by A. G. Riddle
“I have clothes in my car.”
Ten minutes later, she walked back onto the catwalk wearing a white sports bra and gray shorts.
He couldn’t help but stare. She was stunning. Fit—but it was something else about her. The way she looked at him, how she carried herself.
“Prepare to be schooled,” she called down.
He smiled. “I stand ready for my lessons, headmistress.”
She never broke eye contact as she descended the steel stairs. “Punishment for failure will be swift. And painful.”
“I expect nothing less.”
They volleyed for serve.
She won.
The ball echoed off the walls, and they danced around each other. Desmond was more powerful, but Avery was faster, and her precision was greater, her serves falling in the unreturnable corners. His forehands were lightning, the crack seeming to sound after the ball whizzed by. The room was cool when they began, but an hour later, it felt like a sauna. Sweat poured down Desmond’s face. His shirt was spotted with patches where he’d dried himself. Avery practically glistened, her blond hair, which was pulled into a ponytail, almost dripping. Three red welts on her legs marked times she had been too slow to dodge Desmond’s strikes. Her stomach was like dunes in the desert, the light reflecting off the valleys and ridges.
When it was fourteen to twelve, her way, she paused at the serving line. “FYI, this is the part where you lose.”
“I’ve got you right where I want you.”
She served, and he returned, a thunderous volley that sent her reeling back into him, their bodies intertwining, both so soaked they almost slipped off of each other. They hit the wood floor together, sliding then rolling toward the back wall, racquets flying out of their hands.
He came up on top. Her chest heaved, and she stared at him. He had never been so sure of anything in his life. He lowered himself, kissed her, and she wrapped her arms around him.
It felt like the world exploded and nothing would ever be the same.
Chapter 41
The gunshots focused Conner. He screamed into the radio, “Get those vans back into the garages. Now!”
He barreled down the central hall of Desmond’s massive home. Two of his men were standing in the great room, exposed to the three French doors that opened onto the back yard.
“Back! Get back—”
Sniper fire shattered the glass and dropped one of the men. The other cowered behind the couch and soldier-crawled into the hall.
“Second floor units!” Conner called. “We’ve got snipers in the back yard. Return fire!”
A second later he heard a massive explosion. Charred planks of wood and cedar shakes rained down on the yard and pool—the remnants of the neighbor’s elaborate tree house scattered in every direction.
Conner raced to the back staircase, up to the second floor, and kept going, through the insulated door to the attic. At the dormer, he waddled forward and peeked out.
The street was blocked on both sides by armored troop carriers. They had heavy artillery behind them. He counted two dozen armored Humvees.
He was outnumbered, outgunned, and perhaps most importantly, trapped.
He took out the radio they had taken from the X1 troops captured at the checkpoint.
“To the commander of the X1 troops out there. I have five of your men. I repeat. I have your people. If you fire another shot into this home—if you even set foot on the lawn—I will kill one and throw him out.”
A man with a deep, gruff voice responded. “To whom am I speaking?”
The troops outside stopped moving. They were listening.
“Call me the man in the stone castle.”
A pause.
“Yeah, well, I don’t have time for a name that long. How ’bout I just call you Conner. McClain.”
How? How could they know? A mole in his organization? Park? Doubtful. Could one of the X1 troops have gotten a message out? Unlikely. He looked across the street. Yes—it had to be a surveillance team. If that was true, they would have seen him arrive and observed his troop strength. What a mess.
He heard rhythmic popping above. Helicopters. Not ideal.
The gruff voice continued. “I’ll take your silence as confirmation. I’m Major Charles Latham, United States Army, commanding a combined X1 force that is willing, ready, and able to do whatever it takes to recover our people. So why don’t you send them on out, and we’ll be on our way. You can have a house party or burn the place down for all we care.”
It was a pretty good lie. Conner sort of liked his adversary.
“Major, be advised, we’re not here for a house party, and if you don’t withdraw your troops right now, the only way those X1s are leaving is in pieces.”
Conner activated his mic as he raced down the stairs. “Unit two, launch the drones.”
“Now, now,” Latham said. “Let’s not resort to threats. We both know you’ll be leaving the same way they do. Let’s choose the alive option. Speaking of which, I’m going to need confirmation that they are, in fact, still alive.”
Conner stepped into the garage, where the vans were parked and the X1 troops were tied up. The highest-ranking prisoner was a lieutenant with short black hair and olive skin. Conner yanked his gag off. “Name and rank only. You go off script, and I’ll kick you in the nuts. Got it?”
His captive nodded.
Conner activated the radio. “Stand by, Major.”
He held the radio to the lieutenant. His captive spoke quickly.
“Lieutenant Jacob Danielson, US Marine Corps, twenty-five troops in the garage—”
Conner released the radio button and sighed. “Well played, Lieutenant.” He couldn’t very well kick the man in the testicles for doing his job.
