Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(8)
Angela stared down at her gloved hands. Finally she spoke, but in a totally different voice. Small. Cold as the vacuum outside. “I am told Damon Vallejo’s only child was named Marisa. You are moving in dangerous circles.”
Dangerous for whom? For him? Like she’d give two shits. He shrugged again. “Don’t matter who her daddy is. She still doesn’t deserve to be hunted by federales. They’ll put her down bloody without a trial just to make the shocker vid channels, and you know it.”
“What are you offering in exchange for her safety?”
“Was kind of hoping you’d suggest something.”
She pulled in a visible breath. “I will see what I can do for her, and in exchange”—she raised her head and pinned him with dark eyes—“you can owe me.”
That had been too easy. Way too easy. What game was she playing at? For the first time, Kellen wished he hadn’t been so damn self-sacrificial. Heron ought to be here, with all his cloud resources whirring, sussing out her real motivations, looking for chinks in her armor and designs in her words. Scaring the bejeezus out of her with that post-human glare.
A politico in her position had deals within deals going on, and if she was caving to Kellen’s demands at this point in the negotiation, that meant she already had what she wanted.
So what had he given her? He mentally replayed their conversation so far but came up with nothing. Could she have misinterpreted something he said?
He pushed, just a little, to see how she’d react. “What does that look like, to owe the war minister of this hemisphere’s biggest empire?”
“Confederation, not empire,” she snapped. “And I’m not the war minister.”
“Yet.” He shoved her ambitions into the space between them. Right where they’d always been. “I’m just trying to get an idea of what you’ll want from me.”
One gloved hand pinched a fingertip in the other glove and rolled it. Nervous tic? She didn’t used to have any.
“What have I ever wanted from you?”
What had she…well, shit. Granted, he hadn’t been grown yet last time they’d met, but back then mostly what she wanted, or what she said she wanted, was somebody to study with and somebody to fuck. He’d provided both services.
“Well now, this telepresence tech is pretty good, but far as I know, it don’t support full-contact naked across time zones,” he drawled.
“That’s not fair.”
“Quoth the fairest of them all.” A line from a tale of fairies, an illuminated relic they’d pored over during late afternoons at the paper vault, the place they’d called a library, back when. Sun had slatted in through the desert dust, making it seem like heaven stroked the pages. That memory glowed golden still, and bringing it up right now, in such a context, felt like desecration. But if it spurred her into revealing what she was really after, he’d count the pain worth it.
Her gaze remained fixed on her hands. She twisted one finger of her glove.
“See, I know what you do, how you spin truths until they’re twisted and dizzy and wrong,” he told her softly. “Same’s what all your kind does. Only you’re the best at it, aren’t you? Now, this time, I know what really happened. And I’m curious what you’ll call it, how you’ll play it. And then how you’ll use that favor, the one I gave up so easy, to hurt people I love.”
Her mouth moved, but no sound came out, and her gaze skidded to the side. Odd. Something was very off about her posture, her movement. For a minute he thought he might have cracked her defenses and she was going to tell him exactly what was going on.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about bringing her so low. Part of him just wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold her. Hell, all of him did, even knowing how little she’d appreciate such a gesture.
Even knowing she’d tell him to go away. Leave me alone, then. I lived this long on my own. I’m good at alone.
“I’m really not like that now.” She raised her face and met his gaze directly. “You don’t know how the last ten years have been for me, Kellen. I have seen things I now can see no more.”
Something clicked in the back of his brain, a cog of memory sliding into place. Gold-dust sunlight and books spread wide over their knees. Her forest-fae eyes alight in mischief, reading bad poetry out loud till they both convulsed in laughter. Damn. He hadn’t expected the memories to hit this hard, but that one was a sucker punch.
He took a steadying breath and followed her down the path. “Been a rough day for you, I reckon.”
“Yes.” The telepresence setup they were using didn’t allow folks to transmit emotions, but she didn’t need one of those fancy rigs. He could see all of it on her face: the weariness, the loneliness. “Tell your shooter to lay low for a few days. I will be in contact with my demands.”
She raised a hand, an easy gesture, as if she were waving goodbye. Her fingers cricked, and he deliberately did not focus on her hand. He met her gesture with its mirror.
The headset vibrated, indicating the termination of their link. The tether on the helm pulled, like it would retract up into the ceiling, but Kellen paused it with a command word. He rewound the conversation. Played it back. There. Right there. Well, I’ll be damned.
She’d raised her hand, slim in its bio-deterrent glove. Its smartfabric bio-deterrent glove.