Skin Dive

by Ava Gray

  This is on you. You didn’t trust her judgment, asshole. You thought infatuation would overwhelm common sense . . . and deep down, you were afraid—afraid she’d leave you. Afraid she’d be sorry for saving you someday. You let this happen. Better to die with your pride intact than take a chance on Gillie Flynn. You son of a bitch.

  And now she’s dying for you.

  “Not today,” he said aloud. “Please. Not today.”

  Hospital room. Gillie had visited so many during her childhood that she could recognize the place by scent alone. All the antiseptic in the world couldn’t cover the stench of sickness. So I lived. She hadn’t been sure she would, in fact. It would’ve been worth it. She opened her eyes slowly, lashes sticky and clinging, blurring her vision at first. Slowly, things came into focus.

  By her estimation, Taye should be in that yellow vinyl chair, beside her bed, worriedly holding her hand. This room ought to be filled with flowers and it wouldn’t be a bad idea for him to get down on his knees either. Instead, the space was bare apart from a blue curtain screening her from the other bed, the medical equipment and a wheeled table with a pitcher of water on it.

  The door creaked as someone slipped in. Maybe he just went to get coffee. I bet he hasn’t slept in days. But she didn’t intend to make it easy on him. When she got out of here, they were having a fight to end all fights.

  But Tanager slid through the curtain, not Taye. She was as colorful as always with her spiky white hair, now tipped in crimson. Today she wore low-slung cargo pants, revealing a tattoo on her hip, a corset-style camisole, a torn jean jacket, and a pair of red Doc Martens.

  “How you feeling?”

  “Not bad, all told. Are you allowed to be here?” Gillie added.

  “It’s a brave new world, Miracle Girl . . . the old rules don’t apply anymore. We can be friends if you want.” She sounded awkward in making the offer.

  Not that Gillie was an expert. “I’d like that.”

  “Sure you wouldn’t rather forget that part of your life and make a fresh start?”

  She shook her head. “So we did it then.”

  “Foundation’s shut down. No more funding. The parent company cut them off. No more money for facilities, research, or personnel.”

  “God, it feels so weird, knowing we can do whatever we want from here on out.”

  “No more looking over our shoulder,” Tan agreed.

  I will not ask about him. I will not.

  “Thanks for coming. It means a lot.”

  “I missed the big showdown, so I figure this is the least I can do.”

  “What?”

  “Sort things out here. I told one of your doctors you’ll be private pay . . . Mockingbird’s taking care of it. The admin women were giving Taye a hard time.”

  So he was here. He just isn’t anymore. What the hell—

  “Thank you.”

  “The way I hear it, you’re the heroine of the hour. Liberator of our people and everything. You hacked their system and slew the beast. Good on you, Gillie Flynn.”

  “Can I be me again?”

  “Yep. MB’s working on getting you out of the federal databases, and I’ll go with you to Wichita and talk to somebody in charge. Explain about your temporary witness protection status and how they should update your college records, listing you as Gillie Flynn.”

  “If someone recognizes me from the news and calls the tip line—”

  “It’s been shut down. They’ll get an out-of-service message. Don’t worry, it’s over.”

  “Thank God.”

  “But MB won’t be paying for stuff anymore. He’s dividing what’s left of the money he skimmed from the Foundation among all surviving agents and that’ll be it.”

  “Severance package?” Gillie joked.

  Tan smiled back. “Pretty much. We all make our own way from this point.”

  “Sounds good to me. Can you get me out of here? I hate hospitals.”

  “That’s the other reason I’m here. We need to get you sprung before they notice anomalies. We don’t want some other fringe group taking interest in what you can do.”

  “So you’ll get a tech to contaminate my samples.”

  “Fancy way of putting it, but yeah.” Tan sauntered over to the call button and pressed.

  A few minutes later, a harried, middle-aged nurse came in; her nametag read “Betty” and she wore a pink and brown camo scrub top with “Private Betty” printed on it. Wonder if she’s former army.

  “You’re awake, I see,” she said to Gillie. “What can I do for you?”

  Tanager said, “Send Doctor Howard in.”

  The nurse sighed. “It’s early. He’ll be along on his rounds shortly.”

  Short of a medical emergency that would draw attention counter to their aims, that was the best they could do. Tan took a seat, propping her foot against the side of the bed. They made quiet conversation and somehow she managed not to ask about Taye. That bastard. I saved his life. He could at least thank me.

  Eventually the doc came in. He checked out her chart and shook his head. “The consequences for a missed appointment can be severe, as you see.”

  So that’s the story. Gillie nodded and donned her chastened face. She had no doubt that the sudden influx of unfiltered waste did resemble a patient with renal failure who had missed several appointments. People sometimes chose to die that way, and it could take anywhere from a few days to several weeks, depending on a plethora of factors. But they couldn’t be allowed to discover that her kidneys were intact.

  “How much longer does she need to stay?”

  “We need to finish the battery of tests,” he answered.

