Anarchy Found (SuperAlpha #1)

by J. A. Huss

  I breathe again. Then again. And things start to become clear. So I stand up and wait for another wave of dizziness.

  But it passes.

  And I’m late again.

  So I do the only thing I know how to do.

  I push it away and go on.

  The Blue Castle is way south of my neighborhood, but luckily the traffic is heading the opposite direction and I’ll take any luck I can get at this point, so I sip my coffee and try to prepare for the inquisition at the front gate.

  It never comes.

  Oh, Mr. Who-the-fuck-are-you is still manning the guardhouse. But he’s out of the building and waving me through the opening gate before I even get close enough to think about rolling down my window.

  When I get to the visitors’ parking lot I pull into the same spot I did yesterday. But the plaque at the head of the spot bears my name.

  Detective Molly Masters.

  What the? Life in Cathedral City isn’t as simple as I first thought it might be. First case is a murder made to look like a suicide and I’ve already slipped into some old drinking habits that I thought were long behind me. Now Atticus Montgomery is passive-aggressively insinuating he’s got me on his payroll?

  I am gonna go in there and…

  Be sweet as hell and not mention the parking plaque.

  Do everything Montgomery asks and answer his questions like a professional.

  And then get the fuck out so I can go interview the other suicide’s wife.

  Sounds like a plan.

  I get out of the car and walk to the lobby. This time a doorman is waiting and Val is chatting with the ladies manning the phones. She smiles when she sees me.

  “Oh, hi, Detective Masters!” She beams, breaking it off with her co-workers and walking over to me in her stiletto heels. This time her suit is a light pink and her shoes are taupe. She’s one of those summer people, I guess. And she does look pretty in the pastels. “Mr. Montgomery is waiting for you upstairs.” She links her arm in mine as we walk towards the elevator. I bet we are a sight. She is polished perfection and I’m back to my regular plainclothes. A white blouse, a trenchcoat, and tan wide-legged slacks that end at my favorite two-toned oxfords. It’s sort of the detective uniform, right?

  She towers over me because—you’re like a little midget—

  What? Where the hell did that come from?

  Not now, Molly. Not now. Just ignore the weird shit. You are not crazy like your mother. You’re not hearing things, or making things up, or losing time. It was a binge, the first one in a long time, and it does not mean you’re having a relapse. You are not crazy, you are not hearing things—

  “Detective?” Val stares at me. “Are you OK?”

  I let out a laugh and then shake my head. “Sorry, I was wondering if I left my garage door open at home.”

  “Oh, I’ll have someone go check on that for you so you can stop worrying.” I start to protest, but the elevator doors open and she waves me in. “All set! See you later.”

  And before I can come up with a reason why she should not go snooping at my house, the doors begin to close.

  I lean back against the far wall and watch the numbers light up above the door as I ascend. Please, dear God of circus people everywhere, let Mr. Montgomery be quick today.

  The doors open and there he is in all his six-foot-something, blue-eyed, blond-haired splendor. “Good morning, Detective. Did you sleep well?”

  This is probably a trick question. I’ll say yeah and he’ll snap off some snide remark about his dead employees like it’s my fault. So I say, “No, not really.”

  He shoots me what might be a genuine sympathetic look. “Oh, I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can do to help with that—massage, relaxation music, a soothing book—please let me know. We have a wellness center on campus and I can arrange for you to go see one of the homeopathic consultants.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’m sure it will be better tonight when we get a handle on this case and figure out what happened.”

  “You don’t think it was a suicide?”

  Jesus Christ, Masters! Keep your fucking mouth shut!

  “Just protocol,” I say with a smile. “We have to look at all angles.” He looks at me for a moment and then nods and turns away. I follow him down the hallway and into his office.

  “I don’t have much time, so this briefing will have to be quick.”

  “Perfect,” I say, taking a slurp of my now-cold coffee. I make a face and force myself to swallow.

