Wicked Attraction (The Protector) Read online

  Katrinka, last name still unknown, looking so serious. She was Jordie’s mother? Nina wondered if Ewan knew that. Or if it mattered. After another second, she wondered if she’d known it before and had since forgotten. It felt like she had, but she had no way to be sure, and it nibbled at the edges of her patience.

  “Who were you talking to?” Jordie asked with a gesture toward Al, who’d gallantly taken her date the drink.

  Nina stared at Jordie. “A friend.”

  “Looked pretty intense. What were you talking about?”

  “It was a private conversation,” Nina said, not giving a damn if this kid belonged to someone important. She didn’t have to play nice with him.

  Jordie gave her a slow, broad smile. “Yeah. Sure. Of course it was private, that’s the kind of conversation you have with a friend, Ms. Bronson. You should have friends, right? Everyone should have friends. I have friends, lots of them. Some of them my mother doesn’t even know, what do you think about that?”

  “I’m sure she’d prefer to have some idea about the company you’re keeping. Mothers usually do,” Nina answered, still assessing him. She couldn’t quite get a handle on him. He might not be a physical threat to Ewan, but something about Jordie was certainly not quite . . . right.

  “Do you have kids, Ms. Bronson? You don’t look old enough.” He shot her a grin he must have thought was charming.

  Onegod, was Jordie flirting with her? “I don’t.”

  “Oh, sure, yeah. Right on. I bet if you did, you’d be a hyper icy mom. You’d care who your kid was friends with. If my mother paid attention to me, I’m sure she would, too. Are you enjoying the party? Oh, wait, I know, I know, you’re only here to make sure that nobody tries to hurt Mr. Donahue, right? After all that business with those protest groups, it’s a good thing for him to be careful. You wouldn’t want him to get hurt.”

  “Neither would you, Jordie. Would you?” Nina watched him carefully as he answered.

  “Lots of people wanted to get to him. That Wanda Crosson, you know, she was bad news. Brilliant mind, but bad news.” Jordie ran his tongue along his teeth and looked beyond her. Nina noticed that he had not actually answered her question. “I need something to eat.”

  “In a minute.” Nina’s voice was authoritarian enough to stop him, a fact that seemed to surprise him enough to actually keep him from moving away from her. “What do you know about Crosson?”

  “She’s in prison,” Jordie said quickly. “Where she belongs, right? For trying to kill Mr. Donahue. She used to work with him. The way I do, I guess, right? Except that I’m not bad or anything, not like her. I mean, I’m not um, you know, I have ambition and stuff, I definitely want to make something of myself. But not like, enough to kill anyone over it. I wouldn’t do that.”

  Nina studied him. “I guess that’s good to know.”

  Jordie’s laugh rang false. “She’s in prison, anyway.”

  “I know that,” Nina said. “Where she belongs.”

  “She’s allowed to correspond via written methods, hyper antique. But not viddy comm,” Jordie said as he rocked on his heels, hands shoved deep into his pockets. He fixed Nina with a sudden fierce look far steadier than any of the others had been. “Did you know that?”

  “I did not. How did you?” she asked.

  Jordie shrugged, twitching again. “I’m a font of useless trivia, Ms. Bronson. I mean, I bet you didn’t know this whole party was planned by my mother so that Mr. Donahue could make his big announcement.”

  “I was not aware of that. No. What’s the big announcement?”

  Jordie sighed and did that odd thing with his tongue again. He pulled a small tin from his pocket and shook out several brightly colored tablets that he popped into his mouth to crunch between his teeth with a grimace. “Candy? It’s the sour kind. Really good. Terrific, as a matter of fact. Turns your tongue blue, that’s hyper icy.”

  “No, thanks. Hey, Jordie.” Nina stepped forward to take both his shoulders in her firm grip. Not hurting him, but letting him know she could, if she wanted to. “Can you look at me, please?”

  Candy took only a few minutes to hit. He’d be re-sugared soon. Right now, he blinked rapidly and honed his gaze on hers. It took an obvious effort.

  “Yeah? Sure thing, Ms. Bronson.”

  She let go of his shoulders. “Thank you. Can you please tell me what this big announcement is all about?”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t tell you.” Jordie’s smile turned sly. Calculating. Part of that was the candy kicking in—he’d be ultra-focused for a while. “Considering how important it would be to you.”

  Nina had had about enough of this kid and his hints. A slow rage had started boiling around her edges, creeping closer and closer to completely consuming her. Each breath slipping in and out of her lungs was meant to calm her, but it wasn’t really working.

  “How about you tell me, instead of making me beat it out of you?”

  Delivered with a smile and hint of a laugh, her threat could have been passed off as a joke. Jordie didn’t take it that way. His eyes narrowed immediately, suspicious. His upper lip curled, baring his teeth for a second before he relaxed.

  “I don’t like any of the people here. You have a friend here. I don’t. These are all my mother’s friends. They talk a lot, you know. About making the world a better place. About working together, but they really don’t care about anything but what benefits them. Whatever’s trendy, that’s what they worry about. It doesn’t really matter to them, deep down. What matters is what they can get out of things. I mean, people go to prison for things these people here wouldn’t think twice about doing, because they know they’ll get away with it no matter what.”

  Jordie clearly had issues that went deeper than Nina cared to dig. She tried again, her voice a little harder this time. She wanted to reach out and yank him forward by the front of his jacket, but didn’t. “The announcement, Jordie.”

  “You don’t need me to tell you,” Jordie said. “He’s about to tell everyone about it. See? Up there. Right next to my mother.”

  Nina turned to look at the stage and podium at the back of the room. Sure enough, Ewan and Katrinka were up there. She was beaming, waving at the crowd. Ewan looked . . . uncertain. No, it wasn’t that. Not nervous, either. Nina couldn’t quite figure out his expression.

  Ewan’s eyes searched the crowd and found her.

  Katrinka was introducing him with lots of adjectives, mostly about his generosity. His dedication. His belief in trying to make the world a better place.

  Dev, Nina thought with an internal gasp of relief. Her last name was Dev.

  “I told you,” Jordie whispered from beside her. “They talk a lot, but really, they’re all excremental sphincters.”

  Nina frowned and nudged him away from her. “Shut up.”

  Ewan stepped up toward the microphone. He smiled out at the crowd, clearly an expert at working them. The applause was thunderous, never-ending. By the time he was able to speak over the sound of it, the room hushing, a chill, anticipatory sweat had broken out in Nina’s armpits.

  “All of you here tonight have worked tirelessly to support campaigns designed to bring to light abuses and misuses of tech. Many of you were behind me in pushing for the Enhancement Repeal Act, because we truly believed that the tech implanted in those fifteen brave soldiers, while intended for noble purpose, nevertheless ended up causing more harm than good. Many of you, like me, worked to make sure that the soldiers who’d been enhanced were not going to be used to cause harm, but more importantly, that nobody else could ever be forced to accept tech that so specifically and detrimentally brought them the potential of harm.” Ewan paused to look out over the crowd, which had fallen silent. Once again, his gaze found Nina’s. She’d stepped into a small circle of light, so he had no trouble seeing her. He smiled. Looked back at the crowd. “We worked hard for our convictions, my friends, and I would never say that anything we did was wrong. But times have changed. We kno