Chapter 9
Aiden leaned down to his toes, body moving with ease as he stretched, placing his palms flat on the floor. He held the position until a pleasant burn warmed his muscles. Then he smoothly flowed into the next pose, reaching high above his head, balancing on one foot then rising up onto his toes. Breathing out, he went into a back bend, pressing up into the arch then rolling through a back flip to land on his feet. From there his movements gained speed, turning into a combination of dance poses and martial arts stances, gradually building to shadow strikes and kicks.
Elation filled Aiden as he swept across the floor. He loved to dance and he loved to fight. Warm ups like this, where he combined his two loves, always got his heart pumping and the blood flowing in the best way. And they were a perfect distraction to get his mind off things for a while. Things that he was determinednotto think about—like last night’s fight and back alley make out session with Zielinski.
He would have kept going until he reached that stage where the sweat dripped and his muscles ached, but it was nearly time to go out for the night.
Slowing his pace, Aiden transitioned to cool down stretches, bringing his heart rate and breathing down as well. Once he finished, he grabbed the towel off the barre to mop the sweat from his face. After a quick shower, he turned on the TV, switching to a local news channel to listen to while he geared up. As he was running the brush through his hair in preparation to braid it, a familiar PSA began to play. Arial shots of the Pruitt golden tower and grounds and a montage of smiling Pruitt employees filled the screen. Anderson Pruitt’s voice rose over the obnoxiously triumphant music.
I’m glad I moved Pruitt Incorporated to St. Louis. And my artificial intelligence bots are here to protect not only my investment, but also your investment in your future by keeping the city safe for us all.The image switched to show a trio of P-Bots standing shoulder to shoulder, sunlight gleaming off their metal frames. A small child walked up to them, giving the first bot a yellow daisy. The robot accepted the flower, and a spot of purple light twinkled in the thing’s visor, as if it were feeling some sort of emotion at the gift.
Aiden rolled his eyes. “Give me a break,” he muttered. Those things weren’t the friendly, neighborhood safety patrol Pruitt presented them as in his little vignettes. Getting caught by them wasn’t the same as getting caught by the regular police—which wasn’t exactly a treat itself. If a police officer brought you in for breaking the law, you’d at least get your day in court. Not so if a P-Bot brought you in. To start with, it didn’t take you to a police station. It took you to the detention center on the grounds of the massive Pruitt complex. From there, you might be released, if your crime was small enough and you had someone who knew where you’d been taken and could navigate through the convoluted Pruitt channels to get you out. If not...you’d disappear for a while. No one phone call, no visitors, no court date. You’d be released after the amount of time they assigned to your transgression based on the undisclosed code the Pruitt complex used.
Aiden knew a few people who had been through the Pruitt system. And not a single one of them would speak of what they’d experienced there. Most simply refused to discuss it. Others would have a blank expression take over their face before they blinked and changed the subject. It was eerie. Aiden half-believed they’d had their minds wiped of their experience in Pruitt Detention or maybe were chipped with a program that wouldn’t let them speak about it. Thankfully, he didn’t know any of the extremely unlucky few who were detained by Pruitt Inc. and never seen again.
It was a messed up arrangement, essentially allowing Pruitt to function as a private criminal justice system in the city of St. Louis. But the freedom to do as he pleased had been part of the stipulations set down by Pruitt before he agreed to relocate his company. The mayor had taken one look at the money the company would bring to the aging city on the river and lobbied the council hard until all motions for Pruitt Inc. had passed. It was obvious that the mayor had received personal gains as well, since he now drove a sleek black Mercedes on the weekdays and tooled around town on Sundays in a shiny red Corvette. He didn’t even try to hide his Pruitt cash. But the people in power were happy and apparently that was all that mattered. The rest of the citizens were merely serfs beneath Pruitt’s feet.
His workout finished, and thoughts of last night completely pushed aside by his annoyance with Pruitt, Aiden headed down to the kitchen to get something to eat. His ACG watched beeped with a message when he reached the bottom of the stairs.
Stardust. Please come in to HQ before your patrol this evening.
Damn, that sounded ominous. After a quick pause to hit the button that sent an affirmative reply, Aiden continued on into the kitchen. He had a feeling he knew what that specific request was about.
∞ ∞ ∞
Later that evening, Aiden walked into the firehouse, feeling as if he’d been called into the principal’s office. A feeling he was well acquainted with from his school days. The first thing he noticed was Mike sitting in one of the chairs in front of the command center. Neither of them spoke, but their eyes met and locked in a silent moment that expressed a thousand thoughts. Or maybe not a thousand thoughts. Maybe one thought on repeat a thousand times.
We kissed. We kissed. We kissed. We kissed. We kissed...
He’d kissed that stiff, uptight soldier.
What the hell had he’d been thinking? The answer was he hadn’t been thinking. He’d got an eyeful of Zielinski beneath him with his face flushed and eyes full of fire and he’d slammed their lips together as if kissing him while the thrill of a fight hummed in his blood was as natural as breathing. And his partner had responded to each kiss, desperate and hungry, as if he’d been starving for a taste of Aiden’s lips. Touched him as though he’d been dying to get his hands on his skin. Why? Zielinski had never looked at him with so much as a hint of attraction, so where had that white-hot passion come from?
“You’re in trouble,” Caleb called out in a sing-song voice.
Aiden snapped out of his musings to look at their tech genius. “What?”
“Trouble. You.” Caleb pointed the half un-wrapped Sugar Daddy in his hand at Strong’s office door, just as Strong yanked it open and strode out, his dark eyebrows drawn together in fury.
“Did I or did I not ask you to contact the team before taking action if the situation escalated?”
“You did,” Stardust warily confirmed.
“Then why did you engage with the Pruitt bots last night?”
Aiden hesitated, considering the best answer to give. He had a feeling thatthey started itwouldn’t be an acceptable response. Strong plowed on before he came up with anything to say in his defense.
“We donotwant to set ourselves up as being against the Pruitt private police force.”
Aiden looked at their director in disbelief. “You can’t actually think those things are on the side of the people.”
“Not at all. But we have to be cognizant of the way the city perceives us. As individuals we’re there to help when the need arises. It’s all well and good and no one has a problem with it. Now that we’re a team—we are much stronger. And some people might see that as a threat. St. Louis doesn’t have an official charter for heroes—yet. You know Pruitt has a lot of influence here. If we get on the wrong side of him and his company, we could end up under a city regulation board which would no doubt have Pruitt oversight. Or, we could be forced to disband our team or kicked out of the city all together.”
Aiden deflated as Strong named all the things that could go wrong as a result of his actions. “I didn’t think of that. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the bots showed up at the job of one of the mugging victims last night.”
“You’re probably right. But at this stage I didn’t want the humansbehindthe bots to know that we’re working on this. The plan was to lay low while we figure out who is involved and what their ultimate goal is. Now, we’ll be on their radar. You risked more than you realize jumping in and facing off against them.”
“Damnit, I’m sorry.” Aiden said with true remorse. He didn’t normally reflect on his past decisions. What was done was done. But Strong had raised several valid points that had him regretting his characteristic impulsiveness. As Aiden stood there with guilt rolling in his stomach, footsteps sounded behind him. Zielinski stepped up to stand at his side.
