by P. R. Adams
She looked up suddenly and bit her lip. “You know what?”
“Hmm?”
“I never thought to ask, and I feel like an idiot now.”
“Scrambled or fried? It’s all fine.”
“No!” She chuckled. “Are you gay?”
The earthy scent of coffee filled my senses. Her pale skin almost glowed beneath the light, which revealed the full shape of her breasts.
She leaned forward, head down. “Because, I think, maybe, a lot of guys would have—”
“I’m thirty-six, Gillian.” And I’ve seen more than most people twice my age.
Her eyes came up, bright and vibrant. “And I’m twenty-five. Why’s that matter?”
Weaver stood in Gillian’s place for a moment, older, worn by the years, looking at me with that curious hunger. Seconds away from death.
We were all seconds away from death.
“Stefan?”
“I should probably—”
“Is it…am I unattractive?”
It was a classic trap. No answer was good. But it was authentic. She was vulnerable. “Gillian, you’re…it’s hard to keep my eyes off you. You’re extremely attractive. But I’m—I’ve been—I suffered a pretty bad injury. There’s not a lot left of me.”
Eyes wide, very real shock. “Oh. I’m…” She looked away. “Do I say I’m sorry?”
“You don’t have to say a thing. It’s just that you should know—I’m damaged goods.”
She snorted and knuckled a tear from the corner of her eye. “Aren’t we all?”
“I guess so.”
She came around the bar and took my hands in hers. They were soft and smooth, and they tugged me up and off the stool.
“Why don’t we see how damaged we are?” she whispered.
She released my hands, turned, walked into the bedroom, and slowly began undressing. I followed, as clumsy as a baby for the first few steps. When she threw back the blanket and laid on the bed, I found my balance again.
Breakfast was going to have to wait.
It was afternoon before I had a full accounting of the damage done by my extended incarceration. Apparently, my torturers had failed to do anything more than ensure I would never have children. Breakfast was rescheduled to lunch, and coffee was brewed fresh, this time while Gillian wore something not intended to seduce me. We talked about her time in college, her radical views turned into pragmatism at the realization that living like a pauper wasn’t particularly fun, and about growing up with her father’s mother after the divorce. Mr. Willard had spent a small fortune to show that the ex-Mrs. Willard was an unfit mother only to turn around and foist his problematic child off on a more compassionate mother. The twice-divorced Ms. McFarland had no great love for either of her former husbands and apparently held Jonas in the same low regard.
We made love again after lunch and napped.
Evening was approaching when we headed out to Habib’s. The SUV tailed us, harder to see in the dying light; I switched to infrared.
Gillian chuckled.
I turned, anxious she had suddenly realized I was a horrible lover. “What?”
“I was just thinking about what you said. You didn’t know you could still get it up?”
“No.” A partial truth. I didn’t know I could perform with an audience.
My data device vibrated. I pulled it out, irritated. Chan.
Something to show you.
“Well, you definitely aren’t broken.” She laughed.
I typed a reply: One hour.
Gillian leaned in close and kissed me. “You think you could do it again?”
“I’ve got an appointment in a little bit.” Plotting to kill your mother.
“I could swing by the hospital, stay for a while, then come to your place for the night. There are some things we haven’t tried yet.”
Alarms went off in my head. “Not tonight. This appointment’s going to run a while.”
She straightened in her seat and pouted. “All right. I don’t understand why you have to keep your address a secret. You married or something?”
“Or something.” I made a mental note to check my clothes for bugs. Panic washed over me at the realization I had fallen into a deep sleep in a stranger’s apartment. Ravi or whoever had been on our tail could’ve broken in, could’ve recorded the whole thing. I’d been sloppy, and Gillian’s behavior made it feel more like she had been part of an elaborate background check than a confused and vulnerable college kid hung up on a mysterious older man.
I got out at Habib’s after a deep kiss that left me less sure about Gillian being part of whatever Ravi was up to. It was cold, and the slush was starting to harden into ice. I waited until both vehicles were out of sight, then went into the eatery and ordered some hummus. I searched my jacket while I ate.
