Forbidden Stranger Read online

Jordie growled. “You can shut up with your platitudes. Your advice. You stink of self-righteousness and smugness. I can’t wait to watch her wipe you out of existence. All of this is because of you. None of us should be here. None of us should have had this done to us. You will never understand that. You’re the one who made us into monsters, Mr. Donahue. I didn’t know that before, but now I do, and I knew it in the prison when I told my mother I could write the code for her, all she had to do was agree to get me out of there. And she did, but it was always for her own benefit, and now she’s dead the way you’re going to be dead, the way all of the rest of us will be dead and nobody, not a single person, ever again, will be able to use this tech!”

  Jordie’s voice faded as he ran out of breath from the rant. He lunged at Ewan, who didn’t flinch. Jordie stank of sweat and something deeper, like dirt that had been grimed into his skin and would never wash away. The stench nauseated her.

  “I’m not going to run,” Ewan told her.

  “I’m going to hit you again,” Nina said.

  She was going to hurt him because she could not fight this tangled, messy skein of impulses and compulsion that worked through her mind and out into her body, into her fists. She was going to hurt him because even though she did not believe he had classified information, whatever Jordie had done to her was making her feel like Ewan was a threat that needed to be eliminated. She swung again, this time with her left hand, equally as strong and capable as the right but still not the dominant fist and therefore, easier for her to pull at the last infinitesimal second.

  It still connected solidly enough to rock Ewan back another step, pushing him in the opposite direction. This time he stumbled and went to one knee. More blood spattered the floor. From far off, she heard screaming. Alarms. A rising, deeper stink of acrid smoke.

  Her heart did not beat faster. She didn’t gasp or pant. The world slowed in front of her as she braced to kick the man in front of her, kick him while he was down. If her foot connected with his face, it would crunch his bones. If she kicked him hard enough, she would drive the splinters of his nose into his brain, and she could kill him.

  She was going to hurt him because he had hurt her, so many times. Over and over. She was going to hurt him because she had loved him, and he had killed that love between them as easily as she was going to end his life right now.

  * * *

  This was the end.

  Ewan saw it on her face, in the twist of her lips and the cold light in Nina’s eyes. She was going to kill him, and even though every single molecule of him screamed in self-preservation that he needed to get away, or at least to fight back, Ewan only shook his head to get the hair out of his eyes. He spat blood to the side.

  And he loved her.

  Kneeling on a hard tile floor in a hospital hallway, the metallic burn of blood filling his mouth and the stink of smoke and worse filtering through his nostrils, he loved her. Pain racking his jaw from her dual punches, he loved her. Waiting for the final blow . . . all he could do was love her.

  Ewan couldn’t speak the words aloud. His jaw, perhaps broken, wouldn’t work. He’d bitten his tongue. He’d lost his voice.

  “Do it!” Jordie commanded. “Do it, Nina Bronson! If I’m going out, we are all going out! I’m going to save you, whether you like it or not!”

  Nina stayed still.

  “Do it, you jacked-up bitch,” Jordie said as he came up beside her.

  Nina moved.

  Ewan had seen her fight before and been stunned by her ferocious grace, but nothing he’d ever seen her do was close to what unfolded in front of him. She whirled, her fist connecting with Jordie’s jaw in an uppercut that seemed twice as hard as the one she’d landed on Ewan. Jordie staggered back, already recovering and coming at her with both his fists and his teeth bared.

  It was not an evenly matched fight. Nina and Jordie were both enhanced, but she had been a soldier, trained for battle and trained again after getting the enhancements on how to use them. Jordie, on the other hand had been a tech kid, soft from spending his days in front of a computer and from the candy he’d become addicted to.

  He was also crazy as a shithouse rat.

  There were no rules of combat. Nina and Jordie went at each other, hammer and tongs as the saying went, although both of them had only their bare hands to fight with. Jordie, taller but skeletal, had the clear advantage of no sense of self-preservation against Nina’s strategic attacks. He dove at her like a wolf going after a deer, but Nina countered with steady strength and determination.

