by Beth Ryan
“Hardly.” King shuffled the papers, setting more aside. He didn't bother to look at Cooper as he spoke. “These will all end up shredded in the end. Useless charities.”
“Oh,” Cooper brightened. I grabbed my fork and focused on clearing the fancy breakfast I’d been given. “I've got experience sorting charities, actually. Some of those might be ones I handpicked to—”
I pushed my foot out, connecting with Cooper’s beneath the table again. He jumped at the sudden contact and again glared at me. I raised my foot gently along the line of his leg, an apology I hoped he could understand.
King continued to flip pages, unconcerned.
“Complete waste of time,” he muttered, ignorant to Cooper’s near-slip. He gathered the untouched half stack and folded it in with those he had already sorted. Leanna came up beside him like a well-trained dog and took the stack from his outstretched hand. “Shred them all. Our funds are better spent on more useful things.”
“Like handling the Argentinians,” Ivonne said, and King grunted.
Standing, he pushed his plate away and his chair back. “There’s still a lot to do for that. You’ll be at the reception?”
“Of course, Daddy. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Good. Behave yourself and make your choice as soon as possible. I cannot hold your uncle back forever.”
Then he was gone, and in the silence that stretched out behind his departure, something tapped against my ankle, tearing my attention away from the sudden realization of how Robert Eisley fit into this little family.
I looked up to find Cooper staring at me. His eyes flicked to Ivonne for a fraction of a second. Then he looked down at his food again. The pressure of his foot against mine did not pull away.
I wondered if his actions would be caught by the cameras. There were three in the room that I could see. Even if someone noticed, however, there was no way for an outsider to understand the meaning behind his actions. Only I had any way of understanding what he was getting at, and even then, I couldn’t really be sure. He wanted me paying attention to Ivonne, that much was clear, and from the incredible scent of cedar coming off of her, I could guarantee I would be paying attention to her for a long while.
I pressed my lips together and nodded. It was less than I wanted to offer, but almost more than I dared to give away. Before he could return to eating his meal, I started blinking rapidly. Morse code was an ancient form of communication that hadn’t lost its value throughout all the years since its creation. Anyone worth their salt knew the nonverbal language by heart.
Anyone, it seemed, except Cooper Hall. He furrowed his brows as I blinked out a simple hello.
I tried again, slower this time. Some people weren’t as advanced as I was, after all. They needed things spelled out for them.
Cooper’s confusion didn’t fade. He shook his head, a frown tugging at his lips. He glanced over at Ivonne again, but she did not seem to notice or care.
With a helpless expression, Cooper stared down at his own plate, forearms resting on the table and his hands gripping at thin air over and over as though he were trying to grasp his frustrations out of the air.
I gave up on any attempt at conversation. I supposed the sanctuary elite had no need for nonverbal communication. They had enough credits to waste their words on delicate information.
For lack of anything better to do, I shoved a forkful of greens into my mouth. I almost choked on them as Cooper’s foot moved against my ankle again. He brushed up and down in a minuscule motion. He wasn’t looking at me at all. A gesture of comfort, perhaps, or apology.
I leaned forward, putting my elbows on the table as I felt the side of his foot rise from my ankle to my calf and back down again.
Maybe not an apology, then.
“Considering both of you already have your coats on, why don’t we go for a little walk around the property?” Ivonne proposed, her voice strained.
I felt a flush of guilt, remembering that this was to be my future wife, if I had anything to say about it. So I nodded amicably and stood, Cooper shooting out of his seat like it had burned him. Rhys, so large that it was impossible not to notice him, hurried out of the room with a worried glance back at Ivonne.
Taking her arm, I gave him a reassuring smile. Nothing would happen to my future wife while I was around. I couldn’t afford to risk her death when all of my plans hinged on her survival; more to the point, none of us were going to die tonight, if I had any say about it whatsoever.
20
In the distance, the trees marked the boundary of the Kingsland Mansion’s lawn, and the blue glow of the forcefield marked the property line further out. Everything looked different in the daylight. The forest was more than a single indistinguishable wall of black, and flowers grew everywhere between the trees. There wasn’t another building as far as the eye could see, or another living soul as far as I could tell.
As we strolled down the driveway arm in arm, Cooper trailing behind us, I could feel my fingers itching for another cigarette. I looked up at the sky instead. The color of the forcefield tinted the plumes of pollution blue, holding it at bay. The fresh air did nothing to ease the feeling of suffocation that was coiled up behind my ribcage.
“We’re here to get to know each other better, aren’t we?” I asked, forcing myself to focus on Ivonne despite how much I wanted to make sure Cooper understood the situation.
We still hadn’t found a way to get on the same page, and his cooperation was everything when it came to getting him out alive.
“Yes,” Ivonne bit her lip, and looked up at me through her lashes. “Tell me more about you, Mr. Donovan.”
“Not much to tell.” I shrugged, using the move to pull her closer. Her heels caused her to stumbled at the sudden change, and I wrapped an arm around her to steady her. “My sister and I are orphans. We’ve been in some pretty crazy situations together, but we always get out safe. Like the time she shot a man on accident and then confessed like an idiot, I was there for her. Made sure we had each other’s backs, covered the legal fees, that sort of thing. She didn’t think I was on her side at first, but everything worked out in the end.”
