She moaned like Mitch had. The last two months had been remarkably like my old life. We had fit into a pattern and I was enjoying the normalcy of it all. If only I could find a way to fix things with Coop.
Chapter Ten
That darned arms dealer
“Evie?”
I blinked and lifted my gaze from the pillow, blinking again and again until my vision cleared.
“Evie?”
There was no one in the room with me, not anyone I could see. I reached for the light, flicking it on but again there was no one.
The door to my bedroom opened, making me jump. Coop poked his head in, giving me a grin. “Sleeping?”
“No.” I shook my head, lying for no reason at all and not convincingly.
“I heard you snoring.”
“I don't snore.”
He laughed. “Or poo?”
“You know me better than that. I love pooing.” I scoffed and sat up, realizing I was sleeping naked when his eyes lowered to my bare breasts. I gasped and tugged the sheets up. “What do you want?”
He stepped in and closed the door, leaning his back against it. “I think that's fairly obvious.”
“You want a bootie call?” I was lost.
“No.” He shook his head, walking to the bed and smiling in a way that made me wish I’d showered before bed.
“I want to talk about earlier.”
I yawned and lay back, covering myself even more. “Can we talk tomorrow?”
“No. I can’t sleep. I’m lying down there thinking nonstop. I need you to tell me what you meant.”
I stretched and flicked the light off. “Just come and lie down. We can talk tomorrow.”
“You’re naked.”
“You’re almost a minor and I am a cougar; we should be fine.” I sniggered but he didn't laugh. He pulled off his clothes and climbed in, far too close. His warm body pressed up close to mine made me leery we would talk at all.
And I was right to be doubtful because he didn't talk. He sighed and moved his head back and forth, breaking the pillow in, and then lifted his hands up behind his head and closed his eyes. The moment he relaxed, I was wide awake, maybe because of the smell of him or the feel of him, or the fact that I’d not had sex in months.
In the moonlight I was stuck on the curves of his arm and face. I wanted to suck his lips and ride his—shit! Had he done this on purpose?
I rolled onto my back and let the blankets slip down a little, revealing a little nipple to the cool air in the room. I positioned my back so my breast stuck out. His breathing slowed and he started the deep breaths he always took right before falling asleep. He didn't notice which meant he was truly going to sleep. Maybe it also meant I was imagining things.
I rolled away from him, pulling the covers back up, and tried to ignore the fact that he was there or that my feelings were hurt. If I could have taken back the awkward confession from earlier I would have.
Eventually, I fell asleep, but it was restless and lacked the peace of sleeping alone.
When I woke I was crusty eyed and still exhausted. It was similar to waking next to James, or maybe just being married—going to bed annoyed or angry and then waking with what felt like a hang on. I didn't miss that.
The thing that wasn't like waking next to James was the face I saw when I opened my eyes. I blinked and realized he had been watching me sleep. I wiped my mouth and winced. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” He offered a bit of a sly grin. “You were talking in your sleep. I think you actually woke yourself up.”
James had told me the same thing several times.
“What did I say?”
The grin grew. “That you love me.”
“I did not. What did I say?” I swatted him in the arm, right where he had been shot. The scar was something I normally avoided. I hated remembering that day.
“You did.” His eyes widened and I knew he wasn't lying. He reached over and dragged me across the bed to him, pressing our bodies against each other. “You said that you loved me even though I was a bratty kid.”
The words sounded right. I sighed and shook my head. “I have to get up.” I pushed on his chest but it was pointless, he held me against him firmly. Making the mistake I always made with him, I glanced up into his steely blue eyes. That was always the end of me and the fight I could muster against him.
“You aren’t getting up.” He smiled wide. “Unless it’s to ride my co—”
“Whoa!” I pulled back, cutting him off. “Let’s not start the day with dirty talk.”
He lowered his face, feathering his lips against mine and then speaking softly, “Then let’s start it with make-up sex.” His tongue and lips pried my mouth open, sliding against me. The way he moved, it felt like he was tense, but I realized he was moving with purpose when he lifted himself and was lying overtop of me. He pulled me to him, wrapping himself around me and holding tight. It was slow and lingering, the way he touched and kissed. I wondered how he didn't have morning breath and tried not to think about mine.
