Page 99 of Amethyst Flame
“No,” we said at the same time.
Jacob—the jackhole—laughed. “See? You two would work better together if you weren’t hiding half your shit from each other.”
“Not half. Probably not even a quarter.” Dane rubbed his hairline as if his secrets were a headache trying to bore their way out.
Maybe I could sympathize, except mine were robo-bugs.
“Dang,” Jacob said. “I only got, like, one thing.”
Dane frowned at him. “What thing?”
“This white disk.” Jacob popped the wafer out of the laptop and held it out to Dane.
“Hey!” A surge of anger zapped through me. “That’smysecret.”
Dane took the chip. “From BantaMatrix?”
Jacob glanced at me, but I set my jaw in mutinous silence so he nodded. “Mo burgled it when she was hiding from Alling in the basement before she…uh…”
“Before I killed him.” I narrowed my eyes.
Jacob’s throat moved in a spasmodic swallow but he didn’t look away. “You gave me the wafer to help you. This is me helping you.”
Nowhe trusted Dane?
Dane pocketed the chip, much to my annoyance. “And what did you find?”
“Some outdated research, some corroborating evidence of what you brought back from Palm Springs.”
“Well, maybe my people will have better luck.” Dane stood. “Let’s all be ready to move once we get a location on William Teller.”
“I told you already,” I said, “he’ll take Adley to his dad’s lab.” Swann’s crack about talking to my loved ones myself echoed in my head alongside Will’s comments to me about his relationship with his dad. “Will is not a real scientist or engineer, just a fuckup who needs help.”
Dane narrowed his eyes at me. “What makes you so sure?”
“Takes one to know one.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “So can we get going already?”
Jacob swiped to a new screen. “Still nothing on the Tesla, but… Here’s Teller Laboratories, in Boulder City, outside Las Vegas.”
Of course it was.
Dane’s jaw clenched. “Then I’ll tell my people to meet us there.”
I remembered the blue worms crawling under Adley’s skin on her temple. It might already be too late for her.
And for me.
But I’d always done my best work the night before it was due.
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
Sure,I’d made a lot of poor life choices, but this time…
“I gotta pee.”
Hands perfectly aligned on the wheel at ten and two—just as they had been for the last hour—Dane didn’t even look over at me. “I told you not to drink all six.”
I kicked the last cold brew can under my seat as if the aluminum lumps could stop the vibrations of the speeding SUV from jostling my bladder. “I’m trying to keep my bugs happy so they don’t hijack me.”