“Wow,” Ivonne said, looking impressed with my far too obvious story. She didn’t know about Jimmy Espinoza, though. She didn’t know anything about how complex this situation really was. “What about you, Mr. Hall? Do you have a sister?”
She glanced back at Cooper, and I took the opportunity to follow her gaze. He was deathly silent as he scuffed along behind us and didn’t look up as we both stared at him. I suspected he might still be processing what I was trying to tell him.
“He doesn’t look like the family type,” I said when the silence stretched too far. “Maybe we should start with something easier. Why don’t you tell us your favorite color?”
Cooper’s attention snapped to me then. He stared, his dark eyes seeking an answer from me that I could not give. I raised an eyebrow, praying he would understand my meaning. With the amount of time we’d wasted arguing over this question, I could only hope he’d learned the lesson I’d tried to impart.
I knew what I was doing, and he just needed to trust me.
“Red,” he said after a long moment, the word slipping through his teeth like an escaped convict. His fists, balled up at his sides, relaxed their grip as he came to stand beside me.
A silent acknowledgment, an agreement to let me take the lead.
“I figured you as more of a blue man,” I said, and after we’d stared at each other for a long moment, I placed a hand on the back of his neck and guided both companions forward, keeping all of us moving even as I kept the questions flowing. “Tell us, Cooper, do you have any hobbies?”
“I do. Of course I do,” he said, but he didn’t bother to tell me what any of them were. Instead, he stared down at his feet.
“Oh, I’d love to hear about them,” I told him. My thumb brushed along the freshly healed trading chip insertion scar, double checking that it
had healed enough to scrape by any close scrutiny. “Mine are old movies, smoking like a chimney, and being better than everyone else.”
“Pretending to be better than everyone else,” Cooper muttered to his feet.
I snorted, and when he looked up at me, I gave him a cheeky grin and a wink. It was the kind of reassurance he seemed to need.
Ivonne cleared her throat.
“And you, Ivy,” I ventured to say. “May I call you Ivy?”
“Only Joshua ever calls me that anymore.” Ivonne sniffed, looking away.
“Ivonne, then,” I agreed. “What are your hobbies?”
“Probably she likes to breed butterflies in her spare time,” Cooper grumbled. I furrowed my brows at him, wondering why he’d come up with such a strange and horrifying pastime. He gave me a meaningful look that might as well be Gaelic, for all I understood it.
“Actually,” Ivonne said, slowing her stroll as we neared the tree line, “I’d like to show you both exactly what my hobbies are. Is that alright by you, Mr. Hall?”
Cooper looked ready to bolt in a mad attempt at escape, but he didn’t. He only nodded. It was a stiff action, something that felt practiced to me. I got the sense that he wasn’t happy with how things were going, but then again, Cooper had rarely been happy with how things were going since I’d met him.
“Follow me, then,” Ivonne said, darting off into the trees. We both stared after her for a moment, and a part of me marveled at how she traversed the soft ground and scattered roughage with her long, sharp heels. She’d vanished behind a copse of trees before either of us could protest following her into the woods.
When we caught up to her, we had reached the true edge of the Kingsland property. There was a fat line running between the trees that grew on our side of the forcefield and those that grew on the other side. The difference in health was staggering. Beside me, the trunks were thick, sturdy. The leaves blocked out the sun and were a bright green. On the other side, the trees might as well be called twigs. They were fewer and further between and they all looked like they could be knocked over if someone pushed too hard.
“Ready, boys?” Ivonne asked, waltzing toward the blue wall in front of her. The haunting smell of burning flesh came to mind.
“You’ll get yourself killed,” Cooper said.
There was a hopeful lilt to his tone that Ivonne didn’t miss. Her smirk grew. She placed a hand on a tree and pushed. The massive tree swayed and then tipped right through the forcefield, as though she’d dug up each and every one of its roots herself, sliding right through the wall of blue without any trouble at all.
“I’ve made friends with all the servants and staff,” Ivonne explained as she hopped up on the fallen trunk and started to make her way across it like a balance beam. “Rhys always comes through when I want to sneak out for a bit.”
She was moments from passing through the forcefield when a sizzling sound crackled out through the forest. The tree trunk she was standing on split in two, and the shift tossed her to the ground, inches from where the forcefield was clearly working again.
“I don’t think Rhys likes you as much as you think he does,” Cooper commented, staring down at Ivonne.
She blinked at him in surprise. He offered her a hand up, but she didn’t take it.
“That’s never happened before,” she whispered, more to herself than either of us. She looked worried, and not about the way she’d almost been sliced in half.
I stared out past the working forcefield and into the trees beyond. Freedom had been so close. There was only a wall of blue light between the three of us and the rest of the world. Ivonne might not think I’d noticed, but I could tell that the bushes on the other side were oddly placed and could see the metal hidden underneath. There was some man-made contraption on the other side, and if my instincts were right, then it was a vehicle. Cooper’s way out.
