I’m just moving into the kitchen when the hairs lift on the back of my neck in a warning I’ve learned not to ignore. Growing up it meant there were trodairí nearby, that I had to pay attention. Now…
A shadow shifts, visible at the corner of my eye where there should be nothing. I drop silently to the floor, barely able to stop myself from gasping. My heartbeat is roaring in my ears, but I can still hear two—no, three, four—sets of footsteps moving quietly across the floorboards.
I pray they’re just thieves who caught onto Kristina’s absence the same way I did. Because the alternatives mean I’m probably already dead.
Fighting the instinct to freeze, to make myself tiny and quiet and invisible, I reach up to grope for the drawer above me, pulling it out as quickly as I can without making any noise. The chef’s knives are on a magnetic strip on the other side of the kitchen, but there’s a paring knife in there. It’s not much, but if they’re expecting the place to be empty, maybe it’ll be enough to get me to the elevator.
I squeeze my eyes shut, feeling with my fingertips around teaspoons and chopsticks, moving with agonizing slowness for fear of causing a telltale jangle of silverware. I have to stop holding my breath or I’ll pass out, I have to open my eyes or I won’t see them coming for me, I have to move, I have to get ready to run, I—
“Hands out of there.” A harsh voice rips me out of my concentration, sending me lurching against the cabinet with a clatter and a cry. Looking up, I see a gun first, then the man aiming it between my eyes. Another man steps up alongside him, also armed. They’re not wearing black, or even the sleek body armor favored by some of the higher-operation thieves in Corinth’s underworld.
They’re wearing uniforms. Green and gray, and as the third man turns to inspect the other rooms to be sure I’m alone, I can see the lambda emblazoned on the back.
For a moment all I can do is clutch at the towel twisted around me, feeling every ice-cold drip of water from my hair against my shoulders, tasting metal and bile and wishing for my father so hard my heart aches. Then my mouth opens by itself, and words come out, like there’s some part of my mind that knows what to do without needing the rest of me to function.
“Take whatever you want,” I gasp, pretending that the uniforms mean nothing to me, pretending I think they’re thieves. “Please, I won’t stop you. You don’t need to hurt me, I won’t tell anyone. Just let me go.”
The first man, difficult to see clearly in the gloom but tall and in his mid-forties, snorts. “Well,” he says slowly, gesturing with his gun for me to stand up. “That’s a problem, because we’re not here for your stuff.”
For once I don’t have to hide the terror coursing through me as I reach with a shaking hand for the edge of the counter to pull myself up. My legs are barely working. I was never one of the warriors on Avon—I know how to duck and cover, but fight? The adrenaline is making me nauseous, making my vision blur and my nose sting as I try to keep breathing. “Whatever it is,” I whisper, “just take it and go.”
“That would be you.” The man’s eyes flicker, just for a moment, down toward where my other hand is gripping the towel closed in front of me. It’s only for an instant, but I’m swept by a wave of fear so tangible I nearly choke on it. “You paid us a little visit the other day at Headquarters. The boss wants us to ask you a few questions.”
They know. My last hope of throwing them off my identity falls away into tatters.
The man watches me, enjoying this, the moment when I realize I’m probably going to die tonight, when they’re done questioning me. Then, softly, he says, “You should be more careful who you write to over the hypernet these days.”
My gaze snaps to my comscreen before I can stop myself. Dr. Rao’s last, brief message to me hovers in front of my blurring eyes: Burn this connection. Run.
She was trying to warn me. Did they catch her, too?
“I have friends.” It doesn’t even sound like my voice. I can’t think. I can’t move. “They’ll know why I vanished, if I don’t show up. They’ll know who did it, they’ll call the police.”
“We are the police,” says the second man, sounding impatient. My act isn’t fooling them—the realization closes over me like water, leaving me drowning in its wake. When I look again at their uniforms I realize they’re from LaRoux Industries’ security branch, which explains how they were able to access my apartment. And why they’re doing this so brazenly outfitted in LRI’s uniform. Kristina McDowell uses an LRI alarm system to protect her belongings. Any call to the police will also get patched through to them—even if what I was saying were true. Even if there was anyone waiting for me, anyone who’d realize I was gone.
One of the other men—there are four total, all distinctly unimpressed with my attempts to find sympathy or hesitation in what they’re doing—emerges from the bathroom with the clothes I left on the floor before getting in the shower. He tosses them at me and grunts to the others, “All clear. She’s alone.”
“Put your clothes on,” snaps the first guy, the one whose eyes keep flickering over me like he’s imagining what’s beneath the white terry cloth. “Unless that’s what you’d like to wear when you come with us.”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak, and turn toward the bathroom. My mind’s running through an inventory of everything in there. The mirror—no, they’d hear it breaking. Perfume—the alcohol would burn their eyes if I could throw straight. My hair spray—if I had a lighter I could use it as a makeshift flamethrower. The hair dryer—the puddles I’ve left on the floor—are they wearing rubber-soled shoes?
But I don’t get more than a step in that direction before a jerk of the man’s gun halts me in my tracks. “You can change right here,” he says, those roving eyes narrowed.
My skin crawls so violently that for a moment I think I might sink back down onto the floor. I grip the edge of the counter, white-knuckled. “I can’t change out here,” I blurt, no longer acting. “I can’t—while you’re—”
Roving Eyes grins a little, and though there’s smugness there, it’s a grin that so contrasts with the hacker’s smile that for a moment, a detached part of my mind focuses on Gideon, wondering what he’ll think when my body turns up somewhere on the news. If it turns up. Roving Eyes’s voice drags me back. “You can step out there. I’ll turn my back and you’ll have ten seconds. You’re not dressed in ten seconds, or I hear you moving in any direction or doing anything other than dressing, you’ll come naked.”
“But—” My voice tangles, my mind finally blanking entirely. I’ve run out of words. I can’t think. I can’t escape.
“Clock’s ticking.”
I lurch out into the center of the living room and glance over my shoulder to see the man do as promised and turn his back. I can see two of the others behind him, speaking to each other; they could turn their heads and see me. But the man’s beginning to count down from ten, voice crawling into my ears and prompting me to drop the towel and scramble as quickly as I can into the tank top and lounge pants I was wearing before I took my shower. I’m still pulling my top down when the countdown finishes, but he can hear the rustle of fabric, and he waits a half a breath longer. In another time, some other situation, that lenience might have given me some hope. But by the time I pull my shirt down, the gun’s aimed squarely my way, the glow of the comscreen from the office glinting blue off the metal barrel.
The comscreen.
“My boyfriend!” I gasp, throwing a plan together as I speak. “He’s meeting me here tonight for a date. He’ll be here any minute—he’s a reporter—I don’t think your boss would like to read about this in the papers. Me disappearing, days after being harassed by LRI security at Headquarters.”