My Next Breath

by Shannon McKenna

Fuck. So they were doing this. With all the drama that went with it.

  Simone followed the trail of dark droplets into the kitchen, where they became one long, indistinct brownish smear on the patterned Mexican tiles.

  The kitchen was trashed too. Cupboards hung open, hinges bent and askew. Drawers were yanked out and smashed, their contents scattered everywhere.

  The blood trail led straight to a door in the back of the kitchen.

  Zade suppressed the stress-amped ASP surge. “Where does the door lead?”

  “Stairs to the basement and garage.” Her voice was tight.

  The smell of blood was so strong when the door opened that she reeled back.

  He put his arm around her. “Stay here,” he offered. “I’ll check it out for you.”

  “No. I have to see this for myself.”

  Damn. He clenched his fists in frustration. “Okay, but let me go first.”

  She nodded. “Light’s at the top of the stairs.”

  “Got it.” He snapped it on.

  Rand was crumpled at the foot of the stairs, head twisted at an impossible angle. His face was caved in. His tan wool coat was soaked with blood.

  He’d been brutally beaten and then thrown down the basement stairs.

  Zade went down the stairs and crouched next to him. His body was stone cold. He’d been dead for hours.

  Simone followed him slowly and kneeled on the other side of Rand’s body. Her hair fell forward, shielding her face.

  He didn’t know what to say. Everything felt stiff and stupid. “Simone—”

  “You don’t have to say anything.” She looked up at him, her gaze hard and bright. “Let’s get the hell out of this place. They’ll come for us next.”

  “Right,” he agreed fervently, pulling her to her feet.

  Simone went back up the stairs ahead of him and they hurried through the kitchen and corridor. When they were almost to the front door, she stopped short.

  “Wait. I just thought of something.” She turned back, and Zade followed her past the trashed study and into the room next to it, which was long and narrow. In it was a large desk with many monitors showing the feeds from security vid-cams all over the property.

  “What’s this place?” he asked.

  “Security room,” she said. “Kruger’s lair. Maybe he copied the RFID database for himself, or for Holt. He’s that kind of guy.” She pulled open all the drawers in the desk, rummaging with frantic speed, and pulled out a device, a small tablet with an antenna, in a black rubber protective case.

  “What’s that?” he demanded.

  “An RFID tag reader,” she said. “If Kruger had one, he probably has the database of all the RFID tags on his hard drive somewhere. It’s worth a look.”

  Just like that, fresh hope fucked him right up again.

  He clamped down on it. Stay cool. “Good thinking.” He tapped Kruger’s computer to wake it. Found the wifi and data-dived swiftly.

  A few teeth-grinding minutes in that techno half-world, gulping data at top speed, and he had every last byte on that hard drive. When it was all parked in his auxiliary databanks, he grabbed Simone’s hand and pulled her out the door. Time to blast off. He’d sift and sort later.

  He pulled in a grateful breath of fresh, clean air once they were finally outside, and dug his keys out of his coat pocket as soon as they cleared the gate. “You drive,” he told her. “I need to data-sift and I don’t want to multitask.”

  “Sure.” She took his keys and sprinted to the driver’s side.

  The tires squealed as the Jeep tore out onto the road but he barely noticed how fast she drove, he was in so deep. Hardly aware of the outside world at all.

  Fastest data-sift he’d ever done. He identified the characteristics of the kind of files he was looking for, sifting through everything in his auxiliaries with blinding speed, and … yes.There it was. A column of RFID numbers, glowing on a superimposed transparent screen in his mind. Hundreds of them, scrolling down his field of vision. He was sweat-soaked, as if he’d run a race. But he had them.

  “Zade.” Simone’s voice was tense. “Tell me you got something.”

  He dragged his mind back from that techno-kinetic inner world, trying to remember how to talk. “Huh? What?”

  “Tell me. Is the RFID tag data there?”

  “Yeah, it’s there,” he said hoarsely.

  “So?” She passed him the reader. “Then use this, for fuck’s sake! Track them down. The suspense is killing me.”

