Wicked Attraction (The Protector) Read online

  Something was very wrong.

  When Nina put her hands around the mug, the liquid inside sloshed over the rim. Her hands were trembling? She focused to still the shaking, but it didn’t work. A low noise filled her ears, and it took a few seconds to realize it was the rushing beat of her heart, but too slow. Not right.

  “Drink more coffee,” Patrice said.

  Nina didn’t want anything else to drink, but a compulsion she couldn’t explain lifted the mug to her lips. She gulped the rest of the coffee, not caring that it scalded her tongue and the back of her throat. It flooded her guts, her stomach feeling full and distended and slightly sick.

  The mug hit the table hard enough to crack it, her fingers still hooked into the handle. She hadn’t set it down. Her hand had dropped, weak, unable to keep the mug aloft. Nina stared at it, knowing there had to be something she was meant to do. Oh, let go. Uncurl her fingers. Look at her sister, whose face had twisted into an expression of grief.

  “They’re listening to everything, and watching,” Patrice said. “I’m sorry, Nina. I really am. But they have my youngest, and they said I’d never see him again unless I helped.”

  “What . . . did you do?” Nina’s tongue had gone thick and unwieldy, hard to speak around.

  The man who appeared in the doorway behind Patrice wore all white. Nina understood at once that the glow surrounding him was only in her head. Her system was working frantically to counteract whatever it was Patrice had put in the coffee.

  “It’s not drugs,” said the man. “We aren’t sure, to be honest, if your enhancements will be able to detect and remove this tech as easily as it can handle a chemical intrusion. This will be interesting, waiting to see what happens. It shouldn’t kill you, at least not right away.”

  Patrice put her face in her hands, shoulders hitching with sobs that ground out of her in strangled moans. Nina tried to reach for her, meaning to offer comfort or at least help her sister to know she didn’t blame her. Not if the threat to her child was true. How could her sister have done anything else? Nina’s hand fell to the table, inches short of their goal. Too heavy to lift.

  “What,” she managed to say.

  The man in white had moved closer, though still out of range should Nina find the strength and coordination to lunge for him. She didn’t. She couldn’t.

  “Some new nanotech. Designed to be ingested for quick access to the subject. It burrows through the gastric lining, which also strips the nano of the protective coating and leaves it free to enter your bloodstream. From there, it goes to the brain. Faster than we even anticipated. Nice.”

  Nina spat on the floor; a metallic taste had embittered her tongue, and she didn’t give a good onedamn about being polite at this point. “What’s it supposed to do?”

  “Make you malleable.”

  “Good luck with that.” Patrice sniffed harsh laughter and cringed away from the threatening fist the man in white shook at her. “I’m sorry! I got her here, didn’t I? I got the coffee into her. Let me go now, give me back my son.”

  The man in white jerked Patrice to her feet by the back of her shirt. The fabric ripped in a long, wet purr, and she stumbled backward so the chair knocked over. Nina was on her feet in seconds, going after him. Her feet threatened to tangle, but she managed to get them beneath her. She swiped at him, barely missing. The next time, she got closer.

  “Stop.” He held up a hand. “Back up.”

  Nina halted, not paralyzed. Not quite. She pushed toward him despite every single impulse inside her warning her to stay still. Only when an agonizing sting ripped through her head, particularly in the back of her neck and the base of her skull, did she stagger back and clap her hands over the pain.

  “I’m going to let your sister go, and she is indeed going to have her child back. Along with a hefty chunk of money in her credit account, enough to keep her solvent for a good number of years, should she not spend it recklessly.” The man in white shoved Patrice toward the kitchen doorway, where she paused, looking over her shoulder. “Go. Get out of here. We have what we want from you.”

  “Nina, I’m sorry!”

  “Go, Patrice.” Nina meant to scream, but her words slipped out in a hoarse whisper through gritted teeth.