  “Oh,” he says, noticing my grimace. “But let’s have breakfast. You haven’t eaten yet?”

  “No,” I say. “I don’t eat in the mornings. It makes me sick.”

  “Mmm,” he mutters. He wraps my hands around his forearm like he’s my chaperone. “Humor me for a little while, will you?”

  Great. I’ll probably end up here all morning. But I go along because I have no other choice. This is the real world and after a lifetime in the circus and years in the military, I’m once again a part of it.

  We don’t walk back to the elevator the way we came, instead he pushes a button on his watch, and a panel slides up on the far wall revealing an elevator. “Private,” he says, like he knows the questions popping into my mind.

  “You like things private, don’t you, Mr. Montgomery.”

  “That I do,” he says, waving me towards the opening doors.

  I enter, he follows, and we ride it up one floor. And when the doors open we find ourselves in a small dining room that has soft music playing and one table with one man sitting at it. The view is amazing—not that Atticus Montgomery’s office view wasn’t, but this view is through windows two stories tall that slant up into the pitched glass roof of the crystal spire.

  “It’s amazing at night,” Montgomery says. I look over at him and his smile disarms me for a moment. “I’ll have to have you up for drinks some time so you can see it. This spire is the executive dining room. But there’s another one my father calls his office over there.”

  I look out the window to my right, spy the other spire he’s referring to, and raise my eyebrows, unsure what to make of this man. Surely he’s not flirting with me. Dear circus god, please, please, please do not let this man make a move on me today. I just don’t have the energy for it.

  He places a hand on the small of my back, forcing me to move forward into the room to avoid his touch. But before I can get over that little maneuver, he’s wrapping my hand around his arm again, leading me towards a table. We stop in front of the older gentleman eating eggs Benedict and reading the stock report on a tablet.

  “Detective Masters, my father, Alastair Montgomery.”

  Alastair Montgomery does not look up or greet me with anything more than an uninterested grunt. Atticus pulls out a chair and I force myself to take a seat. Be sweet, Molly. You’ll get out of here much faster by playing along. “Thank you, Mr. Montgomery.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” he says, taking his own seat next to me. “But my father is Mr. Montgomery and I am just Atticus.”

  Before I can reply, Montgomery senior barks, “Did you find out what that mess down on twenty-one was all about?” Still, he does not look up. Like I am not even worthy of his gaze.

  “No, sir,” I say as politely as I can. “I’m afraid this case will require a little more effort than one afternoon of questioning.”

  “Then why are you here?” He looks up. And his anger is as ugly as his indifference. It lingers on me and then focuses on his son.

  Atticus might be a powerful snob just like his father, but his demeanor is one of patience. To my horror, I find myself leaning in his direction, seeking some sign that he’s not going to throw me to his wolf of a father.

  “Don’t mind the old man, Detective,” Atticus says, breaking the silence left by my speechlessness. “He has no use for manners these days.”

  “I don’t need manners,” Montgomery senior barks at his son. “Two dead bodies were found in my buildin
g, Atticus. So it’s only natural that I expect answers. What I don’t expect is to be breakfasting with the CCPD’s rookie detective in my private dining room.”

  “OK,” I say, pushing back from the table and looking at Atticus. “I’m going back to work. Your father is right. Thank you for the offer, but I—”

  “I’ll join you. I’ve already eaten.”

  “But—”

  He cuts me off with a look. Something in his eyes that says, Quiet. He mutters a half-hearted goodbye and leads me back to the elevator.

  When the doors close, sealing us off, I shake my head. “Well, that was awkward.”

  “Awkward doesn’t even come close, Detective Masters. But now you know.” He stares down at me with an intensity that makes my heart skip a beat.

  “Now I know what?”

  “What you’re up against.” A small smile forms as the elevator car descends. Floors fly by. “How high the stakes are,” he continues. “And maybe a minute of rude conversation isn’t enough for most people to make a decision about a person, but I think it was enough for you. Detective Molly Masters is not most people, is she?” He cocks his head at me and drops the pretense of a smile just as the elevator stops and the doors open to the lobby. “I’ll get in touch with you about the date.”

