Freaks Under Fire (8 page)

Jay scooped up the necklace she’d left on the vanity unit and fastened it about her throat before flicking the extractor fan switch up a gear to dispel the steam that had accumulated. “I’ve turned the hot water off,” she said. “There’s no point wasting further resources. What’s so imperative that it can’t wait until I’ve showered and gotten rid of all the puppy pee, Michael?”

Tyler couldn’t help grinning as he watched his dad scramble to kick-start his brain… and cover the fact he’d been caught staring at his son’s girlfriend by loudly clearing his throat.

“Are you incubating a virus?” Jay asked. “You appear very pale.”

Tyler’s dad waved away her comment. “Either the puppy has Houdini tendencies and should henceforth be named Digger, or we have a big problem. I’ve a horrible suspicion it’s the latter.”

Jay’s brow wrinkled and her killer-blue eyes narrowed. “I’m afraid I’m not following you, Michael. If my puppy managed to escape the house and dig a hole in the backyard, I can rectify any damage caused. I fail to see how any hole a pup of its age could possibly dig would constitute an insurmountable problem.”

“It’s not the hole,” Tyler’s dad said. “It’s what used to be buried in the hole.”

A chill of presentiment licked Tyler’s spine. Shit. Please don’t let me be right about this. “Could, ah,
Digger
, have buried it somewhere else?” he asked. “Have you checked?”

“For the record, I am not naming the puppy Digger,” Jay interjected. “And if this missing object that has you both so concerned has been reburied elsewhere in the yard, I’m sure I will be able to locate it for you. All I require is a description—”

“You don’t think the puppy dug it up,” Tyler said to his dad. “You think it was taken by someone who knew exactly what they were looking for.”

“Yep. That’s what I think.”

Tyler rubbed the bridge of his nose, his mind whirling with worst-case scenarios. Nausea churned in his gut. This was bad—real bad. “Fuck.”

“My thoughts exactly.” His dad pressed a fist to his stomach, as though his gut pained him. His face looked pinched with worry. And Tyler figured that right now, his own expression would be a perfect mirror of his dad’s.

Jay uttered a noise that successfully conveyed frustration. “Will one of you please tell me about this missing object that has you both so spooked? Or will I have to pick you both up by the scruffs of your necks and shake it out of you? Which will necessitate dropping this towel, thereby causing you both extreme embarrassment.”

Her attempt at humor missed the mark. Tyler couldn’t look her in the eye. After everything she’d done to keep them safe, the past was again coming back to bite them all in the ass. “Dad found the hand you planted at the explosion site to make everyone think you’d been blown to bits. He brought it back and gave it to me—to prove you were gone. We had a ceremony in the backyard to bury your remains.”

“And that hand is now missing.”

“Yes.”

“Ah.” Jay nodded. “Now I understand your concerns.”

Tyler wanted to punch his stupid-ass former self in the face. “We thought you were dead. There was no body to bury and I…. Hell, I just needed some closure. And when you came back into my life, I had other things on my mind. Shit, Jay, I can’t believe I didn’t think to tell you—so you could dig it up and destroy it, or something. This is my fault.”

“We are equally to blame, Tyler. I knew exactly what had been done with the decoy hand I constructed. I watched you bury it.”

He lifted his chin, a part of him refusing to believe what he was hearing. “You were
watching
?”

“Yes.” She folded her arms across her chest.

Wow. Tyler didn’t know what to say—or think for that matter. This was heavy stuff. He would need some time to—

“Let it go,” his dad said. “You know why Jay couldn’t risk revealing herself at that time.”

Tyler’s throat was too tight to speak but he managed a terse nod of acknowledgement. Of course, he understood Jay’s reasons. But, as the memories of that dark time in his life hovered, waiting to pounce and drag him under again, it was damn hard to fight the remembered anguish—hard not to feel…. Betrayed. She’d watched him bury what they’d all believed were her sole remains. She’d witnessed how gutted he’d been to lose her, witnessed his pain. And yet she’d remained hidden, silent.

As though reading his mind she said quietly, “I did as much as I dared to give you hope, Tyler.”

