Dangerous Promise (The Protector) Read online

  “Made me into something new,” she said.

  Ewan made a low, strangled noise that sounded like her name.

  She looked at him. “You touched me, and I became something new.”

  “Crosson—”

  “I’m not talking about Crosson,” Nina said.

  Ewan looked stricken, then nodded. “I know.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “All I wanted to do was to help my sister. My entire life, we’d been at odds. She was my parents’ favorite. I was their disappointment. But still, she was my sister. Family. When we lost our parents, she was all I had left.” Ewan filled two mugs with steaming water from the electric kettle and added some tea. He pushed one across the table toward Nina, who did not take it.

  She’d showered and dressed in her usual uniform of black leggings and top, but the harness and belt with her gear was folded neatly on the table in front of her. She would not stand by and allow him to come to harm, she’d told him, but she was no longer in his employ. No longer bound to protect him with everything she had.

  He was no longer hers.

  “She’d done such great work, see. Her efforts with conservation. The environment. She was only eight years older than me, but she’d spent so much of her life doing whatever she could to make the world a better place. No wonder my parents preferred her. Thought she’d left more of a positive impact. She had. I mean, what had I ever done? Sold candy. Drifted around to different apprenticeships. Never stuck with anything. Never thought I needed to.” He blew on the tea to cool it, but could not bring himself to sip. His stomach churned.

  Nina sat quietly, her hands on the edges of the table. She looked at him. She listened. She did not speak and had not, not more than a few words or so, since telling him she was quitting. That had been hours ago. She’d waited until they got back to Woodhaven, at least. Until he’d been given the antidote to Crosson’s poison. Until he’d been safe.

  “When she first started to forget things, it seemed like she was just working too hard. Had too much on her mind, you know? Maybe using too much candy. But it became rapidly clear that she was failing. She was losing pieces of herself. She was so young, but she was falling into dementia. Nothing worked. All of these medical miracles, and nobody had yet figured out how to stop a brain from forgetting. So I decided I would.”

  “And you did.”

  Those three words made him happier than any other three words could have, because it meant that Nina was at least going to say something to him. “I tried.”

  She drew the mug toward her and drank from it without bothering to cool the tea first. If it burned her, she showed no sign. She drained the mug and went to the sink to fill it with water from the tap. She drank that, too. It was the first time she’d ever been in the kitchen at Woodhaven, and it would also be the last.

  “It’s easier to erase memories than it is to keep them,” Ewan said. “As it turned out, the tech did everything it was supposed to, but too well. My sister deteriorated so rapidly I never had time to help her. And after that . . .”

  “You enhanced fifteen people who would otherwise have died. You saved our lives.”

  Ewan nodded.

  “You have the tech upgrades already developed. You’ve always had it.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You know that without upgrades, we’re all going to die. Probably as terribly as your sister did, within the next five years. Or less. There are only thirteen of us left. Some of us might go out on the job. Some might end up in some butcher’s chop shop, so desperate for the chance at new tech they won’t care about the risks. Some of us,” she said quietly, “might simply check out the way Hendricks did. Believe me, I’ve thought about it once or twice.”

  The thought of that, of losing her not just for himself but that the world itself would end up bereft of her, shook him to his core. His gorge rose. He was glad he hadn’t drank any tea. It would have come back up.

  “Nina,” he said in a voice ragged with longing. “I’m sorry. Please believe me.”

  “So change it,” she said sharply. That liquid-dark gaze settled on his. “Change all of it. You lobbied to change the laws. Change them back.”

  Miserably, he shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “Because you don’t want to.”

  “Because it’s not right, Nina. I wish I could make you understand. Watching my sister die that way was horrifying. I thought I could help her, and instead I created something that had no business being used. I saw her lose herself, but only once. I can’t allow this tech out there in the world knowing it could make someone lose themselves over and over again. I can’t, baby.”

  “Something happened to me,” Nina whispered, her voice breaking. “I’m so angry with you, Ewan, it’s like a sickness inside me.”

  “You can feel again. That’s a positive—”

  “I’m sick with it!” she cried harshly, loud enough to shut him up. “Don’t you understand? I love you, but I hate you, and it’s pulling me apart from the inside out.”

  She got up to pace, each step a thump on the floor hard enough to shake the table and the teacups. She whirled around at one end of the kitchen and strode back. Her fists clenched and unclenched. She was shaking.

  “Something happened,” she repeated, her voice like the grinding of gears. “It hurts.”

  That wasn’t what he wanted, and the sight of her distress, the sound of it in her voice, sent waves of sickness all through him, too.

  “I can fix you,” he said in a low voice. “We can get the upgrades for you . . .”

  Nina whirled on him, her teeth bared, shocking and fierce. “The upgrades you lied about?”

  “Yes. I lied to you. I lied to everyone. I’m sorry.” Ewan recoiled from her before he could stop himself.

  “Are you afraid of me? Do you think I’m going to hurt you?” She stalked closer, taking him by the front of his shirt. Her fingers gripped, digging deep.

  He closed his eyes. “I know you won’t.”

  “I didn’t think, I didn’t think you could hurt me.” Her grip loosened. Her breath gusted over his face as she leaned to press her cheek to his, giving him hopes she was going to embrace him that were dashed with her next words. “I love you. I hate you. I hate you.”

  She pushed away from him and began pacing again. This time, Ewan got to his feet and stood in front of her. He took her by the upper arms to keep her still. Beneath his hands, Nina was trembling. Tears welled in her eyes but didn’t slip down her cheeks.

  “I don’t understand what’s going on,” Ewan told her. “But I can fix you, Nina. I’m going to fix you, I swear.”

  “And the others?”

  He shook his head. Nina tried to jerk herself free of his grip and step back, but Ewan refused to let go. The second time she moved away from him, it was hard enough to make him stumble forward.

  “Even if I could change the laws, I can’t in any good conscious agree to make a wide release of any upgrades to that enhancement tech!” he shouted. “It would not end with the thirteen of you, and you know it. We should not have the ability to wipe anyone’s memories. Or to control them. It’s wrong, Nina. At the end of my sister’s life, if there’d been any way at all for me to help her regain her memories, to hold onto what she had left, I would have given anything. But that’s not what that tech does, and it’s not right to be able to take something like that away.”

  She put her shaking hands to the sides of her head. “Even the bad memories? Don’t you think there are people who’d be so happy for the ability to get rid of the things that hurt them?”

  “And there are people who have decided that there are things you’re not allowed to remember. What happens when they choose to take away something you want to keep?” he shot back at her. “Because that’s what they can do.”

  “Will you?” she demanded. “Reset me? Wipe this assignment? You could. You probably should,” she added flatly and stood up straight, hands at her sides. “After