Spectre of Intention Read online

  Jessie didn’t say anything through the three hours we spent hauling boxes from the warehouse-sized cargo area and organizing them in our narrow little workspace. Of course, he didn’t have to. I thought my back would light on fire he was so pissed. Fortunately for me, I was the one with all the tracking information for our freight, so I spent most of my time in the cargo area locating boxes.

  Unfortunately for me, when I got down to the last three boxes, no amount of searching yielded Gerard’s precious surveillance cameras. And I’d forgotten my mini with its tracking reader back in the conference room.

  The second I closed the conference room door behind me, the second Jessie realized I was alone, I could feel the change in the air. He turned to face me.

  “You lied to me.”

  I offered a small smile. “I never got the chance to actually lie about it.”

  Jessie raised an eyebrow.

  I sighed. “What did Gerard tell you?”

  “That when he got there your room was trashed and your clothes were wadded up in the suitcase with the hangers still on them. He said somebody had written something all over your coffee table in lipstick, but when he asked you about it, you about passed out on him.”

  I opened my mouth. Closed it again.

  “Kaitlin, what happened?”

  I looked up at him with his thick arms crossed over his chest. His face had set into hard lines. Ashley quietly suggested we slip back out the door.

  “Don’t you do that. You stand up straight, look me in the eye, and answer me.”

  It took a serious force of will, but Kaitlin left Ashley to cower alone in the cave in the back of my mind. She snapped into place under my skin. Unfortunately, that had little effect on my mouth.

  “Stephan got—” I cleared my throat. “Ah, well, Stephan got into my room last night. I’d already taken my sleeping pill. I only remember fuzzy images.” Stephan leaning over me; Stephan stroking my hair, my face, tucking the comforter around me. “But when I woke up, I saw that message on the table. I flipped out.”

  “Started packing?”

  I nodded.

  “What did the message say?”

  That broke the eye contact. Clutching my workpad tighter, I stared at the box to the right of his head, a big box with identifier: Paula, Box 3. I knew from my freight list that it contained all the parts for her interview scanner. Except the software plug-ins. Those were in Box 1 with the backups in Box 5.

  “What did it say, Kaitlin?”

  Don’t think about it, just say it.

  “It’s just a door, Ashley.”

  “It’s just a door,” he repeated quietly.

  That precise control he always kept on his emotions snapped like a lightening bolt tearing through the room. I jerked back.

  “That’s it. You’re bunking with me. If he likes—”

  “Don’t. Stop. Just stop. This is exactly why I didn’t tell you. I don’t want him knowing how much you know. I don’t want you in the middle. These are my mistakes rearing up to bite me in the ass.”

  “So, you’re just going to put a sign up on your door, ‘Come on in’?” The anger on his chiseled face, radiating flare-like off his entire body, made me forget for a moment what I was trying to say.

  “No, I…I was going to do what you told me to do.”

  “Kaitlin, he broke into—”

  He wasn’t the only one who could get angry. I held up a hand. Now I was standing up straight, looking him straight in the eye. Both Kaitlin and Ashley stood tall in me, though Ashley quivered so hard I didn’t know if I’d be able to follow through. If I was alone, Stephan would be back. Could I handle it? Somehow I had to.

  “I’m not going to take everything you’ve given me and use it to destroy your life.”

  “I didn’t give it to you, so you could throw away yours.”

  “I’m not going to. He wouldn’t hurt me—physically. Not on purpose.”

  “Those bruises were signs of affection?”

  The vent above me began roaring dully. I stepped out of the stream of air that patted my hair.

  “He didn’t do that. And I’ve gotten worse in training.” No mentioning Mak. Not ever mentioning Mak.

  “Kaitlin—”

  “I’ll leave. If I have to, I’ll leave.” I felt my eyes prick, but I was done with tears. “I won’t risk you.”

  Jessie stepped forward, wrapped his big hands around my upper arms left bare by my sleeveless black button shirt. “Kaitlin, you’re shaking.”