His gaze strayed to the thumb drive nestled in her cleavage. She’d threaded it on a heavy silver chain and now wore it as a necklace. The only time she removed it was to bathe. That thumb drive stored only one file—a song he’d written and recorded for her. He’d hidden the drive alongside the spare house key before he and his family had fled Snapperton because he hadn’t been able to bring himself to believe she was gone, and had hoped for a miracle. And when his family dared return home, and he’d discovered the thumb drive missing, it
had
given him hope. Even if it had begun to die in the months that had followed before Jay’d shown up to rock his world all over again, that hope had been a precious thing. He’d been a mess, but it would have been so much worse without that small hope to cling to.

Jay was right: She’d done what she could to let him know she’d survived. Anything more would have endangered them all. He had no right to be pissed at her.

“I could have refused to let you bury the damned thing.” Tyler’s dad raked a hand through his hair and sighed. He exuded a deep-seated weariness that had Tyler secretly worried.

“I should never have brought it home,” his dad continued. “But I figured it was safer than leaving it lying around for just anyone to find. And it seemed wrong to leave even a part of you behind after everything you’d done for us, Jay.”

“Thank you, Michael.” Jay’s slow nod seemed to both acknowledge and dismiss a fraught past that had transformed Mike Davidson into Michael White, a man ripped from his family because of his unique skills, and blackmailed into hunting Cyborg Unit Gamma-Dash-One, AKA Jay Smith and more recently, Jaime Smythson.

“You must be aware that I could have dug up the hand and disposed of it at any time, with none of you any the wiser,” Jay said. “I chose to leave it buried there because it….” She appeared to be searching for the right words. “It
comforted
me to know that you mourned me—a machine. It gave me hope. It gave me a reason to fight for a dream when it would have been far more logical to inter myself somewhere and shut down for a few decades until the danger to you all had passed.”

Tyler gulped. She seemed calm enough on the surface but her eyes shone with unshed tears. He knew how hard it had been for
him
, believing that Jay had sacrificed herself to save them and been destroyed in the bomb blast.

Burying her remains. Discovering a sign she might have survived. Hoping, praying that she would come back to him. And then, when she hadn’t, trying to accept her loss and move on. For his then seventeen-year-old self, those months without her had seemed like a lifetime. But he’d never considered how hard it might have been for
Jay
. He had presumed she’d simply gotten on with covering her tracks, deleting her previous identity from public record, tidying up loose ends. He hadn’t considered that she, too, might have suffered emotionally.

God, he’d been a fool—and a selfish one at that, thinking only of himself. At least he’d had his family to help ground him. Jay’d had no one.

She placed her hand on his arm, yanking him from a mire of self-recriminations. “None of you are to blame for my illogical decisions,” she said. “But there is now considerably more to be considered than merely a missing cybernetic hand.” She rubbed an eyebrow—the gesture so intrinsically human that Tyler’s heart flip-flopped. “I need to get dressed and we need to talk. All of us. No exceptions.”

Tyler’s dad shifted uneasily. “But—”

She made a slicing motion with her hand to silence his protest. “No buts, Michael. It’s not right to keep the full truth from Marissa any longer. We need to tell her everything—just as I need to tell all of you what happened after Sixer left. I want everyone to have all the facts before any decisions are made.”

“You’re right.” Tyler’s dad nodded slowly, and Tyler thought he seemed relieved.

No surprises there. Tyler both understood and agreed with the reasoning behind keeping the full truth from his mother and his sister, but it hadn’t sat well with him. He didn’t like secrets. He’d kept a few big ones himself. He knew firsthand how secrets destroyed trust and ruined lives. Keeping this one must have been doubly hard for his dad. But even though Jay happened to be right, didn’t mean it was gonna be easy coming clean. Jay’s actions might have made it possible for Tyler’s dad to return to his family, but Tyler’s mom had taken a long time to trust her husband again. His parents’ relationship was still fragile. And Jay’s relationship with Tyler’s mom was still pretty damned rocky, too, which made things real awkward.

On his mom’s part, Tyler got the impression fear was the main reason she was playing nice, rather than any real desire to have Jay be a permanent part of their lives. He’d made it crystal clear that if she badmouthed Jay again, or tried to force a choice between her and Jay, the shit was gonna hit the fan big-time. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but right now, observing Jay’s carefully expressionless face, he was afraid it might.

And he was afraid, too, of something he was barely able to acknowledge: that Jay might take the choice from him. If she concluded that her presence threatened their safety, she would leave… and there would be nothing Tyler could do to stop her.

