Page 18 of Gryphon

The Imagine Dragons track “Enemy” pounded over her earbuds, as if she needed a reminder that everyone was the enemy. Today the London weather definitely ranked as Enemy Number One.

She ran in DC all the time; why was London so freaking cold by comparison? Two degrees above freezing, but wrapped in a thick, chill mist that soaked everything it came in contact with. Her Outdoor Research jacket’s Pertex waterproof had utterly failed. Not because the water went through it, but because the chill London fog slid in via every tiny opening worse than a desert dust storm.

And she’d thought she’d been so smart by skipping a run in this morning’s freezing sleet so she didn’t actually pitch under a London bus—coming from some drastically un-American direction. Sleet, at least, might have frozen on her like a shell, offering its own layer of insulation.

She went straight into her hotel room’s shower fully clothed. Of course, the jacket worked great against a mere inundation, sluicing the water off her body before it warmed her in the slightest.

Heidi forced her frozen fingers—frozen right through her sixty-dollar winter running gloves, thank you so very much—to peel off layer by layer. Though the temperature looked to be set to lukewarm, her nervous system rang fiery-intruder alerts as loudly as possible about the comparatively scalding water blasting her skin.

Twenty minutes. That’s all she had.

In twenty minutes, warm or not, she had to be downstairs ready to present her keynote address. Her hair could stay wet, it always curled enough to avoid a drowned rat look. Besides, she was a woman at a hacker conference. She could mesmerize most of the guys by reading the terms and conditions for an iPhone’s operating system.

Her job took care of the rest of the doubters. As head of the CIA’s cyberattack division (which of course didn’t technically exist), her keynote, New Cyberdefense Tactics and Methodologies, would rivet them to their seats. If she said even a serious percentage of what she knew? Their brains would melt down—and she’d spend the rest of her life in solitary confinement in Leavenworth prison.

Damn Harry for tearing out that tendon in his ankle and sticking her with this on her own. He’s the one who headed up Cyberdefense, though he wasn’t as good at dancing along the edges of the secrecy directives surrounding their jobs, even without the injury. Now, he’d had the tear repaired but was on his back for the next two weeks—foot must remain elevated to “toes above nose” for eighty percent of the time. No plane flights from DC to London. No long days at the Black Hat Europe conference.

At least he could crutch around and feed himself during the other twenty percent. And he’d appeared clearheaded enough already for her to go on her own, as she was one of the keynote speakers.

They had rigged a lie-down console setup for him, both at home and the office, but she hadn’t thought to make him video-in for the talk. It might have been fun as he was still loopy on the opioid painkillers. Probably not the best choice for a public presentation—who knew what would slip out. Be fun to watch though.

Heidi, finally naked, kicked her clothes to the corner of the shower and began edging up the hot water, trying to raise her core temperature. Or at least stop the shivers shaking her like a failing hard drive.

Black Hat Europe was always fun. Whatever idiot scheduled Black Hat USA during August in Las Vegas was clearly a punk hacker, probably never left Mom’s air-conditioned basement except for the conference. Certainly never considered how deeply stupid it was to travel to a city at a time of year ideal for frying eggs on the sidewalk.

USA also took themselves far too seriously. All the heavy security geeks were there, from the NSA and DIA on down. Mixed in with all the beginner wannabes who’d read too many William Gibson novels, it was a mess. Here, her far-more-rational NATO-member counterparts predominated.

A loud buzz cut off the follow-on to “Enemy”, Lady Gaga belting out “Hold My Hand.” Heidi had left in her earbuds. Her hands were still shaking when she reached up to squeeze the earbud’s stem to accept the call.

“This is me.”

“You in a rainstorm?”

“Shower.” Then she recognized the voice. She’d been expecting Harry, not Jeremy.

“Uh…”

She imagined the bright blush racing up his face.

“…should I call back?”

“Why?” Heidi couldn’t resist the tease. Jeremy had been Harry’s best man at their wedding. She’d discovered that he was embarrassed by the strangest things. Harry was sweet, for a vicious hacker, but Jeremy was simply too cute.

“Because you’re…”

She wondered if he’d manage to say the word naked.

“Is Harry around?” Nope, no naked with Jeremy.

“He’s still in DC with his foot up in the air. I’m at Black Hat.”

“Oh. Uh, that’s great. Good program this year, but I didn’t sign up. You know, with Taz giving birth just a few months ago I didn’t want to leave her alone, except I did go to the Air Safety Investigators conference at the last minute with Miranda—Taz accused me of hovering too much and getting on her nerves. Wait until you and Harry have a kid; it does crazy things to how you think about stuff. When is that anyway?”

“When is what?” She played stupid to buy a second, at least long enough to not swallow her tongue. How had he started discussing Black Hat and finished by scaring the shit out of her?

“Having a baby. You two. You’ll love it.”

She laid a hand on her belly. Her belly was warm, the only part of her that was, but her fingers felt as if they were far colder than the run had made them. The chill claw of doom threatening to invade her womb. She really wasn’t ready to think about going down that path. “Sure, why don’t you carry a growing alien lifeform inside your body for nine months and see how you like it?”

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