Freaks Under Fire (11 page)

Jay admitted to taking what she’d later identified as mild offence at Tyler’s clumsy signals for her to remain silent and let him do the talking, and at the time had countered with a firm statement that she would be quite comfortable “sleeping” on the couch. That wasn’t to say she hadn’t been
tempted
to explain that although she did not
require
sleep, if she felt any requirement to mimic the state at least
she
wouldn’t suffer any discomfort lying on one of the Davidson family’s well-used, somewhat saggy couches, that were hardly optimal sleeping surfaces. But she hadn’t given in to the temptation because she saw no reason to exacerbate a potentially fraught situation.

Tyler shouldn’t have felt compelled to prompt her not to tromp all over Marissa’s desire to continue treating her like any other human purporting to be her son’s girlfriend. Jay again considered discussing the matter with him, but ultimately deemed it prudent to let it go. It was her problem, not Tyler’s, that it was becoming increasingly more challenging to suppress her human side and be the cyborg that was immune to hurt feelings.

Detecting potential social minefields, however, was becoming a little easier. As was navigating them without attracting too much unwanted attention—although Jay could still find herself floundering, despite blink-of-an-eye access to extensive information on any subject. Parent/child dynamics was one such constant source of both confusion and fascination. Take, for example, a son sleeping in the same room as his girlfriend. To a parent, “sleeping” in the same room appeared to be synonymous with their son and his girlfriend having sex under their roof. And to a parent, it frequently appeared perfectly reasonable to insist on separate rooms in an effort to prevent such an act from taking place—surely an illogical reaction if the parent already knew that their son and his girlfriend were sharing an abode and presumably having intercourse.

So far as Jay could determine, the reasoning was along the lines of “my house, my rules”—even if such rules wouldn’t prevent one party from sneaking into the other’s bed if either the son or girlfriend felt the risks of being caught worth the reward.

In the end, no one had slept on the couch because Caro had insisted on what she’d called “a mini sleepover” in her old room. Jay wiggled her sparkly-purple-painted toenails—one of the many rituals Caro had forced her to undergo. Others had included the application of mudpacks, manicures and pedicures, makeup sessions, gorging on Caro’s chocolate stash, raiding the freezer for ice cream, and whispering long into the night until Caro couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer and fell asleep. Jay would even go so far as to admit she’d enjoyed these rituals. And yes, she had felt pride in Caro’s envy of the steady hands that allowed Jay to achieve a perfect “cat’s-eye” with liquid eyeliner first time, every time.

She adjusted the parameters of the current search, her fingers keying in the new data too fast for the human eye to follow. Simultaneously, she replayed a particularly satisfying interlude between herself and Tyler at 2:15 am on the second night, compiled a list of items she needed to order for her puppy, and planned a week’s worth of frozen meals to cover her impending absence. Tyler was a competent cook, but often neglected to eat properly when she wasn’t around.

Hmmm. Perhaps scheduling regular reminders on his mobile phone would assist his memory?

Perfect. That was exactly the kind of action a human girlfriend might take—the kind of thing that a young male might complain about to his friends, while being secretly pleased his girlfriend cared whether or not he ate regularly.

Then again…. Perhaps such reminders would simply irritate him.

The shower in the ensuite started up—Tyler was taking a break from the song he was currently working on. Disappointment stabbed her. He wouldn’t perform the song until he was satisfied with it and she had hoped to hear it tonight, before she had to leave.

She abandoned that thought-thread for now and resumed a previous one revolving around her continued fascination with sibling dynamics. Her visit with the Davidsons had not disappointed in this respect. There had been the usual bickering and banter to analyze, plus the rivalry over who got to do what, and when, with the newest member of the family. Jay’d had no idea that walking a slumbering infant in an overly complex piece of machinery called a “stroller” was considered such a desirable activity. Add an untrained, spoiled puppy to the mix, and she had plenty of data about sibling interactions to replay and analyze.

On the subject of the newest addition to Jay’s household: When she had announced to Tyler that she had chosen a suitable name for the pup, he had asked her not to reveal it to anyone, including himself. He’d claimed would be “amusing as hell to watch Caro turn herself inside out” to extract the pup’s name from Jay.

