Chase Me (27 page)

“Go,” Elliott ordered. “I’ll get our network team going here to verify that our shielding held. We’ll bring it down until we have more information.”

Lorin gulped at Lukas’s nod of agreement. An SL network shutdown? This was serious shit.

Bailey shoved tiredly to her feet. “Lorin, Gabe, I’ll need your phones.”

“Huh?” Though her phone was off most of the time, the prospect of being without it was unexpectedly disconcerting. “It’s powered down in my bag next door.”

“I need to check them out,” Bailey said. “Not that I actually know what the hell I’m looking for yet.”

Bailey walked over to Gabe and held out her hand.

“Shit,” he muttered. Color flushing over his cheeks, he glanced at Elliott. “Sorry.”

Elliott smiled slightly. “I’ve heard the word before.”

Reaching to the holder at his waistband, Gabe slowly handed over his Bat Phone, as reluctant as a parent leaving his child with a babysitter for the first time.

“Oh, you have a prototype.”

“I don’t appear to have it anymore.”

“Nope,” Bailey responded without sympathy. To Lukas, she said, “This would be a great opportunity to probe Council_Net for other susceptibilities. As long as I’m—”

“Bailey, there are too many projects on your plate as it is. Most of them are behind schedule.”

“Just pointing out that there’s a silver lining here. C’mon, who needs sleep?” Bailey quipped.

You
do.
Bailey looked like she’d pulled too many all-nighters as it was. So much responsibility rested on the shoulders of this single, frail human.

“Are you done down here for the day?” Elliott asked Gabe. “I have a couple of questions about that proposed budget you sent last night.”

Gabe shot Lorin an apologetic glance. “Sure, Elliott.”

So, he
hadn’t
forgotten what they’d been up to before all technological hell had broken loose. She sighed heavily. Damn. Even without computers, even with a possible breach, business went on. She had some work to catch up on herself. “Touch base with me later, Gabe.”

As Lorin turned over her phone to Bailey, she wondered if Gabe would hear the invitation in her words—and if he heard it, would he take her up on it?

***

“Aah…” Even as his legs collapsed, even as the floor tipped up to smack him, Beddoe closed his eyes to protect them from the searing light. He’d materialized into a dark, seething cauldron: sharp spears of light. Ozone. A huge shock wave of sound built, rolling and rumbling, threatening to cleave the world in two. He clapped his hands over his ears.

Had Minchin finally made his move, sending his captain to a fiery death?

Suddenly the room… quieted. Stilled. Hesitantly opening his eyes and dropping his hands from his ears, he sat up and checked his ’comp:
Thunderstorm. A seasonal weather phenomena comprised of rain, lightning, thunder.

As he read further, the workroom’s shapes and shadows formed, grounding him: the wall of shelves. The window, flashing with strobes of light. A table leg. He’d fallen near the table where, last night, he’d suckled from Paige’s body—a delicacy that still thrummed through his body and mind.

Outside, projectiles pounded, rhythmic and musical. Dragging himself up from the floor, he carefully walked to the window. He peered out and grabbed onto the windowsill to keep from falling again.

Clean water—
rain
—fell from the sky. The planet was so abundant with water that it fell from the sky and flowed freely over the land.

Rain
. Such a simple word to describe a treasure beyond price.

Dia.
Even if he never found the wreckage of the
Arkapaedis
and couldn’t claim the bounty, possessing the cryotube would more than meet his needs. If the cryo’s precious cargo was still viable, he could claim this world—so many worlds—as his own.

All he had to do was take it.

He flicked a tiny button at his wrist, illuminating the tabletop with a narrow-beamed light. He swept the light over its surface—its clean, empty surface.
Where
was…
Shoving down the panic, he searched the shelves, the desk and its drawers, even the tiny room that Paige had hidden him in last night.

Nothing. The cryotube was gone.

***

Lorin jerked awake at the light touch on her shoulder. “Gabe?”

