Night Beyond The Night (16 page)

“Luke,” she said, trying to sound breathy, “we. . . .” She let all of her weight, insubstantial as it was, lunge toward him in a sudden movement, angling her knee so that it jabbed right into his gut. “Oh, my God, I’m sorry,” she said, pulling out of his grip as he gasped in pain, and she squeezed down and past him in the dark. “I slipped right off the step.”

She was never coming to Greenside, or to meet with Luke, alone again.

“Jade,” Luke was saying, and she felt his hand brush against her. But before he could snag her back, she turned on the light.

A smile firmly in place, she looked at him with an exasperated expression and said, “Now, Luke, you’re going to put me all off-schedule. We’ll have time for this later.” Much later.

She moved over to the rows of computers, hard drives, and something Theo called mainframes—she guessed they were just big computers—and opened her knapsack.

“What do you have?” he asked, moving over to stand very close behind her. His finger trailed over her neck, curling around in her long hair as he looked over her shoulder.

“I need to, uh . . . upload”—she thought that was the word, but Lou talked so fast and technically sometimes she didn’t always catch the correct terms—“all this data onto your machines.” For backup, Lou said. So they had copies of it somewhere else in case the worst happened.

“That’ll take some time,” Luke said, watching her remove the assortment of flash and hard drives from her pack. “What should we do while we’re waiting?” The expression in his eyes was not good.

In fact, he looked more than a little pissed. Time to soothe the savage beastie. She’d never had to resort to that before. Without letting herself think too hard about it, Jade placed her hands on his shoulders and lifted her face for a quick brush of a kiss over his lips followed by the barest of nibble.

“I wish I had more time,” she murmured, trying not to gag. Then she pulled away, placing her hand on his chest to keep him from lunging forward to maul her again. “Let me get started on this while you get your stuff for me. Otherwise, I’ll never get it done.”

Reluctant, Luke nevertheless moved away to find the drives and disks he’d prepared for her. “Got a good delivery last week,” he said from the corner, from which came the familiar sound of metal clunking and sliding against metal.

Luke collected any old computers or hard drives from various sources. He extricated the data from them and provided it to Jade, who brought it back to Lou and Theo in Envy. She “ran” the information from place to place on portable drives, and occasionally, like today, brought data that Lou wanted to make certain was protected and backed up.

This was the crux of the business relationship she had to work so hard to preserve—the exchange of information and confidentiality. The problem was, Luke was a hothead and although he had good contacts and understood almost as well as Theo how to work with computers—and he hated the Strangers, which was the key to his cooperation—he could also be impatient. The last thing she needed was for him to feel slighted by her and start running off at the mouth about her and Theo visiting and collecting data.

But now, fortunately, Luke had turned to the business at hand, leaving Jade to begin the transfer of data . . . and to wonder where Elliott was. How long had she been gone?

She checked the status of the five hard drives she’d hooked up and noted that they were in the process of transferring their secrets. It would take a while.

“I’ll be right back,” Jade said, rising swiftly from her chair and starting up the spiral stairs before Luke could waylay her again.

But he merely grunted, now engrossed in a different task, and she was able to make her escape to find Elliott.

She’d been to Greenside often enough to know many of the people by sight, and as far as they were concerned, she was a traveling singer who visited from Envy and brought Luke tools for his shop. Nothing suspicious about an occasional conjugal visit, if that was what they thought. And she suspected Luke wouldn’t set them straight.

Since it was midafternoon, most of the town’s fifty or so residents were working on their daily tasks, so Jade wasn’t surprised to find few people about. But where to find Elliott?

She couldn’t picture him as a patient man, waiting docilely for her to return after she dashed off like she had—and, now that she thought about it, Jade realized it was surprising that he actually hadn’t followed her. Had he really listened to her when she told him to stay there?

She decided to retrace her path and hope to run into him, but she’d gone hardly a few steps when she heard voices. Jade walked toward the conversation, her skin prickling. A burst of laughter, followed by a deep rumble.

