by Jade Kerrion
“You thought you were saving a street waif who would be so overwhelmed by your charity she wouldn’t notice that she wasn’t actually loved? Well, tough. I’m not a spoiled billionaire’s son, but I earn more than enough to not give a damn about your money. Maybe I can’t afford to buy obscenely large diamonds, but I didn’t wear the Najam ‘Azraq because it was a diamond. I wore it because it was yours. The only damn mistake I made was refusing Zara’s offer to run a background check on you. She knew.”
“Of course she knew. She moves in those elite circles.”
“She was trying to warn me.”
“Why wasn’t she more explicit?”
“Because she knows how damaging it can be when we allow the facts to get in the way of emotions. What happened to Danyael—” She broke off.
Rio’s brow furrowed. “What happened to Danyael?”
“She let the facts trump what her gut instincts told her about Danyael. Danyael’s an amazing doctor, trained at the best medical schools in the nation, but he’s here, working insane hours in a dead-end job that pays him barely enough to live, because it’s the only place that will hire him. She ruined his life.”
“And he still loves her.”
Cixi sighed. “It’s complicated. The facts are the facts, and on some level, I don’t think Danyael blames her for what she did, but she could have acted differently, and the ending would have been happier for everyone, if she had given him and herself the benefit of the doubt.” She stiffened and held up her hand. Had she imagined the irregular tap of Danyael’s crutch against the floor and the sound of the front door opening?
No, she hadn’t.
Zara’s voice, muted by the closed door, bristled with anger. “Is she here?”
“Why would she be?” Danyael asked.
“Because her cell phone signal is pinging from Anacostia.”
Damn it. Cixi turned her cell phone off, not that it mattered. The damage had already been done. She had forgotten that Zara wasn’t just about guns and daggers. The assassin had a host of extremely competent geeks working for her too.
Rio moved forward, and together they listened at Danyael’s closed bedroom door.
Zara asked, “Is she in there? Is he with her?”
“What happened?” Danyael asked.
“Shit happened. I hate amateurs.”
“But Cixi’s been in the business almost as long as you have.”
“Not Cixi. Rio Loren,” Zara hissed. “I should have killed him and saved myself all the aggravation. But no, you called and told me to be nice.”
“I shouldn’t have to call to tell you to be nice. I shouldn’t have to open my door at 3 a.m. because your employee is terrified of you.”
Cixi stiffened. She wasn’t terrified; what the—but Rio reached for her hand and squeezed it gently. He was right. Now was not the time to get upset over semantics.
Danyael continued. “Things screw up. It happens.”
“Eighteen months, Danyael! We—she—built it up for eighteen months and it goes down the drain in an instant because of a flat-footed novice who’s afraid of heights and can’t sneak worth a damn.”
“So why did you bring him in?”
“Because he would have come in anyway, and possibly screwed it up even worse,” Zara growled. “It doesn’t matter now. That was our one chance at getting at the triad’s records.”
“What were you after?”
“Illegal shipments of human products.”
“They’re trafficking people?”
“No.” A long pause suggested that Zara was thinking, possibly choosing her words. “The blood Seth Copper took from you, when he nearly killed you—”
“You killed him.”
“Yes, but we never found the six pints of blood he took from you.”
“Until now?”
“We still haven’t found it, but we think Seth arranged to hand them off to a triad. I’ve got people in all of them, but nothing’s panned out so far. Cixi was the last, and placed in the largest, most influential of the triads. If they didn’t traffic your blood, then we’re at a dead end.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“Investing your time, your people, your resources into finding it?”
“Because it’s dangerous, Danyael, and you know it. The experiments Seth did on your blood—he implied…no, he boasted that he was on to something big.”
“I know. And I also know the government is working on it. You could have left it to them. Why didn’t you?”
Another brief pause. “Because it matters to me.”
Cixi drew a slow breath through the ache in her chest. Why won’t you just say it, Zara? You. Matter. To. Me. Four words. Four little words. It would mean everything to him to hear it from you.
Rio leaned down to whisper in her ear, “And we thought we had communication issues.”
“We haven’t ruined each other’s lives yet.”
“Speak for yourself.” Rio’s tone warned her that he was not quite done being furious with her.
Cixi glared at him. Her voice, propelled by indignation, was not quite a whisper. “Tell me, how exactly did I ruin your life? By not being around to eat breakfast with you? By not cleaning the cottage while you typed away on your little computer.”
“Don’t give me that. I wasn’t lord of the manor. I did all the laundry. I was always picking up your female droppings—”
“They’re called earrings! If you’re feeling so injured, so betrayed, then walk away.”
“I can’t. I love you, but I don’t know what to believe either. You’ve twisted me around so many times I don’t know which way is up.”
“Well, Zara’s here, so why don’t you ask her?” Cixi flung the door open and stalked out. Danyael and Zara stood next to each other in the tiny living room. Danyael wore a faint, amused smile, and Zara looked like she didn’t know whether to laugh or to start cursing.
Zara’s gaze flicked to Rio as he emerged to stand beside Cixi. “Female droppings? Really. Next, you’ll be calling perfume chemical warfare.”
