Reviving Olivia (Project DEEP Book 7) Page 5

  Damon chuckled. “I’m aware of that firsthand. I thought you’d turned into a possessed demon and might go into the television.”

  She slapped his arm. “It surely wasn’t that bad.”

  It felt good to joke with her, especially considering everything they dealt with was so serious these days. “No. It just stunned me and scared me, is all.”

  A few moments of silence passed, during which Damon was acutely aware of Olivia’s proximity. Finally, she spoke again in a softer voice. “Do you think I know something I’m not telling you about the bunker?”

  “No,” he answered immediately. “And I don’t think anyone else doubts you either. What Dade and Spencer are concerned about is that you know something without realizing it.”

  It did annoy Damon that Dade doubted Olivia’s story. Damon was the one with her day in and day out. She was totally innocent in all this. He was certain of it.

  Olivia stiffened next to him, but then she set her head on his shoulder. “They’re right to question me. It’s possible.”

  Damon swallowed. It was hard to concentrate on the rows of numbers in front of him with Olivia leaning into his body like this. The woman had very little personal space. He wasn’t sure how to read her on that issue. Since waking, she’d gradually become more touchy feely each day. She didn’t seem to have any idea how the contact affected him. Either she was incredibly trusting and innocent, or there was way more to Olivia than he gave her credit for.

  She had a grip on his arm, and her breath was hitting his neck. No one would believe she’d been in a coma last week. After just a few hours a day of physical therapy, she was nearly 100 percent. Apparently, the fact that she had been perfectly healthy when she was preserved made all the difference in her recovery.

  He needed to get his mind off the woman pressed against him and focus on the numbers. Clearing his throat, he said, “I don’t see how these numbers are ever going to make sense to anyone. They’re so random.”

  “I agree. But I bet they are the key to something.”

  Damon sighed. “I’ve learned there are few coincidences in this crazy world nowadays.” Damon set the computer on the coffee table and leaned back.

  Olivia moved with him, keeping her arms wrapped around his forearm and leaning into him. “I’ve been trying to put our danger out of my mind, but the more I hear about what’s been going on with all of you, the more chills climb up my spine.”

  He set his hand on top of hers and squeezed. “I know. If I could stop the madness for you, I would. I’m sure this is stressful for you. I can’t imagine being in your shoes, waking up in a strange place with a strange man who feeds you a convoluted story that hardly sounds believable coming from my own lips.”

  She tucked her head into the crook of his neck. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “For what?” He leaned his face down, inhaling the scent of her shampoo and wishing he could lift her into his lap and hold her closer. He wished for a lot of things lately.

  “For making it as easy as you can. I know this is hard for you too. You’ve been trapped with a woman you didn’t know for weeks while she was in a coma. Thank you for staying with me. For rescuing me from the bunker and caring enough to make sure I was safe. You didn’t have to do it. You didn’t even know me.”

  He twisted around and wrapped her more thoroughly in his embrace, cupping the back of her head and pressing it against his chest. “You’re more than welcome. And just so you know, if I had it to do over, I’d make the same exact choices. You’re an incredible woman. I wish I had met you under less duress.”

  She lifted her face and met his gaze, inches separating their faces. “I’m okay with how we met. If I had to be in a cryostat against my will, and I was permitted to choose anyone in the world to revive me, I would still choose you.”

  He smirked to lighten the seriousness of their conversation. “Over all the cryonicists you know?”

  She giggled. “Yes.” And then she surprised him by quickly closing the distance and kissing his lips briefly. “Thank you.”

  Damon was shocked. Too shocked to respond. Her sweet kiss had probably been innocent enough, but it sent a zing of pleasure through his body. He wanted more. Instead, he gripped her tight and pressed her face back against his chest. His heart was racing from the touch of her lips. Did she realize what she’d done to him?

