AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m taking a ride on the metro,” she said, drawing the strings of her black hoodie so hard she made the face hole of her hoodie look like a butthole.
Why did I even bother speaking to her? I should have pretended I had headphones in and couldn’t hear her.
“What areyoudoing here?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you be at home sleeping?”
“I should. I should be sleeping right now on my stink sofa with my soft blanket and dreaming of sugarplums, butMaxim freaking Loughtyruined it. Now I’m an overtired dumpster gremlin and I’m here. With you.”
We were gathering attention, blatant stares. I was too tired to care.
“You have ketchup on your coat.”
“Thank you for pointing that out, Dani,” I snapped.
She licked her lips. “Are you a fan of classic cinema?”
“If you’re telling me I belong inPsycho,I already know,” I said. “I don’t need to look in the mirror to know I look—and smell—disturbingly deranged.”
“No. I’m suggesting a little criss-cross.”
“You do your cross-stitch, and I’ll do my own thing.”
She loosened the hole in her hoodie so I could see only her mouth, with the weirdest smile filling the space.
“There’s no motive, and plenty of chances for an alibi with a little criss-cross,” she said. “No one can trace it. Wouldn’t it be nice if this Maxim fellow was off your back?”
“It’d be nice if he flew into the sun and exploded,” I said. “But wishes don’t make reality.”
“What if they did?”
I blinked at her. “You don’t secretly work for a dark web version of NASA, do you, Dani? Because if so, you’ve been holding out on me. And for the record,I don’t actually condone murder.”
“Of course not.”
I didn’t know what part she was talking about—of course she didn’t work for dark web NASA or of course she knew I wasn’t cool with murder—but the doors to the train opened. My tired brain was starting to hurt, which was a common occurrence when I was around Dani.
“This is me,” I said, rising to my feet. “And this has been weird. Peace.”
“Gabriel Stryker,” she called after me, but I was already done listening to her nonsense.
I walked to Morgan’s place.
When she saw me, she let me right in, set me up with a shower and a place to sleep without question, and I crashed.
FIVE
GABRIEL
As I stepped across the threshold from my personal lab into my office, the lunch alarm on my watch went off. I silenced it and proceeded to pull a reusable bottle of water and my metal lunch box from the mini fridge.
Ever since yesterday’s post-lunch meeting, I’d been distracted. I didn’t care if people thought I was a robot. It had been a common refrain ever since I was a child, and preferable to the alternate pejoratives thrown at me.
If anything, metallic thick skin was a boon I’d crafted for myself. First it was an illusion, and then that illusion became reality.
Yet, Pamela’s warnings had taken up far more of my mental energy than I’d have liked. Business was meant to happen during business hours. Lab time was meant for actual work. The carryover left me uncharacteristically bothered.
It wasn’t only the threat to the merger that had me off kilter, either. That woman, Layana, according to the fan who’d assailed her this morning, slowly gnawed a hole in my equilibrium. Her fiery cobalt eyes burned white-hot through my thoughts. Her defiance distracted me as thoroughly as the turquoise ends of her raven-black hair.
The more I attempted to put her out of my mind, the more deeply she set root, and the more space she consumed. I still couldn’t fathom what possibly could have compelled her to assault me and claim it was a public service.
