Getting up was going to take some willpower. And some painkillers. And some adrenaline. And actual physical food wouldn’t hurt anything either, even though she sensed it had been long enough since she’d last eaten that she might just throw it all up.
She couldn’t think about of any of that, though. She had to stick to the plan.
Turning her head to the right, she looked for the rolling robot that always showed up with supplies whenever she ran this simulation. Sure enough, there it was. Ready and waiting.
At least something was working in her favor.
Step 1: Stab herself with the syringe on the robo-butler’s tray. Adrenaline.
That was going to suck. But there was no way she could do any of what followed next without doing that first. Without adrenaline, she’d be an invalid on a table.
It hurt too much to keep her head turned to the side, so Kali reached over blindly with her hand to feel out the syringe’s location—breathing through the pain of moving just one arm, not to mention her entire body.
Man, she really should have drilled the pain aspect of all this. She might have requested a few more items.
Her eyes fought against staying open as she located the syringe and popped its cap off with a shaky thumb. She took a breath, reminding herself this was not a drill.
This is life now, she reminded herself. Go find out if all this was worth it.
Then she grit her teeth, stabbed the needle into her thigh, and depressed the plunger.
Chapter 4
Claire
If a satellite plummeted out of orbit, crushing Claire in that moment, it would find her being dolled up by the best of the best.
As far as disaster scenarios went, she was moving up in the world.
Just keep compartmentalizing, she coached herself whenever the reality of her situation started to set in. She’d made the choice to get on the jet. There was no point in playing the victim and hyperventilating about it now.
Better to just lean back and enjoy the included mani-pedi while taking surreptitious notes on her host.
Claire had been within ten yards of Malachi for over an hour now and, as far she could tell, the man had the body language of an expert poker player. Every movement he made seemed manicured and practiced … except one.
Back when Claire started working with Jack, she had noticed that whenever Jack needed to think, he pulled an old coin out of his pocket and rolled it across the back of his fingers. Malachi’s tell wasn’t all that different. Whenever he paused to think, he rubbed his thumb back and forth along the band of the gold signet ring he wore on his right hand. His eyes always dipped down as he reflected, suggesting he was thinking about something that mattered on an emotional level. Something he cared about.
Malachi had a soft spot … something he consistently strategized around. Claire didn’t know what that was yet, but focusing on finding out was much more empowering than tallying the many ways this whole situation could blow up in her face.
If it did, she had no one to blame but herself.
As if hopping onto a helicopter with a stranger wasn’t bad enough, Claire had voluntarily climbed aboard a jet on a private airstrip next, where a fully staffed beauty salon awaited. Four women and three men had descended on them immediately—five with Claire, two with Malachi. Everyone had their job, which seemed to come down to leaving nothing about Claire the same as when she boarded the jet.
They knew exactly how to take off her Nadia mask, and did it like it was the most normal thing in the world before redoing her look from the ground up.
Hair, makeup, nails, wardrobe … all of it happened to her before she could open her mouth to make a request. Including the waxing. Claire would have objected, but it was over before she could say stop. And she would have told them that waxing made her skin embarrassingly pink and agitated for a good eight hours, but then they rubbed something cooling into the waxed area and all the pinkness went away as they moved on to the next task.
This wasn’t their first rodeo.
In the back of the jet, an effeminate man looked over Malachi’s hair with a magnifying glass, fixing all imaginary stray hairs. Working alongside, a female assisted with his wardrobe change.
“Other side,” the woman working on Claire’s hair said, before spinning the chair so Claire could no longer see Malachi. The 180-degree turn pointed her more directly toward the diffuser that was pumping some heavenly smell into the air. Every inhale made it easy to lean into all the pampering and forget the almost-certain reckoning on the other side of this spa treatment.
She was already locked into the consequence anyway. Might as well enjoy the perks, right?
That’s the aromatherapy talking, her nerves warned. Don’t listen. Stay strong!
Her nerves weren’t lying. Whatever was in the diffuser was definitely making her more complacent than usual. That said, malleable Claire was currently sporting a gorgeous up-do with perfectly glossed fingernails that had never been more symmetrical … and she really needed to let the beauticians finish so she had the pedicure to match.
Feather-light brushes danced across her face, accompanied by the occasional instruction to “look up,” “look down,” or “close your eyes.” Claire did as instructed, her mind slowly catching up with the conversation she’d had with Malachi back at the office.
She kept replaying the moment when he’d spoken to the building, and the building had spoken back. That was the moment when she’d started believing he was who he said he was. Well, that ... and Lennox ... and the helicopter on the roof with Margot’s own men standing guard around it.
In retrospect, she’d been insanely naive to think she wouldn’t get caught. Knowing what she knew of Margot, there was no way anyone—including Claire—should have been able to break into the building. It made way more sense that all the known security precautions were decoys while a more stringent system ran things in the background.
That sounded much more like Margot.
