Portia Tremaine, Ice Queen.
Portia Tremaine, Tommy Gilmore’s wife.
Who was she now? And what the hell was she supposed to do for the rest of her life?
Questions to ask herself while she ran.
She laced up her custom running shoes and slipped her phone into a hidden pocket in her pants. With some credits, ID, and her keycard tucked into another secret pocket, Portia left her lonely apartment.
Her high-security building was designed to keep people out, not in. She and Tommy had explored all the different ways to leave their building and avoid the newsies who occasionally camped outside, looking for a juicy story about any of the wealthy residents.
Portia used one of those exit routes now. Descending the stairs that led to the ground floor warmed her muscles and elevated her heart rate. At the bottom, the door opened into an alley at the back of the building. It wasn’t as sketchy as some—the partial lighting discouraged lurkers and the security cameras captured everything that happened back here. Portia wasn’t worried about the cameras. Her glasses were embedded with technology that prevented them from clearly capturing her image.
She stretched her hamstrings and her quads, breathing in the night air. The salty tang and hint of seaweed told her tonight’s breeze was coming in from Puget Sound. Those were her favorite nights, when the air smelled like home instead of oil and people and decay.
Pulling up a high-energy playlist, Portia darted out of the alley and headed toward the city center. Her feet hit the sidewalk in time with her music. Speakers built into the glasses allowed her to listen while remaining aware of her surroundings.
Two blocks in, the tension in her shoulders started to melt away. The rhythmic in–out of her breathing, the slap of her feet, the pulse of her music, all those sounds drowned out the noise in her head.
She let the traffic lights decide her route. She took advantage of every green light, exploring the city she stared down at day and night. The ground-level perspective was completely different.
Tonight, the streets still teemed with people. No longer tiny ants on the ground, but full-size people. Seattle was almost, but not quite, a twenty-four-seven city. Not a New York or London or Hong Kong—not yet—but it was getting there. And as the head of Tremaine Corporation, she was a part of it.
Her body on as close to autopilot as it ever got, Portia studied the people she ran past and the buildings that towered over her. The rumble of a passing car sent a spike of adrenaline through her. She ignored the faces of the startled people she dodged on the sidewalk. Rounding the next corner, she stepped into the street to avoid a cluster of users.
Running was her drug. Why use synthetics like Vyne when the natural endorphins of running could fix you right up? It was like a miracle cure—it cleared her head, worked her body, soothed her soul. If only it hadn’t taken Tommy’s death for her to discover it.
Portia paused at a driveway that cut across the sidewalk, jogging in place as a motorcycle pulled out of the garage and slipped into traffic.
The slim figure bent over the handlebars reminded her of Dizzie. The other woman had spent her life racing around the city, running packages and whatever else wherever they needed to go. All for the benefit of people like Portia. The people who made the decisions and ran the companies.
Portia shuddered and took off again. It sounded awful. She couldn’t imagine trading places with Dizzie.
She liked her life... mostly. At least she had, before the bombing.
Following her mother’s death when Portia was in middle school, every day after school she’d made her way to Tremaine headquarters, hoping to spend time with her father. But it had never happened. By the time she was a teenager, she’d stopped trying and started working.
That had been the secret formula and the ticket to weekly meetings and progress reports with her father.
God, she’d been so naïve then. Believing that her father loved her.
Portia shook herself free from those thoughts and ran on.
New songs, green lights, red lights, pedestrians. Taking it all in, she wove through the city.
Then slowed as she neared a familiar building. She passed the ornate entrance and the uniformed valets, then stopped on the other side.
Hands on her hips, she paced in a small circle, sucking in one deep breath, then another.This was so stupid.There was no reason to stop at Aleks’s hotel.
She hadn’t meant to come here.
Had she?
Of course not. Her route had been completely random, determined by traffic lights. This was pure coincidence.Just keep running, Portia.
But her feet didn’t move. She stopped pacing and stared up at the building.
The sooner she sorted out the Solveig Consortium’s demands and arranged a meeting with Dizzie, the sooner Aleksander Lind would be out of her hair.