  The man in white studied her, then raised a fingertip to his ear to connect with an unseen comm. “Come get her, please, before we discover this tech is in fact able to be counteracted by her enhancements.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Nina didn’t bother trying to get at him. The intrusion of the new tech in her head still itched and burned. It was no longer a blistering pain, but her body felt sluggish and unresponsive.

  The man in white looked shocked. “You have something we need, and you’re the only one we can get it from.”

  “What could I possibly have that you need?” Truly surprised, she took another step back she hadn’t been ordered to take, both hands up to show him she wasn’t making any attempts at going for him, just in case whoever was heading for her was armed and ready to cause permanent damage.

  “Donahue’s tech, of course.”

  Nina’s head tilted. Confused, she said, “The enhancement tech? I’m far from the only one you could get it from. Hell, I guarantee you there . . . there are . . .”

  It was becoming hard to talk again as the room spun and the floor became slick beneath her feet, threatening to send her onto her hands and knees. She spat more bitterness. Her throat rasped.

  “Others,” she said finally. “Who would sell you whatever you wanted, just to be done with it all. You could rip it right out of their heads.”

  “Not the enhancement tech. The upgrades.”

  “I don’t have them. Nobody has them.” She’d have laughed if the simmering pain in her head would let her.

  The man in white curled his lip. “He never even told you. Did he? Of course he didn’t. It was always a secret, especially to you.”

  Her heart froze. “Ewan and I don’t have . . . any more . . .”

  Secrets, she thought. He promised. No more secrets.

  “Donahue claimed he never actually produced the upgraded tech, but he lied. He did produce prototypes, ones that worked, if crudely. The plans and specs for that tech were implanted in you, to keep it protected from any attempts at destroying it forever. After all, you’re the perfect safe.”

  Nina reeled, horrified. “No.”

  “Oh, yes,” the man in white said as he wavered and shimmered, blurring in front of her. To someone she couldn’t see, he said, “Take her now. She’s passing out.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The money transferred within seconds of Ewan authorizing it. Jordie’s viddy kept playing with the kid ranting on and on about things, but the moment the transfer was approved, the screen went blank.

  The comm pinged with an incoming call.

  “Hey, Mr. Donahue,” Jordie said with a grin, acting for all the world as though nothing was wrong. “Thanks for the credits.”

  “Jordie, I’m so disappointed in you,” Ewan said in as calm a voice as he could manage. “What are you thinking? Blackmail? What’s going on? This can’t just be about me not approving your work proposal.”

  Jordie’s expression turned serious. “It is, though.”

  “Why?” Frustrated, Ewan tapped the screen off to the side, trying to send a message to his security team so they could track Jordie’s location.

  “Because you’re the only one with the pieces I need, Mr. Donahue. See, it’s like this.” Jordie shifted around in his seat. He wore the same clothes from the viddy message, and the background looked the same. Either he hadn’t changed his clothes in a while, entirely possible if he was on the candy, or he’d made the viddy today. “I have this amazing plan, a truly terrific idea, really great. It’s going to be huge. Just huge. Make me a lot of money, you a lot of money, it will make the investors a lot of money—”

  “Investors?” Ewan sent the message, but so far, the team wasn’t responding.
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  “Yeah, yeah, of course, I need investors. What I did with you in the lab was great and all, a real apprenticeship. I learned a lot, so much. I’ll always be grateful, like my mother said I should be. Did I tell you she always told me to be grateful?”

  “You did.” Ewan tapped another message to the team, urging them to try harder.

  Jordie’s gaze flicked toward the lower corner of the screen. “What are you doing, Mr. Donahue? Calling the cops?”

  “No. Of course not.” Ewan sat back.

  “It won’t matter if you do, not really. The investors are really interested in what I have for them, Mr. Donahue. They’ve set me up in a terrific work space, really amazing, I mean no offense to the lab you gave us to use, it was top-notch, but you put limits on it. I guess you felt you had to, right? Like, teach us responsibility and stuff? This new space, I have everything I need to do what I want. There’s a problem though, Mr. Donahue, and I’m sure you’ll understand it, even if you’re not sympathetic.” Jordie patted the pocket of his shirt as though reassuring himself something was inside it. His fingers circled the fabric before it looked like he had to force himself to put his hand back down.