His fingers dug in as he tilted his head and kissed my neck. His rigid cock pressed into my hip and I froze. “I can’t do this.”
He kissed my neck, nodding. “Yes, you can.”
“I actually can’t.” I winced and pushed him off me. He sighed, clearly more invested than I was. A slow and possibly mocking smile crept across my lips. “I have to have breakfast and coffee and water and perform my ablutions before I can do anything, in the morning.”
He wrinkled his nose. “What?”
“I have to have a—well, I won’t go to the bathroom if I orgasm in the morning.”
“I don't under—” Disgust crept across his face. “Oh.” He leaned back, obviously uncomfortable with the fact that I was a real girl—woman—human. “So, rain check?” He still looked put off.
“Sure.” I nodded, annoyed at the fact that he was bothered. I reached over and grabbed my cell phone and climbed from the bed. I needed coffee before I could even attempt to fix the disaster I was in the middle of creating. First the complete disaster of “I like you” in the yard and now this.
Ugh . . .
I hurried to my closet, hating that his eyes were on my bare ass. Why had I gone to bed naked?
When I got downstairs Fitz offered me a coffee and a grin. He knew something.
“Morning.” I snapped my eyes shut and moaned, stretching and taking the coffee, refusing to notice his amused face.
“Have a good sleep, Evie?”
I slowly blinked as a response, but he was too old to know it meant anything.
“Me either. Too warm in my room last night.” He shrugged. “Must be something in the air—spring and humidity maybe.” He winked and strolled to the table.
I sat across from him as Jules came in looking flustered. “I can’t find my lunch kit.”
“It’s on the clothesline outside. I washed it last night.” Fitz made a face. “There was spilled yogurt.”
“You washed my lunch box?” Jules scowled, looking like she might get upset. “That's weird, Uncle Fitz.” She walked past us both to retrieve it from the backyard.
“Yeah.” I sniggered.
“That child is Pigpen from
Charlie Brown.”
He rolled his eyes. “You know she doesn't plan to change her hockey socks when she’s older. Like athlete’s foot is some kind of luck.”
“I know.” I laughed as my phone rang. We both stopped and stared at it, wondering why it would ring in the house where all of the people who knew the number were. I didn't move fast enough so Fitz reached over and answered it for me, “Hello?” His eyes widened as he listened for a moment before pressing the screen and putting it on speakerphone as the voice stopped talking. I opened my mouth to speak but he lifted a finger.
“Dear Miss Scarlett, I am sorry to tell you the ship has not come in and the package you were seeking has been lost in Bribie. Mr. Butler wishes you to seek it Oxford style before the expiration of Boston.” The robotic man’s voice paused and repeated on a loop.
Fitz listened one more time and swallowed hard. “This is from Servario. There is someone named Bribie in Oxford he wants us to find.” He chuckled and gave me a look. “I mean he wants you to find.”
I bit my lip, not sure of the message or why we would go to Oxford. Bribie, Boston, and Oxford could all be something. “Bribie is a place, is it not?”
Fitz, obviously still deep in thought, gave me a quick nod. “Australia. An island. Very lovely.”
“Boston, an island in Australia, and Oxford—what do they have in common?”
“You have to read the code properly. Bribie, the obvious location is a false lead. He would never say the name of the place. In Bribie means there is a person with this name. Someone the Burrow will want. Perhaps an Australian from Bribie in Oxford. The location is Oxford. We know it’s a weapon as it could take out Boston. It could ruin a city. But Bribie is either the person making the weapon or where the person is from.”
“Great.” I sighed. “Why isn’t Servario going after this one? He brings the assets in and we kill the list and prevent anyone from finding the Burrow.”
“Something is wrong.” Fitz’s eyes narrowed.
“What?” Coop strolled in, grabbing himself a coffee.
“Servario just left us a message saying something weird. Coded.” I didn't even know how to explain it.
Fitz gave me a look of obvious annoyance as he relayed the message. “There is someone in Oxford, possibly an Australian or someone with the last name Bribie, who is making a weapon large enough to take out a city the size of Boston.”
Coop’s eyes widened. “What?”
“Yes. Exactly the response one should have.”
My mom sauntered into the kitchen, immediately pausing when she saw our faces. “What’s happened?”
