by JC Hay
“We’re getting out of here, exactly as I planned to do.” She elbow-crawled toward the nearest window and crouched below it, then pulled something off her belt and cocked it. She reached into another pouch and slapped something against the window. Immediately, gunfire erupted from outside, punching holes through the glass. One bullet hit the thing she’d stuck to the window and it exploded, sending the pane showering out into the desert air. The cold air whistled through the open window frame, chilling him further.
“Ready?”
He indicated the towel. “Obviously not.”
“No time for modesty, pleasure doll. It’s now, or I leave you here.”
Na’im bristled at the slur but complied. He moved to her side as quickly as possible. “What’s the plan?”
She fit a pair of goggles over her face, and he realized her eyes were amber-gray before she covered them. An interesting choice, when people could pick the color as easily as selecting socks. Despite everything, he couldn’t help but be intrigued by them.
The woman smiled. “It’s a simple plan, but those often work best. I hope you’re not afraid of heights.” Without further comment, she grabbed him, stood, and fell from the window while gunfire rang out around them.
Chapter Two
T
he boytoy’s arms threatened to crush the wind out of her, and his screams mingled with the rush of air as they fell. Elise twisted in the air, bringing herself above him, and watched the altitude scroll past in her vision while she chided herself. Of course Zaahir had a LifeGuard contract. It had become standard practice for those who could afford it. High-priced private medical services like LifeGuard were more than willing to burn through whoever stood between them and the body of their client. Not that it would help Zaahir much. Medical science could fix a lot of things, but last she’d checked dead was still dead.
Burj Khalifa swelled out into the full three-lobed structure of its lower levels. She checked the altitude again, fired the zip line at the roof edge and screamed, “Hang on!”
Na’im’s arms tightened in response.
Do not think about his torso pressed up against you. Just don’t. He’s a file box, nothing more.
A very pretty file box, to be sure, and his physical perfection made him hard to ignore. Lovers were a risk most in her line of work didn’t take. That had been Ty’s final lesson to her—the corporations weren’t above using the people you cared about as leverage, so long as it improved the final line on the balance sheets. Since then, she wrote off the emotional need as acceptable losses and relied on one-night stands to satisfy her physical needs. Not that she’d even had one of those in a while, as her traitorous body kept trying to remind her.
But not with this guy. The last thing I need is a vapid pleasure model cramping my space.
She clipped the winch to her harness and braced herself for impact as the line caught. It pulled taut with their combined weight and threatened to yank her hips off her spine. They arced through space for a moment and then slammed shoulder-first into the side of the building. She felt Na’im slip, and seized hold of his wrists. “Hold tight, file box!”
Because the last thing I need is my paycheck splattered all over the sidewalk.
That was one of the problems with protein matrices. They had ridiculous storage capabilities, but had to be maintained inside a relatively delicate environment—namely living beings. With enough time she could set up lab conditions to replicate the environment, but not fast enough to save the files if he got himself killed.
Plus I’d feel guilty, though God knows why. Waste of some quality eye-candy, mostly.
She slapped the winch and braced herself against the mirrored glass. In their reflection, she could see her prize had lost his towel sometime during the fall. The revelation did not make his presence against her easier to ignore.
The winch dragged them up onto the observation deck, and she pried the boytoy’s hands from around her shoulders. He lay on the floor, his chest heaving with adrenaline from the rush of the fall. Elise unhooked the zip line and set the winch to fast wind while she dragged him to his feet. “Come on! It won’t take them long to figure out what happened. After they’ve grabbed the body, they’re going to tell the cops two perps took the long drop, and we’ve got another hundred and twenty-four floors to go before we’re out of here.”
He glared at her. “You’re crazy! Why didn’t you tell me we were just going to fall?”
“I said it was a simple plan.”
“You meant a simpleton’s plan.” He held up the pistol he’d pulled from her holster. “But now we have a new plan. You wait here. As you said, the police will be along shortly.” He looked nervous but resolute, holding the pistol steady.
