Freaks Under Fire Read online

  He blinked as he caught sight of the house.

  Nice. More than nice, in fact. Another win, for sure. The modest two-story, built of cream brick with a red tiled roof, was almost eclipsed by the addition of a huge conservatory. Bi-folding doors had been pushed back to take advantage of the balmy temperatures, revealing a substantial swimming pool. An undercover pool—heated, too, at a guess. With a bit of luck he could wangle permission to use it on his days off.

  Sam’s gaze lingered on what he guessed was the garage. He’d bet his next paycheck it housed some seriously sweet cars. But as much as curiosity pricked him to be nosy and peer through the side windows, he ignored the impulse and continued up the path to the front door. There were bound to be cameras secreted here, too, their feeds manned by someone noting his every move, and it wasn’t a good look to be caught nosing around on his first day.

  He was reaching for the plain brass doorknocker when the door was yanked open, leaving him confronting a tall woman with short-cropped white hair and cold gray eyes. She wore light, flowing black pants, a loose black tunic, and black sneakers. Sam estimated her age as anywhere between forty and fifty—a polar opposite to the housekeeper-cum-guardian who’d interviewed him a month ago, and professed herself delighted to offer him the position. That woman, one Sally Bridges, had been short and plump, with dimples and a kind smile. She’d worn a floral dress, a pink cardigan and matching pink low-heeled pumps. She’d chatted away, immediately putting him at ease. She’d appeared friendly and harmless, the kind of woman who would sit you down in the kitchen with a plate of fresh-baked cookies and a glass of milk.

  This woman? She was all lean muscle and coiled strength. She possessed the sort of watchful stillness Sam recognized from a stint training with a martial arts expert—the kind that told you here was a person who could explode into motion and take you down before you could blink. His spidey-senses warned him to proceed with caution. Apparently this job was not going to be as straightforward as it had appeared.

  He met her cool, assessing gaze with his best bland expression, and waited for her to make the first move.

  One slash of an eyebrow arched. “Mr. Ross, I presume.”

  She didn’t offer her hand, so Sam responded with a curt nod.

  The other eyebrow joined the first before returning to neutral. “If you’ll follow me, Mr. Ross, I’ll show you to your quarters.” She turned her back on him and strode away, obviously expecting him to follow like a good little lapdog.

  Sam figured he might as well start as he meant to go on. “It’s Sam, not Mr. Ross,” he called after her. “And getting settled in can wait. Right now I’d prefer you introduce me to Miss Smith.”

  She halted and pivoted, the full force of that steely gaze boring into him.

  A lesser man would have backed down, stuttered an apology. But Sam was made of sterner stuff. “Please,” he added, keeping his tone firm and to-the-point, while making it obvious the effort at politeness was a token afterthought.

  Her lips quirked ever so briefly, and as she strode toward him she stuck out a hand. “Marguerite Danvers.”

  Sam noted the slightest nostril-flare accompanying that announcement, and hazarded a guess she was less than thrilled to be named after a flower—a fact he only knew because marguerite daisies had been his grandma’s favorite bloom.

  “You can call me Marg.” Although she pronounced it with a soft “g” her tone was anything but soft, suggesting dire consequences if he dared call her Marguerite.

  Sam managed not to wince when she gripped his hand so tightly it felt as though his bones were grinding together.

  She released his hand and, when he manfully showed no inclination to flex his crushed digits, her gray eyes sparkled with amusement. She’d won the dominance challenge, and they both knew it, but he’d also earned a modicum of her respect. “You and I are going to get along just fine, Sam. Let’s go check what Bea’s up to.”

  Sam frowned, mentally scanning his employment documentation, but could only recall his patient referred to as “Miss B. Smith.” Nor could he recall Mrs. Bridges mentioning the girl’s first name. He took a punt. “Bea as in… Beatrice?”

  “Yes.” Marg’s lips compressed to a grim line. “Though it might interest you to know that Bea’s previous guardians referred to her as ‘Beta’.”

  Beta. The second letter of the Greek alphabet.

