A pause. "Is Maxime okay?"
"Secure. Drugged, but recovering."
"What kind of targeting?"
"Recruitment attempt. Failed."
"How did Shaw try to recruit him?"
I considered how much to tell him. Xavier was brilliant and useful in ways that bordered on the supernatural. But he was my son first, my ally second.
"Chemical coercion. Maxime refused to cooperate."
"Huh." There was genuine surprise in his tone. "What do you need from me?"
"Intelligence on Gideon Shaw and GidTech. Everything you can find. But keep it quiet. We need to understand what we're dealing with before we move."
"Got it. How soon?"
"When we're back stateside. Right now, we're extracting."
"Algerone?" There was a different note in his voice. "Shaw can't have cracked the Banshee protocols yet. I mean, assuming he actually has the prototype."
Grim satisfaction settled in my chest. Shaw had stolen hardware he couldn't use.
"How long would it take him?"
"Months, if he's lucky. I didn't exactly leave breadcrumbs." Xavier paused. "You want me to add more safeguards remotely?"
"Not yet. Let him think he's closer than he is. We'll use his frustration against him."
"Understood." The line went dead.
Xavier knew not to ask unnecessary questions.
I moved to the window and studied Zurich's skyline. Steel and glass spread out below like a circuit board. Somewhere out there, Shaw thought he was clever. Thought he'd gained the upper hand by poisoning what belonged to me.
He'd made his move. Now I'd make mine.
But not here. Not on his territory. Shaw had the advantage in Zurich. Here, he had resources and connections I couldn't match in a foreign city. Better to retreat, regroup, plan properly. Let him think he'd won while I prepared his destruction.
I went back to the bed and slid in beside Maxime. He curled toward me immediately. His hand found my chest, fingers spread over my heart like he could hold it steady through touch.
I traced the bite marks I'd left on his skin. There was no going back to the careful distance we'd maintained before and no more pretending he was just my assistant.
Tonight showed me how much I stood to lose. Losing him would destroy me. Not professionally or operationally. Fundamentally. I'd survived betrayal and bullets, survived nearly losing my leg. I’d weathered every storm fate had thrown at me.
But losing Maxime? There would be nothing left worth salvaging.
He owned me as completely as I owned him.
Lightning slashed the skyoutside the G700's window as we climbed through turbulent storm clouds, leaving Zurich behind. I counted the seconds between the flash and the thunder. Four seconds meant the storm was close.
The plane dipped, then steadied. I glanced across the cabin at Algerone, noting the details I'd memorized through five hundred and forty-seven days of enforced proximity: the white-knuckled grip on his cane, the subtle tension carving lines around his jaw that hadn't existed before the explosion, the almost imperceptible shift of his weight away from his damaged left hip. The changing barometric pressure tormented his injured leg. He would rather die than admit such weakness, but I knew his body better than my own now. I knew every tell, every compensatory movement, every silent admission of suffering he thought he'd hidden.
Shaw's poison had mostly cleared my system, leaving only a dull headache and waves of nausea that crested every forty minutes or so. What demanded my attention were the bruiseshidden beneath my collar, four distinct marks from Algerone's teeth and three from his fingers during our encounter on the plane to Zurich. Each pulse of blood against the tender flesh sent heat spiraling through my chest. We hadn't crossed the final line then. He'd pulled back, left me marked but unsatisfied, and I'd spent the hours since replaying every second like a man dying of thirst remembering water.
"The pilot says we'll be in this weather for at least two hours," I said, reading the message on my tablet. "He's requesting permission to climb to forty thousand feet."
