My Next Breath

by Shannon McKenna

  Zade’s knees went weak. He tried to block the hope, but he couldn’t. Don’t do this to yourself again. Another brick wall. Another bloody crash.

  Hope was a cruel bitch. And he just kept coming back for more abuse.

  “Thanks, man,” he said.

  “No problem.”

  “That’s enough for now.” Asa’s voice was stern. “How about a shower and a real bed?” Asa loaded Brenner’s arm over his shoulder and heaved him upright.

  The other man stumbled even with assistance, hissing with pain as he staggered forward.

  Zade and Simone watched them slowly lurch out of the room and then looked at each other.

  “The suspense is driving me nuts,” she said. “Look at that data.”

  He went to the laptop, tapped a key to wake it, and clicked on the download with one last twinge of stomach-churning dread.

  A graphic rendering of a US map. As Brenner said, there were ten days of the truck’s movements.

  In that time, Mark had driven all over the western United States. The wiggling line started in Utah, snaked through Wyoming, wound its way around Montana, and then went through Nevada. Then back to Utah, where it stopped. Zade synched with the laptop and uploaded it all into his own auxiliary data banks.

  He had thousands of miles of road to cover.

  Chapter 26

  Simone woke up from a vivid dream, in a state of startled wonder. She barely remembered where she was for a moment. She looked around, bewildered.

  Oh yes. Asa’s house. She’d finally decompressed enough to sleep after all those intense hours of work to revive Brenner. Dawn had been threatening to break before she and Zade had finally collapsed in one of Asa’s upstairs bedrooms.

  She hadn’t gotten much sleep, but she felt more rested than usual. Maybe it was the dream. Usually she dreamed about the white room. Restraint, suffocation, terror. Voices that droned and jabbered ceaselessly.

  This one was different. It had been full of open spaces, starry night skies, wind sweeping over rippling grass, vast canyons. Big waves crashing. Freedom.

  And Zade, everywhere. Her mind was full of him. And not only him. Her mother had been in that dream. But it hadn’t been a stress nightmare about her mother’s acute suffering at the end. This dream had been sparked by older, happier memories. From way back when things were still good. Before … everything.

  Simone shut her eyes and tried to grab the images before they slipped away.

  Hiking in the woods. Just the two of them in a forest of pine and cedar trees, their feathery branches sifting the sun into a million shades of shimmering green-gold. The spicy smell of needles, the soft, cushioning moss. Mom’s smile as she looked back, encouraging her to skip on the rocks over a rushing cascade of water.

  It looked so clear and pure in her memory. Mom’s hand held out, encouraging her to jump from the last boulder to the rocky edge of the stream.

  It was a long jump for her short legs. The water was deep and swift and cold.

  Come on. You can do it. You’re brave. Just jump, baby.

  Yes. She was brave. She could jump.

  Zade was looking straight at her when she opened her eyes again. He was no dream. He was right here. Flesh and blood. Big and complicated and gorgeous.

  The look in his eyes charged her with emotions. Part joy, part fear. Nothing in her experience had led her to think that something so sweet could last.

  But she wanted so badly to believe it.

  When he saw her awake, he gathered her close, arms tightening around her with a rumbling murmur, pulling her against all that hot skin, the rasp of beard stubble, his unruly dark hair. Her lips brushed up against the hard, uneven scars on his chest. She tasted salt on his skin.

  So many wounds, but he didn’t seem haunted by them. He was so strong and vital; it was hard to imagine him as vulnerable. Yet the poison he had worn was proof. That pendant. A macabre talisman against a degrading death.

  The scars reminded her of what he was up against. His kill code. Yet here he was. Vital and alive.

  “You barely slept,” he said. “Two hours, tops.”

  “Better than nothing. How about you?”

  “I did a soldier sentinel circuit,” he said, yawning. “Tried to, anyhow.”

  “What’s that?”

  “An Obsidian battlefield training technique,” he said. “You rest one brain hemisphere while the other one stays alert. I hate it, but it cancels out the nightmares.”