  He activated the reader, messing around for a moment to get his bearings. Then he ran the tags, pinning all the coordinates he found to a mental map that encompassed the route Mark’s truck had taken in the last ten days of his life.The hairs rose on his neck when he saw the two data sets merged. In one spot on Mark’s snaking GPS map, two active RFID tags were pinging away.

  Emotion thundered through his body. Not joy. More similar to terror. His final reward for all this effort would probably be his worst nightmare.

  Luke’s body, decomposing in an underground cell.

  He’d be dragging that image around in his head until the day he died. But it wasn’t like he wasn’t obsessed by it already.

  Luke would do it for you. Luke never stepped away from a hard job in his life.

  “So?” she demanded. “Is there overlap?”

  “Yes,” he said. “In Wyoming. The Bighorn Mountains. A mountain canyon, judging by the topo lines. Mark’s truck went there and then left from there, on the same road. Two of the prototypes in that database are at the end of that road.”

  She was silent for a moment. “Well, good, then,” she said finally. “So all this crazy drama wasn’t for nothing. So? Where to?”

  He didn’t answer her. After a few moments, she glanced over, frowning. “What?” she demanded. “Give me some directions, Zade.”

  He braced himself. “You can’t go there with me.”

  She looked back at the road and screeched to a shuddering halt at a red light, just in time. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “I have no idea what I’m going to find,” he said. “And it’s not safe. You’re not trained for combat.”

  “Maybe not, but this isn’t a combat situation. Mark’s dead and gone. He was operating on his own. According to Brenner, he never succeeded in activating his supersoldier army. Obsidian hadn’t found him by the time he got killed. Why would anyone be lying in wait at Mark’s place?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I can’t guarantee that it’s safe.”

  She let out a sharp laugh as the light turned green and the Jeep surged forward again. “I don’t need guarantees. I’m not a soldier, but I am trained in finding solutions to complex problems. And that can be pretty fucking useful sometimes.”

  “I never said you weren’t useful. You’re just the wrong person to go with me. I’ll call a guy I know from SafeGuard. They’re a local security firm. I can leave you at their headquarters here in town. They’re not Midlanders, but they’re damn good. They can cover you until I come back for you.”

  “Hell, no,” she said. “I may not be the right person, Zade, but it sure looks like I’m the only person.”

  “Simone,” he growled. “Don’t do this.”

  “Here it comes,” she said. “I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve been braced for this ever since I found out how you lied to me when we met.”

  “Come on. I thought we were past all that shit.”

  “Me too. But evidently we’re not.” She flipped the turn signal and hit the gas to pass an aging Buick that was poking along too slowly for her liking. “Looks like this is the end of my fun hot fantasy. I delivered the goods. You won. Good for you. Congratulations, Zade.”

  “You think I’m just going to blow you off now that I have the data?” He was outraged. “After everything that’s happened between us? You still think that’s what this is all about?”

  She glanced over long enough to give him a thin smile and looked back
at the road. “I don’t know, Zade. You tell me.”

  He hung on to his temper with some effort. “That’s fucked up,” he told her.

  “Yeah, that pretty much defines my life lately,” she said.

  He let out a slow breath, still seeing those superimposed RFID tag coordinates glowing on the map inside his head. “It’s true that I got everything I was stalking you for. And more. You even saved Brenner’s ass for us. And now I have a lead on Mark’s headquarters. My wildest dreams came true.”

  Simone looked like she was bracing herself. “Then I guess this is goodbye?”

  “Hell no,” he said. “Because my wildest dreams got a whole lot wilder when I met you. You are not getting rid of me.”

  She kept her eyes fixed on the road, but it looked like she was blushing. Thank God. At least her body was on his side.

  “I can’t afford to get this wrong,” she said. “Do not jerk me around.”

  “I’m not,” he said. “So listen. Don’t read this wrong. This is not me blowing you off. This is me keeping you safe. I couldn’t stand it if you got hurt.”