“Weapon being created in Oxford; Servario wants us to retrieve it for the Burrow tomorrow.”
She sighed, relieved that it was something as small as international efforts to retrieve a weapon. “Oh. All right then. Fitz and I will watch the children while you lot get busy.”
“No.” Coop shook his head. “We don’t follow that arms dealer off half cocked. We need more than that.” He turned and walked from the kitchen.
My mother’s eyes followed him and then darted to me. “This is precisely why we don't shit where we eat, Evie.”
“What?” My jaw dropped.
“You have him conflicted. If he was the only one for you, he would already be warming the jet or booking flights. But he worries Gustavo has ulterior motives, as in seeing you, so he is skeptical that this information is true.”
“No.” I shook my head. “He worries because no one tells us the truth on anything and we are constantly going by guess and by golly.”
“No one can have all the information. It’s too vulnerable then. We have filled you in slowly on everything. Now you know all there really is to know. The Organization is seeking the weapons of the Burrow to launch a one world power. The Burrow is hiding everything that might possibly help out the Organization with that. And we are the middlemen, always walking the fine line between the two. It’s not rocket science, Evie. You are smarter than you act most times.” She walked from the kitchen with her coffee.
Fitz chuckled and opened the paper.
I sat there staring at my phone, a little baffled and a lot insulted.
Z-Apoc
Jack lifted his gaze as I walked into the room in the basement that we had dedicated to the computers. He grinned. “I found Bribie. It’s a middle name. Janice Bribie Saunders. She’s an Australian who is finishing her post grad at Oxford in molecular sciences. She’s smart.” His eyes widened. “Really smart. Her intelligence makes mine look like yours.”
It took me a couple of seconds to realize he had insulted me, but he had moved on by then.
“She isn't an activist or even political in any way. Very mellow. Surfs a lot. Loves the ocean, but even then, not to the point she would wipe out humanity. She seems like a normal girl. She’s thirty-one, been in college since she was sixteen. She even finished MIT nine years ago.”
“Holy shit.”
“Right!” Jack nodded. “I almost feel bad that she’s too smart for her own good.”
“We live in a bullshit world where everyone wants to take advantage,” Luce muttered from her desk.
I sat with a thud next to her. “Do you think this is something?”
“Hard to say.” Jack shrugged. “She has the brains to be dangerous, but her research doesn't suggest anything beyond the usual. Her thesis and studies are fascinating, but I can’t say world threat. It’s mostly cancer research.” He looked worried. “I can’t assume that, when it means she will be locked away at the shrine of doom.”
It made sense. We were essentially offering her a life sentence. It was too much power to be saddled with.
Luce glanced at me, lowering her voice, “I think the thing we need to consider is how often is Servario wrong?”
Her sentence gave me chills. He was never wrong. Not as far as we had seen anyway. He seemed to know things it was impossible to know.
“Yeah, and what happens if we say she’s cool and then Boston disappears off the face of the earth?” Jack sighed and rubbed his eyes.
Coop came in on the phone, just hanging up. He lifted his gaze to me, revealing a strange look. “My mom says hi.”
“Oh.” I shrank back before I realized I had done it. “Tell her hi next time.”
“I will.” He ignored my obvious discomfort and glanced at Jack. “What have you found?”
“Nothing threatening.”
Coop’s strange expression lifted and he looked vindicated. “I suspected. The Burrow can’t just expect us to abduct every scientist who might come across as a little too smart. This is ridiculous and technically no different than the Nazis.”
Luce shook her head. “There might be things about her we can’t find online. Scientists are cagey people. They don't want other people to steal their work. She might do things by hand until she knows for sure she has something worthy of bringing out into the world.”
“That is a fact.” Jack pointed. “It’s all about being the first to write about it. Once you’re published you’re golden, but until then, anyone could take your idea and make it theirs, if they can fudge or steal the experimentation or documentation. The scientific community has a research theft every couple of years.”
Crickets might as well have started singing right after that as all three of us stared at him, not sure what to say.
“It’s a very big deal.” He rolled his eyes.
“Anyway, let’s keep looking into her.” Coop nodded and walked for the door.
I jumped up and followed him out, grabbing his sleeve. “Wait, we should probably send at least one of us to check her out in the real world, not just on the Internet.”