He was about to head back into the house when Major Goins caught up with him. He glanced back to make sure he was out of earshot of the X1s. “Sir?” he said. “We’re pretty jammed up here.”
“Indeed.”
“What’s the plan?”
“It’s very simple, Major. We’re going to deal with it.”
Latham’s voice crackled on the radio. “Thank you, Conner. Another show of good faith would go a long way. Release the lieutenant, and I promise we won’t shoot any more of your men.”
Conner examined the available vehicles. Both vans in the garage had a flat tire. The two vans outside were shot up pretty bad, and probably wouldn’t run. The Humvee in the garage and the one in the motor court were in good shape though. The only other vehicle was Desmond’s Tesla sedan, plugged in and charging.
He stepped into one of the vans. A bank of screens in the back showed drone footage. He studied his adversary’s troop alignment. Textbook cordon and siege formation. They would breach soon.
He held the radio button down. “That’s a compelling offer, Major, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to do better than that. First, you get those Strykers out of here. Second, you move your Humvees back a hundred feet. Do that, and we’ll send your loquacious lieutenant out. And be advised, we have eyes in the sky—don’t waste time lying.”
Conner returned to Major Goins and spoke softly, but loud enough so that the lieutenant could hear. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Put the spare tires on these two vans. Get them running. Split our prisoners up, one in each vehicle—the two vans and the two Humvees, plus the Tesla. As soon as we’re ready, we’re going to send a Humvee out the front. The rest of our vehicles will follow the other Humvee out the back, onto Stockbridge. They’re not set up there. We’ll make a run for it. And if they shoot or try to stop us, they’ll risk killing their own people.”
Goins nodded. “I like it.”
“Make it happen.” He glanced at the lieutenant. “As soon as they pull the Humvees back and get rid of the ATCs, cut him loose.”
“Sir?”
“You heard me.”
Fifteen minutes later, the vans were ready to go. In the back of the second van, Dr. Park was studying the
monitor.
“How long?”
“Soon,” Park said. “Maybe ten minutes.”
Conner turned to Goins. “Load up. Get ready.”
When the kiss finished, Desmond paused, unsure what to do—and what he wanted. Avery was not. She raised her head and kissed him with fervor, her arms wrapped around him, holding him close, her strength surprising him. That strength seemed to feed him, like some part of her flowed into his body, reawakening a hunger that had been dormant for years.
He kissed her back, and she gripped him tighter and rolled on top of him. She grinned as she looked down and ran a hand through his sweaty hair, her own blond ponytail hanging to the side as she lowered her face to his.
He waited until her lips were almost to his, then pushed off the hard floor, rolling her over. He threw his leg over her, took her hands in his, and pressed them to the floor, the sweat making them glide, then catch, streaking, the skin on wood crying out like a wild animal caught in a trap.
He kissed her, slow then fast. He relaxed his hands and she brought her right leg up, planted it against the floor and rolled him over again. Even in all the dives and watering holes in Texas and Louisiana, he had never been with a woman as physical—or as strong—as her. It thrilled him.
She broke from his lips and straightened, straddling him. With one hand, she reached under the sports bra and ripped it up and over her head. She pushed his T-shirt up, revealing his bare chest as she lowered hers to him, rubbing her wet skin on his. She slipped out of her shorts as he pulled his off and his brain stopped working completely.
They lay on the hard floor, staring at the court’s buzzing lights until the warm beads of sweat on their skin turned cold. He wondered if she regretted it. The act had happened so fast, as if they had been exploring a cave and had fallen down a shaft, desperately hanging on to each other, not knowing where the bottom was. Now they were at the end, where the lovemaking had led them, both staring up, not acknowledging each other, not sure exactly how to get back to the place they were before, or if they ever would.
He didn’t know if he regretted it. He expected to, but he didn’t feel that, just the opposite. He felt more content than he could remember. He decided to gauge her.
“What are you thinking about?”
She smiled. “The fact that my Halloween costume has actually become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
He rolled onto his side and looked at her.
“I have become the walk of shame. I went to a little get-together at what, frankly, sort of looks like a frat house. Things got out of hand. I got laid. And now, I’m going to be walking back to my car, hair disheveled, slightly skanky looking.”
He shrugged and held the pose. “You’re not that skanky looking.”
She punched him, harder than he expected, forcing him onto his back. She was on top of him again, leaning in to kiss.
“Wait.”
She stared into his eyes.
“Do you… are you ashamed?”
“No, Des. Not even a little.”
“No bad decisions behind you?”
“Not recently.”
She kissed him and they started up, but he held her at arm’s length. “If we don’t get off this floor you’re going to be bruised all over.”
She smiled, mischief in her cold blue eyes. “I’m okay with that.”
He got on top of her. “I’m not.”
He scooped her up in his arms, hefted her, and walked toward the staircase.
She leaned her head back, roared with laughter.
“What?”
She wiggled free, landed like a cat who had jumped from a tree. “Sorry, my romance allergy was acting up.”
