In My Skin (The Obsidian Files Book 3)

by Shannon McKenna

  “Brenner’s not going to have a relapse,” she soothed. “He’s doing well. I ran tests. Solid as a rock. It was fun playing with the weapons. Plus, Brenner’s teaching me new skills. His way of paying me back. He’s convinced that I saved his brain. Sweet of him.”

  “He’s right,” Zade observed. “You did. What kind of new skills?”

  Her smile became a teasing grin, and she hid it behind the coffee cup, still peeking at him through her sexy fan of dark eyelashes. “If you’re curious, come with me,” she said demurely. “You’re more than welcome to do so.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’ve been spending a lot of time out there. What’s that about?”

  “Just keeping busy,” she said airily. “Like you. Those endless dives of yours don’t leave us much room for couple time. Might as well study captured Obsidian equipment, right? In fact, I’ve been thinking. It’s a lot of driving for me every day. Maybe I can just crash out there from time to time. Asa has all those guest rooms.”

  True. That giant, secluded multi-level house in the woods was absolutely set up for unexpected guests. Zade launched a blazing-fast micro-dive into the house’s system lists, looking under Guest Rooms, subhead Nightstands. The usual. Wi-fi and hot spot instructions. Pens and paper. Kleenex. So far, nothing ribbed or flavored.

  “He wouldn’t mind,” Simone added.

  He studied her suspiciously. She looked like she was trying not to smile. “Are you fucking with me?” he asked.

  “Oh, no,” she assured him. “I would never, ever do that.”

  “So what the hell is he teaching you?”

  She rolled her eyes and sighed, smiling at him. “Fine. If you must know, I’m learning how to pilot a helicopter. And it’s a blast.”

  Zade just stared at her. “You’re doing what?”

  “I’m getting the hang of it,” she said. “Brenner’s a good teacher. I’m a fast learner. When you have a minute to spare, come out with me. I’ll take you out for a spin.”

  Holy shit. His bride was hanging out with a couple of tough guys, letting them teach her how to fly fucking helicopters. But it wasn’t like he could object. He knew better, when she had that calm, cool, what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it look on her face.

  “Wow,” he said. “Good for you. Could be useful sometime. Anyhow. Back to the subject. This is my life now, babe. This is who I am until I find Luke. I’ll try not to be a prick when I come up for air. But I can’t stop.”

  She set down her coffee with a barely audible sigh. “Did you catch anything on today’s dive?”

  “Maybe. My ASP archives are packed with stuff to analyze. But this one was my favorite. A clue to how he might have survived.” Zade leaned over and snagged the tablet on the bedside table. He wirelessly downloaded the file from the augmented sensory processor in his brain, converted the file and handed her the device. “Read that.”

  She studied it. “The Plagette Falls Post? Where’s Plagette Falls?”

  “Wyoming. Fifteen miles as the crow flies from Braxton’s hellhole. Look at the date.”

  “One week after we got away from Braxton and Holt,” she murmured. “Hmm. Interesting.” She leaned over to set her coffee on the bedside table to read it, with Zade looking over her shoulder. “Local Man Claims Aliens Drive His Jeep On Canyon Road.” She tapped the tablet screen. “Like it’s possessed, or so he says.”

  “Happens to me all the time,” he told her. “Snot-nosed deputy never believes it.”

  “Neither do I,” Simone said. “Where were we?”

  “Waylon Meeks,” Zade said. “The guy in the Jeep. Read it to me.”

  “Right. OK. Plagette Falls resident Waylon Meeks was driving his Jeep Cherokee on Rathbone Creek Canyon Road when his vehicle began to swerve erratically, as if the steering wheel was controlled by someone or something outside the vehicle. The Jeep accelerated and veered toward the edge of the roadside cliff, stopping inches short of going over. Mr. Meeks exited the car, which then drove away on its own—over the cliff?”

  “No.” Zade pointed to the relevant line. “It left him stranded in a late winter snowstorm.”

