CHAPTER 2
MIA
I let outa little growl of frustration, giving in to my feelings for two seconds, before raising my chin and heading over to the nearest traveling tray of booze. With a quick glance, I can tell there are a couple of partygoers eyeing me, probably wondering what happened between me and Vanguard.
That makes two of us.
I twist my earring before grabbing a glass of passing champagne and downing it in one gulp, putting the empty one back and grabbing another.
“Mia, what the hell was that?” Bayo cries out from the now-online transmitter.
“Look,” I say quietly, holding the glass over my mouth. It takes a lot of alcohol to affect me, and downing several glasses won’t even calm my nerves. “I could tell he wouldn’t be up for it.”
“So you decided to insult him?”
“I had to stand out,” I tell him, looking around the room again. No one is paying attention to me anymore, not even Vanguard, who I see standing by one of the outside heaters, talking to a bunch of elegant women who laugh and smile ateverything he says. Oh, to have that kind of power. “He’s used to everyone fawning over him, sucking up to him.”
“For good reason!”
“I know. But I’m not just anyone. At least now, he knows I won’t sugarcoat things, that I’ll tell the truth.”
Bayo sighs, and I picture him running his hand over his face. “Theywantyou to sugarcoat things. That was the whole point of this PR piece. It’s not just Vanguard, it’s Global Dynamix. Even if Vanguard is more open to the gritty truth, the company won’t be.”
“But—”
“No. Youknowit, Mia.” He lets out another sigh. “Now, have you laid eyes on Van Veen this evening? I’ve been scouring the CCTV footage all night and I haven’t seen her once. Doesn’t help that this gala is a sea of blonde European ladies with rods up their asses. They all look the same.”
“Haven’t seen her yet,” I say. Julia Van Veen is the Chief Technology Officer of Global Dynamix, credited as the one who ‘created’ Vanguard (despite what he thinks of it). Double PhDs from MIT and Stanford in neuroscience and computer science and a former DARPA researcher, Dr. Van Veen was brought on to Global Dynamix two decades ago and helped shape the company under the guidance of the founder, Elron Masters. Masters is nearing a hundred years old and has an honorary role as Chairman Emeritus, but his stain on society has left a mark that’s impossible to scrub off. It was his foray into self-flying airplanes, AI, and cryptocurrency, plus his support of autocracy, that helped usher in the Dark Decade and the fall of the American empire, the consequences of which the world is still feeling today.
But even with Masters tucked away, his protégé Conrad Marsh, a smarmy, fifty-four year old former start-up whiz kid, still carries the mark. While Marsh, Van Veen, and the rest ofGlobal Dynamix have spent the past few years trying to placate the harm Masters did and the role the company took in the US as the government fell and corporations rose in power, no one worth their salt trusts them.
Especially not the British government.
Especially not when they possess a living, breathing weapon.
Which is exactly why I need to infiltrate Vanguard and his inner circle and find out what’s really going on. And if it turns out the so-called superhero is as dangerous as a weapon of mass destruction, then I’ll need to take him out and somehow survive the process.
Sounds easy, right?
“I see her,” Bayo says in my ear. “Walking around the pool, talking to one of the ambassadors. She’s heading your way.”
I slowly turn my head to see a tall blonde woman in an off-white satin suit. Before I can look away, her gaze stops on mine and focuses.
“She’s seen me,” I mumble behind my hand as I smooth back my hair.
“Mia Baxter?” Van Veen says as she approaches me.
Fuck, she knows me.
“Keep your head this time,” Bayo says. “Remember, you need this. I’m going to mute myself now in case she has similar tech to Vanguard.”
“Yes?” I say to her, keeping Bayo’s words in my head. Van Veen is a different animal than Vanguard, that much I can already tell. The way she walks has a lethal grace, not unlike some of my fellow agents. Van Veen’s, though, doesn’t come from knowing how to kill a man with a twist of her hands, but from knowing she’s probably the smartest person in the room, no matter the room. To be fair, she might also know how to easily kill a man. Her upbringing in the Netherlands is rather hazy.
What we do know is that she’s been with Global Dynamix for over twenty years, rising through the ranks with the kind of quiet efficiency that suggests she’s buried more than a few bodies along the way—metaphorically speaking, of course.
“I’m Dr. Julia Van Veen,” she says in a crisp, posh accent that’s not quite Dutch, not quite British or American either.
“Mia Baxter,” I say as I take her outstretched hand, her grip firm and dry, holding on just a beat longer than necessary. Her eyes—a pale grey that borders on colorless—sweep over me with clinical precision. I feel like a specimen being cataloged, though I’m immediately doing the same to her.
