Nolan laughed. “We’ll meet again. Of that I have no doubt.” He stepped backward, toward the wall.
“Stop,” Le’Ace shouted, firing again.
He managed to avoid the second azure beam, as well. When his back met the silver stone, he simply disappeared. There one moment, gone the next.
CHAPTER 10
That certainly went well,” Le’Ace said as she tossed her weapons onto her nightstand. Normally, she cleaned them and placed them carefully in their holders whether she’d used them or not. They were her best friends, her only friends. This time, however, she was simply too pissed to care.
Silent, stoic, Jaxon hobbled to the bed and fell onto the edge. She hated that stoicism more than ever. Wanted to smash the unemotional mask into so many pieces he’d never be able to adopt it again. She’d much preferred his vehemence inside the bar. He’d been so wonderfully human, as human as she’d always wanted to be.
He braced his hands on his knees and watched her. He’d occupied that exact position before, she remembered, and seeing him there again morphed threads of her anger into arousal. He hadn’t been stoic then. He hadn’t been silent. He’d been wild and tender, a pleasure giver.
He’d been desire.
“You have nothing to say for yourself?” She wanted to stomp her foot like a child and barely restrained the urge. “Why don’t you tell me what you thought you could accomplish, hmm? Following me to the bar was stupid!”
Still, he remained quiet.
“There were cameras there, Jaxon. There were agents watching and recording our every move.”
“I know,” he finally said. His flat tone did not betray a hint of his emotions.
Frustration clawed at her as she began to pace in front of him. Back and forth, back and forth, until he was a dark slash at her side. “Do you have any idea what kind of punishment I’ll be given for this?”
His back straightened, and his stare became a hot brand, probing. “Punishment?”
Of course he’d latch onto that little admission, the one thing she didn’t want to explain. “One, I allowed you to escape. Two, I allowed the otherworlder to f**king disappear. Yes, I’ll be punished.”
“Well, you couldn’t have stopped the otherworlder, and we both know he would have disappeared whether I’d been there or not. He knew exactly who and what you were in a single glance. Now, what do you mean punished? By whom? Your boss? Daddy?” The single word dripped with sarcasm. “What can he do? Spank you?”
She scrubbed a hand down her face, the bands of her rings digging into her skin. Jaxon had no idea. Had no concept of what could—and would—be done to her. Part of her suddenly wanted to tell him. The other part of her demanded absolute silence. Always silence. To speak of the things she’d endured over the years was to share her deepest humiliation with another.
“Le’Ace,” Jaxon said. Now he sounded concerned. “Who will punish you? What will they do?”
The resonance of her own breathing, shallow and rough, filled her ears. For a moment, she lost touch with reality. Present bled into past, images flashing through her mind. A dark, dank cell. Loneliness. Pain. Needles. Tests. Oh, God, the tests. There’d been so many.
As a little girl, she’d spent every spare moment praying for a brother or a sister to rescue her. Parents, not so much. Her first bosses had been, in essence, her fathers. They had created her from carefully selected DNA—human, animal, alien, she wasn’t sure what parts of her were what—merging the bits and pieces they desired and discarding the rest. As she’d grown, they’d done their best to discard her character weaknesses, as well.
They’d hoped for perfection, someone cold yet malleable.
When she’d demonstrated anything less than what they desired, she’d been locked up to “think about” her actions, or sent on a job they knew she would despise. It was part of her conditioning, she’d always been told. The best part: they thought she should thank them for putting her back on the right path.
A bitter laugh escaped her. Once, she’d been ordered to bring a target in for questioning. He’d fired at her; she’d fired back, meaning to nail him in the shoulder. He’d tripped, realigning his body, and ended up taking the blow straight to his heart. He’d died on the way to the hospital. For that “crime,” she’d been ordered to screw information out of her next target. That way, she wouldn’t accidentally kill him.
Once, she’d jumped from a building while chasing an other-worlder and twisted her ankle, slowing her down. Because of that, the alien escaped her. When she returned to the lab, Le’Ace was forced to learn how to fight and track other-worlders with broken bones. And yes, the only way to learn was to have her bones broken and be thrown into the wild.
What would Estap do to her for this?
Of all her owners, he was the worst. She didn’t have proof, but she knew Estap’s father had killed her creators to take over her “care.” They’d died too close together, too many accidents to be written off. Estap Senior had been a top-level government official and had stumbled upon her file, deciding she would be an asset. At the time, Estap Junior had been low-level, trying to work his way up.
When his father died, she’d discovered she’d been left to him in the will. Like a house or a car. Immediately she’d been put to work to advance the bastard’s career. He’d tasked her with killing innocents who stood in his way. He’d had her steal his future wife’s savings so the woman would be more inclined to marry.
And now, here Le’Ace was. Still a pawn. Would Estap tell her to kill Jaxon for getting in the way? Remove her from this case completely? Command her to find Nolan and allow the alien to infect her so that she could be studied? Viruses and bacteria did not live long inside of her, bless those implanted particles. But again, she found herself wondering if Nolan’s virus would overpower them. She found herself wondering if she would be infected, tested, observed.
Breath caught in her throat, burning, blistering. Black and gold spots winked over her vision. The erratic pants in her ears became discordant bells. A goddamn panic attack, she realized as her diaphragm shuddered, petrified.
“Le’Ace!” Jaxon barked. His voice boomed past the blood-roar. “Mishka!”
“I’ll be all right in a moment,” she managed to push out her swollen throat. Dizziness slapped at her mind, her thoughts soon spinning out of control. Death, destruction, pain, darkness. Breathe, goddamn it. In. Out. “I just…I haven’t…done this in a long time. I just…need a moment.”