Chapter 29
vera
I felt better than I had in a long time once Elaine and I finished.
Finally getting to work out the endorphins of the last few days was always going to be a relief. But Elaine especially…
I’d fucked so many women in my life. Some were people I knew, other people within the family, who I’d flirt with a little, and then I’d go to them when I’d had a rough mission and needed to work some energy out. Some were strangers—women picked up at bars on my time out.
But none of them were like Elaine.
She was innocent and earnest in a way nobody else was. Like really, all she cared about was doing the best she could.
And she did really, really damn well. The way her eyes glazed over when I was fucking her, or when she was pleasuring me… her loose curls all messy and wild from the intensity of it… and those sweet, innocent blue eyes.
It was her own fault for getting into this. She’d walked right into it, after all my warnings. You couldn’t blame the predator if her prey walked in and presented itself.
So I gave her the contract. It was late at night, after we’d finished and cleaned up, and she was at the writing desk in the bedroom when I walked in and pressed the paper down in front of her. She looked wide-eyed down at it and back up at me.
And she looked damn good with her hair damp, clinging lightly to her shoulders around the delicate, lacy top of her pajamas.
“We should formalize the arrangement,” I said. “Protection services. And your services.”
“Vera…” She went nervously through the pages, blushing.
“I keep you alive, safe, unharmed, no matter what. And you give me what I want, when I want it.”
“A submission clause…”
I caressed a finger under her jawline. “I need my payment, too, you know,” I said. “And your audition was excellent. You’ll submit to me whenever I want you for the duration of the contract.”
She swallowed, her breath quickening as she read through the contract.
“You’ll have a safe word, of course.” I let my hand drop to her collar, caressing the soft skin there. “But you’ll make every effort to satisfy me within the limits of your abilities.”
“I… I understand,” she breathed, and she picked up a pen. “You’re supporting me, my family… our group… I’ll do it.”
I laughed, low and murky, as warmth stirred in my abdomen. “You don’t have any self-preservation, do you, darling?”
“I trust you.” She said it just as a breath as she signed her name.
“You shouldn’t.”
Defiantly, she gave me the contract back. I took the pen and signed above her name.
“It’s done,” I said. “You belong to me now.”
She nodded, blushing deeply now. “Just… tell me what to do.”
She was going to kill me with that blushing obedience. I really needed to sleep tonight. But maybe I could take just one more turn with my new toy.
“Your vital signs are looking better today,” Jenna said, stepping away from the bench.
“How about that,” I said, jumping down onto the floor.
“You got some proper sleep?”
I chuckled. “Sure.”
“I see.” She turned back to her tablet. “Just be careful you don’t hurt her.”
“She can handle herself,” I said.
She set the tablet down, looking at me more seriously. The medical bay was small, but it was well-stocked, and it was Jenna’s kingdom, enough that she could get away with giving me a look like that. “You care for her, don’t you?”
I laughed. “We’re having sex. That’s all. Jenna, you know I don’t care for people.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I also know you don’t walk away from the Blackbirds for someone.”
I narrowed my eyes too, matching the energy, but we both turned at the sound of a knock. The door swung open, and Petra came in, her boots thumping on the floor with each step, and she nodded to Jenna.
“Sup, doc,” she said. Jenna smiled with concern.
“Petra, dear, don’t tell me—”
Petra took a swing at my face. I ducked back, grabbing her and throwing her with the momentum, and she went with it, leaping up onto the patient bench and throwing one of her bolas with a crack of the wrist. I put my hand out to catch it just as she came back down with an elbow drop I stepped away from, and then to the side to dodge a precise side kick that sent a blood-pressure monitor flying across the room.
“Petra!” Jenna scolded, hands on her hips, and Petra huffed, arms folded.
“Well, good to see you’re feeling better. Give me my bolas back.”
“You’ve got to aim lower with them if you don’t want me to just catch them.” I tossed them back, and she snorted.
