by Cate Dermody
“Enemies is so melodramatic,” a woman murmured from behind her.
Alisha looked over her shoulder to see the brazen-gazed woman offering a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Sorry. What would you call yourselves?”
“Friends,” the woman suggested. Her voice was lightly accented, English learned somewhere in the British Commonwealth, but not in Britain itself. “People concerned for your well-being.”
“Yeah?” Reichart asked, nodding as three more from the plane entered their car. “What about them?”
The woman glanced toward them, then came back to Reichart with a smile. “Oh, they’re your enemies.”
Alisha, taken off guard, laughed, then dropped into one of the seats. “Look, since we’re all friends here, who’re you with? Come on, sit down.” She waved a hand at the others who’d gotten on, then leaned forward to put her elbows on her knees, assessing all of them. The blond who’d admired Reichart looked slightly confused as he sat, and Alisha wrote him out as a danger.
“We can’t reasonably answer that,” the brunette woman said.
Alisha shrugged a shoulder, not disagreeing. “Just trying to make small talk. Look,” she added to the blond, “things are going to get a little peculiar in this car. You might want to get in the next one.”
He stood again, eyebrows wrinkled with perplexity, and glanced around. “Erm.”
“G’wan, luv.” Reichart flapped a hand, ushering the poor fellow out. “You’re lovely, but not my type, anyway.” He looked around as the blond, still confused and now blushing, hurried to the next car. “Anybody else?”
Strangers exchanged glances and moved as far away as they could, clearly uncomfortable. There were too many, Alisha thought. Too many to risk, but she saw very little choice. At least the late hour thinned out the passengers to some degree.
The doors swished shut and Reichart dropped his chin to his chest. “That’s what I thought.” He laced his fingers together, cracking his knuckles, but as he looked up, Alisha reached out and stopped him with a touch.
“Discretion’s the better part of valor, Frank.” A brief nod reminded him of the closed-circuit television cameras on the train. He scowled, but settled back down, watching their four counterparts warily. Alisha leaned into the train’s acceleration, its thrum non-invasive after the roar of airplane engines, and sighed.
“Excellent,” the brunette said. “I’m glad you’re not going to fuss.” Reichart grunted and the woman fell silent, no one meeting anyone’s eyes or striking up conversation.
Fifteen minutes, Alisha thought, curling her hand around a cool metal pole. Fifteen minutes into London. They seemed interminable, seconds counting backward in her mind. Every moment she felt herself growing twitchier, body stiffening and finger tapping against the pole. Her tension seemed to radiate, making Reichart scowl more deeply and Brandon frown at the floor. Even the quartet who’d come to collect them seemed affected as the train raced toward London. The woman got up to pace the length of the car. Alisha flinched her shoulders back, as if the woman being in action threatened her, and the time whispered itself in the back of her mind: two minutes, thirty-four seconds left.
“You’re up for the highest bidder, you know?” The woman stopped beside Alisha’s seat, reaching above her to hold on to one of the balance poles that hung from the ceiling. “The three of you. Your government is the lowballer so far.”
“Really?” Curiosity piqued in Brandon’s voice, breaking him out of his sulk. “What are we worth?”
“You’re worth a conservative half million,” she answered. Brandon folded the laptop case against his chest, sullenness returning twofold.
“I always thought I should be worth at least a million.”
“These two are only worth a quarter million each,” the woman offered, gesturing to Alisha and Reichart. Alisha pulled a face of acceptance, while Reichart looked insulted.
“Dollars or euros?”
“Euros.” It was the woman’s turn to look offended. “Nobody works for dollars anymore.”
“Oh.” Brandon brightened. “Half a million euros isn’t bad.”
“And that’s conservative,” Alisha reminded him. “It’s probably what the U.S. is offering.”
“She’s a smart one,” the woman said. “Care to counteroffer?”
Alisha exchanged a glance with Reichart before they both looked at Brandon. He straightened, clutching Lilith’s case to his chest. “What?”
“I certainly don’t have that kind of money,” Alisha said. Reichart turned his hands up, miming empty pockets.
