Wicked Attraction (The Protector)

by Megan Hart

  Sure enough, before Nina had even bothered to get out of the bed, the door opened. The woman who entered wore a pair of faded jeans that had gone out of style at least two decades before. A knit sweater in multiple blocks of color, also too ugly to be called retro, clung to her lean frame. The bun of ebony hair on top of her head looked precarious.

  She had a nice smile, though, which she turned on Nina full force. “Hello, there. Did you sleep well?”

  “Sure, I slept shiny fine.” Nina didn’t return the smile but kept her expression neutral. Pleasant, but not welcoming. “What’s going on?”

  The woman had the audacity to plop herself on the edge of Nina’s bed, not moving even when Nina gave her a pointed glance. “Do you remember your name? The date?”

  Nina named a date that felt like it might be right and added, “Nina Bronson. Am I supposed to not remember that?”

  “Many of our clients arrive a little . . . unsteady,” the woman said with a smirking smile that definitely left Nina unsteady, but with irritation, not uncertainty. “And what is your occupation?”

  “I’m a private security operative.” Nina paused, frowning, digging backward. That felt right. Normal and true. “I was on a job.”

  The woman pursed her lips.

  “No? I wasn’t on a job?”

  “What’s the last thing you remember before waking up here?”

  “Being abducted,” Nina lied, because she did not remember that at all. The last thing she truly remembered clearly was Leona telling her she had a new gig. She remembered signing the contract. Therefore, she’d been on a job. If she was here now, then something had happened to her while working. She took another guess. “I was drugged. Maybe even injured.”

  “Oh, my goodness.” The woman raised both her eyebrows but didn’t deny what Nina had claimed. She shook her head. “I apologize profusely, Ms. Bronson. At times, the treatments result in vivid dreams. I can make sure to note that, so your treatment can be adjusted to accommodate that. Do you feel injured?”

  “No,” Nina said. “But that doesn’t mean anything. I could’ve been here long enough to start healing.”

  That didn’t feel right, though. She flexed a bit, testing her muscles and joints for any hints of pain. There were a few faint aches and pains, and when she rolled up the sleeve of her flowered pajamas, she found a faint pattern of bruises on the inside of her arm. Without pulling off her pajama bottoms, she couldn’t see if the small aches on her legs matched the bruising pattern. All of that meant very little. She could’ve banged herself up during a workout, or protecting the client she could not, at this moment, remember.

  “Something bad happened to me, or else I wouldn’t be here,” she said stubbornly.

  The woman smiled gently. “Ms. Bronson, I can assure you, Limone Luxury Health Spa has only voluntary clients here.”

  “Health spa!” Nina snorted rude laughter. “Uh-huh. More like psych ward.”

  The moment the words came out of her, she stopped laughing. The underlying stink of a hospital. The monitoring. There’d been nothing voluntary about her arrival here, she knew that in her bones, and the fact she couldn’t force the memories to return had left her more than unsteady. She was unsettled. Unnerved.

  “I’m in a psych ward,” she repeated, starting to convince herself.

  “No, no. Of course not.”

  “A lab. A research facility,” Nina said, her voice louder this time.

  Be quiet.

  Be still.

  The voice was solid. Real. Yet the woman in front of her didn’t so much as blink at the sound of it. Nina faltered, putting a hand to her ear, tilting her head to figure out where it had come from.

  “I’ll make sure your treatments are adjusted,” the woman repeated. “My goodness, we want all of our clients to feel comfortable and pampered here at the Limone Luxury Health Spa—”

  “Go ahead and say the name of it once more. You haven’t managed to convince me yet.” A fresh pain twinged in Nina’s head. She winced.

  “Here at Limone Luxury Health Spa, it’s our goal to make our clients as comfortable and pampered as possible,” the woman continued without irony.

  Nina held up a hand. “Look, I’ve never actually been a client of a luxury health spa, but I’ve been inside more than one while on the job, and the first thing I can tell you is that you’re dressed all wrong.”

  The woman looked down at her clothes with a frown, then back at Nina, who continued before the woman could answer.

