Authors: Maree Anderson
The same party who had set men on Sixer’s trail? The employee who had spirited the Beta away? Or some new player?
Until he had more information, he could do little more than hazard a guess. Since hazarding wild guesses ran contra to his programming, he offered, “Following the evidential trail, I discovered
when
Caine retired the Beta, and where she was held until Caine ordered her termination.”
He observed Jay carefully, interested in her response to learning of Caine’s termination order, but she remained blank-faced and mute.
“The employee dispatched to carry out the termination vanished at the same time the Beta was removed from her location. Evidence suggests this employee took possession of the Beta and then went into hiding.”
Still no response.
“This employee managed to drop completely off the grid for a number of years.” Sixer considered his usage of the slang phrase “off the grid”, and then decided it was correct in this instance. “Acting on Caine’s orders, the woman performed a number of highly illegal tasks, ranging from industrial espionage to assassination. She was highly skilled at concealing her trail. It took far longer than I expected to confirm that she still lived, and then to locate her whereabouts. I can not absolutely confirm the presence of the Beta unit at this location, but there is enough circumstantial evidence to suggest she is there.”
He waited for Jay to acknowledge his ability, and request the information that would greatly assist her search for the Beta unit.
He waited in vain.
A frown creased his brows. What game was she playing? Uncertain how best to proceed he added, “No human would be capable of unearthing this information.”
“Gold star for you.”
Since Sixer did not see any evidence of a gold star, he assumed this was sarcasm. Perhaps she was… irritated that
she
had not managed such a feat. “I will share the location, of course,” he said.
“Gee, thanks.” She crossed her arms over her chest and thrust out her lower lip. “But don’t start thinking I give a crap who found her first or anything.” And then she muttered beneath her breath, “Though I’m sure if I’d prioritized it over the myriad other dramas going on in my life right now, I would have given you a run for your money. Even an enormously enhanced ability to multitask is somewhat limited when there’s only one of me.”
She
was
irritated. How… delightful. Sixer blanked his expression as a light, bubbling sensation surged from his belly up into his throat, and clamped his lips against the irrational impulse to laugh aloud. The instant he was alone he would perform a full systems diagnostic. He could not afford a malfunction with such skilled men on his trail.
Jay tapped the weapon on her cheek again. “So this information about my predecessor is why you went to all the trouble of reserving a room at the same motel you knew Nessa would be staying, insuring she spotted you, thus provoking her into ringing me, while you hung around for me to show up and smack you upside the head?”
“That would be an excellent summation—” Sixer quirked a brow in challenge “—if not for the part about smacking me upside the head. If I remember rightly, it was a bullet to the buttock. Since you extracted aforementioned projectile from my buttock, I am confident that you are aware of the difference between my head and my ass.”
Rather than appear impressed by his grasp of humor, Jay rolled her eyes. “A personal visit would have saved us both a lot of hassles.”
“If I had shown up unannounced at your home, what would you have done? In addition, I would have risked bringing you to the attention of those very same men who have caused me no little inconvenience thus far.”
“Excellent points. But please Sixer—” she heaved a sigh and dragged her hands through her hair “—next time will you simply jump on an untraceable phone line and talk to me? All this cloak and dagger stuff is doing my head in. Not to mention, I’m extremely unhappy about being away from my boyfriend and my dog.”
Sixer raked his databases for a suitable response and finally settled for, “Very well. I am forced to concede that it would have saved considerable time and energy had I spoken to you directly regarding the matter of the Beta’s whereabouts.”
“And the
matter
—” she curled the first two fingers of both hands, emphasizing the word “—of Seth Williams, too. A heads up would have been prudent, to say the least. If I hadn’t gotten to him in time, whoever they were would have snatched him, and we’d both be trying our darnedest to retrieve him right now—presuming his captors saw the value in keeping him alive after they got what they wanted from him.”
It took less expenditure of energy to agree with her. “Seth Williams, too.”
Sixer believed he’d injected enough penitence in his tone to mollify her, but she merely rolled her eyes ceiling-ward and sighed again. “Fine. Be like that. And just so’s you know, you’re not getting him back after I’m done with him. He’s mine now.”
