by Snow, Nicole
No streetlamps here.
No windows facing the street, or else they must have blackout blinds.
There’s trash everywhere. It’s so cold my breaths are steaming, my blood almost too hot in my veins when the rest of me is frozen to the core.
What fucking gives?
We’re nowhere near the sort of private offices military heads direct people to for anonymous meetings that never happened.
I get the sick feeling we’re somewhere we’re not supposed to be.
It feels like the dark side of the moon when I know where I’d rather be instead. Back home in bed in Seattle where it’s warm.
With Fuchsia.
She’s going to be so mad at me, even though she understands.
Galentron protocol.
Full dark on a new initiative.
You become a ghost on the spot until you’re clear to communicate again.
Still, even with my suspicions, even with my reservations that something about this situation doesn’t feel right, I don’t know what I’ve stepped in.
I don’t realize how close I am to becoming a real ghost until the pattern of movement around me shifts.
Suddenly there’s an opening in the wall of men in front of me.
The guards seem to move naturally—and just as we pass the mouth of a pitch-black alleyway, I’m vulnerable, exposed on one side.
My head comes up sharply, something in my old Intelligence Corps training warning me.
With a prickle of alarm, my head darts up right as a shift in the pressure of bodies nearly shoves me toward that alley opening.
And several masked men dart out from nowhere, latching on to me, whipping me into the darkness, right when I’m off balance.
Fuck!
I can already guess what’s happening before the pain proves it.
It’s made to look natural. Just a simple change in formation as we all walked, taking a corner, nobody’s fault, nothing like a deliberate opening created to leave me vulnerable to attack.
And even as I’m jerked backward, struggling and snarling into the alley, the guards are reacting—not to save me, but to protect Durham.
Because that’s their job.
If there’s an attack, he’s the primary target—close ranks, get him out of there, leave anyone else behind to fend for themselves.
Leave me behind to fend for myself.
That wall of bodies closes around Durham, ushering him away, protecting him with their flesh as meat shields against attack.
And I get one last glimpse of him.
Looking back.
And I’ll never forget that smile on his lips.
Sly.
Triumphant.
Sinister.
He’s the sacred cow, and I’m the sacrificial lamb. The motherfucker lured me out here for this and this alone. It’s a hit.
So I won’t stop him from developing and unleashing SP-73 to its full devilish potential.
So I won’t stand in the way of his delusions of grandeur.
So I won’t survive this, but no one can blame him when they call it an ambush and talk about how bravely I sacrificed myself so the CEO could get away.
I know this fucking scenario because I’ve set it up before.
Because I’m a tactician, because I can see every branch of possibility, probability, and deliberate action converging.
Right on this hell-point when four men in ski masks and black tactical gear drag me deeper into the dark cold.
One of them clamps his hand over my mouth to stop me from crying out, alerting the authorities or anyone in the buildings around us.
Later, no doubt, they’ll say it was thugs. Or assassins hired by competitors well-versed in the bloody art of corporate espionage.
But I recognize those brutal builds and the flat blankness of the eyes looking at me past the ski masks.
Then I can’t see anything but red as the first fist crashes into me.
It’s hardly a fair fight, but I give them one.
I strike back with everything, fists and legs and teeth.
But there’s four of them and one of me, and even though I’m good, I’m not an engineered supersoldier trained to be able to kill ten men single-handedly. I never stand a chance unarmed and dizzy with surprise against four fucking Nighthawks.
There’s pain now.
Explosions of ripping, white-hot pain as they lash out at me with hammer fists, hard knee jabs, steel-toed boots, catching me in my face, my ribs, my gut.
Another minute of this and I’ll be a pile of mush.
Closed casket funeral for sure.
But it’s nothing compared to the sudden slicing explosion of agony as a tactical knife rips across my knee, and suddenly the icy wet concrete scent of the street is eclipsed by my own blood, red and smoking in the cold air, filling my nostrils with its bitter, coppery scent.
I go down hard.
The last thing I see is a flash of silver coming toward my face.
Pain bursts in my skull as a blade drives into my eye.
I can’t begin to describe the searing heat, the torment, the fire that races over me. The scream that bottles in my throat, forced back by the hand still clamped over my lips.
But I don’t feel it for long.
I’m shutting down.
Goodbye, good night.
It’s all going black, the pain fading away into a terrible fog of shock.
I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t even remember who I am.
But I remember her.
Fuchsia.
My last thought is wondering what she’ll do now.
And how much I hate myself for leaving Fuchsia to raise our baby—and guard her against Galentron.
Alone.
* * *
I’m not dead.
Somehow I’m not dead, and believe me...
I’m just as surprised about that fact as you are.
I know before I even open my eyes—excuse me, eye—that I’m in a hospital.
Not even a Galentron one, either.
Because I can hear people talking—warm, soft. Gentle emotion between two people who care about each other.
You’d never find that in a Galentron facility, no matter how hard you looked.