  Tan shook her head, and her voice sank lower. Gillie could hear the difference, but it didn’t compel her the way it did men. “You should release her now. After all, if she has complete renal failure, there’s nothing to analyze, is there? You’ll send the nurse to remove the IV and shunt.”

  “You’re right,” Doctor Howard said. “I’ll get the release paperwork started.”

  As soon as he left, Tan went to meddle with the technicians. The loose ends were just about wrapped up; within fifteen minutes, Gillie had staff helping her get ready to go. She had a clean change of clothes, courtesy of Tanager.

  The nurse put a gauze bandage over the shunt site. Kindly, she refrained from commenting on the track marks marching up Gillie’s arm, but from her expression, the nurse thought she’d blown her kidneys shooting up. “I swear, you were at death’s door yesterday. I don’t know why the doctor diagnoses as he does.”

  “It’s probably insurance-related,” Tan said blithely. “You know how they are.”

  Nurse Betty frowned. “Do I ever.”

  An hour later, an orderly wheeled Gillie along the hall. She fought not to look over her shoulder, trying not to want him to be there. He hadn’t gone for coffee or a bite to eat. Now she had to face it; he wasn’t coming back. When you got right down to it, Taye was a fucking coward, and she wanted no part of him.

  Tanager met her at the front doors, parking in the patientloading zone. Gillie felt weaker than she’d expected but she managed to get in the car. Once she’d buckled up, they took off.

  “Where are we anyway?”

  “Los Angeles. It’ll be quite a road trip. I mean, I could get us a plane, but I thought you might enjoy the girl-time. I know I will.”

  “I turned down an internship, so I’m not in any hurry to get back.” At least she had a life. “Oh, did you find the flash drive in my pants pocket? I didn’t leave it behind.”

  “Sure did. Let’s rock.” With a whoop, Tan stomped on the gas.

  CHAPTER 28

  Once he dropped them at the hospital, Cale ditched the stolen car and his thoughts circled back to Kestrel. Kristin. It had just about killed him to lay her down, her eyes wide and sightless, staring up at the dark sky. The barn roof would keep the wind off her, and under the circumstances, it had been the best they could do. An anonymous pho
ne call would get the cops out to take care of her, but—

  Not good enough. Never good enough. She would haunt him, all the days of his life.

  I’ll sleep with you. What’s the matter? Don’t you want me?

  Oh, Kes, I’m so sorry. Too late, he’d learned that more than money mattered. If he’d acted sooner, maybe he could have saved her. Then again, perhaps with some people, there could be no salvation. He suspected he was one of them.

  Fighting memories, he sat on a park bench in the rain. It spattered the pavement like tears, perpetually falling. The authorities would find her family from this point; relatives would take her home and bury her with no idea how brave or splendid she was—or how broken at the end. He hurt more than he could’ve imagined possible at the start of this job. Once, things had been simple.

  They weren’t anymore.

  He sat there all night in a private memorial, replaying that moment and holding her body in his arms. People had died on his watch before; it was part of what had driven him from the army into private pay, where at least the money was worth the grief. But no ending had ever left him feeling like this.

  At dawn, he returned to the Foundation tower, where everything ended the night before. It was cordoned off, rescue crews poking through the rubble. Whatever the other teams had done, it destabilized the whole structure. Thirty stories, all collapsed into a shallow crater—now it was just cement and steel and dust motes wafting in the wind. People had never seen anything like it.

  He took a room at a motel, watched the news; they had all kinds of theories about the tower. Some experts thought it must’ve been a sinkhole, similar to those that occurred in Guatemala . . . others argued, given the tectonic activity in California, it must’ve been an extremely localized earthquake. Cale flicked off the TV and opened a bottle of Powers Irish Whiskey. He poured three fingers into the plain glass and held it to the light.

  Same color as Kristin’s eyes. He shut his own and drank.

  On the second day, he called the morgue to tell them her name. From there, they put the pieces together. Though they’d never find the killer—the bastard might even be buried in the rubble at Foundation headquarters—at least they could give closure.

  As it turned out, she was from Minnesota, and it didn’t take long to run down which funeral home would be handling the services. On the seventh day, with his head thundering, he flew to Pine Grove. For the first time in ten years, he donned a suit and tie. He hadn’t expected to dress so formally again . . . not even if he happened to get married. In fact, he’d always imagined himself tying the knot on a beach, if he could find a woman to put up with him.

  Unlikely, that.

  Pine Grove wasn’t a large town, so he drew some looks, first at the service, and then later at the cemetery. He didn’t know how long it had been since they’d seen her, but they bought her a nice casket. Such a fucking waste.

  Breaking his reverie, an elderly woman tapped him on the arm. “Pardon me, but I don’t recognize you. Doesn’t that sound rude? How did you know Kristin?”

  “We worked together,” he said quietly.

  “Oh?” Her tone invited him to elaborate; her eyes asked for more than that, a memory from him that she couldn’t otherwise know, something to remember.

  “She was really gifted,” he answered. “I couldn’t have done without her.”

  “What business are you in?”

  “Importing.” That was what his documents said, anyway.

  “You’re from England, I take it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I’m glad she had a friend willing to come all this way. We lost track of her. She moved out west and then disappeared. Tragic.”