Elise chuckled. Typical pleasure model, all looks but short on the brains. She turned and headed for the observation deck doors. “Tell me how that works out for you. I’m sure they’ll want to hear all about your services for Ms. Zaahir.”
Behind her the gun clicked once, twice, a third time. She sighed. Well, you can’t say I didn’t give him a chance.
She spun and charged. The gun clicked a fourth time, before she knocked his arm out and pronated his wrist into a joint lock. She pulled him off balance, and drove three fingers into the nerve bundle in his armpit. The pistol clattered to the tile as he yowled.
“Do you really think I wouldn’t have my gun coded to my system? After it cost me so damn much to get a tactical mod installed?” Elise drove a fist into his ribs for punctuation. “Listen hard, pleasure doll, while I explain how this works. I can leave you here, and you can spend time talking your way out of a long-ass prison term—or more likely a short one ending in your execution for murder—or you can come with me and stop thinking you’re more clever than you are. Which do you choose?”
Na’im clutched his side and flexed his fingers. “I’ll come along. Can we at least grab some clothes? I’m feeling a little vulnerable.”
Elise studied him and put a hand on his shoulder. “I kinda like you like this.”
“Which? Naked or in pain?”
She felt a twinge of guilt, and immediately smothered it. He had pulled a gun on her. Had even pulled the trigger. If she hadn’t had the pistol set to fire only when her body completed the circuit, she’d be bleeding all over the tower right now. She refused to feel bad about bruising a couple of his ribs in response.
Except he’s clearly having a bad day. Can you blame him for lashing out? Her teeth ground together. “Dammit. Okay, I’m sorry about the ribs. I got carried away. Probably the adrenaline spike. Yes, we can get you some clothes. Okay?”
“Okay.”
She turned toward the observation deck doors. “Though I think you look fine naked.”
Just inside the doors to the observation deck stood a souvenir kiosk. She grabbed a t-shirt and pair of swim trunks and waved them in front of the RFID scanner. When the system flashed a price, she yanked a credit chip out of her belt and tossed it on the scanner. The chip was cased in a layer of vat grown skin and muscle, to guarantee it registered like a normal, palm-mounted ID, and was as illegal as it was untraceable. Zurich had always cared more about the money in its vaults than the legality of who accessed it. The scanner beeped and she tossed the clothes to Na’im. “That’ll have to do for the short-term. I’ll get you something more substantial later.”
He nodded and slipped the trunks on over his legs. If anything, it made him more attractive, accentuating the cut of his legs and muscular calves. She always had preferred boxers to briefs, and the trunks played into her fantasy perfectly. No, Elise. Not for you, remember? She focused on the obscene amount of money CorpServ had offered her for the information locked in his head. Stop daydreaming now.
He pulled on the shirt and turned. “So, what do you think?”
Delicious. She resisted the urge to say it aloud. “I think if we don’t stop playing dress-up they’re going to catch us and start shooting. Now, come on. We have to go.”
I should run.
Na’im followed the woman at a trot. Burj Khalifa never sleeps. I could find a crowd and run for the police. And tell them... He sighed. He’d tell them nothing. Whatever else she’d said, she was right on one thing—the authorities would lock him away without so much as a thought. Without Jalila around, he became another unprotected member of the populace. His rights were what he could afford, which, once Jalila’s money dried up, would be less than nothing.
Besides, prison was almost assured. The Burj had its own police detachment, and they would have been alerted when LifeGuard came for Jalila’s body. It had only been luck on their part that the observation deck had been closed for yet another upgrade to the augmented-reality telescopes. Unless...
No. There was no way this much chaos and insanity could amount to a plan. Soon enough, they would encounter any of the thousands of residents in the tower and the jig would be up. Almost on cue, they rounded a corner into one of the tower’s open marketplaces. People thronged the area talking, laughing and shopping.
