Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(41)

“Listen to Garrett’s tales all you want, querida,” Heron said, “but we are grounded for a while until I can figure out what is going on with those data holes.”

“You found more?” Kellen asked, totally serious.

Heron nodded.

“The data hole like you mentioned over Guadalajara?” Angela asked.

“Yep,” said Kellen. “Big, black-ICE blobs of nuthin’.”

“On satellites?”

“On everything. All data feeds,” Mari said. “Can’t even get voice-com transmissions in or out. Heron can break through the ICE, because he’s a god like that, but he’s got to find it first. Might also help to know who keeps making the damn things, how they’re doing it, and why.”

“Texas is the obvious culprit,” Heron said. “That’s where we found the first anomaly.”

“Vallejo, that asshole,” Kellen agreed. “No offense, Miss Mari.”

“None taken. My daddy’s crooked as a dog’s hind leg, and he must indeed have been somewhere under that ICE, seeing’s he hijacked poor Nathan’s brain up there on Enchanted Rock. Y’all did say signals can’t get in or out of those blocks. Stands to reason he was right there, inside the bubble, being his usual dastardly self.”

Angela quietly rolled some more beans into a tortilla and nibbled on the end. There was something in what Mari just said, something that clanged her clue bell. But she couldn’t figure out exactly what.

The quiet guy, Garrett, looked up from his plate. Angela did a double take. He was startlingly good-looking. Beautiful, even. Fine-planed face, inky, unkempt hair, unsettlingly intense amber-colored eyes. She could imagine him slinking down a runway in Grigori Hahn couture. If, you know, he could manage to wash some of those grease stains off his hands.

“It could be the Black Knight,” he said.

“The what-what?” asked Mari.

Heron and Kellen both groaned.

“Whatever is causing these data holes, it almost certainly is not an ancient alien satellite,” said Heron dryly.

“’Specially not one more likely to be a blanket that fell off the old International Space Station,” added Kellen.

Garrett’s dark eyebrows swooped down like a predator bird’s wings. “Blanket. Exactly. A satellite, especially one launched with malicious intent, could seed dampers in the upper atmosphere, basically erecting a gigantic data blanket. Boom, there’s your data hole.”

Heron smiled, but this particular smile was neither sarcastic nor scary as hell. It was almost, well, warm. Warm looked wrong on him. “You have a point, G. I could certainly create a damper field such as you describe with foglets. Maybe we should have the queen sweep one of these data holes for the presence of atmospheric nanites. Not a bad theory.”

“Thanks.” Under such praise, Garrett warmed to the topic. “And as to who and why, I know you don’t want to hear that the Green aliens are setting up massive planetary weapons to deter the imminent approach of Nibiru and the Grays—”

More groaning, but softer this time, and with some chuckles salted in.

“—so I’ll just skip that theory and go right to the why. Anybody, not just aliens, wanting to move large-scale machinery or matériel into a certain location wouldn’t want hobbyist satellite hounds documenting their every move.”

“True that.” Mari seemed completely on board.

A lot of the concepts were flying straight over Angela’s head, but the enthusiasm of these people was contagious. She’d found herself nodding more than once during Garrett’s half-breathless spiel, but that clangy something was vibrating the back of her brain. A few seconds later it bloomed into a full-on eureka.

“Wait a minute,” she broke in. “You said there was a data hole over Guadalajara when I was there, right? And that no data could get in or out? Well, I was able to get a voice-com transmission out.”

“Before the attack or after?”

“After.” Cement dust, bomb breath. Just thinking of her experience made her shoulder ache and terror claw her throat. She swallowed. “Mech-Daniel contacted the government to let them know I was still alive. He used a backdoor relay I almost certainly should not be mentioning to people without the appropriate security clearance.”

“Whoa, then, best quiet fast, ’cause we sure don’t have—” Mari started.

But Kellen interrupted. “I think that’s her point.” He met Angela’s gaze, and something deep and raw inside her body hummed to life. “You’re taking a big risk, laying out that info to folk like us, gal.”

“You all took the risk first, when you invited me here, and then another when you told me about Chloe.” She held his gaze. “I trust you.”

You know me. Let me in. Please.

The smile he reflected—secret, intimate, as if they were the only two people in this room full of hundreds—warmed her like dawn after midwinter. “You about done eatin’?”

She nodded.

Without breaking their locked gazes, Kellen addressed the rest of the people at the table: “I will wish you fine folks a good night. Now you’ll have to excuse us. I’m gonna take this woman up to her bedroom.”

? ? ?

He didn’t mean it the way it’d sounded. Or not much. Aw, fuck it. Yeah, he would dearly love to take Angela up to a bedroom, lock the door, and spend the next forever or so showing her how much he wanted her. He could admit to himself, in private, that he was just so barbarian at the core.