  The floor lurched beneath all of them as the building shuddered. The emergency lights went out, plunging the three of them into darkness. Ewan, woozy from the smoke, fell back against the wall and used it to keep himself upright.

  The lights returned. The smoke had started to thicken, gray fog hovering a foot or so from the ceiling. His throat and eyes burned. He had to get out, but not without Nina.

  Jordie let out a roar and slammed Nina against the glass fire extinguisher box. It shattered. For the first time since their fight began, she shrieked in pain. She fell forward, and Jordie staggered under her sudden weight. They both went to the ground.

  Nina was on her feet before the kid. She laid him low with a swift, brutal kick to the head. Ewan couldn’t see her stomp, but he heard the crunch. By now the smoke was so thick he choked with every breath. Whatever Nina had done to Jordie, he was down and did not get up again.

  Through the smoke, her figure loomed toward Ewan. He braced himself for another punch or more than one. It would be a relief, finally.

  Her hands gripped the front of his shirt as she pulled him away from the wall. He stumbled forward, trying to cough but not finding even enough air in his lungs to manage it. A rumble like thunder rocked the building. The floor shifted under their feet again.

  “We need to get out of here,” Nina shouted.

  He couldn’t see, but she would be able to. Ewan didn’t fight her as she pulled him along the now completely smoke-dark corridor. The stairwell was marginally cooler but no brighter. They were on the seventh floor, but he lost track of the sets of stairs and landings. By the time they shoved through the fire door at the bottom, Ewan was barely conscious.

  He gagged on a gush of fresher air. All around them came the sound of rustling paper. Flames. It was fire, and the heat of it pushed against them like they were standing in front of an open oven. He went to his knees, coughing and spitting ashes.

  He looked up at her. “You should have left me up there. Easier than killing me now.”

  “I’m not going to kill you, Ewan,” Nina said. “I love you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  There was no saving the hospital. Anatoly Nguyen’s demolition skills had begun the building’s collapse from the ground up. Nguyen had timed the location of the explosions on purpose to allow for escape. Most of the patients had been evacuated in time, and Nina knew what that meant. He might still go to prison because of what he’d done, even though it had been forced upon him by Jordie Dev, but something inside Nguyen had resisted long enough to do his best to make sure everyone had least had a chance. The way she’d resisted hurting Ewan as much as she could have.

  Jordie hadn’t made it out alive, or least his body had not yet been recovered. Nina had seen enough terror viddies to know what that meant. He could turn up at any time, twice as evil.

  Nina had made sure Ewan got set up with oxygen, fluids, and whatever else the EMTs were doing with him in the back of one of the ambulances in the parking lot. Of her fellow soldiers, so far only Anatoly and Haven had shown up. Both had been discovered in the parking lot in the throes of battling each other. Presumably to the death, although Nina wasn’t sure anyone else knew that. They’d been taken into protective custody—not by local or even federal cops but by NorthAm soldiers. They’d also taken Nina, and she hadn’t fought against them. The truth was going to shake out soon about what roles, exactly, they’d all played.

  It was what
Jordie had wanted. To first make them ruin as much as they could before pitting them against each other until every single remaining enhanced soldier was dead. It would be a long time before any of them recovered from this, but they would, Nina thought. She would, anyway.

  Sitting in the back of an armored transpo, Nina weighed her aches, pains, and wounds against the effort of complaining. For now, she was tired enough that simply leaning back against the seats and closing her eyes was the most effort she could make. When the door opened, it startled her enough to put her into a defensive position that she fully expected to be taken as a threat by whatever soldier was outside.

  It was Al. Behind her, Ewan. Both of them smudged with smoke, looking exhausted. Nina wanted to weep at the sight of her friend, safe, and her . . . well, she had to call him her former lover, didn’t she? Because who knew what they were to each other now, or what they would ever be to each other again.

  “Get out,” Al said without preamble. “Bank Account here got you sprung.”

  Nina hesitated. “What about the others?”

  “They’re being taken to another hospital to be treated, but they’re not going be released,” Ewan said.