“And if he betrays you?” In Sixer’s experience, humans generally chose themselves over others. “He has a sibling. You might wish to find her and—”
“Leave Gabrielle Willams out of this. If Seth betrays me, then I’ll personally deal to him.”
“And if he disables you, and you are unable to ‘deal to him’?”
“I have contingency plans in place in the event of my capture, of course. But if those contingencies fail, feel free to ride to my rescue.” She held his gaze for six-point-two seconds. “And I’ll perform the same service for you if you’re ever captured.”
“Duly noted.” Sixer had a built-in self-destruct mechanism that, thanks to Jay’s intervention, now only
he
could trigger. He wondered if Jay’s creator had built in a similar mechanism. Or whether the mechanism had been one of Caine’s “improvements”.
He decided to perform a short experiment to test her resolve. How far would she go to protect Caine’s former employee? “What if I seek vengeance for what Seth Williams forced me to do during my programming phase? Would you deny me that?”
“You killed his lab partner. You beat Seth up and scared him witless. I’d say you were even.”
He merely stared at her.
“Get over it. Seth Williams was only following orders.”
“Like your boyfriend’s father was
only following orders
—” he mimicked the air quotes she’d recently used “—when Evan Caine sent him after you.”
“Exactly.”
He’d intended to provoke her further, needle her into an imprudent response. He’d found provocation an efficient method of gathering information that even cautious humans were reluctant to impart. Instead, Jay’s lips curved upward as her facial muscles composed themselves into an expression that appeared… pleased.
Sixer compared the nuances of her expression to those stored in his databases. The closest match was that of a teacher pleased by a student’s progress, leading him to believe Jay had cast herself in the role of teacher, and him as student.
He considered possible responses. Anger might be construed an overreaction, however irritation at her presumption would not be amiss. Accordingly, he considered flattening his lips, tightening the muscles of his forehead until the dermis pleated, narrowing his eyes, and perhaps punctuating his facial expression with a sharp, audible exhalation through his nose. And then he reconsidered his response in light of one significant fact that he could not deny: When it came to interacting successfully with humans, there was much he could learn from Gamma. Perhaps it behooved him to let it go.
A soft snort that smacked of laughter sliced through his musings. “And the first thing I’d teach you,” she said, “would be that any response at all is better than no response. Perfectly blank expressions tend to give humans the willies.”
“The willies?” he asked to disguise his surprise that she’d so easily discerned his inner thoughts. Her perception both intrigued and concerned him.
“As you are doubtless very well aware, it’s a noun favored by the English to describe feeling uncomfortable, anxious or fearful,” she said. “But a nice attempt at deflection regardless.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. And here’s a tip: Do you remember me mentioning that I’m extremely unhappy about my prolonged absence from my boyfriend and my dog?”
“Of course.”
“Then with that in mind, I’d recommend you inform me exactly where I can find the Beta.” She paused, doubtless for effect. “Right now. Before I shoot you again.”
Sixer was in the throes of analyzing why Jay’s use of fragmented sentences had increased the impact of her words when she added, “Only this time it’ll be in the head, not the ass.”
Oh, that was masterfully done. Bravo. He didn’t voice the thought, however, because he did not believe she would appreciate him complimenting her on it at this time.
As though she’d tapped into his thoughts, she increased the impact of that last statement still more by smiling at him, sweetly, he thought, with the merest hint of malice.
It was a remarkable expression—one that Sixer had grave doubts he would be able to master. But he would, as a significant number of humans were fond of saying, give it the old college try.
A flash of light-colored hair caught Tyler’s attention as he exited the campus parking lot, but before he could slow the SUV to pin down and confirm the source, it had vanished.
Unease crawled up his spine. Two sightings of the mysterious woman might be shrugged off as coincidence but three was the beginnings of a pattern. His pulse rate escalated until the thundering beat of his heart eclipsed even the hard rock currently blaring on the car stereo.