Which meant the building had let her in on Malachi’s order and locked itself up after they left. That was no entry-level AI. And it explained everything except for the countdown clock on the wall and Malachi’s appearance out of nowhere.
“Dress time,” one of the women said, removing the apron dusted with makeup and trimmed hairs from around Claire’s neck. Claire glanced in the mirror, not recognizing herself at first. She looked … beautiful. Not pretty. Not really good, considering what she had to work with.
Beautiful.
Claire couldn’t even imagine what to wear to top it all off. She usually stuck with pastels and earth tones, but the face staring back at her in the mirror needed something bold. Something fearless. Something memorable.
As two of the women pulled a massive garment bag from a storage area, Malachi stepped to Claire’s side of the jet and spoke for the first time since the helicopter.
“If you’ll forgive me, there is a bit of a dress code tonight,” he said. “Quite inflexible, I’m afraid. I took the liberty of choosing a dress for you.”
Claire looked at the two women moving the voluminous garment bag and decided it had to be some kind of old-fashioned gown. Malachi had repeatedly said they were going to a ball. If that was the case, it was probably better that he’d chosen the dress because Claire didn’t know—
When the garment bag was pulled away, Claire couldn’t believe her eyes.
It was her dress—her dress.
Not that she’d told anyone, but maybe—just maybe—she’d been toying with the idea of getting married recently. And maybe—just maybe—she’d seen this dress and thought it was perfect. It wasn’t sleek and form-fitting, like so many dresses were these days, but a little more Belle-in-the-gold-dress from Beauty and the Beast.
Only this dress was silver, with eight-pointed stars beaded into the fabric.
“It’s divine,” she gasped.
“I’m glad you approve.”
Approve? She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t thin
k. All she wanted was to see what it looked like on.
“We land in forty minutes,” Malachi said. “I’ll give you privacy to finish up.”
Without another word, he walked to the rear of the jet, this time closing a curtain between them to give privacy to both sides.
Wherever she was going, Claire was pretty sure she was going to be the best-dressed one there. She’d never seen a dress this gorgeous in her life, and she’d been to more than her fair share of formal parties.
Oh, if Claire’s mom could see her now, she might actually approve of her. Not that Claire cared much about that at the moment. She cared more about getting that dress on. Immediately.
One of the assistants dragged a pedestal box in front of her. “Step up, if you will, my lady.”
My lady? Any other day, the term would have felt pretentious. Not today. Today, she most definitely felt like a lady, as layer after layer of clothing was added to her, starting with a shift. Her attendants might be people in their twenties, but they handled the period clothing with practiced fluidity.
She was grateful when they tightened the corset to an endurable fit that allowed her to breathe before helping her to step into petticoats that looked much heavier than they were. A lot of volume, not a lot of weight. Claire was pretty sure women a few centuries back would have killed for the innovation.
And the dress.
The dress.
You’re either going to be Disney’s Cinderella or Stephen King’s Carrie tonight, one of her less-helpful voices volunteered as if she didn’t already know how wide the pendulum of her recklessness might swing.
Luckily for Claire, the gorgeous dress distracted her from ugly thoughts. It looked so much better on. Heavenly, even. The way the fabric swayed and moved with her? It was all but begging for her to give it a twirl. This was a dress made for dancing.
“We’ll be landing shortly,” one of her female assistants said, offering her a hand down off the pedestal. “Let’s choose your shoes.”
All five of her attendants walked over to the storage area, each returning with a shoe box. When the boxes opened, Claire had an uncomfortable realization. Just like the dress, she’d seen all these shoes before. She’d bookmarked them under Wish List back when she’d been feeling a little dreamy about the future.
Malachi had been watching her for a while. Or was it Ace?
Either way, it was hard to be offended, since she did the exact thing to others when helping Jack with a job. Malachi did what she did at work all the time; current evidence simply suggested he did it better.
Claire touched the second box from the right. “These,” she said, already knowing her order of preference.
The ones she’d put on her wish list several weeks ago had been bone colored, but the shoes in front of her were a silver perfectly matched to the dress.
“Wise choice,” Malachi said, appearing in an ivory court suit with a gold frock coat from the same era as Claire’s dress. Paired with Malachi’s dark hair and his green eyes, he had a half-rogue, half-monarch look about him that made Claire pretty certain her host was the kind of man who had his pick of ladies and knew it.
Jack would not be happy about her showing up with this guy. She could feel it. But he only had himself to blame, considering Jack hadn’t invited her and tried to ship her off on a solo vacation instead.
They were definitely going to have a talk about that. And crashing Jack’s private party on Malachi’s arm seemed like the perfect conversation starter.
“Dancing will be on the agenda tonight,” Malachi said, cutting into her hypothetical future arguments with Jack. “Based on your school transcripts, you learned all the required dances as part of your private school curriculum. I trust your sharp mind remembers them all.”
Dancing? A chill of nerves overshadowed Claire’s enthusiasm for the dress.
Sure, she wanted to give the dress a twirl, but … required public dancing?
