Blindsided (5 page)

Teigan looked at him skeptically. “You think so.”

Garret met the gaze. “I know so.”

“You guys are that much better.”

Garret shifted his chair back, pushing aside his beer bottle and placed his elbow on the desk, hand uplifted and ready to grasp Teigan’s. Instinctively, the muscles in Teigan’s arm flexed. He was in excellent physical shape, one of the best field agents out there, and could bench press a full ten rep of 280. Nor was he stupid. Viadal’s meddling would give Garret a true edge and Teigan wasn’t about to make any sort of bet that he could beat the ex-super soldier. At the same time, Teigan was no fly to be easily squashed—and yeah, he was damn curious.
 

Curiosity won. It had always been one of his greatest flaws.

He shifted his chair into better position, placed his elbow onto the desk and clasped Garret’s hand. Garret waited, allowing Teigan to start the match. Fine
.
Teigan pushed hard, met an immovable force. Hands locked, knuckles whitened, arms strained; Teigan broke out in a sweat, keeping his force steady, using leverage as much as strength, ever increasing the pressure in hopes of making headway. His palm became sweaty and his grip slipped. He recovered easily. Too easily. He glanced up, Garret smiled. Smiled, like he imagined the Cheshire cat playing with a mouse might. Seeing the lack of strain in his half-brother’s shoulder, Teigan quadrupled his efforts, determined to at least make the arrogant bastard work for the win. Garret chuckled, slamming Teigan’s arm down effortlessly.

“Fuck.” Teigan rubbed his throbbing hand. “You sure you’re human?”

Garret’s smile vanished. He pushed back from the desk, grabbed a slim container off the shelf, and extracted a smoke. He lit the cigarette and drew in a long breath. Teigan had never understood how the safe-smokes had caught on as a replacement to the addictive nicotine cigarettes of the 20
^th
century. Chemically altered to be a perfectly harmless, non-addictive, non-cancer forming smoke alternative—even the smell had been carefully neutralized to be non-offensive to the non-smokers—the only thing the smokes did for a person was keep their mouth and hands occupied. If Teigan was going to have a vice, he wanted it to be bad for him. Bad for his health, bad for his wallet…or something.

“Yeah. I’m human. I’m perfectly fucking human.” Garret puffed a series of clouds into the small room that dissipated as quickly as they formed. “Human enough to hate him. And resent you.”

Teigan didn’t have to ask who
him
was: Their father. He could understand the hate part. Not many people hadn’t hated Teigan’s father. Including Teigan. Hadn’t stopped him from idolizing the old bastard though. “Can I ask why you resent me?”

“Cause of what you are, what I wasn’t,” Garret said through another cloud of smoke.

Teigan eyed him dubiously. “Isn’t it the other way around? You’re the perfect soldier, the perfect son. I imagine that’s why he did it. I was never good enough.”
 

“You coddle him too much, Marie. You’re turning my son into a pussy.”
The anger and disgust in the gravelly voice sliced the young child inside his memories. It was the child’s weakness and his father’s repugnance that had no doubt fueled the creation of this half-brother beside him. Teigan wondered if their father would’ve finally been proud of his eldest son for making the cut and joining the Agency. He’d never know. The old man and his mom died in a freak hover car accident before Teigan had even been accepted into the training program, ending his hope of ever gaining his father’s approval.

Teigan tipped his beer bottle in Garret’s direction. “You’re the son he wished he’d had.”
 

Garret leaned forward, blue eyes intense. “But you had a dad, and a mom. I didn’t even know who my father was until Whitesman asked me to do this. I still don’t know my mother. We had a governess until we were five. After that, all we had were trainers and handlers.”
 

Teigan opened his mouth to protest, then slammed his lips shut. What could he say? He felt like a dick for harboring his jealousy. Garret might be the embodiment of his father’s idea of a perfect son, but he’d had far from a perfect life. Teigan had suffered from an often indifferent and sometimes condescending father, but at least he’d had a loving and supportive mother, at least he’d had choices. Garret never had any choices. His option to leave the V-10 program hadn’t been a real choice. He was still a captive of what he’d been made and trained to be. And he would always be suspect. Like a prisoner on parole, his life was monitored, his choices limited, his humanity reduced.

