Right Through Me (The Obsidian Files #1) (28 page)

“There was no way out,” he said. “I was in over my head. Things proceeded. They got our group organized, told us we’d be a beacon of hope for humanity. They didn’t tell us how much it would hurt. How many of us would die in the process.”

The haunted shadow in his eyes could not be faked. It chilled her.

“What did they . . . how . . .” Caro’s voice trailed off. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to hear the rest.

“Our odds of survival weren’t good to begin with,” he went on. “And if the experiments didn’t go the way they wanted, their plan was to plow us under and start over with fresh meat.”

Caro hugged herself against the inner cold. She wanted to say something, but couldn’t.

“We were ideal subjects. Intelligent, relatively healthy children who weren’t addicts, and about whom no one on earth gave a flying fuck. My crew all has the same sad story.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Not as many as there should be. I led a rebellion at the research facility when I found out that a bunch of us, including me, were scheduled for disposal. I had to move fast. Before they took out the trash.”

Caro bit her lip and waited for the rest. She couldn’t bring herself to ask any more questions.

“There were twenty-seven of us fighting on rebellion day,” Noah said. “It was bloody. High casualties on both sides. I can think of twelve more who died before that, during the trials. We lost seven in the battle. Twenty of us escaped. Four more died over the next few years. PTSD, depression, suicide. The rest of us are still hanging in there. New names, new lives. Lethal secrets.”

“And Mark?”

“Mark was one of the twenty,” Noah said. “He was in my group. One of the Eyes Guys. Didn’t stay with us long. He wasn’t a team player.”

“I bet he didn’t like taking orders from you,” she commented.

“No, he didn’t. I made rules, about not using our abilities to take advantage of people. Mark found that insulting. After what was done to him, he felt entitled to grab whatever he wanted as payback. But nothing could repay what they took from him. It was driving him out of his mind, even then. He’ll never be satisfied.”

“I see,” Caro said, though she didn’t. She felt numb, and stupid.

“We’ve followed his career,” Noah said. “He changed his name, of course, but so did we all. And he was never hard to find. We just follow the death and destruction.”

“You never turned him in?”

“How could we? He would retaliate, and I’m still responsible for fourteen other people. If Obsidian tracks us down, they’ll wipe us all out. We’re a threat. We could go public, expose them, I guess, but it’s not like the quality of our lives would be improved. Our existence would scare the living shit out of everyone.”

“So Mark is stealing Obsidian’s secrets,” she said. “To punish them.”

“Mark wants to punish the whole world,” Noah said. “And he will never stop.”

“Well,” Caro replied, after several seconds. “In spite of all this, you have a wonderful life. I don’t know how you pull it off. I’m huddled under a rock, eating ramen, and you’re making gazillions helping humanity with visionary biotech. You live in a lakefront mansion with art by Delaunay and Bosch on your wall, you drive a Porsche, you eat filet mignon for dinner and hand-peeled grapes for dessert. I am in awe.”

“I’ve been at it longer,” Noah said. “You learn some tricks.”

She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Is that so. Tell me more about these modifications. Are you, like, Superman?”

An ironic smile flashed across his face. “Hardly,” he said. “We have implants. We had to undergo brain stimulation and intense biofeedback, plus experimental gene splicing. Muscle fiber mods, intensive combat training, ultra-heightened reflexes. They wanted supersoldiers. Each of us has a specialty, according to our dominant abilities.”

“What’s yours?”

“Eyes,” he said simply.

She sighed. “Of course. Can you see in the dark?”

“Yes. I have hardware in my eyes, for far vision and night vision, and AVP uploaded into my brain. Augmented visual processing. I see a wider spectrum of frequencies, and I process visual information extremely fast. And react the same way.”

“Kill first, think second?” The question just came out.

“It’s happened,” he said, unfazed by the question. “Not lately. Took me years to learn to calm down the stress response.”

Caro got up from her chair and grabbed her coat from the back of the couch where Hannah had draped it. She shrugged it on. “That is just an amazing story, Noah, but I don’t want to hear any more. It’s time for me to go now.”

“No.” Noah moved between her and the door, blocking her. His huge body was a wall between her and and escape.