“It is.”
Zara chuckled. She handed Rio a small pouch. Within it were four smaller velvet pouches, each containing the pendant, ring, and the pair of earrings. “Yours. The real thing.”
“Why didn’t you tell me Cixi was wearing paste jewelry before we went into the apartment?”
“I did. I told you they were just pretty stones.”
His eyes narrowed, and then he scowled. “That’s deliberately vague.”
“I make it a point not to be clear. Plausible deniability makes the world go round.”
Danyael sighed, but he sounded more resigned than upset. He slowly lowered himself onto the couch, stretching his crippled left leg out in front of him. “Is anyone going to get hurt today, or can I call it a night?”
Cixi glanced at him, and her chest tightened. Danyael was so matter-of-fact about his injury that his seemingly nonchalant question was the closest he would probably ever get to admitting that he was exhausted. “We should go and let Danyael get his rest.”
“No, this involves him,” Zara said. “We’ve cleared all the other New York triads, so by definition, Shen Long knows what happened to the pints of blood. I need to know where it went and who has it now. Maybe it’s time to dispense with the kid gloves—”
“Those were kid gloves?” Rio asked pointedly.
“Compared to phase two, certainly. I can get him.”
Cixi cut in. “He’s got bodyguards.”
Zara waved her hand dismissively. “I can get him,” she repeated and looked at Danyael. “Are you up for wrenching the truth out of him?”
His eyes in turmoil, Danyael turned his face away.
Cixi grimaced. That was a no. Danyael had never had a taste for violence, not even when entirely justified.
Danyael whispered, “If that’s the only way.”
“It’s not,” Rio spoke up. He too had been looking at
Danyael, his gaze unexpectedly compassionate. “But we’ll have to move today. Right now. Before Shen Long catches on that we’re after his computers.”
Zara snarled, “There are too many computers in his back office. We’d need a hell of a diversion to find the one or handful of non-networked computers and then locate what we need in them. We can’t just take the computers; the loss will send an alert all through the supply chain, breaking the trail we need to find Danyael’s blood.”
“Exactly. You need to hack the computers, and—” He held up his hand before Zara could snap at him again. “I have exactly what you need.”
Rio glanced at Cixi. “You know all the time I spend typing away at my computer, never quite producing the next great American novel? That’s because more than half of it was spent designing and coding. The cartels know their firewalls are only secure until the next bored hacker comes along, so they’ve been keeping their files on non-networked computers. Well, I’ve been working on a high-speed radio transmitter for the DEA. It goes into the USB port and lies flat—no protrusions. No one would even notice it’s there until they try to insert a drive into that port. The transmitter runs a program to replicate and transmit the entire content of the hard drive—everything, including its hidden folders. A 500 GB hard drive would take about an hour to copy and send, and then as long as it’s not discovered, it remains in the computer, transmitting any new files.”
“Where does the data go?” Zara asked.
“Wherever I tell it to.”
“So it can be sent to the Three Fates networks instead of the DEA.”
Rio nodded.
Zara’s eyes narrowed. “And this isn’t a conflict of interest for you?”
Rio’s jaw tensed. “You’re not looking for drugs. It’s personal, not professional. I can sleep easy at night.”
“So, you’ll need one drive per computer,” Zara said. “How many is that, Cixi?”
Cixi gazed off into the distance. The large back office leaped into focus in her mind. Her attention moved across the backdrop like a camera over the landscape. “Twenty-three,” she said. She blinked hard to dismiss the image from her photographic memory.
“Twenty minutes.” Rio nodded. “Perhaps it can even be done in fifteen. Then we sit back and wait for the data to come in.”
“And hope the radio transmitters aren’t discovered within an hour,” Zara said.
“Right,” Rio conceded. “That’s the part that requires luck.”
Zara was silent for a moment. “All right. Do it.”
Chapter 10
The night wind chafed their cheeks as Cixi and Rio stood on the balcony of Zara’s twelfth-floor apartment. Rio edged closer to the rail and peered down. He blinked hard, his face paling. Cixi could have sworn he almost reeled.
She frowned. “You don’t have to come along. I can do this alone. I know where all the computers are.”
“But if any tech issues come up, I’m the one who can solve them. Besides, Zara’s not in there with you. You need someone watching your back.”
“Zara’s got her hands full out front.”
“Is she going to knock on the door, walk in, and start a fight?”
“Zara? No, she can be subtle when she wants. She’s spent several months engineering accidental encounters with Guan Yu in the elevator. He’s been dying to screw her for months.”
“And she’s going to let him?”
“No, of course not. She’s going to be the concerned neighbor who heard the commotion and wonders if there’s anything she can do.”
“So, no bloodshed?”
“It’s rough on carpets, as Zara often points out. It stains marble too. She would know.” She glanced at her watch. Five more minutes until Zara made her move. She had to wait until Zara had all the attention riveted on the front door.
“Why do you do that?” Rio asked quietly.
“Do what?”
“Work for Zara.”
“She pays well, and most of the time, doesn’t consider killing her employees, not too seriously anyway.”
