by Tia Siren
“Can I help you, gentlemen?” she asked.
“Is there a Miss Claire Danes here?” the officer asked again.
“Depends. What’s wrong and when did it happen? Because I’m pretty sure we were hangin’ out havin’ a girl night and drinkin’ wine. I can vouch for that.”
I shook my head, and the officers got a good chuckle out of it, but then their eyes found me, and something in my body froze at their expressions.
“You must be Claire Danes, then,” the officer said.
“What’s the problem, officers?” I asked.
“I think you should come with us. It’s about your brother.”
My face got cold, and I was pretty sure all the blood had left it. I hopped off the edge of the desk I was sitting on. I crashed through the door and poured out into the main area of the hospital, following the two men around the corner.
All sorts of images paraded through my head. Patrick had gotten into some trouble when he was younger, right after our parents had died, but no way would he do something bad enough to warrant a police visit to my workplace. He’d been pretty pissed off about his work forcing the chip on him, but it’d been weeks, and he hadn’t mentioned much about it since the implanting.
“Officers, stop. Please, just—what’s happened? Where’s Patrick?”
“Ma’am, we, um . . .”
The officers looked at one another, and I thought I was going to scream. They’d come to my work, pulled me from my friends just as my vacation was beginning, and now they couldn’t even tell me what the fuck was going on.
“Ma’am, Patrick Danes is dead.”
All sounds ceased to exist in that moment. My mind stopped buzzing, my heart stopped pounding, and the commotion of the hospital faded into the background until there was nothing. I was floating in an endless space of nothing while falling into an abyss. Something warm came down on my back before I hit something hard on my ass, and when I finally came to, one of the police officers was holding a bottle of water up to my lips.
“Ma’am, can you hear me?” he asked.
“What the hell happened to my brother?” I choked out.
The officers looked at one another while I drank from the bottle, and when I took it from them, their eyes settled back onto me.
“Well, ma’am, we can’t really divulge anything while the investigation is ongoing.”
“Excuse me?” I asked. The officers said nothing more but looked uncomfortable. “You can’t tell me what happened or why or when this happened?”
“Ma’am—”
“Stop it! Not one more ma’am, damn you.” My hands clenched into fists as I fought to get my increasingly rapid breathing under control. Nausea bit at my stomach. This had to be a mistake. They had the wrong guy. “It’s not him. I saw him leave for work this morning. He’s fine. I can message him and show you.”
I checked my phone for messages and sent Patrick a new one. He’d answer, of course.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Danes, but he’s already been identified. The lead detective is waiting at Wallace Industries to interview you about the last time you saw your brother.”
My focus shot up from my phone. “Identified? But, how—?” The implant. That stupid, fucking implant. The officers ushered me toward the main hospital entrance, still content to leave me with no answers. They offered nothing more as we walked to their cruiser and headed toward my brother’s workplace.
Had he died there? If it had been an accident, things wouldn’t be playing out the way they were. There had to be something wrong about the way he died.
“It killed him, didn’t it?” I sucked in a breath, fighting the tremor in my voice and the emptiness spreading up through my chest that urged me to collapse. “That implant killed him. I need to know. Please. I need to know. You don’t understand. He’s all I—”
I couldn’t go on. Saying aloud he’d been everything to me, and I’d never see him again made it more real, made the rising pain sharper.
“We don’t know what happened yet. The CEO and his people are being interviewed right now. When we get you there in a secured environment, more of your questions can be answered.”
“Because Mr. Wallace wants this kept under wraps so it doesn’t hurt his precious little study?” I asked.
The officers side-glanced one another. Their lack of answer told me enough.
If that damned implant had anything to do with Patrick’s death, Wallace couldn’t run far enough or fast enough to avoid a reckoning. If it took my whole life to destroy him, I’d do it, and all the billions he had in the world wouldn’t stop me.
5
Leo
“How the fuck could our implant have killed someone, Obi?” I whispered.
“We don’t have any evidence that it did. Just stay calm and answer their questions as best as you can,” he said.
“I didn’t even know his name. I had absolutely no idea who they were walking about.”
“And that’s not your fault. You employ thousands of individuals. You couldn’t possibly have known everyone’s name.”
“Jesus Chri—We should’ve done more regular checks. We should’ve checked them twice a week instead of weekly. We should’ve had them checked here by doctors we brought into the office ourselves.”
“There’s nothing we could’ve done. And anyway, how could one of our implants cause death? They’re not toxic. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Shit, I didn’t even know his name,” I groaned.
“Leo—”
“I could’ve fucking done more.” It didn’t matter what Obi said. Until I knew the implant didn’t have anything to do with the guy’s death, this burden was mine. I deserved it. I’d been too focused on the endgame and not on the people helping me get there.
“I’ve sent a couple of people we trust to check on everyone else who has the implants. When they’ve gone around the building, they’re supposed to make their way back up here. Someone from one of the hospitals will be here soon to do a quick check. Then, if you want, we can bring in a couple doctors later for an in-depth one-month checkup to make sure the implants aren’t doing anything funny before we go the back-half of this stretch.”
