She darted a quick glance at me as she concentrated on the pot she stirred. “I don’t want to drive alone.”
“Why would you drive? It’s three days from Vancouver to Whitehorse.”
She shrugged and avoided my eyes. “I might need to move my stuff out.” Her door sounded and she looked up suddenly. “Talk to you later, Sis,” she said as she reached over and shut off the phone before I could respond.
What the hell was that? I thought about calling her right back, but knew she’d send me straight to voicemail. I missed her. I missed my whole family.
But when you screw it up, you need to suck it up, Buttercup.
I sighed and got up to fix myself one of Oliver’s steaks, then settled in to learn whatever else I could find on the internet about Oliver Curran.
5
Oliver
“Show me your kitchen and I’ll show you your soul.”
– Oliver
* * *
Darius Masoud was stupidly good-looking. He also had the kind of manners that Europeans and old-money people had—like they automatically knew which fork to use without getting a raised eyebrow from whichever parent might have been home.
“Good morning, Mr. Curran.” His breath fogged the frigid morning air, and I shivered in my jeans, sweater, and bare feet.
“Thanks for coming,” I said with a friendly smile, stepping back from my open door. “And it’s Oliver.”
He ignored the smile and looked pointedly up at the camera. “That records to a hard drive, I presume?”
I nodded. “The system came with the place when I bought it.”
He followed me into the living room, which was also my home office. I didn’t see the point in hiding my work from myself, since I lived alone and pretty much worked all the time anyway. My desk faced the windows to the back patio, and bookshelves filled the walls behind it. I’d turned the dining room into a TV lounge, and I slept upstairs in a room that took up the whole floor. I bought the place for its kitchen, which was huge and had been updated right before I moved in, but the bedroom with its big skylight was a bonus.
“Nice place,” Darius said, his eyes going straight to the bookshelves. “Have you lived here long?”
“I moved in a couple of months ago. I used to work with the guy I bought it from. He put in most of the security system. You want coffee?” I asked, as I went into the kitchen to refill my own cup.
“No, thank you,” he said.
Everything about Darius Masoud seemed precise and automatic, like he hadn’t even bothered to check in with himself to see if he actually wanted that cup of coffee before declining it. My impression that he would make a decent android was confirmed with his next words. “I’m going to suggest, Mr. Curran, that you remove the old system entirely.”
I sighed. “It’s Oliver.” I tried the smile again to soften my tone. It had been a rough night of programming until I was too tired to keep my eyes open, and then I’d slept just enough to keep from going totally nuts. In other words, the usual.
He gave me a direct look. “Physical security is remarkably similar to cybersecurity,” he said. “Unless you build your own system from the ground up, you have to assume someone left a back door open.” And then he smiled, and the android became a stupidly good-looking human again. “And it is my strong recommendation that you close the back door and build your security from scratch.”
I sighed and rubbed my jaw with the hand that wasn’t holding coffee. “Right,” I finally said. “How long will that take?”
“A day to remove the existing system. For an installation estimate, I need to see the whole place.”
I gestured around. “Help yourself. Bedroom’s upstairs. I’m going to stay down here, drink my coffee, and attempt consciousness. It’s not a guarantee until I’m about three cups in.”
He smiled. “I’ll make a note of my questions,” he said as he pulled a little Field Notes book out of his pocket. The android was an analog note-taker. Classic.
Darius wandered around the main floor as I settled in at my desk. He wasn’t wrong about cybersecurity, and therefore, security in general, which was annoying. I had state-of-the-art encryption on every computing device I used, from my phone to the data drives where I stored my work. The cloud was not an option, so everything was on drives, and it was hardware someone clearly wanted. I just couldn’t believe they’d actually sent someone to get it.
The doorbell sounded, and I glanced at the front door camera. A pretty, blonde white woman with long, curly hair stood outside. She wore motorcycle leathers and carried a helmet under one arm. I stood up just as Darius popped his head back into the room.
“Stunning blonde in leathers?”
I grinned. “Yeah. She with you?”
His answering smile was proud. “She is. Mind if I let her in? She’s a B and E specialist and can identify the weaknesses in nearly any system she encounters.”
I waved my hand in the direction of the door. “I’ll make more coffee.”
I dropped a capsule into my machine and put a clean cup underneath as I heard the distinct sound of a kiss before Darius showed the blonde in.
“Anna, this is Oliver Curran. Oliver, Anna Collins Masoud.”
She held her hand out in a way that reminded me of how men greet each other. “Good to meet you.”
“You too,” I said with a smile. “How do you take your coffee?”
She looked past me as the coffee maker shut off. “Black, please.”
I handed her the mug and raised an eyebrow at Darius. “Change your mind?”
He shook his head, and Anna answered for him. “He’s a control freak. He decides a thing and nothing except a T-rex suit can change his mind.”
I spluttered a laugh and glanced at Darius, whose expression of fond pride hadn’t shifted one bit. Then I raised my mug to Anna in a salute. “Here’s to T-rex suits and five-cup days.” I was pretty much an equal-opportunity flirt—guys, girls, kids, dogs—it didn’t matter. Everyone, especially pretty blondes, got the smile and friendly chatter. Well, almost everyone. That Dallas chick was a piece of work and inspired the opposite of flirting from me.
“Cheers,” Anna said with a grin, obviously unable to read my thoughts about her colleague. Anna turned to Darius. “Give me the tour and let’s figure out how to break in.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That’s what you meant by ‘B and E’? Break and enter?”
“Of course,” Darius said.
“Of course.” I watched the pair of them leave, and wondered if Quinn Sullivan had a radar for beautiful people. These two looked like they’d stepped out of the pages of a European fashion magazine spread, except in my imagination, she was the gorgeous thief and he was the handsome insurance investigator sent to track her down. Of course, Quinn was ridiculously good-looking himself, Kendra at the desk had been lovely, the model-tall brunette was a knockout, and even Dallas …
I turned on my computer and navigated to the security footage from my front door. I entered the time code from the Cipher agent’s visit the night before when she’d handed me my groceries and walked away. She was surly, all business, and nothing about her was even friendly, which might have been why I hadn’t paid real attention to her appearance. My first impression had just been about identification—she wasn’t tall or short, and she could have been one of about ten different ethnicities, but I was leaning toward Indigenous North American. I studied the video and tried to focus on finding the one thing that set her apart, but nothing stood out about her clothes or her features. She had dark hair, dark eyes, wore dark-colored clothes, and seemed about my age—late-twenties more or less. The only thing different about her from every other person who hunched down in their coat against the wind was that she didn’t. She didn’t hunch, or brace herself, or anything else that said she was affected by the cold. And once I’d seen that, I noticed everything about how she moved. And that’s when I freaked out.