by Snow, Nicole
For once, I need to take care of me.
I swear softly but don’t let go of Rook’s hair. Closing my eyes, I take a few deep breaths, sucking my candy against my tongue before I stand—and keep my grip tighter, dragging him along like he’s on a leash.
“Get up,” I snap. “Get up!”
Blubbering, he stumbles to his feet. He’s a few inches taller than I am even with my heels, but I make him walk at my level. I turn him around to strut up that red carpet like it’s my own personal runway to the door of the theatre cabin.
“Come on.”
He stumbles after me, batting uselessly at my hands. “Wh-where are we going? Lady, please, I...I told you every—”
“I know you have some kind of data backups here. Durham wouldn’t let whole decades and billions of dollars spent on research get erased. Not even to cover his tracks and ensure his freedom.” I yank a little harder, making him groan in pain. “So you’re going to take me to your workstation and show me everything I want to see in your crystal ball.”
To his credit, he does exactly that.
Without even complaining or protesting.
I train them well, don’t I?
He’s actually got a server closet set up here on the yacht. Necessary, if he can’t securely access everything remotely with the Feds monitoring so many connections. And right now, with Galentron’s data too hot to touch, not even the most black-market private server overseas would host their backups.
It pleases me to think I could wipe their entire recovery plan just by sinking this damned ship.
But if I have my way, by the time I’m done...
There won’t be anyone left to sell the data anyway.
I shove him into the single chair in the small room, in front of a desk where a nest of cables connects a laptop to a mess of fan-ventilated server stacks. They’re attached to a large, high-powered generator that hums with enough energy to vibrate the walls.
Fingers shaking, Rook pulls up the Galentron custom intranet interface, and taps in his user data before gulping and rolling his round, gleaming eyes up at me.
“What do you want to know? I...I don’t think there’s anything else about Durham here. His escape plan was classified.”
“Not Durham,” I bite off, shoving the back of his head. I don’t want that sallow gaze on me, touching me. I feel like he’s getting my sheath dress dirty just by looking at me. “Before the company and I had our ‘parting of ways,’ I noticed two personnel files missing. We never delete personnel records, even on death. So I’m very curious where they went.”
“Personnel?” Rook chews at his lower lip noisily, the pink thing rubbery and flopping. “Wh-who?”
“Former President of Operations. Oliver Major,” I say. “And my daughter. Stillborn. Last name Delaney, first name...unnamed. I carried to term in a Galentron facility. Good company girl to the last—and they never even let me see my precious girl’s body before they took it away.”
Oh, fiddlesticks.
I hadn’t meant to say that much.
It just came falling out of me, the memory of that cold, sterile room that wasn’t even a hospital, just a lab. All white walls, a metal table under me, strangers with cold eyes over surgical masks and the blood everywhere.
They gave me drugs. I remember that part.
Not for the pain.
But so I wouldn’t be able to focus, think, remember.
Or question.
But I remember hearing a baby’s cry.
Dim, fuzzy, distant. I knew the way any mother knows that she was mine, but when I came to the day after they told me I hallucinated it. My daughter was stillborn, they said, and never even drew her first breath.
What did I say about how much I hate being wrong?
That cry has haunted me for years in every nightmare.
She was breathing. I know she was.
She lived.
I just don’t know what they did with her, or why.
And that question is what sent me on the warpath.
I never meant to drag Gray, Leo, and their friends back into this. I never meant to bring fire and screams back to Heart’s Edge twice.
That little town just happened to have the misfortune of being a pit stop on the way to my answer.
And right now, Tim Rook is in my way.
When I raise my hand, he flinches, well aware that the next time I cause him pain, there’s going to be blood.
Probably a lot of it.
“I’m looking,” he gasps, a tremor rolling through him. “I’m looking, give me a minute, please!”
Still making those absolutely repellent sounds in the back of his throat, he rattles through screens, search windows—then pulls up a personnel file.
There’s a single photograph of a man with a strong jaw, a dark trimmed beard, those rakish bourbon-brown eyes I remember looking at me with a mix of tenderness and dry, cynical amusement.
In the photo, he’s wearing a suit, the fabric stretched stiff over broad muscles. Even with the very best tailors, it always seemed like his jackets were a size too small.
Like no clothes ever crafted could contain the sheer wild energy and strength of that man.
His hair is jet-black, just barely touched at the temples with a splash of early grey.
I wonder how he’d look now.
I wonder if he’d still smile, with those honey-sweet eyes softening just for me.
Oh, Oliver Major.
I...
I hate how the terrible knot of diamond in my chest where my heart should be actually tries to beat again at the sight of him.
But it hardens again the second I scan over the thin skim of information there.
Date of birth, some fifty-odd years ago, but the date of death I’m looking for?
Conspicuously absent.
“Where’s the rest?” I ask, nearly panic swallowing what’s left of my second hard candy of the night. “His dossier, cause of death, everything? The report on the assault?”
