As Cold As Ice (2 page)

The light above the only door that led into
her room flashed green, letting her know someone was about to come
in. She sighed and pushed herself to her feet, keeping her hands
relaxed and at either side of her body. If she put them behind her,
it gave off the impression that she was trying to hide something,
and that never worked out well in her favor.

The door opened, and Charles Mallary walked
in, a tall, blond man with a widow’s peak which just made his
receding hairline look that much worse. He had a clipboard in his
hands, and he looked down at it as if this was just another day in
paradise, not even caring that Jessica didn’t have on her
shackles.

Soren Birgir followed behind him. A man who
was taller than Mallary by a good five inches, was closer to
Jessica's age and had better, thicker hair, but he was thin.
Definitely thinner than the last time Jessica had seen him. There
were blueish-looking bags under his eyes, suggesting he hadn’t been
sleeping much. Eating much either, apparently, if the way the white
coat hung off him was anything to go by. His stubble was also a
tiny bit longer than it had been the day before, which meant he
hadn’t shaved, either.

He’d spent another night
sleeping at his desk.
Doesn’t he ever go
home?

A pair of fingers snapped in front of her
face. Jessica blinked and looked to the side. Charles wasn’t
exactly glaring at her, but he didn’t appear happy, either, even as
he finished snapping the iron shackles onto her wrists.

With the round spectacles, he looked like a
grown-up Draco Malfoy who’d stolen Harry Potter’s glasses.

“
I asked you if you were
ready.”

Jessica waited. When no explanation came,
she struggled to hold her patience. “Ready for what?”

Soren answered for her. “Your solitary
confinement is over, for now. It’s been decided that you will be
safe enough to spend time with the other test subjects.”

Chapter Two

Jessica’s heart tried to lunge into her
nose, but she tightened her throat and kept it from launching too
high up. Did the fear show on her face? She hoped not; otherwise,
she might as well be completely and totally done if she couldn’t
mask her emotions from them.

“
I put a lot of these
people away. I handed them over to you, you both know
that.”

“
And we will do everything
in our power to make sure no harm comes to you,” Charles said,
adopting a comforting tone as he rubbed her back through her torn,
white pajamas, which were standard for the paranormals locked up in
there.

Jessica didn’t like the touch. Her skin
crawled, but she’d regained her composure. She didn’t shiver in
disgust, or sneer at Charles for what he was clearly doing.

He’d had a thing for her for a long time,
that she knew, but he was also something of a creep. The type of
man who stood a little too close to her whenever she’d sat at her
desk, pretending like he wasn’t trying to rub his balls on her
shoulder.

Still, maybe she could use this. It didn’t
matter how she got out, so long as she got out. She looked up at
him, widening her eyes like she was afraid, keeping her voice small
and unsure as she tightly held her hands together at her chest. The
picture of the frightened and helpless damsel. “You won’t let them
hurt me, will you?”

Charles’s eyes softened from behind his
round spectacles. “Of course not, no. That’s not what this is. We
just want to see how the others will react to you. No one will be
hurt this time, that’s why you’re wearing the bracelets.”

Sometimes hunters, handlers, collectors, and
the scientists who all worked for Head Office called the shackles
that. Bracelets. Even Jessica had used the word before plenty of
times over. Mostly whenever a hunter was trying to explain how
harmless and safe they were to a family who’d called in and was
turning over a relative who had uncontrollable powers. Or when
someone from HR was doing an interview on television, trying to
explain with a polite face to the camera how not barbaric it was to
be putting people who weren’t guilty of any real crime in these
things.

Basically,
bracelets
was the
politically correct term for something so much uglier. Everyone in
the PR department said that word, especially when talking to the
media or any politicians. If anyone called them what they
were—shackles, chains, handcuffs, regardless of whether or not
there were any actual chains connecting the two pieces—then they
were immediately terminated from their post.

Okay, so Jessica had made herself look
helpless and scared, so then she had to look like she was overly
grateful and happy for Charles’s protection. Too much whimpering
and crying was never attractive. “Thank you,” she said, glancing
away from Charles’s face and down at her hands, as though shy. She
wished she could summon a blush, but it just wasn’t in her.

“
Not to worry, not to
worry. We’re still friends here,” Charles said, his hand finding
its way to the small of her back as they started walking out the
door. “We’ll take care of you. I know you’re not actually
dangerous, and we’ll get this whole thing settled.”

Jessica couldn’t help it when her eyes
glanced up to see what Soren was doing. He was just standing there
as they walked by. He was also frowning down at his clipboard, his
thick, reddish-brown brows pulled so tightly together it made
several lines on his forehead, and made him look like he had a
unibrow.

This was clearly bothering him, but Jessica
didn’t have time to be thinking about what his feelings were on
Charles’s barely contained creepy flirting. She had to get out of
there, and Soren was taking too long to do it.

Soren trailed behind them as they walked
through the halls. There were guards dressed in white standing at
every door. Their guns didn’t have actual bullets in them, just the
rubber ones, but those suckers could still hurt like hell. Jessica
had never been shot with them before, but she’d seen the bruises
left behind on those who had tried fighting back, tried to
escape.

Charles chatted beside her amiably, as if
she wasn’t there against her will. He didn’t ignore the subject
completely—it was hard not to talk about that fact—but his tone was
that of a fine Sunday morning conversation between friends. He
sounded hopeful, and even optimistic.

“
I’ve already spoken with
the head of the department. He’s reviewed your progress behind
these walls, and read over the notes I’ve taken. I think, with all
your years of service, that you might get an invitation into the
Proxy Program.”