“Evie, I have this. I don't need you backseat driving.” He walked off, clearly still annoyed about the awkwardness of earlier.
“Whatever.” I sighed and walked back into the room to start helping organize and analyze the information we had.
After about an hour of it I noticed my phone ringing again. I lifted it to my face but didn't speak, in case it was another recording.
There was no one on the other line. It was dead silence. I coughed and turned my head so the other two wouldn't see me holding the phone.
“Evie?” Servario muttered into the line. “Are you safe?”
“Yeah,” I whispered as I stood and left the room.
“Why are you whispering?”
“Because you aren’t supposed to be calling me.” I didn't know what to say. The last mission we had been on, he erased my memory and the one before that he had sold me down the river several times, and once for a phone I still didn't know the truth about.
He sighed. “Are you going to the place I mentioned?”
“No. Coop thinks it’s you setting us up or setting a trap.”
“Are you kidding me right now?” He was no longer whispering. “Is he disobeying a direct order from the very people he works for?”
“He’s being cautious. He wants to know everything before we go in and you never tell anyone anything. It’s always strip and pretend to be a hooker, and then as I’m running and shooting, you explain why we’re there.”
“Let’s not discuss this again.” He chuckled. “I need you there—needed you there yesterday.”
“He won’t.” I felt like a traitor even talking to Servario, especially after the text I had sent. “Call him if you want to talk to him about this. I am not in charge.”
He sat silent, maybe thinking. I couldn't even guess what he did while on the other end. When we were together he would try to do sexual things while he was on the phone. I didn't want to know if he was doing that.
“I am going to call upstairs in the bathroom, the one in your bedroom. Go there now and turn this phone off,” he demanded and hung up. I hurried up the stairs, slipping into the bedroom and closing the door just as something started to ring in my bathroom as promised.
When I walked in, my eyes drew to the cupboard. I opened it and crouched, looking up at the bottom side of the bathroom sink. Taped to the basin was a phone, an obvious burner. It was a flip phone.
“Hello?”
“Clearly it’s me, Evie. Don't sound so surprised.” He was annoyed, that much was obvious. “Run the tap and listen to me.”
I turned on the tap as he barked into the phone, his accent thickening with his spicy mood, “You and that little shit better have your asses on the next flight to London or I am going to come there and kill him myself. Which, by the by, would be annoying and a real hardship on me, because I’m nowhere near Canada. The girl—the Aussie—has worked out a plan to build something we don't have the technology to counter. Do you understand that?”
“No.” It was true, I didn't understand how a girl could make up a weapon from Oxford University and no one in the world knew about it.
“She specialized at MIT in robotics, Evie. She is working on nanotechnology. Do you understand what that is?”
I patted my lips about to say no, but I did. It had been on a list I read once of the possible things that could destroy the world. Nanorobots could ruin the world. It would appear like a zombie apocalypse, according to the article. The tiny robots would use a human host and transfer from one human to the next through a bite, spreading themselves into all the humans. I had laughed, confident that it was bullshit.
“Evie?”
“Yeah, I know there are tiny robots that make you look like a zombie.” It sounded worse coming out than it had in my head, which was already bad.
“Don't be daft. They are meant to work like a surgical drone, traveling through the body to repair organs and clean blockages and destroy cancer. It’s meant to work like a remote control car, only helping doctors save the very sick or those unable to be operated on.
“Oh.” That clearly wasn't the article I had read.
“Zombies, Jesus.” He sighed. “Anyway, the girl has done it. She has created the prototypes and they work. Her professor is in the Organization. He’s called her in. She is being picked up the day after tomorrow, in the evening. She’s scheduled to be going on a research expedition, some trial runs on prison inmates. They believe she will have the research with her; it's the only reason she hasn't been picked up yet. She will disappear after that, the research will too. She’s cagey. She hides everything and trusts no one. They can’t find her work, and she has insisted on doing everything like she might already work for the CIA. She trusts no one. The professor has clued in because he is a smart man and she has worked with him on things.”
“Why can’t you pick her up?”
“I am on the team of men being sent to retrieve her. I think I am being tested so I will be there in two days and trying my hardest to get her. Do you understand me?”
“That you will kill me if need be.” I gulped, realizing exactly what he meant. He was always all about the job and his cover.
