“I’m not being irrational,” she told me. She had turned out the bedroom lights, but the ongoing party in the kitchen below cast enough to show the curves of her body. “I just won’t live with someone else controlling me.”
“I can understand that. Better than you know.” I nodded, my forehead brushing against the nape of her neck. “Sleep on it, though. Maybe you’ll think of a different way to get out of this situation in the morning.”
“No,” she said. “I want my life to go back to normal. That will never happen if I’m in hiding.”
“This is a big risk,” I told her. “A safehouse is a controlled environment. Kumarin might have found it, but he had to run a gauntlet to get in here. The Lexington has one doorman, and half of the time he’s on a coffee break.”
“What are my options, Josh?” Davie said as she turned to face me. “I’m being realistic. Kumarin wouldn’t have let himself be taken to jail if there was any chance they could keep him there. And this safehouse is lovely, like our own private resort getaway, but sooner or later, you and Ami and the other OACET Agents will have to get back to their day jobs.”
I nodded. I had already postponed several media spots and an important meeting with a federal judge, and when I got back to the city I’d probably be doing non-stop interviews about my role in Squirrelface’s very public death.
Davie snuggled herself under my chin. “This safehouse is not a long-term solution, Josh. I know leaving here is a risk, but I’d rather face it than hide from it.”
“Then move in with me,” I said. Davie looked up at me and put on that funny little grin she used when she was about to say something cute and evasive, and I took her hands. “Not forever. Not unless you want to. Just until we’re sure there’s no immediate danger.”
“Josh…”
“If you’re worried about my lifestyle, that’s not an issue. I do monogamy as well as I do everything else. You might need to come to some events with me, since I’ve already reserved seats for me plus a guest… Ever been to dinner at the White House?”
“What? No!”
“You’ll love it. The food is amazing. There’s this one guy on the Secret Service who tells the best dick jokes…”
“Josh,” Davie took one of her hands from mine, and reached out to brush my hair out of my eyes. “You’re sweet, but please stop asking. We are very different people. It wouldn’t work out.”
“Maybe, but it would work out long enough,” I said. “Listen, Davie, I know I can be a stupid romantic. But going back to the city just to prove a point? That’s being stupid, too, and I think you know that. So can we compromise? Either we play this smart, or we’ll be stupid together.”
She paused, then said: “One week.”
“One week,” I agreed. “If it doesn’t work out, you move back downstairs. If it does work, then we try two weeks, and if that works, we can renegotiate from there.”
Davie rolled me on my back and pushed herself on top of me. “You don’t do anything halfway, do you?”
“Life is short,” I said, wrapping my arms around her and draping my hands across her firm butt. “It’s too easy to miss out on the important stuff. I take a lot of chances, but I know I’d regret it if I didn’t.”
“See?” Davie kissed me again, a long, slow one that held the promise of good things to come. “You understand why I’m not going to stay in hiding.”
“Not the same kinds of risk,” I said. “I’m seizing the moment. You’re punching Fate in the mouth.”
“Semantics,” she said. “Don’t twist this so you get what you want. That’s fighting dirty.”
“I’m not fighting,” I told her. “And I’m not twisting anything. I believe you have to live for today, but that means you have to live.”
“I’m not planning to go home to get shot.”
“I know,” I nodded, feeling her hair sweep against my cheek. “But nobody plans on getting shot.”
There was nothing more to say. After a few quiet minutes, I felt the tension start to leave her. Her legs jerked slightly as she fell asleep. I waited another fifteen minutes until I was sure the party downstairs was healthy enough to go until dawn, and then I closed my eyes and joined her.
SIXTEEN
For me, coming back to the city is like getting plugged in to a power socket. One that’s hooked up to a thermonuclear reactor by way of the Hoover Dam. The country house was fine for weekend getaways, but there's no way in hell I can live anywhere outside of a city. It would drain me dry.