It was Elliott. As Jade approached a whitewashed building that boasted huge glassless window openings, she saw that he was sitting beyond the building, in a courtyard with a group of women of various ages—from grandmotherly to a decade younger than Jade herself. Three of them were obviously pregnant, with beautiful round bellies of varying sizes.

Jade thought of her own flat abdomen and empty womb.
Barren bitch
.

It had been a long time since Daniel’s words had cut through her memory, and she wasn’t prepared for the sharp renewal of pain they caused. He was long dead, but the voice in her head was not.

She automatically touched the three bands on her wrist, twisting them to line up the beads, reminding herself what they represented. She’d come so far from that weak, insecure girl—not only because of her own determination, but also thanks in part to Flo for taking her under her wing, and to Lou for helping her find her place. Giving her a purpose.

Giving her a chance for revenge.

Another burst of laughter, followed by a chorus of crooning
awww
s drew her back to the tableau through the windows, and Jade straightened her shoulders and smoothed her hair. As she started toward the building, she noticed the wet spot on her shirt from Luke’s overzealous mauling. Right over her nipple.

Shit
.

“Elliott,” she said as she approached the large opening. “There you are.”

He looked over at her. There wasn’t an element of surprise, nor delight, at seeing Jade. None of that subtle flare of heat she’d become used to seeing. “Jade. Are you finished?”

She counted more than five women, and recognized some—Sally, who was as sweet as she looked, and her sister Della, who looked more sober but was also very kind. Della’s eldest daughter, Andrea, was sitting there between two of the pregnant women across from Elliott, and she seemed to only have eyes for him. In fact, from her body language, it looked as though she were ready to slide right into his lap.

Jade walked around the building and came to a low wall. On the other side sat the group of them, looking very cozy, sitting there around a table in the cheery little courtyard. “What are you all doing?” she asked, trying to sound casual, and as if it didn’t bother her to see Elliott surrounded by a group of females who seemed to be hanging on his every word.

And why should it bother her anyway?

“Elliott’s been predicting the sex of our babies,” said one of the pregnant women. Mathilda was her name, and her belly looked ready to burst. “He says he’s never been wrong.”

“Is that so?” Jade looked at Elliott. When their eyes met, she read recognition of her message there . . . but, again, no warmth. “Will you be performing tonight, Jade?” asked Della hopefully.

“I’m sorry, but we need to get back on the trail before much longer. I have to be somewhere else tonight.” Jade spoke quickly, then read the disappointment in the woman’s eyes. “I’ll come back soon, though, and stay for a show.” She hoped.

“I just love it when you sing that song about the preacher man,” Della said wistfully.

“I like that one too,” Jade said. And because Della seemed a little sad, she sang a few bars of the beginning, about going walking with Billie Ray, the preacher’s son.

It turned into the whole first verse and a couple run-throughs of the refrain, and when she finished, they all applauded. Although she hadn’t wanted to sing, Jade was glad she’d done so. It seemed to give them pleasure, and she knew that the computer upload wouldn’t have finished quite yet.

And then there was, of course, the added benefit of the way Elliott was looking at her. A little bit of that heat was back.

“Well, now come and have a glass of tea with us for a bit, dear,” Sally said, gesturing expansively. “Elliott’s been telling me how to take care of the ache in my hip too.”

All of these women were fairly eating out of his hand, and Jade could see why. He looked, sounded, and acted like he really cared, yet he wasn’t alienating Sally, who acted as midwife, by telling her how to do her job. He played it well. Very well.

He had a way with them—he knew how to talk to women, to treat them, to make them feel comfortable and happy. She couldn’t imagine him ever raising a hand to anyone . . . although he was certainly capable of inflicting great damage. The snake he’d sliced up was a perfect example of that.

And Andrea . . . damn if she wasn’t inching her way closer to him when no one was looking. Pretty soon her knees would be brushing against his. Jade was looking at the younger woman when Andrea glanced up and caught her attention. “What’s that on your shirt?” she asked. There was a bit of a malicious gleam in her eyes.