Listening closer, it’s a girl talking to her father. About chemotherapy, I think, about how she’s a candidate for donating bone marrow and he’s going to be okay.
I’m still fuzzy, not quite sure on everything, coming up out of the darkness and into a sort of muted pain in my skull. It feels like I’m being held together by a dull wall of drugs, but that’s the first thing that hits me when I come to.
I’m in a hospital, and my roommate is a man with bone cancer, and his daughter is crying with happiness and clutching his hand to her chest while he smiles up at her with new hope in his eyes, because there’s something she can do to save him.
Waking up with heartache is, I guess, better than not waking up at all.
But I guess my movement sets the heart monitors off.
They start beeping as I try shifting in the bed to get a better idea of my surroundings. I have to get the fuck out of here.
There’s a second of panic. Then a weird epiphany occurs to me.
Galentron can’t know I’m alive, or I wouldn’t be in a civilian hospital in...wherever I am.
It’s hard for me to focus.
Everything feels off-kilter, and that’s when I realize it’s because I’m only seeing out of one eye. The other is completely dark, not even red light filters through my eyelids, though I can feel gauze thickly padding the flesh over my socket and wrapped around my throbbing head.
The woman sitting next to the other bed in the room, along with the older man in the bed, glance over at me, their faces lit with elation. It’s like they know me and actually care that I’m conscious.
It’s that kind of strange solidarity that comes from being surrounded by the sick and dying.
You care about people li
ke they’re your own, just because you can’t stand seeing anyone else hurt after suffering in purgatory’s waiting room.
“Hey, roomie,” the guy says. He’s sunken, wasted, but practically glowing with the new life of hope. “Thought you weren’t gonna make it for a while. What’s your name? They’ve got you down as John Doe.”
John Doe.
Anonymous. Picked up with no wallet, no form of ID.
Galentron probably took them to make my death look like a random mugging. They must have left my body, thinking I’d bleed out, and then get called in for pickup.
What they don’t realize is, they also gave me an opportunity.
This is my chance to disappear, to sort shit out.
So I wrinkle my brow, shaking my head as I feign confusion and say, “I...I don’t know. Go ahead and laugh but...I can’t remember my name.”
That’s my story.
Oliver Major has to stop existing for a while.
I’m sorry, Fuchsia.
I’ll be back for you.
I’ll be back for our little girl.
But for right now, I can’t even share the same country.
Canada’s sounding pretty good for a while.
Just as soon as I get out of here and find a way to disappear.
8
Like Taking Candy from a Baby (Fuchsia)
Remember when I said I’d tell you how I came to be here, staring down the barrel of this obnoxious gold-plated gun with a smile on my lips?
Ta-da. Here I am.
And as Leland Durham lays his finger on the trigger and starts to apply that ounce of pressure, I smile wider, clicking my little ball of pink candy against my teeth just because I know it annoys him and it always has.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I say. “You don’t want to end up like your friends.”
The two Nighthawks in uniform he’d had guarding him in his cabin?
On the floor, out cold.
You’d be surprised how high a lady can still kick in a pencil skirt.
I’d used the close quarters to my advantage. They’re big men, made to be that way, and they don’t maneuver well in tight spaces.
I do.
And it wasn’t hard to get an elbow to a solar plexus, a heel to a thick forehead, then use Goon Number One’s body as a sledgehammer with a well-timed push. Goon Number Two went crashing against the wall, his head bouncing off it like a tetherball attached to a rope.
Right now, I should have an entire army of Nighthawks descending on me, but there’s someone outside raising hell. A lucky break.
I can hear the shouts, the roaring, the confusion.
I just caught a glimpse of the man, he was moving by too fast.
A stocky build.
An eyepatch, a leather jacket, and muscle underneath it gleaming in the rain.
That’s all I had time for before the door to this jet opened.
Whoever my mysterious benefactor is, he saved my bacon and my lovely heels from having to lay out another dozen of those hulking pricks while Leland Durham scrambled for his rich man’s gun.
Not that it stopped him.
And not that it’s keeping him from staring down the barrel of his ever-so-classy gold Colt right at me.
Guess he’d been waiting.
He had to know someone would try something.
But I still don’t think he was expecting I’d be the one showing up at his door.
He glances past me with contempt, glancing at the bodies of the men on the floor, then frowns, tilting his head, listening to the dim hints of ruckus from outside.
“I’m sorry,” I say mildly. “Were you waiting for the rest? They’re a bit occupied.”
Durham lets out a soft, raspy sigh.
Like this is just the kind of minor inconvenience that has him complaining to the hotel concierge. Totally not a highly trained assassin and mega-pissed off woman staring him down fearlessly over his own gun.
He has to know I’ve been in this situation before.
He has to know a gun pointed at me has never once stopped me.
And it won’t do him a lick of good today.
I’ve already got six different action plans worked out, and I’ll be out of the line of fire before he even finishes pulling the trigger.
