As if my eyes touched her skin, alerted her, made her hackles stand up.
Shit. Those pale-grey eyes are smoke and blue witch fire.
They smolder.
They’re the color of ash tinged with pearl-blue, but full of all the flame that burned everything to the ground.
It makes me wonder for a brief, terrible half-second what it would be like to tame her.
God. You’d have to fight her down even for a kiss, and she’d make you work for it and give back as good as she got.
It’s like she can read my mind.
Her fingers clench tighter.
She tilts her head, and a touch of a cocky smirk crosses her lips as her tongue plays over that ball of pink candy.
Fuck me if it’s not suggestive as sin for just a second.
As if she’s saying, Wanna go?
I’m almost afraid to find out what she’s even asking.
She could be asking me to spar, or...
Yeah.
Shit.
My eyes narrow.
Was she trained in that, I wonder? How to be a modern day siren?
Reading the curiosity, the interest, the vulnerability in men’s gazes and playing into them before she rips their balls off.
Call me a gullible fool, then, because fuck.
Yeah.
I could make ten bad moth-to-flame analogies, but why bother?
I’m feeling her pull, her gravity, and I damn well wouldn’t mind finding out just what kind of moves she has outside of dismembering her targets.
Right now, though, my job is focusing on this dumb meeting and determining how it’s going to impact Galentron’s operations overseas on a strategic business level.
I’m the process guy.
NATO pulls us in on a life-saving critical mission in the Balkans, and my job is just to make sure the geopolitical ripples don’t slow down factory production at our facilities in Taiwan.
So when the military aide finally drags himself to his feet, the awkward silence in the room finally turns crisp and alert.
Our illustrious CEO, Leland Durham, rises from his chair, straightening his tie and smoothing back his slick gloss of brown hair with a facile smile that never quite reaches his flinty, dark-green eyes.
“I think,” he says, his voice rolling like overly syrupy-sweet chocolate, just a little too friendly, “we’re all deeply appreciative of Agent Brin’s courageous efforts.”
Brin looks away from me, her expression icing over.
She flicks a look at Durham like she’s hardly fond of his easy surface charm, before sparing a quick, tight nod.
No-nonsense.
Zero ass kissing—a rarity around here.
I like it.
For once, Durham actually falters. I have to swallow a laugh.
Considering how rarely he shows his face among the little people, I suppose he expected more subservience. I normally lead these meetings, but he’d decided today was the day he wanted to show off in front of the people funding our government contracts.
I guess that’s why we’re using the big conference room.
The Space Needle almost over our shoulder, zoomed in too close to enjoy its impressive profile.
Glossy wood everywhere.
And leather chairs so shiny it takes everything in me not to fall out of mine by bracing my feet against the floor to keep my ass put in the slippery seat.
After a short silence, Durham clears his throat, his easy smile returning as he moves on. “Now, for those of you who haven’t had a chance to review the briefings, our friends at NATO have just successfully completed a strike against Yugoslavian armed forces facilitated by the information Agent Brin recovered through a very skillful covert infiltration operation.”
The flattery sounds false even to my ears.
Brin just looks bored.
She loudly clacks her candy against her teeth with a pointed pop of her tongue, looking out the window.
I hide a grin.
With a sigh, Durham continues. “What Agent Brin also unearthed was a cache of Soviet-era data on a number of interesting abandoned projects the Reds were working on—projects that could prove very useful and highly relevant to our current aspirations. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll turn your attention to the slides...”
Oh, fuck. Here we go. The real reason we sent Brin on that dangerous goddamn raid.
It was never about helping NATO or anybody else stop a bloody civil war.
Durham wants his precious monster data—stuff so secret the best of the best couldn’t ferret it out of the Russians at the height of the Cold War. Until today, I figured he was just chasing dragons. Make-believe demons.
Turns out, some of it, at least, is real. Leland Durham looks like a man who just hit the jackpot.
On and on, he drones.
How we could integrate these abandoned technologies into our new supersoldier program, and perhaps create something more than just highly trained men.
I’m not a big fan of the Ubermensch thing, but Durham’s eyes are sparkling, almost fanatic. Dr. Ross looks like he might actually be hard underneath the table. Fucking gross.
I’ve gotten a little too good at masking my reactions to this shit.
And a little too good at hiding how increasingly uncomfortable I am working for this company as they descend deeper and deeper into experiments even greed shouldn’t be able to buy. Much less justify.
It bothers me.
Call it obscene. It’s a sick joke how every leap in technology that eventually benefits the lives of the common person starts here.
Born from some wild-eyed, money-hungry dick like Durham who gets wrapped up in his own manic power fantasies as he drives military advancement after military advancement.
Because all the biggest money’s in figuring out how to kill people better than the people who want to kill you.
Not save them.
But it’s Brin who catches my attention as her gaze swivels back to Durham.
It’s back again.
That dead, hollow-eyed expression she wears in the photograph.
Her vibrant energy is gone, diffused, leaving her stone-cold and still.
And I realize that expression isn’t so empty at all.
It’s filled with a contempt so deep, so powerful, that it’s all-consuming and sucks the emotion out of her.
And it’s directed solely at no one but the father of Galentron—Leland Durham himself.
That look on Agent Patty Brin’s face is still on my mind by the time I make it home to my penthouse apartment. Home sweet home instantly makes me more at ease, looking out over the Seattle skyline with a view fit for the gods.
My balcony deck lords over the entire city, perfectly bisected by a more aesthetic, graceful view of the Space Needle than the Galentron boardroom.
It’s better appreciated from a distance, anyway.
Preferably while mildly buzzed.
The sunset glimmers off Elliott Bay as I settle on the balcony to pour what’ll likely be the first of many glasses from a bottle of Riesling. It’s from the Delaney vineyard in Northern California, a highly sought, best-kept-secret sort of winemaker that never lets me down.
I need the liquid courage more lately, something to lift the weight off my shoulders.
Too bad I’m starting to think that increasingly crushing load just might be my conscience.
Fuck.
And sooner or later, there won’t be enough wine in the world to make me forget the burden. Not until I either do something to ease it or...
...or let it obliterate me.