  “Date?” I ask, stepping out of the elevator and turning back to look at him.

  “The stars, Masters.” He points upward. “You can’t say no to that. Every woman deserves to see the stars from the top of a castle.”

  And then the doors close and he disappears from view.

  Chapter Eleven - Lincoln

  “Goddammit.”

  “How can I assist, Mr. Wade?” Sheila is hovering over me, a worried expression on her semi-transparent face. “What do you need? I hate seeing you so upset.”

  “I’m not upset, and I don’t appreciate that whole Mr. Wade routine,” I say. “You’re pissed off about my decisions, but it’s not up to you, Sheila. And I know what I’m doing. So no more passive-aggressive bullshit, OK? I’m busy.”

  She’s silent after that and I’m left feeling like a class-A prick. I’m frustrated. Sexually frustrated. That detective has been on my mind non-stop since last night. But taking it out on Sheila is the wrong way to handle it. “Sorry,” I say. “You can’t help, Sheils, you know that.”

  I wish she could. At least with the engineering stuff and the lab work. I have a few robots in the labs, but they have no intelligence. They just do what you tell them to do. Sheila has intelligence but she has no physical body.

  For a genius, I sure didn’t think that one through. But I never figured on being in this position, did I? It’s been a dream for fifteen years. Something Case and I talked about, but never thought we’d see. And then Thomas appears—not physically at first, just in email—and he offers us everything we need to do what we always said we would.

  I don’t care what Sheila thinks about it, I’m on board. And maybe Thomas is a dick and I don’t like him, but I don’t have to like him to take what he’s offering.

  “It’s to the left,” Sheila says as I blindly search for the wrench I’m looking for on the ground. I find it with my gloved fingers. My hands are sweating like crazy.

  It’s the stress. It’s the job. It’s the girl.

  I really do need to make Sheila some kind of solid body when I get the time. Something with hands so she can expand her duties. Right now she’s perfection when it comes to computers and weapons. She runs all the automated systems in the cave. And I have several small robots used for cleaning that she’s wired into, so they are busy all hours of the day and night. She runs the bikes, and the car, and the helicopter.

  But she cannot hand me tools. And the biology bot I call Hammer, despite his name, can’t do shit in that department either. He’s the largest robot I own at the moment. But he’s contained inside the inner labs. Stationary and mounted to a bench. He’s really just an arm with half a brain.

  I sigh to stop myself from cursing too much as I try to fix the bike that Case fucked up last weekend. I had to take the whole engine apart and rebuild, and that’s just the mechanical damage. The body work is something else altogether. If Hammer was mobile… if Sheila was solid…

  But wishing aside, there’s no one here but me and these bits of computer code. So I go it alone. As usual.

  “Why not just build a new one?” Sheila asks, still hovering over me like a mother. “The prototype is ready for engineering.”

  “I don’t have time,” I growl through a wrench between my teeth.

  “You need an automatic engineering system.”

  “No shit.”

  “That way we can work harder for you.”

  Fucking Sheila. I stop what I’m doing and look up at her. She smiles. And goddamned if she isn’t the perfect replica of a human woman in her holographic form. I’d never be able to assemble something like that. It pains me to think of reducing her to a tin can of nuts and bolts like Hammer. “You work plenty hard, Sheils. I’d be sued for violation of labor laws if you were human.”

  “I’m not human. And I enjoy working. I can’t work enough. What is rest to me but time spent being idle?” She cocks her head at me.

  “Well, one day. When things quiet down, I’ll have time to build more. But right now I just need to make do with what I have.”

  “We have all the parts, Lincoln. I inventoried everything in stock at the moment, and your new prototype could be assembled in seven days if you gave me control of your engineering lab.”

  “Control how?” I growl, still trying to concentrate on the task at hand.