  You don’t know the half of it.

  “I’m Kristin’s grandma,” the woman added. “It was a pleasure meeting you, but I think the minister is about to begin.”

  Guilt had driven him here to try and make amends, though it was too late. The lady went to join relatives in front, stumbling over the uneven sod. Or maybe it was grief making her unsteady. Quiet fell, apart from the man in black, droning about heaven.

  Once the minister finished, he slipped away. He knew he’d never be the same; he’d never look at work as uncomplicated again. For good or ill, she had changed him. From the cemetery, he drove to the airport. It was time to get the hell out. Maybe he could leave the memories on American soil.

  As he drove, his phone rang. He answered, and a familiar voice said, “I need you in Liverpool, you bastard.”

  Hausen. Cale never thought he would be grateful to have one of his messes to clean up, but there it was. Gratitude that he had work to do, so he could focus on something else. Maybe in time, his sense of failure would fade. Nobody would know how things had gone down or that she’d died because he failed to save her. The Foundation certainly wasn’t in any position to talk about whether he’d satisfied the terms of his contract.

  “Can you contain the problem until I get there? It’s a fairly long flight.”

  “It’s not an emergency yet, though it will become so in the next forty-eight hours. I can stall them for now.”

  “Didn’t I say you’d owe me another favor soon enough?”

  “Skip the gloating if you please.”

  “And this is why I get to call you in the middle of the night. I’m on my way.”

  It was time to leave her ghost behind, if such was possible. Time to go home.

  After Tanager saw Gillie safely home, she did what she had been dying to do ever since she retrieved the flash drive. She drove to the nicest house within five minutes of her friend’s apartment; it was a huge place with pillars out front, brick facing, and beautiful manicured grounds. The flowers were just starting to bloom, adding touches of color to the green lawn.

  “Why don’t you take a vacation?” she told the gray-haired man who answered the door. “How long has it been since you took a day off? You should spend the night in Vegas.”

  “I’d love that. I used to be pretty wild in my day.” With more excitement than her victims usually displayed, he went off to pack . . . but not before hiring her to house sit until day after tomorrow.

  Tanager sauntered in with her backpack, checking the place out. No worry about strike teams. No fear of Kestrel finding her. Somehow the freedom felt bittersweet.

  Once Mr. Miller tore out of the garage in a squeal of tires, she plugged it in her netbook and waited. Nobody else knew; once again Mockingbird had given her the burden of knowledge, and she didn’t know whether she loved or hated him for it. A little of both, perhaps. It had always been that way between them. She had no idea why he’d chosen her to bear his secrets, except, possibly, that she’d known him longest; they had history.

  Two minutes later, he appeared in a shimmer of light. Whole. Unchanged.

  “The transfer didn’t hurt you?” she asked.

  “Their security measures weren’t fun, but I’m intact, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Mockingbird had been able to hack peripheral Foundation systems, getting tidbits of intel, and allowing them to hit satellite facilities, but their central server had been closed. No external access. Before Dunn turned, they had no hope of locating enemy headquarters.

  In order to shut things down for good, he had to be carried to the server, as Gillie had done, and uploaded, so he could wreak havoc from within. But he hadn’t known what the consequences would be—whether a personality and intelligence could be ported on a flash drive and back again. He had been prepared to sacrifice what was left of himself to set everyone else free. Thanks to Heron, thanks to everyone who fought and died, the survivors could live without fear for the first time since the experiments began.

  And she’d never been so scared in her life. Tan wished she could touch him—hug him—but that part of him was gone. Now they had only words, so she took refuge in business when she wanted something else, something she’d scarcely admitted even to herself.

  “You shut down all
their operations? I told everyone you had, but we haven’t had a chance to talk before now.”

  “I did. Destroyed all the data, too. To my knowledge, the Foundation is no more. The parent company is focusing on military applications now: biological weapons and the like, more mundane means of dealing death.”

  “Guess their number-crunchers didn’t have a hard time accepting your report.” That had been part of the plan—that he’d sign some executive’s name to an internal e-mail, recommending complete termination of the homo superus project, as Rowan had called it.

  “You know they called the overall effort Project Prometheus? Learned that while I was in the server.”

  “I didn’t. But given what I know of mythology, their plan panned out about as well, didn’t it? You died for us. Was it worth it?” Anger flavored her words.

  The opulence of her surroundings didn’t cool the fury of her grief. She’d hardly had a chance to mourn, just that one moment by the side of the road. Just keep going, Tanager. I know I can count on you, Tanager. And she still couldn’t, because he was still here . . . and yet he wasn’t. Not in the way she needed him to be. Tan could almost hate him for it, too.

  “Yeah,” he said. Just that. No explanations.

  She didn’t know why she’d expected anything different. He’d always held himself apart. Though he’d confided that he once ran a crew in Las Vegas, something bad happened, something that ended in a lot of his people dying, and so after that, he worked alone, barriers and distance.

  Then he surprised her. “I was dying anyway, Tan. The more I used my mojo, the more it consumed me.”