Dangerous Promise (The Protector)

by Megan Hart

  “She blamed you for your parents dying?”

  She nodded. “Yes. And for other things.”

  She closed her eyes for a second or so, remembering. “I wasn’t . . . kind . . . when I came home. I had a huge chip on my shoulder. I had money from the settlement, and I threw it around like that made me important. Like somehow I’d become better than them. I didn’t remember much about them. I’d lost so much and . . . I wasn’t as good about it as I am now. I guess because I couldn’t really feel, I didn’t understand what they were feeling.”

  “Still. They’re your family. I’m sure you needed them when you came home. They should have been there for you.”

  Nina smiled at him. “Sure, when I was a complete sphincter? Throwing my money around like it meant something?”

  “Ouch,” Ewan said after a moment.

  “I didn’t meant that you . . . umm. Yeah.” Nina bit the inside of her cheek for a second or so. “Well. I’ve reached out to my sister since then, but she doesn’t seem to be able to forgive me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ewan said. “That can’t be easy.”

  “No. It’s not.” Nina unlinked her hands and stretched out. “It’s getting cold. You’re going to catch a chill. We should get back.”

  “You know, protecting me doesn’t mean you have to worry about me like that,” Ewan said but followed her out through the chilly splash of the waterfall again. “If I’m going to get sick, I’ll get sick. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him, surprised. “I know it’s not my job to tuck you in at night and make sure you have a nightlight on. But I also know how easy it can be for the temperatures to drop, how you could be affected by that in ways I’m not.”

  Ewan paused at the edge of the pool. The cascading water sprayed them both in a fine mist. He looked toward the shore, where they’d left their clothes.

  “Right. You’re different than I am. Enhanced.”

  “Hey,” Nina said to his back when he moved past her to get to the clothing. “That doesn’t mean better.”

  Ewan bent to gather up his jeans and shirt. The expression he turned her way was neutral. “Sure it does. That’s exactly what it means.”

  She wanted to protest and deny it, but something in the way he dismissed her in that moment kept her from speaking. Instead, she made her way to the shore and gathered her own clothes, slipping into them gratefully. When they were both dressed, she followed him back down the path they’d taken to get there.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  They got back from the hike, both sweating but only Ewan seeming winded and sore. Nina had done a check of the house before she let him go in, but he didn’t protest even though he was certain nobody had trespassed while they were out. By the time she came back outside to let him in, night had started to fall.

  “I’m going to rummage up some dinner,” he said. “I’m sure you’re hungry.”

  Nina patted her lean belly. “Always. I’m going to do a little workout, if you don’t mind.”

  “The hike wasn’t enough of one?” He paused, looking her over.

  She gave a rueful laugh. “It just reminded me how long it’s been since I really did my normal routine. It will only take me about half an hour. Then I can come help you with dinner, if you want.”

  “You don’t have to. I’ll grab a few of the premade meal packs from the storage cellar.” He lingered in the doorway to watch her for another minute before he ducked inside and grabbed a few of the foil packages from the shelves in the basement.

  He could watch her through the window over the kitchen sink as he unzipped the popovers, made of spiced vegetables and protein cubes in a flaky pastry, and emptied them into a couple glass containers he then put into the microwave. When he returned to the window, Nina had dropped into a smooth, still pose that reminded him of the way a wild animal would crouch before pouncing.

  Elegantly, she moved through a series of patterns with her hands and feet. Spinning slowly, every motion looked as though she were doing them at a quarter speed. Deadly beautiful, Ewan thought. He couldn’t stop staring.

  She wasn’t finished by the time the popovers had heated, so Ewan brought out two plates and sat on the back porch to watch her. Night had fully fallen and the first hints of the moon were glinting beyond the tree line. A cool breeze had kicked up, blowing the fine tendrils of curly black hair off Nina’s face. In a few weeks it would be too cold at night to sit out here, but tonight it was perfect.