“Attached in the files in his profile, but...” Rook wobbles his lips, darting me a fearful look. “They’re encrypted. Only accessible to one biometric profile.”
“Whose?”
I know the answer even before he says it.
Because I just have that kind of luck.
Rook closes his eyes, whispering out in a nasally tremor, “Um...Leland Durham’s, ma’am.”
Well, fuck.
I don’t—I can’t—
Oliver’s not my priority.
He’s an adult who can take care of himself, and if he’s still alive somewhere...it’s been too long.
He doesn’t belong to me anymore.
It’s enough to know he’s probably out there, and Galentron had their reasons for faking his death and covering their tracks.
This is about my little girl.
She needs me, wherever she is.
I prod Rook’s shoulder. “My daughter.”
“That’s going to be harder to find without a first na—”
“Don’t.” I clench my jaw. “You know what kind of data to look for. I don’t need to tell you the company forced every Nightjar to receive all medical care in-house. You know how our records were tracked. Find the damn information.”
Something flickers in Rook’s eyes.
Then he just nods like a deflated doll, bowing his head obediently and raking his fingers over the keyboard.
A moment later, he finds a file saved only by number, in the four-dash-six-dash-two sequence used for numbered Galentron personnel files.
There’s no name inside.
No photo.
Just another number.
Mine.
And a date of birth, a gender.
A daughter.
Data confirmation. Truth, however brief. Something more than the lying words of the cold, impersonal doctor who barely spoke to me when I was reeling in a drugged-out haze.
But that’s it.
The day I was wheeled into that sterile lab
and left to suffer through labor for hours, and for nothing.
It’s also the only thing I get. There’s just nothing else there. No other data.
I frown.
That’s not normal, even for a stillbirth.
This kind of deliberate omission tells me one thing.
There’s something to hide.
Like the fact that I’d bet my life that my daughter’s still alive.
And I’d give anyone else’s life to find out where.
So I catch Rook by the back of his polo shirt, knotting it up in my fist and yanking back hard. The open V-neck hitches up under his chin and digs into his throat, choking him and half lifting him out of the chair.
“Where is it?” I demand in a seething hiss, rolling my candy from side to side between my teeth and lips. “Where’s the rest of the data? What happened to her?”
“It—gglk—it’s locked—it’s locked!” he screams. “Biometrically encrypted, like I told you! Th-the only one who can open the file is D-Durham!”
Mercy. The hoops I have to jump through.
I breathe in a slow, deep hiss.
Let it out on a count of three.
My white-hot rage still doesn’t dim in the slightest.
With a furious sound under my breath, I fling Rook out of the chair and against the table. His head bounces off it, and he goes slithering to the floor, gasping messy words I can’t be bothered to digest.
Fine.
I guess all of this Durham body double business just became my problem after all.
I’ll just have to pry the CEO’s bioprint off his cooling fucking corpse.
Ignoring Rook, still flopping on the floor, I settle in the chair and slip a thin card-sized drive just like the one the boys gave me back in Heart’s Edge into the specialized reader.
Galentron doesn’t play around with security. They use entire private systems of drives and readers that can only be accessed by each other, and no other device in the world.
Lucky me, I’ve got sticky fingers and just happened to be wearing a very stylish and roomy Vera Wang coat with several extremely large pockets on the day I walked out forever.
I quickly copy over the data on my daughter and, just for the hell of it, Oliver Major.
Then I swipe a few other things that may or may not be useful in the corporate espionage game later down the road. A lady’s got to pay her bills, after all.
I’m not in the line of work where I can show a resume in anything other than extremely valuable trade secrets and/or a trail of dead bodies that also count as evidence.
It’s a hard knock life for an espionage expert with a dangerous luxury fashion habit.
Once I’m done, I stand, glancing around the room for something handy. I come up with a nice heavy gooseneck lamp with a pretty silver filigree globe holding the bulb at the end.
Which I promptly smash across Tim Rook’s knee.
There’s blood. Howling. Tears.
Quite an impressive bit of mayhem, if I do say so myself.
But he won’t be following me or trying to pull anything cute as I leave.
Just to be sure, though, as I saunter out into the brisk sea air with the night stars glowing over me and the drive in my pocket, I casually pick up one of the harpoon guns ever-so-conveniently mounted on the wall.
Now for the fun part. Even I can’t help smiling.
I swear, every wealthy yachter has one of these harpoon gizmos. I guess because they want to spear a swordfish in the middle of the day or whatever else these assholes do while I’m out handling all of their dirty laundry and staining my hands with blood until I’ll never be clean again.
Well, at least this pretty little boat will never float again.
Because I stand in the middle of the deck, plant my feet wide, and fire that harpoon gun baby straight down.
It’s got more of a punch than I anticipated.
And I actually have an ungraceful moment, tottering backward for half a second. A hollow whoomp of release pressure slams me back with a recoil. It’s like being kicked by a horse.