  “You’re in civilian clothes instead of scrubs or a uniform. And you haven’t even told me your name. That’s a dead giveaway,” Nina said. “Ass kissing is generally best accompanied by a name tag or an introduction. You know, in case I want to complain, ’cause that’s what the people who go to luxury health spas like to do.”

  “I’m Adami, and here at Limone Luxury . . . Health Spa.” She stuttered a little on the words, and Nina was glad to think maybe she’d rattled the woman. “Ahem, we encourage individual expression instead of uniforms.”

  “Like these pajamas?” Nina flipped back the comforter to show them off.

  Adami beamed. “Exactly!”

  “The only thing I would like to personally express about these pajamas is the desire to throw them in a fire,” Nina said with a sneer. Her fingers twitched, making fists on top of the blankets.

  She could be out of the bed in a minute, Adami’s throat in her hands. She could squeeze.

  Kill.

  Adami recoiled. “You don’t like them? Oh, no, that’s terrible. I’ll have something else brought to you right away. Would you prefer stripes or checks, or another pattern?”

  “How about you bring me back my own clothes? I’m not an invalid.” Nina swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She had no trouble standing, which seemed to shock Adami, who’d probably been expecting Nina to be weak. Adami stumbled back toward the wall with a look of clear terror.

  Nina paused. Did she look frightening? Her teeth bared, she made as though she was going to step toward Adami. The woman didn’t quite cower, but it looked as though it took every bit of her willpower not to. She tapped the side of her head to activate a personal comm. She didn’t speak, though. Maybe she was waiting to see if Nina intended to attack her before she called in the wolves.

  Visual as well as auditory monitoring? Check. Whoever was watching would be ready to burst into this room in seconds, most likely fully armed with weapons even Nina couldn’t protect herself from. Assuming that they knew who and what she was—and she had to go with that they surely had to. It meant this woman was important enough to warrant being protected, but not so important that they weren’t willing to risk her getting hurt or killed before anyone could rescue her. So Adami wasn’t the head of this operation. That would also explain why the woman seemed so terrified. She knew she was expendable.

  “I’m not going to do anything to hurt you,” Nina said calmly. Her fury at the ugly sleepwear had vanished, replaced with wariness and the uneasy desire to laugh. A flurry of pained giggles slipped out of her, links in a chain of hilarity that sounded wrong. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?”

  “I’m here to . . . I’m here to make sure you know how to . . .”

  Nina pulled the ugly pajama shirt over her head and tossed it onto the dresser. Then the pants. They were not only hideous, but would encumber her should things start going sideways. She anticipated that happening at any moment. Unconcerned with her nakedness despite being convinced she was being observed, Nina put her hands on her hips. She could hear the flutter of Adami’s heart, the fast pace of her breathing. The other woman was scared, and that was fine with Nina, who didn’t mind being intimidating.

  Adami didn’t deserve to be intimidated, she thought suddenly, the fierce anger that had been building dwindling like a punctured balloon. Nina drew in a breath and put her fingertips to her temple, where an ache had begun to throb. She blinked against a few seconds of blurriness, and her vision cl
eared.

  “How to what?” Nina prompted when Adami didn’t manage to finish her explanation.

  “I’m a client consultant, I’m here to make sure you have everything you need to feel comfortable . . .” Adami coughed into her fist and took another hesitant step toward the door, making sure to keep her back pressed along the wall.

  “Who do you work for?”

  “I . . . I work for . . .” Someone must’ve spoken into Adami’s ear, because she shook her head a tiny bit, and her next words were more confident. She straightened, every line of her body said she was ready to run if she had to. “I work for Limone Health Spa, where you’re a current client . . .”

  Nina’s lip curled. “Uh-huh. Try again. You forgot to mention luxury.”

  Adami trembled.

  “Hey. I told you I wasn’t going to hurt you, and I meant it. But you can tell whoever’s chatting in your ear that I don’t believe a word you’re saying. They’re going to have an easier time dealing with me if you, or someone, is up-front and honest with me.”

