by Megan Hart
In minutes, several burly members of the household security staff had arrived to carry a now groaning Vanslyke down to his car, Aura at his side. Seri had gone with them, leaving Dima snoring on the couch. Ewan had said he could stay and find his own way home in the morning.
“I’ve lost track of the times he’s ended up on my couch,” Ewan told her as they left the media room and went upstairs to get ready for bed. “But I’ve known him for a long time, and despite his tendency to get too drunk at dinner parties, he’s not a bad guy.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
He shot her a grin. “None of them impressed you, did they?”
“It’s not my place to be impressed or not. But, no. They didn’t. Those people are your friends?”
“I wouldn’t call them that. They’re donors. Supporters of the cause.” Ewan actually looked caught at his own words, his mouth thinning as though he wished he could take back what he’d said.
Nina studied him. There wasn’t much point in berating the subject. Ewan was going to keep lobbying against the improvement of the enhancement tech, and she was going to keep protecting him from anyone who decided they wanted to hurt him.
“You know, if a bro is coming at you with a slasher, it’s shiny fine to get yourself out of the way,” she said.
“I trusted you,” was Ewan’s reply. “I knew you’d make sure nothing bad happened to me.”
CHAPTER TEN
“It wasn’t actually the worst dinner party I ever had.” Ewan, settled in his big, comfortable bed, heard the squeak of Nina shifting on the folding cot.
He lay on his back, hands folded on his chest, staring into the darkness. His knee ached and he could feel a few tingling bruises beginning on top of the ones that had just started to fade from the day in the garden. He wasn’t going to be a baby about it and complain out loud.
“I’m not surprised, actually. You run with sphincters, you’re bound to get spattered now and then with shit.”
He laughed at her wry tone. “So eloquent.”
“It’s something my dad used to say when I complained about anything I’d chosen to do. He said it about my going into the service, once or twice.” Nina paused, looking contemplative. “I’m glad I remember it.”
“Did it stop you from complaining?”
“No. He died,” Nina said, but so matter-of-factly that it didn’t make Ewan feel bad. “And then I stopped complaining.”
“I’m sorry. It’s hard to lose your parents.”
“Thanks,” Nina said after a hesitation. “Yes. It was.”
He knew he should apologize to her about Vanslyke. About the dinner in general. He’d pretended it was about the money, but the truth was that even if Vanslyke or any of the others never again donated a single credit to his efforts, Ewan was going to be fine. His money had started making money long ago. The donors were a way to keep his lobbying in the public eye. It had never really been about the credits.
The truth was that he’d wanted to put some distance between him and Nina. He wanted to remind himself exactly why he was so determined to do everything he could to restrict any new developments in the enhancement tech, but all he’d managed to do was remind himself that Petro Vanslyke was nobody Ewan wanted to associate with. Out of the whole group, Dima was the only one Ewan really even liked, and their friendship had always been more of a quarterly acquaintanceship than anything real. Once again, Ewan was reminded of how he’d kept himself from forming any kind of real friendships. Of how natural it had felt to fall into that sort of casual ease with Nina, something beyond a sexual attraction. Something deeper.
He’d asked her if his dinner guests had impressed her and hadn’t been shocked when she said no. She, however, had amazed him. Again. Everything about her since the moment he’d met her had exceeded his expectations, especially those he’d set unnaturally high.
“Does your knee hurt?” Nina asked now, bringing him back to where they were.
His bedroom. He in his big bed, alone, she in her small cot across the room. He bent his knee beneath the covers. “It’ll be okay.”
“I’m glad you trusted me.”
He didn’t reply at first, not sure what he could say that wouldn’t sound condescending. “You’ve proven to me more than once already that you’re able to do your job.”
“Do you believe what Aura said? That Vanslyke was just trying to goad me into attacking him?”
“It’s the sort of thing he’d do,” Ewan said. “Why? Do you think he was doing it for another reason?”
Nina huffed a soft sigh. “I don’t know him. But I wonder, that’s all. What he thought he’d gain by fighting me, or even more, what he thought would really happen if he attacked you.”
“He was drunk, and he’s a self-important git. That’s all.” Ewan paused, eyes narrowed even though in the darkness, there was nothing for him to look at. “Do you think it was something else?”
“It was clumsy enough to be drunken bravado. Sure. People do stupid stuff when they’re drunk. He couldn’t know that it’s impossible to rile me up enough to really lose my temper.”
“But you don’t think that’s what it was?” Now she had him thinking about it, uncertain. Wary.
She made another thoughtful sound, and he wished he could see her face. “It’s not my job to trust people.”
Again, this was the place for an apology, but he found himself unable to make it. Instead, he listened for the sound of Nina’s breathing to slow as she fell into sleep, but all he heard was the steady, unchanging in-out, the same as it had been every other night.
“You asleep?” he asked finally, softly enough that if she was sleeping he wouldn’t wake her. He should’ve known better. She was trained to wake at the sound of an eyelash dropping to kiss a cheek.
“No.”
“Do you ever sleep? Really?”
A pause. “Of course I sleep. I’m not a robot.” She huffed a sigh, but sounded amused, not irritated.