“I’ll be down in five minutes,” Jay said, her crisp no-nonsense tone a clear dismissal.

Tyler’s dad left without a word but Tyler lingered, half-expecting Jay to at least hint what she planned to discuss.

“You, too, Tyler,” she told him. “Go put the clothes through the washer before you forget and they’re irredeemable. I’ll be down shortly.”

He frowned at her, unease churning in his belly. “Are you okay, Jay?”

When she finally answered, her voice was small and thin and wholly unlike the capable Jay she usually presented to the world. “No, Tyler, I’m not okay. I believe… I might be scared?”

He opened his arms and moved, meeting her halfway as she stumbled into his embrace and wound her arms about his back to hold him tight against her. She buried her face in the crook of his shoulder and he could feel her shaking. He wasn’t sure he wanted to ask but he had to know so he forced the question from his tight, aching throat. “What are you scared of?”

“That when I tell you everything you’ll want me to leave.”

“Funny,” he whispered into her hair, “because
I’m
scared you’ll decide it’s better for everyone if you vanish again.” He cupped her face, raised her tear-drowned gaze to his. “I don’t want you to leave me, Jay. And just so’s you know, if you
do
leave, I’ll spend the rest of my life tracking you down so I can kick your ass before I kiss you senseless. We’re in this together, okay?”

She managed a smile. “Okay.”

He kissed her hard and quick, and then left her clutching her towel and wrestling with her demons. It wasn’t the most difficult thing he’d ever had to do but it came damn high on the list. Ditto with steeling himself to keep walking rather than lurk by the bathroom door in case she tried to do a runner. He didn’t think she would—not after what he’d just told her—but she was a cyborg, and although he loved her, he didn’t always understand her thought processes. It boiled down to trust. He had to trust her. And so he collected the puppy-pee-doused clothes and headed downstairs to chuck them in the washer.

When he ventured into the yard, he found his mom and sister sitting on the park bench-style seating near the outdoor grill. His sister Caro had propped baby Danny over her shoulder, and was patting his diapered bottom and cooing nonsense at him. Jay’s puppy lay on its back in Tyler’s mom’s lap, all four paws in the air, while she absently stroked its belly. His dad was standing beneath the apple tree, hands shoved deep in his pants’ pockets, staring down at the patch of disturbed earth.

Tyler’s mom spotted him heading for the tree, and the gentle smile she’d sported while observing Caro with Danny melted into something thin and brittle. “What’s all this about, Tyler?” she asked. “Mike’s being mysterious.” Her gaze darted to her husband, and by the time she turned back to Tyler, her expression had morphed into a full-on frown.

Tyler wasn’t going to be drawn. Nor was he going to spout platitudes to keep his mother happy. “Jay needs to talk to us. There’s some stuff we need to know.”

His mother’s expression blanked. “Jay’s
here
.”

“She arrived—” Tyler glanced at his watch “—about an hour ago. We had some catching up to do.”

He rolled his shoulders, waiting for some smartass innuendo from his twin. But apparently Caro had decided to cut him a break. She’d pressed her lips tightly together, though, and her expression seemed a little…
pained
. He’d bet some substantial “alone time” with Jay that his sister was biting her tongue in an effort not to say whatever was currently skating through her brain. He appreciated her efforts. Last thing he needed was his mom going off about what he and Jay had gotten up to in his old room.

“You all knew she was here,” his mom said, glancing at her husband, the hurt etching her face so obvious Tyler would’ve had to be blind not to spot it. And then she ducked her head, belatedly hiding her expression as she petted the puppy lying in her lap.

Tyler inwardly cringed. This was gonna be a freaking nightmare. This was what happened when people kept secrets from family. “Caro only found out a short time ago,” he felt compelled to say—more so his mom had the comfort of knowing she wasn’t the only one kept out of the loop, than to keep Caro out of the firing line. His sister was way more than capable of standing up for herself.

His mother nodded, grasping at the pathetic excuse for an olive branch. “Where—?”

Jay had exited the back door on silent cat-feet. If not for the fragrance of the soap she’d used wafting to his nostrils, Tyler wouldn’t have known she was there until she slipped her hand in his and gave it a firm squeeze. “Hello, Marissa,” she said.