Jessica nearly stopped. Because of that,
Soren accidentally stepped on the end of her heels. She jumped and
kept right on going, ignoring the pain in her bare feet as she gave
Charles all of her attention. “I’ve never heard of that. What is
it?”

It was definitely something new they’d
thought up fairly recently.

Charles tilted his head, making a slight
face as he tried to come up with the nicest way of telling her what
she was in for.

Soren answered her straight-up. “Head office
is looking for more paranormals to integrate into the system,
people who can use their powers to hunt down other paranormals, or
stand in front of a camera and tell the world that hunting
paranormals is for the greater good.”

“
I thought we already had
that. It was never called the Proxy Program then,” Jessica said.
The word
we
came
out of her mouth by accident. She was so used to walking through
these halls as an equal that it just slipped by.

All the better for her to say it and for it
to sound natural, because she sure as hell wasn’t feeling like one
of them at the moment. Nor would she ever again.

“
This is different,”
Charles replied, throwing a half-glare over his shoulder at Soren
before his expression softened and he looked back at Jessica. “Now,
don’t you worry. It won’t all be that bad, and we’re still ironing
out the details, so I’m sure you will be quite
comfortable.”

“
What do I have to do?”
Jessica asked. She didn’t care what it was so long as it got her
out of these damned pajamas, brought her some shoes so she wouldn’t
be barefoot anymore, and got these shackles off her.

“
You’ll have to be bound to
someone, for one thing,” Charles said. “I volunteered, but they
want you bound to another hunter. Someone you can work with in the
field.”

Jessica was quickly losing the whole scared
little girl act as she fought to keep control of herself, and her
patience. “What do you mean by ‘bound’?”

“
He doesn’t mean it
literally. You won’t be tied up,” Soren said. “But you will be
partnered with another hunter, someone you can go out in the field
with. You’ll bring back other paranormals, like you always did, but
this time, there will be the whole proxy thing.”

“
Meaning what?”

Charles cleared his throat, grabbing
Jessica’s attention. “The people on the upper floors realized soon
after you came in that you had a tendency to be…picky, I suppose is
the right word. Yes, picky. You were always picky whenever you
chose the targets to go after.”

Whenever the paperwork and pictures of
recently accused paranormals arrived—be they vampires, werewolves,
fae, whatever—well, she only took the files of the people who’d
actually killed or hurt other people. She wasn’t the only one to do
it, either. Those files were the most sought after. Every hunter
knew the more dangerous a paranormal creature was, the higher the
bounty for bringing them in.

“
Their bounties paid more.
I didn’t want to waste my time with anyone else,” Jessica
explained. “Lots of hunters did that.”

“
Yes, well, things are
changing somewhat,” Charles said. “You won’t be given a choice on
who you’re hunting. You will just receive your file, and you and
your partner will bring the suspect in. If you fail, or if your
partner decides that you purposely allowed the target to escape,
then the target’s punishment will become yours.”

“
Proxy,” Jessica said, and
then she rolled her shoulders. “I suppose that makes
sense.

“
You don’t seem happy about
it,” Charles replied.

“
Should I be?”

“
If it gets you back to
working instead of staying in a cell and being watched, then yes,”
Soren said, and he was the one who sounded the most irritated. She
would rather deal with that than Charles’s limp smile.

She kept looking straight ahead. She didn’t
look at Charles, who was right beside her, and she certainly didn’t
turn her head to look at Soren, who was still trailing behind, as
if the hallway wasn’t big enough for the three of them to walk
together.

Maybe this had been his doing. He might've
had a hand in setting this up after her not-so-subtle threat when
she'd first been brought in.

She could still feel the way his lips
quivered when she'd kissed him in there, before the cameras had
been brought in, back when she was in a smaller cell that had no
two-way mirror.

Soren had been the one to warn her those
were on the way, and he'd been right about that.

Then she'd threatened to reveal something
about him if he didn't help her get out. She had no proof, of
course, and she based her assumption on mostly guesswork. However,
considering where she was, if she accused him of being anything
remotely not normal, he would have eyes on him, and he would be
questioned under a hot lamp, possibly thrown into a cell next to
hers, until it could be proven otherwise that he wasn't a
paranormal.

She was still trying to figure out what he
was, but it was definitely some type of shifter. She'd seen his
eyes change; it had been just a quick glance as she'd walked by his
office one day a couple of months back.

His door had been open just a crack; he
likely hadn't noticed that as he injected himself with something,
right in his arm. His eyes had been golden, which was much
different from their usual bright blue. The only way a normal
person could have eyes like that was on Halloween after buying a
pair of cheap contacts.

It hadn't been Halloween, and when she'd
backtracked, he'd just finished pulling the needle out of his arm.
His eyes were normal.

Supposedly, the needles and constant need to
check his watch and test his blood was because he was a diabetic.
After that day, she knew it to be different. He was suppressing
something, and Jessica had sunk to a new low when she'd threatened
him.

Charles wasn't the only one who had a crush.
Jessica had seen a picture of herself on the desktop of Soren's
laptop at one time. Other than that little transgression, she
hadn't had a clue beforehand that he had any feelings for her at
all. He'd been that discreet, barely ever nodding to her whenever
they crossed paths in the hall, whereas Charles liked to follow her
around like a lost and pathetic dog. Always wanting to show her
something he'd been working on, wanting her to approve of him, and
never leaving her alone until she did.

Jessica had kissed Soren in the cell, not
because she was attracted to him or wanted him, but because she'd
wanted to get her point across that she did in fact know a couple
of things about him.

Of course, she
actually
was
attracted to him, and yeah, she’d maybe fantasized about him
a little. He was a good-looking man. Slender without being skinny,
blue eyes she could get lost in, with a hint of strength hidden
behind that calm reserve.