Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
She doesn’t flinch. “Yes.”
“So, which one am I?”
“Both.” Her hand comes up, fingers brushing my jaw. The touch is feather-light but I feel it everywhere. “You’re both. You have darkness in your light and light in your darkness. That’s the duality of being alive in this world. That’s what makes you human.”
Human.
The word echoes in my skull, rattling around like a stone in an empty room.
You may be human, but you have no humanity. You’re a weapon. You’re a thing they built in a lab and programmed to follow orders and the only reason you think you have feelings is because they wanted you to think that.
“Stop,” I groan, my eyes pinching shut, but I don’t know if I’m talking to her or to the voice. “Please, just stop.”
Her hand falls away.
We stand there in the space between the bed and the window, neither of us moving, neither of us speaking. The sound of our breath fills the room, I can hear her heart beating so fast, like she’s afraid, or maybe that’s my own heart because I’m afraid too.
Then I hear something outside her door, the elevator opening somewhere down the hall. Followed by footsteps getting closer and closer. Mia is frowning at me, unable to hear what I hear, unable to know that someone is coming.
There’s a knock at the door.
Mia goes still.
I nod at her as if to say, you better answer that.
Mia crosses to the door and checks the peephole, while I stand back to the side and out of direct view.
All the color drains from her face and I already know who it is.
“It’s Cal,” she whispers.
Despite somehow knowing—smelling testosterone and his Armani cologne from the other side of the door, hearing his steady heartbeat—his name detonates in my chest like a grenade.
He came back. He came back to her.
“Open it,” I say. My voice doesn’t sound like mine anymore. It isn’t mine anymore.
Mia doesn’t move, stares at me with those big eyes of hers. She shakes her head.
“Open the door, Mia,” I say quietly. “Or I will.”
Seconds pass. He knocks again.
I make a slight movement for the door but she puts her hand on the handle and quickly opens it.
Cal stands in the hallway, a small jewelry box of all fucking things in his hand. His eyes find Mia first—relief flooding his features, then confusion at her expression—and then they slide past her to me.
The relief vanishes.
“Cal, what are you doing back here?” Mia asks, her voice steady despite her racing heartbeat.
“Uh sorry, I needed to give you these, uh…” he says, holding out the box, his eyes darting back and forth between me and Mia.
Before Mia can say anything, I cross the room and snatch the jewelry box from his hands and open them.
It’s a pair of earrings.
And just like that, something inside me lurches, rushing out cold and black, snaking over my entire body from the inside out until I can’t hear straight, can’t see straight, can’t think straight. All I feel is hate. All I feel is angry.
All I know is that I must do what I am told to do.
That box inside me has finally been opened.
CHAPTER 40
MIA
I know the exact moment Nate leaves his body.
One second, he’s standing there holding Cal’s jewelry box, which hold my new comms in it, his jaw tight, his eyes blazing with that jealous fury I’ve been trying to talk him down from. And then something changes. The muscles in his face go slack. The light behind his eyes dims and then winks out entirely, like someone blew out a candle.
What’s left isn’t Nate.
What’s left is smiling.
My whole body goes numb.
“You should go,” I say to Cal, my voice coming out strange and thin. “Right now. You need to leave.”
Cal doesn’t move. He’s watching Nate with the focused stillness of a man who’s walked into an ambush and knows it. His hand drifts toward his hip, toward the weapon I know he keeps holstered under his jacket.
“Mia,” he says carefully, “step away from him.”
“Cal, just go. Please.”
“I’m not leaving you here with—”
Nate laughs, the sound cold, bitter and slightly unhinged. “With who? America’s savior? Its golden boy? Don’t you know who I am? I’m the safest person on the planet, Cal.”
He sets the jewelry box down on the dresser with exaggerated care, his movements slow and deliberate, and when he turns back to face us his smile has widened into something that makes the numbness take hold in my chest, freezing my heart in place.
“Cal,” he says, tasting the name. “The colleague. The friend.” His head tilts to one side, birdlike and predatory, like a hawk. “The one who’s in love with her.”
Swiftly, Cal draws his gun, has it pointed at Nate.
“Don’t move.” His voice is steady, professional, but I can see the sweat beading at his hairline. He knows what Nate is. He’s read the files. He knows a 9mm won’t stop him, knows that nothing short of a direct shot to the brainstem might slow him down, and even then it’s not a guarantee. But right now, Vanguard is not in his suit and doesn’t have special protection and I know Cal is willing to take those odds.