Page 12

11

THE brUSH OFF

A ll four of us stared at one another as Wicker’s words sank in.

Wicker himself paled slightly at our silence, right before he shook his head.

“It’s u-unlikely,” the scientist clarified. “It’s very, v-v-very unlikely,” he added. “I m-maybe should have l-led with that. The b-b-bullet appears to have destroyed it… the implant. It’s a f-f-flaw of the c-current design. It d-d-doesn’t protect from something catastrophic happening to the implant itself at the time of d-death. Skull fragments and the b-b-bullet ripped the d-device apart. Some of the d-d-data will have been uploaded… b-b-but not enough. The technology hasn’t been p-p-perfected yet…”

Black, Nick, and I exchanged glances, eyebrows raised.

Wicker himself seemed shocked after he spoke, like he couldn’t believe what he’d just told us. He probably couldn’t. I suspected they had it drilled into them pretty hard to never discuss any element of their work with outsiders.

My suspicion was confirmed when I saw how pale Wicker got once he’d absorbed the full content of our conversation.

He gaped up at Black, his eyes round and terrified.

“S-s-she told you?” His mouth opened wider, making him look like a flat-faced fish. From his expression, Black might have just told him the other Rucker employee, Ms. Gorren, had confessed to the murder herself. “S-s-she t-told you about the The Fountain?”

Black blinked at him. So did Nick.

I opened my mouth, about to speak, but another voice interrupted.

“No,” that voice said coldly, emphatically. “No… she most certainly did not.”

All four of us turned towards the office doorway.

As soon as Nick took in the woman standing there, his muddy brown eyes grew visibly darker. I suspected they were turning blood red behind the contact lenses.

As for me, I just froze in place, shocked.

How the hell had she managed to sneak up on us?

That was damned hard to do with two seers… much less a vampire… even when they’re as distracted by something as we’d been by Wicker.

I remembered then, what Black told us, and everything clicked.

This had to be Rania Gorren, the “Ms. Silver” who came to Black’s office. She wore the slightly-less-advanced version of Rucker’s implant, the one they might be pulling out of Rucker’s bullet-mangled brain even now.

Black said the implant blocked her mind from seer probes. I hadn’t fully understood what that meant until the woman stood right in front of me.

Her mind and light felt like they lived behind a steel wall.

It made her appear unreal, doll-like.

Physically, she looked maybe forty, with pale blond hair cut in a severe bob and some of the lightest blue eyes I’d ever seen, especially on a non-seer. She strode into the room on six-inch heels, and completely ignored me and Nick.

Her eyes bored into Black’s.

Unlike with the admin assistant, I saw nothing sexual in that stare.

She eventually walked all the way around the desk to stand directly behind Leon Wicker, looking all the world like a bodyguard, or maybe a handler, despite weighing maybe one hundred and five pounds soaking wet. She looked overdressed, even here, and especially next to Wicker, who still wore the stained lab coat and cheap watch, his hair uncombed. Gorren stood erect in a gray, tailored suit, diamond earrings, a diamond pendant, a diamond-studded watch, and four diamond rings, none of them on her wedding finger, and black, silk stockings.

It was difficult to believe she was just a lawyer.

She had to be more than that.

Agreed, Black’s mind murmured in mine. But it’s a little hard to verify that, doc, given I can’t read a single fucking thing off her. I can’t hear her thoughts. I can’t feel the slightest hint of emotion, or mood, or temperament, nor even if she’s tired or hungry or about to murder me. I can’t even see her aleimi, for fuck’s sake…

He paused for a single beat of my heart.

…Can you? he asked pointedly. Can you see or feel any of those things, doc?

I knew better than to look at him.

We still had no idea if these people knew what we were.

I considered asking Black for more information, then dismissed that, too. I pushed everything else aside and focused my mind on the woman’s.

I slid past her… through her… around her.

Honestly, I’d never felt anything like it, not even back before I knew what I was, when my attempts to read people were generally a lot weaker and more abstract. I backed off, then tried with Gorren a second time. I reached out with significantly more of my living light. Everything on my side felt normal, strong even, probably because I hadn’t used my sight skills much in days, if not weeks.

It felt like flexing a muscle aching to be used.

I did everything right… I even tried a few tricks Jem taught me, things that were more sneaky and utilized skill over brute force. I tried a number of those, then tried hammering on her aleimi again. None of it worked. I couldn’t connect.

It felt like climbing an ice wall with my bare hands.

I blinked, tried again.

And again.

Finally, I glanced at Black.

He didn’t return my look, but from his expression, I knew he’d already felt exactly how unsuccessful I’d been.

Don’t stare at me, he murmured. It looks weird.

I faced the brushed-steel desk and the two people behind it.

What is she? I asked.

What do you think she is?

I completely forgot what he’d just said and looked at him. Black. Just tell me what you think she is. She’s not a seer or a vampire is she?

I don’t know, he sent, now sounding as annoyed as me. As far as I can tell, she’s pure-blooded human. But I already know what I think. I wanted a second opinion.

I frowned. Why would you need a second opinion? Why mine? You’ve looked at a lot more seers and humans over the years than I have. Since when don’t you trust your own vision?

He gave me a brief look, eyes hard.

Well, I certainly don’t trust it as much as I used to, he retorted. But we’re on the clock, doc. Does she look human to you? Or not? I can only stall this psycho for so long.