  “You’re not going into battle,” she argued. “You saw Mark die. Shot in the head, right? No question.”

  “Yes. But I don’t know who else might be out there.”

  “Was I useful yesterday? I mean to you and Asa and Brenner.”

  “Of course!” he said savagely. “That’s not in question.”

  “And are we together now? Or did I misunderstand all the sweet nothings the other night? About me helping you, and how much you needed me, blah blah blah. Was all that just more of your calculated bullshit?”

  “No,” he growled.

  “So let me help,” she said sharply. “Don’t shut me out. I’m invested in this now. And I’m going with you. End of story.”

  “Simone, I can’t—”

  “It’s our only way forward,” she said. “I go with you now, or else I concede the obvious. You don’t trust me, and you’re just using me. If that’s the truth, then okay. Believe me, I get it. You love your brother. You’d do anything to find him.”

  “I’m not using you,” he said. “Maybe I did at first, but not anymore.”

  “So prove it. Don’t waste any more of my time.” She waited, and then swerved to avoid an erratic sixteen-wheeler. “Go ahead, Zade. Own it, if we’re done. I won’t break.”

  His glare was wasted on her. She was concentrating furiously on the road ahead.

  “I don’t like ultimatums,” he told her.

  “I’m sorry you see it that way,” she said coolly. “Doesn’t change a thing.”

  She wasn’t going to back down for any reason. Damn. She was a force of nature.

  He just sat there for a minute. Thinking it through. Weighing the risks.

  “Get into the right hand lane,” he said finally. “We’re taking I-5 South to Route 90.”

  She put the turn signal on. He could tell that she was trying not to smile.

  “You follow my lead, though,” he said forcefully. “I tell you to run, you run. I tell you to stay put, you stay put. Will you promise me that?”

  She glanced over at him, lips curving in her sexy, mysterious smile. “Of course, Zade,” she said sweetly. “You’re the expert, after all.”

  She was fucking with him again.

  Chapter 28

  They made good time on the highway once night fell, speeding over long empty roads. Zade took over the wheel after a few hours. The darkness enfolded them, and both were silent. They barely stopped, just for the occasional cup of coffee.

  They hit the Wyoming state line the following afternoon. Simone’s RFID coordinates glowed intensely on Zade’s inner field of vision, as did the snaking GPS route of Mark’s truck. He couldn’t voluntarily dismiss the data from his field of vision as he usually did. As the hours crawled by, the inner visual stimuli started glowing brighter and brighter, until it became more visible than what his actual eyes took in from the outside.

  After an hour or so of that, he got Simone to drive again.

  It was close to sunset when they left the main highway for a narrow road winding up into a mountain canyon. A spell of warm weather had melted much of the high snow, judging by the gullies and creeks they drove past. They were swollen with rushing brown water and choked with debris. Zade gave terse directions. Simone followed them without comment.

  “We’re about fifteen minutes out,” he told her finally. “Promise you’ll stick close to me when we’re there. Follow my lead. No heroics.”

  She shot him a swift, sidewise look. “I already promised that,” she said. “You’re the supersoldier. It’s obvious.”

  He grunted. “Right. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  The final stretch was partly washed out by recent rainstorms and a bitch to drive over. The SUV rocked and bounced in the deep ruts but hauled its own ass out.

  His guts tightened as the final turn on the road revealed the house. The approach was long and slow, flanking a creek that had turned into a dangerously swift river barely contained by eroded banks. Mark’s house was a concrete cube with big picture windows. One was boarded up with plywood. The house’s crude angles were jarringly ugly against its wild surroundings.

  It stuck out like a turd on a rug.

  A wooden footbridge connected the road to the property, damaged now and partially overwhelmed by the rushing current. Several inches of muddy water swirled over the sagging middle section.

  They parked at a distance from the river and glanced around, looking for signs of life or movement. With that boarded-up window, the house looked abandoned. No cars. No lights. He heard nothing but the roar of the water.

