eyesight.
But as it turned out, this transaction was pretty straight-forward.
Tattoo reached into the pocket of his bomber jacket and produced a small baggie of white pills. Pills had never been West’s thing, even in his hardest partying days, but he was pretty sure they weren’t chewable vitamins.
Keeping his distance, West clipped a bluetooth earpiece in and hit the call button.
A familiar voice answered.
“Cross Family Mortuary. You kill ‘em, we chill ‘em. How can I help you?”
“Hi, Jess,” he said with half a smile.
“Hey. Do you have a target?” she asked.
“I think so,” he replied, “some Aryan Dawn drug dealers. And a dog.”
“Perfect,” Jess said.
“I’m going in for a closer look,” West told her. “Hang on while I put on the ski mask.”
“It’s a balaclava,” Jess said impatiently.
“Right,” he replied, fishing the thing from his back pocket, and pulling it over his head and face until only his eyes were showing.
“It’s your tactical gear,” she scolded him, “like special forces stuff. You’re on a mission, not robbing a drugstore.”
; “Right.” West allowed himself to be corrected.
“Did you set up the camera already?” she asked.
“Yes,” he lied.
Quickly, he retrieved the camera from the inside pocket of his baggy coat. It was no bigger that a Zippo lighter.
He pealed the backing off, and looked around a moment before sticking it to a telephone pole, taking care to angle it toward the alley. He pressed the small button on the side until a green light flashed three times.
“We’re recording,” he told her.
“Good,” she said. “Remember, intimidation is your friend.”
West considered that, and eyed up the three guys and their dog.
“No problem. I’ll call you back when it’s done,” he said, ready to click off the bluetooth.
“No,” she blurted. “Keep me on the line. You might need me.”
“Are you sure?” West didn’t like the idea of Jess being involved in this part.
“Yeah, just think of me as Oracle,” she said. He could hear the grin in her voice.
“Oracle?” he asked, hating to disappoint her.
“Barbara Gordon? Batgirl?” she said, as if he were being phenomenally slow with something everyone else knew. “She gets sidelined after the Joker shoots her in the spine. Then she provides heroes with intel using her new codename, Oracle.”
“That sounds pretty violent,” he said.
“Did you even read the comics I told you to get?” she asked in frustration.
“Yeah. Most of them. Well, some of them,” he admitted. “They were a little… dark.”
“Well, this isn’t a Saturday morning cartoon, this is the real deal,” she told him firmly. “You are about to go send some drug dealing skinheads to the hospital. Dark is your thing now.”
“I don’t know if I’ll have to hurt anyone,” he hedged.
“Ha. Like maybe you’ll just stroll up with a guitar and get them to sing about their feelings?”
“No,” he began, but Jess cut him off.
“West,” she said, her voice as serious as he’d ever heard it. “These guys aren’t playing around. They are going to hurt you, unless you hurt them first.”