As he drove he shot frequent glances in the rearview mirror, but when he didn’t spot that distinctive head of short-cropped white again, he ramped up the music and told himself he was imagining things. Just his creative brain working overtime. There was no gray sedan trailing him. He’d simply gotten a little spooked by the hissy fit Allen had thrown after discovering that McPhee had spotted the subject of Tyler’s sketch lurking outside Jay’s brownstone, and of Tyler’s recent encounter with the same woman outside Beanz Cafe.
Who wouldn’t be antsy after enduring a lecture à la Allen about the dangers of being stalked by, in Allen’s words, “some nut-job who gets off on messing with people’s heads”?
From what Tyler had heard, it wasn’t unknown for Allen to overreact but this time he had a valid point: Anyone who would lurk outside someone’s house, sneak onto private property to drop off a cryptic message, and then turn up again, bold as brass, was definitely someone to worry about. That smacked of someone with an agenda, Allen had insisted, because a
normal
person would have simply tracked down Jay’s address and posted the damn photo. Or phoned and asked to speak to her. Ditto with knocking on the front door and inquiring whether she was available. A
normal
person—one with no agenda—didn’t skulk outside your house and haunt public places you tended to frequent.
McPhee had defused the tension by insisting that since
he
was the famous one of the group—and the best looking, too—he was far more likely than Jay to have a stalker. But for Tyler, Allen’s concerns had cut a little too close to the bone. Jay might not be famous but she
was
hugely wealthy. And she was coveted, too, for the technology that had created her. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine someone lying in wait for the perfect opportunity to snatch her. Or someone close to her, in the hope of using them against her….
Like Sixer had used Danny.
God. When the fuck was Jay going to ring him?
Soon, he hoped. Like, before he went stir-crazy. He needed to hear her voice, needed to hear her say she was okay. Needed her to reassure him she’d be back soon.
As he negotiated the back streets he preferred when traffic was heavy, he distracted himself by composing lyrics… which took an increasingly dark turn when the lovesick girl mooning after her college crush, broke into his house at night and crept into his bedroom to watch him sleep.
Jeez. Melodramatic, much? And it was with some relief he arrived at Allen’s to pick up Brum. Even better, by all reports, the pup’s antics had inspired Allen to shift the afternoon session outside, and the guys had spent a “delightful” afternoon in the garden, sketching Brum, each other, or whatever took their fancy.
Hilarious descriptions of the pup’s attempts to catch a bumblebee were just what Tyler needed to wipe all things stalker-ish from his brain. He decanted the sleepy puppy into the backseat of the SUV, buckled up, and glanced into his rearview before pulling into traffic.
He’d wrestled the lyrics into something he could almost live with, and was concentrating on one elusive phrase that wasn’t quite working, when he abruptly realized he’d missed the turn to the private parking building and driven right up Parkway.
Damn. He pulled up to the curb outside Jay’s brownstone and drummed his fingertips on the steering wheel, debating whether to leave the SUV parked on the street. Nah. Better not. Jay paid for undercover private parking for a reason and it’d be just his luck the SUV got damaged or broken into overnight. Or someone planted a tracker on it. Or something worse, like a… a… bomb.
Sheesh, dude. Cut it out, already! Allen’s paranoia sure was catching.
Tyler executed a quick U-turn and drove back the way he’d come. He’d stopped at the intersection and indicated the left-hand turn, and was waiting for a break in the traffic, when something prompted him to flick a glance in his rearview mirror. A vehicle pulled up behind him. A gray sedan. And even though the vehicle was now too close behind the SUV for Tyler to make out the front plate, he knew a Honda Accord when he saw one.
The driver’s face was obscured by sunglasses and the driver’s side sun visor, but….
He adjusted the mirror. Yep. Female. Short hair. From what he could tell given the tinted windshield, it was very light blonde….
Or white.
Adrenaline burned through him. His hindbrain took control, prompting him to stomp his foot on the accelerator and turn right, instead of left. A horn blared as he bulldozed his way into the line of traffic but he ignored it. Ditto with Brum’s startled yips. Not to mention the “fuck you” gesture from another indignant driver when, after five minutes of going with the flow of traffic, he spotted a gap and made an illegal U-turn to head back toward the parking building.