  The ringing of her cell phone made Temple wince. She’d grown to hate the sound in recent weeks. And she wasn’t pleased to see who the caller was as she picked it up either. “Temple speaking,” she answered cheerfully as if she could possibly feign ignorance about who the caller might be.

  “Cut the crap. What the hell is going on?”

  She cringed inwardly. She hated that tone of voice, and it came at her all too frequently lately. “Nothing has changed,” she responded, hoping her lack of information would end the call quicker.

  It wouldn’t, but one could hope.

  “So let me get this straight—the entire DEEP team is MIA and you know nothing.”

  “That’s right. And under the circumstances, are you surprised? They are intelligent, well-educated military personnel. Most of them attended either West Point or the Air Force Academy before going to medical school and joining the team.” She stood from her desk, tapping it with her finger to emphasize every word. “They were handpicked by the government to join my team over the last thirty years. They are not fools.”

  “Do not take that tone with me,” he ground out.

  “Do not insult the people who work for me,” she retorted. “They’ve been hunted and followed and even captured and tortured in the last year. Now they’re hiding somewhere.”

  “And you don’t know where?”

  “Of course I don’t know where.” She was shaking now.

  “After thirty years, how the fuck do they not trust you to tell them their location?” His voice rose now too. It wasn’t surprising. When he lost his cool, he always let his voice rise.

  “Because they are smart enough to realize that every single damn detail that comes to me gets exposed to the entire world in moments. I’m a well-respected four-star general, but even I have to report to those above me. My team was sharp enough to realize that what they don’t share with me can’t get passed up the food chain.” She flattened her palm on her forehead and wiped away the sheen of sweat that had formed there.

  “So that’s it.”

  “For now, yes.” Her hands were tied. “Wiping the servers clean of thirty years’ worth of data in this bunker was the last straw for Tushar and Trish Anand. I don’t have the foggiest idea where they went.”

  “If they contact you, or if any member of the team contacts you…”

  “You’ll be the first to know,” she breathed, and then she ended the call and slammed the phone onto her desk. “Son of a bitch,” she muttered as she began to pace the room. This entire situation was totally out of control.

  Chapter 5

  Spencer was unreasonably nervous when he arrived at the apartment building. He parked his car in the street a few blocks away and walked the rest of the way. He had an enormous backpack weighing him down as well as the computer bag he carried at his side.

  There was no way to know how long he might be staying with Damon and Olivia. Livvy. If he didn’t get her name straight in his mind, he would seriously fuck things up.

  There was every chance he would fuck things up anyway. Spencer was not a people person. He was a numbers guy. He was well aware that his mind worked differently from other people’s, and he understood his tendency to be awkward with normal conversations that didn’t involve data and technology.

  For as long as he could remember, he’d been the smartest guy in a room. Getting caught by Blue Cell had been a huge hit to his ego. Evidently, there were other people in the world as smart as him or smarter. At least one of them had hacked him and figured out what he was doing for DEEP. He still hadn’t recovered from that. Computers were the thing he was goo
d at, and if he wasn’t good enough to keep himself hidden, then what the hell did he have to offer anyone?

  He hoisted his backpack higher as he entered the apartment building, his cocky hacker self nowhere in sight. These people were going to see right through him. Sure, he was smart, but he was also a bit of a fraud. His imperfections were weighing on him. His social skills were horrific.

  And now he was about to join two strangers who might judge him and find him lacking. Damon was older than him, and his voice on the phone had brought Spencer down another notch. And Olivia…

  He visualized Olivia in his mind. He’d seen pictures of her from before preservation. She wouldn’t have aged. She was only a few months older than him. A nurse. Cute. Brown hair. Green eyes. He’d found himself staring at her picture several times, admiring her smile.

  If he were an average guy and he met her in a bar, he would definitely hit on her. She was attractive and the twinkle in her eyes suggested she was less serious than some people. Himself included.