Teigan gazed down into the remnants of his beer, swirling the bottle so it bubbled and foamed. The liquid had gone clear again before he spoke. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?” Garret snuffed the cigarette, leaned back, his actions casual, almost lazy, belaying the intensity that had been in his pale eyes a minute ago. “It’s not all bad. My life is decent enough. I got a job—it pays okay—enough to afford a decent crib. I can sleep in if I want. I can eat pizza, have a beer, watch the game. The epitome of the American dream, right?”

“Friends? Girlfriends?”

Garret hesitated, the muscles along his jaw ticked. “Acquaintances. Not fair to them to make it more.” He waved his hands at the monitors. “Not with shit like this. They can’t ever know who or what I am. And they probably would freak if they did know.”

Teigan gazed at him steadily. “That’s why I’m sorry.”

“I don’t need your pity,” Garret said sharply, his eyes hard and full of anger.

“No pity,” Teigan agreed. “Okay if I’m angry for you?”

Garret mulled that over and eventually nodded.
 

Teigan leaned forward, snapped the empty beer bottle onto the desk. “That’s not all though. I know who and what you are.” He looked back up, fixing his gaze on the face that was so eerily like his own. “You’re my brother. And I’m not freaking. Not anymore, at least. And when this is done, whether you like it or not, the next game day I have off, I’ll be over here knocking on your door with pizza and beer in hand.”

Garret ran his tongue over his teeth as if considering. No real emotion touched his face, but eventually he nodded, extended his hand. “Sure, what the hell.”

Cautiously, Teigan reached out his own hand. They clasped and shook.

“Ouch. Damn it.” Teigan swore. “Knock that shit off.”

Garret’s mouth split into a wide grin as he released Teigan and slapped him hard on the shoulder. “Yeah, I think I could get used to this brother shit.”

***

“Where is the connection?” Aria gnawed at her lower lip, her fingers floating over the file names rolling across her screen.
 

“Computer, hold.” She settled back in the chair.
 

This was getting her nowhere. She’d been going over these reports for hours and couldn’t find anything that would link these deaths to the man she believed had committed them—Byron. She just knew it was him. Problem was, no one else would believe her if she tried to tell them. Not without proof. Rather hard to prove a connection between Byron and the five Viadal deaths when the man in question was also supposedly dead.

A wet nose bumped her left elbow incessantly, demanding the same amount of attention as the screen in front of her. Absently, her hand drifted down and began stroking the dog’s ears. He whimpered and leaned into her until she found that spot just behind the cartilage and scratched. “You’re such a schmooze.”

Frodo’s happy panting was her only answer.
 

“And sorely lacking in sophistication,” she informed him. His breath stank. She’d have to ask Willis to pick up some more of those wonderful doggy breath mints the vet sold.

“Hmm. What is the pattern? Is there one?” she asked the empty room. Well, empty if you didn’t count Frodo. Which she did, she just didn’t expect an answer from the furry mutt. “List country and date of birth of the deceased according to date of death. First to last.”

“Please wait,” the automated voice responded as it crunched through the complicated program. Top notch, and highly illegal—not that Aria was worried about getting caught, she was off the grid. Even if one of the agencies she plugged into noticed a breach, it would lead them somewhere else entirely. Hacking was her specialty.

After a long while—too long in her opinion, she’d have to do some tweaking to the program—the computer began to spit out data in its lyrical voice.

“Abd Al Aziz born 07/30/2072 Iran, died on 07/02/2102; Antonio Diaz born 10/03/2073 Mexican Confederation, died on 10/02/2103; Joel Lepravue born 02/24/2074 United Euro Nations, died on 02/23/2104; soldier 03022074 no name given, born 03/02/2074 China, died on 02/28/2104; Noah Gordon born 07/30/2074 United States, died on 07/29/2104.”

Aria sat back, tapping the arm of her ergonomic chair. All five governments had lost Viadal soldiers. Until two days ago, she’d thought the US had ordered the hits—her theory being they’d finally gotten tired of the live-and-let-live attitude that had been their MO for the last decade and decided to exterminate the threat to their soldiers once and for all. But then Noah Gordon was killed and all her carefully repressed suspicions and paranoia had come to a head.

