Skin Dive (39 page)

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Authors: Ava Gray

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BOOK: Skin Dive
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“How much longer does she need to stay?”
“We need to finish the battery of tests,” he answered.
Tan shook her head, and her voice sank lower. Gillie could
hear
the difference, but it didn’t compel her the way it did men. “You should release her now. After all, if she has complete renal failure, there’s nothing to analyze, is there? You’ll send the nurse to remove the IV and shunt.”
“You’re right,” Doctor Howard said. “I’ll get the release paperwork started.”
As soon as he left, Tan went to meddle with the technicians. The loose ends were just about wrapped up; within fifteen minutes, Gillie had staff helping her get ready to go. She had a clean change of clothes, courtesy of Tanager.
The nurse put a gauze bandage over the shunt site. Kindly, she refrained from commenting on the track marks marching up Gillie’s arm, but from her expression, the nurse thought she’d blown her kidneys shooting up. “I swear, you were at death’s door yesterday. I don’t know why the doctor diagnoses as he does.”
“It’s probably insurance-related,” Tan said blithely. “You know how they are.”
Nurse Betty frowned. “Do I ever.”
An hour later, an orderly wheeled Gillie along the hall. She fought not to look over her shoulder, trying not to want him to be there. He hadn’t gone for coffee or a bite to eat. Now she had to face it; he wasn’t coming back. When you got right down to it, Taye was a fucking coward, and she wanted no part of him.
Tanager met her at the front doors, parking in the patientloading zone. Gillie felt weaker than she’d expected but she managed to get in the car. Once she’d buckled up, they took off.
“Where are we anyway?”
“Los Angeles. It’ll be quite a road trip. I mean, I could get us a plane, but I thought you might enjoy the girl-time. I know I will.”
“I turned down an internship, so I’m not in any hurry to get back.” At least she
had
a life. “Oh, did you find the flash drive in my pants pocket? I didn’t leave it behind.”
“Sure did. Let’s rock.” With a whoop, Tan stomped on the gas.
CHAPTER 28
Once he dropped
them at the hospital, Cale ditched the stolen car and his thoughts circled back to Kestrel.
Kristin
. It had just about killed him to lay her down, her eyes wide and sightless, staring up at the dark sky. The barn roof would keep the wind off her, and under the circumstances, it had been the best they could do. An anonymous phone call would get the cops out to take care of her, but—
Not good enough. Never good enough. She would haunt him, all the days of his life.
I’ll sleep with you. What’s the matter? Don’t you want me?
Oh, Kes, I’m so sorry.
Too late, he’d learned that more than money mattered. If he’d acted sooner, maybe he could have saved her. Then again, perhaps with some people, there could be no salvation. He suspected he was one of them.
Fighting memories, he sat on a park bench in the rain. It spattered the pavement like tears, perpetually falling. The authorities would find her family from this point; relatives would take her home and bury her with no idea how brave or splendid she was—or how broken at the end. He hurt more than he could’ve imagined possible at the start of this job. Once, things had been simple.
They weren’t anymore.
He sat there all night in a private memorial, replaying that moment and holding her body in his arms. People had died on his watch before; it was part of what had driven him from the army into private pay, where at least the money was worth the grief. But no ending had ever left him feeling like this.
At dawn, he returned to the Foundation tower, where everything ended the night before. It was cordoned off, rescue crews poking through the rubble. Whatever the other teams had done, it destabilized the whole structure. Thirty stories, all collapsed into a shallow crater—now it was just cement and steel and dust motes wafting in the wind. People had never seen anything like it.
He took a room at a motel, watched the news; they had all kinds of theories about the tower. Some experts thought it must’ve been a sinkhole, similar to those that occurred in Guatemala . . . others argued, given the tectonic activity in California, it must’ve been an extremely localized earthquake. Cale flicked off the TV and opened a bottle of Powers Irish Whiskey. He poured three fingers into the plain glass and held it to the light.
Same color as Kristin’s eyes.
He shut his own and drank.
On the second day, he called the morgue to tell them her name. From there, they put the pieces together. Though they’d never find the killer—the bastard might even be buried in the rubble at Foundation headquarters—at least they could give closure.
As it turned out, she was from Minnesota, and it didn’t take long to run down which funeral home would be handling the services. On the seventh day, with his head thundering, he flew to Pine Grove. For the first time in ten years, he donned a suit and tie. He hadn’t expected to dress so formally again . . . not even if he happened to get married. In fact, he’d always imagined himself tying the knot on a beach, if he could find a woman to put up with him.
Unlikely, that.
Pine Grove wasn’t a large town, so he drew some looks, first at the service, and then later at the cemetery. He didn’t know how long it had been since they’d seen her, but they bought her a nice casket.
Such a fucking waste.
Breaking his reverie, an elderly woman tapped him on the arm. “Pardon me, but I don’t recognize you. Doesn’t that sound rude? How did you know Kristin?”
“We worked together,” he said quietly.
“Oh?” Her tone invited him to elaborate; her eyes asked for more than that, a memory from him that she couldn’t otherwise know, something to remember.
“She was really gifted,” he answered. “I couldn’t have done without her.”
“What business are you in?”
“Importing.” That was what his documents said, anyway.
“You’re from England, I take it?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I’m glad she had a friend willing to come all this way. We lost track of her. She moved out west and then disappeared. Tragic.”
You don’t know the half of it.
“I’m Kristin’s grandma,” the woman added. “It was a pleasure meeting you, but I think the minister is about to begin.”
Guilt had driven him here to try and make amends, though it was too late. The lady went to join relatives in front, stumbling over the uneven sod. Or maybe it was grief making her unsteady. Quiet fell, apart from the man in black, droning about heaven.
Once the minister finished, he slipped away. He knew he’d never be the same; he’d never look at work as uncomplicated again. For good or ill, she had changed him. From the cemetery, he drove to the airport. It was time to get the hell out. Maybe he could leave the memories on American soil.
As he drove, his phone rang. He answered, and a familiar voice said, “I need you in Liverpool, you bastard.”
Hausen.
Cale never thought he would be grateful to have one of his messes to clean up, but there it was. Gratitude that he had work to do, so he could focus on something else. Maybe in time, his sense of failure would fade. Nobody would know how things had gone down or that she’d died because he failed to save her. The Foundation certainly wasn’t in any position to talk about whether he’d satisfied the terms of his contract.
“Can you contain the problem until I get there? It’s a fairly long flight.”
“It’s not an emergency yet, though it will become so in the next forty-eight hours. I can stall them for now.”
“Didn’t I say you’d owe me another favor soon enough?”
“Skip the gloating if you please.”
“And this is why I get to call you in the middle of the night. I’m on my way.”
It was time to leave her ghost behind, if such was possible. Time to go home.