  “How long have you been off the candy?” Ewan asked him.

  Jordie frowned. “I don’t need candy, Mr. Donahue. I’m perfectly fine without it.”

  “Of course you are. Everyone is,” Ewan told him. “But how long has it been since you had any?”

  Jordie’s frown turned into a curl of his lip, a true scowl, his brow furrowed and eyes gone narrow and mean. “You haven’t even asked me why you should understand, why you should care about this as much as I do.”

  A tiny, silent ping alerted Ewan that the security team had locked a trace on the source of Jordie’s original transmission, but that they couldn’t get a handle on the current one. He’s in the same place, he typed. Wearing same clothes and same background. Check all known locations.

  “Shiny fine, Jordie. Tell me, why should I care?” Ewan asked as he finished typing.

  “Because my tech is going to literally change the way the world works, at least for people who can afford it.” Jordie snorted a hard burst of laughter. “I mean, that’s the way it always works, huh? Rich people get things. I’m not complaining, I mean, look how I grew up.”

  Ewan kept his voice calm and expression neutral. “We’ve gone over this already. The tech you’re talking about is unethical, Jordie. There are complications far beyond what you’ve appeared to think about. This tech . . . it isn’t just an experience enhancer, it’s not the equivalent of an upgraded adventure VR. You’re talking about completely rewiring people’s memories. Permanently. The far-reaching repercussions of that are horrific, not to mention the applications of tech like that when used against someone’s will. Jordie, listen to me . . .”

  Ewan took a breath, trying to make sure he waited until the kid focused on him, but Jordie didn’t seem capable of it. “Tech like that never falls into the right hands. It never stays safe from people who want to use it for bad reasons. Never.”

  Jordie’s fingers crept up again to stroke his shirt pocket. He shook his head. “They’re going to pay me a lot of money not to care about that, Mr. Donahue. Let’s face it, you did the same thing. You got paid a lot of money not to care.”

  “That’s not true. I thought the tech I invented would be used to help people, Jordie. When I found out that it could be used to cause more harm than good, I did everything I could to stop the use of it. I lobbied against it. You know that.” Ewan looked again at the small ping coming in from his security team. They’d locked into a location. Did he want to take action?

  Not yet, he sent, along with another command to find out where Nina was.

  “Then you turned around and changed your mind. You and my mother.” Jordie burst into barking laughter that bit off abruptly as he leaned in to stare once more directly into the camera. “You and my mother, what a joke, Mr. Donahue. She’ll sign her name to anything that will make it seem like she cares about something other than herself. Really, she wants her name in all the gossip viddies, and she wants to get invited to all the parties, and most of all, Mr. Donahue, she wants to snag herself another rich husband. A guy like you, probably. It must’ve burned her a lot when she found out you and Ms. Bronson were a thing.”

  Ewan had never had the impression that Katrinka Dev had been interested in him romantically. In his experience, women like her had no problem letting him know if he was the target of their affections. Her personal reasons for supporting him in changing the laws they’d worked so hard for weren’t any of his business.

  “I don’t much like my mother most of the time, Mr. Donahue,” Jordie said now, before Ewan could reply. “But I guess this time, I did something she’d like.”

  Ewan paused in watching for a response from the security team. “What did you do?”

  “Here’s the thing, Mr. Donahue. The thing. Is.” Jordie shuddered, eyes closing, and reached for the small package in his pocket. He slipped out a few of the brightly colored tablets and held them up to the camera. “I like candy, Mr. Donahue. It’s so good, isn’t it? Makes you feel like you can do anything. But I don’t need it. Right? Because it’s not really addictive, they’ve done all the studies, they’ve proven over and over again that any kind of addiction is all psychological. Not physical. You only feel like you need it, Mr. Donahue. Right?”