And completely oblivious to a man in casual wear and a woman in a form-fitting suit.
She slowed to a walk and shook a thin coat out of a pouch on her belt, pulled it onto her shoulders with a graceful twirl and suddenly she looked like just another fashionable consumer. The belt was a bit clunky, but the hem of the coat was plenty long enough to cover up the butt of her pistol.
Okay. Maybe she does have a plan. He sped up enough to walk next to her while they navigated the crowd. “So, are you going to tell me your name? Or do I just scream ‘hey’ if we get separated?”
“Or you could keep up.” She waited a second, then added, “Elise.”
Na’im blinked. A barely perceptible widening of her gray eyes told him the admission had surprised her as much as him. An actual name, not a code name or obvious nom de guerre. He felt flattered by the honesty, no matter how accidental. The silence between them stretched on longer, as if she dared him to say something about her mistake. He settled for “Thank you.”
“I’ll still be happier if you keep up. That works better than you shouting out anything. We’re on the run, remember?” As if to hammer home the point, she nodded toward a pair of security guards standing in front of a tea kiosk. One watched the crowd while the other sipped from a thermal cup.
“Can do, Elise.” The name felt odd to use. An elegant, feminine name, it felt inadequate for describing the no-nonsense woman he’d seen take charge of the situation.
A situation she created, and controls, he reminded himself. A situation that started with the murder of your employer. A sudden stab of pain and guilt wrenched through him at the thought of Jalila, dead in her suite of rooms. He knew the feelings weren’t all real. Her surgeons had implanted his love and loyalty as easily as they had put in the memory cortex. But there had been real emotion as well, he was certain.
She had pulled him up from the bottom of the spire, and installed him as the bishop to her all-powerful queen. Her death threw everything into chaos. In that, Elise’s declared innocence made sense. Elise’s job became twice as difficult with a murder investigation surrounding it.
Still. Someone had killed Jalila. And that someone was at large. They could even be watching them now. A cold tingle tightened the skin between his shoulders.
He glanced over his shoulder at the two guards. The one without the cup had a hand to his jaw, mouthing in the universal sign of someone using a bone-induction communicator. The guard nodded and elbowed his partner, before stepping out into the crowd, scanning faces.
Na’im risked a glance at Elise, but she hadn’t noticed the guard. She continued to move forward through the crowd, heading for a way out. He tugged her around a corner, hopefully out of sight of the patrol. She opened her mouth to protest and he covered it with his.
She froze, one hand still balled into a fist on his shoulder, then relaxed and melted up against him. She stood shorter than Jalila, and he had to bend slightly to keep their lips matched. Not that she seemed to mind. Her hand traced his shoulder and his skin came alive, accompanied by a familiar tightness in his core.
He cupped one cheek of her ass, squeezing as he lifted her to him. She moaned in response, exploring with her tongue and claiming his mouth in turn. His whole body thrummed, his heightened nerves on fire with the need to give and receive pleasure.
Despite his body’s response, or perhaps because of it, he broke the kiss. Her gray gaze went soft as she leaned against him, lips tantalizingly parted. His mods kicked in, pointing out the increased swell of her lips, the capillary flush to her cheeks, the slight dilation of her pupils. Her level of arousal was easy to read, even if she denied it to herself. She’d enjoyed the kiss as much as he had. Desire sent the blood rushing to his groin. He checked for the guards to distract him from his body’s response. They’d moved, scanning the crowd actively, but they had started off in the opposite direction. He took a deep breath to recover his center. “Sorry. The guards were looking for someone. I figured we needed to hide, so I improvised.”
She blinked and her eyes went from clouds to iron. “Good thinking, if a bit personal. They could just as easily come after us for morality violations.” Unlikely, but possible. Public displays of affection were frowned upon in the ostensibly conservative Emirates, but the influx of Western tourists and business interests left the exact enforcement levels a muddy blur. Buildings like the Burj were even less controlled. Those who could afford to be in the spire could afford to do whatever they wanted.