  “If you gave me owner access to the entire lab, I’d recode the cleaning bots to build parts. Then I’d recode the AI program in this bike and transfer it to that bike.” She stands and points to the holographic image of my dream. The perfect motorcycle. Sleek, aerodynamic, powerful, and well-equipped.

  Weaponized, is the word I’m looking for. This bike, the one I’m working on, has no built-in weapons. But if Sheila could…

  “I can do it,” she says, like she’s reading my mind. “Just give me access and I will get to work. Then you can stop spending so much time in here and get out a little more. Mr. Reider sent me a reminder earlier that you’re expected at a party tonight in the city.”

  “He’s out of his mind,” I snap. “I’m not going to a party being held by Thomas. I’m not his fucking dog. I’m not at his beck and call. I’m not—”

  “Detective Masters is going. I found her name on the guest list.”

  “What?” I stop messing with the bike again and look at her. “Why would I care about that?”

  “Because,” Sheila says in that superior I’m-a-genius-AI voice, “you’ve watched the footage of her in the cave at least seven different times since last Saturday. And I don’t have access to the house upstairs, but I’m not an idiot, Lincoln. You’re obsessed with her.”

  “Fuck.” I laugh. “No. It’s a sign of paranoia. I was trying to gauge how much she saw just in case her memory comes back.”

  “Hmph,” Sheila says. “That’s a lie. I can detect an increase in your heart rate and a sheen of sweat forming on your brow. You like Detective Masters.”

  “No—”

  “In fact, it’s my duty to see to your well-being. So I think we should call her up and ask her out on a date.”

  Beeps sound off on her speaker system. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Calling Detective Masters.”

  “Sheila, this isn’t funny. She’s a fucking cop, for Christ’s sake. Hang up.”

  “Only if you go to the party.”

  “You can’t disobey me.”

  “Health override. You’re stressed, which affects your moods. Moods are part of my wellness recognition protocols. And I have decided you need a date.”

  “Sheila, I will turn you off.”

  “Oh, look, it’s ringing.”

  “OK, fine! Just hang up!”

  “Promise me wi
th a pinky swear.”

  “I don’t pinky—”

  “Hello?” I stop mid-sentence at the sound of Molly Masters’ voice. “Hello?” she asks again.

  I look up at Sheila and mouth, I swear, as I wiggle my pinky finger at her.

  “Good evening,” Sheila says in her fake automated computer tone. “You are the lucky winner of a free trip to—”

  Beep, beep, beep.

  “Oh, darn, she hung up.”

  “You’re a bitch,” I say. But I say it through a laugh.

  “I am,” Sheila says with a smile on her transparent face. “Every good woman has a little bitch inside her. I’ll have the cleaning bots press your tux before I morph them into my engineering minions. Now please accept my request to run your life so I can make sure you get laid sometime in the next century. People can go months, but you’re straddling that line between frustrated and desperate.”

  Fucking Sheila. She’s been around Case too much.

  But I get out from under the bike and walk over to the main computer terminal so I can accept the request. Because women, right? Every man wants one. Even me. And maybe Sheila’s not real and she’s more like a mother than I’d like to admit, but she’s all I’ve got.

  Chapter Twelve - Molly

  I hang up the phone and look at it for a moment. The voice sounded familiar. It was a computer, Molly, the rational person inside me says. But it did… feel… familiar.

  My phone rings again and I snatch it up and tab the answer button. “Hello?”

  “Ah, Miss Masters.”

  Fuck. Atticus Montgomery. I spent all week avoiding the Blue Castle, but I should have known better than to think I’d slipped under his radar.

  “Mr. Montgomery. How nice to hear from you again. I’m sorry, but I have no news about the case just yet. I’m—”

  “It’s a personal call.”

  Shit. “Oh. Well, how can I help you?”

  “Our date, remember? To see the stars.”

  “Mr. Montgomery—”

  “Atticus.”

  Whatever. I roll my eyes. “Atticus, I’m afraid I have plans tonight.”