  “That’s a plus.” She wound her arms round his neck. She didn’t have words to tell him how she felt. The strength of her arms said it better. The heat of her lips.

  Her hands slid over his body and she drank him in with all her senses: the steely unyielding muscle, his long, strong fingers gripping her with tightly controlled need.

  His thick, stiff, beautiful cock, pulsing in her hand when she reached for it.

  She shifted herself over him, seeking his heat and hardness.

  He pulled back. “Wait,” he said unsteadily. “I have to get you ready.”

  “I want you inside me right now,” she said. “Your kisses make me so wet. The way you look into my eyes. Feel me. Put your fingers right there … oh God, yes. See what you do to me?”

  “So sweet,” he groaned. “Open your legs a little wider. So damn sweet.”

  He caressed her pussy, and she clenched eagerly around each slow stroke. He petted her right where she craved it, slowing down, speeding up. Teasing the wonderful ache of need until she was whimpering for harder, deeper, more.

  All of him. On her, in her, right now.

  Zade rolled on top of her, and she grabbed his iron-hard ass muscles to pull him inside. She shuddered with abandoned surrender at the incredible sensation of his cock filling her.

  They were quiet, both conscious of being in someone else’s house, but they wound their hands together and indulged in endless, ravenous kisses. She was so wet and soft and he was impossibly hard and hot, stroking her depths with each slick plunge. She took him deeper with each surge as waves of pleasure rocked them.

  They tried to keep it slow. They couldn’t. Body to body, they urged each other on with fierce, muttered demands.

  Until the pleasure crested, pulsing wildly through them both.

  Zade rolled her over on top of him. He pressed his hand to the small of her back to keep his cock lodged deep inside her. Fine with her. She didn’t want to break the connection either.

  She sprawled on his chest, idly tracing a few of his tattoos.

  “Mm,” he said drowsily. “Lie down. Maybe now we can sleep.”

  “No,” she said. “I need to go check on Brenner.”

  She washed and dressed, and headed downstairs, Zade following close behind. They found Brenner and Asa on the side deck. Brenner sat on the steps drinking coffee. A chilly breeze ruffled the treetops. Asa was chopping wood in the yard below, bringing savage energy to the task.

  Brenner looked wan and bruised, and his newly shaven head looked weird, but the swelling had gone down far enough that she could actually see his features now. He looked human again.

  He held a neurostim wand in his hand, studying the thing with tight-lipped loathing. He gave her a nod, and his eyes dropped shyly when she smiled at him.

  “You look great,” she said. “How do you feel?”

  “Everything hurts,” he said, his ruined voice thick and rasping. “But better. I think.”

  “Is that the wand Mark used on you?” Zade asked.

  Brenner nodded.

  Asa gave a chunk of seasoned pine a mighty whack with the axe and tossed the resulting split chunks onto the deck woodpile. “Is that thing one of yours?” he asked Simone.

  “No, but it’s modeled on mine, judging by the schematics.” She reached out. “May I?”

  Brenner gave it to her. She sat down next to him on the steps to study it, ignoring the chunks of wood sailing past her head to land neatly onto the pile near the door.

  “How do you
know for sure?” Zade asked. “It looks exactly like the stuff I saw in the Batello catalog.”

  “The casing,” she said. “I put yellow stripes on my prototypes so I could spot them fast in a messy workspace. Like the pieces I used on him last night, remember? I’m going to steal every last piece of my stuff back from those bastards. I’ll have to get my hands on the RFID tag database somehow so I can track down who’s been fucking with them.”

  She glanced up from her absorption with the wand when she noticed the odd silence that followed her statement. “What is it?” she demanded. “What did I say?”

  “RFID tags,” Zade repeated.

  “Well, yes. There’s an active long-range beacon in every prototype.”

  “Yeah, I saw that,” Asa said, leaning on his axe. “I bug-swept the stuff we got out of Mark’s truck. The stuff with yellow stripes was pinging away to the whole fucking world, so I put them in the weapons room. It’s shielded down there.”