“I know that.”
More silence. Another shifting squeak. Ewan tapped his fingers on his chest.
“I’ll never get to sleep if you keep doing that,” Nina said. “It’s super annoying.”
He stopped the tapping. “Tell me about yourself, Nina.”
“Oh, so it’s my turn to tell stories?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want to know?” Nina asked.
Ewan blinked into the darkness. “Whatever you want to tell me.”
“You didn’t do your due diligence on me? Oh, wait. You had someone do it for you, huh?”
“Something like that.” She was right, sort of. Of course she’d been thoroughly vetted before she’d stepped so much as an inch onto his property, but the truth was that he couldn’t recall anything personal about her that he hadn’t learned since she’d arrived. It hadn’t mattered, before.
He wasn’t sure why it had started to matter, now.
Maybe because she’d already done her job several times since coming to work for him, and while none of the attacks would’ve killed him, it had been obvious that if the time ever came for her to handle something more serious, she was absolutely capable. Or maybe it was something else he didn’t want to think about. He tapped his fingers on his chest again and heard her soft chuckle. He smiled, imagining the upturn of her lips. The rise and fall of her shoulders. He turned on his side to stare through the darkness to where she would be, making out her silhouette but not much more. It was better that way; he could let her image fill his mind without any chance of her noticing his stare.
“I grew up in a small town in western Pennsylvania, in Elk County. You heard of it?” she said finally, when he didn’t speak.
“No.”
“You should have,” she said. “One of your research facilities is there. Guess you never bothered to visit.”
He chuffed. “I own thirty-seven research facilities, Nina. You think I ever had time to visit every single one?”
“You i
mpressed me as the sort of man who’d make the effort to see what work was being done in his name. Anyway, that’s where I grew up . . .”
“Saint Marys,” he said, pulling the name of the town from somewhere. “I guess I do know it.”
A beat or so of silence. He heard a smile in her voice. “So, I was born there. Grew up there. Lived there until I finished high school.”
“Then you worked on the dairy farm?”
“You remembered,” she said with a tone of surprise. “Yes. The dairy farm. That was in Lancaster, also in Pennsylvania. Farther east and south. And eventually, after some other gigs, the army.”
“Why the army?”
“Because I wanted to make a difference in the world, and I believed in what we were fighting for, even if we were never officially at war,” she told him. “Because I wanted to help support my family, and the army paid better than anything else.”
“Your family, tell me about them.” She didn’t say anything for so long that Ewan said, “No? You don’t want to talk about them?”
“If you want to know about them, I’m sure you could look it up. But I’d rather not talk about them. No.”
“Fair enough.” He tap, tap, tapped his fingers, then stopped, mindful of what an irritating habit it was. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right. You’re the one who needs to get to sleep. I can run a long time on a lot less than you.”
“How long?” He knew, exactly, but he wanted to hear her say it. He wanted to keep her talking. He didn’t want to think about why, about how the comfort of her voice was going to keep him from sleeping as much as it would send him into dreams. About why he wanted to know everything about her, not from files or background checks, but who she was as a woman.
“It depends on how hard I’ve gone and how hard I still have to go.” Her voice had dipped. Gone low. A little raspy.
Ewan let his eyes close, finally. He drew in a breath, recalling the scent of her shampoo. “What’s the longest you’ve gone?”
“Without sleep?”
“Yeah . . . what did you think I meant?”
She didn’t answer, not right away, though the soft huff of her breath made him think she was suppressing a chuckle. “Before the procedure, two days. You can’t go much longer than that before you start to hallucinate. Lack of sleep can literally kill you. They did studies on it,” she added seriously.
“And after the enhancement?”
“Longer than two days,” she said.
He waited, but it was clear she wasn’t going to offer more information than that. “How many times have you been reset?”
“Wouldn’t you rather ask me if I were a tree, what kind of tree would I be?” A shift, a squeak. It sounded like she’d sat up.
He got the hint. Some topics were off-limits. “Okay, fine. What kind of tree would you be?”
She laughed. “An evergreen of some kind, I guess. What about you?”
“An oak. Grows from a little acorn into something massive and everlasting.”
They both burst into laughter that spiraled up and up.
“You are so full of it!” Nina gasped through her guffaws. “An oak? Donahue, you’re a derp.”
“Oh, c’mon, what about you? An evergreen? What kind of frou-frou bullshit answer is that?” He sat up to swing his legs over the edge of the bed, toes brushing the thick rug.
“It’s an ‘I don’t know what kind of stupid tree I’d be’ answer, that’s what.”
He saw her shadow move until she was sitting up, too. There couldn’t have been more than a few feet between them, but all he could make out was her outline. He’d always kept his bedroom dark to help him sleep. For the first time since childhood, he wished he had a nightlight, so he could see her now. He watched her shadow push the fall of her hair over one shoulder. The cot creaked.
“If I’d known you were going to insist on sleeping in the room with me, I’d have ordered you a better bed,” Ewan said.
“There’s always tomorrow.”
He passed a hand over the plush mattress. “You could come up here. There’s plenty of room.”
“Like I’ve never heard that one before.”
