Marjorie Chevalier was officially dead. Nina had arranged for the TechCorps to find skeletal remains with bone marrow that matched her DNA, the My First Fake Murder version of the way she’d helped Knox and his men stage their own deaths a few months ago. After Marjorie’s remains had been verified, the two-million-credit reward on her head had been canceled. The TechCorps wasn’t looking for her anymore.
Maya had picked a new name. It didn’t have the power or magic of that first one she’d chosen for herself, but it didn’t have the danger and pain, either. Maya had never watched a bullet tear through the face of the woman who had raised her. Maya hadn’t sat for weeks, strapped to a chair, watching the VP of Security carve pieces off the man she loved in an attempt to force her to reveal the names of Birgitte’s coconspirators.
That pain was Marjorie’s. That life was Marjorie’s. Maya was trying to build a new one. Yet here she was, obsessing over Gray, another man about to die because of the TechCorps.
She might actually be an emotional masochist.
Maya grabbed the book and carried it up to her room, where she curled up in her bed. She turned the real paper pages with reverent fingers and tried to remember what it had felt like to know she could fix anything. Save anyone.
Maybe she could save him.
TECHCORPS PROPRIETARY DATA, L1 SECURITY CLEARANCE
It was a barracks fight, Birgitte. If we ordered additional observation for every Protectorate soldier who punched a squadmate, you wouldn’t have time to do anything else.
Your obsession with 66–221 is damaging your objectivity. Stop harassing my men, or I’ll have you stopped.
Internal Memo, June 2064
FIVE
Gray managed to sleep through what was left of the day and night, but not even sheer physical exhaustion could keep him there after six the next morning. His internal alarm clock had been set by years of disciplined training, and his body wasn’t about to let little things like being drugged or slowly dying screw it up.
It had absolutely nothing—not a thing—to do with how his dreams were filled with warm lips, soft sighs, and the lingering peach scent of Maya’s hair.
He rose and stripped his bed, folding the bedclothes neatly at the foot of his cot. It was another habit he’d picked up over the years of breaking camp. If he was still there when night fell, he’d remake the bed and start all over.
The warehouse that Nina’s sister, Ava, had helped them acquire through a shell corporation had a deep, narrow footprint and had been fully divided into two floors. They’d barely touched the top so far, except to clear out the animal skeletons and old mattresses, detritus left behind by squatters, both human and otherwise. On the ground floor, they were still sleeping in barracks-style cots while they put up walls.
Gray dressed and headed toward the front of the building. They were nearly finished framing up a dividing wall to separate Knox’s clinic from the rest of the warehouse. It would provide a safe space for the neighborhood doctor to see patients. Later, when the remaining Silver Devils had finished renovating the second floor into their living space, the rooms downstairs could be repurposed to expand the clinic.
It felt good to have a goal for once instead of a mission.
He picked up a hammer and got to work, letting the repetitive physical labor lull him into that narrow space between single-minded focus and zoning out. He’d spent many hours in that place, set up and waiting for the perfect moment to take a shot. It wasn’t a circumstance that allowed for distraction or active engagement, so Gray turned inward, letting his mind drift between the two in a soothingly hypnotic rhythm.
He finished the framing quickly, then frowned at the skeletal wall in front of him. Conall had special wiring to do for the security system he wanted to set up, and any further work Gray did might interfere with that.
Time to find another piece of busywork.
He headed to clean up. They might not have bedrooms yet, but the Silver Devils had spent enough years out in the field that they had all agreed on the first thing they wanted: a bathroom with proper showers. That was already finished, a beautiful tiled set of rooms with three separate showers and enough space to accommodate four men living under the same roof.
Gray lingered longer under the steaming water than he normally would have, but when he finished and dressed again, the digital clock Conall had set up to project high on one wall still only read 9:38.
With a sigh, he brewed two cups of coffee and headed across the street.
“Morning, Sam,” he greeted the old man sitting on his front stoop.
“Gray.” Sam had weathered dark skin, snow-white hair, and observant brown eyes framed by smile lines. His gaze sparked with humor, even as he faked a scowl and jerked his chin toward the Devils’ building. “Lot of hammering over there with the sun barely up. Some of us like to sleep.”
“Liar. You were out here before I started.” He handed over one of the mugs. “Extra strong, no sugar.”
Sam grumbled, but he took the coffee and savored a slow sip. “Someday you kids’ll tell me how you’ve always got the real shit.”
“Hell, that’s easy. We grow it out back,” Gray lied, then sat one step down from Sam and stretched out his legs. “Anything interesting happening this morning?”
“My knee’s aching something fierce.” He lifted the cup. “A bad storm’s blowing our way.”
“It’s September in Atlanta, Sam. Tell me something I don’t know.”
“You weren’t the only one up early.” This time he tilted his head toward the building where Nina and her crew lived. “Couple of folk from Little Acadiana were waiting when Maya opened the door this morning. Don’t see them outside their neighborhood that often.”
He didn’t ask how Sam had identified the visitors as displaced Cajuns. If the man had bothered to mention it, it was because he was certain, and Gray wasn’t about to waste his time asking. “Looking for help or trouble?”
“Help, I reckon. The young one, she looked scared. But the older one was plenty pissed off, so…”
“I’ll check in on her,” he promised. “Anything else?”
“Nothing important.” Sam cradled the coffee cup in two gnarled hands. “Tell Maya I wouldn’t mind her taking a look at that air conditioner she rigged up for me, if she gets a chance. It’s rattling.”
“You got it.” Gray rose. “Watch your six, old man.”
“I always do, kid. I always do.”
Dead bolts and other assorted locks edged the front door of the ladies’ warehouse. Only one was engaged at the moment: a state-of-the-art magnetic lock secured by a code. Conall had wanted to beef it up, but Nina had drawn the line at biometrics.
Her paranoia seemed justified to Gray. He barely trusted anything that gathered his identifying biological data. If he’d been grown in a lab full of clones, as Nina had?
No fucking way.
He punched in the eight-digit code, waited for the lock to disengage, and slipped inside.
The ladies’ warehouse was the same size as the one the Devils had taken over, but that was where the similarities ended. Instead of two full floors, this one had been sectioned off. The back third of the building served as their storage and general work area, while the front part had been renovated into their home.