  Simone continued. “‘I about had a heart attack,” Mr. Meeks told reporters. “That Jeep went nuts on me. I thought it was going to kill me, like in that old horror movie. I practically froze to death before I got a ride.’ Mr. Meeks’s ex-wife Beverly Stratton, of Rathbone, Wyoming, was heard to observe that Mr. Meeks is forty-eight expletive-deleted years old, which is more than old enough to know better, and he ought to lay off the tequila shots before attempting to drive. Her unsubstantiated comment notwithstanding, the Highway Patrol is on the alert for a driverless but possibly aggressive red Jeep Cherokee. If anyone sees such a car misbehaving, consider it armed and dangerous. Stay clear, and notify the authorities. And go easy on the tequila, folks.’”

  Simone looked up at him, her eyes full of startled wonder. “Wow,” she murmured. “You think Luke might have taken over this guy’s car?”

  Zade shrugged. “The timing is right. The distance is right. Assuming Meeks isn’t a total nutcase or a boozehound, it would explain what happened to him. It would also explain how Luke survived barefoot and half-naked in the snow, all shot up. He’s as tough as nails but even he couldn’t keep that up indefinitely. And along came this character.”

  “Holy shit.” She stared at the screen, fascinated, before she gave him back the tablet. “Luke could do that?”

  “Theoretically, all of us could. We’ve got the right hardware and software. It’s just a matter of choreographing a specific technique, you know? Like learning to juggle. There’s all kinds of crazy shit we could do if we put our minds to it, but we don’t. Either because we’re busy with other things, or else we don’t want to attract attention.”

  “Or because it’s illegal.” She shot him a meaningful look. “You know. Stealing and all that.”

  “Yeah, of course. Obviously.”

  “So, you don’t think it was the tequila,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Could have been. Hell, Meeks could have been half-drunk or worse, but that doesn’t mean he was lying. In any case, it’s another lens to look through.”

  Simone looked thoughtful. “Did they find the car?”

  “Eight days later, parked at a big box store in Bozeman. No damage, full tank of gas, keys locked inside. Sounds like something Luke would do. By the way, Meeks put the car up for sale. Won’t drive it to save his life.”

  “I don’t blame him,” Simone said. “I wouldn’t either.”

  He blew out a frustrated sigh. “But I don’t get it. If it was Luke, and he’s free, why let weeks go by without contacting us? It makes no sense. Whatever he’s fighting, he knows we’d help. We’d do anything for him.”

  “I’m sure he has his reasons.”

  “Yeah.” His voice was bleak. “Like, Obsidian caught him and killed him. Or they put him back into a fucking cage.”

  “I doubt it.” Simone’s voice was calm and neutral. “If they had debriefed him with control codes and drugs, we’d all be locked up by now. So there’s that.”

  “Maybe so,” he conceded.

  She laid her hand on his shoulder. “If Luke is as tough as you say—”

  “Tougher,” he broke in.

  “Good.” She gripped his shoulder hard. “Then he’s not dead. He took Waylon’s Jeep and drove it off into the sunset. He can think. His ASP works. His brain’s not damaged.”

  “Yet,” he said. “It’s just crazy that we came so close. We must have missed his escape by, what? Barely a day. A goddamn day.”

  Simone took his empty coffee cup and placed it on the bedside table. Then she scooted up close, and leaned against his back, resting her head on his shoulder. A soft, gentle weight.

  “Be patient,” she said. “You have a new lead. Be glad for it.”

 
“I’ll be glad when I find him,” Zade said flatly. “Not before.”

  She didn’t reply. Her warmth against his back felt good. Caressing. A wisp of her blond, wavy hair had come loose, coiling on his shoulder. He reached up and stroked that soft texture, admiring the glint of gold. Inhaling her scent.

  “I wish I could make you be glad,” she murmured. “At gunpoint, if need be.”

  He let out a short laugh. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “You don’t. Ever.” She leaned forward to rub her cheek against his face. “I love how you care. Even when it hurts you. You never run away. That’s brave.”

  “Or stupid,” he said.