“I’ll try not to do it again.”
She smiled. “In public at least. Come on. The express elevator’s not far. If we can get to the garage, we can get out of here.”
She didn’t release his hand as she turned into the crowd.
Chapter Three
T
he car waited exactly where CorpServ had promised. Sleek and low-slung, it looked perfectly at home among the other vehicles the glitterati had parked around it. Elise allowed herself a deep breath in relief. At least something was going according to plan. She risked a glance over at Na’im, and tried not to think about his kiss, despite the fact that her pulse continued to race in response.
Of course it was an amazing kiss. He’s a pleasure doll. Good kissing is part of the programming. She placed her hands on the steering wheel’s sensors and waited while the car accessed the fob on her belt and started.
Na’im buckled up. “So, what’s the plan after we get away?”
She shot him a dirty look. “First, we don’t jeopardize success by talking as though we’ve already finished. There’s a lot that can go wrong between here and the street.” She fastened her safety belt and eased the car toward the exit.
“And second?”
“Second, we go to a safe place and lay low for a few hours, then we go out for breakfast.”
He relaxed into the seat. “At which point you’ll hand me off and be rid of me.”
Elise looked at him. “You figured it out, hm?”
“You weren’t exactly subtle, calling me file box. I assume you were hired to retrieve whatever’s up here?” He tapped his temple with two fingers.
“They didn’t tell me the data would be on human storage, for what it’s worth.”
He shrugged. “How much am I worth to them? For that matter, who’s them? Manscheim-Arbeitegruppe-Zurich? BlueGene?”
“I don’t dig too deep.” She thought of Ty, broken and bloody in the street, then pushed the image away. “In my line of work, that trait extends your lifespan immensely.” Don’t ask questions. Don’t trust. Her mantra repeated itself as she angled the car up the exit ramp and onto the street. “They identify the object. I retrieve it. They pay me. Handsomely.”
“But you study your target, obviously. This went far too smoothly for me to believe you go in without a plan. You must have researched the spire for a week, just to choose your paths in and out. I can’t believe you don’t have a strong suspicion who hired you for the job.”
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Elise felt her cheeks warm at the compliment. The hardest part of the job was making it look spontaneous, and she took pride in her ability to be ready for anything. It was nice to have her talent recognized, especially by a relative stranger. It didn’t hurt that he was damned attractive. And kissed like a god.
Her jaw tightened until the muscle in her temple ached. No. He’s cargo. She checked the chronometer in the corner of her vision. In six hours how he kisses won’t mean anything. I’ll have my money and he’ll be somebody else’s problem. Let them worry about the data in his skull. She felt a twinge of regret at the thought and grimaced at the inconvenient emotion.
She took the car outside the controlled zone of Downtown Dubai. She slowed for the security checkpoint, but they waved the car through without question. Score two for CorpServ. Outside the sector, the difference was immediate—signs were in Nagari, Chinese, Arabic and English. Most used more than one. The streets were dirty, and, with the skyscrapers downtown blocking out the majority of the sun, dark. She tapped a control on the dashboard to adjust the window tinting and cut left into a maze of streets.
“You’re taking me to the foreign quarter?” Na’im sounded nervous. No. Not nervous, anxious. She would be too, in his shoes. The real people of Dubai had little patience for the twelve-percenters. Most of the city was foreign, lured in by the promise of easy jobs and decent wages. For all the stories, the money stayed with the native born, walled up in the secured zone and out of reach from the rest of the city.
She turned again, taking a circuitous route, just in case. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe, boytoy.” Elise gave him her most predatory smile.
He didn’t flinch away. “Actually, I used to live here. Well, the eastern side, but it’s all the same really.”
Interesting. She fought the urge to ask him for more. I am not getting to know him. He’s someone else’s problem. Don’t ask questions. She turned into an alley and parked in a cluttered cul-de-sac. “We’re walking from here.”