“You’re the one with all the patents,” she continued before looking back to Reichart with a frown. “And I don’t believe for a minute you’re broke, Frank. I know what you got paid for some of those gigs.”
“I donated it all to charity,” Reichart said blandly.
“The only charity you know anything about is the kind governments shower on you to hunt down people in the same kind of situation you’re in right now,” Alisha snapped. “Don’t give me that crap.”
“Sweetheart, crap’s the only thing you’re worth giving. You made it real clear you weren’t into my thing anymore back there on the plane.” Some of the anger in Reichart’s voice was real, Alisha realized, and stuck her jaw out in injury that was only partially mocked, herself. “So you can butt the hell out of my finances, kid.” The irritating nickname was stressed, and Alisha saw a flash of triumph in Reichart’s eyes as it struck home. “What I do with my money’s none of your business.”
Eighty-seven seconds. Alisha knotted both hands around the pole and pulled herself upright, cheeks flushing with anger. Her knuckles turned white, her grip hard enough to ache as she glowered at Reichart. “This is exactly why it doesn’t work with us, Frank. You twist the things I say and only hear what you want to in them.” She heard a chuckle over the thrum of the train, and saw amused glances being exchanged in window reflections. “Talking to you is like talking to a brick wall.”
“This really isn’t the time,” Brandon said through his teeth. Alisha and Reichart shot him equally dirty looks and he got to his feet, clenching Lilith’s briefcase in one hand. “It really isn’t the time,” he repeated. “I’ve been putting up with you two making moon-calf eyes at each other long enough. You think I can’t see it? I thought we had something,” he spat at Alisha, and once more the bitterness was real. She closed her eyes, swaying with the train’s motion, as if his words had managed a palpable hit.
Forty-five seconds. “We’re all about to get hauled in somewhere we may never see the light of day from again.” Alisha took a deep breath, exhaling as though it might be her last taste of free air. Centering herself, the combat part of her mind acknowledged, though she let none of that show in the dullness of her voice. “I think now is exactly the time.”
She didn’t have to open her eyes to move. Preternatural hearing kicked in, ignoring the white noise of the train and focusing on breathing, on small body movements, on the whisper of cloth against cloth. Strength honed with years of yoga practice and focused with her careful breath came to the fore as she gripped the pole and swung her legs up, kicking with the full weight of her body.
The brunette gave a single shocked grunt as Alisha’s feet caught her in the diaphragm. Her hold on the overhead pole kept her from smashing back into the windows as hard as Alisha had hoped, but she was off her feet and winded. Alisha’s feet hit the ground and she changed the direction of her momentum, leaping forward to grab the woman’s shirt in one hand and her hair with the other. One sharp blow against the hard plastic seat edge sent the woman slithering to the floor, insensate.
“Leesh!” Reichart’s warning came an instant too late, Alisha dropping forward in time to avoid the brunt of a blow, but still driven down on top of the woman she’d just rendered unconscious. She swung her leg around backward, a wide sweep that crashed her calf muscles into her attacker’s ankles, but she lacked height and angle to knock him off his feet. Swearing, she
rolled with her own kick, changing trajectories and getting herself out of the path of his next blow.
It never came. The man folded, boneless, to reveal Brandon behind him, Lilith’s carrying case held in his hands like a weapon. Alisha’s muscles trembled with readiness for action as she came up in a crouch over the brunette woman’s legs, but no one was left standing. No one she didn’t recognize and trust, at least. It took a few seconds to release adrenaline enough to push to her feet. The train slowed and she caught a bar to hold herself, looking at the four bodies lying around them. Three against four, Alisha thought a little dazedly, were much better odds than one against two or more, which was what she was accustomed to.
Only then, belatedly, did she allow herself to hear the gasps and shrieks of panic from the other train passengers. She bared her teeth in frustration, glancing down the car, and watched people avert their eyes and crowd toward the doors. At least one man was on his cell phone already, cursing as he couldn’t get a signal.