Nothing. I ran my fingers along the surface of my shoes, socks, shirt, and pants. Also nothing.
I called Nitin. “Nitin, you at the hotel? Bring a complete change of clothes for me to the Guillaume Clinic. Twenty minutes.”
I hired a car to the clinic and let myself into the physical therapy area. It was down to a few staff members at that point, but no one challenged me. When Nitin arrived, I brought him in, and changed out my clothes while he waited outside the gym.
Outside, I gave him the old ones and said, “Take that north and then east. Dump it in the river.”
A smile sneaked across Nitin’s face. “Sure, boss. You hiding you got a piece of ass from Ichi?”
Shit. “Yeah. She thinks I’m getting wrapped up with Gillian. Weaver’s daughter.”
“She’s a nice piece. Was she good? Did she get violent?”
The heat hit me again, unexpected and unwanted. Nitin was just making casual talk. Locker room talk. She was just a target’s kid. I had no reason to be defensive or protective. “Yeah, pretty crazy.”
“Damn.” He shook his head and laughed, then jogged out to his car.
I waited a few minutes, shivering in the cold, then headed back into the clinic. There was an exit out of the kitchen area that opened into a walled-in patio. I slipped out through there and ran across the lawn. When I was safely hidden between two buildings a few blocks away, I hired another car.
The entire drive back to the hotel, I forced myself to think through my relationship with Gillian. By the time I got to Chan’s suite, I was convinced that what I was feeling was nothing more than lust. It had to be.
I passed through a fog of Mexican food coming out of the dining room garbage can on my way to Chan, already feeling like I was cooking in the stifling heat. Chan looked up from the display panels and handed me another pair of VR goggles.
Chan slid on the same pair as the night before. “You’re late.”
“Shooting for tropical rain forest or something?” I tossed my coat on the floor. “What’ve we got?”
“You’ll see.”
“Where’s Danny?”
“Out. Goggles. On.”
I did as ordered. Once again, I stood on the assembly hall stage. Ravi stood toward the front, watching me intently; Weaver stood a few feet away, at the edge of my peripheral vision. I could almost smell the coffee on my hands.
The view swung around and pivoted up to the balcony. There was a noticeable drop in the quality of the video and gaps in the coverage. Immediately, I spotted the assassins. I had missed the male the first time: farther back, mostly obscured. Hiding.
“Chan, check the video from the restaurant, see if—”
“He was there. Too far out. Watching.” There was a welcome confidence in Chan’s voice again.
“So that was a test run. Or she thought she could pull this off on her own.”
The woman leapt onto the stage, a graceful string of movements to rival Ichi. Chan froze the image, rotated it some more, and slowly began peeling away layers of clothing until the assassin was crouched in front of me naked.
“No armor.” Chan spun the view around, pushing it in and out. The shades
disappeared, and pieces of the face filled out. Full, dark lips, deep brown hair, small brown eyes, a pointed nose.
Maribel Clavel.
Chan’s avatar appeared on stage, standing next to Maribel. “Maribel Clavel. San Vicente, El Salvador. Thirty-nine years old. Former assassin. Did work for the Agency. Biggest target: eight Canadian oil executives. Convicted of negligence. North Dakota, about sixteen years ago.”
“Right. That was Agency?”
“Environmental radicals.”
The video shifted. The VR gear struggled to make it seem authentic. Elderly men, all smiles, strolling alongside slick-haired men in expensive suits. Lawyers. Laughing now. Heading toward a cavalcade of huge SUVs watched over by beefy men in cheap suits.
Avatar-Chan appeared at the edge of the video. “Coming out of appeals court.”
Motorcycles—black and sleek and low to the ground—accelerated toward the vehicles. The beefy men looked up. Reached for their weapons.
The motorcycles braked. Guns came out.
The beefy men went to the ground, firing as they died, disbelief in eyes revealed when shades fell away. Then it was the lawyers.
Then it was the groveling executives.