We crossed from the suburbs into the city and I breathed a sigh of relief. There’s no substitute for the thrill of a thousand pieces of technology filling your head. Sure, they’re loud and screamy, but so are toddlers, and you know the house feels empty when you drop them off at daycare.
Davie was driving. She glanced over at me as I closed my eyes and drank in the city. “You okay?” she asked.
I nodded. “Just catching up.”
“Are you listening to someone?” Davie asked. She was gradually getting used to the idea of cyborgs.
“Something,” Ami chimed in from behind us. “Cell phones, tablets, alarm systems, you name it. He loves when his head is full of digital chatter. Drives the rest of us freakin’ buggy, but this lunatic actually enjoys it.”
Ami might have been in the back seat, but she was literally riding shotgun. The same stocky weapon she had pointed at Kumarin’s chest was snug across her lap like a lethal seatbelt. If anyone thought to carjack us, it would probably be the last though they’d ever have.
Davie had removed herself from police protection, so if (God forbid) she took a bullet through the skull, there'd be no one to blame but herself. Still, I had insisted on a few precautions until Friction Commodities could set her up with a private security firm. She’d have either me or another Agent with her at all times, and Ami and a few others would move into Davie's condo while we'd take my penthouse. If there was another direct attack, the bad guys would have to get past a floor full of heavily-armed cyborgs to get to her.
I still wasn’t happy about it, but you know. Compromise.
We pulled into the underground parking garage at The Lexington a little before ten in the morning. The three of us took the service elevator up to my penthouse; no reason for my already skittish neighbors to see us roaming the halls with heavy weaponry. I popped the digital lock for Ami as a courtesy. She made a quick sweep of the interior, shotgun at the ready, and joined us in the hall.
“All clear,” Ami said.
“You doubted my security.” I shook my head and gazed skyward. “Lord above, the woman thinks I’m inept.”
Ami prodded me with the butt of the shotgun until I shut up and carried our bags into my condo.
“Wow,” Davie said. She had found the balcony. “This is better than the view from the roof! Wait…” She leaned over the railing and looked up. “How is that possible?”
“The roof doesn’t have mimosas,” I said, handing her a fluted glass. “Top scientists have proven that champagne drinks improve any view by forty-two percent.”
“Can’t argue with science,” Davie said, savoring those first few moments with a fresh beverage. “Delicious. Wait…” she said as she glanced up at me. “We’ve been here for all of thirty seconds. When did you make these, or…” she took another sip, “… find the time to squeeze oranges, for that matter?”
“It’s part of his mutant powers of seduction. You’ll notice he’s also slipped into something more comfortable,” Ami said, joining us on the balcony. She had exchanged the shotgun for a mimosa of her own. “Just roll with it. The perks outweigh how weird it is.”
Davie mulled this over, then shrugged and sat down in an overstuffed patio chair. Ami joined her, and I excused myself and went back inside to make the place a little more guest-friendly. As I usually had guests over on a nightly basis, this mostly involved cleaning out a few drawers for Davie and shoving the unfolded heap of squirrel-tainted laundry into a nearby closet.<
br />
“Knock knock, company’s here.”
“Door’s open, Rachel. Come on in.”
She joined me in my bedroom as I was fluffing out the sheets. Rachel had been in my condo at least once or twice a week since I had moved in, but she had never been in here. I could count on one hand the number of female Agents I hadn’t slept with, and Rachel was one of them. She surveyed the bedroom with a practiced eye. “Interesting,” she said. “Not what I expected. I thought it would smell more like a brothel.”
“Come here,” I said, holding up a pillow. “Smother Pillow wants to say hello.”
“Oh no,” she warned. “I’ve heard where that thing has been!” She whooped and ran towards the balcony as I jumped over the bed.
“Get back here!” I shouted. “I use dryer sheets! I promise your murder will be soft and springtime fresh!”
By the time we had reached the balcony, Rachel had put her game face on and was casually strolling over to Davie and Ami. Which meant that Rachel was calm and composed when she greeted the others, while I, of course, was the one flailing and making wild death threats with pillows.
