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  “You sure? Maybe I should do it again. Just to make certain.”

  She snatched her hands away, slid to the side and out of the kitchen, away from him. But not before he’s spotted more than a hint of curiosity, and heat, in her gaze. Seemed he wasn’t the only one to feel the burn when they touched.

  Standing, he rooted around in the pantry and came out with two meal replacement bars. Strawberry sundae flavored. He shuddered. He’d rather have a real sundae. No matter how many vitamins and minerals these things had added to them, they still tasted like flavored cardboard. What happened to normal food? The kind that didn’t come pre-wrapped. He handed a bar to his pretty little client, who perched against the arm of a chair in the dark living room.

  “Thanks.” She took the bar, unwrapped it, and bit into it without once looking him in the eye.

  Everything about her was fascinating, even the way she ate. He was losing his mind around her and needed to focus. “We need to talk about what happened. The Enforcement agency knew where we were. I have to ask, are you sure you’re cut off from your implants?”

  “Yes. I’m sure. I took Interferan-X.”

  “Would that affect a tracker that’s been placed under your skin? One that wasn’t an official implant?”

  Her head snapped up. She frowned. Thinking again. “You’re suggesting I’ve been tagged without my knowledge?”

  “It happens.” It was a lot more common than most people thought.

  “Even if I had been tagged, it wouldn’t work. Interferan-X works a little like a gel. It finds the implants, or in this case any tech parts under my skin, and surrounds them, essentially cutting them off from the outside world and from my neural network. The tech still works, but it’s been isolated. It no longer records, it can’t be accessed remotely, and it doesn’t communicate with me.”

  “There’s no way any tracking device in your body would work.”

  “No.”

  “What about your clothes? Could they be bugged?”

  She glanced down at her regulation jumpsuit, one he’d seen on thousands of busy little worker bees going to and from the companies.

  “I changed clothes as soon as I knew I was coming after you. I don’t have anything on me, or with me, that I owned while working at CommTECH. I bought this and changed in the store. I picked a small store on the outskirts of Houston and left all my old clothes there.”

  “Okay, it isn’t you. Did you tell anyone where you were going? Who you planned to meet?”

  “No one.”

  “No family? Friends? Someone looking after a cat for you?”

  “There’s no one. I was a foundling. My mother left me on the doorstep of CommTECH.” Unreadable, luminous blue eyes stared up at him. “I was found by a security agent called Jones. On a Friday. Hence the name. I then spent my youth in various institutions.”

  “I get it. No family. What about friends? Boyfriends?” The thought that she might be involved with someone grated on him. It seemed he was fast developing possessive urges when it came to Friday Jones, and in his line of work, there was no room for them.

  “No time for either friends or romance. My colleagues are just that—people I work with. We don’t socialize.”

  “You’re telling me no one outside of CommTECH knows that you’ve gone missing?” He ran a hand over his head as he tried to get his brain around someone being so completely alone. Without his team, his brothers, he’d be lost.

  Her eyes flicked away for a second before returning to his. He felt his body tense, instantly alert.

  “Not exactly no one,” she said.

  His mind raced through the facts as he knew them. “There’s the person who told you about me.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Yes.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I can’t tell you. But they would never betray me. They want what I want.”

  He crossed his arms and glared at her. That answer was unacceptable. “And what exactly is it you want?”

  Wide, sad eyes looked up at him. “Freedom.”

  He sucked in a breath and then cursed on the exhale. “You’re part of Freedom.”

  Her cheeks flushed, but she nodded once.

  He clasped his hands on top of his head. No wonder Enforcement was so hot to catch up with her. She was a rebel. A member of Freedom. Part of an underground revolution.

  Or, in the eyes of the Territory governments—a terrorist.

  Chapter Six

  CommTECH headquarters,

  New York City, Northern Territory

  “What do you mean you lost her?” Miriam Shepherd, CEO of CommTECH, asked the holo-image of the Enforcement agent.

  The man stood to attention, large as life, in the middle of her office. This was the way Miriam liked to deal with the dirt that came with her job. At least a holo-image didn’t leave marks on her priceless silk rug.

  “She may have been buried under the rubble, ma’am. We’re checking for bio-signatures right now.” The man’s voice had all the emotion of a drone.

  “When will you know for certain if she’s dead?”

  “Within the hour.”

  Too long. She could be out of the Northern Territory by then. Especially if she’d obtained the services of a smuggler. No. Not just any smuggler. Striker. The man had been a thorn in the side of CommTECH ever since he’d mysteriously appeared three years earlier.

  “Keep searching. This is a priority order. Stand by for further communication.” She waved her hand and the image disappeared.

  “We need to make sure the girl is no longer a threat.” Ju-Long Lee, master of the obvious, and CEO of Lee-Chan Medical, smoothed a hand down his pristine oriental-style suit.

  “What do you think I’m doing here?” Miriam let none of her frustration show in her tone. If the man hadn’t insisted on a meeting in person, none of this would have happened. He didn’t believe there was such a thing as an un-hackable conference call, and they were all suffering because of it.

  “I think you are trying to correct your mistake.” His black eyes were icy cold. “You should have ensured the building was empty for the meeting.”

