Chapter Seven

Sami

It had been almost twenty-four hours since I spoke to Harvard, and I couldn’t concentrate on the novel I was trying to read. I kept replaying the conversation in my head.

Do you miss me?

God, I did. I couldn’t nerd out with my fellow trainees like I could with Harvard. While Wolfe had some gaming tendencies, if I started talking crypto or rootkits, his eyes glazed over. I could talk some Star Wars with Remy, but only because he’d seen the newer movies. Gavin always listened politely when I pointed out a constellation—at least until I realized he was either too nice or too shy to tell me he didn’t care and I stopped torturing him with my geekery. Blaze would flat-out tell me he didn’t give a fuck—which, hate to admit, I kinda admired about the cocky bastard. He was a jerk, but he knew it and was completely up-front about it.

But Harvard? Every night, he asked me to show him a new constellation. We could talk Star Wars for days, and computers were our lives. He just…got me. In a way nobody else in my life ever had.

So, yes, I missed him. And I was kicking myself for letting him know it. My non-answer had very obviously been an answer. Mortification, thy name is Samira.

A knock sounded on my door a second before Remy poked his head through.

I scowled at him. “Heard of privacy?”

He waved a dismissive hand. “You get more privacy than the rest of us.”

“That doesn’t matter. You can’t barge in like that. I could’ve been naked.”

“Well, damn. I’ll have to time it better next time.” His grin was all mischief as he marched forward and pulled my comforter off my legs. “You’re coming out with us tonight.”

I held up my book. “Thanks, but I have plans already.”

“I won’t take no for an answer.” He went over to my dresser and started pulling open drawers. “Find something to wear or I’ll dress you myself. And you won’t like what I choose.”

“Remy…” I sighed and watched him yank clothes out, making a mess of my dresser. He really wasn’t going to let me get away with staying home again. Resigned to my fate, I climbed out of bed and snatched a shirt from his hand. “Ugh. Okay, I’ll go. You have no sense of personal space, you know that?”

That mischievous grin brightened with triumph as I pushed him toward the door. “You love me. Don’t deny it.”

I couldn’t. Because it was true. I enjoyed his antics. He liked to have fun and always made sure everyone around him was having a good time, too. Which was something I’d been lacking in my life. “You’re a pain in the ass.”

“Yes, but a lovable one. We’re leaving in fifteen minutes,” he added right before I shoved him out and shut the door.

I leaned against the door and released a breath. Okay. I was actually going out with the guys tonight. Why did that terrify me?

Sometimes I wondered why I was such a freak. Why couldn’t I be a normal twenty-one-year-old and enjoy a night out without feeling like I didn’t belong? It had always been that way, though. I grew up in Palo Alto and never fit in with the privileged and extremely intelligent kids of Silicon Valley millionaires that I went to school with. I know my parents would have preferred it if I was like my classmates, but I was always more interested in science fiction than science. And, let’s face it, if I had made it to college, I probably wouldn’t have fit in there, either.

Forever the oddball. That was me.

But maybe tonight would be different. I had friends now. Real friends, not digital. Maybe I wouldn’t be the freak tonight.

What should I wear?

Fifteen minutes and three outfit changes later, I met the guys in the common room. My phone rang. I waved them ahead as I dug it out of my purse. Remy tapped a nonexistent watch.

“Just be a minute,” I promised.

I looked at my phone screen. I didn’t recognize the number. I answered, hoping it was Harvard—

“It’s time to pay up,” the computerized voice said.

Oh, shit. No, no, no. I thought about my savings account, where I’d been tucking away every extra cent I made. Although HORNET paid me better than any job I’d ever had, I didn’t have enough money to buy my way out of the favor yet. I wasn’t ready. I clutched the phone tighter to my ear and watched my friends pile into Remy’s SUV. I should’ve left the stupid phone behind for the night. I shouldn’t have answered.

But I had. And now I had to say something. Unfortunately, my mind had gone blank.

“I can’t,” I said faintly and released the breath I’d been holding. “Not yet.”

“You took my money knowing I would call on you for a favor someday.”

Goddammit. I glanced around to make sure nobody was in hearing distance. “I’ll pay you back. I have— I can give you half of it now. Just give me more time and—”

“I don’t want your money. I want your skills. We had a deal.”

