Freaks Under Fire (16 page)

“An excellent point.” And one that Jay should have considered earlier when she’d been weaving in and out of traffic. She eased off the accelerator. Confidence that she could extract
herself
from an encounter with the average highway patrol officer was one thing, but she had Seth to consider.

If she’d been human, she might have added blushing at her own recklessness to the silent lecture she gave herself. She would not have been so cavalier about taking such risks had it been Tyler in the car with her. It was laughable to compare her feelings for Seth to what she felt for Tyler, but for now Caine’s former employee was her responsibility.

A loud gurgle came from Seth’s side of the car.

“Sorry,” he said, pressing a fist against his belly. “I missed breakfast. Don’t suppose there’s anything edible in this car?”

Jay inhaled and analyzed the scents. “I believe someone left a Twinkie in the glove compartment. Whether it is edible depends on the expiry date.” At least the preservative in the ingredients list was sorbic acid rather than sulfites.

“Twinkies? Seems there is a God after all.”

Indeed. Especially since this rental vehicle should have been thoroughly cleaned by depot staff before being rented out again.

Seth rummaged in the compartment and unearthed the double pack of the snack cakes. He squinted at the expiry date. “Near enough.” He ripped open the cellophane and inhaled, releasing his breath on a long, slow sigh. “Ahhh. I’m telling you, you haven’t lived until you’ve had them deep-fried. I read somewhere that something truly magical happens when you freeze a Twinkie, dip it in batter, and then deep-fry it. I was skeptical until I tasted one at a state fair but they’re not wrong.
Magical
is the only way to describe ’em.”

Jay accessed her databases and found what seemed like an informative description of the process. By all reports, immersion in hot oil caused the Twinkie’s filling to liquefy, and the vanilla flavor to impregnate the sponge of the cake. Aficionados went on to extol the virtues of the contrast between the softened, nearly melting cake, and the crispness of the deep-fried crust. Deep-fried Twinkies didn’t sound at all
magical
to Jay, but they did sound interesting enough that she resolved to sample one at some stage in the near future.

Seth generously offered her one of the snack cakes but Jay shook her head. “Your requirement for sustenance is more pressing than mine.” She could forgo sustenance for another thirteen hours without compromising her body’s optimum physical condition, although she’d become accustomed to eating more regularly since Tyler had moved in. Speaking of food—

She made a mental note to order in a regular supply of sulphite-free foodstuffs for Seth. And to hire him a regular housekeeper.

“Tell me more about Evan Caine’s supposed relationship with my creator,” she said when Seth had demolished his snack.

He reclined the seatback and slumped, hands on stomach, legs outstretched as far as the sedan’s cramped interior allowed. “Nothing
supposed
about it. You know your creator was married, right?”

“Of course. Mary Patricia Durham, nee Highton, married Alexander Jay Durham in 1961. There was no issue from their union before she passed. Alex never remarried.”

“Correct. But prior to Durham meeting his future wife, he dated a chick named Nina Berry. He met her when he was overseas studying medicine at Cambridge—you do know he went to Cambridge, right?”

Jay gave him what she trusted were excellent, “Duh, what do you think?” eyes.

“Right. Anyway, Nina’s family didn’t approve of Durham—not entirely sure of the full story but her parents sent her away. And not long after, they announced to all and sundry she’d married a far more suitable, substantially older American, who just happened to be rolling in money, name of Neil Caine.”

Jay risked Seth having another conniption over her driving habits and threw a long, assessing glance his way. “Following this information to its logical conclusion,” she said, “Nina, pregnant with Alex’s child, married Neil Caine and passed off the child as his. Alternately, Neil was aware of her circumstances when he married her, and raised the child as his own. Was Alex aware Nina was pregnant when she was sent away?” She couldn’t conceive of the man she’d called Father abandoning his child, but stranger things occurred when matters of the human heart were involved.

“Don’t know,” Seth said. “But if he did, he never made a fuss about it—not that people did in those days. Anyway, Alex met and married Mary Highton, and once he got his degree, they upped stakes and moved to the good old U-S-of-A. Meantime, Nina and Neil doted on their only child, and young Evan didn’t have a clue he wasn’t Neil Caine’s legitimate son until Neil did the whole deathbed confession thing before he died.”