For now, he shakes his head, clucking his tongue.
The man hasn’t changed much over the years. The bad ones never do. A little more grey, a little more portly, a few more lines around his mouth and eyes, but it’s funny how living guilt-free off other people’s sweat and blood keeps you from aging.
You know what they say.
Money’s the cure for all that ails.
“It doesn’t have to be like this, Fuchsia,” he snaps, his voice as cold and refined as ever.
Conciliatory.
Bastard prick. He’s actually doing it.
Turning on that smart-assed, superficial charm I’ve always hated since day one.
How much do you want to bet he’s a Scorpio?
“Don’t be daft. You’ve got just as much to lose as I do if the police show up and we’re both apprehended.” He pushes the gun out a little farther, an inch closer.
I raise an eyebrow. “What makes you think I’ll let them arrest you alive?”
He snorts, his nostrils flaring. “You’ve lost your mind. Heroics never interested you. Tell me why you’re really here?”
“Reasons,” I snap, fluttering a step closer, completely oblivious to his little popgun. “Don’t make me recite them or we’ll be here all day. I’d much rather get right into it, wouldn’t you? Be reasonable, now.”
That last line was chosen carefully. It takes me back to a deep, dark place I know he has to remember, even if it’s tucked back in the recesses of his rotten weasel brain.
“I’m exceedingly reasonable, Miss Delaney.” He stressed that word, reasonable. He knows. But he’s still talking, enjoying the sound and taste of his own voice. “You and I, we have history.”
“Yeah. History,” I bite off, already tensing my legs, ready to move. “One you wrote to suit your own greed.”
For just a split second, it all comes rushing back.
* * *
Fifteen Years Ago
I don’t do grief.
At least, that’s what I tell myself as I stand numbly across from Leland Durham in his plush office and listen to him roll off platitudes about how I’ll always have a family at Galentron.
How he knew Oliver and I had gotten close, that things were serious between us, and he understands how devastated I must be, especially when I’m pregnant with Oliver’s child.
I want to fucking throat-punch this man.
Especially every time he dares to bring up our baby.
A child I never told another living soul about, much less anyone at Galentron.
So either Oliver spilled it to Durham, which I totally doubt...or it’s worse than I ever thought.
It’s so bad my blood runs colder than liquid nitrogen.
They’re watching me more closely than I realized.
Monitoring my every move. I should’ve known the God-like tracking would continue long after officially “graduating” Nightjars. Growing up, I couldn’t move my pinky without an entire Galentron psychiatric team knowing.
Which makes me wonder if I’m the reason Oliver’s dead.
Because you can bet more than anything I don’t believe a mugger in a back alley took out a man like Oliver and left him for dead.
There’s no body.
No fucking body and I can’t find anything about a funeral, no matter how much I dig.
Oliver’s personnel file has mysteriously vanished from the system, or at least been moved where my credentials can’t access it—and with Durham talking about sending me outside Seattle to keep watch on the executives managing the big SP-73 study in Montana, at this point there’s not much my security credentials can’t access.
Unless someone deliberately wants to hide something from m
e.
Durham disappeared Oliver.
If he’s gone thanks to me, I don’t know how I’ll live with myself.
And I don’t know how to protect our child, if Durham will go so far when it comes to managing his assets as he sees fit.
Speaking of assets...
He half-smiles, his syrupy platitude smile that’s so insincere I could claw it right off his face.
“Your child will be well cared for, Miss Delaney,” he promises. “You won’t have to worry about raising them alone. You and Oliver are—my condolences, were—two of our finest personnel. A child of yours will have amazing potential as an asset. We’d be more than happy to assist in nurturing that potential, rather than leaving it solely in your hands. Why, you’re practically my own daughter. You’re Galentron’s.”
That knocks the air right out of me.
Total horror.
And I think the only reason Durham’s still alive right now is because I’m in shock over the fact that I’ll never see Oliver’s strong, handsome, life-giving face again.
I just know the grim truth: no matter how it happened, it’s done.
He’s dead.
Galentron doesn’t make mistakes when it comes to the reaper business.
My hands clench into fists as I take a slow, arcing step forward.
“You...”
My voice shakes. I can’t fucking help myself.
There’s a volcanic rage building up inside me, like all the coldness I’ve cultivated over the years is cracking here and now, revealing the molten inferno hidden inside.
It’s beyond ready to erupt in his face.
“You...you stay the hell away from my baby, Durham!” I choke out. “She’s not yours. She’s not your property.”
Durham, cold as ever, just smiles at me, completely unafraid, even though I could snap his neck in seconds with no one the wiser. Too bad I’d pay for it with my baby’s life, and my own.
“Be reasonable, now, Fuchsia,” he says, ever-so-kindly. “Don’t you know I only want what’s best for you? That’s all I’ve ever wanted for my Nightjars.”
* * *
Present
“So?” I spit at him.