Now I just had to figure out how to get him to the other side of the forcefield without being sliced in half like the tree had been.
Ivonne got to her feet, blinking at the cleanly sliced ends of the trunk and the forcefield that was going right through it. As much as I couldn’t relate to the easy life she had lived, I understood the fear she must be feeling now. It was the same fear I’d lived with my whole life. The feeling of having to dodge certain death from one moment to the next.
She turned away from the blue wall and walked back toward the mansion without another word.
Cooper and I followed in silence. As she hit the open lawn, she picked up the pace, but was slowed down by her heels digging holes in the soft dirt. She kicked them off after a few steps, breaking into a full run, heading for the side of the building.
I scooped up her shoes and followed her lead, catching up when she stopped in front of the solid wall of her home. As she stood there, staring at a blank wall, I wondered if the incident had shorted some circuits.
Then she pushed on the wall, and it came away from the rest of the building, every other brick separating to create a zippered edge and a dark entrance to the mansion.
“Whoa,” Cooper said, and I shared his sentiment.
Another piece of the puzzle was settling into place, another element of the escape that would free Cooper from this place.
Ivonne ignored us both, marching into the dark passage with tight shoulders and bare feet. We followed, Cooper closing the secret door behind us. On the other side was what looked like a storage room. There were many chairs covered in white cloth, and labeled boxes filled with what I assumed were generations of accumulated knickknacks.
Ivonne did not stop her march. Curious to see where she was headed and what weighed so heavy on her mind, I followed. And, as seemed to be his nature, Cooper followed me.
The passage was close to the front of the house. It wasn’t more than a half a minute before we were opening one of the identical wooden doors that led into the grand foyer. Ivonne didn’t stop at the sight of the crowd gathered there. She marched right past them, and they parted before her with years of ingrained respect.
“What’s going on?” she asked, stepping through the many people to reach her father.
I dragged Cooper along after her before the crowd could become a wall of faces once more. There were a few men and women, prominent and outspoken members of the Lemniscate, who I recognized as we passed. Those that I didn’t recognize still wore enough finery to make it clear they belonged right where they were. None of them seemed to notice or care about Cooper and I.
As Ivonne reached the front of the crowd, I pulled Cooper back before he could run into a man who had moved out of Ivonne’s way. I received a grateful smile and the back of his fingers brushing against mine for my efforts.
At the bottom of the staircase, President King stood beside Eisley, while two black-clad profilers stood at attention behind them.
I felt Cooper’s hand grasp my wrist and I knew that we were on the same page. Comments about butterfly breeders and backstabbing servants aside, neither of us wanted anyone to die, and whenever the Profile Department appeared, there was usually a corpse to clean up afterward. Whatever they were here for, we could only pray that it wasn’t about us.
“Ivy, you might want to go back outside for a bit,” Joshua said, coming up to stand beside her.
Eisley shook his head, his deep scowl turned toward the King children. “I think she should see this,” he declared, and then rose his voice so that the rest of the gathered congregation could hear his words. “A servant of the Lemniscate has been found attempting to contact a profile hacker.”
A gasp of surprise and disgust washed through those assembled. The woman to my left was holding her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide with horror. I thought her name might have been Ashley Fischer, though all the Fischers looked too much alike in my opinion. Long necks, short blonde bobs, too much makeup and jewelry for any one woman to wear. Debra, Ashley, and Karen were all high-profile, working in some department or other, but I’d taken to thinking of them as
one person. It had seemed easier that way, back when everything was easier.
“He was requesting illegal services,” Eisley continued once the commotion had died down. “He dared to sneak into the FTC security center, to misuse the very technology that has allowed him to live in safety and luxury all these years. He brought the forcefields down today and risked all of your lives in the process.”
“No,” Ivonne whispered, her eyes searching the crowd.
I knew that who she was looking for wouldn’t be there. Instead, a broad-shouldered man with a bag over his head was dragged out from behind the two black-clad profilers. He stumbled and fell to his knees. Whatever power might have allowed him to keep his dignity and his fighting spirit was gone now. He remained on his knees before those he had dedicated his entire life to serving.
“Upon further review of his communications, we have found some disturbing things. Appeals for sanct-born to rebel against us, state secrets being shared with other countries. He even dared ask about a way to remove his chip entirely!”
“That’s not possible,” Cooper murmured.
He wasn’t the only one who was whispering. The gathered Lemniscate sounded distressed, tittering and gasping at each other, until Eisley raised his hand for silence. Everyone’s attention returned to the man at his feet.
Eisley motioned to the two profilers, and they removed the hood.
Ivonne did not gasp out in dismay when she saw the man’s face. The sadness in her was already bone-deep and expectant. She’d known who it would be.
Rhys stared up at her, mouth open as though to protest. He was not given a chance to defend himself. The sound of three bullet shells hitting the marble flooring was indiscernible beneath the combination of gunshots echoing in the foyer and Ivonne’s cry of despair.
Whatever words had been on the servant’s tongue were forever silenced.
He fell forward, hands tied behind his back. Ivonne was at his side before her brother could pull her away. Eisley ignored her in favor of addressing the crowd again.