Why now? I had to bite down on my tongue to keep from screaming it at them.

Okay. They weren’t going to let me pay my way out of this. Maybe the favor wouldn’t be as bad as I imagined. I forced myself to breathe. “What do you need me to do?”

“It’s simple,” they said. “Child’s play for a hacker of your skill level. Open a backdoor into HORNET’s network.”

My heart thumped hard against my ribs. How did they know about HORNET? I hadn’t even uncovered anything about them before joining Class Alpha. “That will make them vulnerable.”

“That’s the point. It’s why I put you there.”

“What?” I asked on an exhale of disbelief. No, they were lying. I’d made it here by my own talent and skills. They hadn’t manipulated Tucker Quentin into hiring me. They couldn’t have.

But the seed of doubt had been planted. Already I felt it taking root and flowering.

Exactly what they’d wanted. I clutched the phone until the edges dug into my hand. “I won’t hurt HORNET.”

“They’re not your friends, Fragment.”

All the air left my lungs like my benefactor had punched me. I looked at Remy’s SUV. Music thumped from the speakers. Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.” Remy rolled down the window and leaned out to stab a fist into the air and scream the chorus at me.

They were my friends.

They were.

Nobody would convince me otherwise, and I refused to hurt them.

“I’ll do anything else, but I won’t hurt HORNET.” I hung up before they could say anything else, then stared down at the phone. It felt heavier than usual. Like a brick. I wanted to throw it. My heart thundered like a drum line, and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.

A car horn bleated several times, making me jolt.

“C’mon, Geek Girl,” Remy called from the driver’s seat. “The night’s wasting! We have beer to drink and skirts to chase.”

I slid the phone into my purse and drew a breath, then released it slowly to calm my nerves. It didn’t work. I’d waited three years for this anvil to drop, and now that it finally had, I needed to think. Plan. Run?

I didn’t even know.

I waved at the guys, silently telling them to go on without me, and turned back toward the dorm. Three car doors opened and shut behind me, and I swore under my breath. They weren’t going to let me duck out gracefully. I spun to face them and found Gavin giving me a look of pity, Remy scowling, and Wolfe with his fatherly I’m-disappointed-in-you face.

I held up my hands to fend them off. “Look, guys. I really just don’t feel like—”

“Too bad,” Remy said, strode forward, and flipped me over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry just like Quinn had trained us.

I squeaked in protest. It was an embarrassing sound. I thumped his back. “Put me down!”

“No. You’re coming out with us, getting drunk, and having fun. Maybe not in that order.”

“This is for your own good, Geek Girl,” Wolfe added, trailing behind us as Remy carted me to the car.

I scowled at him. “Is that your professional medical opinion, Wolfey?” The question came out with more snark than intended, but Wolfe was unfazed.

He crossed his arms over his chest, studied me with his medic-in-training eye, then nodded. “As a matter of fact, it is.”

“They’re dragging me out, too,” Gavin said with a helpless shrug. “If it’s any consolation.”

“It’s not.”

Remy dumped me in the seat, and before I could bounce out the other side, Wolfe blocked my escape. Gavin slid in behind me, and I looked at him with pleading eyes. “We don’t have to go out if we don’t want to. We can go back to the nice, silent dorm.” Okay, that was a tiny bit manipulative of me, but I didn’t have time for these shenanigans. I had to figure out what the hell I was going to do about that phone call.

Gavin’s gaze shifted from me to the door handle. He reached for it, but Remy whipped around from the front seat and held up a finger in warning. “Don’t even think about it, Crash. You do, and I’ll blast all my favorite country music day and night until you like it.”

Gavin winced, and his hand dropped away from the handle. “Sorry, Sami. You don’t have to live with him. Have you heard his music?”

I grumbled and slumped back in the seat. I was trapped.

In so many more ways than one.

Shit.

Wolfe nudged me with his elbow. “You okay?”

I opened my mouth to tell him off but discovered I was too close to tears to risk saying a word. I snapped my jaw shut and gave a jerky nod that in no way reassured him.

“Hey,” he said and wrapped a big arm around my shoulders. “We were just joking around. If you really want to stay home, we’ll take you back.”

I wanted to tell them, “Yes, take me home!” But I couldn’t seem to form those words, either. What was I going to do at home? Sit there and worry and fret and make myself sick with dread.