Seth sat up straighter, which Jay took to mean he was getting to what Tyler would call “the good stuff”. “Evan eventually tracked his real daddy down,” he said. “And somewhere along the way, decided it’d be a fine idea to pay Durham a visit. Seems Caine-the-younger was just as disagreeable as the modern day version, because he robbed Durham blind. See, Durham was pretty stoked to learn he had an heir apparent, so he treated his son to a tour of his private lab, and did a bit of a crow about his cutting edge research. Far as I can tell, Caine decided he had to have whatever Durham was working on. So he waited ’til Durham left to attend some function, broke into the lab and cleaned it out. Notes. DNA samples. A prototype cyborg that never lived up to his expectations.

“Caine didn’t have a scientific bent, but he did have a talent for using other people. He put together a team of people who worked on the prototype for donkeys’ years but never got it functioning to Caine’s high standards. They didn’t have much luck replicating it, either—the female version they built went through five incarnations before they gave up and scrapped it.” Seth yawned and scratched his chin. “Caine eventually decided to have another unit built from scratch. Only this time, he ‘improved’ it by making it male, and using his own DNA for the creation of the physiological shell. And the rest is narcissistic history, AKA Caine’s pseudo ‘son’ created in his own image, Cyborg-Six-Point-0.”

Seth had emphasized the word “improve” by raising his hands and curling the first two fingers of each hand into air-quotes. Jay gathered he didn’t believe that, a) changing a cyborg’s sex from female to male, and b) using Evan Caine’s genetic material over Mary Durham’s, had been an improvement. Or perhaps Seth was merely indicating his aversion to Caine’s creation—unsurprising given Seth’s recent encounter with Sixer. But Jay didn’t succumb to the lure of analyzing Seth’s thought processes, or how his revelations of Evan Caine being Alex Durham’s illegitimate son illuminated past events and the motivations of the key players. She was focused on the bigger picture: the fate of the cyborg Evan Caine had stolen.

“How did you discover this information?” she asked.

Seth answered promptly. “I started getting antsy about Caine’s motives, so I did me some digging. But I must’ve triggered some kind of internal alarm system because next thing I know, I’m up on report and some computer-whizz dude’s chewing my ass and calling me all kinds of idiot. I didn’t realize how much shit I was in until he admitted I was damn lucky he’d been able to convince Caine that terminating me would’ve been a waste of talent. I got the distinct feeling he meant termination of the permanent, non-breathing kind. I took his advice from then on—kept my head down and did what I was told.”

“Was this man’s name Michael White by any chance?”

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

So Seth owed his life to Tyler’s father, who’d used the pseudonym “Michael White” after being blackmailed into working for Evan Caine. “Put it down to a lucky guess,” she said.

“Meaning you’ll tell me once you’re sure I’m trustworthy?”

“Meaning, it’s not my story to tell.”

He didn’t press her further.

Jay didn’t yet have enough data to confirm her suspicions but it wasn’t a stretch to assume the “prototype” Caine had stolen had been Jay’s forerunner—a
Beta
unit. Specifically
the
Beta unit featured in the photo that had mysteriously made its way into Jay’s possession.

“How long ’til we get wherever it is we’re going?” Seth rearranged his limbs to extract maximum comfort from the cramped confines of the sedan.

“At our current speed we’ll be there in a little short of two hours.”

He barked a soft laugh. “Sixer would have given me the exact time down to the last second.”

Jay, too, had been programmed to be precise, but she’d learned precision was not always advisable. More often than not, it drew attention from those who didn’t know what she was, and only emphasized her differences to the few who did. Seth, however, seemed far more startled when Jay displayed her human attributes. “I can be precise if it makes you more comfortable,” she said.

“No thanks. I like you just the way you are.”

Now it was her turn to be startled. She scanned his expression for clues. “You
like
me?”

His face creased into a smile. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

Jay considered various responses. Would it be ill mannered to say she didn’t know him well enough yet to have formed an opinion?

His smile widened. “Don’t worry. I won’t be offended if you say it.”

“Say what?”