  “I came to make sure you knew how to order breakfast,” Adami said from in front of the door. “You use the tablet on the desk, you place . . . you place your order . . .”

  Nina took a step toward her. “Get out.”

  Without another word, Adami scrabbled at the door until it opened and she disappeared through it. It didn’t have a handle on this side, Nina saw when she got closer. Not even a thumbprint panel or an ocular lock. Someone had opened it so Adami could get out.

  It might be a hospital or it might be a prison, but it was definitely not a spa.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The slight figure with the white-blond hair in the doorway looked determined not to let him in, and Ewan supposed he couldn’t blame Al for being upset at being awoken at this strange hour. He didn’t have time to be polite. He put a hand on the door, forgetting for an instant, stupidly, that Al was as strong and quick to act as Nina and probably as quick to react.

  He was lucky Al hadn’t put him to the ground.

  “Please,” Ewan said and took a step back. “It’s about Nina.”

  Al yawned and blinked. “What about her?”

  “She went to visit her sister and disappeared. Someone took her. Jordie Dev is involved, somehow. I need you to help me find her, but more than that, to get her back once we do.” Ewan had spent the last few hours working with his team, trying to locate both Jordie and Nina, but so far there’d been little luck.

  “How’d you figure out where I live?” Al yawned again, looking curious, not angry.

  Ewan drew in a breath, determined not to lose his temper at Al’s lackadaisical attitude. “You’re in the directory.”

  “Right, right. Did you contact ProtectCorps first?”

  “Yeah, but Leona said you’d quit.”

  “I did. I’m off the job, out of the game,” Al said. “Reee-tired.”

  Ewan’s fingers twitched, wanting to make fists but too aware of how stupid it would be to make even the barest hint of a threat. “I can pay you.”

  “I’m sure you can, Mr. Billions.” Al’s eyes narrowed. “Leona didn’t have anyone else who could help you? She has loads of guards.”

  “Nobody else who was enhanced.”

  Al laughed in a low voice, not without humor, but somehow sly, and gave him a sideways look. “So the guy who worked so hard to make sure we were all hobbled by the very tech he’d invented is now desperate to hire only one of us to help him?”

  “I love her, and she’s gone missing,” Ewan said evenly, refusing to allow Al to bait him into anger. “ And I was an idiot. Please, don’t waste any more time trying to remind me of that. Will you help me?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Al said with a shrug and stepped aside to let him in. “I’m not doing much else at the moment.”

  The interior of Al’s apartment was no surprise. Al lived in one of the modern buildings that had become trendy in the past few years. Each unit was a simple box, an open living space with doors that ran on tracks to close off the bathroom and sleeping spaces as necessary. All the doors inside Al’s cube had been slid into the walls, so the apartment was wide open. Undecorated except for a neatly made bed and a comfortable-looking beanbag couch in front of a viddy screen set into the plain wall, it was a spartan and somehow soothing environment that calmed him only a little.

  “Just let me get changed, and then you can tell me what’s going on.” Al gestured toward the beanbag couch, but Ewan didn’t sit. It was designed to cradle the user, and he didn’t feel like being cradled right then.

  Al slid one of the doors halfway across the room to block off the area next to the bed. Ewan turned his back to offer even more privacy. He kept himself from pacing only because the room wasn’t large enough for him to move around too much. Behind him, the door slid back on its track, and he turned, letting out a mutter of surprise.

  “What?” Al looked down at the slim black leggings and form-fitting long-sleeved shirt that showed off curves Ewan hadn’t noticed before. She laughed at his look. “Oh, yeah. You thought I was a bro, yeah?”

  “I . . .”

  She held up one hand to show off the androgyne tattoo between her thumb and forefinger. “I’m shiny fine with being called ‘him,’ if you’re wondering. ‘Her’ is also acceptable. I’m not a big fan of ‘they,’ but I’ll answer to it. You can also call me Allegra, Al, or ‘hey, you.’ Just don’t call me late to dinner, hyuck, hyuck.”

  She gave a loud, braying, and forced burst of laughter that softened when she watched him. “Sorry. Just a little light humor.”