  “Nope,” she said. “Brave.”

  “Whatever.” He grabbed her hand, kissed it.

  She took over from there.

  Chapter 8

  “Right there,” Lewis Hale said. “Stop. Back up. About three seconds.”

  R-48 forced her mind blank. Anxiety would be visible to Hale, the team leader. His elite command mods let him assess her stress reactions just by looking at her. And his word was law.

  She replayed the video as directed. It had been copied from her implanted data processor, recorded from a microscopic camera mounted in her eye. Every second of that fight in LaSalle’s kitchen in Munro Valley had been captured and was being analyzed.

  Her head hurt. Without her genetically altered bones and rapid healing, she would have been killed by that blow from the knife block, but its impact still pounded like a sonofabitch. Metzer had fared somewhat worse, not having as many genetic edits as she did. Command types were never as tough as subordinates like her. The process of inserting hardcore genetic edits was dangerous. The Obsidian fat cats thought twice before risking it, for themselves or for their kids.

  No, all the really hazardous stuff was for slave grunts like herself.

  Metzer was under observation for his concussion. Resting comfortably in bed, zonked by painkilling drugs, while she was getting debriefed and reamed by Hale.

  This was the thirty-eighth viewing of this video, and Hale had finally honed in on the bad part. She’d half-hoped it might slip right past him. The glitch was subtle from the outside, just a stutter in the timing of her fight. Blink and you missed it.

  Hale hadn’t blinked. He might be a pig and an asshole, but he wasn’t an idiot.

  R-48 wiped that thought, out of caution. The chemical residue of hostile, resentful thoughts left a trail that team leaders could sense, and Hale had doubts about her already.

  Fortunately, he wasn’t looking at her, only at the video. Specifically, that moment in the fight where the mystery opponent choked on his kill move.

  Which had been her opportunity to finish him off. She should have done it. Easily.

  But she hadn’t. She’d glitched, and everything had gone to hell.

  Hale kept running it back, playing it again and again. Each time R-48 looked into the mystery guy’s eyes, the tension built to screaming intensity in every part of her body. Her head pounded harder with every second that passed.

  “You froze,” Hale said slowly. “What the fuck happened?”

  She looked straight ahead. It was better in these cases to look blank and stupid. They didn’t like thinkers. But it took energy to keep the activity in her mind shoved down that far. “I don’t know, sir,” she said. “There can sometimes be glitches in programming from different sources that conflict—”

  “Are you fucking kidding me? In a Level Twenty? Eye contact with this combatant had a measurable effect on your fighting skill. I can see it.”

  “May I point out that it was a point four second delay, and the first one I’ve ever experienced,” R-48 said. “A conclusion can’t be drawn from a single isolated incident.”

  “Yeah? Should I wait for an even more colossal fuck-up before I intervene? Two of my Level Twenty operatives are dead. Another is injured and out of commission. Your squad commander’s injured. The targets escaped. The mission failed. Shorting out at a critical combat moment is a serious issue, R-48. I’m the one who has to take the heat. It’s a huge clusterfuck. One that hurts me.”

  “Yes, of course, sir.”

  Hale licked his thin, pale lips as he stared at her. He picked at a lock of her hair coming loose from her braid. Without permission to clean up from combat, she was still uncomfortably disheveled.

  “Do I need to think about reconditioning you, R-48?” he asked softly, stroking the lock of hair with his thumb.

  She tried to stifle a shudder. “That’s not necessary, sir.”

  “Hmm.” His eyes glittered as he let go. “The combatant at LaSalle’s house must be a rogue Obsidian agent. Do a deep dive. Find out who he is.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “I don’t want to compromise your function while I’m shorthanded. It won’t be easy explaining away two dead agents in one night, R-48. There will be a reckoning.” He gestured toward the large data-dive tank that dominated the debrief room. “Strip down.”

