About a month ago, Ewan’s former partner and co-inventor of the enhancement tech, Wanda Crosson, had been arrested for the repeated attempts she’d made on his life. Wanda had been one of the few who knew about Ewan’s family cabin in the mountains, where Nina and Ewan had gone to hide out until the threats died down. Wanda had shown up there with her own guard-for-hire, another enhanced soldier who was the only one who could take on Nina and expect to get out of it alive.

He hadn’t.

Wanda had been only one part of several groups, including the League of Humanity, that had been threatening Ewan. Some for his involvement in the original enhancement tech, others for his efforts at pushing the laws making the tech illegal for anything beyond use in private service, as well as those forbidding any upgrades. Since Wanda’s arrest, any threats of real importance had ceased. The sudden abandonment of what had been years of ongoing threats only proved Nina’s theory that the focus on Ewan had never really been about the enhancement tech in the first place. In this world, there’d always be something to protest and a way to monetize it, a way to rile people up to get them to support a cause. The League of Humanity had moved on to greener pastures.

Nina wasn’t glad the focus was turning away from the enhancement tech, though. If people were busy hating, there were also their opposite counterparts who worked in support of the enhanced soldiers. When nobody was paying attention any longer, there was nobody left to rally for them.

This didn’t mean she was hoping the security system at Ewan’s lab had been tripped by anyone trying to bring him harm, but it also didn’t mean that she automatically believed, as Ewan seemed to, that it had been simple vandalism. He’d spent about half an hour with the security team here at this facility, going over the reports of what had happened the night before. So far, none of them, including Ewan, seemed concerned.

Nina had stayed in the background, quiet, paying attention but not drawing attention to herself. She watched him interact with the team of men and women he’d hired to protect this building, its contents, and the people who worked inside it. She had no criticisms of the way they’d handled anything, and she’d often admitted her specialty was reaction, not analyzation. Nothing about this situation screamed of danger to her, and yet there was a low-grade, persisting sense of something being . . . off.

“We won’t even bother to clean up the paint,” Ewan told her after the team had left him alone in his office. “Bare walls seem to invite more attempts at vandalism.”

“The sec team said the front door camera lens was painted over, and someone tried to jimmy the locks,” Nina said.

Ewan looked at her. “You were listening.”

“Of course I was.” She looked around his office, which in comparison to the elegantly appointed home office he’d had in Woodhaven, was sparse and unassuming. “What do you have in here that anyone could want to steal?”

“If someone wants to break into a solid concrete building without windows or signage,” Ewan said, “it seems to me that they are looking to steal whatever they can find.”

“It would seem to me that they knew of something specific, or else why would they bother? You don’t have any particularly strong security setup here. Standard,” Nina said. “Nothing out of the ordinary that would give anyone the idea that there’s anything special in here.”

Ewan leaned back in his chair, fingers linked behind his head, and put his feet on the desk. “Or, like I said, they were just trying to break in because it looked easy enough to do, and to see if there was anything they could steal. Or ruin for the fun of it. This lab isn’t in the best neighborhood, you know.”

“It’s in the middle of nowhere,” Nina said with a chuckle. “Which means that whoever was hanging around here last night had to make an effort to get here.”

“You think it’s something more important than some kids hyped up on candy, trying to score some junk they can sell to buy more sugar?” Ewan studied her, not mockingly. Seriously waiting to hear her opinion on things.

“Is it possible that it’s a decoy?” Nina asked.

Ewan said nothing for a moment, then put his feet on the ground with a thump. “Who or what would they be decoying?”

“It could be a reason to get you here,” Nina pointed out. “Certainly, in the past, there’ve been attempts to get you into places on purpose where you’d be vulnerable.”

“My security here might not be anything above standard, but my home and personal sec team still works around the clock to monitor any kind of threats against me, Nina. Truly, there’s been nothing. If anything, I’m the opposite of a target, no longer trendy. But if you really think there’s something not right about all of this . . . I trust your judgment. Implicitly.”

That meant more to her than any number of compliments about her beauty. An ache rose within her, a pinching throb of sorrow and regret. Unlike the other times recently when the return of her emotional capacity had threatened to drive her to her knees, Nina didn’t try to push it away. She nodded at him, forcing her voice to be steady.

