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To my surprise, he sounded wide awake when he answered—which told me he’d been up for a while. We’d dated long enough that I knew it took him an hour and a pot of coffee to not sound sleep-fuzzed.
“Hey, Marcus. I got a text from Kristi saying to meet her at NuQuesCor this morning. Will any Tribe people be there? I’d rather not go on my lonesome, if you know what I mean.”
“Dr. Nikas has been there all night, along with Tribe security.” In the background, a door opened and closed, followed by the sound of footsteps on tile.
A bit of my tension eased. “Gotcha. What about the people who usually work there?”
“We’re only taking over half of the third floor. NuQuesCor regularly conducts highly classified projects, so the employees are used to not asking questions.” Fatigue threaded through his voice, but it wasn’t physical—more likely his weariness of being a figurehead, of being responsible without actually being responsible. “And to smooth the feathers of the displaced workers,” he continued, “we’re sending them to a week-long conference in Puerto Rico.” He paused. “Hawaii was too expensive.”
I silently prayed a week would be enough. “That was your idea, right? The conference thing?” I couldn’t see Pierce giving a crap about smoothing feathers.
“Sure was,” he said, tone a bit brighter. Another door opened, followed by a rising thwup-thwup-thwup sound. “Sorry, Angel,” Marcus said, raising his voice over the noise. “I’m headed to NuQuesCor right now. I’ll see you soon.” The thwup-thwup grew louder and faster, then he disconnected.
Damn, he got to ride in a helicopter. Too bad that little perk couldn’t make being Tribe head worth it.
I thumbed in a reply to Kristi’s text:
Her reply came as I pulled myself out of bed.
I could practically hear her long-suffering sigh. Nice guilt trip, bitch. And it worked, which was even more annoying. Grumbling curses, I texted Allen.
Hopefully, he’d read into that and understand what I meant.
Messy. Two dead shamblers. Damn it.
I returned to the Kristi convo.
Ugh. I liked her a whole lot more when she was her normal, nasty self.
I shuffled to the kitchen, surprised to see my dad flopped on the sofa watching the morning news.
He gave me a bright smile. “Morning, baby. There’s fresh coffee in the kitchen.”
My eyes narrowed as I took in his bloodshot eyes and haggard features—as well as the controller and headset resting at the far end of the couch. “Did you stay up all night playing Swords and Swagger?”
“Um.” He shifted. “Yeah. Y’got me. I heard you talkin’ on the phone, so I changed it to the TV real quick.”
My mouth twitched as I poured a cup of coffee. “And you might’ve gotten away with it except for one tiny detail.”
Dad heaved a sigh. “I ain’t never awake this early.”
“Uh huh. You ain’t never awake this early.” I added cream and sugar, stirred. “Bad guys get caught when they act out of character. But you made coffee, and that’s all that matters for now.”
He snorted. “You hang around cops too much. I can’t get away with shit around you no more. Not that I meant to stay up ’til the crack of dawn. See, I went online last night and found a discussion forum all about Swords and Swagger. Learnt how to make a character. So I created me a guy barbarian and then had to level him up so I could do the cool shit.”
“Had to.” I shook my head. “I don’t know which is weirder: you playing a video game all damn night or that you joined an online forum.”
Dad chortled and went back to watching the news. But my amusement faded as I rummaged in the pantry for something more nutritious than Pop-Tarts. Kristi Charish was being nice and pleasant. That was definitely out of character.
“Goddammit!” my dad roared, startling me. “Fuck you, you fucking bitch!”
“What the hell, Dad? What’d I do?” I grabbed a towel to wipe up the coffee that had sloshed from my mug.
“Not you, Angelkins. Come see this goddamn shit! It’s her! That piece of shit fuckstain cunt!”
I left the spilled coffee where it was. Dad only ever used the c-word for one person.
And there she was on TV. Lovely, perfectly stylish, and . . . blonde? She’d always been auburn before. I checked the crawl at the bottom of the screen to make sure it was really her. Sure enough, it read “Dr. Kristi Charish—noted neurobiologist.” Guess she wanted to make a whole new start, now that she was a bigshot at Saberton. What sucked the most was that she looked fucking amazing with blonde hair. Fuck her. I was hands down the better blonde.
