by Belle Malory
“Why does that matter?”
“Just answer the question.”
He stared at the wall, shrugging. “She never gave me a reason. If I had to guess, I would say it’s out of loyalty. In her eyes, we’re equal. I’ve always treated her like family. And then you come along, and I put you above everyone. When I dragged you from that pool Sigly tried drowning you in, I chose you over the keepers, including her.”
“You were just doing what was right,” she pointed out.
“I don’t think Fang sees it that way, and I don’t think what she’s feeling is love. My guess is that she’s jealous because she doesn’t come first anymore. I hurt her, too, Kennedy, the moment I stopped putting her first.”
“But since then, you’ve convinced me to come back, to train harder, to work harder. What is that, if not something you did for the keepers as a whole? Loyalty to our united purpose has always come first for you—and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. That’s the way it should be.”
Phoenix took a few more steps towards her, closing the distance between them. She tried to move away, but found herself cornered against the wall.
“Yes, it should be, but it’s not.”
She swallowed nervously. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you’re the most important thing in my life.” His hand brushed her cheek, caressing the side of her face, causing her stomach to do that flutter thing.
She shook her head in disbelief. “That’s not true.”
“Call me selfish if you want, but when it comes to you, everything else fades into the background. You come first, Kennedy. You come before Fang, before the keepers, and the whole bloody world.”
Kennedy stared at him. Beats of time passed as she tried to piece together what he had just said. She watched him watching her, his face inches away. That was genuinely how he felt.
For God’s sake, why does the room feel as if it’s spinning?
“Kennedy,” Phoenix whispered. “You’re not breathing.”
Oh. Right. Oxygen.
The thing people needed to stay alive.
She sucked in a deep breath, wondering if she should be annoyed or grateful that he was paying so much attention to her body.
Phoenix reached for her hand, weaving his fingers through hers. “Look at me.”
She did as he asked, seeing a whirlwind of emotions beneath his typically impenetrable surface.
“Look beyond all the bullshit, and tell me you honestly think I meant to hurt you.” His eyes held onto hers, challenging her. “I dare you to tell me you believe that.”
No, hurting her wasn’t something he meant to do. That much was obvious. But whether intentional or not, he did end up hurting her, and that was what she couldn’t let go of. The ends never justified the means.
When she didn’t say anything, he rested his forehead against hers. “Let me kiss you,” he pleaded, moving his hands to her waist. He took a ragged breath. “I want to kiss you so bad, Kennedy. Let me kiss you until you forgive me.”
Heat swept over her cheeks. She stared at his full lips, wanting to taste them just as badly. Her hands itched to wrap around his neck and pull him the rest of the way. She wanted…she wanted…to melt into him.
What is wrong with me?
Closing her eyes, she blocked everything out, summoning every ounce of will power she had. Then she tore his hands away from her. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
God, the pain in his voice just about broke her. She pressed her lips together, trying to remember that she was angry with him. “Phoenix…”
“Why not?” he asked again, sharp enough to make her flinch. “Give me a reason. A real one.”
“Okay, fine,” she said, shaking. “I don’t think you had bad intentions when you allowed Fang to kiss you, but the part I can’t get over is that you didn’t stop her to begin with. You say I come first, but you didn’t put me first when you let her have her way.” She paused for a moment, trying to steel her voice. “You used to stir so many emotions within me, Phoenix, all of them happy. Just picturing your face used to make me feel excitement, joy, desire. But when I think of you now…I don’t feel any of those things. All I feel is betrayal, sadness, and an aching for something I can’t name. I’m sorry…I don’t think I can get past that.”
She looked away, afraid of his reaction. Honesty shouldn’t cause this awful feeling of shame, but she felt it anyway. She’d only given him what he wanted by telling him the truth.
Phoenix tilted her chin up to face him. “I know I messed up. But I’m not giving up. I swear I’ll do whatever it takes to make you feel those things again. Do you hear me? I’ll wait as long as I have to.”
The way he spoke, with so much conviction, made Kennedy believe him. She turned out of his grip, needing to get out of there. She rushed through the hall, hearing him call her name from behind, but she didn’t look back.
Everyone she passed stared at her, angling their heads around. It wasn’t until she was far enough away that she realized she had tears in her eyes. Brushing them away, she became angry all over again. Stupid tears. Crying would make her exactly the type of girl she didn’t want to be. The weak, pathetic girl.
If she was ever going to prove herself, she couldn’t react to every little emotion she felt. Seeing Phoenix’s face and hearing the pain in his voice was too much. Staying mad at him was difficult when he looked at her like that, and she needed to stay mad at him. How much he hurt her this time was bad enough, leaving her feeling like she’d been ripped in two. If she didn’t keep her anger at the surface, and if something like this ever happened again…she sighed.
It just might crush her soul.
Nineteen
Kennedy had been given the remainder of the day off, under strict orders from Mason to get some rest. As tempting as that sounded, the problem with resting was that it led to a wandering mind, and that was no good. She needed to stay busy. She needed to get Phoenix’s face out of her head.
