Blindsided (4 page)

“He’s used to following my orders,” Carthridge explained. He set the small receiver box on the desk. “Guess I’m used to giving them, too.”

The shrug Carthridge gave could have been interpreted as an apology. Carthridge may have been the youngest of the American super-soldiers, and an interesting mix of Asian, African-American, and something else that had led to his green eyes, but Whitesman said he’d always headed the V-10 team. Teigan didn’t have a problem with that, so long as Carthridge and Morris would unquestionably follow his orders if and when the time came.

“Not a problem.” Teigan moved into the room. “So, what do we have here?”

“We have our link to the Agency hooked up, per Whitesman’s instructions. And the receiver is ready once we get the feeds in place. Outside we’ll be using a constant live feed—”

“Not motion-activated?” John piped in. “That will take a lot of CPU usage.”

Carthridge shook his head negative. “Motion-activated doesn’t always work on a Viadal soldier. We can move slow enough if need be to avoid motion sensors.”

John frowned at that but nodded.

“Inside we’ll have audio all the time.” Carthridge held up a box of audio transmitters. “I’ll let you make the call on whether you want video feed in here beyond the major entry points.” He glanced at John then back at Teigan. “But if you get too much live feed going, you’re going to have concerns about slowing down the entire system. Which wouldn’t be good.”

“Could get a second system in here,” John offered.

Teigan shook his head. “More cameras means more to watch, more sensors mean more alarms. I’d rather have fewer things to keep track of and position them so an intruder can’t get by.”

Carthridge nodded agreement. Teigan ignored John’s pout.
 

“I’ll just go help Morris then.” Carthridge moved out of the room.

“Man.” John shuddered. “Dude’s cold.”

“Carthridge?” Teigan hadn’t gotten that impression, neither here nor at the office when Whitesman had briefly introduced them earlier. Reserved, yes, but cold? No.

“No. He seems cool.” John jerked his head to where Carthridge had just left. “I meant Garret. Keep your eye on him, Teigan, that bro of yours could stick a knife in your back without a second thought if it served his purposes.”

Teigan straightened, giving John a hard look that irrevocably stated his opinion on that sort of speculation.

John shrugged. “Just saying.”

A throat cleared behind them; John jumped halfway to the ceiling. Teigan turned a bit more slowly to find his half-brother standing in the door frame. He did look cold. Immobile features, blank eyes, not a fucking muscle twitched in response to what he’d just overheard. Teigan was surprised the air wasn’t forming ice crystals around him.

“Whitesman mentioned you’d want to go through my routine with me?” Garret prompted.

“After I get these placed.” Teigan held up the clear container with a dozen or so transmitters. Virtually see-through and thin enough to be overlooked by a searching hand, they were the best bugs on the market.
 

“Yeah.” John folded his arms, snapping his gum. “So remember, we’ll be monitoring everything that you do.”

“John,” Teigan warned. As if Garret hadn’t known what they were, and could speculate on why they were being placed.

“Message received loud and clear,” Garret said, then looked back at Teigan. “Feel free to help yourself to whatever you need. I’m going to go help Cartwright and Morris set up the perimeter.”

John pushed off the desk he’d been leaning on. “I’ll go with you. Supervise, you know?”

Garret shrugged indifferently and started down the hall toward the back door, leaving John scrambling to keep pace.

***

Teigan slapped cold water over his face and peered into the mirror as he worked his features through a range of expressions. If applied improperly, the putty—or whatever the hell the gimmicky name for the stuff was called—would part from his natural skin. A great yawn and a hard rub across his eyes convinced him the gunk would hold. He now possessed a wider jaw, a scar across his chin and…no more crow’s feet. The miracle of make-up magic combined with the shortly cropped hair, connived to produce the reflection of his younger half-brother staring eerily back at Teigan. Even his blue eyes looked different—icy cold, emotionless.
 

Heaving a sigh, Teigan made his way out of the bathroom and down the short hall.