“I was hoping you’d be distracted catching them. It usually works.”
“Petra,” Caitlyn’s voice said, and I looked at where Caitlyn came into the room in a wheelchair I hadn’t seen before. “Were you trying to fight Vera again?”
“I wasn’t trying to fight her,” Petra said. “It was supposed to be over in one punch. I’ll get her next time, though.”
“Vera,” Jenna said, “is our best operative. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t get her next time, or any time.”
“So, what’s up?” I asked Caitlyn. “I’m assuming Petra came around for something other than to flail like a fish on land.”
“Hey,” Petra complained. “You want to go again?”
“Petra,” Jenna and Caitlyn said at the same time, and Petra put her hands up.
“What?”
Caitlyn’s expression turned serious. “There’s something interesting on the network. Come take a look.”
Petra had made quick work of moving things around to accommodate Caitlyn’s new wheelchair, which I guess had been what Petra was out for this morning.
Apparently she was still working on the stairlift, though, because she got Caitlyn down to the basement by scooping her up in one arm and carrying the wheelchair in the other.
Dumb, brute strength was good for something after all.
Elaine was waiting in the basement, too, wearing that white dress again. My body reacted right away to the sight of her, memories of last night lighting me up.
Mine.
She smiled at me, and from the blush on her cheeks, I could tell she was thinking the same thing. Good.
“How did the examination go?” Elaine said, and I smirked.
“Jenna says I’m feeling much better today. Said I must have slept well.”
Elaine looked down, blushing. “I’m… I’m glad.”
“Quit flirting,” Petra sighed. “We’ve got a job to do.”
“She’s my wife,” I said flatly. “Leave me alone.”
“More importantly,” Caitlyn said, “you can put me down now.”
“I haven’t finished wheelchair-fitting the basement! It’s just the chivalrous thing to do!”
Elaine suppressed a laugh. I rolled my eyes, joining them in the server room, where Petra finally set Caitlyn down at her computer seat. Caitlyn was tapping away at it quickly.
“I scraped some data and made some quick visualizations,” she said, pulling up a series of charts and graphs, nothing obvious showing up between them.
“What are we looking at?” I said.
“Logistics orders.”
“There’s no pattern here.”
“I think it’s encrypted. None of it makes sense. Except that it all links back through…” She zoomed in on the center of the screen, one node on a network diagram that branched out into the others, a code on it. SN42331-28810.
“Bellare Convention Center,” I said, and Caitlyn and Elaine looked at me. “That’s its internal code.”
“You just know that off the top of your head?” Elaine said.
“She has a good memory for data,” Petra said. “Don’t ask her what information she has on you.”
“I don’t have everything,” I said. “Just what was in the dossier. Credit card number, bank account information, your top used passwords—you reuse too many of them, by the way—your phone number, the phone number of your college boyfriend…”
“Vera!” Elaine clasped her hands over her face. Caitlyn turned in her chair.
“You had a boyfriend in college?”
Petra elbowed me. “Ah, infosec breach.”
“Forget that!” Elaine waved her off. “Bellare… that’s the events center downtown, right?”
“It’s a Blackbird hub,” I said. “A lot of information that can’t be on electronic channels goes through there.
People wear masks, go in disguise, play it off as parties, and meet anonymously.
They’ve probably encrypted everything around logistics orders until Horizon is completed…
and you just found the spot where the keys are going to converge. ”
“The keys are converging at Bellare?” Petra narrowed her eyes. “Then that means…”
“Glenn’s selling out,” I said. “I should have known he was pressing too hard on Horizon… someone’s paying him off for control. This has all the hallmarks of someone reporting back to Master.”
Petra and Caitlyn looked at each other. Elaine spoke quietly. “So what do we do?”
I flipped my phone from my pocket, looking at the latest coded brief from headquarters, and I smirked. “We crash the party. While we’re still considered Blackbirds.”