“I don’t know if we should do the back-half of this stretch.”
“Look, I’ve got it under control,” Obi said. “You gotta keep your head on straight. It looks bad if you don’t.”
“How the fuck did we not see this coming?”
“Dude. Stop torturing yourself. How could anyone predic—?”
“Hello?” A firm knock on my half-open office door accompanied the sexy rasp of a woman’s voice. “Someone expecting me?”
I spun on my heels as the door swung open and a woman walked in, her natural vibrancy practically lighting up the room. Her raven hair had a blueish hue as it bounced all the way down her back, and her light blue, almond-shaped eyes were kind. Something about the softness of her flower-petal eyes combined with her jaw set in determination set a solar flare of heat in my gut.
“Ah, so you’re the boss,” she said. She held out her hand and connected her gaze with mine, and I was trapped by that look, rooted in place while the heat spread to my groin. I clasped her hand, my skin sliding along her softness, and the hairs on my arm stood on end. I had to have this woman.
“Leonard Wallace,” I said.
“Claire Joanna,” she said lightly. “I’m from the hospital.”
Funny how a handful of words can kill a libido. The guilt swallowed me, and I couldn’t look into those gorgeous eyes anymore.
“Miss?” The lead detective had slipped back in while I’d been occupied with Claire. “This is a private affair, and I need to speak with Mr. Wallace alone.”
“It’s all right. She’s here at our request. I’m sure Miss Joanna could stay for the details, right?” I asked.
“You realize your implant is currently under investigation in a murder case?” the detective said.
“Oh, a puzzle. I love puzzles,” Claire s
aid with a smirk.
“See? She loves puzzles,” I repeated.
“Leo, what the hell are you doing? Now’s not the time to be thinking with your—”
“So!” I interrupted Obi, “what do you know so far?”
“Well, the last person to verify seeing him was his neighbor. She was bringing him cookies when she found your employee dead,” the detective said.
“She was bringing him cookies?” Claire asked.
“She said she does that a lot when she bakes too much.”
“Sounds like they were probably sleeping together. Was she pretty?”
I whipped my head over to her at her question, and I couldn’t help smiling. She was spunky and to the point, and I liked those traits. Just another reason I couldn’t to take my attention off her.
“We’re looking into their relationship,” the detective said. “At any rate, when we got on scene, he had bled out from his neck. His skin was pretty marred, and your implant was lying beside his body, Mr. Wallace. His hands were bloodied as well, which indicates he tried to claw it out of his body before he died.”
“So, you aren’t sure if the implant was the cause of death?” Claire asked.
“If something happened or malfunctioned in the implant and he wanted it out that badly, then it would be, yes,” the detective said.
“Well, he could have just as easily bled out. Exsanguination could’ve been the cause of death. Was there a lot of blood?” she asked.
I kept my eyes steady on her while she volleyed with the detective. I’d gotten the feeling all morning that he was biased against my technology and the way I was testing it, and I got the feeling Claire felt that, too.
I’m glad she’d stayed. I could use that on my side, and I’d forgotten she was in the medical field.
“There was quite a bit of blood, but with the victim—”
“Detective, I’ll make this quick. I’m sure Mr. Wallace wants a smooth and speedy—”
“Leo,” I interjected. “You can call me Leo.”
“I’m sure Leo wants a smooth case closed just like families and employees want answers, but if you are biased toward his technology, no one will get what they want. If this man was killed by this implant, then I would want to know what happened. If he was not killed by this implant, but rather by exsanguination, I would want to know why he bled to death. Are we clear on the difference?”
I looked over at Obi who was watching with a stunned expression on his face. His bemused look was rare and priceless, and I was completely impressed by how Miss Joanna was handling the situation. Obi and I had tried all morning to get him to be more rational, and it seemed as if all it took was a petite woman with icy eyes to put him in his place.
“Yes, ma’am. I understand,” the detective said.
“Good. Now, what other answers do you have for these men? Have you figured out if any of the other people with this implant had similar issues?”
“Like death?” the detective quipped.
“If you want to be smart, then be smart. If you want to be dumb, then be prepared for me to point it out to you.”
God, this woman was perfect in every single way.
“What the hell is this woman even doing here?” the detective asked.
“It’s actually not a bad question,” Obi interrupted.
“I came from the hospital to check the implant sites,” she said. “At least, that’s what I was told to do. Did I come to the wrong office? I thought about test driving a chip myself. I’ve seen on a couple of occasions how it worked in our ER.”
“Under the circumstances, we aren’t taking anymore testers.” I gave Obi what I hoped was an annoyed look. “Didn’t you just tell me you were expecting her? Stop looking for pitfalls and bad guys around every corner.”
“Great,” the detective murmured. In a louder voice, he announced his exit. “I’ll be in touch if I have more questions.”
He left with his bad attitude, but negativity remained in the form of Obi. I’m not sure whether it was the detective’s determination to paint our chip as the culprit or something to do with Claire that got Obi’s balls into a pinch, but I’d had enough of being on a knife edge.