  Sam blanched, rocking back on his heels as the full import of Marg’s explanation smacked him upside the head. They hadn’t believed this girl deserved a name—only a designation, like she was some freaking sub-human lab-rat instead of a human being. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

  Marg must have had exceptional hearing for she folded her arms over her chest and gave him some truly superb cold hard bitch that was at odds with her conversational tone as she said, “When Sally came on board, she decided on the name Beatrice. Sally adores the English royals,” she added by way of explanation. Followed by a little shake of her head and an eye-roll, as if to convey fond exasperation, but those gray eyes were still cold and hard and watchful as she observed his reactions. “Most of us think that’s a bit of a mouthful, though, and shorten it to Bea.”

  Sam swallowed the myriad questions clamoring in his head and agreed. “Bea, it is, then.”

  Marg rewarded his ready acceptance and disinclination to pry with one of her clipped nods, and beckoned him to follow.

  Sam trailed her through to what turned out to be a spacious kitchen dominated by a huge, solid wood table that could have sprung fully formed from the pages of Country Living.

  None other than Sally Bridges, resplendent in be-ruffled floral apron, stood at the counter, kneading bread dough. She glanced up as Marg and Sam entered, and greeted them with a smile. “Oh good, you’re here. How do you like your eggs, Samuel?”

  “Please, call me Sam,” he said, his gaze sweeping the room. “And I like my eggs however you care to cook ’em. Thank you for the offer of breakfast, by the way. I’m starving.”

  He shucked his pack and leaned it against the wall. Ignoring the glances Sally and Marg were shooting at each other, he visually assessed the girl seated in the wheelchair at head of the table.

  Her head had tilted to one side until her chin almost rested on her collarbone. Her shiny mane of naturally curly hair hung over one shoulder in a loose, fat braid. Her complexion was clear and smooth, pale but healthy-looking. Good muscle-tone—no atrophied muscles that he could detect beneath the shapeless gray sweatpants and loose black long-sleeved tee she wore. Surprisingly, there were no support straps to prevent her slipping out of the wheelchair. A good sign. Likewise that neither her hands, which lay relaxed atop her thighs, nor the sneaker-clad feet resting on the footrest of the wheelchair, were twisted—

  His gut swooped. He’d been told Bea was in a persistent vegetative state. PVS patients were awake but unaware of what was happening around them. Some could open their eyes, even track objects. Others could move their limbs slightly, though such movements were reflexes rather than reactions to external stimuli. Bea’s eyes were closed—nothing unusual in that; PVS patients had regular sleep-wake cycles. But instinct prompted him to approach her—the same visceral instinct that insisted he drop whatever he happened to be doing to check on a patient he’d left only moments before, because he knew something was wrong.

  He needed to see her eyes—to gaze into them, gauge what it was about her that disturbed him. He strode forward, peripherally aware that Marg and Sally had stilled and were watching him like hawks.

  He dropped to his haunches before Bea and took her hands. “Hi, Bea. My name’s Sam.”

  Save for the slow, even rise and fall of her chest, there was no response.

  In the back of his mind, he noted her hands were cooler than he’d expected given the sun pouring in the windows and the warmth of the room. “Bea,” he said, firmly and clearly. “I need you to wake up now.”

  Nothing.

  “Open your eyes, Bea.”
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br />   He waited. Still nothing—not that he’d expected any response to his command… had he?

  He mentally shook himself, trying to shrug off a sense of foreboding so powerful that the fine hairs on the back of his neck were standing at attention. He reached up, and with the pad of his forefinger, gently pushed up her left eyelid…. And was confronted by an orb of breath-stealing, far-too-intense-to-be-natural blue.

  He inhaled sharply. “Whoa.” That was… unexpected.

  There was a muffled protest—from Sally Bridges, at a guess—that was quickly shushed.

  Sam ignored his audience of two. Bea’s left eyelid had remained open after he’d removed his fingertip. Interesting.

  He carefully opened her right eyelid and eased his hand back.

  Ditto with the right eyelid.