  Nina ended with a stretch and gave him a smile. She couldn’t have been surprised to see him, but she looked amused. “Hey.”

  “Here.” He held up a popover. “I have more inside, if you want.”

  She sat next to him and bit into the pastry. They ate quietly for a moment or so before she pointed at the sky. Stars had started peeking out of the darkness.

  “I haven’t seen a sky this clear in a long time.” Nina tucked the last bite of popover into her mouth and chewed with a happy sigh. Around the mouthful, she added, “Those are real stars!”

  Ewan tipped his face upward, enjoying his own bite of the surprisingly good meal. “About eight years ago, I had several miles of filtration installed, enough to deal with any residual pollution that blew in. It keeps the sky clear, at least here.”

  “It’s so pretty.” She looked at him. “If you loved this place so much, how come you picked it for one of your safe houses? I mean, you could have bought a new place and kept this one to use for pleasure.”

  “I figured with all the records wiped out from Gray Tuesday, there’d be no way to trace this place to me, especially after I set it up under the shell corporation. I’d only ever need to use it if I was in some kind of danger, and if I was in that dire of a sitch, it seemed likely this might be the last place I saw on Earth. I liked the idea that if I might be killed it would be here.” Ewan finished his popover and wiped his fingers on his pants. “And here we are.”

  Nina stretched out her legs and leaned back, supporting her weight on her arms. She studied the sky. “Are you worried now? About dying in this place?”

  Ewan mimicked her posture. Another tickle of breeze chilled him, but he didn’t want to go inside yet. “No. Not with you here.”

  “Ah.” Nina didn’t say anything after that but sat with him in companionable silence.

  “My sister loved this place more than I do. It belonged to her, actually. My parents had willed it to her.”

  “Because she was the favorite.”

  He laughed under his breath. “Yes. After she died, it came to me.”

  Nina glanced at him, but said nothing. Her clear respect for his right to tell her the story, or not, reminded Ewan one more time how much he liked her, and that in turn reminded him uncomfortably of how much Nina believed he did not like her at all. He twisted a little to glance at her. The fine tendrils that had escaped her braid clung to her forehead and cheeks with sweat from her workout, although the breeze was drying them. In the glow from the kitchen windows, her dark skin gleamed.

  “My sister and I didn’t get along as kids, but when we got older I really admired her conservation work. She didn’t think much about my place in the tech world. Funnily, she seemed to respect me more when I was pushing candy. Probably because she had the sweetest tooth of anyone I’ve ever met.” Ewan shrugged, remembering how deeply addicted his sister had been to the powders and tablets. “Katie was so involved with nature and animals and trying to find ways to preserve them that she didn’t think we needed more tech.”

  “She wouldn’t have liked me, I guess.”

  Ewan shifted on the cooling boards of the porch. “I think she’d have liked you a lot, Nina. She wouldn’t have liked what was done to you, which is totally different.”

  What had been done to her, what he’d made possible. What he’d created to save his sister had turned out to be the worst possible solution. Katie would have hated it, if she’d known, but by the time the enhancement tech had been imp
roved enough for implantation, she’d already been gone.

  “She had early onset dementia,” Ewan continued quietly before Nina could say anything. “There was never any proof that it had been triggered by her candy addiction, but I always thought that had something to do with it.”

  Nina drew her knees to her chest and linked her fingers together. “I’m sorry.”

  “It was hard. Watching her die that way. By the end, she could rattle off every scientific name for the animals she’d been working to bring back from extinction, but she couldn’t remember anything that had happened to her in the past fifteen minutes. It was impossible for her to take care of herself. She was failing so fast, right in front of my eyes. I brought her here thinking that being in this old, familiar place might trigger something for her. Might help her hang on to herself.” Ewan closed his eyes briefly and swallowed against the lump in his throat. Toward the end, Katie had become a wizened, shriveled, and shrieking hag who’d clawed out at anyone who tried to touch her. “But by that time, she was already so lost. There was no saving her. I took her home and she died a few days later.”