“That you’ve only known me a couple of hours so you haven’t formed an opinion either way. And how did I know that was what you were thinking?” he added, before she could voice the question that had bubbled to her lips. “It’s written all over your face.”

Jay couldn’t help herself: Her gaze flicked to the passenger side windshield visor Seth had lowered.

“Wanna see, huh?” He obligingly angled the visor so Jay could lean over and check her reflection in the small inset mirror.

She peered at her face and then turned her gaze back to the traffic. “I don’t detect anything in my expression that would allow you to guess my thoughts so accurately.”

“Is that a pout?” Seth asked. “Oh, my God. It is. You’re pouting!”

He sounded delighted by the discovery. “I am not pouting,” she said.

His response was unsatisfying in the extreme. “Have it your way.” He folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes.

One minute and fifteen-point-seven seconds passed, and then he whispered, “Were, too.”

She opened her mouth to refute his statement but instead of some pithy rejoinder, a wry laugh escaped. “Yes,” she agreed. “I totally was pouting.”

Seth’s laughter spilled over, and this time Jay joined in. And decided that she might like Seth, too. Just a little. Not that she would admit it to him. At least, not until he’d proven himself trustworthy by extracting the projectile once he’d shot her.

His heart pounded like it would burst from his chest and his breath came in sharp, painful gasps. He was running. From something bad—something that was gaining on him. He dug deep and somehow managed an extra spurt of speed. It howled, and his heart seized as all the hair on his body stood to attention. He chanced a glance over his shoulder and—

Abruptly he lay sprawled on the ground. It loomed over him, licking its chops. And then it opened its tooth-filled maw and—

Licked his face.

Tyler’s eyelids flew open and he found himself gazing into a pair of mournful yellow eyes. He swiped puppy-slobber from his cheek with the back of his wrist, and screwed up his nose as the canine version of morning breath hit him. Not a werewolf, then. Thank God for that. Not that he believed in werewolves or anything crazy like that but hey, it’d been a pretty realistic nightmare—no doubt caused by Brum’s furry presence in his bed.

“Arrooo.”

Tyler fondled the pup’s ears. “You miss her, huh?”

The pup whimpered and rested its muzzle on its front paws.

“Me, too.” Tyler scrubbed his face with his hands, blinked a couple of times, and glanced at his wristwatch. He loosed a heartfelt groan. Brum sure was an early riser. Maybe if he closed his eyes and feigned sleep, the pup would get the hint and—

“Rrrroooff!”

Apparently not. Grumbling beneath his breath, Tyler rolled out of bed, yanked on some clothes, and headed downstairs in search of Brum’s leash.

The morning “walk” turned out to be a pell-mell sprint all over the freaking park until Brum’s energy finally flagged and the pup flopped on the grass, refusing to budge another inch. Meaning Tyler had to pick him up and carry him home… and endure some of the most blatant pickup lines he’d ever encountered.

He unlocked the front door, kicked it shut behind him, and headed for Jay’s study. Brum woke the instant Tyler decanted the pup into his doggie bed, and with an earsplitting
yip!
of protest, rocketed from the study.

Tyler blotted his face with the hem of his t-shirt. The heat in his face wasn’t only from running ’round after Brum. Who knew so many single women were out exercising at this time of the morning? And who knew sporting a sleepy puppy draped over one shoulder was the trick to attracting their attention? Put it this way: He often took his shirt off to cool down after a run and because he was in pretty good shape, he’d gotten the odd appreciative glance. But having Brum with him had taken “attention” to a whole new level. Not even toting a baggie of puppy poop along with aforementioned cute-as puppy had put them off.

In future, if he had Brum with him, there would be no more going shirtless after a run…. Unless he wanted to see if Jay was capable of jealousy—

Nah. Dumb idea. Jay had already proven that she could experience jealousy when she’d dealt to Nessa, who’d been dumb enough to come on to Tyler in a disastrous effort win him back.

He snorted. As if.

His lips quirked in a wry grin. Pity he hadn’t known about the puppy angle back in high school, though. Like, when he’d fervently believed that attracting female attention was the key to life, the universe and
everything
. Then again, truth be told, he would probably have chosen an extra hour’s sleep over trolling for chicks at such an ungodly hour of the morning. He’d never been much of a morning person.