“It worked,” Brandon said, sounding mildly astonished. Alisha broke her attention away from the others on the train and cracked a grin at him, hearing herself ask, “Were they that bad or are we that good?”
Reichart snorted, a sound closer to laughter than she expected. “We’re that good. But that was the easy part. Right now I’m wishing it was high noon and Paddington Station was going to be crawling with people.” As he spoke the train stopped, doors sliding open.
“It’s been thirty-nine seconds since the fight started,” Alisha reported on the way out the door. “The cops may not have been watching the monitors—”
Pounding footsteps put the lie to her hopes. Reichart barked a curse and all three of them broke into a run, Alisha’s shorter legs made up for by less body mass to move. Voices rose in anger and panic, ordering people down. Alisha dared one glance over her shoulder to see if the Paddington police were local or airport authority. Local: there was no sign of guns, especially of the automatic weapons airport security were allowed to carry. It gave them a chance. Alisha drew in a deep breath and let it carry her to quicker speeds, racing for the escalators and leaping up the moving steps three at a time.
A broad-shouldered cop met her at the top of the steps with a clothesline hit across the collarbones. Alisha crashed backward, tumbling down the escalator again, head ringing as she smacked it against shifting metal. Reichart shouted, half warning and half alarm, and leaped over her as he charged up the stairs. Alisha grabbed the moving railing, hauling herself to her feet, vision blurred with tears that she blinked away. A roar sounded, indistinguishable at first from blood pounding in her ears. Clearing sight helped establish the noise’s source: Reichart, using the battle cry to give himself strength as he fell on the cop who’d hit her. Alisha let the escalator bring her to the top of the terminal, too dizzy to bring herself back into the fight any faster.
“Reichart.” A touch on his shoulder pulled him back from the semi-conscious officer. Alisha shook her head, grateful for an instant of silence and focus. “No casualties. These aren’t the bad guys.”
A touch of rage faded from Reichart’s eyes and he glanced down, then nodded and let the cop go.
Alisha inclined her head, slow gentle motion, then lifted her gaze again as the brief moment of clarity faded and the fight around her took the spotlight again.
Brandon, for all of Reichart’s mockery—for all of Alisha’s dismissal, for that matter—could and did hold his own in a fight. As she watched, he dropped Lilith’s case and lifted a hand to catch a billy stick in his palm as it swung down, the impact a vicious crack that made Alisha’s stomach flinch. Brandon yelled as if the sound could release some of the pain, but never stopped moving, twisting the stick around until the policewoman on the other end was forced to release it. By that time she’d been drawn too close. Brandon smashed a flat-heeled hand into her jaw, sending her head back with a nasty snap. Weapon now in hand, he spun and caught another falling stick in the crossguard of the one he held, whipping his opponent’s club free in what looked very much like a fencing disengage. He’d somehow become the first defense, Alisha realized, holding the line while Alisha got to her feet again. Reichart moved forward to join him, and Alisha followed, left with no more time to admire the men she fought beside as officers descended.
She came into battle at a run, ducking more in instinct than from conscious need, and drove her shoulder forward as another billy stick whirred over her head. The man she hit huffed and above her she heard another crack of flesh hitting flesh. A stick came out of nowhere, smashing into her back. She yowled, dropping to the floor, and rolled, lashing out at knee-level. A pop of sinew and a scream of pain told her how solidly she’d hit, and she muttered, “Sorry,” beneath her breath as she scrambled to her feet.
She came up the third point of a dangerous triangle, Reichart and Brandon already back to back. At least one officer sprinted for the street, radioing for backup; Alisha dismissed him, intending to be long gone from Paddington Station before any more help could arrive. She clenched her stomach muscles to take a hit, still wheezing as a fist found its way past her defenses, but the woman who’d thrown the punch had gotten too close. Alisha brought a knee up, catching the other woman in the groin, then drove an elbow down as the woman doubled, smashing her between the shoulder blades. The woman dropped and Alisha moved with the men, a rotation of deadly force so smooth they might have spent years rehearsing together.
