Chapter 9
Cutting onions helped. Tossing them into sizzling oil in a skillet. Stir-stir-stir with a wooden spoon. A simple sequence of tasks, one leading into the next. An anchor to keep Zade’s mind from spinning wildly out into orbit.
He’d been prepared to use Simone. He’d expected to enjoy having sex with her. How could he not? She was gorgeous, brilliant, fascinating, mysterious, highly sensual. He’d have to be dead not to be rock-hard for her.
He just hadn’t counted on having his mind blown to fucking smithereens.
Touching her equaled instant and total oblivion to anything else. Simone herself filled up his mind and crowded everything else out. From the fake name she used—Alison—to the critical importance of what he was doing and who he was doing it for. All gone. Whoosh.
Luke. This was about Luke, and he just fucking … forgot.
Zade wrenched his mind grimly back to the task at hand. Tossed in the potatoes, the chopped herbs. The other skillet was hot enough to sear steaks, so he tossed the dry-rubbed meat into the pan. A dash of pepper. More salt.
It sizzled and hissed. That was his brain right now. Cooked rapidly at high temperature.
Salad. He rummaged through the veg drawer and yanked out handfuls of various greens. Pre-washed, good to go. He liked being organized on all levels of existence. They’d wired him for that at Midlands and it had stuck.
He flipped the steaks, poking at them absently as his mind raced. Simone Brightman was wired up, just like him. Full set of mods. His ASP processor had been gulping in terabytes of data, measuring everything. Her reaction times, her physiological responses, her levels of stress and sexual hormones. He was almost certain that she had genetic mods and multiple implants, too.
She’d bitch-slapped her active compulsion patterns down like a boss. That was a heroic achievement, but she had no clue. She was balancing on a fraying tightrope over the abyss, and she didn’t even see the thousand-foot drop beneath her.
Maybe that was why she was still alive.
Still, she could easily kill herself fighting like this. She could go into shock, have a heart attack or stroke, get a blood-boiling stim fever. The researchers didn’t hold back on the cruelty.
But she’d survived so far. Simone was as tough as they came, despite being in the dark about her modifications.
The plan had been to get close to her and gain her trust if possible. That was still the plan, but now he knew that he could hurt her in ways that she couldn’t imagine. She was already battling her own compulsion patterns and suffering the inevitable consequences.
If he pushed too far, he could push her right over the edge.
Simone was a victim of Obsidian. As a fellow escapee, he owed it to her to bring her up to speed. But if they’d programmed her to be unaware of her mods, finding out the truth could be toxic for her. It could even trigger a fatal meltdown.
He desperately needed another lead. Without some new info from Simone, he had fuck-all to go on. Days kept sliding by. Days that could mean life or death for his brother. Every day the possibility that Luke was alive grew smaller.
It didn’t matter. His restless, grinding frustration drove him onward.
Rising smoke made him cough. Damn, he’d spaced out again. He dragged the pan off the heat and flipped the steaks onto a waiting platter, burned side down. One was slightly more charred. The other was perfect. Hers, then.
Simone needed taking care of it. That, and a hero. Not that he was available for that shit right now. Heroism, caring, any of it. Coaching her on the talisman trick had been a risk, but he had to throw her a rope, or he would have ended up at the nearest ER watching her sink into a coma.
He’d seen that movie before. He hated the ending.
He heard a faint squeak of bare feet on the stairs, her soft breathing.
“Whatever you’re cooking smells wonderful.” Her low, husky female voice stroked over his nerves like silky fur.
“Steaks for two. Hot out of the pan.”
“Mmm. Yummy.”
He braced himself before he turned to look. Good thing, too. She was a full frontal assault on his senses. His big red T-shirt made her glow like a pearl.
He took in every detail. Her hair rippled down, catching the light. Her soft lips still red and swollen from all the wild kissing. Dewy from her shower.
And that smile. She looked so different from before.
The T-shirt slid off one slim, pale shoulder. Well, yeah. It was way too big. Thanks, shirt. It hung to barely mid-thigh, showing off her long, shapely legs.
No underwear under there. Just warm, soft, scented woman.
“Um, Zade?” she offered. “Maybe lower the flame?”
“Oh, shit.” He lunged for a hot pad. “The onions.”