  “Thanks for telling me,” Zade said.

  Asa frowned at him as he positioned another chunk of wood. “It never came up. And I was busy at the time. As you may recall.” His eyes flicked to Brenner as he brought the axe down.

  Zade looked at Simone. “Did the device Mark put on Luke in that video have a beacon?”

  “Yes. But there were many copies of that design. I couldn’t identify which one it is from that video.”

  “But you could narrow it way down,” Zade said. “Who has the RFID info?”

  “Batello’s security personnel, and Rand himself. He has a big vault at his house where he insists on keeping hard copies of all my unpatented designs. Along with a dedicated laptop that holds all the digital schematics. And the RFID tag database, of course.”

  Zade’s eyes gleamed. “Can you get into his vault?”

  “He gave me the combination last year when he had exploratory surgery,” Simone said.

  “Yeah? Did they find anything?” Zade asked. “Like a heart?”

  “Hah,” Simone said. “It turned out to be nothing at all, in fact. But he did have to stay in the hospital for a few days.”

  Zade grunted. “He would have changed it for sure since then.”

  “Maybe not,” she said. “Though he was always so confident that I was his good-girl robot. He’d just call with the magic ringtone and I’d hop right to it. It’s not happening anymore. But he might not have gotten around to all the details.”

  “I need to pay Rand a visit,” Zade said. “Today.”

  “I have to go with you,” she said. “I know his house, his alarms, his files, his hardware. How his mind works.”

  Asa swung his axe down deep into the chopping block and stood up, glaring at Simone. “No way,” he said. “You can’t just up and leave yet. I need you nearby. In case Brenner has a relapse.”

  She and Zade looked at Brenner, still hunched over his coffee. He was healing before their eyes, his scrapes and bruises fading with incredible speed, but his eyes had a bleak, haunted stare.

  “Luke can’t wait.” Zade’s voice was hard. “It’s been nine weeks.”

  That shut them all up for a moment.

  Asa shook his head. “So what’s your brilliant plan? You shake down Rand, maybe get a hit with an RFID beacon, and then? You leave him hanging out to dry?” He waved his hand toward Brenner. “After what he’s been through?”

  “Nine weeks,” Zade repeated, through set teeth. “Luke can’t wait.”

  “I’ll stay in the cage until they’re back,” Brenner offered. “If that helps.”

  “No,” Asa snarled. “You’re not my goddamn prisoner and you never were.”

  Brenner shrugged. “I don’t want to hurt anyone if I go nuts again.”

  “Either we get a fix on Luke or we don’t,” Zade said. “Simple.”

  “No it isn’t,” Asa growled. “You Midlander types have no talent for simple.”

  “So give me a gun,” Zade said.

  “Take what you want from the armory,” Asa grumbled. “You always do. Pick one out for her while you’re at it. I’ll put it on your fucking tab.”

  “You do that.”

  They got on the road right after Zade chose weapons from Asa’s basement hoard. Simone was keenly aware of the weight of the small .38 double action revolver in her coat pocket. Zade had insisted she take it, in spite of her lack of experience with guns. Today was not a day for shooting practice, but whatever.

  The drive back to the city was very quiet. Zade was deep in his thoughts, so she stayed deep inside her own. She didn’t even bother giving directions to Rand’s house. He knew where it was. Hell, he knew where everything was. She just contemplated the road, trying to organize the data in her head so she could work with it. But the crazy new info pouring in did not organize easily.

  They were getting close to Rand’s when she finally spoke to him. “I was thinking about your control codes,” she said.

  He winced. “Do we have to talk about that?”

  She ignored him, pressing on. “I was just wondering if the principles behind it are similar to Brenner’s issues yesterday.”

  “No idea,” he said. “Where are you going with this?”

  “Nowhere yet. But yesterday showed us that what was done can be undone.”

  He shook his head. “Maybe. If I knew the codes themselves. But no one knows his own codes. The shock wipes them right out of your mind. There’s no time to register them. It’s like getting hit in the head with a blackjack. You don’t even know it happened. And as for the kill code, well. No second chances with that.”