I fought not to react to his words, or go too far into the meaning of them.

I focused on the woman, Rania Gorren.

As I did, it occurred to me that Black had never stopped talking.

Neither had the blond woman.

“Absolutely not,” Gorren snapped. “Not only do we have military agreements that prevent us from sharing that information––”

Black cut her off.

“That is… if you’ll pardon me saying it… utter bullshit,” he retorted. “Given the conditions surrounding my hire, you pretending to suddenly care about the legality of your military contracts would be laughable if it wasn’t so insulting. Not to mention directly impeding my ability to do the job I was hired to do.”

The blue eyes narrowed behind perfect but artificially-lengthened lashes. “We will give you enough to do your job, Mr. Black.”

“You’re not, though. You’re clearly not,” Black growled. “You’ve already implied, numerous times in this very conversation, that the tech itself is the most likely motive behind Rucker’s murder, yet I haven’t even got a basic description of why it’s significant. Now I find it has something to do with why you’re not involving the police? You’re already broken our agreement about leaving my colleagues out of that side of things, incidentally––”

“This conversation is over,” Gorren cut in coldly, checking her watch. “We will revisit it at another time, once you’ve assessed the physical facts of the case, like you were hired to do. Right now, I have somewhere to be.” She glared at Wicker, her fingers tightening on his shoulder, which she now appeared to be clutching. “Dr. Wicker is in no way authorized to speak to you about any of this. He was merely supposed to share the surveillance recordings.”

“That’s not my problem,” Black growled. “I want to know what you intend to do about the legal peril you’ve just put me and my company in. I can hardly claim I ‘didn’t know’ when you’ve likely got me and my colleagues on tape discussing your boss’s dead body in your building. How do I know that wasn’t the plan all along? That you won’t use that to pin all of your illegal crap on me and my company?”

The was a silence.

In it, the woman gave him a shrewd look.

Honestly, in that handful of seconds, I wondered if Black and I were wrong, if she was a seer after all. When I looked at her aleimi, however, I still saw what Black saw. Gorren’s living light wasn’t only shielded and inactive, it seemed, if anything, diminished.

Like she had less aleimi than most humans, not more.

Rania Gorren glanced towards the door behind us, and a smile touched her lips.

“Ah. Hello, Mr. Morgan,” she said, that cold smile still on her lips. “You may come on in. Mr. Black is ready for you.”

I glanced at the man standing in the doorway, a tall, thin, specter with small, close-together eyes. I somehow disliked him the instant I looked at him. He made me think of a vulture. He stared at me like he was trying to see through my skin and flesh to my bones.

Peck. Peck. Peck.

The man never stopped staring at me.

“He’ll assist you and your team with the security tapes,” Gorren said, her voice still holding a vague warning. “Including any from this room during the conversation you had with Dr. Wicker in the past hour. You have my full permission to destroy anything you find problematic.”

I scoffed at that; I couldn’t help it.

Digital video wasn’t a VHS tape. Whatever they had, it likely lived in the cloud, not just on whatever local disk where they stored it.

Rania Gorren glared at me.

Again, I might have thought she was a seer, but I suspect she just understood my skepticism. She continued to glare as she spoke.

“You can see exactly where the recordings route within our system. You can also destroy anything saved to the cloud.” Her eyes swiveled off me and back to Black. “I suggest you work with the information you’re cleared to have, Mr. Black. Not waste your time and mine asking about things that are irrelevant to the job we hired you to perform.”

“Irrelevant,” Nick muttered.

Gorren walked out from behind the desk, as if, for the first time, she felt safe leaving Wicker alone. I definitely sensed a handoff between her and that creepy Morgan guy.

“We’ll send over the autopsy report as soon as it’s complete,” she said, sparing Nick only a brief look. “In the meantime, I hope you have enough to work with looking at the actual murder, rather than obsessing on details that do not concern you.”

I glanced at Black.

He looked angry on the surface, but I knew him.

I knew his real anger, and this wasn’t it.

This was an act; it was spectacle.

Did that mean Black had answered his own question? Or simply that he’d never expected Gorren to tell him anything in the first place? Clearly, he wasn’t bothered by getting the brush-off. Which meant he either never expected her to talk to him, and their “argument” was all a big diversion… or he’d used the argument to learn things she hadn’t intended to tell him at all, possibly from Wicker, or even from the security guy, Morgan, who still hadn’t moved from his vulture-like stance by the door.

I couldn’t ask him which thing it was, not now.

But suddenly, looking at my husband’s guarded face, I had to fight not to smile.

I’d forgotten this part of working for him.

He was maddeningly secretive, infuriatingly chaotic in style, and difficult to pin down when it came to the intricacies of his plans. Like now, with him apparently testing the accuracy of his own sight, even as he tried to shield me and Nick from legal liability, and figure out how to get Rucker’s people to divulge information they didn’t want to divulge.

Black was also crazy like a fox.

He might be doubting his sight right now, but he had a plan. He likely also had more than just me, Jem, and Nick working on this.

Something about the realization made me relax.

It also caused most of my doubts to fade.

No, I’d made the right choice in coming back to this.

Honestly, I may have been a little bored for the past few months.

Next to me, Black grunted a laugh. He covered it with a hand and a cough, and he didn’t look at me, but I felt it.

I felt the warmth pooling around my gut.

I bit my lip, but very deliberately did not smile.