  He backed off. “Well done, Bea,” he said, smiling to convey approval, even though all the approval and encouragement in the world wouldn’t make an iota of difference to a PVS patient like Bea. And then, as he gazed into those inhumanly blue eyes, the smile froze on his face.

  What the—?

  He cupped her face in his palms, tilting her head.

  No. He hadn’t imagined it.

  He watched the telltale moisture form in the duct of her right eye. “How long has Bea been PVS?” he asked, without taking his gaze from that glistening teardrop.

  “I took over as her primary caregiver five years ago,” Sam heard Marg say.

  With a bent knuckle, Sam oh-so-carefully caught the plump tear tracking down that perfect cheek and held up his hand, knowing in his gut both woman would understand exactly what he was showing them.

  “PVS patients can shed tears,” Marg said. “It’s not unheard of.”

  She was right, of course. But this? This was more than the spontaneous crying, moaning, laughing, and even screaming, considered within normal parameters for a PVS patient. Sam knew it absolutely. He knew it in his heart and soul and the very marrow of his bones.

  And then, as if she’d read his mind, Bea’s pupils dilated and those remarkable blue eyes were focusing… on him. And damn him to hell and back if he couldn’t almost feel the emotion pouring from her in waves. Determination. To… to….

  To make him understand that she was… she was… trapped. Inside in a physical shell that refused to function as it should.

  Sam had to lock his muscles to prevent himself recoiling. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. There was awareness in those inhumanly beautiful eyes. “I understand,” he blurted. “I’ll help you however I can, Bea, I promise.”

  If he’d hoped for some miraculous physical reaction from her, some acknowledgement of his outburst, he was sorely disappointed. He knew Bea had understood him, though—believed him, too—because a breath sighed from her body, long and slow, heavy with some unnamed emotion.

  He stared at her, fascinated and horrified in equal measure, as that spark of awareness was extinguished, leaving only gloriously blue, chillingly blank orbs.

  God— Sam caught the thought before it could fully form, for it seemed the worst kind of travesty to importune the very deity who’d condemned a thinking, feeling human being—a girl who’d barely begun to experience life—to such a fate.

  As he straightened from his crouch, he distinctly heard Marg declare, “You don’t understand a damn thing, Samuel Ross. But you will.”

  He turned to the two woman, questions bubbling on his lips, in time to witness Sally Bridges hug Marg, and for Marg to pat the shorter woman on the shoulder before extricating herself and smoothing her tunic.

  Marg glanced up, caught Sam’s gaze, held it. “Sal,” she said, “you were right: He’s just what she needs.” And although Sam was one-hundred percent certain he’d caught the glimmer of tears before Marg strode from the kitchen—because from the stricken expression on Sally’s face, she’d caught them, too—well, neither he nor Sally were brave enough to broach the subject.

  Sally cracked three eggs into a bowl and began to whisk them vigorously. Sam planted his butt into the chair nearest Bea and stared into her unseeing eyes, willing that spark of awareness to return.

  Chapter Two

  A human would have been overwhelmed by both the number and magnitude of the tasks ahead—not to mention the necessity of prioritizing them. So it was fortunate that Jay was not human.

  Locating the Beta unit she’d recently learned existed sat high on Jay’s current list of priorities. Her self-proclaimed “bestie” Caro—fraternal twin of Jay’s boyfriend Tyler—would doubtless insist on referring to the Beta as Jay’s older sister. In truth, the term twin would be more accurate, given the same human genetic material used to construct Jay, a Gamma unit, had obviously been used during the creation of the Beta. Both Jay and the Beta had been created in the image of a woman named Mary Durham, their creator’s deceased wife.

  Discounting the nature of any supposed “relationship” between Jay and the Beta for the moment, Jay understood the workings of Caro’s mind enough by now to know that Caro would consider the Beta family. Moreover, whether the Beta was labeled sister or twin, and proved fully functional or as defective as the wheelchair in the photo indicated, so far as Caro was concerned family should be at the top of any list—a fact Jay could easily prove by revealing the Beta’s existence to Caro and the rest of the Davidson family.