  Ewan’s guts twisted again. “Jordie, why don’t you let me help you? Tell me where you are. I can send someone—”

  “I can’t do that, Mr. Donahue. I’m not sure where I am. They brought me here sedated, so I couldn’t know. They set me up in this lab and stuff.” He jerked his chin to the side. Then he put the tablets on his tongue, holding it out for Ewan to see as the candy rapidly dissolved into a multicolored mess. “They want me to do my work. But of course, there’s something I need from you that isn’t credits.”

  “What is it that you need from me, Jordie?” Ewan’s patience had run out. He was no longer able to make any pretense that he wasn’t typing messages while he spoke to the kid.

  “The freaking passwords, Mr. Donahue. I thought I could crack them, but you sure do know how to encrypt stuff hard.”

  “The passwords for what?”

  “For the upgrade tech. I can get the specs, but I can’t start working on my tech without yours as the base. I tried, Mr. Donahue.” Jordie shook his head. “I tried with the base-level tech, the enhancement stuff, but you know, you can’t update an operating system by skipping the interim updates. I need those passwords.”

  “There is no upgrade tech. It was only theoretical,” Ewan said even as the sourness on his tongue reminded him he was lying.

  Jordie laughed cruelly. “Not according to Wanda Crosson.”

  “Wanda went to prison because of her obsession with that tech, Jordie.”

  “I know.” Jordie shrugged. “Where do you think I learned about where it was hidden?”

  “So you’re the one who burned down the lab,” Ewan said.

  Jordie nodded. “Sure. But you don’t keep the information there, huh? Just in case someone like me came along, I guess.”

  “I never anticipated someone like you.” That was the truth and not a compliment, although Jordie appeared to take it that way.

  “I need that upgrade tech, Mr. Donahue. I can’t finish mine without it. You wouldn’t give it to me. I tried a few times to get at it, but I couldn’t manage, got interrupted. And it was harder than I thought it would be. So I had to go to some people who’d have the ability to get it. To steal it, yes, it’s true. I had to, Mr. Donahue.” Jordie’s expression twisted into a semblance of sincerity and righteous smugness. “I’d say I’m sorry, but I think you know I’d be lying.”

  Ewan ran cold. A stream of responses from his security team had started scrolling up his screen. All negatives.

  “What do you mean, Jordie, that you stole it? How can you steal something that doesn’t exist?”

  Jo
rdie laughed so loud and hard that Ewan caught a glimpse of his candy-stained tongue. He stopped abruptly, looking fiercely into the camera’s eye. “It exists. Wanda Crosson told me where to find it, and I did.”

  “How did you steal it, Jordie?” Ewan was already tapping another series of orders to his security team, ordering them to find this kid’s location along with any other information they had on him.

  “Well,” Jordie said with a shrug. “I stole Nina. And that’s really the same thing, isn’t it?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Nina had been here before, or a place enough like it that it was instantly familiar even if nothing else was.

  She couldn’t remember how she’d ended up here, or when or why she’d been in a place like this in the past, but she knew enough to understand that her memories would come back to her eventually. Probably. The blank spot didn’t feel like a permanent loss, but more circumstantial. Injury related, perhaps.

  The distinct scent of antiseptic that was probably too faint for anyone else to even notice wrinkled her nose. The place smelled like a hospital but looked like a hotel. She lay in a comfortable bed big enough for three of her. Thick pillows, soft sheets. A twitch of the comforter revealed she wore flowered pajamas that she would never have picked out for herself, not even under duress.

  Of course, Nina hadn’t chosen these pajamas. Someone else had put her in this bed and dressed her this way, and while she wasn’t too weirded out by the idea of someone handling her unconscious body, she was a bit freaked that they’d thought she could ever be convinced she’d chosen flowered nightwear. Because, judging by the setup here, they were going to try to convince her that she was here of her own accord.

  Nina closed her eyes for a moment or so, listening hard. The room was soundproofed. She couldn’t even detect a hint of a voice or footsteps or anything beyond the soft puff-puff of the ventilation system.

  “I’m awake,” she said aloud to the empty room. Someone would be listening, she was certain of that. Probably watching her, too. Creeps.