“Thanks,” I told Rachel, as Davie and Ami looked at each other and shook their heads.
“Don’t mention it.”
“Wait. Should we be out here?” Davie asked, sitting bold upright and looking around us. “I mean, there was one sniper…”
“Nope. The angles are terrible,” Rachel said. “Even Ami couldn’t make this shot.”
Ami nodded. “At this height, the only good vantage point is from the roof,” she said. “So if you see a sudden shadow, run.”
“Any news on the sniper?” I asked Rachel.
She shook her head. “He’s cooperating, but he’s a paid assassin. That’s a business with a lot of double-blinds to hide the participants’ identities. We’re concentrating on the burner phone that sent the coordinates to the victim’s GPS.”
“Can’t you just, you know…” Davie touched her temple. “Zap the phone’s location or something?”
“Not when the phone’s battery is out, or if it’s been crushed with a rock. Then it’s nothing more than a pile of inert junk,” Rachel said. “I’ve got its number, so if it comes online again, I’ll be ready.”
“She means Santino will be ready,” Ami said, placing her hand on Rachel’s knee. “Santino’s her partner at Metro. He’s the one who’s good with tech.”
“Is he OACET?” Davie asked.
“No,” Rachel said, covering Ami’s hand with her own. “I’m terrible with technology, and he’s a Metro computer guy.”
“How’d you become a cyborg if you’re bad with tech?”
Rachel sighed. “The brochure had very pretty pictures.”
They continued to chat about Metro and OACET. I flopped down in the unoccupied patio chair and propped the pillow behind my head. The sun was warm, my friends were happy, the city was alive around me… What a beautiful day.
“What’s up with your squirrels?”
I blinked. “What?” I asked Rachel.
“Your squirrels.” Her head was tilted towards the ceiling. One of Rachel’s more impressive skills is how she uses her implant to expand her visual range. She was piggybacking on the electromagnetic spectrum to watch the squirrels through the brick and cement and metal ductwork of my condo. “They’re… I think they’re swarming?”
“What? Squirrels don’t swarm. Link me in?”
Rachel reached out through the link and extended her perception to me. I was suddenly brain-deep in squirrels. We had done this before, where Rachel allowed me to borrow her senses to see what the squirrels were up to in my ventilation system, but this was the first time they had seemed…
“Are they angry?” I asked her. “They look angry to me,” The squirrels were tangled over each other, looping back and forth through the ductwork. Several dozen squirrels were congregating by the nearest exterior air vent and appeared to be peering down at us from their vantage point.
“Can squirrels get angry?” Rachel asked. “Actually…” she paused, her cop’s mind ticking, “… a better question might be why you went straight to thinking they’re angry.”
“They might be mad at me,” I admitted. “I killed one yesterday.”
“Josh!” Rachel exclaimed aloud.
“What? We were in a hurry!”
Davie and Ami stopped chatting at our outbursts. Rachel explained, almost horrorstruck: “He killed a squirrel!”
“With a car?” Davie gave me the benefit of the doubt.
“No. I sort of…” I hesitated: the three of them were looking at me. “I caught it and… Well, I swung it around and cracked its head open.”
“Josh!”
“What?” I wasn’t used to being rebuked in surround sound. “Squirrels are vermin, and my apartment’s infested! It’s no different than killing a roach.”
“Josh!”
“Don’t give me that! I’ve seen your Army service record,” I said as I pointed to Rachel, “And you…” I moved my finger to Ami, “are a professional assassin!”
“A professional assassin who brakes for turtles!” Ami retorted.
I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay, okay! I’ll put it right,” I promised. “Now, how do I apologize to a colony of squirrels?”
