Chapter 18



It made sense. It was crazy, but somehow it made sense. Kevin had no trouble believing Dani. Maybe that meant he was just as nuts as her claims of being a genetically enhanced superhero, but the way scientific advancements were rushing headlong into the future at a speed most people couldn’t comprehend, it just didn’t surprise him. Sean wasn’t the only one in the family who read Moynihan Consolidated investment reports. Just because Kevin didn’t want a corner office and a long-winded title didn’t mean he wasn’t curious about what the company his family had built was involved with. Some of the work being done in the Applied Sciences division was truly remarkable.

But none of it could hold a candle to this. He watched in silence as Dani sat motionless, her eyes half closed, face drawn tight in concentration. Every few seconds he flicked his gaze to his laptop to check the progress on the download. The circular icon advanced slowly, as if downloading a large zip file. With her neural interface, which he wanted to know absolutely everything about, and the five megapixel camera in one eye, she’d taken a photo of the Russian mobster who liked to use a stun gun. Now she was downloading the photo to his laptop. With her brain.

Holy shit.

The circle flashed green then settled, indicating the download was complete. Dani remained still for a moment, then slumped back against the sofa cushions. She pressed the heels of her hands against her closed eyes, the color drained from her face.

Kevin said, “What do you need?”

“Rest for a few minutes,” she said. “Maybe some orange juice and a snack.”

“Does it mess with your blood sugar?”

“It just takes a lot of energy, and I was tired already.” She dropped her hands and sat up a little straighter. “They were working on improving the download technique to make it easier, but I left.”

A thin line of red leaked from her nose. “You’re bleeding,” he called out as he rushed to the bathroom. When he returned with a handful of tissues, Dani was sitting with her head back again, right hand at her nose and smeared with blood.

She held a tissue to her nose with her left hand while he cleaned the right. “Sorry about the mess.” She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Don’t be absurd. Are you okay? Do I need to get you a doctor?”

“No! No, I’m fine. This happens sometimes with downloading. Like I said, they were still working on perfecting the process. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” She folded the tissue again, swiped it at her nose and held it up. “See, it’s already stopped. No big deal. I could go for that snack, though.”

Kevin nodded, unsure of what to say. So instead of speaking he rose and went to the kitchen. She needed a snack, so he’d get her one. Several minutes later he returned with a tray piled high with a sandwich, sliced apples, a glass of orange juice, and a cup of Greek yogurt.

Dani smiled weakly. “Dude, I asked for a snack, not a meal.”

He arranged the food on the coffee table then brought his laptop over and sat next to her. “I just wanted to make sure you got enough to eat.” He opened the photo of the Russian. It was taken at night but still a good shot of his face. “I can try an image search but I wouldn’t hold out much hope of learning anything that way. The press is pretty circumspect about what they print on organized crime. They have to be, unless someone is arrested. Then it’s a matter of public record.”

“So if he’s been arrested, you should be able to get me a name?” Dani scooted forward on the couch, picked up the sandwich and took a bite. “This is good, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Kevin copied the photo then cropped it to focus on the Russian’s face. Next he uploaded it to the internet and ran an image search. It came back with some hits with similar faces, but no match. “Either he’s never been arrested, or it was kept out of the news.”

“If I can’t find the girls, I need to find him before he finds them.” She downed half the glass then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I need to get back out there tonight.”

Tension spread rapidly through Kevin’s neck and shoulders. “Are you sure you’re up for it?”

“I need some sleep. Then I’ll be fine.” She picked up an apple slice and crunched it. “I need you to find out everything you can about the Russian mobsters here. Who they are, where they hang out, what they’re into.” She used another apple slice to point at the laptop screen. “Anything you can find out about this son of a bitch.”

“What are you going to do if you find him?”

Dani kept her eyes on the screen. “Make sure he never hurts anyone again.”

Kevin closed the laptop then set it aside. “What does that mean?”

“What do you think it means?” She still wouldn’t look at him.

“I know you want to save those girls.”

“It’s not just them,” Dani said. “I can guarantee, that’s not the first time he’s killed. He’ll keep doing it, until somebody stops him.” She launched from the sofa, a coil of unreleased energy, and paced in front of the glass wall overlooking the city.

Kevin followed her, leaning against the cool glass with his arms crossed over his chest. “I understand self-defense. Defending others. But what you’re talking about.” He stopped short, not sure how far he wanted to push this conversation. How far he wanted to push her.