The harpoon gun’s barbed, high-powered spear goes crashing right through the deck boards and drills at an angle that sends it jutting out, clawing through the hull from inside, creating a hole that dips just below the water line.
When my senses return a second later, I hear the rushing, angry roar of the flood.
Perfection.
Timmy won’t have any choice, now.
Head back to land in the runner, and with an anonymous phone call to the cops...
He’ll end up rotting in the same Federal Supermax where Durham—the real Durham—should be.
I won’t be around to see it, though.
I’m already striding over to the railing, vaulting over the side into my little speedboat. I can’t risk getting caught myself.
I don’t have time to wait around here. Don’t have time to waste.
There’s only one day, maybe less, for me to find Leland Durham. Rook said he’s on the verge of flying the coop.
If I have to rip his hand off to decrypt these files, I will.
He took my daughter from me once.
I won’t let him get away without giving her back.
5
Bitter Like Chocolate (Oliver)
Twenty Years Ago
There’s a first time for everything.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a girl this young drop a man that large without even breaking a sweat.
One quick jab of the flat of her hand to his neck, and he’s on the floor, throat-punched and gagging and grabbing at his windpipe. The Air Force colonel rolls on the ground so hard I can hear his shiny medals scratching the floor.
He’s incapacitated.
She’s pissed off.
I’m impressed.
I’m also reminded that any man with a brain had better never try to take credit for a very angry young lady’s accomplishments—especially when you’ve trained that very angry young lady to be a one-woman hit team.
Then set her loose to do her worst behind enemy lines, even if this particular mission required more stealth and finesse than brute violence.
Luckily, Agent Brin is one of those unique byproducts of our program who happens to be quite good at both.
From the dossier open across my lap, she’s almost frighteningly intelligent. Coldly in control of her emotions. Confident. Aggressive. Nearly impossible to knock down, and if you somehow manage...well, it’s your death warrant.
She’ll just get back up and make you regret it ten times over.
Her file is littered with 'incidents.'
Like the numerous times she put other girls in her unit in the sick bay during training in the inaugural Nightjars program. Naturally, Galentron’s first test run at raising its own in-house army of spies and supersoldiers from cradle to grave had some kinks to work out.
It’s probably not surprising Brin was rewarded for being our strongest graduate.
It’s also probably not surprising that she’s one of the youngest agents we’ve ever put in the field, and within weeks she delivered the goods. The girl pulled off a stealth operation I don’t think most SEAL teams could’ve accomplished, allowing NATO to take out an entire Serbian tank division in a covert aerial strike before they even knew what hit them.
So when the puffed-up military aide here debriefing us decided to downplay her involvement...
Well, who am I to deny a lady the right to speak for herself?
She’s not what I was expecting from the file.
In the photo clipped to the pages she’s a stone-still, cold, blank-faced thing with a severe jaw and pointed chin. Her hair is cut in a sharp black line across her brow and clipped in an angled pageboy to frame her china doll face. A natural white streak cuts a splash in her bangs, over her left eyebrow.
In the photo, she’s hollow-eyed, a mannequin, an automaton. A killer robot of a person.
In real life, she’s vibrating with tense energy.
>
Agent Patty Brin.
Twenty-three years old.
A tall, wiry girl, though her thick, clunky, entirely punk combat boots add another two inches.
Pixie-like build honed to taut strength. All outlined by her tight-fitting black A-shirt, the curve of her hips accentuated by the snug grey combat pants slung low on her body.
In a word: she’s fucking beautiful.
Even here, in the debriefing room at Galentron headquarters, she’s got a tactical knife strapped to her thigh, and her hands seem to twitch with the need to reach for it.
I wonder who the hell approved that.
Or who just decided it was easier not to argue with her about it and let her traipse in here armed with the entire senior leadership in the room.
Not that she couldn’t be dropped with a single command word, if push came to shove.
That’s why Dr. Maximilian Ross is here, seated at the conference table with the executives who sign his paychecks. Possibly the creepiest Count Dracula fuck I’ve ever met, even if he’s good at controlling his subjects.
It just makes me wonder why the man whose sole purpose is to handle this hot-eyed young woman chose the seat farthest away from where she stands near the window, looking every inch like a panther who’s five seconds away from pouncing for its dinner.
My lips twitch slightly.
Maybe mega-creep Ross is afraid of his own creation. Amusing.
Me?
I just find it too charming how she can’t seem to stop rolling a piece of this round pink candy around her mouth, her little cherub lips now and then parting to give me a glimpse of the gleaming bright color sliding across her tongue.
It looks like this cheap stuff, some violet or magenta color, no doubt made with artificial dyes sure to leave your tongue stained for days. Hers damn near glows neon right now. At least she’s fully human in one respect.
But it’s like that bit of candy helps keep her calm.
Could it be a comfort object? A sugary security blanket of sorts?
I haven’t been fully briefed on the specifics of what they do to the girls in the Nightjars program to make them what they are. They were all orphans once, handpicked at the perfect age to rewrite what little they’d remember of their past lives.