SEVENTEEN
The front office at Friction Commodities had all of the hallmarks of a prosperous startup, but I had been trained to look a little deeper than the average would-be investor. The company wasn’t as financially stable as its polished corporate image would imply. The overflowing trash cans and the smears on the glass were signs the cleaning service’s hours had been cut. I ran a quick scan through their network and noticed their software was pirated, a serious no-no for any legitimate business. And when I pretended to drop a pen, I saw the rental tag underneath the plush office chair; a quick Google search showed the rental company charged exorbitant rates for its high-end furniture.
In short, Friction Commodities was struggling.
“How important is this deal you’re working on?” I asked Davie.
“Hm?” We were sitting in her office. Davie was catching up on what she had missed over the last day; she was responding to emails and had forgotten I was there.
“This trade deal you’re working on, the one in Afghanistan. Is it make-or-break for the company?”
“No,” Davie replied, her fingers flying over the keyboard. “We’ve got the usual corporate growing pains, but we’re doing fine. Rinehart has a great reputation. He’s been working in minerals commodities for almost thirty years. This is his sixth company. He likes the challenge of starting a business and selling it.”
“Ah.” Davie had a posh corner office with four whole walls all to herself. I glanced through the interior window to where the office receptionist was fielding phone calls. “Mind if I go flirt with the secretary?”
“Planning to have your wild and wicked way with her?”
“Nope.”
“Have a good time, dear.” Davie said, without a pause in her typing.
I let myself out of Davie’s office and moved through the main floor at Friction Commodities. It was a large central room with conference tables in the middle and cubicles lining the edges, with the window side of the room reserved for the executives. Heads poked above the partitions as I walked by. I was attracting some attention: Davie’s brush with death was yesterday’s gossip, the man she had brought with her to work was today’s.
Ami was there, too. Sitting in the reception area, shotgun at the ready, she divided her time between reading a fashion magazine and cleaning her semi-automatic pistol.
Okay, maybe I wasn’t the only source of office gossip.
The receptionist, a lovely young woman with long dark hair, saw me walking towards her. She gasped and pretended to be busy with her paperwork.
I draped myself over the edge of her desk and smiled. “Hey.”
She smiled back, shyly.
“I’m Jos
h Glassman,” I extended a hand. The poor girl took it nervously. “I’m with the Office of Adaptive and Complementary Technologies.”
She was wide-eyed and nodding frantically.
I waited for her to introduce herself. When she couldn’t, I said: “Sorry to bother you. I’m just a little bored in there, you know? Is there anywhere we can go to get a coffee?”
“There’s a café on the corner,” she blurted, shooting a quick peek towards Davie’s office. “Ms. Costello knows where it is.”
“Ms. Costello is busy,” I said as I placed the girl’s hand on her desk. “I understand you are, too, but…” I leaned in. “I’d really appreciate it if you could show me where it is.”
I pretended not to see Ami’s eyes roll as the receptionist and I left the office.
Her name was Evalyn and she was darling. She ordered hot chocolate instead of coffee, and she gushed about her boyfriend. She mentioned her boyfriend in at least every other sentence. Her boyfriend was in grad school, and he was in a band, and he brought her flowers every Friday, and…
She was so in love it was beautiful, all but begging me to not seduce her. I wanted to turn her loose with an apology, but I was on a mission.
“Is he okay with you working at Friction Commodities?” I asked her. “After what happened to Davie, it’s…” I shook my head and sighed, then pressed her hands around her warm mug of cocoa with my own. “I’m worried about her,” I said. “I’m sure your boyfriend is worried about you.”
“He is,” she nodded, relaxing slightly. “But Mr. Rinehart is hiring protection for us.”
“Do you know when they’ll show up? It’s been nearly two days since Davie was attacked.”
“This afternoon?” Evalyn was unsure.
I took my hands away as she said: “Mr. Rinehart told us this had never happened to his employees before, and he needed time to find the right company.”
“Does he ever do business in New York?” Evalyn looked puzzled, so I added, “There are some great security firms there. I can put Rinehart in touch with them if he wants to vet them in person.”
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