Page 26 of Amethyst Flame
I stepped into a blast of A/C. The entry floors were light reddish-brown tile, the ceilings a little low with wood beams, and it seemed that the house was built around a central courtyard with a small fountain and artsy birdfeeders.
Wandering deeper inside, the space opened into a great room with a leather sofa and a chair. Whoever had decorated went cowboy crazy with the art on the walls and the knickknacks. There was a flatscreen on the wall, and on a side table was a laminated set of instructions on how to use the remote with the television, what channels were available, and how to pair your services with the screen.
Seemed like this house was one of those rentals, the kind families get for vacations or business people use when they have to stay in town for a while. It was too big for Dane alone. Where were his minions?
With a little pirouette, I headed toward the dining room. The table only had a laptop and a headset. Quite a departure from the setup at the farmhouse, where they’d had an array of machines coupled with fingerprint and iris scanners and those fancy high-def, widescreen curved monitors.
I pulled back the chair and hit the spacebar on his laptop. “Where’s my file, Dane?” A gray screen appeared with two words:Please Authenticate. But there was no username or password field to type anything in. Weird.
He came in behind me, so it wasn’t until he sat down at my side that I realized he’d taken the suit jacket off and was now just wearing his white shirt, sleeves rolled mid-forearm, gun holster still on. I caught a dark, musky-sweet whiff of him.
Definitely human. Emphasis on theman. Because I was acutely aware of that fact now.
Luckily, he was ignoring me.
He slid the laptop in front of him and put on the headset. He tapped the screen and said, “Dane, Raymon. ID 4F65G23D.” Some new words appeared on the screen, and he read them out loud: “Man, door, hand, hook, car, door.” A welcome screen appeared. Guess he had upgraded to voice recognition.
“Fancy,” I said. “No more finger scans?”
“Too easy to hack,” he said, tapping the mute button. “You can 3D print a finger or an eyeball. Voice is more secure, for now.”
He hit another button, and the screen went black, with a Matrix-y green cursor. Looked like some old DOS command screen, but different. He typed a search command and hitEnter. The screen filled with a dizzying list of search results, all tagged with my name.Shit.
He selected one, and voila…the screen refreshed with details about me. He scrolled down a bit to the father section, and sure enough, my sperm donor’s name glared at me in green console print.
Ryan Edwin Martensen. And he was married to Maurna Lacey, maiden name Roland. And—drumroll—they did indeed have a daughter, Brianna Searle, who was—I did fast brain math with the DOB—fifteen years old.
Dane tabbed over to the daughter’s name, hit control + something, and another list of search results filled the screen. The mobile number was among the results, and…yeah, it was the same number. Apparently, she also had a juvie record.
“Congratulations,” Dane said. “You have a sister. But even if she wants to speak with you, I advise against doing so at this time. You’re on a mission. Contacting her will almost certainly cause some disruption and complications on the home front and may ultimately endanger everyone. Family has to wait.”
You have a sisterwas still ringing in my ears.
“Did you hear me, Imogen?”
“I have a sister.” I pulled at the neck of my t-shirt. It was so fucking hot in here. Like sauna hot. Or maybe the heat was coming from me. My moths simply had no idea what to do with the sister information…probably because I didn’t. Which is why I felt close to exploding…in anger? Tears? I had no idea.
“And what else?” he prompted.
“I’m not going to call her back, Dane.”
“And why not?”
His reasons were shitty, so I gave him real ones. “Because I don’t want to hurt my mom. She’s happy right now. In a relationship. And we’re in a good place. This father-daughter thing would wreck it. I’m not calling that girl back. She’s a stranger to me.”
There must’ve been some resolve in my statement because the burn within me subsided somewhat, and I could breathe a little better.
Dane sat back in his chair, and he was doing that concern thing with his eyebrows again.
“Stop it,” I said. My feelings about my family were none of his business. So I changed the subject to something that was. “Are you recruiting Jacob? He’s sure horny to be a super spy.”
Dane gave a small shrug. “I don’t do the recruiting. I can only recommend prospects, and I will only do that if I’m absolutely sure of who they are and what their motives are.”
When he didn’t elaborate, I asked. “And what do you think about him?”
Dane’s expression went stony again. “I think he knows more than he’s letting on. He talks around little bits of classified information and then shows sudden insight where I see only the most tenuous connection. My conclusion: He has a source.”
The little White Wafer of Doom. Jacob sucked balls at playing spy.