A sweep of the inside earlier, while placing the bugs, yielded as much information about the house’s owner as the outside had. Beyond a pretty snazzy home gym, there weren’t any real personal effects. No pictures, no art. There was the expected furniture and the standard wall screen, which right now displayed a football game, the sound turned off so the men crashed silently into one another and the crowds’ enthusiastic cheers and jeers appeared surreal. Teigan didn’t even see a book or magazine to clue him in to Garret’s personal tastes.

Teigan moved into the kitchen, popped open the cold storage unit to take stock of his options. Milk, OV-8—damn synthetic OJ tasted like crushed vitamins masked in fake sugar—eggs, the standard condiments, cheese, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, thawing meat, some sort of leftover pasta dish—shrimp primavera from last Thursday, according to the label. Sickening. He dug deeper. Wait, there…redemption: beer, six bottles, in a neat row across the second bin for easy access.

He grabbed two—
make yourself at home there, Teigan
—and straightened. He’d be living here for the duration, with Garret hiding in the background and coaching Teigan how to live Garret’s life. Which brought up the question: What life?

This entire situation was bizarre. How was he supposed to impersonate someone when he’d found absolutely no clues into what made Garret tick? He supposed he’d better get his poker face on, because thus far, it was the only expression he’d seen cross the super-soldier’s face. Correction: ex-super-soldier.
 

What had made Garret decide to take the option and leave? It wasn’t like he’d left so he could have a real life. Sitting around this sterile, cold place pumping iron and watching silent games on the wall screen was no life. Maybe Garret was just
too
emotionally detached to care about being a good little soldier. At least Cartwright had seemed exasperated by John. Teigan considered that a good measuring stick: If you weren’t annoyed by John, you weren’t human. Garret hadn’t even blinked when John blatantly insulted him, insinuating they were there because the government believed he was probably involved in the recent deaths. Which was partially true, but damn, if it was him, he'd be pissed.

Teigan moved back into the office that had been converted into a command center, the screen displaying a rotating four-up of the perimeter cameras. With Morris outside, Carthridge taking a quick cat nap, and John gone for the night, it was just him and his bro.

He plunked an open beer down on the desk beside his brother.

Garret twisted his head as he picked up the bottle. “Trying to soften me up some so I won’t knife you later?”

Teigan grimaced. “You have to excuse John, he’s just…”

“An idiot?” Garret supplied. He leaned back in the chair and raised the beer bottle to his lips, taking a swig.

“No…” Teigan answered carefully, somewhat taken aback by the delayed response to John’s earlier comments but at the same time irrationally relieved at the altogether human reaction. “I was going to say he’s just John.”
 

He settled into the chair next to Garret, glancing over the live shots of the exterior. “Actually John is very intelligent. But his social skills…”

“Suck,” Garret finished for him. “Personally, I’d question his IQ. Normally you don’t go around telling the person you’re supposed to be spying on that you suspect him.”

“And?” Teigan settled into his chair, folding his arms.

“And?” Garret shot back.

“Should I suspect you?” There, get it out in the open. Teigan had never been good at pussyfooting if he thought it a waste of time and he couldn’t see any motivation for Garret turning on his brethren.
 

“Noah was one of the brothers I once blood swore to stand with, fight with, and die with if it ever came to that.” Garret’s knuckles tightened around the beer until Teigan thought he might break the frosted glass. Garret glanced down, easing his grip and took a long sip of the brew. “Besides, I’ve never had enough unmonitored time to pull off something like that.”

Teigan mulled that over. To some extent that was true, but as Whitesman pointed out, there had been pockets of opportunity. “You’re a night-shift security guard,” he stated.

“I am.” Garret slid him a glance. “Which Uncle loves because they can request the surveillance footage whenever they want to see me walking the halls.”

“Surveillance footage you are responsible for transferring onto data chips and filing.” Teigan made the statement carefully, watching Garret for his reaction. He got one, alright.