  Ewan thought back to the first night he’d seen Al talking to Nina, and the heat of embarrassment flooded him at what an excremental sphincter he’d been about it. “I shouldn’t have assumed. I’m sorry.”

  “People do it all the time, it’s not a problem. It’s hard to see the tattoo and when you saw me before I was being more of a bro. It’s all good.” Al rubbed her hands together briskly. “I don’t think you came here to talk to me about that, did you? When did she go missing, exactly?”

  “Late yesterday afternoon. I know who took her, but we can’t figure out where.” Ewan swallowed a rush of sourness, trying to keep himself calm. “Leona said her tracking chip was disconnected. I have my team on it, but every lead they’ve tracked is turning up negative.”

  “I’m not a tracker.”

  Ewan nodded. “I know that. I will find her. When I do, I need you with me.”

  “Because you think it’s going to be dangerous. Extracting her,” Al said thoughtfully. “Gotcha. Well, let’s get started, I guess. No sense in waiting around.”

  “You don’t care about a contract? Payment?” He’d been prepared to transfer credits to her account immediately, even to work without a signed agreement, just to get her help.

  Al looked surprised. “Nah. I’m sure you’re good for it. And besides, anybody who managed to actually take down Nina Bronson sounds like a challenge to me. I’m totally up for a good challenge.”

  “This isn’t a game, Al,” Ewan said sharply.

  Her expression smoothed, and she nodded. “Yes. I know. If you get me to her, I promise I’ll do my best to make sure we get her home safe.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Nina hadn’t been keeping track of the minutes. Her memories of this particular place and circumstance might be borked, but she did recall that being too focused on the time only made it harder to stand the boredom of being locked up. When her stomach rumbled, she ordered a meal through the tablet as Adami had instructed. The menu header said Limone Luxury Health Spa, along with accompanying graphics to prove she was truly exactly where they’d told her she was.

  The food itself had arrived within the hour on a tray delivered via a small portal in the wall. She’d opened it quickly, but the door on the other side was locked tight, and the portal itself was far too small for her to fit through. Spa food. Fancy, pseudo-healthy options that arrived on plates decorated wit
h edible garnish that did nothing but get in the way. Nothing so gauche as a cheeseburger had been offered, so she settled for a protein patty on a bed of greens, adorned with cheese that claimed to be real and not synthetic. She didn’t believe that any more than she believed this place was a spa, and at any rate, it was also supposed to be fat-free. Real or not, fat-free cheese was an abomination.

  Still, she had limited options and she needed to fill her stomach. She’d eat while she had the opportunity. Eat and wait. And wait. And wait some more. She’d given in to the allure of the room’s viddy screen, flipping through each program until she got to the end, then back to the beginning until she gave up, finding nothing to entertain her.

  Instead, still naked because they’d delivered her the food but no new pajamas, and aware that she was certainly being watched, Nina started a workout.

  She’d deliberately intimidated Adami earlier, and this workout was meant to do the same for whoever was watching her. It was possible her unseen observers were somehow unconvinced of how deadly she could be. She intended to impress her silent, invisible captors with her strength, discipline, and determination. Also her good humor, since as she exercised, she told joke after joke, some of them made up, most of them knock-knocks. None of them really funny.

  “Knock knock,” she said before answering herself, “Who’s there?”

  She dropped to the floor for push-ups. “Ewan.”

  “Ewan who?” she answered herself, her arms pumping.

  She paused, breathing hard, something about this joke tickling at her brain. “Nobody. It’s just me.”

  Nina had meant to make herself laugh, but nothing about her joke felt amusing. It stuck in her brain like a pin in a map, marking a spot she knew was important—but could not remember why. She tried another joke, feeling for the same reaction, but got nothing.

  “Nobody,” she murmured. “Just me.”

  That wasn’t it.

  Faster, up and down. Pushing hard to clap her hands together in the air before dropping to hover an inch above the ground. Arms straining, she tried it one-armed. She pushed her body to its limits, rolled onto her back to start again with crunches. Searched her brain for another bad joke, but could only think about the last one she’d said.