Jay had agreed, and been duly treated to lengthy bouts of Caro pleading, pouting, wheedling, threatening, and finally resorting to increasingly outrageous attempts at bribery. Inevitably, Caro had given up on Jay and turned her efforts to extracting the information from her brother, who’d predictably taken great delight in informing Caro he hadn’t a clue what name Jay had chosen.

Marissa had not been at all fazed by the carryings on, but Michael hadn’t been so sanguine. He’d taken Jay aside and begged her to come clean for the sake of his sanity.

Jay, taking pity on both Mike and Caro, had announced that “Brum”, a diminutive form of
Brummer
, was a good strong name for the adult dog the pup would eventually become. However, after enduring seventeen minutes of the pup’s yipping, and its attempts to crawl into her lap and chew the steering wheel during the car trip home, Jay had informed Tyler that she might yet change the pup’s name to
Bello
, which meant “barker”. Brum must have preferred his original name, for he had subsequently settled down in the backseat and behaved himself the rest of the trip.

Jay glanced toward the second doggie bed she’d bought to encourage Brum to nap somewhere other than her lap while she worked.

Excellent. The pup was still sprawled in his bed, tired out from their walk. Her lips curved at the memory of him careening around the park, startling at anything at everything, until he’d flopped down atop Jay’s feet and crashed into sleep.

Another memory imposed, this one carrying with it the sheer wash of pleasure she’d felt upon unlocking the front door of Number Sixty-Four Parkway. It was illogical to have become so attached to an arrangement of walls, furniture and belongings, but she couldn’t deny the physiological and mental shifts that had resulted in the brownstone coming to represent an elusive human concept labeled “home.” Along with pleasure, ushering Tyler and the pup inside and shutting the door behind them, had provoked the release of tension in smaller muscles, deepened breathing, a slowed pulse rate, and a number of other subtle physiological changes.

Or perhaps it was not the building. Perhaps it was the knowledge that only when she was alone with Tyler, could she truly be herself. Perhaps home was not a place but a
person
, and for Jay, Tyler had become synonymous with “home”.

A series of soft beeps called her full focus to the program currently running on her laptop. She analyzed the results… and quickly concluded there was no pleasure whatsoever to be extracted from her current lack of progress in locating Sixer.

A similarly thwarted human might have indulged in some filthy swearwords, glared at the laptop monitor like it was to blame, pounded her fists on the desk, or thrown something at the wall. Perhaps all four if the situation had warranted such a tantrum. Because it was not in Jay’s nature to allow frustration over lack of success the upper hand, she adjusted another search parameter… and refused to give credence to a tiny part of her that insisted indulging in a small tantrum might turn out to be somewhat satisfying.

She had other leads to pursue. Tantrums were a waste of energy.

“Any luck?” Tyler padded into the room off the lounge that Jay had turned into a library-cum-office. He rested his palms on her shoulders to lean in and kiss her cheek, and the impulse to turn her head and demand a real kiss buzzed through Jay’s veins. That impulse wasn’t helped by the fact Tyler wore nothing but sweatpants that hung low enough on his hips to hint at the waistband of his boxer shorts.

He looked—

What had been the phrase Caro had once used to describe her boyfriend Matt? Ah, yes.
Eminently lickable
. And Tyler smelled wonderful, too—of soap and vanilla shampoo and healthy human male.

A shaft of heat swirled low in Jay’s belly and muscles lower down involuntarily clenched. She analyzed these physical reactions, and identified the sensations as desire… which she would not be acting upon at this moment, tempting though the thought might be.

She cleared her throat. “No luck yet.”

“Bummer.”

Jay decided this was as good a time as any to practice one of those shrugs humans used to convey that they weren’t particularly bothered by something. “I would have been surprised if Sixer had made it easy for me to trace his whereabouts.”

“Yeah, I’d have been suspicious as hell if you’d tracked him down quickly. Sixer’s too smart to slip up. He’ll make you work for it.” Tyler perched on the edge of the desk and swung his bare foot. “So, reckon you’ll have better luck with that guy my dad recognized?”