  I took a deep breath, forced the tremors to cease. I raised my gaze back up from his white T-shirt to his eyes.

  “You said I was strong enough. So, I’m going to be strong enough.”

  In the small gap between us, the warmth of pride pushed out from him and into me. A brief spike of lust. Then he lowered his arms and stepped back. For the longest time he looked around the room as if memorizing the positions of the boxes stacked tight around us. Finally, those hazel eyes turned their drill sergeant gaze back down to me.

  “Two conditions. One: you strap on an ‘oh shit’ button at all times. And two: you let Gerard rig a camera in your room.”

  My stomach did a quick flip and I let Ashley indulge in one final pathetic wish that he had tried harder to talk me out of it. God, how was I going to do this?!

  I nodded.

  Immediately his finger jabbed down in my face. “You ever hold back from me again, this is over. Money isn’t more important than lives, Ms. Osgood.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I was never going to be able to keep both promises to him. He had to know that. But the lecture was over. Behind me the door creaked open. Apparently, you didn’t have to be part oracle to feel the tension in the room.

  “Ah, Kaitlin,” Paula hesitated. I unhooked my clawed fingers from my workpad and tried to erase the chastised teenager look from my face. I turned to see her head sticking through the door, the gleam of her mahogany hair spilling to the side.

  “Yeah?”

  “Gerard wants—”

  “The tracker. I’ll be right there.”

  “Great. Thanks.”

  Paula popped back out again. I looked around, spotted where my bag had been stuffed under a chair on top of the conference table. I reached down the side and found my mini completely wrapped in the gleaming silver of my energy bar. I sighed and pulled them apart. That thing had to be expired. I was never going to eat it. I eyed the recycling can next to the door. But back in it went.

  As I reached for the door, Jessie called over his shoulder from where he tapped away at his workpad, “This room is too small. Talk to Mr. Brands. And tell Gerard and Paula we’re meeting for training in twenty.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  And then I fled.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do without the damn cameras?”

  “Gerard, they’re not here. Maybe they just missed the boat. Give me a second and I’ll see if I can find where they ended up.” I stuffed the mini in the pocket of my capris and took my workpad back from Paula. I leaned back against the cargo rack, grateful for the thin fabric of my shirt and the metal which was at least five degrees cooler than the air around it.

  Paula pulled her own mini out. “It’s time. We need to go hook up with Jessie.”

  Training time was sacred at Countermeasures. Everybody from the techs to the receptionist was expected to participate. VPs and presidents were not exempt from this company ritual either.

  I followed Gerard out of the steady, draining heat of the hold and into the hallway. Paula shivered. I smiled sympathetically. The over-air-conditioned public areas on the operations side of the ship made for a miserable temperature transition.

  “I keep wondering if they do it to keep the popsicle people from thawing out when they have to move them from the lab,” Paula muttered, wrapping her arms around herself as we waited for the elevator.

  Gerard and I laughed. The nice thing about Gerard, his tantrums never lasted long. He didn’t ha
ve the attention span for it. The elevator arrived, and we settled in. At least the operations-side elevators weren’t full of mirrors.

  “Dude,” Gerard clapped his hands together. “When is the tour calendar-girl? I wanna see the inside of that cryogenics lab. And the elevator, do you think they’ll let us take a ride up to the space station? I want to see the docks where they’re building the voyagers. Maybe they’ll have one ready. Maybe we could see inside one.”

  “I’m supposed to schedule the tour with J.C. as soon as we get our office put together. But there won’t be any elevator rides any time soon. They’re still in the last stages of building up the ribbon.”

  “But we’re here for six months!” Gerard’s burst of disappointment even made me feel sad. And I had no intention of ever setting foot in that thing. He joked often enough about how much he missed playing human dirt dart out of the military airplanes. Maybe he actually meant it. The elevator settled on the fifth floor and he held the door for Paula and me as we stepped out.

  “They’ll be running manned elevators before we leave, but it takes a whole week to get up there,” I said.

  Both Paula and Gerard turned to me as we rounded the last corner before the conference room.