  However, there were two pressing problems concerning Olivia. One was that Spencer already knew he was going to stammer around her because he was attracted to her. She was going to leave him tongue-tied, and that frustrated him because he was not an average guy in a bar. He’d never been to a regular bar with friends. All his friends were online. He had no idea how to hit on women. Why couldn’t she be boring and ugly and frumpy?

  The second problem was far more disturbing. Olivia Genova had no past. She materialized out of thin air about six years before she was vitrified. She’d gone to nursing school and then gotten a job in a hospital and then been hired by Dr. Boyden. She had no childhood.

  Olivia Genova was a name she had acquired after she turned eighteen. Why the hell had she changed her identity? And how had she been hired by the government to work in a secure bunker without a thorough background check?

  The first issue he was just going to have to ignore. The second issue he was going to have to address. Soonish. Like today.

  When he reached their apartment, he took a deep breath and knocked. He shuffled his feet nervously for a few seconds and then the door opened.

  The man on the other side of the threshold was frowning as he glanced up and down Spencer’s frame, and then he smirked as he held the door open wider and made a sweep of his hand. “Spencer, then. Come on in.”

  “What’s so funny?” Spencer asked as he stepped into the extremely small studio apartment. He’d known it wouldn’t be much, but holy shit.

  “Nothing.”

  There was no mistaking this thirty-year-old with dark red hair and freckles for Damon Bardsley. He was almost six feet tall and built. He towered over Spencer’s five-eight frame, not just in height but bulk. His presence alone was larger than life.

  Olivia stood from the couch and wiped her hands on her jeans. “Hi.” She waved shyly in his direction as Damon shut the door behind him.

  Spencer held up a hand to silence them, dropped his bags, and pulled out a bug detector. He proceeded to wander around the room, slowly, to ensure the place wasn’t tapped. It had levels of disruption, and when he got near Olivia, a low level of alarm registered. Not much, but enough to cause Spencer to get closer.

  Olivia frowned. “What are you doing?”

  He ran the wand up her body.

  “Dude,” Damon said from behind him. “We have a detector too. Trust me, this place is not bugged. And there’s no way Livvy has anything on her because I’ve been with her since she came out of the cryostat.”

  Spencer shot him a glance. “Twenty-four-seven?” Of course not. Anything was possible. Spencer had seen the impossible with his very eyes multiple times in recent months.

  Damon didn’t respond to that.

  Olivia sighed. “You want to look in my mouth too?” she joked. “Maybe it’s a filling.”

  Spencer smiled at her humor and turned off the device. A filling wouldn’t set off his high-tech equipment, but Damon had a point. There was no way for Olivia to be bugged. The Project DEEP team had planted trackers in the first several members to be revived, but it had created such a calamity that they’d stopped the practice.

  The trackers had been meant to keep the team safe, but Blue Cell was tapping into the bunker’s system and following every member of the team as they were revived. Spencer knew this because he had been the one doing it.

  “So, you think I’m clean?” Olivia asked wryly. She was grinning.

  “Yeah. You’re clean. It was only a low-level detection anyway. Not enough to raise suspicion.”

  Damon cleared his throat behind Spencer. “Great, now that that’s done, how about introductions?” He made a sweeping motion with his hand. “Spencer, this is Livvy. Don’t use her given name unless you want to watch her head spin around backward.”

  Olivia rolled her eyes as she circled the coffee table and the sofa. “So dramatic.” She held out a hand. “I hate the name Livvy.”

  Spencer shook her hand. “Nice to meet you. We could pick a name you like instead.”

  She was even cuter than her picture. He was doomed to stutter in her presence. Then again, he’d managed those first two sentences without a problem. Maybe he hadn’t completely lost his mojo yet.

  “I like the name Livvy,” Damon growled.

  Olivia laughed. “Fine. You get to call me Livvy. You never make it sound like I’m a small child when you say it. But it makes me cringe when other people say it.”

