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Uh, oh. “Is something happening with Emma?” Raul asked, without thinking.
“Something wrong with Riley?” Pierce asked.
“Emma,” Hope and Felicity said at the same time. Raul went behind Hope to look at the monitor full on. All he saw were streaming numbers, rippling by so fast there was no hope of catching on to even one of them. Like the Matrix only horizontal.
“What am I looking at?” he asked the air. God knows the monitor wasn’t helping.
“Trouble,” Felicity said, looking somber. Felicity knew trouble. Her father, a Russian Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist who defected with his pregnant wife, had had his family placed in the Witness Protection Program. Felicity had been brought up knowing her story was a lie without knowing what the truth was. By the time she came of age, she’d had three names. Felicity twisted her head to look at Raul. “Bad trouble.”
Raul knew trouble, too. Something crackled at the nape of his neck, his own personal and infallible trouble detector. It had never failed him yet.
The back of his neck had nearly exploded the day the new commander had been introduced to his team. Commander Morris Buchanan had come highly recommended, with medals up his ass, but Raul had looked into those bright blue eyes and seen a stone-cold killer and that feeling of bad juju just crackled along his neck.
He kept his voice even with effort. “What kind of trouble?” he asked.
Felicity’s blonde eyebrows drew together. She dropped her hand to caress her belly where two Metal mini-mes were growing. “I … I don’t really know. Hope?”
This was not good. Felicity was super smart. If there was something bad happening that she couldn’t figure out, Emma was in deep shit.
Hope shook her head, frowning. She knew trouble, too. She’d only found out not too long ago that her whole life had been a lie and that her grandfather had had her mother killed. Like Felicity, Hope didn’t have many illusions about the world.
“Emma caught something, but we can’t tell what it is, exactly. Sort of like looking at a black hole and not seeing it, even though you can tell its presence by the gravitational pull.”
“Like that.” Felicity nodded, narrowed her eyes and moved her head closer to her monitor. “Only weirder.”
“What’s weird?” The two women jumped at the deep voice behind them. Felicity’s husband, Metal. He lay a gentle hand on his wife’s shoulder. Felicity had had a very rough start to her pregnancy, spending more time barfing than eating, and Metal had been very, very worried. Had aged about ten years, in fact. Felicity was better now and hadn’t barfed for a couple of days. Metal checked her work schedule and didn’t let her work more than four hours, all in the morning, which is what the ob gyn had said. Metal followed the doctor’s instructions closely and hid her laptop at home during what he called her downtime.
Felicity could whine that she only had ‘one thing’ to finish, but he didn’t care. He loved Felicity and was putty in her hands, but this was the one thing he was being a hardass about. Her safety.
Felicity smiled at the screen without moving her head. “Hi, darling. We’re trying to solve a puzzle that Emma threw our way.”
Metal bent to kiss the top of her head, took her gently by the shoulders and lifted her out of her chair.
“But Metal –”
“Nope,” he said. “The doctor said you can work four hours in the morning. And if everything goes well, next week you can work a few hours in the afternoon. It’s not next week yet.”
“But Emma needs –”
“Hope can take care of it. Hope’s really good.” Huh. That was crafty. Everyone knew Hope was good. Now, if Felicity insisted on staying, it would look like she thought Hope couldn’t deal with the issue on her own. “She can take care of it.”
Hope gave him a two fingered salute off her forehead. “Hope will indeed take care of it,” she confirmed.
Felicity touched her husband’s chest. “Metal, darling,” she said softly. “Emma might be in trouble. We have to help.”
That stopped him, but only for a minute. “Raul,” he barked. “Felicity’s friend might be in trouble in San Francisco.”
Raul turned his head sharply from studying the impenetrable figures on Felicity’s screen. Trouble. He wasn’t good at dealing with math. But by God he was good at dealing with trouble. Dealing with trouble was his superpower.
“On it.” He started moving toward the door, making a mental check list of what he’d need to pack to deal with trouble. Weapons first. “Brief me while I’m in the air. Tell Emma I’m on my way.”
*.**
Whitaker Hamilton III,CEO of Pacific Investment Bank, stood at his window on the corner office of the 34thfloor of the Merritt Building in the heart of the Financial District of downtown San Francisco. It was a beautiful day and he had a glorious view, both east across the bay to Oakland and north to Marin. The view of a god.
He stood, hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth in his Gucci loafers, watching the sun paint Oakland gold and wash the Bay Bridge with blinding light. Sometimes he put his forehead against the glass to look down and watch people walking along the sidewalks. They looked like ants, scurrying here and there.
Not today, though. He wasn’t looking down. Today the ants were even less relevant to his existence. They didn’t even register as life forms. A new life had started. An almost unimaginable life.