“So why did we hide out at Danyael’s place?”
“So that she wouldn’t kill you.”
“Would she have?”
“Not obviously, but all sorts of things happen in accidents. Zara’s especially talented at facilitating accidents.”
Rio frowned. “Shen Long’s not really your father, is he?”
Cixi shook her head. “My parents live in suburban Toronto. She’s an accounts executive. He’s VP of marketing for an ad agency.”
“I would never have met them, would I, not after you’d played the street waif façade to perfection, wringing sympathy out of me over your supposed mother’s death? How long would you have kept the lie going?”
“I don’t know. There didn’t seem to be any reason to end it when I didn’t think you loved me enough to miss me, let alone propose.”
“So what happened to Shen Long’s daughter? The real one.”
“She died in a car accident.”
“A real accident or a facilitated one?”
“With Zara, you never can tell. Sometimes, it’s better not to ask.”
“What kind of world do you live in?”
“Me?” She arched an eyebrow. “You’re the supposedly spoiled, rich kid, working undercover for the DEA, and you’re asking me that?”
“At first, I did it because it was the right thing to do. And then I did it for my brother. And then I did it because I lost you and I didn’t know what else to do to fill the empty holes. What about you?”
“At first, because I was good at it, and then because I thought it would bring you comfort.” Because I loved you.
He stepped forward and when he drew her into his arms, she did not resist. “Is there a future for us?”
“I’m not the girl you fell in love with.”
“And I’m not the guy you fell in love with.”
“But you’re still angry with me. Will you ever be able to get over it?”
“I’m trying.”
“But you’re not there yet.”
Rio gritted his teeth. “I…don’t like Zara. I don’t trust her.”
“That’s probably smartest,” Cixi agreed.
“And you work for her.”
“So?”
“It’s a statement—”
“No.” She glared at him. “It’s a job, like the barista at the coffee shop—”
“Nobody gets hurt by the barista at the coffee shop. You shot two people today!”
“They started shooting first! What the hell!” She flung her arms into the air. “You work for the DEA. All the undercover work you do eventually leads to the DEA pulling automatic weapons on people while you sit all cozy and comfortable on the sidelines. You have the benefit of behaving like a self-righteous prick because you are a self-righteous prick.”
“I work for the DEA because I believe in it! You work for Zara because of what—the money?”
“Did you forget?” The ache in Cixi’s chest was so sharp, so real that she had to press a hand against it. “I left Zara to be with you. And in the end, I left you on a fool’s quest to make you happy.”
“I didn’t need you to avenge my brother’s death. I was honoring his memory in my own way.”
“You were doing the exact same thing you were doing before he died.”
“I left! And I came back, perhaps because, deep down, I realized that if I quit, more people would get hurt. More people could die. I’m trying to save lives, don’t you see? But you?”
“I’m just a greedy mercenary, is that it?”
“You do it for money.”
“Not all of us have a trust fund to live off.” She pushed him away. “I always knew you were judgmental, Rio, but I didn’t know you were pompous and judgmental.”
“Just because you’re defensive and guilty—”
“I am not defensive and guilty. If you despise me, have the guts say so. Don’t twist this around to be about me
when it’s not.”
“How are you not in the middle of all of this?”
“I am in the middle of all of this, but none of it is my problem. Zara’s looking for something that matters to her, and she came to me for help. The people she thinks has it are the same people distributing X2 and X-treme, and I thought that finding damning evidence that could bring them down would make you happy, so I agreed to help Zara. I’m getting nothing out of this except my usual salary. No hazard pay. No percentage cut of whatever haul is brought in. Hell, I went through two weeks of utter misery to look like this.” She pointed at her face. “And now, every time I stare at myself in the mirror, I have to convince myself that it’s still possible for someone to not be distracted by a pretty face and still like me because of who I am inside.”
“You were always pretty.”
“I was common. I was the girl who could stand on the sidewalk, selling flowers and candy, and not get a second look. It was why I was so effective. Now, I’m not. I can’t hide just by standing still. I can’t blend into the crowd,” she snarled. “I hate life in the spotlight. I hate it—but it was the only way to get what I thought Zara wanted, what I thought you wanted. Next time, I’ll just be the selfish, mercenary bitch you think I am and do something for me.”
Rio looked stricken. “Cixi—”
She glanced at her watch. “We have to go. Zara’s made her move by now.” She stepped out onto the ledge and threw a glance over her shoulders. “I don’t need your help.”
Cixi climbed down the brick post. Her thoughts whirred, and she had to draw several deep breaths and utilize every calming technique she knew. Nothing extraneous in mind or body. Either could be fatal in a job.
The window on the eighth floor had been closed but not locked. Cixi thanked Zara for her foresight in closing the window when she had left earlier; it had escaped scrutiny in the lockdown that must have followed.
She slipped into Shen Long’s apartment, and then—because she couldn’t help it—looked back the way she had come.
There was no sign of Rio.
Fine. It’s easier without having to stop to pick him up off the floor. I don’t even know how he followed Zara down the first time with his absurd fear of heights.