She harrumphed. “I don’t do as I’m told. You should know that about me by now. Like I could walk away and leave you writhing in agony. Stupid thing to ask. Unrealistic.”
“I know.” He coughed. “I was desperate. I used you. I know it wasn’t fair.” He pulled her hand close, raising her knuckles to his lips and kissed them. “I’m sorry.”
She yanked her hand away. “Stop it. You’re being manipulative.”
“Nah,” he said. “I’m not the devious type.”
“How would you know?” she demanded, and suddenly her eyes went big. “Oh, wait. Ah…do you know? More about yourself, I mean? Did it work?”
He thought about it, but his brain was too exhausted to make any sense of the garbage heap of cracked up pieces in there. Later for that.
“I guess,” he said. “Maybe. In a sense. The memory blocks are all broken up, that’s for sure. But everything else is broken, too. It’s all in there, but there’s so fucking much of it and it’s all out of sequence. Plus I no longer have hard data to cross-reference my memories and pin them down by date and time. So it’s just a pile of disconnected crap in there.”
“Ah. Well.” She gave him a smile that was both exhausted and faintly amused. “Welcome to the real world, buddy. That’s what it’s like for us normal folks.”
“Yeah?” He shook his head. “Jesus. What a fucking mess.”
“Yeah, I think that pretty much sums it up. But do you know anything about yourself and your people now?”
He couldn’t stop touching her. He flicked his finger around at that sweet ringlet tumbling over her forehead, enjoying the way it sprang back into place once released. “I haven’t sorted through it yet,” he said softly. “But there’s one thing I know for sure.”
“Yeah? And what’s that?” Her eyes were bright, expectant.
“I love you,” he said.
Chapter 21
Dani froze.
It was too damn much. After being jerked around, torn apart and scared out of her wits, the sex god woke up and pledged his love.
She was too battered and bruised to let herself believe it. It couldn’t be this easy. He had put her through pure hell and now he was messing with her head.
“What are you saying?” she yelled. “You can’t say that!”
Luke’s calm gaze had that direct quality that always flustered her. Breaking his memory block hadn’t changed that aspect of his personality one bit.
“Why not?” he asked. “Anything else would be a lie.”
She scrambled off the bed and stood there, her hands clenched. “But you can’t say it now. After what you just put me through? It’s like saying you love me when you’re stoned. It doesn’t even count!”
“I hear you,” he said. “My folks were junkies and their word was for shit. But I’m not stoned or crazy, Dani. I’m in my right mind. Like never before.”
“I just watched you have screaming convulsions for hours straight! After you deliberately brain damaged yourself, for the second time in two months. What you made me do last night tore me apart. Damn you, Luke.” She wiped away hot, angry tears. “Aw, crap. This again.”
He pushed himself up so he was sitting on the edge of the bed, and reached out to her. “Dani—”
She slapped his hand down. “Don’t. I hate when I cry. Makes me look like shit.”
“I think you look beautiful.”
“Nix the sappy compliments, too,” she snapped.
Luke’s mouth twisted. “You wouldn’t let me say it before you zapped me last night and I got my memories back. I lived through it, and my blocks are gone, but I’m still not qualified? At what point am I going to be in good enough shape to make a big declaration to you?”
“Oh, I have no fucking idea.” She rummaged for a tissue from the fancy marble box on the antique dresser and blew her nose noisily. “Maybe when things have calmed down a little. When things are more, I don’t know. Normal.”
“Shit.” Luke looked discouraged. “Is that your goal? Normal? Good luck with that.”
She stared down at the floor for a while, working on making the tears stop. Now was not the time for blubbering. She had to keep it together.
“OK,” Luke said gently. “Don’t freak. I’ll wait. We’ll work toward normal together. I’ll put the romantic declarations on ice. But stay with me. Stand by me.”
Dani straightened her shoulders. “I’ll consider it.”
Oh man. That smile. His clear dark eyes read her so easily. He knew how she felt about him. How crushed out and turned on and upside down he made her feel.
But he wasn’t rubbing her nose in it. He was a classy guy. For all his faults.
“Thank you,” he said seriously. Like she’d made this big concession, which was such a load of crap. They couldn’t pry her away from this guy with a crowbar and a blowtorch and he damn well knew it. She’d never been particularly good at hiding the way she felt. In fact, she absolutely sucked at that.
“Tell me one thing,” she said. “Since you have your memories back, fish for this one. Are you married? Engaged? Involved?”
She held her breath. He closed his eyes, brows knitted. It was an intense physical and mental effort for him, and he was beyond exhausted, but she didn’t relent. They had to know.
After a few minutes, he opened his eyes. They were full of relief. “No,” he said.
“Just…just no?” She was too suspicious to let herself relax. “A guy like you?”
“Like me?” He frowned. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
She rolled her eyes. “Skip the fake modesty. I mean the drop-dead gorgeous guy who’s huge and tall and ripped, with the dimples and the great teeth? The one who has the big beautiful cock and knows exactly just what to do with it?”
His eyes brightened. “I do?”
