“Yes.” Okay, so it was a private nurse, but the auction house had recommended her, and she knew her care of me had to be good or I wouldn’t hire her to take care of Harmony in her final weeks.
“Someone you aren’t paying? Who’ll be there because he wants to make sure you’re taken care of?”
I shook my head. “My lifestyle hasn’t let me have relationships. Over the years, I’ve fucked a few guys for a couple of months, but when they started asking too many questions I had to publicly pick a fight with them, so I could break up with them and disappear, and they couldn’t claim I’d have never have voluntarily left like that and get the police involved when I disappeared.”
“Yeah, but things can be different, now, and you do have a guy in your life who’d be happy to take care of you. What are you having done?”
“It isn’t as big of a deal as it would’ve been with the other girl. I’m doing a chin implant, and some slight work on my eyelids, and he’ll pull the skin at my forehead, so my eyebrows are a different shape. He’s going to do something to the piece of skin between my nostrils, to make my nose look a little perkier, but that’s nothing like a full nose job. Since she’s so much heavier, the fact she’s lost weight will be enough to make people believe I’m her, apparently, without too much surgery. So, we just need to do enough so the facial recognition won’t ping as the old me.”
I sighed and said, “The hacker community doesn’t know Ice is a girl, but the Russians and NSA do, and I’ll always have to watch my back to be sure they don’t figure out the new Harmony is the chick they’re after. No one can ever see me without my contacts. You, Duke, Gonzo, and Bash know about my eyes. If I come back into your life as Harmony, and they mention my eyes to the wrong person?” I looked at him a few seconds, let it sink in, and said, “It’s too big of a risk.”
“Then we’ll move far, far away, so they don’t know I’m with you.”
I’d finished eating, but he still needed to pay, so it was the perfect opportunity for me to lose him. He’d find me again, sure, but I needed to get away from him long enough to pull my thoughts together.
“No, Brain. I’m sorry for being the catalyst of your break with Duke, and the rest of your friends in Chattanooga. I know you’re sorry for the way things worked out, too, and I accept your apology. I didn’t know about the identity auctions before, and now I do, so thanks for that. I screwed your MC, but then I did what I could to make it right. Drop your guilt, you don’t have to take care of me, or atone for anything. We’re square.”
I let the piece of hair go back across my face before I left the restaurant, and walked straight to the CNN center, pulling an employee badge from a pocket of my fatigues before I entered the building. I swiped it to gain entrance to the employee section, nodded at a guard as if I belonged, and kept walking. I had the map of the area in my head, and in five minutes I was walking through the overhead enclosed walkway to the hotel across the street, and in another three minutes I was in a cab.
The idea he was a werewolf was ridiculous, but when I thought back to the ways he’d found me when he chased me before, I’d only lost him when I got into a vehicle not on rails. I didn’t really think he could track me by smell, but if thinking of him in those terms would help me stay away from him…
I took three cabs, and then walked the final couple of blocks to my hotel, knowing for sure I’d lost him.
Imagine my surprise when he was sitting in the hallway floor across from my room, busy doing something on his phone.
He smiled when he saw me, as if I shouldn’t be freaked. As if I should’ve expected him to be waiting for me. “Ah, there you are. I thought maybe we could finish our conversation?”
Chapter Twenty-One
Brain
Showing up at her hotel had been a risk, but I hoped by waiting outside instead of breaking in, I’d show her I was respecting some of her boundaries.
“How’d you find me?”
I let an eyebrow lift as I asked, “Really?”
She rolled her eyes, turned away from me, and walked towards the elevator. “You aren’t welcome in my room. You want to talk, we’ll go downstairs to the bar.”
We rode down the elevator in silence, and I followed her to the bar. She sat at a booth away from the others, her back in a corner, and I sat opposite her, though I wanted to push her farther into the booth and sit beside her.
The waitress was still a half dozen steps away when Ice told her, “Long Island, extra long, and keep ’em coming.”