“Thank you. That means a lot.”

Ewan smiled. “You’re welcome. So, what do you think I should do about this?”

She smiled in return after a moment, and while the ache didn’t go away, at least it eased. That had to mean something, didn’t it? Maybe she was finally going to return to normal . . . whatever normal was for her. Nina looked around his bare office, thinking hard about what it was about all of this that was setting off her internal alarms. She couldn’t come up with anything specific.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Keep your security doing what they do, I guess. Keep paying attention. You might be right, it could be something simple and stupid, not directed at you personally at all. I mean, since you’re not trendy anymore and stuff.”

He laughed, shaking his head, then looked at her with a smile still tipping his lips. His eyes gleamed. “As if I ever was. Hey, you want a tour of the lab?”

“Absolutely.”

“It’s not much to look at,” Ewan said as they paused in front of a bank of glass windows showcasing a stark white room lined with tables and equipment. A couple of young people pushed themselves along the rows in their battered desk chairs, apparently having a race. Ewan shook his head. “This the third place I ever bought and outfitted, so it’s not the most up to date. I let kids apprentice here, now.”

“Is this where you invented it?” Nina put her fingertips on the narrow windowsill, leaning closer to peer inside the room. Nobody in there seemed to notice or care that they were being observed.

Ewan didn’t have to ask her what she meant. “No. That was in the first lab I opened. It burned a while ago.”

“After Gray Tuesday.” She slanted him a grin, not meaning to be snarky about it, but knowing that he’d used the worldwide catastrophic data hack as a way to erase the records of his involvement with the enhancement tech. “Convenient.”

Ewan gave a low, sheepish laugh. “It wasn’t arson, if that’s what you’re suggesting. It was a legitimate fire. That’s why I have the specs for the upgraded tech, but no working examples . . .”

He paused. Shrugged. “We don’t have to talk about that.”

“What are the kids working on?” She gestured, giving him the benefit of not pursuing the topic. It wouldn’t lead to any good place, and she knew that. Like probing a sore spot on the inside of her cheek or rubbing a paper cut on the tip of her finger, she was only going to cause herself a constant, fresh agony.

“They’re each doing their own thing. I mean, when they’re working, obviously.” His laugh sounded more genuine this time, and he shook his head. His expression was curiously paternal when he looked back into the room. “If I hadn’t had a good apprenticeship in the tech field, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I’ll always remember that. So when I take on an apprentice, I make sure they’re really interested in working in this field. That it means something to them, that they want to make a difference somehow. Then I let them go off on their own. Experiment. See what they come up with. One of the things I missed a lot when I was hiding out was working with them. I need to get back into it. Be more of a hands-on mentor, I guess. I haven’t done any real work in a long time, you know. Other than working at spending my money.”

Her heart panged at his self-deprecation, especially because she knew it was for her benefit. “You’re very good at that.”

“Lots of experience.”

She studied his profile as he still stared into the room. “You like working with the kids.”

“Yeah. I do.” He turned to her. “Looking for someone to eventually take over my legacy, maybe. Who knows? There’s always a bit of ego in working with young people, I’ll admit that.”

“You don’t think you’ll ever have any of your own to take over the family business?” Her question surprised herself. There’d be no babies in her future, but somehow she hadn’t considered that Ewan might assume he’d never be a bio father.

Ewan seemed as surprised by her question as she was. “Not really. Call me old fashioned, but I think children should only come along after you’re set up in a committed partnership.”

She couldn’t look at him after that, because the clear, brutal honesty in his gaze was too much to bear. They’d talked about “forever,” but that had been lovers’ talk. Bound up in the giddiness of their time alone together in that cabin, drunk on possibilities and fantasies and each other. They’d spoken of children, but not about having them together. To imagine that Ewan had considered becoming a parent with her was too much, coming too hard on the heels of the night before. A vivid memory of his hands on her body and the taste of him as she took his flesh between her teeth sent a shiver through her that she masked with a slight cough behind her fist.

“They’re waving at you,” she said instead and pointed at the kids inside the room. “Maybe you should go in and talk to them.”