  “Wow,” Paula mouthed.

  “Neither of you read the report I put together on this project?”

  “I did,” Paula objected.

  “I didn’t. Didn’t have any blueprints in it. What the hell good was it gonna do me?” Gerard dropped back, and I found myself with a muscular arm draped over my neck. “But hey, I heard you sweet talking ol’ J.C. into letting us open up the airwall in the conference room. You two are pretty tight, right? You could loosen him up for me. Maybe offer a couple of sexual favors in exchange for a ride on the ol’ sling shot to the sky.”

  I lifted Gerard’s arm from my shoulders and dropped it.

  “This,” I replied as I opened the door to the conference room, “would be why I do the sweet talking and you do not.”

  Behind us, Paula walked into the room with a little chuckle that turned into hysterical laughter. Jessie looked up from packing his workpad into his bag.

  “What?”

  Paula and I exchanged an evil smile and she waved Jessie’s question away.

  “Ready to go?”

  The three of us dug our respective bags out of the crannies where they’d been stuffed to make room for the overload of boxes which had begun to make the air reek decisively of high school locker room: musty and damp, turning to mildew.

  Jessie set the door to lock as we headed out. As he locked step with me, I felt Kaitlin falter. Carefully, trying not to let him sense it, I settled her back into place. Kaitlin didn’t carry a reprimand with her like baggage. She changed course and moved on. It would have been a lot easier if the man next to me had done so as well. But then he hadn’t been in the hold arguing with Paula and Gerard. He’d been alone in the conference room stewing.

  “I talked to J.C. He said we could go ahead and open up the airwall and take over the room next door if we need to.”

  Jessie nodded.

  Well, that went well.

  We all climbed onto the elevator. And stood in silence for the duration of fourteen floors.

  When we finally arrived at the employee gym, we discovered there were no locker rooms associated with the facility. Jessie sent Paula and me in to change first while he and Gerard waited outside. We switched with the boys and dumped our bags against the wall.

  Paula peeked over at me.

  “Just how much trouble are you in for missing the meeting this morning? It was just a stupid meet and greet.”

  I flashed a pained smile. If that’s what she thought was going on, so much the better.

  “I was supposed to run that meeting with Cam.”

  “He was asking about you.”

  My body flashed back to the sensation of his palms resting against my skin, his breath in my hair. A delicate, beautiful moment I’d misplaced in the disaster the rest of the night had become. I savored the memory for just a moment. “I’m sure he was,” I murmured.

  I caught the hum of fretting buzzing off of Paula and looked over to her.

  “Don’t worry. He’ll get over it,” I assured her.

  She looked apologetic. “I know.”

  Despite the fact that she wasn’t my report, I still felt the need to shield her when things got too testosterone-laced. I’d hired her, so I felt responsible for her. Which was ridiculous because she was probably older than I was, but she was so delicately feminine—even in yoga pants and a muslin tunic. She was brilliant, but like a lot of brilliant people, she was also brilliantly focused, so in the end our connection was loose. The most I knew about her was that she was a single mother of a seven-year-old boy named Brian who would be joining us here when our install people, India and Andrès, came down after Brian finished his visit with the grandparents.

  The door cracked.

  “Come on in!” Gerard said, already walking away.

  Paula and I crossed the aerobics floor and dropped our bags by a rack of barbells on the far side of the small room. I spotted a treadmill and decided I could work on following the electronic trail of Gerard’s precious cameras while I worked up a sweat. After a quick set of stretches, I grabbed my workpad and made a beeline for the machine.

  I had just figured out how to bypass all the automatic settings when Jessie walked up beside me. He pushed cancel and I had to move quickly to keep from falling as the belt abruptly slowed.

  “Not today. Come on.”

  Ah, shit.

  I tried to reason with him. “Jessie, some of our boxes have gone missing.”

  Oh, damn, the box with the cameras. Like the camera that he wanted to install in my room, I realized abruptly. Crap.

  “Later.”

