Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(17)

The white-haired woman went around and got in on the driver’s side. The car was so old, it still had a steering wheel. She pressed a button on the dash, the electrics hummed, and the car lurched forward, slamming Angela against the seatback. What was it called on these things? Ludicrous speed? Just so. She hadn’t thought to put on a harness, but there probably was one around here. She’d have to dig for it.

A plaintive cry made the fine hairs on her forearms stand up. Oh, yikes. No car, not even an antique, made that sound.

“What was that?”

“Mi cria,” the driver hollered over her shoulder. Without taking her gaze off the highway, she popped the lid of the compartment between the front captains’ chairs, withdrew a bottle that smelled like puke, shook it, and then handed it back toward Angela. “Lift up that blanket there and stick this in the feeder, yummy end pointed in her direction. She’ll be your best friend forever.”

Angela took the bottle, held her breath, did as she was told, and came nose to nose with a furry face framing the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen. Long-lashed and sweet-tea brown. The white face tilted to the side and let out that mew/hum sound again.

A miniature llama. Or a baby one? Angela had never seen one, not in real life. She’d seen pictures of llamas, mostly in old books. Like other domesticated herd species, llamas had been decimated in recent decades. Predators, half-starved and desperate after a string of unpredictable climate extremes and disease-vector eradications, had descended on licensed herds, wrecking fences and ranchers’ livelihoods alike. Prey animals never had a chance, but even their sacrifice wasn’t enough, ultimately. Global ecosystems were disintegrating at a rate that was now too rapid to pause.

Some of the heartier wild things had survived in sustainable populations: rats, hawks, and of course, cockroaches. But most of the beautiful creatures were gone, even the ones that had once been ubiquitous. Angela had seen only one cat in her whole life.

The memory of that cat still throbbed. She pushed it away viciously.

“Her name is Azul. She was a rare twin birth. Vicu?a. Might not look it, but that little bit of fur and sass is almost two months old. Barely fifty pounds, for all her monster appetite, but if anybody can get that wee girl up to fighting weight, it’s Kellen. You know him?”

Angela didn’t reply, just pushed the bottle in between slats in the traveling crate and fitted it into the feeder sling. The baby vicu?a latched on almost immediately. Look at that little girl go! She did have a healthy appetite. Angela watched her, those slow-blinking eyes with their impossibly long lashes. So delicate.

Shhh. You’re safe now. Promise.

The woman was right. Kellen could care for this animal. He had a magic where animals were concerned. It would thrive. It would love him to absolute bits. All the creatures did.

“Where did you get her?” she asked.

“La Paz, or north of there, in the mountains. They used to roam wild all over Bolivia, whole bunches of them, till the poachers had a run at them in the 1900s. Gentle animals, vicu?as. They don’t deserve what we humans have done to their world, but they can’t say a damn thing to stop us.”

What would a vicu?a say if it could speak? Probably would agree with that statement. Certainly Angela’s—and her government’s—plans for the world were people-first. If she somehow managed to goad Texas into a war, bringing a dozen or more other entities into conflict, what would the voiceless animals of the world have to say about that?

Nothing. They would say nothing, the cool statesman in Angela insisted. Bolivia wasn’t even in her continent.

Still sucking at the feeder, the cria looked right into Angela’s eyes, possibly into her soul. At first, she read the expression in those round cocoa eyes as thanks. Angela had given the animal food, after all. Safety. But that was the easy interpretation, wasn’t it? Acquiring basic sustenance did not necessarily engender gratitude. In her experience, people who were riding the edge of desperation and were saved right at the last minute weren’t grateful. They were too wound up. They lashed out, suspicious, sometimes angry.

The vicu?a’s eyes weren’t angry, though. They were…she couldn’t read them. If only she could hook this little girl up to a psych-emitter.

“By the way, you can call me Fanaida, or Fan,” the driver said. “Heron Farad, who you messaged? He’s my kid. Got a place not an hour from here. Good place, strong. You’ll be safe from whatever’s hunting you, mija.”

Disbelief jangled up Angela’s spine. Bomb-flavored dust, cracks in the walls. Pain.

I’ll never be safe. I’ll never be free.

Still…Kellen would be there. Not-right Kellen and his murderizing band of scoundrels, true, but him at the core. And the core Kellen was more compassionate than eleven-tenths of the human population. Plus, he had messaged her tonight, earlier, before her world went to hell. That proved he still cared, didn’t it? That he wanted her here?

And she, of course, had never stopped wanting him.

? ? ?

“Just sit yer boney ass down, already.” Kellen eyed his best friend, who looked like hammered shit this fine morning. “You need to sleep for about a week. Can’t even stand up on your own two feet right now. What you been through, man, you gotta take this recovery slow.”

Heron might have been the most tech-altered human alive, but when he wilted into the wide executive chair and pressed his palms against the smartsurface boardroom table, he was just a guy, and a tired one at that. He closed his eyes for a long moment, and after a while, a look of perfect peace settled over his face. So perfect he might have been sleeping.