Dani paused in her restless back and forth. “What I’m talking about is protecting women. Those traffickers, they don’t even think we’re human. The women they buy and sell, they’re nothing but property. Like you buying a new car. Shit, they treat their fucking cars better than they treat the women they sell.”

“I know they’re bad guys, Dani. I just don’t think you want to be a bad guy, too.”

“You think I’m a bad guy because I want to stop a killer and a sex slaver? How the hell do you figure that?” Unspent violence radiated through every line of her body.

If she was as strong as she claimed, she could easily hurt him. He really wanted to back down but more was at stake than his physical safety. “There’s a right way to do things and a wrong way. Murder is wrong.”

“So because I killed some of those bastards, you think I’m as bad as they are?” Hurt simmered beneath the anger in her voice.

“No, that’s not what I think at all. You did what you had to do, to give those girls a chance to escape, and to save yourself. But maybe you could find another way now.”

She exhaled slowly, nostrils flaring, her hands balled into fists at her sides. “Okay. Okay, let’s hear some ideas. How do I convince the cops these girls are worth looking for? If I get lucky and find a cop who isn’t on somebody’s payroll. How do I do it without admitting what I did?” She shook her head. “Because no way in hell am I going to jail. For one thing, the people at the lab, they’ll find me in a matter of hours if I’m fingerprinted. Then they’ll come get me, and I won’t go back there.”

“I want you to be free.” Kevin considered reaching out to her, just a light touch of comfort, but he was afraid she would snap if he so much as breathed the wrong way. “I want you to help those girls. But I don’t want you to do it in a way that costs you your soul.”

She replied with a bark of acidic laughter. “What are you, a priest?”

“I’m someone who cares about you.” The words slipped out before he could stop himself. But hell, it was the truth. No sense in denying it. “You feel like you can’t walk away from this, okay. I just want you to still be whole when it’s over.”

Dani stared at him in disbelief. “You don’t know me.”

“I know you want to help people.”

“That doesn’t mean you know me.” Anger burned in her voice, and something he couldn’t identify. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means everything, Dani.” He raised his hands, wishing he could capture the swirl of thoughts running riot in his head and force them into something that made sense. “I don’t believe you’re a murderer.” Not in her heart. That might not matter to the law, but it mattered to him.

She turned away from him. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I just want us to try to find another way to stop him from killing anyone else. I don’t have an answer right now but I know we can come up with one.”

For nearly a full minute she was silent. When she finally spoke again, her voice was barely above a whisper, and cold. So cold.

“Intelligence gathering,” she said. “Infiltration. Exfiltration. Hand to hand combat. Guns, knives, anything I can get my hands on. I know how to kill a person with a ballpoint pen.” With her back still to him, she turned her head so he could see her profile. “I’m a weapon, Kevin. It’s what they made me, in that lab.”

His heart hammered, but the fear he felt wasn’t for himself. It was for her. “A person’s never just one thing. Believe me, I know.”

“I don’t know how to be anything else.” She turned to look out the window. “It wasn’t the only thing people were enhanced for at the lab. There were tests to see what we’d be best at. Guess I made an A plus on Killing Machine.”

“Is that why you escaped?”

“I was going to be sent on a mission.” She shook her head. “I never volunteered for any of it.”

He moved close enough to feel the heat from her body. “Use what they taught you, the enhancements they gave you, to help those girls.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. “On your own terms.”

Dani leaned her head against the glass, her hair tumbling around her face. She gave him a halfhearted grin. “What the hell are my terms?”

He returned the smile, relief pouring through him. “You’ll figure it out.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I’m always right. I’m too good looking to ever be wrong.” That turned her halfhearted grin into a smile that almost reached her eyes. A flush of accomplishment further buoyed him. She would be okay. She had to be.

“I need some sleep,” she said. “My head is pounding after that download.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna catch a few hours then I’ll see what I can turn up about the local Russian mob.”

But he was still awake when the sun rose, alone in his art studio watching the dawn light filter through the wide slats of the blinds. Charcoal stained his fingers and discarded papers littered the floor. On the easel hung a portrait of Dani that he was finally satisfied with after hours of trying to get her eyes right. Every other feature had fallen into place easily enough, but the difficulty with her eyes had left his hand aching and black streaks all over his clothes and his face. Now, he stood back and regarded his work, and the reason for his difficulty came to him.

He’d wanted to draw her as he wished to see her – free, open, her own person. But that wasn’t the truth, and the truth that stared back at him from lines and whorls of charcoal made his heart ache for her. Her eyes carried the weight of it. She looked like she’d already given up.