Scratch it all, he loved the banter. “It’s a custom-made super king. Four people can sleep comfortably on it. Five if you’re all really, really good friends. I just thought it might be better than that folding bed someone probably picked up from their grandma’s yard sale. At least until I can have them bring you in a better bed. I should’ve done it right away. I’m . . . sorry.”
“I’ve had worse. Don’t worry about it. Anyway, if there’s something I know about you it’s that this folding cot is the top of the line, best of the best. You don’t settle for less than that.”
“Well, the offer still stands,” Ewan began, feeling exactly like the derp she’d called him a few minutes ago.
That’s when everything in the room exploded.
* * *
Searing white light tried to blind her, but with no more than a microsecond of effort Nina’s pupils squeezed closed against the assault. She braced herself as she sprang from the cot, but there was no impact. No flying debris. The explosion was of light and sound, meant to disorient and stun but not an actual, physical attack.
That would be coming next.
“Don’t move, Ewan,” she ordered. Her weapons could be in her grip in seconds, but for now she kept her hands out, fists open. Ready. “I’m coming to you.”
Another burst of that intense lightning glare and the coordinating thrum of ear-splitting thunder rocked the room. This time in the aftermath she heard the rock of furniture on the floor. A falling chair. Breaking glass.
She’d crossed the room in a few long strides to get to Ewan’s bed and found him already sitting on the edge. He would not be able to see her, but she could make out the shape of him. Another blast of that light, though, and even her enhancements wouldn’t be able to combat the assault on her eyes.
First, assess the situation.
The immediate danger was damage to his eyes and ears from the pulsing blasts of light and noise.
Second, protect the client.
Nina pushed Ewan back onto the bed as she tore the layers of blankets up and over him. He slept with an entire nest of pillows, and she piled them on top of his head to provide some minimal protection from the attack on their senses. He struggled a bit, but only until the next blast came. Then he went still.
Third, eliminate the threat.
This attack was meant to disable, possibly while someone physically entered the room in order to take, hurt, or kill the target. None of Ewan’s windows were covered with metal bars, but the glass she’d heard shattering had come from inside the room, not the entrances. The door was still closed. The decibel bomb had to be inside the room. Attached to the ceiling, she thought as she braced herself for another blast.
It came as she was rolling off the bed to crouch on the floor, face tucked between her knees. She couldn’t see or hear. Whoever was coming for Ewan would be wearing protective equipment that gave them the advantage over her. She needed to get rid of whatever was creating the blasts before she could deal with them.
Her heart wanted to race, but she slowed it. Also her breathing. Eyes closed, head ringing from the noise, Nina pulled up a picture of the room’s layout in her mind. Two windows, floor to ceiling. Two doors, one to the bathroom. One to an anteroom, and through that, to the upper hallway. A third door to a closet without additional access.
The blasts were coming closer together now, designed to completely immobilize anyone in this room. Nina didn’t need to see or hear in order to fight. She pushed her body from a crouch into a roll, getting to her feet as another surge of light and noise rocked the room.
The unit would be small. Made to blend in with the surroundings. Easily placed and easily removed. Remotely operated. It would be in a location nobody would suspect or feel the need to sweep.
Top of the wardrobe, nothing. Atop each of the
curtain rods, nothing. The smoke alarms, which she had to reach by jumping from the top of the desk, also nothing. She checked behind the headboard, Ewan a motionless lump beneath the feeble protection of his blankets and pillows. The entire search took less than a minute or so, although to Nina it felt like a leisurely hour.
She found the unit inside a bundle of packages that had been delivered that morning, tucked between the pages of a thick, old-fashioned booklet of the sort she hadn’t seen in years. It was blasting again as she took it out to crush beneath her bare heel. Pain registered; she slept in her clothes with her gear at hand, but had time to wish she’d been wearing her boots before the bedroom door flung open and someone came inside.
The silence and darkness in the wake of the blasts was equally as effective at disabling its intended victims, meant to leave them too disoriented to respond to an attack. Nina, of course, had recovered faster than a non-enhanced person could possibly be expected to. Whoever it was seemed to anticipate that, because they came at her with full force.
A fist connected with her jaw, sending her back a few steps. By the time the attacker’s second fist came swinging at her, Nina was ducking and punching, adding a kick and a sharp, targeted thrust of her fingertips into what she hoped was a throat. She couldn’t hear the thud of the intruder dropping to the floor, but she felt it. Blinking, her eyes adjusted, aching, but she could see. Before the person on the floor had time to react, she’d bent to twist both his arms behind him. The crack of bone made him shriek. Nina swiftly pulled a piece of cord from the pocket on her harness and knotted it around the attacker’s wrists.
She sat back on her heels, waiting to see if the figure on the floor would struggle. Expecting more attackers. Maybe even another round from the decibel bomb. When nothing happened, she poked at the groaning figure on the floor.
“Are you alone?”
* * *
The chip is so tiny it can’t be seen without a microscope, and there’s no way Ewan could possibly feel it on his fingertip, but he knows it’s there. A hundred thousand credits or more of technology, nearly invisible. He could sneeze and lose it. For a moment, he thinks about doing just that.