Determined to put herself together, she decided to sift through the piles of information Matilda amassed on Dominika’s family. She’d been putting it off anyway, just by the sheer enormity of the task—how did one find a needle in a haystack? DOE certainly hadn’t been able to do it. But she had the spare time. She might as well take the time to look for anything they’d missed.
Interestingly enough, one news article labeled Maxwell Ryder not only as the employer of Nika’s Dad, but also a close friend of the family. He was present for the funeral, and had taken it upon himself to pay for Nika’s care and medical expenses. She was being treated for PTSD at a local hospital when she was discovered and named the seventh keeper.
Kennedy sipped at her latte, thinking. The connection between Ryder and Nika was obvious, but the real question was what name on that list freaked her out? Running the names through search engines didn’t help. Some were associated with Ryder, like Penelope and her land, but none of them connected to Nika or her family specifically.
“Find anything yet, cupcake?” Matilda asked as she came out of the laundry room. Kennedy flinched, still not used to her legs.
“Not much. You wanna run the info through your system and give me some statistics?”
“Already did. I’m not coming up with anything either.”
“That’s a first.”
Matilda put her hands on her metal hips. “It means I don’t have enough information to make a reliable estimation. If I knew more about Dominika or her family, I would most certainly amaze you with my talents.”
Kennedy lightly chuckled. “I’m sure you would.”
It made her wonder though, if she was wasting her time with this research after Matilda had already checked for hidden facts. Could she really uncover something a high-tech Series Seven android couldn’t?
Then it hit her.
Freshman year, she’d taken a course on psychology, another subject Professor Mason considered useless. She, on the other hand, loved learning a
bout the way people operated. One particular chapter stuck out in her mind, which questioned the validity of human instinct. The sixth sense was supposed to be the brain’s innate ability to piece together a combination of subconscious signals which can’t necessarily be defined as facts or evidence.
If a sixth sense was real, she had a chance at finding what Matilda’s system couldn’t.
Go back to the article about the funeral.
That was her instinct talking. Had to be. She’d already read through the funeral report thoroughly, finding nothing that stood out. Maybe her gut was telling her to dig a little deeper.
Kennedy waved her hand in the air to cue the hologram computer back several pages. She stopped at the picture of six wooden caskets, side by side. Mourners dressed in black surrounded the caskets.
She frowned as she stared at it, the depressing images stirring up memories of her own dark past. Losing her father had been the single most horrific experience of her life, leaving her with emotional scars and a fat therapy bill her mother couldn’t afford.
Nika lost her entire family, was forced to listen to them die from beneath her parent’s bed, and was helpless to do anything about it. And then right after that happened, life hit her with another blow—she would have to live on Olympus with a bunch of strangers and train to keep the world safe. Who in her situation would care about keeping the world safe?
Not me, that’s for sure. I’d probably feel like blowing it up myself.
It no longer seemed odd that the girl had issues. The fact that she hadn’t already lost it completely was the real shocker.
Kennedy read over the article again, recounting the murders, followed by a description of the funeral. When nothing stood out, she read it again, and then a third time, making sure to analyze each and every sentence.
“This is no use!” she said, groaning loudly.
She zoned out for a second, debating whether she should continue, or if she should quit the research altogether and actually do some of that resting Mason recommended. Then a minor detail caught her eye within the funeral picture she had been mindlessly staring at.
Nika’s fur boots.
She would have never been able to recognize her in the large crowd if it weren’t those boots. She zoomed in on the image. Nika was pressed up against a woman’s side, hiding her face as if she were crying. The woman held Nika close, one arm wrapped around her shoulders protectively.
Kennedy’s eyes darted to the caption. She read through the list of names until she found Nika’s and then looked at the name beside it.
Eva Gurevich.
Hmm. Didn’t sound familiar.
“Matilda, do me a favor and run the name Eva Gurevich through a search. See what you can find.”
The android was busy in the kitchen, preparing a dinner that smelled delicious. “Sure thing. Let’s see…we’re connecting this to the Orlov case, right? Because there are quite a few Eva Gurevich’s out there…” She chopped a green bell pepper into immaculately straight lines. “Found her. Dominika’s mother had a sister-in-law with that name. Gurevich was the last name of her previous husband, but she’s since remarried to Alexander Duchovny.”
Ah, ha. Now we’re getting somewhere. “So she’s Nika’s aunt?”
“Technically she was her aunt through marriage, but she’s not anymore. She divorced the first husband.”
“Can you tell me if Nika has any other living relatives?”
“Let’s see, she has an uncle in Germany and a few cousins in Poland.” She filled a pot with water, then set it on the stove. “All of which have been questioned regarding her whereabouts, by the way.”
Kennedy narrowed her eyes on Matilda. “How do you know that?”
“I checked the St. Petersburg police records.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong here, but isn’t Dominika’s case still an ongoing investigation?”
“That’s right.”