Rescued in the nick of time. Browner than they should be, but what the hell.
He carefully did not look at her as she entered the kitchen and made her way to the fridge. He needed to maintain some functioning brain cells to serve dinner.
That resolve disintegrated when he heard the suck-pop of the rubber seal and glanced her way.
She was bending over to snag a beer from the bottom shelf of the fridge.
Yeah. He kept looking hungrily until she straightened up and turned.
She perched on a high stool at the bar and sipped her beer. There was a whole counter between them, for which he was grateful. Her smile was shy and incredibly seductive, at the same time.
He cast around for a conversation starter. “So what’s your story? You said you’re an engineer. Didn’t say what kind.”
“Biomedical,” she told him. “I specialize in treatments for brain lesions. Devices for neurosurgery. That’s my main specialty.”
He was surprised at how forthcoming she was. “Have you made anything that’s on the market already?”
“Patents granted, so yes. More in the pipeline, still more in the planning stages. I have lots of ideas. And not enough time to develop them all.”
Zade was impressed. “You don’t look old enough to be that far along in your career. I put you at around … twenty-four?”
“Almost twenty-seven, but I got a head start,” she told him. “I finished my undergrad degree when I was seventeen. Then I went for my doctorate.”
He whistled. “Good for you.”
She held up a hand. “I meant to say my first doctorate.”
“Oh.” And he fixed cars as a side hustle. No degrees, not even in Advanced Nothing. They didn’t hand out certificates for the kind of stuff he kicked ass at. Though it was extremely lucrative. He had several millions stashed in a neutral country that was fighting the good fight against tax disclosure legislation.
“I have two,” she said.
“You’re amazing,” he said.
“I just have a few really useful tricks up my sleeve, that’s all. Photographic memory, for instance. And I’m compulsive about figuring things out once I start them. I’ve been obsessed with neurology since I was a kid.”
Of course she had a photographic memory. They all did. It was part of the core mods package. Zade hated what those bastards had done to him with a white-hot, unending hatred, but even he had to admit that photographic memory was pretty goddamn useful. He could no longer imagine life without it.
Auxiliary data banks in his brain with fast cyber-connectivity rocked, too.
He loaded himself up with the skillet, the steak platter, and the breadboard. “Could you grab the salad and your beer?” he asked. “Let’s get dinner on the table.”
She lay down the salad bowl and slid into one of the places he’d set at the table as he put down the food and spun the platter around so that the perfectly done steak was on her side. “This one’s yours. Grab it while it’s hot.”
She did so, and sliced off a bite. He watched attentively as she chewed.
“So?” he demanded. “Not too done?”
She looked amused. “Delicious,” she assured him. “Tender. Succulent.”
He relaxed a little and loaded up his plate. They both dug in. Hungry as they were, the food slipped right down, and it was a few minutes before either one of them could be bothered with conversation again. By the time he’d buttered up a chunk of Italian bread, he was ready for another whack at it.
“So why the human brain?” he asked. “What’s so compelling about that?”
She thought about it, a small frown between her brows. “Because of my mom, I guess,” she said. “I never really put it together. But I suppose it’s pretty obvious.”
He hesitated. His research into her life had yielded enough info to know when to slow down and tread carefully. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“She died right before I turned fourteen. A rare neurological illness.”
“Oh. I’m really sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to … uh … ”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I don’t mind talking about her. I can’t believe I never made the connection before. But I got all hung up on neurology after she died. Started studying it night and day. Ever since my accident.”
He gnawed on another chunk of bread. Letting her talk.
“I was in a car accident, just a few months after my mom died,” she went on. “A head-on collision. I don’t remember it myself. I was in a coma. When I woke up, I’d lost several months of memories. After that, I just threw myself into science. Studied all the time. Never looked back.”
“That’s interesting.” He kept his voice bland, but he seethed inside. Evil bastards. True to form. She was a grieving kid who’d just lost her mom, and they just wound her up like a clock. Didn’t give a fuck about hurting her.
“Not really. I pretty much skipped the whole process of being a teenager and geeked out on science. I love thinking about the human brain. How it works, how to fix it when it doesn’t. I could never get bored with that.”
“And your family didn’t think it was weird that you only wanted to study neurology?”