“No, dear,” her mother said softly. “It’s me. Are you expecting Gabriel?”

Lorin sat up, disgusted to find that she’d fallen asleep at her desk with her hand buried in a bag of Cheetos. Was she expecting Gabe? “No, not really.” She’d hoped Gabe might seek her out after his meeting with Elliott was over, but she’d worked for several hours, waiting, hitting the snacks like an addict did his pipe. “What time is it?” she asked while she stretched, glancing to the big window overlooking her mother’s desk. It was full dark outside, but that didn’t tell her much.

Alka glanced at her slim, black-banded watch. “Just past 1:00 a.m.”

And no Gabe. Had he called? She reached for her messenger bag, stopping with her arm extended. She didn’t have a phone anymore; Bailey had taken it. She had Gabe’s, too. He’d need to use a landline to call her, use someone’s desk phone—duh, desk phone. She glanced at the whiz-bang machine sitting, dusty and neglected, on the corner of her desk. The thing had so many features that frankly, it intimidated her, but she’d managed to use it earlier to retrieve Elliott’s message notifying SL employees that their technology use would be limited to internal communications and local work until further notice.

The message light was dark. And she was staring at the phone like a lovesick teenager.

Suck
it
up, Schlessinger.

Sitting up with a lurch, she stuck her forefinger in her mouth to suckle off the neon orange Cheetos dust, taking in her mother’s simple black linen pants, matching tunic, and stunning fire-opal necklace. The large collar covering most of her upper chest was priceless, an ancestral piece, but her mother wore the ornate jewels with a royal’s casual confidence.

“How was your dinner with Valerian?” she asked.

Alka snagged the Cheetos bag for herself, walked to her own desk, and sat down. “Just fine. Valerian was quite the raconteur tonight, in fine form. But that might have had something to do with the wine. Oh my stars, the wine.”

While her mother rhapsodized over the vintage Wyland had selected from Valerian’s incomparable wine cellar, Lorin’s thoughts turned bittersweet. Even for a species as long-lived as vampires, Valerian was ancient. While deteriorating health was to be expected at such a great age, Valerian’s condition had taken a marked turn for the worse this year, prompting urgent action by both Alka and Wyland. Most of their peoples’ known history had been catalogued by this one man, written in his distinctive, sprawling script as he whispered into rulers’ ears from behind countless royal thrones, in innumerable smoke-filled rooms, sitting on the periphery of history, influencing it on their species’ behalf. Plumbing his fading memories had become an urgent priority. Alka had started recording his oral histories during a series of weekly dinners, a digital recorder lying beside the heavy Georgian cutlery, catching every word of their wide-ranging conversation. Wyland, Valerian’s chosen successor, had all but moved in to Valerian’s hulking old house, perched on the cliffs overlooking the St. Croix River, to maximize their time together.

“Why are you here, not at home?” Lorin asked around a jaw-cracking yawn.

“Wyland makes a vicious espresso. I’m wide awake.” Reaching over, Alka carefully extracted a single Cheeto from the bag. “I thought I’d catch up on some work. I never figured you’d be here.”

Lorin told her mother about what had happened in the lab earlier in the day, that Bailey suspected that the tech unit had somehow attached to her test network. “You don’t seem surprised.”

Alka shrugged fatalistically. “Carl always said that math might be the closest thing we have to a universal language.”

Though Council Humanity Chair Carl Sagan had died before Lorin took her own Council seat, she’d spent many happy hours simply sitting at his feet as he’d examined the petroglyphs up at Isabella. “I miss Carl,” she said. “I could really use his counsel right about now.”

“So could we all,” her mother said, reaching into the bag. “So tell me how things are going up at the dig. Did the site winter well? How is the crew this year?”

As they munched, Lorin updated her mother on the significant happenings up at the dig, telling her about the capsule Nathan had unearthed, and the odd, metal-flecked trees she and Gabe had found. She didn’t reveal to her mother just what she and Gabe had been doing at the time of discovery. “And Paige has a boyfriend.”