“Nina.” Ewan’s low voice sent another quiver through her, but he said no more than that.

She didn’t look at him. After a moment, he pressed his finger to the keypad next to the door and waited for it to beep so he could open it. He held it open for her without a word, waiting for her to go through it before he followed.

“Mr. Donahue!” The girl who’d been bent over a tablet, scrolling with a fingertip, got out of her seat and gave him a wide grin. She wore her tightly curling hair in twin puffs on top of her head, adorned with bright ribbons. “Hey, guess what? I figured out how to implement that base tech using the programming we talked about last time.”

“Great, that’s terrific. Betts, this is Nina. Betts came up with this amazing idea for a way to chip migrating birds to help the flocks avoid places where they might hit danger.”

“Because birds just go where they think they ought to be going,” Betts said. “But you know, if something gets built in the way or there’s some kind of environmental disaster, they get into trouble. If I can get them to accept this tech, which would be put into their natural food sources, it could keep whole flocks from getting wiped out.”

Nina had joined the NorthAm Army because she’d wanted to make a difference in the world, but as she listened to this young woman, no more than seventeen or so, talk about what she was working on, Nina definitely felt as though she’d been slacking. She glanced at Ewan. “Sounds incredible.”

“The tech would go into the insect population,” Ewan said. “She didn’t mention that part. About how she’s actually come up with working specs for tech so tiny and so realistic that it can be released into the wild among the natural bugs it mimics, so the birds will eat it.”

Nina laughed and put her fingertips to her temples, spreading them open with a small, sharp puff of her breath. “Mind. Blown.”

“Thanks.” Betts giggled. “It’s shiny fine, I guess. I haven’t actually made any micro insects yet, I’m still working out the . . . bugs.”

The three of them laughed.

“Your work is more than shiny fine.” Ewan dug into his pocket for his personal comm. He typed quickly, then drew his fingertip across it in a signature and pressed the pad, which whooshed in a distinctive tone of sending a message. “Worth this week’s bonus, for sure. It’s in your account.”

“Oh wow!” Betts danced in place while the other kids in the room groaned or clapped in congratulations. “Yeah! Woo! Thanks, Mr. Donahue!”

He was really good with the kids. Nina watched him talk to each one, listening to their projects and their progress. Offering advice or commiseration, depending on what they needed. She’d seen a little of this side of him before, at Woodhaven, when she’d first gone to work for him. It had impressed her then and still did, more than any amount of money ever could have.

From across the room, Ewan looked up from where he’d been bent over a table, offering a solution to a problem. Their eyes met. Locked. He smiled, just a little, before returning his attention to the young man in front of him.

“Mr. Donahue sure is hyper icy,” Betts said. Her finely shaped black eyebrows furrowed over her dark eyes, free of any cos-tech—something unusual enough for Nina to notice they were natural. “Are you his girlfriend?”

Nina, unfamiliar with the new slang, had to think a minute to understand if Betts was giving Ewan a compliment. She decided it must be. “Um, no. I’m his bodyguard.”

“Oh. Does he still need one?” Betts frowned.

“He thinks so.” Nina looked at the girl. “Last night, something happened here. Do you know anything about it?”

“No.” The answer came too quickly to be the truth.

Nina hadn’t really been expecting the girl to know anything, but she also hadn’t anticipated that Betts would flat-out lie to her. Nina kept her tone neutral as she focused her senses, noticing the girl’s elevated heartbeat. The slight dilation of Betts’s pupils. The nervous way her eyelids fluttered.

“The sec team said they thought it was probably just some attempted vandalism,” Nina commented.

“Someone did paint some hyper noxious graffiti on the walls out front,” Betts said, again too quickly. “I saw it when I came in this morning.”

Nina made a show of looking casually around the room. “Is there anything in the lab that anyone might want to steal?”

“Sure, everything.” Betts had relaxed a tiny bit, her response not a lie or half-truth this time, at least not based on her body’s reactions. “The sugarheads would love to get their hands on any of this tech in here, sell it for credits. They’re bad around here. They sell candy in the parking lot. That should be illegal.”