The way Matilda spoke so casually, as if they were talking about the weather instead of committing felonious crimes, had her gaping at the robot. “Okay, this has gone too far. We really need to talk about your new hacking hobby. As hugely impressed as I am by your capabilities, you can’t look at police investigation reports without permission. They’re not public records.”
“No one ever said I couldn’t look at them.”
“Hacking is a crime, Matilda.”
An amused snort came from the robot. “What are they going to do, send me to jail?”
Picturing the robot behind bars was kind of funny, but she wasn’t about to say so. “What if they take you away from me—or worse, shut you down?”
“What a morbid thing to say,” Matilda lilted. “I think you’ve been spending too much time reading about funerals, cupcake. It’s beginning to set you on edge.”
“Matilda, this isn’t a joke!” Kennedy crossed her arms over her chest, unable to believe she was getting frustrated with a robot—a robot, for crying out loud.
“Relax. There’s nothing to worry about.” Matilda tossed an assortment of sliced veggies into the pot on the stove. “There are very few of my kind in existence. The Series Seven model requires too much time and money to create—we’re not even on the market right now. Anyway, my point is that we grow and learn based on our owner’s needs, and I highly doubt there are any other Series Seven owners who require the once-in-a-while computer infiltration assistance.”
“That would only be comforting if you can’t get caught.”
“I can’t,” she insisted. “I’m untraceable, cupcake. And since there aren’t scores of other androids with—how did you put it? Hacking hobbies?—that means I have no chance of getting caught by default either.”
Brilliant. Her robot was a bad influence. And apparently Kennedy needed her to be one. She wondered what that said about her.
Matilda placed a lid over the pot and turned around to face her. “If it makes you feel any better, my statistics rule in favor of me never getting caught with a ninety-nine point nine percentile rate.”
“Okay, then. How about running it by me next time? That might make me feel better.”
Well, a little better anyway.
“That’s an awful idea. If I ever did get caught, that would make you an accomplice.”
Kennedy grimaced. Matilda was right. She liked the robot, enjoyed having her around, but she wasn’t planning on going down with her. “In that case, let’s try to keep the hacking to a minimum. Emergencies only.”
“Fine,” the android agreed, but sounded sulky about it.
“Great. Now that that’s settled, can we please get back to the original topic?”
“Nika’s family, you mean.” Matilda went back to cooking, pouring some oil into a frying pan.
“Yes. Do you know if this Eva lady was questioned?”
The pan sizzled as she set strips of uncooked chicken inside of it. “Funny you should ask, but I do know the answer to that question. Of course, it took some exemplary hacking skills to get into the police files—”
“Matilda,” she ground out through clenched teeth.
“No, she hasn’t been questioned.”
Kennedy looked at the picture again, seeing the way Eva cradled Nika to her side. “Do we have an address for this lady?”
“I’m sure I can find one. Why? What are you thinking?”
“I think if we find Eva Duchovny, we find Nika.”
Matilda set her spatula down, looking at her. “What makes you come to that conclusion?”
Kennedy shrugged. “Instinct.”
~ ~
The next morning Kennedy immediately went to find Professor Mason, hoping to speak to him before the morning meeting began. Luckily she found him on the way in to his office. “Professor, do you have a moment?”
He held his hand over the scanner, prompting the door to unlock. “Good morning, Miss Mitchell. Are you feeling better today?”
“Yeah, I’m great, but I need to speak with you.” She followed him in
side, watching him anxiously as he set his briefcase down.
“Is it important or can it wait until later? Don’t mean to be short, but my inbox is flooded with messages I need to return before the meeting begins.”
“I think I might know where Nika is.”
That earned her a stunned look from the Professor. He gestured to the chair in front of his desk. “Have a seat, kiddo, and talk fast.”
She did as he asked, quickly walking him through the research she had done the previous night, and telling him all about Eva Duchovny. “I believe they’re close, sir. If Nika ran to anyone, I’d bet it would be her.”
When she was through, he leaned back in his chair and stroked his beard, thinking. “You know you’re getting your hopes up, right?”
She did know that. But she felt it in her bones she was right about this. He just needed to believe her.
“It’s still worth checking out.”
“No argument there.” He waited a while longer before he nodded his head. “Okay, Miss Mitchell. I’ll contact the local authorities and have them scout the address you found.”
“Actually, Professor, I was wondering if you might be willing to send me instead.”
He raised a brow. “And why would I do that?”
She flinched at his abrasive question. “I um…well I think Nika would respond to one of the keepers better than she would the local authorities.”
“That may be true,” he allowed. “But why you in particular? Why not one of the more experienced keepers?”
Kennedy wrung her hands together, looking around the room. “That, I can’t give you a good answer for. All I can say is that I feel connected to Nika somehow. I want to help her.”
There was that reason, and her growing need to get as far away from Phoenix as she could, but she didn’t fill him in on that.
Professor Mason’s brow furrowed as he studied her. “If I sent you to Russia, you wouldn’t be able to go to Mexico with the others.”