“I did warn you not to make me love you, remember that. Burn the phone.” He hung up and I hated the ache in my chest.
I clutched it to my chest and carried it from the bathroom after turning the tap off. When I got downstairs I put it in the burn box and closed it. I pressed the button and gave Jack a look. “What if her research is nanorobots that might help a doctor do surgery like a remote control car, going in and repairing without surgery?”
His eyes widened. “That would be fairly spectacular. Tell me that’s her jam.”
“No. You tell me why would the Organization want that? I don't understand.”
“Fairly obvious I would think.” He scoffed. “In practical application one would treat cancer and save lives. The nanorobot swims through the bloodstream to the sick area and leaves the body through the urethra. This is a very basic example of medical treatment. In biological warfare one could take a perfectly healthy individual with nanorobots filled with illness inside them, send them to the country of choice and unleash a drug-resistant form of any given disease or virus, killing an entire population. What I would do is go directly to Saudi Arabia and cripple their economy with a sickness no one there can treat fast enough, but one I have the vaccine to, and then go in and take over. What can they do? Mid pandemic a country is weak. Then all the oil is mine.”
“Shit!”
Luce lifted her brows. “Is this a thing, Evie?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “This Aussie has created this. She was at MIT like you said. She was a robotics engineer and now she is a neuroscientist.” I looked at Jack. “Don't even. I don't know the proper terminology. Anyway, she wants to save the sick and weak and make this a proper way to treat people. Not kill off whole countries.”
Jack swallowed hard. “So she has it?”
“She has it. Servario and the Organization are being sent in two days from now. He gave us the heads up so we would save her before he has to kidnap her and force her to give them her work.”
“So S is kidnapping her?” Luce asked.
“Yeah. He thinks he’s being tested. He’s being sent in to take her from a test site she is running.”
“We need to tell Coop—”
“Tell me what?” Coop cut Jack off.
“That the girl checks out. She has something the Organization wants. Servario is going to retrieve her and her work in two days, for the Organization. She is the real deal.”
His steely gray eyes narrowed. “How do you know this?”
“He called me on a burner he had taped under my sink.”
His eyes darted to me. “He planted a phone and told you this, and we are meant to run off after him and do as he has told us to and not question it or defy him in any way?”
When he put it like that it sounded bad, but I trusted Servario. And not because my vagina told me to. In fact, she wasn't on his side.
Coop lifted his hands and rubbed them through his hair. “Okay, let’s see if we can figure out what her MIT years looked like so we can at least somewhat confirm this before we go too far.”
I gave a long sigh, the kind that lets the other person know they have displeased you. He chose to ignore it, and I chose to walk out of the room and book flights.
I finished booking with the Visa debit card Canadians used for banking. It was like a Visa but not. It used cash from your bank account. Our dummy account had one and I wished the US had them. One day if I ever had a life back, I would totally use it.
Coop walked in, knocking weirdly. “Hey.” He looked funny. The look that had been in his eyes earlier was there again.
“Hey.” How did I tell him I was leaving with Luce and disobeying his orders?
“I wanted to tell you my sister is missing.”
My jaw dropped. “What? Which one?”
“Rachel.” He nodded. “It’s what my mom wanted to tell me earlier. It’s why I’ve been so distant. I can’t leave here and go find her and my family is pissed.”
It was perfect. “You have to go. Go and find her. She’s your sister. This could be because someone knows who we are. We need to know why Rachel would go missing. We can cover this. It’s a typical run for us. Get an asset and take her to Japan. No biggie.”
He looked wounded. “You are just so desperate to get back to him, aren’t you?”
“Who?” I said it before I had really thought about it.
“You know who.” He looked about ready to burst. “You just want to go and be with him and forget about me and where we are at.”
“Are you kidding me right now? I just told you I like you. I like being with you.” I got up from my bed and stepped closer to him. “I am not even thinking about that at all. He’s acted like a dick and hung me out to dry. Remember the phone he wanted so desperately that he left me with James? I won’t ever forget that. He left me. I texted him a while ago saying that we were over, forever. I meant it. I have kids and things I need to worry about, and I don't need Gustavo Servario ruining my life more than he already has.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “And now I am being accosted by you because I think we should do our jobs, and I think you are not doing yours because you hate Servario.”