“You think?” This attitude surprised her. Candy had been introduced sometime during Nina’s childhood, and the government-approved drugs had become as prevalent and socially acceptable as cigarettes and booze had once been.

Betts nodded. “Yeah. Candy isn’t any good for anyone, not really. It just causes problems. It’s not supposed to be addictive, but everyone knows it is.”

“Yeah, it can be bad news.” Nina had never partaken much, preferring an adrenaline rush to a “sugar” high. She knew Ewan had been both a user and a seller briefly. It still surprised her that someone from Betts’s generation would be so against it. “I take it you don’t use sugar.”

“No. I’d never get into it! Those guys do.” Betts frowned and jerked her head toward the two kids at the far end of the room. “But you know what? They didn’t get this week’s bonus, and I did.”

Nina laughed. “More than a good enough reason not to sugar up.”

Betts seemed a little relieved that the direction of the conversation had changed. She nodded, looking over at the other group. “Yeah. They’re not really much competition anyway. Jordie’s really the only one who I have to worry about. But Mr. Donahue’s really fair about the bonuses. Even if someone didn’t really deserve it for being hyper cranial about something, if they haven’t won it in a while, he ends up finding a reason to give them one. Usually he only does it online though, when we submit our weekly reports. He hasn’t been in to the lab for a long time. He meets with us on the comm.”

“Is that Jordie?” Nina pointed toward the young man Ewan was still helping.

Betts drew in a breath, rough. “Uh, no, he’s not here today.”

Nina carefully didn’t make a big deal out of Betts’s reaction, although once again, the girl was clearly responding negatively. There was no way to prove Jordie’s absence had anything to do with last night’s issues, but Nina was going to guess it did. She was also going to guess that Betts knew it.

“Is he sick?” Nina asked.

“I don’t know. It’s not like he’s my boyfriend or something, I mean, he doesn’t tell me why he doesn’t come in. We don’t have to, you know, get a note from the doc or anything.” Betts bent back over her tablet. “I should get back to work.”

“Sure.” Nina watched her for a minute or so, noting that the girl’s body temperature was still a little higher than what was considered normal, and her heartbeat was still racing. Betts’s fingers trembled when she tapped at the tablet screen, and although the teenager made a big show of working on something, she wasn’t actually doing anything but typing and erasing the same few strings of letters over and over again.

Before Nina had the chance to pursue her questions further, Ewan crossed the room to her. “Ready to head out?”

“Yeah.” She paused with a glance at Betts, who was studiously ignoring her. Nina said the girl’s name and waited until she looked up. “Nice meeting you. Hyper icy on the bonus.”

The girl nodded, looking guilty. “Thanks.”

“What was that about?” Ewan waited until they were outside and in the transpo before asking. “With Betts. She looked like you’d scared her.”

“I think she knows something about what happened last night.”

Ewan’s eyebrows rose. “You think so? Why?”

“The way she reacted when I asked her if she knew anything about it. Sketchy. I could be wrong,” she added. “But you might want to keep it in mind.”

“I will. Thanks.” He typed a command into the transpo controls and leaned back in the seat. “Is it okay if we don’t go home right away?”

Her stomach had been rumbling for the past half hour or so. “I have a couple of protein bars in my bag if it gets, as the kids say, hyper noxious.”

“We can stop for something to eat, don’t worry about that.” Ewan gestured.

Nina chewed the inside of her cheek for a second. “Of course, then. Sure. Wherever you want to go.”

“Great.” He settled into the seat and looked out the window, not saying much.

She didn’t like the silence, but she also didn’t know if she wanted a conversation. She let herself study him in profile, his features highlighted with the soft glow from the transpo window. It wasn’t that he’d aged in the past few months, she thought. It was that the businesslike fortitude she’d seen in him when they first met had returned. There was a chill between them, and could she blame him? The passionate interlude was something she didn’t regret but certainly knew better than to repeat. Other than that brief time last night they’d had very little but arguments and dissatisfaction between them since he’d rehired her, and it wasn’t all Ewan’s fault. She was as much to blame.

Maybe that was all it was ever going to be, now. Blame and guilt and anger and regret. A lifetime of joy lost before it could even be had.