Her throat constricted. “You can’t force me to stay.”

“I don’t want to force you to do anything. But I can’t let an angry person with a grudge who knows my family’s secrets just go walking out my door.”

“Oh,” she said. “So, you’re a super-assassin, right? You don’t even need to outsource a hit. Shall I say my prayers? Is this my big moment?”

“I already told you.” His voice was stiff. “I would never hurt you.”

“You already did,” she said. “You’ve hurt me more in the past half hour than I ever have been hurt by anyone. Including Mark. Open the goddamn door, Noah. There’s no danger in letting me walk away. I won’t say anything about you. No one in their right mind would believe me if I did. You’re perfectly safe from me.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Caro,” he said. “Not happening.”

The look on his face made her want to scream. He felt completely justified in what he was doing, no matter how supposedly sorry he was to do it. It made her feel so alone.

A thought crept into the back of her mind, which was right where she had to keep it. It had to stay small, huddled up. If it got any larger, he would sense it. The way he sensed fucking everything. Always.

Sexual energy buzzed between them. She couldn’t stop it if she wanted to. Her body responded to him without her consent. That heat in his eyes did something to her that was light-years outside her conscious control. It made her frantic. Furious that he had so much power over her. Besides all the other powers, all his crushing advantages as an adversary, he had this, too.

Sex was the only weapon she had to turn back upon him, as alert as he was. If she could keep her thoughts small, and cold, and secret.

Sex might distract him for a crucial moment. If she could manage not to get totally swept away by it herself. A very big if.

She took a step closer. Shrugged the coat open. Shoulders back. Tits out.

“So what’s the plan for me, then?” She made her voice go low and husky. “A golden cage? A collar and leash? Is this going to be my life now? Will you keep me naked in your bedroom, ready to fulfil your every sexual whim?”

His eyes narrowed. “That’s a fast change of subject.”

She shrugged. “I suppose. You make me so angry. And even so, we always find ourselves . . . right here.” Another step brought her close enough to reach out and stroke the thickened bulge at the front of his jeans with her fingertip. “Every damn time.”

He shuddered but stood tall, a hot flush on his cheekbones. “Oh fuck.”

“Screwing me over really turns you on,” she said. “Look at that.”

“You too,” he shot back.

“You think?” Caro grabbed the hems of her layered T-shirts and pulled them up, baring her breasts and tight nipples. “Well, would you look at that. You’re so right.”

His eyes had that hot amber glow that made her crazy, but she controlled herself, sliding her hand into her deep coat pocket as she sidled closer. “If you’re not going to let me go, what do you propose to do with me? I’d love to hear the details.”

Noah’s body heat made sent a shivering ripple of excitement through her body, making her nipples tingle wildly.

“No,” he said unsteadily. “We’re not doing that now. You’re too angry at me.”

“That’s not going to change,” she told him. “But I’m in a crazy mood.”

“Caro.” His voice was strangled. “Anytime you want it, just take it.”

Caro kept her purpose cold and clear as her trembling fingers closed around the smooth cylinder in her pocket. “Not this time,” she said. “
You
take it.”

She whipped out the pepper spray and blasted it into his startled eyes. Then she grabbed one of the brass candlesticks from the table.

The sound he made was awful. A bellow of betrayal partly drowned out by her own screaming. She screamed with horror, and guilt, and anger, at having been driven to do something so fucking horrible to someone she loved.

Loved.
Yes. She did love him, goddamn him. She realized that fully the same instant that the brass candlestick connected with the side of his head.

She felt it through her own nerves as if she’d taken the blow herself.

Noah grunted at the impact, dropping to one knee, hands clamped over his eyes. He let out another roar that rattled her bones.
Caro scrambled away from him.

Everything was overbright, disjointed. The world through a shattered mirror.

The keys to the Porsche. She snatched them, stumbling and weaving through a smear of colors out the door. Something broke behind her. He was still bellowing.

She was crying so hard she could barely breathe. She dropped the key fob, had to fish for it in the wet grass. Once she was in the car, her legs couldn’t reach the pedals, and she lost precious seconds groping for the button that slid the seat forward, terrified that Noah would descend upon her in an avenging fury.