“I spilled something,” Jade replied coolly. Then, she smiled blandly and said, “I’m sorry everyone, but I’m going to have to take Elliott with me. We’ve got to get on the road if we’re going to make it by dark.”

Andrea must have gotten the message—whatever it was Jade was trying to tell her—because her mouth tightened just a little bit. And Jade was surprised at how relieved she felt when Elliott stood to join her.

“Ladies,” he said, turning back to the group as he stepped through the large window opening. “It’s been a real pleasure meeting all of you. I’ll be back in a month or so myself to see how things are going.”

So much for him never seeing Andrea and her big blue eyes again.

Elliott followed Jade down the street, trying to ignore the mouth-sized wet spot over her right breast. “Are we leaving now?” he asked, catching up to Jade with an extra-long stride.

“As soon as I get my stuff.” She tossed that gorgeous smile up at him.

He looked her over again, over the wet spot on her tee. He should have figured it out right away, last night when he saw her up on stage. Of course she was a man-eater. Of course a woman who looked like Jade, who performed and rode like she did—and was smart and brave to boot—had a plethora of male companionship.

Women like that attracted them in droves. And they couldn’t settle on just one.

Lysney had been the same way. Beautiful, smart, confident—a skyrocketing star in the Chicago advertising industry. And she had a man in each city where she had an account.

At least Elliott had realized it before he fell too hard, for Jade or Lys.

Which was why, when he met the man who’d had his hands all over that great ass, he merely smiled at Luke instead of
smiling
at him. And he was rewarded with absolutely no vibe whatsoever.

And which was probably why Luke didn’t hesitate when Elliott followed him and Jade down into another cellar complete with a NASA-like computer setup. It didn’t take Elliott long to figure out what was going on—the transfer of data.

He poked around a little bit without appearing to poke—watching screens surreptitiously (simple data uploading), slyly opening a drawer when the opportunity arose (it held some flash drives and a few CDs, along with a curling-cornered picture of Jade), even looked behind the computers to see where their cords went. How was Luke generating so much power? It was one thing to run a refrigerator or television and a few lights—but at least twenty boxes, plus monitors?

The cords plugged into something that looked like a large, homemade generator boasting countless outlets that had been cobbled together. The generator was set into the ground, with all of its plugs exposed in a grid. He wanted to look beneath and find out what made it work.

So he knocked over a stack of disks, and as they spewed all over the floor, he knelt to pick them up. Out of sight under the table, he knelt next to the generator and began feeling around for the mechanism behind or beneath it. Low to the floor, he found a small metal door next to the grid of outlets. It felt warm to the touch, and its sliding bolt lock opened as if it were often moved.

The door opened with a small metallic clang, but Luke and Jade were talking on the other side of the room, and neither seemed to notice. A warm yellow glow spilled into the space, lighting the floor around him. Elliott looked down into what had to be the insides of the generator and saw a large oblong object, glowing and sparking with little blue lightninglike sparks. The object, which looked like a piece of granite with a light burning inside it, had blue and yellow veins all over it. A crystal, as large as his forearm. Generating enough power to run a classroom of computers.

Next to it were some fragments of more crystals, much smaller, as if they’d been smashed. The floor felt gritty beneath his palms, and he noticed the tiny sparkles of what looked like dust beneath the shards.

Elliott closed the door and returned to his seat with the disks in hand. Casting a glance behind him, he noted that neither of the others seemed to have noticed his nosiness.

“So you haven’t heard from Theo for a couple weeks?” Jade was saying.

“Nope, but when I got this stuff, I sent him a message and said he might want to make a special trip. I’m sure not complaining that he sent you. Maybe you could come from now on,” Luke replied, absently scratching what looked like a rash on the inside of his arm.

“I’d discount my prices if you made Greenside part of your regular route,” he added with a leer.

Elliott resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“That sounds like a good idea,” Jade said enthusiastically, then her voice sharpened with regret. “But we’re leaving now. I’ve got to catch up with him.”

Jade didn’t allow Luke’s obvious reluctance at their departure to delay them, and just a bit more than an hour after arriving in Greenside, she and Elliott were on their way, back to Envy on foot.