I turned my attention to Claire. “If you’d like to start checking the implant spots, I have one in my neck.”
“Could I see it?”
I walked over to the couch and sat down, and she followed me without a second thought. Seated so close, our thighs brushed, and her body heat left a swath of buzzing nerve endings along my skin. I tipped my head to the side and pointed to the implant site. The airy touch of her fingers smoothed along my skin, circling around the slight bulge the microchip made underneath. She leaned in, flooding me with the light scent of jasmine and a hint of something spicy. God, her touch was so comforting, and pangs of guilt began to ricochet through my stomach again even as my groin grew hot and achy for her body. My dick swelled and throbbed underneath my pants, and I moved my coat to cover it. I didn’t need to be feeling this way at all about a woman who was here to help, but I couldn’t contain it. She was beautiful, spirited, determined, and intelligent.
And I wanted every inch of her.
“It seems to be fine,” she said. “Would you mind showing me where to go to check the other employees?”
“Absolutely, Miss Joanna. I’m grateful to have someone like you on my side right now. If there’s anything I can do for you, despite this implant halt, just let me know,” I offered.
“That’s very generous of you, Leo. I’ll keep that in mind. Right now, though, I’d like to go prod a few more of your employees.”
“That can be arranged,” Obi said. Usually I could read my friend when others couldn’t, but this time, something besides the chip was under his skin, and I didn’t have the energy to figure it out.
The detective was geared to pin responsibility on my company, and if I’d truly thought the chip figured into this, I’d accept that, but I needed proof. If any of these exams came back even slightly problematic, it could ruin me and screw over everyone who worked here. Persecuting detective aside, today’s survival hinged on Claire finding nothing wrong.
6
Claire
I couldn’t believe my luck. If the officers who’d brought me to Wallace hadn’t left me to wait alone in the lobby, I never would have overheard the conversation about checking the implants. It gave me the perfect shot at getting answers about Patrick’s death. Never mind my insides shaking like gelatin and my heartbeat pinging at nearly twice its normal speed, it had been fate telling me to jump in while I had the chance.
Keeping composure had been a struggle for more reason than the risk of getting caught. The videos, the pictures—none of it had prepared me for being so close to Leo in person. His masculine scent wrapped around me, and those piercing eyes devoured my willpower. I could have straddled him on that couch and filled every part of me with him if we’d just been alone. But, then, reality was never as fun as fantasy. It was a bitch.
I wasn’t buying Leo Wallace’s shtick for a second. Sure, he might’ve felt guilty for what was happening, but he was either blind or covering for someone. There was foul play in this company. It reeked of it the moment I’d walked in. There was no way a chip that small and so far away from the main artery in someone’s neck could have possibly killed someone. And even if it did ‘malfunction,’ Patrick was sane enough to go to a doctor or come back to the office to have it checked. I’d done a great deal of reading on this little thing since my brother had it implanted into his body, and it wasn’t like this thing was emitting radio signals or anything. It couldn’t have gone all sci-fi weirdness on us and made him go crazy mad with fury. It was just a storage device and possible locator, if necessary.
Someone had killed my brother, and I intended to find out who.
Leo had left to take care of business matters right before the first employees started arriving. The tall, tattooed guy with the perpetually dark expression was in and out, bringing in
people for me to examine, and he instructed me to tell them that I was there to perform a planned one-month check in. He said I could examine everyone in the company who had the implant, and we could all get peace of mind that no other chips were malfunctioning.
A lot of good this check did my brother now.
It wasn’t my first choice to help the company, but there wasn’t a better way to get access like this. I worked out of Leo’s office, so between each check, I dug around for any information I could get my hands on. I took in his pictures and the books on his shelves, and I even opened his drawers and rifled through them. My search nearly ended when the muscle came in while I had a drawer open, and I thought the big man might cut me into pieces and dispose of my body in a dumpster. Instead, he grunted at my “looking for a pen” explanation and regarded me with blatant disapproval.
That was the thing about being pretty. You could get away with just about everything if you held it up with confidence.
Leo was attracted to me, and I knew exactly why he moved his suit jacket the way he did on the couch. There was something flattering and powerful in being desired by a seductive man with intense eyes who could woo just about any girl in the room.
Just about, anyway.
As if her thoughts had conjured him, Leo appeared with Obi to bring the next person into the office. When the man walked in, my pulse skipped and my breath hitched. He looked so much like Patrick. His hair wasn’t quite as dark, and his eyes were emerald instead of blue like Patrick’s—and mine, too—but we could have been related.
I leaned in to see the injection site. This was so damned hard. He had the same voice, and worst of all, he was wearing the same cologne Patrick wore. The scent spun a reel of memories in my head. The tricks we played on each other, the bullies he’d fought for me, the girlfriends I’d scared off for him, the homework we’d swapped in school. I saw him next to me at our parents’ funeral, his hand gripping mine hard enough to hurt. My breathing was coming too fast, and my eyes grew watery with unshed tears. I turned away, pretending I’d gotten something in my eyes.