Head shots. Gore on the sidewalk. Screaming witnesses.
The motorcycles sped away ahead of police cars.
The image froze. The man’s bodysuit peeled away. A thin layer of armor peeled away. Bleached blond hair, a heavy jaw, a broad nose canted slightly to the left.
Avatar-Chan strolled in front of the still motorcycle and waved toward the man. “Jose Funes. Assassin number two.” Avatar-Chan’s gaze drifted toward Funes’s crotch.
The image changed abruptly. A highway. Palm trees. Distant mountains. Police cars. Debris and skid marks stretching back yards. At the end of the trail, dark and wet stains. Ambulances, gurneys with blood-soaked sheets. Avatar-Chan carefully walked among the debris and stains, then squatted next to something that resolved into a forearm wrapped in shredded black material.
“Nine weeks later,” Avatar-Chan mumbled. “Dead. Halfway between Barstow and Los Angeles, California.”
“Not dead enough.” I walked onto the scene and panned the view around, picking out what details I could.
Police cars, police, horrified witnesses, shaken paramedics. I panned up as high as the image went. Something hung just inside the edge of the image.
My avatar pointed. “What’s this?”
Avatar-Chan came close and followed my gaze. The image took on greater resolution, removing graininess and smoothing the jagged line out. I squinted.
“Landing skids,” I whispered. “A helicopter.”
Chan’s breath was a nasally hiss. “I’ll look into it.”
“Do that.”
I tossed the VR glasses onto the table and pulled my coat from the floor. It was a big find, reinforcing what Dr. Jernigan had discovered. I already knew the helicopter would be a dead end, same as I knew someone from the Agency was onboard, the same Agency bastard who would pay to have Maribel and Jose pieced back together by experts at UCLA. The same Agency bastard who would pay to have their flesh replaced by a bulletproof carbon weave. The same Agency bastard who would leave me to rot in a Korean dungeon.
Stovall.
Chapter 16
As the rest of the team settled into seats in Chan’s domain, I paced and fought off the memories of my time with Gillian. Despite my change of clothes, her scent was on me. Worse, she was in my head, a youthful and unmarked body that had felt so soft and smooth to my artificial fingers. Heidi cleared her throat as she squeezed past me and plopped into her chair and leaned against the curtains. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy, and for once I thought I could actually smell the alcohol on her.
Danny’s heels bounced up and down on the carpet with nervous energy, while Nitin slouched in another chair. Ichi was squeezed against the couch end closest to the dining room. Chan had the pillow fort going again. Everyone was dressed in casual wear—jeans, light shirts. Most of it had the frumpy appearance of being hastily pulled on.
Good. We needed a sense of urgency.
Chan’s system seemed to pulse with power. I caught the signal from those magenta eyes: It was time.
I stopped pacing and leaned into the window corner across from Heidi. “I know it’s late, so I want to get right to it. Chan and I just finished a walkthrough that’s more than a little troubling. There’s good news, too, though.”
Heidi rubbed her brow. “It’d better be very good news, Stefan. It’s damned near two.”
“We have the names of our unstoppable assassins: Maribel Clavel and Jose Funes. I can see from your reaction that you’re not impressed. Hear me out. We also know they worked for the Agency before. And we know they were rebuilt, same as me. Better.”
“Oh, good…” Heidi buried her face in her bony talons. “You woke me for this?”
“I woke you because we’re going to make our move. Tomorrow night, we solve this little Ravi mystery. The day after that, we finish the job.”
“And I’m sure there’s a reason this Ravi mystery matters?”
The others studied me. It was a moment of faith for them. “Because there’s too much connecting this to the Agency right now. It stinks of a setup. If he’s one of them…” I turned on Heidi. “Then you’re being used for something, same as me. Might want to think about that, Heidi.”
Her face locked into a stony glare. She creaked as she got to her feet, reached out for stability, then shambled to the hallway door. She slipped out without so much as a good night.
Danny’s feet stilled. “Uh, what’s the real story?”
