“You’re lying.”
“Have I ever lied to you?”
“You have to be. If you’d been in my house doing—” He waved a hand. “—whatever, I would have known.”
“I’m sure if you look close enough, you’ll see a slight difference in paint coloration around the supporting wall in your living room. But only if you look really close and had better lighting. You really should add a few fixtures. It’s bad for your eyes to work on a computer in a dark room.”
Reese stood fast enough to push back his roll-away chair only to have it bounce off the metal cabinet and collide with his heels. He caught himself on the edge of the desk. Sharp stabs rode through the tendons in his legs.
“You had no right to go into my house without my permission.” He blinked back the tears trying to form in his eyes as grating pain crept through his bones all the way to his jaw, making his teeth ache with the same ferocity as they would when fingernails scraped a chalkboard.
“The password on the computer is the same as the one you had at the Utah Facility. I suggest you change it as soon as you log in.”
“No.”
“No?”
“Yes, no. N. O. Means the opposite of yes. A negative response. And in this case, it means I’m done.”
“My personal email is on your contact list. If there’s any other hardware or software you need, just let me know.” She started to turn.
“Didn’t you hear me?”
She tilted her head a little. “I have very good hearing, Dr. Dante.”
“Then maybe it’s your comprehension skills.”
“And a vocabulary far beyond the average person.”
“Then what part ofI quitdo you not understand?”
“The only one confused is you, Dr. Dante. You seem to have the impression you’re an employee with the luxury of resigning.” Phillips’s words dripped in that arrogant tone Reese hated with every fiber of his body. “Considering your involvement in the Anubis project at the Utah Facility, your only alternative to remaining under contract with us is retiring to a nice cell in a federal prison.”
And Reese couldn’t even argue his right to freedom. Because she was correct, his participation in the Anubis project was a crime on multiple levels.
Thirty, maybe forty years under the thumb of the government wouldn’t cover the debt he owed to the people he’d abandoned.
Time alone in an eight-by-eight cell was the best scenario he could hope for because if he wound up with a cellmate? He wouldn’t last a year.
The air in the room thinned out, and Reese dropped into his chair.
“I’ll give you a couple of days to get used to the computer. The number for any technical support is on your phone.”
Of course it was. She’d probably plugged it in there while he was in the shower. Or hacked it while he was on the toilet.
“If they can’t get you situated over the phone, I’ll send someone out.” She went to the door and stopped again. “Oh, and when they delivered your computer, I also had them replace the Mauritius Leopard Wrasse you lost.”
Phillips left and Reese tried to remember how to breathe.
* * *
Heated droplets beat against Luca’s back, coaxing out the tension in his muscles. He’d washed twice just because it felt good to be in an actual shower and now stood there in a surprisingly clean tub, with hideous rust stains, just because it felt like he hadn’t had a real shower in forever.
Considering how difficult it was to get clean using a jug of water, a washcloth, and soap, while trying not to die of hypothermia in fifty-degree weather, it might as well have been months, not weeks, since their last stay in a motel.
For the past month on the run, a new town every day, every other day at the most. Remaining in one place was too dangerous, even though there’d been no sign of the military people hunting them.
Or Dr. Dante.