  Zade got out and went around to the back, where he dragged out a hard-shell case he’d taken from Asa’s weapons room. He beckoned Simone over. “We’re wearing comm gear. I want to be able to talk to you and hear you if we have to separate. And here’s a button cam. Mine will transmit images to your phone.”

  “What phone?”

  He pulled out a phone and handed it to her. “This one. Your button cam feed goes directly to my implants. I’ll see it inside my head.”

  “Okay. But why use comm gear? I thought I was sticking to you.”

  “Just in case,” he muttered.

  He rigged her up fast. His neck crawled as if hidden killers lay in wait, but his hyper-charged senses still gave him nothing, even when he sound-sifted the hell out of the feed.

  As far as he could tell, they were alone. The place seemed deserted.

  He chalked his uneasiness up to paranoia. Fear, sleep deprivation, and true love: a lethal combo that was fucking with his head. He couldn’t trust his own brain anymore.

  “Switch that on,” he told her, pointing at the phone. “And wait here.”

  He activated his comm set. The footbridge seemed strongly anchored on both sides, but he was careful as he stepped out onto it.

  The bridge shuddered at the force of the water beating against it. In the middle section, brown water swirled and foamed over his boots up to his ankles.

  Eventually the pounding water would win. How long that would take, he didn’t know. All he needed was to get across and back.

  He called to her from the other side. “Can you hear me?”

  “Just fine.” Her reply vibrated in the implant inside his ear. “Aren’t your feet cold?”

  He smiled and gave her a thumbs-up. Resistance to cold and heat: basic mods that always came in handy. “Stay there. Wait for me while I check the place out.”

  She walked out onto the bridge in response, the water splashing her jeans halfway up to her knees as she went through the flooded section. She hiked up the bank toward him, eyes wide and innocent. “Sorry? You were saying?”

  He sighed and deactivated the comm gear again. Whatever.

  The ugly house loomed over them, gray and malevolent. Metal, concrete, and glass against the cold white sky. They climbed the steps and Simone’s hand slid into his, squeezing b
riefly as he turned the knob.

  The knob turned. The door opened. They looked at each other, startled.

  “No fucking way,” he murmured.

  “How could it be a trap?” she asked. “He’s dead, right? You saw him die.”

  “He wasn’t dead when he left this place,” Zade said. “Mark would never leave one of his properties unlocked.”

  Simone’s brow was creased. “I assume you could tell if someone was here.”

  “To a point,” he said. They stared at the door, the house, the surrounding landscape. Just trees, angry wind, wild water. An occasional stray snowflake. He listened deeper and harder than he ever had in his life, maxing out his ASP capacity.

  Nothing.

  He pushed the door open and they eased slowly inside. He held the gun ready, keeping Simone behind him. The power hadn’t been turned off. He could sense an electrical charge. The heat was another story. The house was like a freezer.

  They moved into a large living room with two picture windows. The intact one showed the flooding and their car on the far side. The other was boarded up with plywood. Broken glass glittered everywhere, on the wood floors, embedded in the carpets. A wide deck outside the smashed sliding glass door overlooked the river. The deck’s handrail was broken.

  Black leather furniture. Plain lamps. No artwork on the stark white walls. No clutter, no signs of a life. Just shattered glass everywhere he looked, and their muddy footprints.

  They continued through the house into a rigidly clean kitchen, then a dining room. A table for eight had undisturbed dust on its glossy surface.

  A spiral staircase led to the floor above, where they saw a pristine white bathroom with one white towel hanging up at perfect right angles. A master bedroom held a large bed with a white duvet cover, neatly straightened, and a chest of drawers. No pictures, no clothes.

  The other upstairs rooms were empty and stank of fresh paint.

  They went back downstairs, footsteps hushed and careful, and found a home office on the other side of the foyer. A desk held a big desktop computer and a cardboard storage box with a lid.

  Zade lifted the lid off the box, hesitating as if he might find something grisly.

  Two of Simone’s yellow-striped prototypes were inside. One was the neuroscanner that Mark had put onto Luke in the video.