But his arm around my waist was all I needed to make it bearable. With it there, all the questions about dancing and Fenbrook and where I was from seemed polite, not threatening—why was it so hard when I was on my own? I rarely felt like I was in danger of panicking and sliding out of control, and on the rare occasion when someone asked something about my past and I felt myself start to go, I only had to press myself against the solidity of his arm and I was calm again. After a while, I even started to enjoy myself. I caught a few vicious little glances from a couple of ridiculously skinny girls when they saw me with Darrell. Exes? Or just hoping to try their luck? I nestled closer to Darrell. Tough. He’s mine and I’m keeping him!
As the party wound down, the storm clouds were almost overhead and everyone kept commenting on how lucky we’d been. Clarissa and Neil had spent most of the party bickering good-naturedly, with an occasional whisper from Neil making Clarissa suddenly gasp and blush. We both shook our heads as we looked at them.
“I can’t believe Clarissa’s found someone who can reduce her to silence,” I said.
“I can’t believe Neil’s found someone who can persuade him to put a shirt on,” Darrell told me.
The party was at an end and people were drifting off when we heard the voice behind us. “Well.” The accent was British and deceptively warm, with a layer of pure ice beneath it. “I’m guessing this must be Natasha.”
I turned. She was maybe ten years’ older than me, with long dark hair, and looked if anything more stylish than Clarissa in her sundress. Unlike me, she looked like she regularly went to garden parties—with the Queen.
“Natasha, this is Carol. She works for Sabre Technologies—they buy the stuff I make.”
Carol smiled at me. “Darrell’s our little star. We’ve been together for four years now.” She deliberately made it sound ambiguous and then made it worse by leaning over and kissing his cheek. “I’m really quite protective of him.”
I smiled sweetly while resisting the urge to rip her throat out. “You must know him very well, after four years.” Had he slept with her? She was a lot older than me, but very attractive....
“Oh, I know all his little foibles. I’m so glad he found himself a....” Her eyes flicked down my body. “Muse.” She somehow made it sound like “slut.”
Darrell took her by the elbow and steered her away. “I actually need to speak to Carol downstairs for a moment,” he told me. “Will you be okay?”
I wasn’t overjoyed at being left on my own, especially if it was so that he could talk shop, but I smiled. “Of course.”
I watched them walk into the elevator together. Darrell didn’t act like there was anything between them—not sexually, at least—but she sure did. And Darrell had been antsy as soon as she showed up, his face tight with worry. What was going on—and why wasn’t he telling me about it?
The house was emptying now, the string quartet putting away their instruments. I tried to find Clarissa, but couldn’t. I gave up and went to stand in the hallway, where I’d be more likely to see her when she came past. I leaned back against the staircase. A few moments later, something pushed against my back, and when I stepped forward, a door opened behind me.
Neil emerged from the storage closet, closing the door behind him. I looked at him, bemused. “What were you doing in there?”
The door opened again and Clarissa’s head popped out, looking both ways to see if the coast was clear and then blushing as she saw me. She slunk out, still in the process of tugging her dress down.
“You two are unbelievable,” I muttered. “At least sneak upstairs and use a bedroom!”
Clarissa sniffed. “It’s a billionaire’s house. I thought there might be a dungeon or something under there.”
“Millionaire and he doesn’t—oh, forget it.”
“Are you coming back into the city with us?” she asked.
I hadn’t thought about that. After the fight and our make-up phone call, we’d only made the vaguest of plans. A night of just the two of us was exactly what we needed. “I’ll stay here.”
Unexpectedly, she gave me a squeeze. “Be careful.” And then she was gone, towing Neil with her.
I wandered the house as the last few guests drifted out, and then it was just the caterers and me. There was no sign of Carol or Darrell, and my stomach started to churn. It wasn’t that I thought they were doing anything, just...something about the woman put me on edge.
I rounded a corner and suddenly she was there in front of me, knocking back a glass of champagne, another one ready in her other hand. When she saw me, her eyes narrowed and she stalked over. “What bollocks have you been whispering in his ear?” she demanded.
“What?”
“Don’t what me: you know exactly what I’m talking about. Did you tell him you’d only spread your legs if he went peacenik? Did that bloody hippy have a hand in it, too?”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but the part about spreading my legs made me want to slap her across the face. “Maybe you’d better leave.”
“Oh, it’s your house now, is it? Think you’ve snagged yourself a millionaire?” She got right up in my face. “Wait until your novelty wears off, sweetie. I’ve known him a lot longer than you and he’ll choose the work over the sex every time, and I don’t care how pretty your pirouettes are!”
