by Liana Brooks
“Not he,” the doctor screeched, “me! I have come here. I change things. He and I.”
Sam checked her phone. It looked like her phone, but this was obviously a dream.
“Agent Rose, I implore you. You must save me.”
“From yourself?” she guessed.
“There are others who would kill me for this research.”
“Like the ones who broke your bots and killed the security guard? Except, wait, nothing was stolen during the lab break-in.”
Dr. Emir was quiet for a minute. “Yes. There might have been—” He coughed. “I think there is a better explanation for that. Although the evidence does not fit observed facts.”
“Dr. Emir, have you considered going to a doctor?”
“My cough is not that bad.”
“I was thinking someone with a doctorate in psychology. You should consider professional treatment.” Hoss’s head thumped on the floor as he went back to sleep. Sam wished she could do the same.
“I am in danger, Agent Rose. Very serious danger. Why do you not believe me? How can you not comprehend this? Do you not see how important my research is? Do you not know who you are talking to? I received the Misakat Award for Speculative Science two years in a row. Two years! I am brilliant! And you suggest I have problems?”
“Dr. Emir,” Sam said, abandoning all tact. “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m stating a fact. You are not right in the head. It’s two in the morning, and you’re calling me to rant about, what? I don’t even know. All I know is that I’m awake when I should be asleep.”
“I called you to tell you that I am in imminent physical danger, Agent Rose,” Emir said, loading his pronouncement with scorn. “Another iteration of myself is tampering with my work and coming to kill me. A real CBI agent would have wasted no time in coming to see to my safety.”
“I’m not the agent covering your case. Before I can do anything, I would need permission from Agent Marrins. Don’t you think calling him first would make more sense?”
“Marrins does not want to help!” Emir screamed. “Marrins is a hindrance.”
Sam closed her eyes. “You’ve already called Marrins?”
“Yes.”
“And what did Agent Marrins say?”
“He used some very foul and abusive language that insulted both my ancestry and my intelligence.”
Sam hit her head on the pillow. It didn’t help. “I think Agent Marrins has a point, Emir.”
“He does not understand the gravity of my situation.”
“I’m not sure anyone can.”
“Exactly! This is why I’m telling you. I know others, like yourself, who are not possessed of my intelligence see only random chaos. To my superior intellect, that chaos is an obvious pattern.”
“Really?” Sam lay back in bed, almost enjoying the raving madman. He was delusional, but he was worth a laugh next time she went to dinner with . . . whomever. Maybe she should let Bri set her up on a blind date.
“You are not taking this seriously, Agent Rose.”
“You called me to tell me that you broke into your lab?”
“Yes! Now you understand!”
“No. Now I hang up.” Sam shut the phone off and looked at Hoss. “That man is insane, and he will drive me crazy.” Hoss snored. The phone buzzed in her hand. She shut it off, and, for good measure, slid it under her stack of gym clothes. Emir was Marrins’s problem.
CHAPTER 19
What did I think the first time I saw another version of myself? I thought she was a coward. She was weak. I am not.
~ Private conversation with Agent 5 of the Ministry of Defense I1–2074
Thursday June 20, 2069
Alabama District 3
Commonwealth of North America
Mac dropped his bowl in the sink as soon as Sam peeled out of the driveway. He’d slept enough the night before to function, even if human conversation wasn’t possible until he found where Agent Perfect kept her coffeemaker. She’d been joking about not having one, right? So far, a thorough search revealed a lot of scary-looking health food, enough dog food to bury a body, and zero performance-enhancing substances like the caffeine he desperately needed to stay awake.
Hoss lumbered down the stairs, sounding like a herd of poorly coordinated elephants. The dog gave him an intelligent look.
“I saw her feed you,” Mac warned.
Hoss dropped his head in Mac’s lap and looked up with caramel-colored eyes.
“Do I look like I have food?”
The nubbin of a tail wagged.
“I don’t have food,” Mac clarified. “I’m not food.”
