Inheritance

CHAPTER 13

The guard was still blocking the exit when Reese and David emerged from the back office and headed for the door. She was so caught up in thinking over what had just happened and how she and David were going to manage to lie to both the Imria and CASS that she barely noticed that the guard didn’t move as they approached. Then he reached out and grabbed her arm.

“Hey!” she cried. His grip was tight on her, and something cold and dark seeped through his fingers into her body. She froze. He was so strong—exactly like that soldier who had manhandled her at Blue Base right before she’d had the medical exam.

This man wasn’t looking at her at all. His eyes were focused on the rear of the shop, and Reese heard Lovick call out, “They’re finished. You can let them go.”

The man released her and she fell back, bumping against David. He sensed her sudden disquiet and took her hand. What happened?

The guard opened the door and she plunged out into the cool evening air, her mind whirling as she plowed up the sidewalk, dragging David with her. That guy was like the soldiers at Blue Base.

She sensed that he wasn’t entirely surprised. I knew there was something off about them, he told her.

She barely noticed the chilly mist on the skin of her legs as they walked through Chinatown, hand in hand. She was consumed with the realization that Lovick had Blue Base–made guards acting on his orders. She and David could try to manipulate Lovick and CASS, but the two of them were thoroughly outgunned. How the hell are we going to pull this off? she wondered.

“We’re here,” David said, pulling her to a halt in front of a restaurant. His face was pale, and he glanced behind her down the street. She didn’t have to turn around to know that he had seen the men in black’s sedan. We’ll figure it out, he told her. One thing at a time.

He opened the door to the restaurant, and she followed him inside. It smelled of chili peppers and garlic, and scrolls of Chinese characters hung on the walls. The hostess asked David something in Chinese, and after he responded, she showed them to a table midway down the rectangular room, dropping off two thick menus.

Reese glanced behind herself at the door. The restaurant was about half full of mostly Asian patrons, and the men in black had not followed them in. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and went to the rear of the restaurant where she saw the sign for the restroom. She had to go down a set of narrow stairs to the basement, where she found two toilets. She went into the one marked for women and took off her jacket, hanging it on the half-broken hook screwed into the wall. She unbuttoned her shirt and slid out of it, draping it over her jacket, so that she could remove the wire that was taped onto her skin. It was attached to a slim recording device clipped to the inside of her skirt. She pulled the recorder out and flipped the switch to Off, then wound the wire around the device and tucked it into her jacket’s interior pocket. She put her shirt back on before taking the cell phone out of her skirt pocket to text Julian: I got it.

David looked up from the menu when she returned from the bathroom. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. I texted Julian.” It had been his idea to tape the meeting with Lovick—“insurance,” he called it—and Reese had agreed immediately.

David leaned toward her and whispered, “We can’t post that online yet.”

“I know. I’m not going to give it to Julian until the right time comes.”

The waitress returned before she could say anything more. “What would you like?” she asked.

Reese glanced down at the menu. “Um…”

“This is good,” David said, flipping through the multiple pages to the noodle section and pointing out something called double-fried noodles with seafood. “Want to share it?”

“Okay.”

David said something to the waitress in Chinese, and they had a brief discussion before she picked up the menus and left.

“What did you order?” Reese asked.

“Spicy jellyfish and soup dumplings.” He poured tea from the stainless steel pot into their two teacups.

She was still agitated from the meeting with Charles Lovick, and her leg bounced beneath the table. She glanced around the restaurant, taking in the glass-topped tables, each setting laid with a single round plate and a pair of chopsticks. A tank full of lobsters glowed near the swinging doors to the kitchen. Her dad always wanted to go out for Chinese when he visited, but they hadn’t had time yet. She wondered how long he would be staying. He had been acting particularly fatherly lately, and it made her suspicious about his motives.

“Is something wrong?” David asked.

“No, sorry.” She took a sip of tea, carefully holding the cup around the rim to avoid burning her fingers. “I was just thinking about my dad, and—we don’t have to talk about it now.”

“We can if you want. What’s going on?”

“My parents are divorced but my dad’s been here since we got back from Nevada. I’m worried about my mom.” She picked up her chopsticks and pulled them out of the paper wrapper, breaking them apart. “Let’s not talk about that. It’ll put me in a bad mood.” She and David had agreed not to discuss Lovick in public, but all she could think about was their meeting. Grasping for a new subject of conversation, she said, “Aren’t we supposed to talk about shallow things like what movie you saw recently or your favorite band?”

