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, papers, 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.
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.