  “I’m so, so sorry.” Nina let her hand rest on his shoulder, her fingers gently pressing before she withdrew the touch. “That must have been so hard.”

  “My parents were both gone. Katie was the only family I really had left. We hadn’t had the best relationship, but still. She was my sister.” He wished Nina would touch him again.

  “Oh!” Nina cried in delight. “Is that a bat?”

  Ewan watched the small dark shape soar and dip. When it was joined by another, he grinned. “Yeah. I had some imported here a few years ago, built some shelters for them. Looks like they’re thriving.”

  She gave him a gleeful grin. “Wow. I’ve seen pictures, and once, in a zoo. But never in real life. I thought most of them died out after Station One.”

  The first inhabitable space station on the moon had never been completed. Station One’s construction had done so much initial damage to the moon that an international outcry had stopped it and changed the laws to make any further development illegal. Too bad the damage had sent the Earth spiraling into a chaos of environmental anomalies, including the destruction of many different species of animals left vulnerable to the changing world. Many colonies of bats had succumbed to a specific bacterial outbreak caused by changes in the average temperatures of their habitats. Fewer bats had meant more bugs. Some of them had carried disease, which had led to pandemics. One thing leading to another, to another, Ewan thought as he looked at her. The failure of the space station hadn’t led directly to his pursuit of med tech, but it had been a factor.

  “Before Katie started to get so sick, she lobbied tirelessly for breeding and release programs. The bats on this property came from her work.”

  Nina smiled. “It must be really fulfilling, then, to see them in the wild. Alive.”

  “Yeah.” He turned again to the sky. “Absolutely.”

  “I’m still hungry. And it’s getting cold. Let’s go in?” She was already unfolding herself gracefully to stand over him.

  She gave him her hand to help him up, and he took it. The motion pulled him to his feet and almost into her arms. To steady himself, Ewan put his hands briefly on her hips.

  “Sorry,” Ewan said.

  “No need to be.” She shook her head and moved past him, through the doorway, pausing just beyond it to hold out her hand. “Are you coming?”

  Inside, it was her turn to fix them something to eat, and she put together a platter of dried fruits, nuts, and some cheese from one of the foil packets. They ate in the living room while she plucked a book from the shelf and settled onto the couch and Ewan, having nothing else to do, did the same. They read quietly together. Companionably.

  When he looked up, she was still deeply engrossed in her book, turning the pages swiftly. Her brow furrowed in concentration. He let himself drink in the sight of her.

  “You’re staring again,” Nina said without looking up. “It’s a thing with you.”

  “Just thinking about everything that had to happen in the universe to bring us to this moment,” Ewan said, suddenly strangely contemplative. She’d said something like that, not so long ago, about her and Hendricks. He wasn’t trying to remind her of the other man, but he had been thinking about it. “All of the pieces that had to fall into place in order for us to end up here. Now.”

  Nina tucked her finger into the book and closed it, meeting his gaze. “You could say that about everything. Is there something in particular about us, here, now, that got you thinking that way?”

  People had decided to build a space station on the moon which had caused changes in the world, which had in turn led to changes in society, which had then led to wars, to Gray Tuesday, to the rise of the tech he’d invented, which had, in the end, put Nina on the couch across from him. Go further back to the reasons why there’d been a space station planned in the first place, add in his sister’s illness and a hundred dozen other bits of minutiae, and he could never figure out what it all meant. Not unless there really was a single divine being that looked out for all of them, shaping and pushing them all.

  When he said as much, Nina laughed. She put the book aside. “Uh-oh. Crisis of faith? Or non-faith, as it were? Have you decided to get back into the Onegod?”

  “No.” Ewan shook his head. “Anyway, organized religion is an excuse for people not to be held accountable for their own actions.”

  “And it’s important to you that you be held accountable?”