  “I did.” The scientist had sneaked in to work. Something she did all the time, apparently. Something her supervisors had failed to mention.

  “We need to contact our source.” Serge Abramovich nursed his ever-present whiskey as he lazed on the cream leather sectional in the corner of her office. His sarcastic smile was as much a fixture as the scotch. “The source will tell us if the woman is still alive.”

  “Yes,” Miriam snapped the words. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  The owner of Abramovich Metals and Alloys laughed into his drink.

  Miriam waved her hand over her glass-topped desk, used her implant to communicate remotely with the virtual screen that appeared in front of her, and sent a message to their source. A second later, a shadowy figure manifested as a ghostly silhouette hovering above her desk. She didn’t know the identity of her contact, only that he called himself “the Broker” and made a living trading information to the highest bidder.

  “We have a problem,” Miriam told the person who was costing them a small fortune. “Enforcement lost them. Are they still alive?”

  “I’m adding this to your bill,” the modified voice said.

  “Of course.” She folded her arms over her cream silken dress and resisted the urge to tap her toe. The image in front of her froze. The source was contacting someone else. A few seconds passed before it moved again.

  “They’re alive. They’re holed up in South Munroe.”

  Before she could say anything else, the image disappeared. She mentally contacted the head of the Enforcement team. The holographic man appeared in the middle of the room. This time Miriam noticed he was injured. Blood trailed from his temple.

  Not her concern.

  “They’re in South Munroe.”

  His jaw clenched. “We’ll deal with it.”

  “See that you do.” She
cut the connection, and the man disappeared.

  “Is this really necessary?” Sandrine Cherbourg asked. The lithe woman headed up the Southern Territory’s largest conglomerate. “Perhaps we should invite the woman in for a download. You do download your Passive Recorders periodically, non? Such a request wouldn’t arouse suspicion.”

  “It’s too late for that, my dear,” Ju-Long told her. “Now the world is watching a manhunt unfold live on their newsfeeds.” He gestured to the soundless images running on the wall behind him. They showed live footage of Enforcement officers speeding through Munroe. Someone had gotten hold of the details concerning the chase, and they were running it as a hot news story. To make things even more difficult for them, a photo of Friday Jones appeared in the corner of the screen. “The girl isn’t going to come in willingly now.”

  Sandrine shrugged. “Then cut the satellite feeds.”

  “Yeah, like that won’t attract further attention,” Serge drawled.

  “You should have called her in for a routine download,” Sandrine said.

  Miriam didn’t appreciate the reprimand, especially coming from someone she considered to be an interloper within the leadership ranks. “A routine download was the first thing we tried. As soon as it was reported she’d been in the same building at the same time we were, I sent a message requesting her presence for an upgrade.” She eyed each of the most powerful people in the world in turn. “She ran.”

  Sandrine stared at the image of Friday Jones, which was frozen on the screen. “Why did she run? Did you order something out of the ordinary?”

  “No.” Miriam had personally supervised the request. “I even added the incentive of a promotion.”

  Ju-Long stood, clasped his hands behind his back, and paced the room. He was the oldest of the four. Miriam didn’t know his exact age but estimated it to be somewhere in his eighties. The only signs of his advanced age were his white head of hair and a slight stoop to his shoulders. Other than that, his long, stick-insect proportions had changed little over the years. Neither had his merciless nature. “Are we sure she even saw anything? This could all be for nothing if the woman didn’t see anything incriminating.”

  Miriam waved a hand, and a recording played on the screen taking up one wall of her office. It showed a bumbling woman hurrying along a corridor. Her attention was firmly on the data pad in her hand, her lips moved as she read the information on it. As she turned the corner, she stumbled, and instead of looking left, she looked right—straight through the open door at the end of the corridor. Straight at the six people who were meeting covertly.

  She didn’t pause when she saw them, didn’t stop at all. She had barely more than a glimpse, but it was enough time for the image to be stored in her databank and for her to have recorded any conversation she’d overheard. The woman carried on, still reading her handheld. The meeting hadn’t consciously registered with her. She was completely unaware of the time bomb that was now residing in her head.

  “She saw all of us,” Ju-Long said.

  “Yes. I didn’t get this visual record until our meeting had concluded. As soon as I saw it, I ordered a download session at the clinic. She should have come in as usual. We would have downloaded the images, wiped her memory, and the incident would have been dealt with.”

  “Instead, she ran,” Sandrine said again. “Do you think she’s a spy?”

  The four of them froze before turning in unison to stare at the image of Friday. Miriam felt a chill climb up her spine. She waved her hand in front of her desk and mentally brought up the chief of Northern Territory Enforcement.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the woman barked. She’d been born into the military and breathed Enforcement in all its forms.

  “Friday Jones. Full investigation. Leave nothing uncovered.”

  “When do you want it?”

  “Now.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The image disappeared.

  Miriam stared at the blank glass of her desktop.

  “You think she’s with Freedom,” Ju-Long said the words everyone else was thinking.

  “I hope to hell she isn’t.” Serge thrust his fingers through his overgrown hair. “If she is, then this just got a million times worse for all of us. Because this comedy show”—he pointed at the newsfeed—“has let her know how important the information inside her head is to us.”