  Uncharacteristically, however, Jay remained undecided over whether to tell them. Much depended upon Tyler and Caro’s mother Marissa, and her reactions to the events of the past two days. And Jay believed Marissa would hardly be in a forgiving frame of mind given their shared history, and the undoubted trauma of recent events.

  Marissa would likely be even less inclined to forgive if she learned that while she’d lain in a drug-induced slumber, her newborn infant had been kidnapped to use as leverage to get to Jay.

  Jay parked the vehicle she’d hired—a hire vehicle had seemed a prudent precaution now that her SUV could be recognized by a certain party—and paused to rub her breastbone, where a too-familiar ache had lodged. Marissa had indicated that she’d liked Jay once upon a time. Before Marissa had understood what Jay truly was. Before she’d understood how deeply her son, Tyler, had fallen for the “glorified calculator” Marissa had once accused Jay of being. And to Jay, it was obvious as udders on a male bovine that, despite the lengths she had taken to keep the Davidsons safe, Marissa would prefer Jay vanished from their lives.

  Logically, Jay couldn’t find it in herself to blame Marissa for that preference. Strange, therefore, to again experience this unrelenting, throbbing ache—a physical symptom of how much it hurt to know that Marissa, a human Jay had admired from the moment they’d first met, would rather she didn’t exist.

  Jay snorted a sharp breath through her nostrils. Bah! as Alexander Jay Durham, the man she had called “Father”, had liked to say. Emotions, those complex human states that provoked often irrational behaviors, as well as disturbing physical and psychological changes, were at best distracting and inconvenient, and at worst, dangerous. They were insidious things that snuck up on one, and impaired one’s ability to make sound judgments. She would be better off without them. And yet….

  And yet, even if she could somehow twist time and revert to her state of being before Tyler had wormed his way into her artificial heart and irrevocably altered her, Jay would not. Now she knew a little of what it meant to love, and to be loved, she would not willingly relinquish those feelings—difficult as they could be to live with. Unfortunately, Jay didn’t possess enough data to ascertain whether Alex had designed her in the expectation she would evolve in such a way, or whether it had been a spontaneous, unforeseen development.

  If only Alex, the one human who might have accurately predicted the far-reaching ramifications of loosing an emotion-fueled cyborg on an unsuspecting world, still lived. If only—

  Jay shut down the part of her brain that had begun to replay her role in her creator’s demise, and blotted the annoying moisture welling in her eyes with the heels o
f her hands. It would not be prudent to confront the Davidson family with watery eyes. Tyler and Caro would double-team each other to ferret out the cause of her tears. Marissa would likely believe Jay was doing what humans termed “turning on the waterworks” in an attempt to garner sympathy. And Marissa’s husband Michael would be torn between the desire to assist Jay in the hope of making amends for his past deeds, and the desire to protect his family from further harm.

  Jay inhaled, drawing oxygen deep into her lungs, and exhaled slowly, steadily, refocusing her thoughts.

  A suitable lab was also a high priority, however any premises would have to be selected with a great deal of care, so as not to alert certain interested parties. Too, sourcing the array of equipment necessary to repair the Beta’s defects could prove problematic.

  Jay was not programmed with a tendency toward paranoia but until she could personally examine Evan Caine’s remains, and personally confirm the covert team experimenting with self-aware cyborgs had been disbanded, she wasn’t about to take unnecessary risks. In fact, it might be more prudent to utilize the sole satellite laboratory she hadn’t dismantled, cleared out, and then sold off after Father’s death. It remained undiscovered to date, suggesting it was as safe an option as any—albeit a somewhat primitive one.

  Too, there was the mystery surrounding the photo that had alerted Jay to the Beta unit’s existence. Or, more specifically, the identity of whomever had left the envelope containing the photo at her friend Allen’s studio.

  The envelope had been addressed to “JAY”—the letters neatly printed by hand in blue ballpoint ink—and Allen had passed it on to McPhee, a mutual friend who’d planned on visiting Jay to drop off a painting. For now, that unknown party’s motives could only be surmised—a waste of energy and resources. Jay would act when more information became available.