She looked blank. “No. It kept me busy. And it was just my stepdad, at that point. He just let me get on with it.”
Zade made a low, growling sound in his throat before he could stop himself. They’d set her running with no off switch, not giving a shit about her health or sanity. And they’d been raking in the dough ever since. Pricks.
His anger was clouding his thought process. “So this stepdad you’re talking about. He’s the guy who sends security people out to follow you around?”
“Yes, he’s pissed at me these days,” she said ruefully. “I’ve been working from home lately. He just hates that. He’s CEO of the company I design for.”
He grunted. “Must be strange, having your stepdad as your boss.”
“I’ve never worked anywhere else, so I wouldn’t know.”
“Never thought about trying something different?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not until just recently. I just work. All the time. As if something is chasing me.”
He waited while she let her thoughts form. “During that phone call I heard you say you never took a day off,” he said carefully.
“Yeah. I have this fear that something terrible will happen if I stop. But terrible things happen when they happen. Like those guys tonight.”
“Want to try a day off with me?” he asked.
She looked wary. “Ah … I don’t even know what I’d do.”
“Just get into my Jeep. We’ll drive someplace beautiful. Simple as that.”
She gave him that mind-blowing smile. “That’s generous of you, but don’t you have to work?”
“My work is flex,” he told her. “Nobody tells me what to do or where to go.”
She looked impressed. “Good for you. So what do you do?”
He shrugged. “Various things. I have a consulting business and I make enough to cherry-pick my gigs. If I’m not pushing against the extreme edge of my abilities, then I’m not interested.”
“Got it. I like to lose myself in work, too. It’s an escape, I guess. But I don’t know what I’m trying to escape from.”
“You’re safe here,” he assured her.
She studied him with fascinated eyes as she took another sip of her beer. “So what kind of work pushes you to that edge?”
“Encryption. Cyber-security systems designs. Some high-level corporate penetration testing, but only if the gig is a huge, ass-kicking challenge. I’ve designed weapons systems for defense contractors. And I fix cars for the hell of it. But only the ones I own.”
“Okay. That fills in some blanks. But there’s one more thing I want to ask.”
He leaned back in his chair, waiting for it. “What’s that?”
“In the bar,” she said hesitantly. “When I freaked out. It seemed like you knew just what to do. To help.”
“Yeah. What about it?”
“You talked me through it,” she said. “Where did you learn to do that?”
He thought long and hard before he answered. “I know people with mental health issues,” he said finally. “The talisman is a method to block panic or pain. And step back from it. Ride it out. That’s all.”
“Do you have personal experience with it?”
“Some,” he hedged.
“The talisman worked for me,” she said. “Maybe because it was you.”
He stopped breathing for a moment. “How so?”
“My visual. I was looking right into your eyes when you asked me to pick something. Your eyes were all I could see. So I just went with that. And it worked.”
His dismay must have been obvious on his face. Her eyes went wide and wary. “You didn’t say anything about what image to pick,” she said. “Believe me, Zade. It’s a compliment.”
“I know, but it’s not … oh hell.” He wanted to tear out his hair. “Your talisman should be something neutral. Peaceful.”
“Like what?”
“Oh—a rose, a star, a waterfall, the moon. Not someone you just met. People are too unpredictable.”
“Well, yes. I know that. But still, it worked. Like magic.”
“I’m glad, but what about next time? What if you need your talisman again, but you’re pissed at me and think I’m an asshole? Where’s your safe place then?”
She stared down at the table, obviously troubled. “I was in bad shape when I did it,” she said. “I didn’t know the rules.”
“There aren’t any,” he muttered. “I should have explained it better.”
Another tense silence, which quickly turned agonizing.
She let out a sharp sigh. “Don’t worry about it, Zade. It’s enough for me that it worked tonight. I know how it’s done. I can come up with a new one on my own.”
“But you—”
“Shhh.” She stood up and sauntered around the table. Then she leaned down and kissed him. Slow and bold and hungry.
“Alison,” he muttered.
He pulled her down onto his lap. “You’re so damn sweet,” he whispered. “You scare me to death.”
She gave him a smile that made his heart clench. He wished he deserved it.
She slid off his lap and stood up. Then she slid her hand into his and led him toward the stairs, head high.