I had hung up on my benefactor. I didn’t know what that meant, or if they would retaliate, or if nothing at all would happen. But I did know there was absolutely fuck all I could do until they made their move.

I exhaled slowly and shook my head. “No. You’re right. I need a drink.”

Twenty minutes later, we pulled up in front of The Snaz. It was named for one of the classic rock climbs in the Tetons. The owner, Old Jack, was a seventy-five-year-old former mountaineer unable to climb now due to a knee replacement, a bad hip, and a heart condition. He opened the bar to relive his glory days by regaling younger climbers with his stories. His favorite was of his Everest summit—memorialized by a picture that hung behind the bar—which he was in the middle of telling a group of female tourists when we walked in.

Remy grinned and slung an arm around Jack’s shoulders. As a local boy, he’d known Jack his whole life. “Hey, old man. Are you telling lies to these pretty ladies here?”

Jack puffed up his chest. “They’re not lies.”

Remy gave him an affectionate squeeze. Then he flashed his dimples at the group of girls. “I’m teasing. Old Jack here is the best climber ever to come out of Jackson Hole.”

“I’m from Florida, kid,” Jack grumbled.

“Yeah, but we don’t like to talk about that.” Remy winked, and the girls giggled. He had them. No doubt he’d be taking one of them back to a hotel with him tonight, which meant Wolfe, Gavin, and I would be begging rides back to the training facility.

Wolfe and I continued to the bar, where his roommate, Blaze, was already holding court with the rest of the trainees and some more tourists. I didn’t really like the guy. He was too cocky, too much of a bad boy for my tastes, but I had to give him credit where credit was due. He could be an epic asshole, but he drew people like a magnet.

“First round’s on Wolfey,” he called when he spotted us, and a cheer went up.

“Wait a minute.” Wolfe pointed to Remy, who was already getting cozy with the pretty blonde of the group. “Remy’s barely made it in the door. How does that make me last?”

Blaze glanced over and grinned. “Because Remy’s not even gonna make it into the bar tonight. Way to go, Shotgun!”

In response, Remy gave him the middle finger behind the blonde’s back as he guided her out the door.

Wolfe whistled and lowered himself into a high-backed bar chair. “Man, he needs to teach me how he does that.”

He wasn’t watching Remy leave when he said that. Nope. He had his eyes firmly fastened on the bartender with wavy red-brown hair at the other end of the bar. Asha Monroe. When she turned and spotted us, he abruptly lifted his gaze to the Everest photo and studied it like he hadn’t seen it a thousand times.

Asha finished what she was doing and sauntered over. “Hey, Sami. Wolfe. What can I get you tonight?”

I waited for Wolfe to speak, but he remained silent. I nudged him, but he might as well have been a rock for all the reaction he showed.

“I’ll have a vodka cranberry,” I said.

“Your usual. Got it.” Asha smiled politely while she talked to me, but when she turned to Wolfe, she twinkled. There was no other way to describe it. She just lit up. “Your usual, too?”

“Uh-huh,” was all Wolfe managed. I nudged him hard, but he kept his gaze glued to the photo.

After a moment, she arched a brow and looked up at the photo in question.

OMG. I’d never been good at flirting, but Wolfe-Boy made me look like an expert. The man was hopelessly inept. Guess I wasn’t the only socially awkward freak in this crowd after all.

“O-kay,” Asha said, drawing the word out.

As she walked away to fulfill our order, Wolfe all but deflated. He watched her go like a puppy watching his master leave for work.

I shook my head. “That’s just sad.”

Scowling, he spun toward me. “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Talk to her!”

“Uh… I open my mouth, and words come out. It’s not hard.”

He snorted in disgust. “Easy for you. You’re a girl. Girls just instinctively know how to talk to other girls.”

I thought about the girls at my high school, then the girls at juvie. I never fit in at either place. Never made any friends. The closest I ever got to real friends until Class Alpha were the avatars I talked to online.

They’re not your friends, Fragment.

No.

No, dammit.

Wolfe leaned forward and banged his forehead on the bar, yanking my attention back to him. He groaned. “I never know what to say to women. Especially to pretty ones.”

I fought to shake off my unease. “Might I remind you, you’re talking to me right now?” I pulled out the collar of my shirt and glanced down as if checking to make sure my boobs were still present. “Yup, definitely a girl.”