He wanted to strangle her and yet, bizarrely, he was even more attracted to her. “I carried you to bed once.”
She squinted and seemed to remember the morning he had come to her apartment, when she was exhausted from pulling an all-nighter, half-drunk after learning that she had been fired, and ended up passing out after consuming an inhuman amount of breakfast.
“Oh, that. Well, it’s not like it was consensual.”
He opened his mouth, alarmed.
“And I never said thanks. But it was nice to wake up in my bed.” She stooped and grabbed her clothes, but to his surprise, didn’t put them on. She strode up the stairs and sauntered across the catwalk, still naked, without a hint of self-consciousness, like some Roman goddess who ruled the Earth.
She paused at the door and peered down.
“You coming?”
Chapter 42
Desmond hadn’t expected it, but Avery spent the night. She slept naked, and that kept him up for a while. But he did sleep—eventually.
He awoke first, and he was glad. He watched her, amazed at how some people looked different when they were asleep. Avery looked more delicate. Younger.
He was sore from using muscles that had grown weak with disuse, and not just in his body. She was his first since Peyton. He wasn’t like most men; he hadn’t missed the sex. Maybe it was because he had sown so many wild oats in his younger years, in the rough and tumble time he’d spent with Orville.
He couldn’t help but wonder what was next. He tried not to.
In the kitchen, he set about cooking breakfast, a large spread—pancakes, eggs, grits, and toast. The same meal she had devoured that first morning they had met.
She emerged with one of his shirts on—a blue button-up. And nothing else. The mascara from her Halloween outfit was faded from the sweat, but the outline was still there.
She pulled several sheets from the paper towel roll, layered them four times, and placed them on the stool. Then she sat, taking in the plates of food.
“I have something to admit.”
He froze, spatula in hand.
“I don’t have my wallet.”
He exhaled, a laugh forming.
“And even if I did, I don’t have any cash.”
“Avery—”
“I’m afraid your tip will have to be a sexual favor.”
He let the spatula fall to his side. “We accept all forms of payment here at Hughes Manor.”
Desmond expected things to change, but they didn’t. At Phaethon Genetics, it was as if nothing had ever happened between them. It drove him crazy. And the fact that it drove him crazy—the fact that he thought about it all—drove him crazier. She was a stone wall at work.
After hours was a different story. She would text, always on days when she was done with her work, no deadline, and always with a simple question: What r u doing? or Plans tonight? or Dinner? or Rematch?
He always said yes—because he wanted to, and because he didn’t play games, and because, frankly, he had nothing else going on. Rendition was done. He was waiting on Yuri and Conner to finish the trials. He didn’t understand what was taking them so long.
He and Avery settled into a pattern. They spent a few nights each week together and most of the weekend. They played racquetball, they had sex in every room in the house, and they played cards—gin rummy mostly, her favorite game—in the library. They talked, but she never let him in. He tried. He came close once, on a Friday night when they were in his bed, both covered in sweat, the moon full, shining through the steel-clad windows.
“Tell me about your parents.”
She stared at the vaulted ceiling. “Not much to tell.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“My mom is dead.”
“How?”
“Car accident.”
“When?”
“My freshman year in college.”
“My parents died when I was five. It turns your whole world upside down.”
“Yeah.”
He searched for the words. “It’s like… they were the Rock of Gibraltar. Unmovable objects. Constants in your life. Gone in the blink of an eye.”
“On the way to the grocery store.”
“At home. Doing housework. Herding sheep.”
She exhaled. “I realized
how dangerous the world was then. How anything could change. Any time.”
“Your father?”
“Alive.”
“You keep up with him?”
“I try.”
He rolled to his side, looked at her.
“He has Alzheimer’s.”
“That’s what drew you to Phaethon.”
“Among other things.”
She was a black box, one he desperately wanted to get inside. The physical part had been the easiest. The real work was ahead.
With each passing day, he watched as she changed. The worry lines on her face grew deeper. She texted him more often. Sex started at the door, her pushing him into the foyer, ripping her clothes off, like she needed it, like it was a drug that could cure her illness.
They finished in the study one night, and he turned to her. “What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Would you lie to me?”
He thought for a moment. “Yes.” Before she could reply, he added, “To protect you.”
Her expression changed then, to one he had never seen, a vulnerable expression, scared almost.
“Then you understand. I have lied to you. But every lie I’ve told you was to protect you.”
He stood, naked, the stacks of books behind him, the sconces glowing. “What are you talking about?”
She got up and faced him. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
“If I told you something that… changed everything you believe, would you still trust me?”
“Avery, what are you talking about?”
“What if I had proof—if I showed you the world was not what you thought it was?”
He took a step back, took her in, seeing her with new eyes. What is this? Was it personal—an admission like, I’m pregnant, or I was married before, or I have a child? No. It wasn’t any of those things. Or probably not. It felt different. More like business.
“I think we’re past vague generalities, Avery.”
“Are we?”
“Pretty sure.”