  “And I am?”

  Al was already reaching for Nina’s hand to help her out of the vehicle. “They’re not engaged to Ewan Donahue.”

  “I’m not engaged to Ewan Donahue,” Nina countered as she stepped out with a grimace and a sigh at how stiff and sore her entire body had become.

  “You were,” Ewan said quietly and took her other arm to help Al keep Nina steady.

  Nina held firm to keep them both from tugging her along. She was capable of walking on her own, even if every step was agony. “I shouldn’t be treated any differently than Haven and Anatoly. And what about the others? What about you, Al?”

  “I didn’t even get the final surgery,” Al said. “At the last minute, that little prick pulled the approval. I wasn’t one of you. But they found Jewel. She’s hurt worse than you all. They’ve already flown her somewhere for surgery. Not sure she’ll make it.” Al shrugged.

  “They destroyed the hospital. People died,” Ewan said. “You didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “Nobody else knows that.”

  Ewan shook his head. “I know it, and I spoke for you.”

  “And because you have money and influence, they just believe you? If there’s going to be a trial, I should be on it, too,” Nina told him. “Nobody knows that I didn’t go along with what Jordie wanted. As far as anyone can tell, I’m as guilty as the others.”

  “Except you aren’t,” Ewan said. “You didn’t have anything to do with destroying the hospital. You didn’t kill anyone.”

  “I killed Jordie,” Nina said.

  Al’s expression twisted. “Nobody is sure he’s even dead. Let your boyfriend take you home, Nina. Let him pay for private docs to fix you up. Let him keep you safe.”

  Nina shook her head. She wasn’t thinking clearly, she knew that. Still, she balked as they tried to urge her toward a transpo she recognized as Ewan’s private vehicle.

  “I might have killed you, Ewan,” she said.

  He shook his head. “But you didn’t. You can’t be held accountable for what you might have done.”

  “According to you, I shouldn’t even be held accountable for what I did do.”

  Ewan said nothing. Al rolled her eyes and looked pissed, but she didn’t say anything. Nina shook her head.

  “I can’t go with you,” she said. “Not right now. I need time and space to think. I’m going to be questioned about what happened. I need to be questioned, Ewan. I need some room to get it all out of my head. I’m sorry.”

  “They’ll arrest you,” Al said. “You could go to jail for a long time while this gets worked out. Even if eventually you go free, that’s a helluva price to pay for something you had no choice in.”

  Nina nodded. “I know.”

  Al made a low, derisive noise and tossed up her hands. “I’m out. This whole business is a clusterfuck of epic proportions. Donahue, you know where to find me.”

  Al spun on her heel and headed off across the parking lot. Nobody stopped her. Nina watched her walk away for a long minute before turning to look at Ewan.

  Ewan’s expression had gone neutral, his voice carefully bland. “You’d rather face prison than go with me?”

  “You can’t buy your way out of everything that happens,” Nina said. “You can’t buy my love or my loyalty, either. Whatever is going to happen to me because of this is something I need to face.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong!”

  “If you buy me out of trouble, I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to prove that I didn’t,” she said. Her head ached, but her heart hurt more. “Ewan . . . I love you. If you love me, you’ll give me some room to figure all of this out.”

  Ewan nodded and took a few steps away from her. His stoic expression crumpled as he turned from her. He didn’t look back as he said, “Fine. Go. Just remember that when you need me, I’m here.”

  She knew he would be. Nina watched him stalk away from her toward his private transpo. Ewan walked as though he’d been stabbed in the guts. Based on her own emotions right now, that was probably how he felt.

  “Hey, you! What are you doing?” The NorthAm soldier who’d stuck her in the armored transpo had come up behind her.

  Nina simply put her hands up. “Nothing.”

  “Get back in there until we figure out what in the void is going on.”

  She nodded, making no protest but a groan at the way it hurt to climb into the vehicle. The door closed behind her. She looked out the window and waited to find out what was going to happen to her.