“You don’t count.”

I couldn’t help teasing him a little, because friends, dammit. I poked out my lower lip in a pout. “What, you don’t think I’m pretty?”

He finally refocused on me, and his eyes rounded like a man who just realized he’d stepped on a land mine. “Uh… It’s not that I don’t think you’re pretty, Sami. You’re just… not my type, you know? But you are. Pretty, I mean. I mean, uh…”

I elbowed his side. “Relax, Wolfey. I’m messing with you.”

His lips flattened into a scowl. “You are a cruel, cruel woman.”

I rolled my eyes. “Asha obviously likes you.”

His scowl only deepened. “I know. That’s why I turn into an idiot around her. All the blood drains out of my head, and I can’t string two words together.”

“Just talk to her like you do with me,” I suggested. “Ask her about herself. Find out what she likes, see if you have any common ground.”

Asha returned with our drinks. She smiled at Wolfe when she set his down, but instead of listening to my very good advice, he only snapped the beer up and took a long drink. Someone called her from the other end of the bar. She sent Wolfe one last look—which, if you ask me, was full of longing—before she left.

“Dammit,” he muttered and stared after her.

I shook my head in exasperation. “Orrrr you could just stare at her from across the room like a scared, sad puppy. That works, too. Not.”

He pointed the neck of his beer bottle at me. “You’re one to talk.”

All innocence, I sipped my own drink through the two tiny cocktail straws. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“Yeah, right. One word for you: Harvard.”

I feigned ignorance. “Good school.”

Wolfe arched a brow at me, and then a sly smirk ticked up the corner of his lips. “He’s here.”

I choked on my drink, and, laughing, he thumped my back a few times.

“What? Where?” I glanced around, and, yup, there Harvard was, hovering near the front door, looking as uncertain about the place as I had been. He also looked exhausted, which made sense. He’d just finished a tough mission with the team and had probably spent the last day traveling.

So what was he doing here?

When he spotted me, he smiled, and some of the exhaustion faded. And I knew why. He’d come here looking for me.

For me.

Nobody ever wanted to see me.

They’re not your friends.

Wolfe nudged my shoulder. “You gonna go talk to him or stare at him like a scared, sad puppy?” When I didn’t move, he started singing “When I Kissed the Teacher” by ABBA.

I socked him in the stomach, which was like smacking my knuckles against a rock. At least it distracted me from my wandering thoughts.

“Ugh.” I shook out my hand. “Do you idiots sit around finding songs to torture me with?”

He grinned into his beer. “It’s a hobby.”

“Asshole,” I mouthed. Then I picked up my drink and walked over to Harvard, if only to prove I wasn’t scared.

But I was. Just a little. And not just of my new situation. I told myself the heat flushing my skin was only the alcohol hitting my system.

“Hey,” Harvard said when I reached him.

“You’re home,” I said stupidly. Of course he was home. He wouldn’t be standing here in The Snaz if he was still halfway across the world.

“Yeah, got back about an hour ago.”

“And you came to The Snaz?”

He glanced around and winced. “It wasn’t my first choice, but…I wanted to find you. Apologize again for making you take control of the drone during the mission. And then not getting back to you after you saw the explosion… Well, it was shitty of me.”

I shrugged. “It’s okay.”

“No, Sami. It’s not. I was wrong, and I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” I said, because what else did you say to such a sincere apology?

“Okay,” he repeated.

We stood there in awkward silence, and then he sucked in a sharp breath through his nose.

“Well, I should head out.” He waved vaguely toward the door, but I caught his hand. It was the first time we’d touched in weeks, and energy zipped up my arm. I dropped the contact but didn’t back away.

“I bet you’re hungry,” I said. “At least stay and have a burger with me.”

He opened his mouth, and for a moment no sound came out. I thought for sure he would turn me down, but he surprised me by nodding. “That sounds awesome, but not here. It’s too…” He trailed off and scanned the bar.

“People-y?” I suggested.

“Yeah, exactly.”

Not your friends.

Anger flooded my body. I wasn’t going to let my mysterious benefactor haunt me like this. The threat of them had plagued me for long enough, and I was done. Fragment was gone. Dead. This ended tonight. Somehow.

I’d figure that part out later.

I finished my drink in two large gulps and set the glass on a nearby table. “Where to?”