Hoss licked Mac’s hand.
“Fine, let me get my keys. I’m sure there’s someplace that sells artery-hardening poisons between here and work.” There was a donut shop; they sold cider, smoothies, fruit juice, and milk from a local dairy, but no coffee. It sounded oddly unpatriotic to him. Wasn’t coffee one of those rights granted in the new constitution? Or maybe it was the old one. He bought milk instead and fed a donut to Hoss.
They pulled up to work, and the first thing Mac noticed was that Agent Rose was missing. Her gray Alexian Virgo was in the same spot every day, rain or shine. Hurricane and burning summer weather never stopped her from parking opposite his window, where he could admire her tan legs getting in her car. If she knew he liked her parking there, so he could watch her legs, she’d probably start parking across the street and running for cover. Or gouge his eyes out. Either was possible.
Hoss hopped out of the car and followed him.
Mac wasn’t sure why he’d let the dog come with him. Pity, maybe. No, he decided as he walked into the morgue, he’d brought the dog out of a latent self-preservation instinct. If Agent Rose saw him today, she was far less likely to kill him if the sad-eyed dog was watching. Without the canine backup, she’d leave pieces of him scattered across half of lower Alabama for threatening her career.
Hoss growled at something in the dark.
“What in the Sam Hill is that?” demanded Marrins.
Mac’s eye twitched. “Um . . . a d-dog, sir.”
“I see it’s a dog. What’s it doing here?”
“You sure it’s a dog?” Harley asked. “It looks like a pony to me. You could ride that thing, Rob.”
Rob? Oh, Marrins. Mac shook himself. “It’s, um, one of the search dogs. I was going to go out with the . . . the clean-up teams. I just, um, stopped to grab something from my office.” He closed his eyes so he couldn’t see the senior agent turn beet red with anger. The stutter was back. He didn’t think it was permanent. He’d managed full conversations with Rose, after all. But she didn’t scare him to death.
Well, she kind of does . . . but not in a bad way.
“Get that thing out of here,” Marrins ordered angrily.
Hoss snarled, crouching like he was ready to pounce. Mac grabbed the dog’s ruff. “Sorry, sir. I’ll put him back in the car.”
“What’d you need from the office?” Ol’ Harley asked. “I can grab it for you.”
“Just. . . .” Just what, you gez? “Just a water bottle, and, uh, his leash. I think I left it . . . left it there last night.”
The morgue door slammed open. “Senior Agent Marrins?”
All three men stopped to savor the sight of Agent Rose framed against the sunlight. He’d have to write the director of CBI and ask that all female agents be required to wear sheer white blouses as their formal uniform. It would perk up morale to no end.
“Marrins?” Rose demanded again. “I’ve been trying to call for the past hour. Altin has a major FUBAR situation down at the labs, and Emir is screaming for bureau attention again.”
The senior agent sighed. “I hate this guy.”
“Join the club,” Rose said through clenched teeth. “You’re not the only one h
e called at two in the morning.”
“I told him not to call you,” Marrins muttered as he brushed past Mac.
Hoss growled and snapped at the senior agent.
“Your rescue dog needs retraining,” Marrins said.
Mac tried to make eye contact with Rose. Her gaze passed over him, as if deleting him from the scene entirely. “Yes, sir.”
“Feeling better?” Harley asked, as the other two agents left.
In the dim hall light of the morgue, Mac couldn’t glare the way he wanted to. “Fine, thanks. How are your interns?”
“Contrite and still proclaiming their innocence. The young do that sort of thing.” He reached for Mac’s shoulder, and Mac dodged, pulling Hoss between them.
Hoss grumbled quietly but didn’t try to disembowel the coroner.
The desk in his office looked far too clean for comfort. Mac shut the door and checked his computer. In a few keystrokes, he pulled up the station log. Someone with little skill and less intuition had been looking through his files. They hadn’t found anything incriminating although they’d checked his e-mail accounts and entertainment viewing files.
