Probably a few body parts, too.
Definitely a lot of blood.
Because I’m vibrating so hard, I could probably kill someone with a look, burning so hot inside that not even the rain pelting down through my hair and clothes cools me off.
I’ve found a place out of sight after bulling my way past the minimal gate security guards. They’ve probably been bribed handsomely by Durham’s entourage to ignore anything strange happening today, anyway.
Gate security isn’t a problem.
They’re just there to make sure no one storms the place with a bomb and makes the TSA look bad. They have no way of knowing I don’t belong with the boarding party. All I have to do is look impatient and important to keep them from questioning me.
The problem is the ground crew—several near-identical men in coveralls, moving around like they’re servicing the sleek, silvery private plane currently grounded and waiting for takeoff on one of the airstrips.
They aren’t ordinary ground crew.
Those are Nighthawks.
The successors to the Nightjars program that created me—and these guys are far more deadly. Dr. Ross was only experimenting with trigger words and deep liminal brainwashing techniques with the girls who became Nightjars.
He perfected it on the Nighthawks when he created massive, supremely refined supersoldiers like Leo.
And those men down there aren’t interested in handling anyone’s baggage.
They’re just there to make sure no one gets within a fifty-foot radius of Durham’s plane alive.
Good thing I’ve never let things like that stop me.
Fun fact: any good bitch scorned runs just like the post office.
Neither rain, nor sleet, nor shine, nor oversized dick-waving brutes will stop me from getting my man.
Trust me, I’ve powered through worse.
Much, much worse.
And today, I’ll do it again.
* * *
Fifteen Years Ago
I thought I’d forgotten how to feel fear years ago.
There’s no point in fear.
Either I’ll succeed or I won’t.
If I don’t, it won’t be for lack of trying—and frankly, with the kinds of situations I find myself in, if I don’t succeed?
I’ll be too dead to throw a tantrum over it.
Hard to really fear the aftermath if you’re not around for it.
But the fact that I’m still here should tell you I’ve got a pretty good win ratio.
On my missions, in my general life…it hasn’t been half bad.
I’m not that scrappy little girl anymore who draws men in by looking younger than I really am, yet wise beyond my years.
That was Patty Brin.
Fuchsia Delaney, on the other hand, is a superior model. She’s older, wiser-in-fact, more subtle, and she even enjoys a few sparse creature comforts.
I travel in style now, no thanks to a certain growly, handsome, strangely refined man introducing me to the glamorous stuff you only find in rich people’s magazines. And whenever I can, I travel with that man.
I keep Oliver Major on my arm quite happily.
I’m not sure how this thing between us has lasted so long.
Five years and counting.
Five years together, and somehow I didn’t even notice them passing in the blink of an eye.
Maybe because we don’t really put a label to it.
It’s easier that way.
We just slip in and out of each other’s lives. We’re both supremely busy people.
He’s still practically number one behind Durham at Galentron, and still despises it. Oliver’s less the power behind the throne and more the workhorse who has no choice but to take his king’s insane plans and make them a barely palatable reality.
I’m more the field work type.
Wetworks, espionage, the cause of most unfortunate accidents for enemies of the company.
I’m out a lot.
But somehow, the first thing I do, every time I find my way back to Seattle, is set out for this lofty penthouse and tumble into Oliver’s arms. Into his bed. Into his whiskey-dark eyes.
It’s a nice kind of weird having a man you want to surrender to.
As long as we don’t talk, it is what it is.
There are a lot of things we don’t talk about.
Like the grand plans we used to whisper about under cover of darkness, secretive and carefully coded. Running through the probabilities of how we could bring down Galentron or even conquer it from the inside out for ourselves, if we just had the right chance.
About how we somehow got snared deeper in the web because that chance never came.
Now, we’re just as guilty. I don’t know how to deal with that when “I had no choice, they indoctrinated me as a teenager” doesn’t really fly.
Not when you’re looking at more bodies than you have fingers and toes to count, plus a few cases of high-profile international data theft.
Like I said.
I get around.
Carmen Sandiego has nothing on me. Besides, I wouldn’t be caught dead in that Bloody Mary trench coat of hers.
After the hell I’ve walked through and the demons I’ve had a hand in creating, there are few things that can scare me.
But if anything can, it’s the idea of telling Oliver Major my latest secret.