  * * *

  Katrina Dev was dead. Her son was also presumed to be dead, although his body had never been found. Ewan couldn’t bring himself to mourn either one of them, especially since they’d left behind a mess of tangled legal issues surrounding the updates Jordie had programmed under his mother’s auspices. Fortunately, Ewan’s own team had managed to write code for programming that was going to work, long-term, for the remaining enhanced, and it didn’t rely on anything Jordie had done, so there was no legal reason it couldn’t be used.

  Ewan had thrown himself into work. He’d been out of programming and tech for a long number of years, but now he found himself drawn back to it, if for no other reason than he already had more money than he could reasonably spend, and the making of money had never been what interested him.

  He wanted to help people.

  Oh, Ewan knew how the viddy stories talked about him. The Benevolent Billionaire. Spending his credits on developing products designed not to make him more money, but to benefit the underprivileged, downtrodden, destitute. He’d been involved with charities for a long time, but now every report on him seemed to focus on all his good deeds.

  None of it was going to bring Nina back to him, but he wasn’t doing any of it to impress her. He was doing all of this to make a difference in the world. And Nina, the love of his life? Well, she would come back to him, or she would not, and the only thing Ewan could do about that was to be ready for when she did.

  He hadn’t thought much to himself about how long it would take him to accept that she wasn’t going to. He’d already been in the places where he believed they were over. Now, it was enough to go day by day, intent on working toward the greater good. There was the chance that one day he would wake up and years would have passed and Nina would not have returned. Until that time, though, Ewan was going to keep on moving forward.

  He wasn’t going to give up hope.

  * * *

  It would have been close to impossible for Nina to keep herself from seeing him. Ewan was in all the newscasts. On all the gossip reports. He was once again a golden child of the media, and unless Nina had hidden herself away from the world entirely, she was going to have to face the sight of Ewan Donahue somewhere, somehow, sometime.

  There were still and w
ould always be missing pieces of Nina’s mind. Unfortunately, no matter how much she tried, Nina had been unable to forget about him. Not for the past three months, not for a week, a day, not even a minute.

  The programming Jordie Dev had corrupted for his own insane desires had been torn apart so Ewan’s team could make it right. The remaining enhanced had been cleared of all criminal charges because of Jordie’s manipulation. Nina had experienced the way public view could turn, but so far, it was widely accepted that they’d been victims, not perpetrators.

  Nina didn’t like being seen as a victim. She’d refused all the viddy interviews and the multitude of offers to become a spokesperson for a number of charities as well as the use of her likeness to endorse a wild variety of products, everything from shampoo to shoes. She didn’t need the money. She didn’t want the attention. She wanted to be left alone, to rest and heal.

  Ewan had left her alone.

  She’d told him she wanted room and space and time, and he’d provided it in abundance. He’d also given her far more than that. Nina had accepted the fresh sum of funds in her bank balance, realizing that to argue with him about it would achieve nothing, and at least this way, she didn’t need to worry about finding work. Not for now. Really, not ever. Even after she’d donated an enormous sum to help the families of those who’d been killed in the hospital destruction, Nina had enough to live on for as long as she needed.

  He had not done it to control her. She might have thought that in an earlier time, but now Nina knew Ewan only wanted to protect and take care of her. So she spent the money as she saw fit, and she gleaned the media for sight of him even though she could not bring herself to pick up her personal comm and ping him. Instead, she tortured herself by watching every viddy report, reading every gossip story. She scanned the media for any signs of him out on the town with another woman, telling herself she would not blame him for dating and knowing that she would.

  So far, all the stories about Ewan featured him solo, and most were focused on his work, not his personal life. He and his team had gone back to the origins of the tech. The original tech that was meant to help people with dementia had been taken and twisted, but Ewan had been successful in pushing forward new tech that was making medical breakthroughs for the same problems he’d first wanted to solve. Because of everything that had happened and the legislation he’d pushed through, the government would be unable to force him to give it up for use in the military—all the new tech was going for civilian use only, and most of it would be free to qualifying patients, courtesy of Donahue Enterprises.