She deliberately dropped her glass and let it shatter on the tiles. Then she was stalking out of the front door, staggering just a little in her heels. A moment later I heard a sports car’s engine roar into life and she sped off, far too drunk to be driving. With any luck, she’ll get pulled over, I thought viciously.
What the hell had she been talking about? Peacenik?!
I needed answers. I took the elevator down to the workshop.
Chapter Twenty Seven
Darrell
I was sitting on the floor, my back against a workbench. The fight with Carol had exhausted me.
When I’d told her I was starting to have doubts about my work, she’d actually thought I was joking—the champagne she’d knocked back hadn’t helped. It wasn’t until she took a good look at my expression that she’d sobered up.
“You have doubts?!” she’d said, disbelievingly. “When have you ever had doubts? You came to me, remember? You were the one who wanted into this game!”
“It isn’t a game,” I’d told her tightly. “And it isn’t the same anymore.”
I’d meant since the weapons had grown bigger, since we’d started measuring success in thousands of deaths, in city blocks destroyed. But I’d seen her eyes flick up towards the mansion. Towards Natasha. She presumed Natasha knew, of course. I didn’t correct her. I figured that if she thought she already knew, there was less chance she’d tell her out of spite.
She’d asked me if I’d wanted more money, or an in-house workshop at the company, or an assistant. I’d shook my head and told her I wasn’t sure why I was doing it anymore.
At which point she walked to the back of the lab and tore down my Curious Weasels poster. She’d known what was behind it, of course. I’d only put the poster up to cover it minutes before Natasha arrived to dance for the first time. I’d been planning to take it back down each time she left, but weirdly, I’d found myself leaving it in place.
Behind the poster was a photo. A black and white crime scene photo of the SUV, twisted and blackened, firefighting foam still dripping from it. I’d asked, then pleaded, then demanded a copy and the lead investigator had eventually relented. It had been the image that had kept me going through the all-nighters, kept me pushing at the problems when they resisted every attempt at a solution. I had only to look at the photo and I’d know that I had to keep going.
Carol had plucked it from the wall and held it in front of my face, following me with it when I tried to turn away. “Have you forgotten?” she asked me. “Do you not remember who this is?”
And the memories had risen up inside me like a dark wave and I’d slumped to the floor. She’d crouched down in front of me and talked to me as if I was a child. Telling me how it was natural for me to be exhausted, towards the end of a long project. How I should maybe take a break—a full week or even two—before the next one.
“You’re a hero,” she’d told me. “A bloody American hero, even if you don’t get any of the limelight. It was people like you who won the Second World War, the scientists and inventors toiling away behind the scenes.”
We’re not at war, I’d tried to say. But my mind was full of hot desert air and the blare of the taxi as it sped past me. I’d nodded, reluctantly, and she’d stood up and left, dropping the photo at my feet. She wasn’t happy, but she knew I was back on board—for now, at least.
I sighed and knocked my head gently against the workbench. Maybe I could stop, after this project. Finish the missile and then tell Carol it was over. Natasha never had to know. I’d managed to keep it from her so far. Another few weeks....
I heard the elevator doors open and watched Natasha walk straight past me. The room was in half-darkness—I’d only bothered to switch on a few of the lights when I came down with Carol—and the workbench blocked me from sight. She walked right up to the missile, staring at the sheet that covered it. Jesus, had Carol told her? But she didn’t look angry...just confused. I watched as she tentatively reached a hand towards the sheet, and there was a part of me that wanted her to find out. I was so sick of lies, and I wanted so badly to talk to her about what was going on. Maybe, if I stopped work on the missile right now, just shipped it off to Carol half-finished and washed my hands of it, Natasha could forgive me....
Except I couldn’t do that. I’d poured my soul into the project. I couldn’t stop it now any more than I could stop caring for a child. I wasn’t even sure I was going to be able to walk away from my work when the project was done, and I knew that was Carol’s plan: let me finish one and then hook me with the next.
Natasha’s hand touched the sheet and I stood up. “Hi.”
“Jesus!” she spun, dropping her handbag in the process, and things went skittering across the floor.
“Sorry.” I stretched and walked over to her, pulling her into a hug.
She wound her arms around me. “Is everything okay?”
I gazed over her shoulder at the sheet-covered missile. “Carol and I had a disagreement. Work stuff.”
“Yeah, I figured. I ran into her upstairs.”
I moved her gently back, so I could look at her. “Oh?”
She shook her head. “She was drunk. Seemed to think I was a bad influence on you.”
I relaxed a little and kissed the top of her head. “I like your influence.” I really meant it. Being torn between her and my work was bad...but being oblivious to what I was doing, having my work and nothing else? I couldn’t even imagine going back to that now. Somehow, I had to figure out a way to have both, to keep Natasha and do right by my parents.