  Spencer gave her a smile. “You let me know if it annoys you, and we’ll pick something else.” He needed to end this banter before he made a fool of himself, so he glanced around. “Wow. Dade said it was a studio apartment. He was not kidding.” Small didn’t begin to describe this one room. Spencer assumed the door in the corner led to a bathroom. There wasn’t even a closet.

  “Yes. It’s going to be tight. I hope you don’t snore,” Damon joked. He grabbed Spencer’s large bag and carried it over to the corner near the bed as if it weighed five pounds. “Please tell me you’ve got more than one computer in that bag.” Damon pointed at Spencer’s second bag.

  “Yes. I figured you only had one.”

  Damon sighed. “Good. Livvy needs to catch up electronically, and we’ve both been leaning over my small screen.”

  Spencer picked up the bag and carried it to the coffee table.

  “Did you have any trouble finding us?” Olivia asked.

  Spencer shook his head. “No, but I’m good with directions. Born that way. It’s in my genes, I guess.”

  “Are your parents geniuses?” she asked.

  He chuckled as he lowered himself into the room’s only armchair. “I have no idea. I never met either of them. Grew up in foster care. I was a pain in the ass for seven foster families before I aged out of the system.”

  “Really?” Olivia asked as she sat on the end of the couch closest to him. “I was a hellion myself in high school. I thought my father was going to have a heart attack.” She sucked in a breath and pursed her lips as soon as those words left her.

  Perfect segue. While Damon sat next to Olivia on the couch, notably closer than strictly necessary, Spencer took the opening. “Where did you grow up?”

  Olivia leaned back against the couch and sighed. “That’s a loaded question. I haven’t mentioned my childhood in years. I’m not sure what possessed me to bring it up.”

  Damon turned toward her, his brow furrowed. He obviously didn’t know the answer either.

  “It’s painful. I’d rather not talk about it, if that’s okay,” she said.

  Spencer glanced at Damon and then back at Olivia. “It’s not really okay. It’s the main reason I’m here.” He needed to be strong and pushy. This woman had a history, and it worried him that there might be a connection.

  Her eyes widened, and she looked at Spencer. “Believe me. My childhood has nothing to do with my adult life. I walked away and never looked back. That was six years ago. Or sixteen, I suppose. If I thought for a second there could be
a connection, I would tell you.”

  Spencer knew she was telling the truth. At least she believed she was. But he still wanted to hear the story and make sure. He’d learned the hard way over the past few months that everything was somehow connected, even if he couldn’t quite put all the pieces together yet. He wouldn’t push her today, but soon he would have to. People’s lives were at stake, and like it or not, Olivia Genova was far more involved in the saga than she believed.

  Interestingly, it appeared to Spencer that Damon also knew nothing about Olivia’s past. He looked shocked. He even ran a hand over his hair as if he couldn’t believe it had not come up in the last week.

  Without a word, Damon stood and headed for the room’s large window. He looked out in both directions. “You feel confident no one followed you?”

  “Yes. But we’re still going to keep an eye out that window closely all day every day. It’s in my nature. I’ve been watching my back for several years now. Until Blue Cell is taken down so I can go on with my life, I’ll be sleeping with one eye open.”

  Damon nodded. “I haven’t slept well in months.” He leaned his butt against the windowsill and crossed his ankles, tucking his hands in his pockets. “Anything in the world I can do to help nail these guys, I will. And I’m sure Livvy agrees.” He glanced at her.

  “Of course.” She sat up straighter. “And I have the added benefit of being refreshed. I just took a ten-year nap.” Her joke fell a bit flat since they all knew her preservation was against her will. It was a wonder she was being so good-natured about it. In her shoes, Spencer was pretty sure he would be throwing a tantrum.

  Spencer glanced at Damon again and found him staring at Olivia, his expression serious and unreadable.

  Damon broke his gaze to shift his attention to Spencer. “Update us.”

  Spencer unzipped his computer bag, pulled out one laptop to set on the coffee table, and then grabbed a second one to open on his lap. “I found Theodore Monk,” he began. “Surprisingly, that was his real name.”