She exhaled a humorless laugh. "This is hardly a mission; we both know that. And the only reason I'm solo on it is because Ackmeyer insists on daytime travel only. That automatically rules out ninety-nine point nine percent of the Order's membership, unless they want to risk ashing themselves along the way."
Ackmeyer had other requirements for his escort to the summit as well, phobias about mass transit and airborne diseases that restricted him to traveling by car - brand new, of course, the interior vacuumed extensively and scrubbed from top to bottom with disinfectant. He demanded no more than four hours of drive time per day, yet he refused to stay in public lodging. Which meant by the time they reached Washington, an eleven-hour drive would take more than sixty, all of it spent together in the close confines of the car.
No wonder Lucan had assigned Ackmeyer's safety to her. Any one of the warriors she knew would likely strangle the oddball human before they reached the southern Massachusetts state line. She hoped like hell she wouldn't be tempted herself. If she stood even a slim chance of salvaging her position within the Order, delivering a throttled guest of honor wouldn't be the best approach.
In some private, dangerous corner of her heart, she knew that if Lucan bounced her from the Order, she would continue to fight. She would still want justice, vengeance against the rebels who had upended her world when they took Kellan from it. She didn't know how far she would go to right that wrong, but it terrified her a little to consider it. Her hatred ran too hot, had scarred her too deeply.
Her blades felt cold, tooled hilts biting into her palms. She flipped the daggers around in her fingers and slid them home into their sheaths on her thighs. "Anyway, I leave in a few hours, then it's on to meet my fate in D.C.," she told Nathan. "I should head to bed, try to get some sleep before I go."
"Mira," he said as she started to walk away from him. She didn't want to talk anymore. Didn't want to think about what waited for her at the end of her journey in just four days' time, nor where she might go from there. "Mira, stop."
She paused, swiveled around to meet her dear friend's sober gaze.
"Be careful," he said, eyes holding her in an unblinking stare that seemed to penetrate right to the core of her. "The line you're walking is thin enough. Do this right. You're too good to give up now. Don't give Lucan any more reason to cut you loose."
"There's nothing to worry about." She forced a mild scowl and lightly shook her head, deliberate in her misunderstanding. "I'm on babysitting detail, not a mission. Nothing's going to go wrong."
Chapter Four
THAT SAME MORNING, ADHERING TO THE METICULOUS instructions she'd received from Jeremy Ackmeyer himself, Mira arrived at his home in rural western Massachusetts at precisely 9:00 A.M. The house was large but minimalist in the extreme. No perimeter fence, no elaborate gate or layer of guards to shield the reclusive genius. Just an expressionless single-story block of white concrete, angled rooftop solar panels and steel-louver shaded windows, sitting on a broad knoll in the middle of a naked five-acre parcel of ruthlessly trimmed lawn.
Even without a gate or guards, to Mira, the house seemed more a prison than a place someone would call home - even an odd duck like Ackmeyer.
The germophobe scientist didn't want her coming inside the house and potentially contaminating anything but had stipulated he'd meet her in the garage below and proceed directly into the car to depart. She dutifully rolled up the long driveway to the underground parking garage as she'd been instructed and braked at the electronic access panel in front of the closed door of the bay on the right.
Mira slid the driver's-side window down, thankful for the incoming gust of fresh morning air. The sedan's interior still held a strong disinfectant scent, lingering from the top-to-bottom sterilization Ackmeyer had insisted upon before he'd agree to set foot in the vehicle. Fomites, he'd explained, as if the word struck cold terror into him. What would he do if she decided to lick the side of his face as soon as she got close to him? Probably collapse in a fit of apoplectic shock. It would certainly make the drive pass a little quicker if her cargo spent the duration of it in a dead faint.
Smiling at the idea, Mira drew in and savored a couple of long breaths of the crisp country air. That small taste of freedom would have to last her for the next five days of torment. Pressing the arrival button on the garage access panel, she leaned forward and recited the temporary entrance password Ackmeyer had given her when she spoke with him earlier that morning to arrange his pickup. "Annus Mirabilis."
Had Ackmeyer chosen the Latin password for its obvious play on her name, or for some other reason? She'd almost asked him when he gave it to her but decided to wait, figuring she'd have plenty of time to ask him on the drive. God knew she'd need some decent conversation starters for the many hours they were about to spend together on the road to D.C.
The garage door wasn't moving.
Mira put her head out the window and tried the password again.
Nothing.
"Oh, come on," she muttered, scowling at the unresponding bay door. For all his obsessive-compulsive tendencies, he hadn't noticed that his home security system was out of service?
She gave it another shot, and when the garage door still didn't budge, she squinted through the windshield at the house above. Ackmeyer had specifically instructed her to wait for him in the garage, forbidding her or anyone else from entering his house under any circumstances. He didn't say she couldn't walk up onto the yard to tell him she'd arrived.
Mira got out of the car and hoofed it up the knoll and around to the front of the house. "Mr. Ackmeyer?" she called, walking up to one of the shaded windows to try to peer inside through the steel slats. "Jeremy, are you in there?"
Her nape tingled with a warrior's instinct that something wasn't right here. Then again, when she'd spoken with Ackmeyer a few hours ago to arrange the trip, he hadn't exactly sounded eager to make the journey in the first place. He didn't conduct his work for awards or accolades, he'd insisted, something Mira respected him for in spite of his personal quirks. He was being forced to attend the gala in D.C., out of obligation to his socially and politically motivated family and due to pressure from Reginald Crowe himself.
Not her place to care about any of that, though. She had a duty to fulfill here, and that meant delivering Jeremy Ackmeyer to the summit celebration safe and sound, as expected.
But something wasn't right here.
Not right at all.
The thing that struck her most was the quiet of the place. Total, unnatural quiet.
And then, a crash.
It sounded from somewhere inside the house.
Was the place being robbed in broad daylight?