slipped the memento into his pocket. His dog tags went onto the counterfeit body, to melt into whatever was left by the fire and give the TechCorps the death they so heartily craved.
Then he turned his back on the whole mess of it and held out his hand to Nina. “Are you ready?”
Smiling, she slipped her hand into his. “Let’s go home.”
* * *
TECHCORPS PROPRIETARY DATA, L2 SECURITY CLEARANCE
66–615’s tracker went inactive at 0500 hours, followed shortly by 66–793, 66–942, and TE–815.
By all appearances, the Silver Devils have gone AWOL.
They must be either contained or destroyed.
Internal Memo, July 2086
* * *
THIRTY-FOUR
Nina’s plan worked smoothly—maybe too smoothly. It barely felt real as they stood on her roof and watched the West End warehouse explode, killing Captain Garrett Knox and what remained of his Silver Devils.
They toasted with champagne—which Ava pointedly explained failed to meet the qualifications for real champagne, as it had not been imported from France—and took the celebrations inside. To their new home.
Instead of two crews, now they had one. One crew that laughed and drank and groaned in mock horror when Nina grabbed Knox by the back of the shirt and hauled him up the stairs. He followed her to her bedroom trailed by joking pleas to get her room thoroughly soundproofed, and then he fell into bed and into her until they were both too exhausted to move.
Something woke him just before dawn.
Nina’s body was a warm weight against his side. Her lips were curved in a soft smile free of lingering sadness. He added that to his mental list of things to do—keep sadness firmly away from Nina at all times.
Her steady breathing didn’t falter as he slipped from her bed and pulled on his jeans. Out on the landing, he lingered in the shadows, scanning the remnants of the night’s celebrations—empty beer bottles and bowls of snacks, an upended deck of cards, and a knife plunged into the table from Rafe and Dani’s game of chicken.
That last one had almost ended in bloodshed, but both participants had given every indication of enjoying the hell out of it.
Awareness pricked up his spine, and Knox shifted deeper into the shadows. A moment later, he was rewarded with movement below.
Ava.
She was dressed in her usual black, with a bag swung across her shoulder. Her heeled boots were somehow soundless as she stopped at the kitchen counter and slipped several packages from her bag. She spoke without turning her head, her soft words drifting up to him. “Are you going to wake her?”
No point to lurking in the shadows, then. Knox walked down the stairs and crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you really going to leave without telling her good-bye?”
Ava shifted the box she’d left on the counter until it was perfectly straight. “She’d ask me to stay, and I’d have to disappoint her. This is easier on both of us.”
“If you say so.”
She stiffened and turned to face Knox. Rationally, he knew that Nina shared those same dramatic cheekbones, the dark brown eyes, the full lips—but she looked nothing like the woman in front of him. And it was more than just the way Ava used makeup to accentuate the sharp angles of her face and frame her eyes with smoky shadows.
All of Nina’s warmth was missing from Ava. There was none of the joy, the ready smiles and teasing affection, none of the things that made Nina who she was. This hard, brittle woman with pain shadowing her eyes was a stranger.
Maybe his pity showed, because her lips pressed tightly together. “I assume you realize this celebration tonight was premature. The Protectorate may have snapped up the bait, but it will take weeks for them to fully process that scene. My sister is inarguably brilliant, but there are still a thousand things that could go wrong. And even if it works flawlessly, your life is over. You can never be Captain Garrett Knox again.”
“No, I can be myself.” They all could. The Silver Devils finally had a chance to become whoever they might have been if circumstances and need hadn’t brought them to the Protectorate. To start fresh. There would always be risk—the danger of discovery, the uncertain stability of their implants, the daily insecurities that came along with living in a place where the strong preyed on the weak …
But they were strong. They could be protectors instead of predators. Like Nina.
And that was the secret he was beginning to understand about her. It