Brandon grunted behind her, a low sound of pain, and a cool space opened up behind her as he fell. She and Reichart moved back to back: there would be time to go back for Brandon in a few more seconds, once the immediate threat was taken care of. Alisha blocked a falling stick to her left and missed one from the right, spinning with the blow and leaving Reichart’s back unprotected. She turned her own fall into a rough cartwheel, clobbering her assailant in the cheekbone with a booted heel, and came to her feet in time to watch Reichart, graceful as a dancer, duck between the last two men standing. Their blows fell on one another instead of Reichart, dazing them both. Reichart came up beside them and caught them by the backs of their heads, cracking their skulls together.
Alisha, heaving for air, found a crooked grin sliding into place. It hurt, pulling muscles in her temple where she’d been hit, and that made her laugh as she took the few steps toward Brandon and hauled him to his feet. Reichart knelt to snap handcuffs free from the fallen officers, starting to link them together. “Right behind you,” he promised, and Alisha, limping and staggering under Brandon’s half-conscious weight, ran for the stairs.
Cool night air hit as shockingly as a blow, Brandon catching his breath and putting more weight on his own feet as Alisha pushed outside with him. “Did we win?”
Alisha grinned again, painfully, and braced herself while Brandon leaned, still working out which way was up. “We won.” Reichart’s footsteps sounded behind them and she looked back to find his expression grim as he displayed Brandon’s empty laptop case.
“We won,” he agreed, “but Lilith is gone.”
Chapter 21
Any grogginess lingering in Brandon’s mind cleared with Reichart’s words, the scientist’s eyes going hard and angry. “How—”
“That cop,” Alisha said between her teeth. “The one who ran for backup. Dammit. Dammit! I thought they were cops.” The explanation, almost an apology, was offered to both men. “No weapons, they were uniformed—”
“We all thought they were cops, Alisha. And if they weren’t, the real police will be here inside a minute. We’ve got to go.” Reichart cut off apologies and explanations alike, searching for a cab to hail.
Brandon drew back, protest in the guttural sound he made. “We can’t abandon her. We’ve got to go back down there and find out who they are.”
“And do what, Parker?” Reichart rounded on him, the few inches of height he had on the other man suddenly apparent. Even the duffel he had slung across his shoulders added to the imposing difference in size, a detail Ali
sha was certain wasn’t unplanned. “Be there interrogating our suspects when the police arrive? Be there when our buddies from the train wake up?” He strode out into the street, lifting his voice to a sharp bark as a cab zoomed by. Alisha stayed at Brandon’s side, a hand wrapped around his forearm to keep him from charging back into the station.
“Reichart’s right, Brandon. There’s no way for us to get her back if we’re stuck in a cell somewhere. We’ve got to go before—” A blast of sirens cut through her words. Alisha’s hands went cold, not with fear, but with sudden calm determination. “We’ve got to go,” she repeated. “Are you with us?” She’d rendered enough people unconscious in the last few minutes. One more wasn’t going to hurt her, even if he’d be unbelievably pissed when he woke up again.
Brandon stared at her, mouth curled in a snarl, then jerked his arm from her grip and ducked forward into the taxi Reichart was already in. Alisha followed, watching his expression cautiously. She’d seen black fury on Reichart before—there were moments when it seemed his natural countenance—but the distortion of rage in Brandon’s clean-cut features was alien to her. She pressed her lips together, reaching out to comfort him, and found herself unreasonably stung as he shifted away. Reichart clipped out an address to the driver, then slammed the glass window between the front and back of the vehicle closed.
As if doing so cut a gag, Brandon snapped, “We’re not going to be able to breach our target without her, Alisha. Even if you don’t have any investment in her as a person—”
“I don’t think you’ll believe me when I say I do,” Alisha interrupted quietly, then spread her hands, palms up. “You said the laptop carried a pared-down version. Doesn’t that mean there’s a full backup still in storage?”
“She’s supposed to reintegrate with that,” Brandon snarled. “It’s the only way for her to maintain cohesion as a single being. Without amalgamating these last few days, both the laptop version and the backup become something—someone—else.”