People liked to think that using a keyboard from infancy meant they could work their way through any computer system. It didn’t. It just meant they could point and click their way through life. He’d left the point-n-click mob about the time he’d started looking at computer code as just another language to learn. It wasn’t hard when he knew the basics. But the basics could kick most people through the stratosphere.
Agent Rose’s profile was still on his computer desktop, just as he’d left it. He skimmed the contents of her file one more time, then closed out, shutting down the computer cold. Someone knocked on his door. “Yes?”
“Agent MacKenzie?” One of the interns opened the door. “I’m supposed to make a specimen run up to Birmingham.”
Mac frowned. “I thought you had classes on Thursdays?”
“I do, but . . .” He mumbled something out of hearing range.
Mac could guess. “Did you mean to poison me?”
“I didn’t poison you at all!” the intern protested. “I don’t know where you’d get drugs like that, and I’d never mess around with someone’s medicine. I took this internship because I want to get into the bureau. Do you think I’d screw that up for a prank?”
Mac shook his head. “It’s chill.”
“Arthur didn’t do it either.”
“Arthur?”
“Arthur Frenzi? The other intern.”
“Oh. Sorry, I’m not good with names.” What an understatement. “It’s chill, really. I believe you.” He took a deep breath. “Tell you what, take the afternoon off, go to class, I’ll drive the specimens up to the lab. I didn’t want to . . .” What had he told Marrins he was doing? Hoss bumped his hand. “I didn’t want to walk with the salvage teams today.”
“You sure?” the intern asked.
“Positive.” Letting anyone else see Rose’s sample in the specimen lineup would only lead to trouble. Someone might do something intelligent, like ask a direct question. If Harley weren’t such a sloppy good-for-nothing, Mac wouldn’t have coasted under the radar for so long.
He massaged his temples. The world was coming back into sharp clarity. Pills didn’t seem an option anymore. After the weekend’s bout of near death, he had choked on his regular pills. Drinking his way into an alcoholic haze sounded promising, but his stomach churned at the thought of the massive hangover. Staying sober meant dealing with life like a responsible adult, yet that sounded too impossible for words. “Tell me, pup,” he said, scratching Hoss’s ear. “How do you kill all thought without drugs or alcohol?”
He looked out the window at where the gray Alexia Virgo wasn’t. Suicide by physical exertion? Rose would happily run him to death if he asked. An unbidden image of other ways she could exhaust him flirted with his imagination. He licked his lips. Maybe in his next life.
Wait, no, wrong religion. Whichever faith handed out beautiful women after death, he was pretty sure atheists didn’t qualify for benefits.
Hoss barked.
“I hear you. Let’s get going.”
Mac tripped over his own feet coming through the back door. The kitchen was dark, the house silent. Hoss barked happily and bounded up the stairs. Shaking, Mac stumbled into his room. A three-hour commute to Birmingham wasn’t exactly physical torture, and his head was still churning. On the way back he’d stopped for a light lunch although he couldn’t remember eating much. Halfway to the lab, the shaking had started. By the time he reached the lab, he couldn’t see straight.
Just the smell of the morgue was enough to make him throw up. He’d run out without telling anyone he was back. Passing the cemetery behind the Baptist church on the way to the house brought back memories. There was a monument somewhere with every name but his etched in stone for eternity.
In the dark, he lay shaking and dry heaving. He dragged his hand across the dry skin of his arm, trying to rub away the constant itch. His arms burned. The shaking in his legs became a rhythmic tattoo. Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to hum a song, sing something, think of anything but the pain.
He rolled in the darkness to check his arms. The metal was there, just under his skin, he was sure of it. He could feel the shrapnel and sand cutting him.
Someone was standing in the dark.
Lieutenant Dan Marcellus watched him, weapon slung across his chest. Mac could smell the dust and sweat of the twenty-mile trek into enemy territory. The soldiers smelled of anger. The baby-faced butter-bar lieutenant smelled of fear.
