He was aware of her jogging behind him as he ran to the door and pushed it up. The van had been backed up right against it. "In," he ordered, pulling open the vehicle's back doors. As she scrambled inside the seatless interior, he closed up the warehouse and followed, pulling the van doors shut behind him. They were moving an instant later.
"Where are we heading?" he asked, recognizing the driver's scent as that of Rina, Kit's sister and one of the younger DarkRiver soldiers.
"Out to the Presidio. Jamie's gonna meet us there with a car for you. Okay?"
"Works." He propped his back against the side wall of the van, aware of Ashaya attempting to do the same across from him. Stretching out his legs, he braced his feet on either side of her. She didn't hesitate to put her hands on him. "You couldn't find something with better suspension?" Not that he minded Shaya's touch, but his teeth were about to rattle out of his head.
"Oh, hold on." A few mechanical groans, the slight jolt of wheels retracting, and then the ride smoothed out. "I turned on the hover-drive. Barker told me this vehicle's not really meant to be run on wheels. Sorry, forgot." A sheepish sound.
"You're doing fine." Rina was under his direct command, and now that she'd figured out he was immune to her sensual nature, she was turning into a good protector for the pack. If the girl learned to control her quick-fire temper, she'd become one of the best. He switched his attention to Ashaya, keeping his legs where they were. "Better?"
She nodded, looked toward the front, then shook her head. Strangely, he understood. She would tell him her secrets but not with a witness. He'd accept that. But he'd keep nothing from his packmates that they needed to know - Ashaya was smart enough to have figured that out.
"Did you troll the message boards like I asked?" he said to Rina, keeping his tone low because changeling hearing was acute in close quarters.
"Yeah. Hold on." Rina made a sharp turn. "Found out something you might be interested in - you know how we thought there had to be backup root servers since the Internet was only down for thirty seconds?"
"Yeah?"
"Word is there's a network of paranoid computer hackers who've made it their business to set up secret fallback servers all around the world."
Dorian considered that. "Paranoia isn't always a bad thing."
"So says a computer geek," Rina teased. "Anyway, Ashaya's broadcast is doing the rounds - we uploaded a perfect version to make sure. Council seems to have given up trying to keep it under wraps."
"Then I was a success," Ashaya said.
Rina made a noise in the front. "I dunno. A lot of the posters are questioning whether you're for real or just a publicity hound. Then there are the ones who accuse you of being a vindictive bitch because you were taken off a multimillion-dollar research project in favor of another scientist."
"So" - Ashaya's eyes filled with a quiet intensity - "since they weren't able to stop the broadcast, they're going to try to discredit me."
"You knew that would happen." Dorian watched her, examined her, knowing he'd never have a better opportunity. She was beautiful, something her intense intelligence had a tendency to overshadow. And beautiful in a very feminine way. Yet there was something missing - the spark that turned beauty into the truly extraordinary.
He knew what that spark was, of course, knew it was missing because he'd seen it light her up from within bare minutes ago.
Emotion.
Heart.
Soul.
Ashaya had retreated, rebuilding her shields as she went. She'd said it was necessary but he wasn't convinced. He didn't want to be convinced. Because the woman who'd told him to get unused to ordering her around, hell, she was just about perfect.
"You ask me, you have to do another broadcast pretty soon," Rina said, breaking into his thoughts. "Right now it looks like you've cut and run, and that's not exactly good for your image."
"I'm not particularly concerned about my image."
Dorian shook his head. "You might not be, but it's what's going to keep you alive."
"My becoming infamous hasn't kept them from hunting me."
"It's given them pause." He considered what Zie Zen had said. "It's probably why you're not on the kill-on-sight list right now."
"Possible. But more likely, they want access to the data I have. Ming is perfectly capable of siphoning it out of my mind and leaving me an empty husk."
Dorian looked at her face, her slender shoulders, and knew she had the strength to carry this burden. "You'll beat him. You made a stand when it would've been easier to run. That takes guts."
"You know why I didn't run." Iliana had run. She'd returned home in a body bag.