Visions of awkward classroom pairings of a decade ago swam through her mind, flooding her with anxiety. Her instructor had told her she danced like a metronome—all technique, no heart. He’d said it in front of the entire class, earning laughs from everyone. After that, no one wanted to dance with the robot. True, she hadn’t had a line of suitors before her teacher’s comment, but any goodwill from guys willing to ask her to dance had dried up really fast after that.
Why didn’t Malachi tell her there would be dancing sooner? Maybe she wouldn’t have come. Okay, maybe she still would have agreed to come, but it would have been nice to have a heads up on the whole public humiliation part of the evening.
Or maybe this guy had taken a page from the Book of Margot and knew that Claire just needed to jump into everything without time to obsess.
No one will be looking at you. They’ll be looking at the dress.
In a shocking turn of events, Claire’s inner voice had something encouraging to say. It almost felt like a trap. But, trap or not, she was in this for the long haul now. If that meant dancing, Claire was going to dance, like the metronome she was.
“You look marvelous,” Malachi said, eyes examining the details of the dress for flaws. “Mind giving it a spin?”
The request was both odd and as natural as can be. Maybe it was the aromatherapy in the air, but Claire didn’t think twice before turning in a circle. Spotting like a ballerina, she could see Malachi’s eyes focused on hemlines, looking for hanging strings or missed details as his thumb absently rubbed against his ring.
What is he thinking about when he does that? She still didn’t know.
When she finished the turn, Malachi gave each of her attendants a look of approval. “Excellent. We’ll be landing in ten.”
He returned to the other side of the curtain and Claire’s attendants swooped back in, making finishing touches while she gazed into the mirror knowing she was going to remember this night for the rest of her life. Come what may.
Chapter 5
Kali
Every part of Kali’s escape had been rehearsed into clarity … except for the last part.
The first time Kali had been brought to the island, she’d had some freedom and a few human overseers.
The second time Jack had negotiated her return, the terms had changed. The reward for her capture was too high to trust anyone with her location or identity. So she’d been locked in a wing of the facility with sensors reporting her well-being into a computer Jack could monitor.
That computer had been the one to make her run the escape simulation until she could do it on autopilot … up until the last choice.
In the updated version, she boarded a different plane at the end. She knew that, but it threw her off when she’d arrived in the hangar to find both the old and the new options waiting for her.
Recent drills told her to take option #2, while instinct told her to stick with the tried and true. Yet logic reinforced the idea that the tried and true had been compromised when she used it the first time around, so Kali snuck aboard a beat-up plane that looked like it vacationed in the Bermuda Triangle. In a hangar where everything was shiny and new, she was boarding the one plane older than her. But once she made it into the flight attendant’s luggage closet, she didn’t care how old the plane was anymore. She fit in the closet and didn’t have to move anymore; that was a win in her book.
Closing her eyes, Kali leaned her head against the metal wall and let herself relax in the dark, tight space. Every so often, a body part twitched as if a current of electricity ran through it. The random movements kept her from falling all the way asleep—or that’s what she thought until the sound of someone boarding the plane woke her.
How long had she been out? The adrenaline shouldn’t have faded that fast.
She stayed frozen as a man walked about the plane, moving in and out of the cockpit several times before finally shutting the cabin door and taking a seat. A moment later, Kali heard him close off the door that sealed him into the cockpit and the engine fired up.
About a minute passed, then the plane pushed back.
Finally. Kali was on her way, and all she could think about was the food that awaited her on the other side of the plane ride. Vegas wasn’t her favorite city, but it had restaurants. Pressing her forehead against the cool steel of the forgotten luggage closet, Kali started devising her dream menu.
Soup would be her starter. Something simple, with a lot of broth to remind her stomach how eating worked. If she kept that down, she’d move to a fruit plate. Berries with yogurt. She tried to dream up a third course to her meal, but her mind stayed stuck on soup and berries.
Heaven really came down to the simple things, it seemed.
After takeoff, it occurred to Kali that she didn’t have to spend the entire flight in the closet—not with the pilot’s cabin locked. She could get out. Stretch.
Hunt for food.
When the plane leveled out, she did just that.
The cabin was dark when she stepped out, drawing attention to the sunset outside the windows. She didn’t know what day or even what season it was, but she knew they were flying north.
A search of the cabin revealed exactly no food and a 24-pack of bottled water. She grabbed one of the bottles, nursing it tentatively to see how her stomach would react to the liquid.
Not well.
What day was it? How long had it been since she’d physically eaten?
She was too weak to think about it all too hard, opting to take a seat in the cabin and stare out the window instead. Three or four sips of water later, her eyelids dropped and the world went dark until the moment a blinding light had her flinching in her sleep.
White light way too bright to be the sun blinded her through her eyelids and almost felt tangible in the air around, like a sea of lightning. Then, as quickly as it appeared, it was gone, night stars appearing in the sky and city lights appearing below. Had they just flown over the Luxor? Because, man, that was—
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