“Don’t get distracted. Yeah, that guy. The one who can’t walk through a bar without getting cocktail napkins with phone numbers on them handed to him right and left. How are you still single? What’s your fatal flaw?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with being a cyborg freak.”
She waved that triviality away. “Apart from that.”
He pondered it for a while. “I saw women, from time to time. Around the time I was abducted, I was seeing this girl named Bea. A grad student at the University of Chicago. Real casual. We hung out, had sex. She was a great cook. But I think I freaked her out. She knew somehow there was something off about me. It made her nervous.”
“You didn’t tell her? You know, about…all of it?”
“About my mods and Obsidian? Fuck no. None of us ever…” His face froze, in wonder. “Oh, man. I almost…oh, shit.”
“What?” She braced herself. Here it came. And he was the type who’d keep his promises even if they hurt him. “You remembered someone?”
“Family. My people. I just got a big rush of them, images and stuff. But I can’t hold onto anything solid. This is driving me nuts.”
“Give it time,” she said. “Don’t rush. Back to the burning question. About Bea. So, uh…no romantic declarations to Bea? No pronouncements or promises?”
“Nah. She was polyamorous. You know, into multi-humping. No guilt. We agreed that it was fine.”
“Oh.” She cleared her throat. You, too? No. Forget I asked.”
“Nope. Not into that anymore. Too much trouble. And the scheduling is tricky.” He grinned at her.
“Is it?” she asked. “I wouldn’t know.”
He beckoned her to him, grabbing her hand and tugging until she slowly consented to sit down on the bed next to him. “You have absolutely nothing to worry about,” he said. “I’m not fooling around. You want me, I’m yours. For as long as you want me.”
“Got it,” she whispered around the lump in her throat.
�
��I remember the day I realized I was freaking her out,” he mused. “She saw us sparring. She’d come to meet me at the dojo, and I was sparring with my brother and we…” His voice broke off.
Dani could hardly breathe. She reached out and put her hand gently on his forearm. “Your brother,” she repeated. “What’s his name?”
Luke cleared his throat. “Zade,” he said roughly. “His name is Zade. Oh God.” He hunched over, and hid his face in his hands. His bare shoulders shook.
“Luke,” she whispered.
“Give me a minute. I just need a minute.”
It took ten. Dani slid closer. Thigh to thigh. She put her arm around him and hid her face against his vibrating shoulder. Feeling his harsh breathing. Sternly refusing to cry. Too much emotion would create a feedback loop, and that wasn’t fair to him.
Finally he lifted his head. “I’m OK now,” he said, his voice colorless.
She wiped her face. Tears. So what. Just a few. “So. Zade, then. Last name?”
“Ryan,” he said. “Ryan was the name we took. Noah told us it was dangerous to share a last name when we created our new identities, but Zade was my goddamn brother, and I just wasn’t giving that up. I don’t know why it was so important to me.”
“So you’re Luke Ryan,” she said. “That’s a nice name. I like it.”
The raw emotion in his eyes touched her heart. She tried to think of something to distract them both before they lost it again. “And, ah…you mentioned someone named Noah? Who’s that guy?”
“Noah Gallagher.” Luke still had that tone of astonished discovery. “The leader of our group. That was the name he took after rebellion day. When we escaped Midlands.”
“And Midlands is…?”
“It was the facility where they modified us. A group of us escaped on rebellion day. A lot more died. We killed the researchers. Burned the place to the ground. Laid low for a long time. Used fake identities, but we built lives on top of them. As real as anybody else’s life, I guess.”
“And your real life?”
“High level tech security. I worked for a retail tycoon. Long story short, I was set up with a son-of-a-bitch named Mark Olund who stun coded me, killed my client and stuck me in a hidden cage beneath his house. That’s where I stayed for a fucking year. Mark stopped coming, and the food and water stopped with him. I thought I was done for. Then Braxton showed up, and things really went to hell. Deeper into hell, I mean. Starving to death would have been better than him.”
“Back up. Who’s Mark Olund?”
“Another Midlander. One of our rebel escapees, but Mark went bad. He liked hurting people, and he got riled up when we told him to cut that shit out, so he left. We hadn’t seen him in almost ten years, but there he was, with my control codes. He murdered my client right in front of me. A guy I’d promised to protect.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Dani said.
Luke shook his head. “I had no business selling myself as a security expert with a weak spot like that.”
“Come on. What were the odds that you’d run into someone with your stun code?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Luke said. “Whatever the odds were, I lost that hand, and so did my client. And his widow, and two little girls. Eight and ten years old.” He paused. “Nine and eleven now.”
“So more is coming back to you now?”
“It’s pouring in on me, yeah. I remember them all now. There’s Noah, and his little sister Hannah. And Sisko, and Zoe—oh, sweet holy fuck. Zoe.”
Dani winced inwardly. Was this a more recent girlfriend he was only just now remembering? “And Zoe is?”
“Another rebel. Part of our group. Damn, I saw her sister!” Luke turned to her, his eyes alight. “That woman who attacked you at your house, remember? When we saw each other, we both choked for a fraction of a second. Because we recognized each other. That was Jada! She was only eight years old when I saw her last. She’s Zoe’s little sister and she’s still alive!”
