traced her finger along a stain in the table. “Am I the only one waiting for Zoey to tell you what to do about him? I know she’s been gone for a long time, but sitting here with you again … It feels like we’re off-balance.”
“I know what Zoey would say.” Nina could hear her voice—so like hers and Ava’s, but lighter somehow. Brighter. “I have to forgive him. For my own sake, not his.”
“Can you?”
“I’m not angry with him.” Her voice broke on a fresh wave of tears. “I’m just sad.”
Ava folded her into a hug, and the years melted away. She was fifteen years old again, sobbing out her pain and frustrations and rage in the protective circle of her sisters’ arms.
It felt … like home. Not the tears, but the comfort. It didn’t matter that all Ava could do was murmur nonsense and stroke her hair. She was there, and it was enough.
MAYA
Maya took her new stun gun to the meeting.
It wasn’t like she thought she was walking into a trap. The Silver Devils were low-grade backstabbing jackasses, granted, but they hadn’t seemed like extra-strength evil. And you’d have to be extra-strength evil to fuck over someone who’d just graciously saved your not-entirely-deserving asses.
If she’d suspected a trap, she would have brought Dani, at least, as backup. But when Conall’s message had popped up on her tablet that morning, something had stirred in her. A terrifying weakness.
Maya kind of missed him. And that made Conall dangerous.
It had been a long time since she’d been around someone else who understood the unique mindfuck of being raised as a petted and prized TechCorps genius. Conall’s training as an elite computer specialist had been different from hers as a data courier, but there was an impossible-to-explain camaraderie between kids who’d breathed that rarefied air.
He understood the way you could hate the TechCorps to the depths of your being and still not be able to banish the nostalgia. The bright, shiny memories, forever edged with guilt, of excitedly receiving expensive gifts to celebrate every achievement. Of having unlimited access to chefs and personal shoppers. Clothes, movies, video games, new gadgets … They’d grown up in the most fantastical of gilded cages, and it had taken them years to fully feel the bars.
So when Conall asked her for a private meeting, Maya showed up.
At a place she’d chosen. With a stun gun.
The table was outside a little grocer that served sandwiches and sweet tea for lunch. Maya bypassed both for a huge slice of fresh peach pie, which she took to her seat under a tattered umbrella. It had a perfect view of Clem’s bar across the street, and she’d already popped in to let Clem know what was going down.
Nina might still kick her ass later, but she wouldn’t be able to say Maya hadn’t taken precautions.
A hand fell on her shoulder, and Maya tightened her grip on her fork as she twisted. She had closed her other hand around her stun gun before her gaze followed the muscular arm up to an impossibly hard shoulder and then a pair of brooding, Gothic hero eyes.
Her heart jumped into her throat. Part of her shoulder was bared by the wide strap of her tank top, and his fingers burned on her skin. She knew he was a liar, and probably a dead man walking to boot, and his touch still burned. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people,” she told Gray stiffly. “That’s a good way to get a fork in the face.”
“Right, how could I forget?” He didn’t withdraw his hand so much as it slipped away as he moved around the table to the seat across from hers. “You and your lethal utensils.”
“Improvised weaponry.” Conall slid into the third chair. “Nothing but respect for that.”
“Uh-huh.” After a moment, Maya released the stun gun and resumed eating her pie. “So. You’re still alive.”
“For the moment.”
“And still in Atlanta.”
“For the moment.”
Maya scrunched up her nose at him. “If I were in your boots, I’d be halfway to the Mississippi by now.”
“That’s kind of why we’re here.” Conall pulled a compact data pad from his pocket and slid it across the table.
Maya drew it closer and tapped the screen to activate it. The RLOC logo stared back at her, along with a set of vault schematics.
It was her goddamn wheelbarrow full of money.
“I unlocked it,” Conall said nervously, “and stripped the encryption. You should probably lock it to your own biometrics. It’s not exactly