“I believe so. It won’t be too much longer before I have something concrete.”

Jay had obtained a list of Goodkind Electronics employees reported to have sustained fatal injuries during the bombing of the bunker housing Caine’s clandestine cybernetics project. And yesterday, while Tyler had been at classes, Jay had driven back to Snapperton to show the list to Tyler’s father. She trusted her own security precautions one hundred percent, but although Michael Davidson’s skills in that regard were superior to most, transferring the file electronically wasn’t worth the risk—not when Jay could easily drive down and give it to him in person. It wasn’t like driving for hours without a break fatigued or taxed her in any way.

Michael had scanned the list and pointed out a young technician who’d been brought to his attention on two occasions. The first had occurred when Evan Caine had personally requested an in-depth background check on the man before he was shifted to another section—an R and D department Michael’s personal security access insured he could obtain little more than rudimentary information about. The second occasion had been when Michael was obliged to write the man up for a security breach.

Evan Caine hadn’t made a habit of offering people second chances once they’d screwed up. Apparently, the skills one Seth Kyle Williams brought to the table had been deemed too valuable to lose, and he’d escaped termination. Given the way Michael’s expression had blanked as he uttered the word “termination”, Jay understood the more sinister use of the word could well have applied in this instance.

It would be far more efficient to gather data directly from the scene of the bombing but for now, the risks of doing so in person remained unacceptably high, forcing Jay to rely on other sources of information. One such source was the preliminary autopsy report on Frank Sloane, the tech rostered on with Williams.

The report indicated Sloane had been in the main lab at the time of the explosion, and had died instantly, his injuries consistent with being caught in an explosion. What were presumed to be Williams’ remains had also been recovered. Eventually it might be possible to identify the remains, but as Jay well knew, anyone with the right skill set could fake a person’s death.

After illegally accessing all manner of private personal information, and taking stringent measures to thoroughly cover her tracks, Jay had ascertained that an unidentified John Doe matching Williams’ physical description had been dropped off at a small, understaffed medical facility two townships over from the bomb site. The John Doe had been unconscious, concussed from a blow to the head. Also noted were a dislocated shoulder, a cracked rib, contusions on his face, back and torso, and a number of other minor, non-life-threatening injuries.

A staff member had recorded the incident as a probable mugging—a logical conclusion given the neighborhood crime statistics. This assumption had not been verified, however, because shortly after the patient had regained consciousness, and before he could be questioned, he’d vanished from his hospital room. Since the costs of his treatment had mysteriously been settled, neither hospital staff nor authorities had been inclined to pursue the matter further, presuming the man had discharged himself and shortly afterward arranged for his bill to be paid.

Jay had confided to Tyler that she believed Sixer had chosen to spare Williams, and had extracted him from the lab prior to the explosion. Too, it appeared highly likely Williams’ injuries had been inflicted by Sixer during the process of convincing the young tech to accompany him.

In Tyler’s opinion, among other things, Sixer needed to work on his powers of persuasion. Jay tended to agree.

If Sixer
had
been involved in the young man’s disappearance from the hospital, there wouldn’t be much of a trail to trace—Sixer was too careful and methodical for that. But if Williams had walked out on his own, Jay was confident she could locate him. The majority of modern-day humans—even those who had reason to be paranoid about surveillance—were too reliant on technology to completely eschew it. Thanks to data mining algorithms like the one she’d written, one careless act could leave a digital footprint that Jay could trace back to the source.

She checked the second of the two laptops sitting on her desk for new results on Goodkind Electronics employee ID 102212. “Gotcha,” she said, for Tyler’s benefit. “Proof that Seth Williams is indeed alive and well.”

He blinked. “That was quick.”

“Yes.”

Jay analyzed Tyler’s responses—head cocked, brows slightly arched, eyes a little wider than usual, torso angled toward her—and surmised he wished her to elaborate on her methods. And then he confirmed it absolutely by saying, “So? Don’t keep me hanging—I want to know how you did it. Spill.”