“She recognized you?” Dani was bewildered. “But…I saw her try to kill you!”
“Of course,” Luke said, as if it were obvious. “She had to fight. She’s all stimmed up. She’d start bleeding out of her eyes if she didn’t. She probably paid in blood for that split-second delay. Zoe’s going to freak when she finds out her baby sister is still alive.”
Huh. It took heavy-duty mental adjustment to recast the terrifying she-demon from her kitchen into the role of somebody’s victimized baby sister. She’d work on that some other time. “So if Obsidian finds you and identifies you, they can use that code on you?”
“Yes,” Luke said. “Zade and I are the last ones left alive who got the verbal control codes. It was a limited experiment, back in the beginning. It went along with the most extreme gene cocktail. Braxton got off on using the control codes on us. It was a big sexual thrill for him.”
She tried not to picture it. “So you guys were based in Chicago?”
“No, I was only in Chicago for that job. I have a condo in Seattle. And a cabin on a lake a couple hours north of the city. Long drive, but always worth it. Before I blocked my memories, I used to imagine the cabin and the lake for hours at a time in that cage, just to keep myself sane. A whole group of us settled in Seattle. Including my brother.”
“I like Seattle,” she said.
His eyes had that flash as he looked at her. “Good.”
She was embarrassed to feel her face heat.
“There are fourteen of us in my extended family,” Luke said. “Zoe, the sister of the woman who attacked you, is near San Francisco. There are more on the East Coast, a few in Europe and Asia. A couple in Africa, too, ex-Special Forces. They run a mercenary army.”
She smiled, shaking her head. “Of course they do.”
“Noah was our leader. Zade and I were the shock troops, but Noah was the brains of the rebellion,” he said. “He has a biotech company now. Hannah is his sister. She’s a piece of work. You’ll love her. And they’ll love you.”
“Hey.” She held up her hand. “Give them time. Give all of us time.”
“All the time you need. But they will. Why wouldn’t they? You’re beautiful and smart and tough and brave and honest and you take no shit from anybody. That’s what they like. Damn, that’s what I like.”
“Stop it, Luke.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right, no passionate declarations until you’re sure I’m not still out of my fucking gourd. I know the rules.”
Dani looked away. “So. What now?”
“I contact them. I have to find them first. I have no data. Phone numbers, email addresses, I wiped all that stuff from my files so that Braxton couldn’t get it. And I don’t have a functioning retrieval system. It’s like a big garbage dump in there. I’ve never fished for data and come up empty, not since I was modded. It sucks.”
“I can imagine.” Dani tried not to smile. “Sounds like me every time I lose my smartphone. Poor baby. How about social media?”
“We don’t use it. Too risky. Too much facial recognition software out there. Secretly picking up data unbeknownst to the entire fucking world.”
“OK. What does your brother do professionally?”
“He has a consulting business. Wait…let me see if I can find …” Luke closed his eyes for a few seconds.
When he turned back to her, he was beaming. “He changed the header on his business website. It has a line written in Midlander encrypted code that lists everyone’s contact info and positioning coordinates. Noah’s company has it on their masthead too…and Kane…and Devon, and Hannah…all of them have it. Only a Midlander would notice it. But it’s there. Like a beacon for me.”
Dani smiled at him, holding back another rush of tears by sheer force of will. “So this whole time they’ve been calling you, just like you said,” she said softly. “And you sens
ed it. You had faith. Good for you.”
Luke turned his face away. “Oh hell,” he whispered. “Dani. Don’t.”
She leaned against him, taking his hand and twining her fingers through his. “I’m here.”
Luke looked at her, glowering. “I am not crying,” he said stiffly.
She suppressed a smile. “It’s OK if you do.”
He made a disgusted sound, but didn’t protest when she got up, sat down on his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck.
They hugged each other like they’d never let go.
Chapter 22
Luke studied his inner screen, focusing on the code that decorated the logo of the Angel Industries home page. Links to geotags constantly updated everyone’s geographical position. An insane security risk on their part to put their coordinates out there, encrypted or not. If Obsidian got him, he’d betray everyone. He wouldn’t have time to re-establish a memory block like the one he’d created before. That had required a complicated analog-build that took weeks of intense concentration.
Through the constant flow of data, he saw Dani’s worried gaze on him. The exhausted look in her eyes. He’d done that to her. He needed to fix it. He had to persuade her somehow that he was capable of keeping a deathless promise.
It was a done deal on his side, signed and sealed and date-stamped. He just had to get her to trust him somehow. Hell of a job, after what he’d put her through.
He pinned the shifting coordinates onto a mental map. Devon was driving northbound on I-95 from Philadelphia to New York. Kane was in New York City. Zoe was in San Francisco, Sisko was in Seattle, and Noah was in Vienna, of all places. Maybe there was some big biotech conference there. It felt great to think of their names. Connect the names to faces, places, memories. Then he checked on Zade.
Holy shit. His brother was less than two hundred miles away. Right here in California. Less than three hours driving, if he pushed it. Which Zade always did.
He had to put his head down between his knees for a second. “My brother is really close,” he said. “He must have heard about my car driving itself. He’s near Goforth.”
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