“Really? Did Mike finally make a move?”

“Nope. Dude’s a vamp she met at Tubby’s.” Lorin shrugged. “I’m not sure Mike quite knows what to think. I don’t know what to think either. We don’t know anything about this guy.”

“They’re adults with their own lives,” Alka gently reminded her. “There’s a line.”

“Yeah. Speaking of which…” Reaching into her lower desk drawer, Lorin withdrew a bag of fun-sized Snickers and tore it open, scattering candy bars over the top of her desk. “Why didn’t you say anything about Gabe’s eyes, his macular degeneration?”

“Lorin, his medical condition is none of my business, unless it influences his job performance. It’s his news to share, or not.” A pause. “Damn it,” Alka muttered, snatching a candy bar. “I know he had an appointment with his retinologist this week. How did it go?”

“Mom, he hasn’t said anything at all—and we’ve worked together in that damn lab, alone, for two days straight. He’s had every chance in the world to bring it up, and he hasn’t. What I
do
know, I heard from Andi.” As she told her mother about Gabe’s cataract diagnosis, she kept her hands busy unwrapping candy bars. How in the world could anyone call these microscopic tidbits fun-sized? They were way too small. “His family seems to have a lot of health problems.”

Alka sighed. “It’s a problem for the wolves in general. If they bonded and bred outside their species more often, their genetic line would grow more resilient, but Krispin—gah.” She threw up her hands. “There’s no talking to the man.”

“Nope.” Lorin tossed a candy bar into her mouth and chewed. Though not codified by any law, Krispin Woolf, and generations of alphas before him, had made their strong preference for wolf/wolf mating bonds crystal clear.

“Speaking of mating, how are you and Gabriel getting along?”

Lorin coughed on her candy bar then held up a hand as she choked it down. “Geez, Mom.”

“If that clinch I interrupted down in the lab is anything to go by, I’d say very well indeed. His quiet strength, your exuberance. I knew you two would be a good match.”

“A good match? Mother, we fight like lions in a cage.” At her comment, Alka laughed—so hard that she reached for a tissue to wipe tears from her eyes. “I’m so glad I amuse you.”

“My poor, deluded darling. Lorin, the sexual tension between the two of you has been brewing for ages. So, have you done anything about it?”

“Mom. Not going there.”

Alka fanned herself with her hand. “Those wolves. Even the betas are such… vigorous lovers.”

Up against a tree. On the pine needles carpeting the forest floor. On her firm mattress.
Vigorous? Hell, yes.
“Mother…”

“Ha! No denials from you.”

How could she explain all the factors at play? “Mom, it’s… complicated.”

“Most worthwhile things are,” her mother said serenely. “So, you’re a problem-solver. What do you want to achieve, and what’s the biggest obstacle standing in your way?”

“What do I want?” Her mother’s question had a very simple answer: Gabe. She wanted Gabe. What did she want from him?
More.
The word jumped into her head, no thought required. More than a working relationship, more than a sexual relationship. She wanted… more.

Ah, damn, Andi was right. Her feelings
were
involved. She raised a hand to her suddenly queasy stomach.

“It’ll be okay, Lorin.”

Her mother’s voice didn’t soothe. How would it be okay? “I have no idea whether he wants the same thing. Hell, I
know
he doesn’t. He might want me sexually, but this is Gabe we’re talking about. He doesn’t think it’s ethical to get involved with a subordinate.”

Alka frowned. “But—your reporting relationship is a formality. You’re peers. You handle the site work, he handles the paperwork.”

“Gabe doesn’t see it that way. I still don’t know what caused him to change his mind about us sleeping together, but he did. We—” Her cheeks flushed again. “We were having what I thought was a mutually satisfying physical relationship, but just before we came back south, he ended it. Now?” She shrugged. “He seems like he might be interested again. I just don’t know what’s going on in his head.”