 

After Tanager saw
Gillie safely home, she did what she had been dying to do ever since she retrieved the flash drive. She drove to the nicest house within five minutes of her friend’s apartment; it was a huge place with pillars out front, brick facing, and beautiful manicured grounds. The flowers were just starting to bloom, adding touches of color to the green lawn.
“Why don’t you take a vacation?” she told the gray-haired man who answered the door. “How long has it been since you took a day off? You should spend the night in Vegas.”
“I’d
love
that. I used to be pretty wild in my day.” With more excitement than her victims usually displayed, he went off to pack . . . but not before hiring her to house sit until day after tomorrow.
Tanager sauntered in with her backpack, checking the place out. No worry about strike teams. No fear of Kestrel finding her. Somehow the freedom felt bittersweet.
Once Mr. Miller tore out of the garage in a squeal of tires, she plugged it in her netbook and waited. Nobody else knew; once again Mockingbird had given her the burden of knowledge, and she didn’t know whether she loved or hated him for it. A little of both, perhaps. It had always been that way between them. She had no idea why he’d chosen her to bear his secrets, except, possibly, that she’d known him longest; they had history.
Two minutes later, he appeared in a shimmer of light. Whole. Unchanged.
“The transfer didn’t hurt you?” she asked.
“Their security measures weren’t fun, but I’m intact, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Mockingbird had been able to hack peripheral Foundation systems, getting tidbits of intel, and allowing them to hit satellite facilities, but their central server had been closed. No external access. Before Dunn turned, they had no hope of locating enemy headquarters.
In order to shut things down for good, he had to be carried to the server, as Gillie had done, and uploaded, so he could wreak havoc from within. But he hadn’t known what the consequences would be—whether a personality and intelligence could be ported on a flash drive and back again. He had been prepared to sacrifice what was left of himself to set everyone else free. Thanks to Heron, thanks to everyone who fought and died, the survivors could live without fear for the first time since the experiments began.
And she’d never been so scared in her life. Tan wished she could touch him—hug him—but that part of him was gone. Now they had only words, so she took refuge in business when she wanted something else, something she’d scarcely admitted even to herself.
“You shut down all their operations? I told everyone you had, but we haven’t had a chance to talk before now.”
“I did. Destroyed all the data, too. To my knowledge, the Foundation is no more. The parent company is focusing on military applications now: biological weapons and the like, more mundane means of dealing death.”
“Guess their number-crunchers didn’t have a hard time accepting your report.” That had been part of the plan—that he’d sign some executive’s name to an internal e-mail, recommending complete termination of the
homo superus
project, as Rowan had called it.
“You know they called the overall effort Project Prometheus? Learned that while I was in the server.”
“I didn’t. But given what I know of mythology, their plan panned out about as well, didn’t it? You
died
for us. Was it worth it?” Anger flavored her words.
The opulence of her surroundings didn’t cool the fury of her grief. She’d hardly had a chance to mourn, just that one moment by the side of the road.
Just keep going, Tanager. I know I can count on you, Tanager.
And she still couldn’t, because he was still here . . . and yet he
wasn’t
. Not in the way she needed him to be. Tan could almost hate him for it, too.
“Yeah,” he said. Just that. No explanations.
She didn’t know why she’d expected anything different. He’d always held himself apart. Though he’d confided that he once ran a crew in Las Vegas, something bad happened, something that ended in a lot of his people dying, and so after that, he worked alone, barriers and distance.
Then he surprised her. “I was dying anyway, Tan. The more I used my mojo, the more it consumed me.”
“You could’ve stopped.”
“Walked away? From this? From you? I don’t think so.”
She didn’t know what that meant. “Were you scared you couldn’t come back?”
“Absolutely. Once you took me out of the net, it was like . . . being imprisoned. Here, I have all this space and freedom. In the flash drive . . .” The words trailed off.
He probably couldn’t explain it to her anymore than she could tell someone how it felt to use her siren voice. In that way, at least, she understood him. They were both different.
“You can stay with me,” she said. “If you need a home base, I mean.”
She was sure he didn’t. Need one. He could go anywhere. But that was as close as she could get to what she wanted. At least she hadn’t lost him completely. How funny to think of her little blue netbook as such a powerful thing.

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