He smiled, tilted his head, and said, “I’m guessing the second time was in a smaller city, and you had your own transportation out of town this time, with a computer set up to monitor and record activity, so you could watch later. Too much of a risk to stay around and watch the second time, especially since you wouldn’t have a huge crowd to get lost in.”
No judgmental crap from him, and he’d guessed my game plan for the second test. I couldn’t analyze my feelings for him now, though, with him sitting right here, so I nodded and said, “Yes, exactly. Medium sized city in Mississippi. I walked by the county courthouse in broad daylight, let the cameras see my face, and got on a bicycle, rode it four miles to a wooded trail, turned onto the trail and went another couple of miles to where I’d stashed a dirt bike. I rode it over a few mountains, using jeep trails and old logging roads, until I came to another town, where I had another storage unit, this one with a car. I drove to New Orleans, got lost in the crowds.”
“How long did it take them to show up?”
“The feeds showed local police activity within fifteen minutes — uniforms looking around and showing pictures to bystanders and asking questions. Feds took two hours to arrive.” I shrugged. “I tried it at a mall, once, and nothing happened. It’s possible they’re only jacked into government owned cams — traffic, parks, courthouses, whatever. I make sure I’m always camouflaged in some way, though. A huge chunk of hair over one eye, sunglasses, or a hat with a visor. The latest algorithms measure the ratios between your eyes, as well as eyes to lips, lips to chin, and eyes to chin. Law enforcement believes these are infallible, since you can’t move your eyes around in your face, but I’ve played around with the algorithms and discovered changing the eyebrows and eyelids is enough to trick the software into thinking the eyes are slightly higher. This, combined with a chin implant, throws the facial recognition off. Having my nose tweaked, and the cheekbone implants as well, will make me look different enough to the naked eye so people who’ve seen pictures of me won’t recognize me visually.”
“I think you’re beautiful, now, but it’s your brain and your courage I’ve fallen for, so it won’t matter what you look like.”
* * * *
Brain
She seemed to have decided to open up and let me in, but I knew she’d shut down the instant I mentioned the Russians, so I moved the conversation everywhere else. She drank slower tonight, but was still three sheets to the wind when she climbed on my lap and kissed me.
It took every ounce of willpower I had to let her control the kiss, but when she went to take my shirt off, I put my hands on hers and gave a soft, “No.”
Her eyes looked incredulous, then pissed, then hurt — all in the space of five seconds.
“I want you more than words can express, but we need to talk about some things before we go there, Buttercup.”
I expected her to storm off, or perhaps hit me, or tell me to go fuck myself. Instead, she gave a single nod, went to her laptop, and became engrossed in something. My instincts told me to let her do whatever this was without interrupting, and five minutes later she went to her bag, retrieved a USB drive, plugged it into her computer, hit a few more keys, and pulled the thumb drive from her laptop.
She walked to me, put the thumb drive on the table beside the sofa, and said, “Details of everything that happened, including the names I picked up, all conversations I heard, and the location I was held prisoner. I’m never going to talk to you about it, so don’t try. Password to access it is butter dot cup, but use an 8 for the B, 3 for the E.”
She walked to the bedroom door, turned, looked at me a few seconds, her eyes dark. “If you ever look at me with pity in your eyes, you’re history. That’s my past, not my present. I’m in control of sex now. No one fucks me, I fuck them. If you can’t deal with that, you should leave.”
I watched her walk into the other room, and only spent a few seconds debating whether to go to her or not.
She was in bed when I got there, and I crawled in with her. “You aren’t going to read it?”
“I am, but I’m going to hold you until you go to sleep, then I’ll read it.”
She didn’t know my night vision let me see her expression, and the vulnerability I saw in her face made me want to hold her and never let go.
I stroked and petted her until she was asleep, and then went to the living room to read.
Ice had put every detail she could remember in, and it took me nearly five hours to go through it. She’d also included pictures of people and places, as well as maps. She may not claim to want revenge, but she’d kept up with the main players enough so, if she had to, she could go after them with little further research.