  He chewed on that for a moment. “I think so.”

  “That’s admirable. Lots of people prefer to lay the blame on everyone else.” She studied him. “You have a lot going on inside that pretty head of yours, Ewan Donahue.”

  He laughed. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” Nina glanced at the book again, but didn’t pick it up. “Anything else going on in there you need to talk about?”

  “I liked kissing you,” he said. Blunt. Abrupt. Honest.

  Her lips pursed. “Uh-huh.”

  “I wanted to kiss you. I wanted to do more than that. You think I don’t like you, Nina, but I do. Very much. You think I don’t know who you are. But . . . I promise you, I do.” Spoken aloud, the truth lifted some of the weight from his chest that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding so close.

  At his words, Nina sat back against the couch. She blinked rapidly. Then nodded. “Another dangerous promise.”

  “You’re smart. Funny. Witty. You keep me in my place, and that’s no easy thing to do,” Ewan told her, getting bolder. “I trust you with my life.”

  “Also no easy thing to do, I imagine.” She leaned forward a little, her hands on her knees.

  He echoed the position. There was still a room’s worth of distance between them, but he wanted to get at least a little closer. “I just wanted you to know that.”

  * * *

  “Thank you,” Nina said, curious about where all this was coming from, and why.

  Ewan got up, leaving the book she’d noticed he’d only been halfheartedly reading on the couch. He went to the fireplace to poke the logs into higher flames, sending a flare of warmth into the room. He faced her, hands on his hips, his expression almost a challenge.

  “I wouldn’t regret it if we slept together. I wouldn’t end up hating you. Or myself,” he added like she’d tried to contradict him even though she hadn’t even opened her mouth.

  “Are you saying you want to sleep with me?” she asked after a moment.

  He was quiet, but clearly struggling to find the words. Nina took a few steps toward him but stopped with enough distance between them that neither of them could reach the other without making more of an effort. Ewan shook his head, still saying nothing.

  “It’s because of the tech?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But also not for reasons you think.”

  Frustrated, she let out a slow, huffing breath. “Are you going to tell me what they a
re?”

  “I . . . no. I’m not.”

  She felt her jaw tighten, teeth gritting, and forced herself to relax. “Whatever. Can I get back to my book?”

  “Nina.”

  “Ewan,” she retorted. “What? What is so top secret, so important to be hidden, that you can’t simply tell me? You know that no matter what it is, all you have to do is order me to be reset at the end of this job, and I won’t remember it at all. What could possibly be so important or awful that you can’t just tell me?”

  Ewan’s lip curled. “I told you. I would never do that to you. It’s beyond wrong. It’s despicable. Vile. Nobody should have the ability or the right to erase another person’s memory. Not ever. Don’t you get it, Nina, I watched my sister disintegrate in front of my eyes for months as she forgot herself. I will never, ever condone or support anything that gives the power to destroy a person that way.”

  “I understand.” And she did, better than she had before. Learning about Ewan’s sister made his revulsion toward the tech so much more logical. “But you need to understand that most things come with a price, and that’s one I would gladly continue to pay if it means getting the upgrades I need. Because either way, I’m going to start to fail. So are the rest of us. Without further development of that tech, we’re all going to be just like Katie.”

  Ewan gulped air. His eyes were red-rimmed. He shook his head. “Fifteen of you compared to the rest of the world.”

  “Fourteen, now,” she reminded him, taking a brutal satisfaction in the way he flinched.

  “They passed laws making it illegal for the tech to be used in soldiers, but what happens when something makes money? Whoever owns it wants to keep making money. That tech could be refined and sold right alongside the cosmetic tech. Instead of just changing the color of your eyes you could actually use them to record whatever happens to you. Everyone could have access to that ability. You think people wouldn’t pay for that?”

  “If you’re going to refine it, you could take out the parts that allow for resetting,” she began, but stopped when he waved a hand.