She hesitated before putting the car into drive, and groped in her pocket for the phone she’d kept for calls from Gareth. She turned it on. She couldn’t leave Noah like that, after hitting him on the head.

She got the information across to a methodical 911 operator, then turned the phone off and shoved it back into her secret pocket, the one she’d sewed way down in the seam. She’d toss it the next chance she got.

The paramedics would come to his rescue—while she sped away in the luxury car that she’d stolen from him. It was so fucked up. Tragic and twisted. But it wasn’t like she could go back and minister to him. He might actually feel justified in killing her after what she’d done to him.

At least the Porsche wasn’t a stick shift. She’d be doomed.

Still crying, she blundered through unfamiliar streets, constantly expecting sirens, strobe lights. When she finally made it home she left the car in a tow zone. Noah must have a GPS tag on it. She’d leave the keys in her apartment for him to find, along with a note of apology.

When she put the Porsche keys into her pocket, she felt the carved wooden wolf between her fingers. All she needed right now. A reminder of the one moment when he’d seemed real. She fished around in her big overstuffed pockets for the key to her apartment and found it as she ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

She unlocked her door, and went in, reaching for the light—

A hand clamped her throat, stopping her breath. A damp cloth reeking of chemicals pressed down hard over her nose and mouth. Someone else caught her wrists, crushing them.

She fought, frantically. The huge hand holding her wrists tightened, until the small bones and tendons ground together, crushed tight, and oh God, that
hurt . . .

Two shadows, in the gloom. One spoke, in a mocking tone, but she could hardly hear him over the roaring in her ears, her thumping heart.

“. . . Olund wants her, he can have her.”

Her lungs demanded air, forcing her to inhale the nasty stuff on the smothering cloth.

It plunged her right down into the dark.

Chapter 21

Noah couldn’t stop bellowing. He crashed against the wall, lurched away and thudded to his knees again.
He blinked away streaming tears, his body’s desperate effort to wash the chemicals out of the blistered whites of his eyes.

No longer human. Not even close. Not in this red haze, combat program raging, so far from his right mind he didn’t even know where he’d left it. He could feel it back there, struggling, but it couldn’t reach the control panel.

Arrogant shithead, thinking he was so on top of himself.

He put his fist through the top of the glass coffee table.

He hunched beside it, head dangling, panting. Hannah’s sandwiches were scattered on the glass shards below the metal frame. Fat red drops of blood plopped down from his fingertips. He stared around the room, dripping, panting. Seeking with his burning, swimming eyes. Finding nothing else to break.

Blood trickled down his shins from his lacerated knees. The smell maddened him with ugly associations. His friends at Midlands, the ones that didn’t make it. Sprawling in an ocean of blood. So many of them.

He staggered in the direction of the kitchen. The sink.
Yes.
That was what a normal human would do. Wash the wound, stanch the blood. Logical. Sequential.

But as soon as he made it into the kitchen, some random association made AVP rage sweep over him again. He forgot the sink, the blood, the logical sequential plan, and swept his arm over the kitchen counter. A big glass blender sailed high into the air in a slow, lazy arc . . .

It hit the brick wall. Chunks of glass rained down over the kitchen. He was peppered with small, stinging darts.

He hardly noticed. His eyes stung, burned. Fucking
hurt
. . .

He flung containers, flour, pasta, sugar, garlic, contents scattering across the floor, the counter. He was possessed by a demon, programmed to someone else’s specs, and he had to play their game or pay an unspeakable price.

I found it. I paid for it. And the price was very high.
Her words echoed in his mind.

He shoved his guilt aside. Sneaky bitch, flashing her tits at him, and he’d panted and wagged like a hopeful hound. Fury at his own stupidity made his arm sweep out at the knife block. The contact would have broken a normal man’s arm. Not his reinforced bones, not his super-toughened muscle fibers. The block hit the ceramic floor tiles, shattering a few into a spiderweb of cracks and fragments.

Knives slid out, skittering over the tiles, through glittering shards of glass and ceramic. Another sweep caught the big fruit bowl, piled high.