  She was startled. “Ah…it might be more effective to wait until I—”

  “Don’t argue. And don’t forget to say ‘sir.’ Get in the fucking tank. I want to know everything about that rogue agent. Cross-reference him with Daniela LaSalle. Find any connections she might have to Manticore. Don’t come up until you have something I can use. And I mean that literally. I do not care if you starve to death in the tank, bitch. Or drown in data. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll call a tech to thread the sensors.”

  “No need,” he said. “I’ll thread them myself.”

  She suppressed her revulsion just in time. Hale was notorious among the female operatives who’d had occasion to serve under him. Literally. He was famous as one of the really bad ones. Some of the top guys got off on compelling the soldiers sexually, knowing they were stimmed up so hard, they couldn’t say no without intense physical and mental discomfort. And there was the threat of reconditioning. Death was better.

  She stripped down to a sports bra and boy shorts.

  “Take off the rest of it,” Hale said. “You don’t need it in the tank.”

  She did so. Blank face, blank mind. Not noticing the thickened sound in his voice, his heavy breathing. Not noticing his flushed face and slack mouth, the hot, buzzy look in his eyes. She wasn’t there. She didn’t see.

  She stood there, floating elsewhere. Letting him look and look.

  He had to touch her to thread the probes into the ports in her head and spinal column. His hot, sticky hands kept sliding around. He gave her ass a squeeze.

  “Dive deep, R-48,” he said throatily. “Real deep.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He gave her a smack on the ass for encouragement, and she climbed into the tank and reclined on the table within it, above the water level. Slowly, Hale hooked her up to the other sensors, pinching and groping all the while.

  She could have dry-dived for the info without the tank. But the sensory deprivation increased the effectiveness of a data-dive by a good percentage. And besides, Hale just liked telling her to take her clothes off. He never missed an opportunity for that.

  He positioned the stimulators to make sure she didn’t cut the cord out there and float away, disappearing along with untold millions of Obsidian R&D money. She’d heard that it happened sometimes, although she hadn’t tried it herself.

  But in a secret, barricaded part of her mind, she thought about it. When the memories trapped behind her brain blocks revealed unbearably poignant glimpses of faces, feelings. She thought about it until the stim pain came and punished her for it.

  Until she had to blank it all out. Stop thinking, or else die screaming.

  Freedom.

  She was lowered steadily into the warm water and the pod closed, leaving her in pitch darkness. All she felt was profound relief.

 
She no longer had to look up at Hale’s red, leering face.

  Chapter 9

  Every mile she drove into the deepening night, Dani got more pissed at herself.

  She was being irresponsible. Not standing her ground and insisting that this poor guy get the medical attention he needed. It went against all her better judgment.

  They know your name, where you live, where you work…wherever you go, they will find you. And then you will die in agony. Slowly.

  Luke’s words kept echoing in her head.

  Going back into that nightmare, if they were lying in wait for her like he said, was a terrifying thought. But if this guy died on her, it would be one hundred percent her fault for agreeing to run. A freeway exit for a town big enough to have a hospital was coming up. It was now or never.

  She gritted her teeth and started changing lanes. Take charge, Dani. Somebody’s got to.

  The Porsche surged forward as if the gas pedal had pressed itself. She gasped and began to brake. With no success. Shit. This, too?

  “Whoa! Luke?” she said. “Something’s wrong. Your car’s messed up!”

  His eyes didn’t even open. “Everything in my life is messed up. Just drive.”

  She tried again to shift into the exit lane, but she was no longer in control. The turn signal switched itself off and the SUV swerved aggressively back into the fast lane, picking up speed. An eighteen wheeler that had been gaining behind them laid angrily on its horn.

  She tried to steer it back and tried again to brake. The steering wheel kept her in the same lane, and the brake pedal would not respond.

  They flashed past the exit. Whoosh …

  “Don’t worry,” Luke mumbled. “Just drive. Faster.”

  She looked at him, openmouthed, but got nothing more from him.

  And so it continued. Her hands were on the wheel, but the Porsche had its own agenda. She was pumped full of panicky adrenaline, staring wide-eyed out the windshield, hands clenched on the wheel, useless though that seemed to be. The car didn’t need her.