“Fuck. You’re kidding me, right?” Garret erupted, slamming his beer down.
 

Teigan kept his own response under tight wraps.

Garret’s eyes hardened, he went on, his tone calm and even. Eruption capped. “Uncle runs standard spot checks on me at least four or five times a week. Even if I were willing to risk getting caught when I snuck out, I wouldn’t know for sure if they’d reactivated the locator chip.”

He glanced at Teigan, a brow raised in question. Teigan had the grace to grunt an affirmative. Whitesman had admitted that the implanted chips had never been removed. Now, since Noah’s death, Garret’s location was being constantly monitored and recorded.

“I thought so.” Garret soothed the slight tick in his jaw with some amber liquid. “Did Whitesman tell you they monitor all activities on my communications system? That they have a direct feed to my screens? Did he mention that beyond all the spot checks, I go in for evaluation each month to ensure I’m healthy, sane, and not divulging any top secrets?”

Here was the bitterness Teigan would’ve expected from a man under constant watch, the resentment that came with knowing the freedom he’d been given was a façade. A thin one at that. “I’m sure it’s in the file.”

“Which Whitesman
didn’t
give you.”

“He gave me the relevant parts for this assignment.”

Garret scoffed. “Yeah. Sure. So you know my schedule, my shoe size, that I like pasta and hamburgers, and I always have a game on the screen, but can you impersonate me?”

Teigan considered. Not ten minutes ago he’d concluded masquerading as his brother would be easy enough. Just pretend he was a robot and go about Garret’s daily business. Now he wasn’t so sure.

Garret cleared his throat, the frustrated lines of his face smoothing out. “Sorry. That was out of line. Tell me what else you need to know.”

“What I need to know right now?” Teigan asked.
 

Garret nodded.
 

“Right now, I need to know how you put up with all this crap.”

Garret gave a slow blink, his face shuttered. “What crap, sir?”

“That crap. Cut it out.” Teigan waved a hand around the room. “There are no ears in here other than our own and I’m not going to run back to Whitesman and give him a blow-by-blow report of our conversation.”

Mistrust brewed in Garret’s eyes. “Why not?”

“Because although I may not have taken a blood oath with you, we do share the same blood.” His eyes met Garret’s, held. “I am your brother, Garret, give me a chance.”

Garret didn’t answer, his gaze slid to the screen where the faint outline of Morris’s black camouflage could be discerned against a set of hedges. It drove home the fact that Garret considered the fellow Viadal soldier more of a brother than he did his own flesh and blood. Teigan supposed that was to be expected, understandable even. What he didn’t expect was for the subtle rejection to cut so deep.

“Okay. Forget I said anything.” Teigan took a chug of his beer, sanitizing the wound that shouldn’t even be there with the alcoholic cure-all. “Anyone you hang out with or talk to?” He pressed because he needed to look into the possibility of a conspiracy, not because he wanted to know.
Lame, Teigan.

Garret gestured toward the screen he continued to stare at. “Morris. Sometimes Carthridge or Nolan when they’re off duty.” He hesitated. “But lately that’s been less and less.”

“Why’s that?”

Garret shrugged as if the reason didn’t matter, but explained anyway. “I’m no longer part of the team. It’s all they know, it’s what we were made for. They can’t imagine not doing the job.”

“So, why aren’t you doing it?”
 

Garret chuckled and his mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Maybe you should ask Whitesman. He has his own pet theory.”

Teigan already knew Whitesman’s theory: That Garret didn’t give a damn about anything or anyone. Cold as a snake, without emotion. On this John and Whitesman seemed to agree. Teigan didn’t, not anymore.

“Who do you think is doing this?” he asked Garret, genuinely curious as to whether the former V-10 had any ideas. “Everyone seems certain it has to be one of Viadal’s boy’s.”

“It’s one of Viadal’s. No regular human could sneak up on and snap a V-10’s neck.”