“That is the real story. With a few discrepancies.” I pushed out of the corner. “The biggest one is that we’re moving the schedule up. Chan, I want a secure Grid connection ready in an hour. You’re going to have a guest. The rest of you, we meet in the lobby in twenty.”
A smile slithered across Nitin’s lips. “Payday, huh, boss?”
“We’ll see.”
Danny tapped my arm as I headed for the door. His eyes flitted from mine to Ichi, who was right on my ass. “You want me to, you know, get the bird in flight?”
“Sure. Trick it out with surveillance gear.”
He bounded into his room, and ducked out of sight. The closet door clattered open, and a loud unzipping preceded the whisper of boxes shuffling around on nylon.
I crossed to my suite, hoping for a shower and change before the inevitable showdown.
Ichi had other ideas. She followed me into my room. “You wore the red pullover shirt this morning, Stefan-san. Your jeans were almost black. Now you wear a yellow shirt that buttons, and your pants are blue.”
I pulled the shirt off, tossed it at the head of the bed, and dug out a long-sleeved black pullover. The jeans went on top of the pillows next to the yellow shirt, and my last pair of black jeans came out.
“You slept with her.” No dancing around it. A direct accusation.
I straightened. “It’s just a job, Ichi. I told you, I care about my team.” Would I see anger in her eyes if I turned and looked? Hatred because I’d betrayed her? Had I betrayed her? Gillian was just our means of getting close to Weaver. Or was I lying to myself?
Sniffling. “I will always trust you, Stefan-san. Same as Norimitsu-san did. I hope that you will show me the trust is not misplaced.”
I couldn’t hear her depart, but I felt the vacuum of intensity in her wake.
I dug my fingers into the clothes I held and muttered, “Norimitsu-san never cried when I took one for the team.”
The shower was scalding; the washcloth dragged across flesh vigorously. Nitin was waiting for me in the lobby—leaning against a wall, watching the snow drift down like broken souls from on high. I let a cleaning robot mop up a puddle of black sludge, then headed for the parking garage.
Nitin was on me in no time, legs pumping to match my pace. “Hey, boss, this is gonna be ugly, huh? She figured it out? That you fucked that�
�”
“Yeah.” The automatic door was too slow opening; it shivered when I leaned into it.
Sneakers squeaked on the concrete as Nitin ran to catch up again. “Worth it, though. Right?”
Ichi sat in the driver’s side rear seat, rigid, arms crossed, staring straight ahead.
I paused at the passenger’s side rear door. Danny’s motorcycle was already gone. “Let it go, Nitin.”
“Sure.” He chuckled, pulled on his gloves, and got in behind the steering wheel.
I slid in beside Ichi. She shifted away from me.
I confirmed the VR goggles were in my jacket pocket, then said, “The Canyon.”
The 750’s wheels rasped over the concrete as Nitin tested the vehicle’s limits. We hit the street at thirty, sliding across the frozen slush for a few feet before the tires found something to grip. We had the roads to ourselves for minutes at a time. When we reached the section of the Canyon near Abhishek’s shop, Nitin had to slow for robotic snowplows.
He tugged at his gloves and muttered, “At least the road’s clear.”
He parked close to where he’d parked before. I signaled for him to follow me. Ichi didn’t budge.
We hurried into the alley, backs hunched, heads low, collars up. Black ice reflected the sickly red neon glow that advertised goods and services no one would seek out at such a late hour and in such conditions. This was a time for violence and danger.
Abhishek’s shop was dark.
“You sure he’s here, boss?”
“He’s here.” I pulled out my data device, typed in a number, and redirected it to my cybernetic implant, quieting the ever-present Grid chatter.
One ring and Abhishek answered. “You have any idea what time it is?”
“I need a big favor.” Snow settled on my cheek—cold, clingy. More snow fell. Nitin scuffed the heel of his sneaker over one of the ice patches. “I have money.”
Lights flickered beyond the grimy windows. The door rattled open, and a red glow revealed the little man. He waved us in.