  Miriam had to clench her teeth to stop herself from thanking the man for pointing out the obvious.

  Their four companies might control the civilized world, but if the scientist was working with Freedom, she had the information inside of her that could ignite a war. Freedom needed something to unite the people behind it. And Friday Jones could do exactly that.

  “We’ll get her.” It was a promise. Miriam held the eyes of her peers.

  “Yes.” Ju-Long stared back at her. “Yes. We will.”

  There were no other options.

  Chapter Seven

  “You’re a terrorist.” Striker folded his arms and glared down at the woman he’d claimed. The woman who was now his responsibility, and whose expertise he badly needed to help his team come to terms with the anomalies in their genetics. Anomalies that would get them all killed if they were ever discovered.

  She shot to her feet. “I am not.”

  “Yet you admit you’re involved with Freedom?”

  “I pass on information. That’s it. And the information I’ve been able to give them hasn’t even been that useful. It’s mainly about the work I’m doing. Nothing earth-shattering or innovative, only run-of-the-mill biotech.”

  He pointed at her head. “They download your data?”

  “No. CommTECH would know if someone else accessed it. I had a secure communications link, and I contacted them once a week to tell what little I knew.”

  “They’re looking for a way to take down CommTECH.” It wasn’t a question. Freedom was very vocal about their aims. They wanted a world run by elected officials—the way it used to be—instead of a world run by big business.

  “They intend to take down the big four. To wipe the slate clean. Start again. Build a system that favors the poor. One that gives people like me choices. Right now, there aren’t any. You either sign away your life to a company for an education, or you scrape a living doing whatever you can. That isn’t a choice. It’s slavery.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Freedom is noble. They’re fighting the good fight. Let’s arm the proletariat and rise up against our oppressors.” It was the main theme of every history book he’d been forced to read in high school.

  “You’re being facetious.”

  “It’s one of my many skills. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it when you were making inquiries with your Freedom buddies. Did they tell you where to find me?”

  “Yes, they gave me your location when I messaged my contact after I got the order to come in for an upgrade. They said you had the skills to help me. For a price.”

  Striker didn’t like that one bit. He thought he was flying under the radar—from official and non-official organizations alike. “They told you to get to La Paz?”

  “I worked that part out on my own. Where else would I find the antidote?”

  The look on her face said she thought he was a complete idiot for asking. That attitude would help her cause. Not.

  Striker’s eye shot to the window as he heard the low hum of an approaching hover-vehicle. “Don’t move.”

  He strode over and glanced out. Mace. He headed to the broken door to let his teammate in, checking the street behind the big man. It was empty. “Where’s your other half?”

  “She’ll be here soon. She’s busy spreading misinformation.” He held up a thin scanner. “I brought this. Better safe than sorry.”

  “Yeah.” Striker motioned into the room. “Friday, this is Mace, he’s is gonna scan you for trackers.”

  “I told you it’s impossible for any electronic device to work in me right now.”

  “Humor him.” He was seriously beginni
ng to regret his decision to take the woman, and her many problems, on.

  “Arms out, honey.” His second-in-command grinned down at Friday. At six-and-a-half-feet tall, Mace towered over her. And yet, she clearly wasn’t intimidated. In fact, she seemed more interested in the scanner than the man.

  “That’s a DC-120.” She pointed at the scanner. “There’s a more up-to-date model. You need to get one.”

  “I’ll get right on that.” Mace ran the scanner over the curve of her waist.

  “You’re doing it wrong.” She frowned. It was cute.

  With an irritated growl, the big guy glared at her. “There’s a right way?”

  She huffed out a breath. “Yes, there’s a right way. That scanner works best when you work your way down in a circular motion rather than a straight line. It has a limited field of operation, which means it can sometimes miss items. A circular motion ensures there isn’t any chance of skipping even an inch of skin. Do you want me to show you what to do?”

  “No, I think I got it.” He shook his head, then resumed the scan. Making sure to do it properly this time. “Clear,” he told Striker when he’d finished.

  To her credit, Friday didn’t point out that she’d told him so. Although the look she gave him was the same one his kindergarten teacher had given him every time he’d tried to eat the paste.

  “Could just be luck,” Mace said, referring to Enforcement knowing their whereabouts. But his face made it clear he believed in luck about as much as Striker did.

  “They’re getting information on her whereabouts from somewhere. There’s no such thing as a coincidence.”

  “She tell anyone what she was doing?”

  “She is standing right here. Wondering why you’re talking about her instead of to her. And no, I didn’t tell anyone.” Friday folded her arms over her ugly jumpsuit and glared up at Mace, who seemed bewildered by her.

  “She told Freedom,” Striker felt the need to point out.

  It was his turn to be on the receiving end of her glare. “They don’t count. They would never sell me out to CommTECH or Enforcement.”

  “Freedom?” All amusement drained from the big guy’s face. “You have got to be kidding me?” He railed at Striker. “She’s a terrorist. They’re never going to stop hunting her. Or anyone who helps her. You need to cut her loose.” He looked back at Friday. “You’re on your own.”