  He was already walking toward the aerobics floor. I tapped my thumbs on the sides of my workpad, then gave up and followed him. Ashley began pacing behind her closed door as I dumped my pad into my bag and stepped onto the floor. Gerard jumped and kicked in the upper right-hand corner of the space, watching his form in the mirror. Paula pedaled away at the stationary bike, engrossed in a novel on her workpad.

  I squared my shoulders as Jessie turned. He reached down and took my wrist in a loose grip. By rote, I bent my elbow, rotated my wrist up and over his thumb. His hold broke. Other hand, up and over. He got a grip on the thick spandex of my workout tank top. I rammed the heels of my palms up into his elbows, circled outside to the chop down on the crooks of his arms. Then one fist drove forward toward his solar plexus while the other chopped toward his throat. His hands released my clothes.

  “Choke holds.”

  God, I hated this. His arm was thicker than my neck was long.

  Jessie stepped behind me. In the mirror I watched him position himself, a full head taller and half body wider than me. Ashley began to make sounds of panic then, but it wasn’t until he laid one hand on my shoulder and I felt those bruises stab into me that the fear prickled to life on my skin.

  “This… this isn’t going to work, Jessie.”

  “Sure it is. You’re doing great.”

  I looked into his eyes in the mirror as he wrapped his arm snuggly around my windpipe. I mocked cracking backward with my head (as though I could have possibly reached his nose), then scraped my training shoe down his shin, shifted my hips to the right and rolled him off my fulcrum point and onto the floor. His arm conveniently left my neck as he fell.

  “Because you don’t hate me,” I whispered.

  I stepped around him, walked over to Gerard, heard Jessie jump to his feet behind me.

  “Come after me like you meant it.”

  “Oh, no, I’m not getting in the middle of this.”

  “I’m giving you a free pass. Get it all off your chest.”

  I saw Gerard look to Jessie and receive a subtle nod. He thought he could pounce while I wasn’t looking. He forgot that I could see with more than my eyes. I du
cked to the left and ran. I shot past Jessie and Gerard lunged for me. Our shoes shrieked across the wood floor as I twisted out of his reach and sprinted to put the workout machines between us. I got to the other side of the stair stepper, spun around to face him. His face, his body was utterly focused. But he didn’t hate me.

  He feinted to the right. I feinted to mine. He decided to risk coming up and over. The moment he got that second foot off the floor, I crouched down and shoved. The overbalanced machine went toppling over and he went with it.

  Now he was pissed.

  “Fuckin’ shit!”

  I heard him scrambling to his feet. I reached the other side of the circuit training machine and he was after me. No feinting now. He charged at me, his anger licking at my back as I jumped the fly bench and headed for the aerobics floor. As I glanced back over my shoulder, I saw him launch off that bench.

  He had me.

  He caught my arm first and no amount of levering or circling could break his hold. Spitting curses, he twisted my arm up behind me. Kaitlin had had her turn; now Ashley fought dirty. Rearing back, I went for a head butt to the nose. He had to release my twisted arm to get his face out of the way, but his hand caught my arm again higher. He felt my tell as I went for the groin shot. He body slammed me to the floor.

  “Jesus Christ, Kaitlin!”

  Gerard’s 215 pounds had every square inch of my 125 pinned to the ground, completely immobilized. My lungs felt empty and every breath I tried to pull shrieked ineffectually through my throat. Gerard stared me down nose to nose.

  “Are we fuckin’ done now?”

  I nodded. Yes, I told Ashley, we are fucking done now. Almost as if exhausted, she slipped off into her darkness.

  Gerard’s muscles bunched over mine, then he was up on his feet. I curled to my side and the wheezing eased. Sitting up, I tucked my feet under me and found a hand dangling of my face. I looked up. Gerard’s intentions felt blurry to me—but that was probably more the ringing in my head than him. I put my hand in his. He pulled me to my feet.

  I had to dig my toes in and lock my knees to keep from wobbling. Gerard used our joined hands to pull me in. When he had me in one of those one-armed guy embraces, he whispered in my ear.