David grinned. “Small talk? For a first date?”

Nerves fluttered inside her at the words first date. She began to fold the chopsticks wrapper into an accordion. “Sure,” she said, trying to sound casual. “Small talk. Have you seen any good movies lately?”

His eyebrows rose. “Not really. I’ve been busy. How about you?”

“No. I was in a medically induced coma for a month and then I got abducted by the government. It totally cut into my moviegoing experiences. How about music? What’s your favorite band?”

David laughed. “Did you get these questions from a dating website or something?”

Reese squirmed. “Uh, no. I just thought we should, you know, try to act like normal people or something.” David seemed surprised, and for a long moment of awkward silence they simply looked at each other. She was about to tell him they didn’t have to act normal if he didn’t want to, when he reached across the table and plucked the chopsticks wrapper out of her fingers.

“You should take up origami,” he said.

She blushed as he held up the paper with its tiny, perfect pleats. “It’s my hidden talent.”

“I like the Running Brooks,” he said.

It took her a moment to figure out what he meant. “Oh. You mean the band?”

“Yeah. Theory’s good too; he does this really cool electronic stuff with rap—you have to hear it.” He grinned. “And I like Slick Rice, this Korean American dude who dresses like a giant nerd and raps on YouTube, but his music is awesome.”

“I don’t listen to much rap,” Reese admitted. “It’s usually super sexist and gross.”

“I know. This stuff is different. It’s not like that. It’s political, but it’s fun too. I’ll make you a playlist.”

“Really?” She smiled.

The waitress arrived with the spicy jellyfish, which looked like a pile of translucent beige noodles dressed in chili sauce. Reese was a little dubious about trying it but she didn’t want to seem like a dumb American in front of David, so she quickly took a large bite. The chili burned the back of her throat and her eyes widened in shock.

David laughed. “You like it?”

“It’s different,” she mumbled. It was crunchy and slippery and tasted almost entirely of the spicy, vinegary sauce. She wasn’t sure if she liked it. The soup dumplings were more her style, and she scooped one up with a flat-bottomed spoon. When she bit into it, a savory broth spilled out. “Oh my God, these are so good,” she said, burning her mouth on the crabmeat filling because she didn’t want to wait for it to cool off.

“So what about you?” David said. “What kind of music do you like?”

As they talked, Reese began to relax. She had forgotten what it was like to just hang out with David, without worrying about their bizarre new abilities or how to figure out what it all meant. She liked the way his eyes crinkled up in the corners when he smiled, his mouth curving crookedly. She couldn’t remember if she had watched him this way, back when they were only debate partners. She had probably tried to avoid it, because the longer she watched him, the more the warm little glow inside her heated up. He was cute, yes. He was tall and broad-shouldered and had a great haircut and his blue shirt stretched so enticingly across his chest. But it was the interior Davidness about him—what could not be seen from the outside—that made her want to reach out and touch him. It was the way he laughed at her bad jokes, as if he genuinely thought she was funny; it was the focus of his attention on her, steady and deliberate; it was the fact that he had always been kind to her, even before he knew much about her.

When the noodles arrived, he served her first, cutting into the crispy noodle bed with the spoon and then lifting them onto her plate, adding stir-fried shrimp and squid and snow peas. The noodles were crunchy on the bottom and soft inside, and she decided she didn’t ever want to order Chinese food without David again.

By the time they left the restaurant, she had forgotten all about the men in black who might be following them. He put his arm around her as they walked, and the heat of his body spread like warm honey through her limbs. She liked the rhythm of his paces beside her, the solid confidence in him. He didn’t doubt himself. Even though Reese had always relied on herself and was wary of depending too much on others, she knew she could depend on him. It was a new feeling: a vulnerable one. To her surprise, she kind of liked it.

She took his hand as they rode the elevator up to their parking space in the garage, and in the car, she leaned over and kissed him before he started the engine. He was startled, but then he was kissing her back, his mouth firm as he cupped a hand around her face. She lost her breath. His fingers were in her hair. His consciousness seemed to open before her like a door, and he was full of heat.

“Wait,” he said, and dragged himself away. “We have to go to the party.”

She groaned. “Can’t we skip it?”

He gave a kind of choked laugh, and she almost reached for him again, but he said, “We’ll go to the party. We don’t have to stay for long.”