Reaching out, she touched the screen, the Braille lettering raised under her fingertips as she ran them over the words and dates.

Shit
.
She sat up straighter, fingering all five birthdates again. “See a pattern, Frodo?”

Frodo whimpered in response.

“Computer, list dates of birth and country for all living Viadal soldiers.”

“Listing all living Viadal soldiers date of birth and country: 08/12/74 America; 08/14/74 America; 08/22/74 America; 09/01/74 America; 09/03/74 America; 11/09/74 America; 12/10/74 China; 05/22/75 United Euro Nations; 05/28/76 Iran; 05/30/76 Iran.”

“Son of a bitch.” She cringed and threw up an apology to her mother for the crude words. Thirty
.
None of them were thirty. And none of them would make it to thirty either.

The soft rhythmic sound of air being pulled in and out of someone’s lungs drew her attention away from the screen. Only Willis could sneak up on her when she was working. She was too familiar with his scent to note the slight increase of his classic Old Spice, and when she was absorbed in her work, even her exceptional hearing could miss his soft footfalls.

“Spying on me again, Willis?”

“Hardly.” His tone said insulted. “I was, however, coming to see if you were taking care of yourself.”

His loafers shuffled slightly on the wood floor as he drew closer. Beneath her hand, Frodo quivered in anticipation of the head rub he was about to receive. Another hand, larger, worn, rubbed the ear behind her own hand. “You take better care of Frodo than you do yourself. When did you last eat? Unless you got some food for yourself, I know it wasn’t in the last twelve hours. And for that matter, when did you last sleep?”

She waved that off. “I’ll sleep when I get back. Can you bring the car around, Willis?”

“And where might we be going?”

Aria could almost imagine the look on his face, his brow cocked, eyes frowning, and lips hard and thin in displeasure. She would give almost anything to see that face again. But that would be mourning for something that couldn’t be changed, and she didn’t waste her time on such things. “I need to visit someone on the south end of the city.”

“Might I suggest waiting a couple hours,” he said in a way that meant it wasn’t a suggestion.

She spun her chair, tilting her head up in his general direction. “Why? What time is it?”

There was a barely audible sigh, most likely tethering his exasperation. “Four thirty… a.m.”

“Huh.” She curled her lip. “I suppose we should at least wait until seven to drop in unannounced.”

“Yes, miss,” he agreed. “And perhaps you can get a short nap.”

“I will later.” Pushing up, she grabbed her guide baton from the edge of the desk and started for the door. “I’m going to go do a few laps in the pool, then work through the simulator. Come get me a half hour before it’s time to go.”

“Very good, miss,” Willis replied politely, but as she left the room she could still pick up the distinctive sound of molars grinding.

Chapter Three

July 31
^st
2104: 0703 EST

“Get up.” The roughly edged words burned a path straight through the cloudy haze of an uneasy dream sleep and into Teigan’s slowly waking conscious.

Teigan resisted the command, burying his head deeper into the stiff pillow which, up until this moment, had been his nemesis during the long night. Right now, the enemy you knew was better than the one you didn’t, and after three nights straight of very little sleep, whoever the hell dared to wake him before the sun had fully come up was, most definitely, his enemy.

“Get up, bro.”
 

A strong hand shook his shoulder rather harshly.
Who the hell?
Instinct took over. Teigan lashed out with his leg, hooking it around the back of the idiot’s knee. Only this time the move didn’t work. Instead of sending the assailant onto his backside, it did…absolutely nothing.

“Nice,” the voice taunted. “You always this cranky in the morning?”

“Wait ‘til I—” His brain woke faster than his blurry vision—which told him he was looking down from above the bed, even though his aching back told him he still lay on the hard-as-a-rock mattress.
Out of body experience.
No. Garret’s bed, Garret’s house, Garret standing over him looking irritated. And the other sound he’d heard? The one that’d made him grab up the offending pillow and stuff it over his head? One of the alarm sensors.