  “True,” she said.

  “The only code I know is Luke’s stun code,” he went on. “And the only reason I know it is because I heard Mark use it on the video. Calliope, banner, ibex. It kills me, that Mark was able to dig that up when we couldn’t. And I can’t make a dead man tell me how.”

  “If he found it, then you can find it,” she said. “I’m sure of that.”

  He pondered that for a moment. “If there was a chance of scrubbing those fucking codes out of me, I’d risk it.” He shook his head. “Nothing keeps a guy humble like a built-in off switch. I’m like a fucking power tool for those bastards.”

  They had arrived. Zade parked a few hundred feet from the high gate in the higher wall that hid Rand’s property.

  “Give me your laptop,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I know his passwords. I’ll disable the alarm and open the gate remotely.”

  He reached for it and handed it over. Simone looked up after a few minutes of tapping and clicking into the security system. “Hm. Says the gate’s already open,” she told him. “Which makes no sense. Rand is incredibly paranoid.”

  “It didn’t look open.” He peered through the trees. “We’d better assume that Obsidian is watching. And we have to be fast.”

  She handed back the laptop before they got out and went on foot. The gate lock opened silently with no more than a gentle push.

  They went inside and walked discreetly through the grounds, reconnoitering. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. Rand’s place had a large sloping lawn and a few towering trees, not too near to his modern house, all glass and steel.

  When they got closer, they saw that the front door was slightly open.

  “That’s not good,” Simone whispered.

  Zade pushed it open. They stepped inside.

  The place had been destroyed.

  Chapter 27

  Zade smelled it instantly. A meaty animal odor. Blood. The taint of decomposition. Not strong enough for an unmod to smell yet.

  Rand was here. And he was dead.

  He needed to prepare Simone, but he couldn’t find the words. Not with his brain in ASP-battle overdrive

  He heard Simone’s heart rev to a gallop as she looked around and called to her stepfather. “Rand?”

  “Keep it down, babe.” He followed close behind as she skidded through debris, shoes crunching on broken glass. Books, pape
rs, magazines were scattered all over the floor. Furniture overturned, cushions and upholstery slashed, lamps thrown down, shards of ceramic and glass glittering on the floor.

  A wheeled suitcase lay open in the foyer, the clothing yanked out and strewn everywhere.

  “Rand!” she yelled again.

  Zade followed her into a study. Books, papers, and computer equipment had been swept off the desk and shelves and hurled to the floor in a tangle of cables. A smashed printer lay on its side.

  “Rand?” she called again.

  Zade tried again to think of a way to prepare her for what she was going to witness as she crouched down, pawing through the mess.

  “It’s a travel itinerary.” Her voice shook. She tugged at a sheet of paper that stuck halfway out of the printer and pried the thing loose, rumpled and torn. She peered at it. “He was going to Singapore. He must have been printing it when they attacked him.”

  She leaped up and shoved past him, out of the room.

  “Simone! Let me go first!” He charged after her up the stairs.

  Upstairs was trashed too. Room after room. They reached what had evidently been Rand’s bedroom. The slashed canvas remnants of some big art piece lay in tatters on the floor. The vault door that had been hidden behind it hung wide open.

  The space inside was as big as a small room, shelving on all sides. A swift glance revealed that it was completely empty.

  “Is that where the laptop with the RFID database would have been?” he asked her.

  “That’s where he kept it, yeah. Along with all my designs.” Her voice was thin.

  Wasn’t that just fucking typical. He wanted to bellow, smash something. He couldn’t. Not while Simone was standing in the wreckage, trying to be tough.

  But if he could at least get her the fuck out of here without seeing Rand’s ravaged body, so much the better. She could find out later. Deal with it then.

  He took her arm. “Let’s just go. Obsidian beat us to it. We’ll figure something else out.”

  She followed along, unresisting, down the stairs, but halfway down she leaned over the banister with a gasp. “Zade! Look at that!”

  The hallway carpet runner had a trail of blood drops along it.