Alina Marcellus’s baby boy, her only son. She’d brought cookies and hand-knit scarves for the whole unit. Cornered him at the farewell dinner. Begged him to watch her little boy.
Mac rubbed his arm, trying to peel skin off. No, the sand was peeling his skin off. The sandstorm wouldn’t quit, but they had to get out of there.
He stood in the desert. Sand beat against his face, beating his safety goggles and stripping skin from his body whenever it sneaked past the layers of protective clothing. The temperature was over 120 Fahrenheit. They’d been hiking through mountains and deserts for days. Another four miles, and they’d be at the safety perimeter. Three days, four max, he’d be in a cold shower smelling like Old Spice and Axe. After a week of sleeping, he’d spend two weeks in the chow hall eating everything in sight.
The LT signaled from the top the hill. A whole valley stretched beneath them like Shangri-La in the Middle East. Yellowed grass grew in clumps under the shadows of rocks. A dusty road wound through the rocky terrain. It was nothing, just another valley. There was no sign that anything but wild goats had moved through here in years. Still, his gut clenched. He grabbed the LT’s arm and frowned at the scene. Something was wrong.
Top Sergeant Abel moved beside them. “We’re good to go, sir.”
The LT nodded. “Let’s move out. I want a shower.”
He looked at the valley floor again. All was quiet. Mac moved down the hill and hefted his gear on his back. Team medic meant last in line for almost everything. He was at the back, so he could fix anyone who did something stupid up front.
The team crawled over the hill and started working their way down to the valley floor. He slipped on loose dirt and slid into a rock, bumping hard enough to make his pack rattle. The noise sounded like gunfire. He rolled his shoulders, moved with a smile, and screamed.
There was blood everywhere. Dust. Explosions. Sand. Someone screamed. He screamed. Marcellus was down, he had to get to him, had to get him home.
Mac grabbed the body of his friend and felt heat. . .
The smell of lavender overwhelmed him.
It was dark, he was shaking, and his hand was on something wonderfully warm and soft. He leaned forward, gasping for breath, and rested his head on bare skin. T
rembling hands tightened on human flesh. Warm, human.
“Shhh,” a quiet voice whispered. A hand ran through his hair. “You’re all right.”
A steady heart beat a quieting cadence. He fought for control of his breath and lost it again as his hands slid higher and touched cool satin with a lace trim. There, in the dark, heart beating wildly, what was he to do? He turned, brushing his face against her lavender-scented skin. All he had to do was pull her down into the bed with him. Lose himself in her soft curves. Bury the memories of war in erotic exhaustion.
His arms trembled as he fought to remember why he shouldn’t. Shaking, he pushed her away. Breathing was hard with her still in his hands, the scent of her filling the room. Mac focused on the woman in front of him, silhouetted by a light from the mudroom. She had to leave. Now. “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”
Rose dropped her hands to her hips. “You were screaming. I thought you were in trouble, so I came down to help. Why are you yelling at me?”
“You came to help?” He stared at her as his eyes adjusted to the light spilling in from the laundry room. Heaven help him, there was so much to stare at. Sun-kissed skin with skimpy black shorts and a barely-there see-through shirt. “Where’s your gun?”
“My gun?”
“You heard me scream, so you ran down here, unarmed, dressed like that?” Anger was the only refuge. “Are you trying to be a statistic?”
She frowned. “I came down to help.”
“No. You came down to scream like a girl. I’m twice your size. If someone were attacking me, they would have no trouble taking you down. You don’t have a gun, you don’t have a phone, you don’t even have clothes on!”
“I’m dressed.”
Mac’s breath hitched as he did another once-over. There was no safe place to focus. If she moved an inch forward, he was going to lose control and tackle her. Run his tongue all over that bare flesh. Spend an hour or two kissing her breathless, so her heart raced like his. Looking in her eyes—too dangerous—he’d lose himself there. Promise her anything. “That is not dressed.”
