Page 88 of Red Rabbit
“Cooper wants to make humans immune to breaking under duress,” I said. “That’s why he wants me back. Not for the Warren—he wants me to help him create the tech.”
“You could do that?”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” I asked in exasperation. “I would rather die. I’ve been trying to stop him since I got out but it’s proving harder than I thought.”
Kraven put the paper down and ran a hand over his face.
“You know—everything you said during cocktail hour makes sense now,” he muttered dryly. “No wonder you knew that man was a liar. You’re the fucking CTO of the company he was talking about.”
“My dad really was in the military if that makes you feel better,” I said with a small smile.
He shook his head and then looked at me.
“What do you need?” He asked simply. I looked at him blankly.
“What do you mean?”
“What do you need to take Cooper down?”
“It’s not that simple—” I started.
“Here’s the thing,” Kraven said interrupting. He leaned against my desk and crossed his arms, all business. “Cooper is going to keep coming after you until he either succeeds in dragging you back to that hellhole or has a hand in your death. I don’t want either of those things so I’ll ask you again—what do you need?”
The thing was, I did need the help. Even with my tech skills and my military contacts, it was taking a long time to get anything done by myself and the more time I took, the more lives Cooper was destroying and the longer I had to live in fear of him showing up at my house again.
“I’m not doing any of this legally,” I warned. He smirked and chuckled darkly.
“Baby—save the dirty talk for later.”
A smile pulled at my lips.
“I need a TAC team. My PMC contact is on a job and his referral is taking forever to get back to me. I have all the data I could ever want but what I need now is someone to get in there and physically shut it down.”
“And kill Cooper,” Kraven said.
I looked at him, my dark look matching his.
“That would be ideal, yes.”
“Done.”
“What?”
He pushed away from the desk and started walking out to the kitchen.
“By the way—who’s Graham?” He asked as I followed behind him. The change of subject was abrupt but I figured he’d seenthe information about Graham in my office. What little I found about him was also among the piles.
“I was in a plane crash with him and he ended up rescuing me from the Warren.”
Kraven turned and stared at me incredulously.
“Whoa, whoa—a plane crash?”
I sighed and went and pulled two beers from my fridge. I popped the tops and slid one over to Kraven.
“I think I should probably start at the beginning.”
I told him all about the plane crash and Graham. I talked about how we had run into Cooper initially but I skipped over my time in the Warren since he knew a lot of it already and went straight to Graham rescuing me. I faltered briefly when I talked about the few days on the run but Kraven seemed to piece everything together quickly anyway. The entire time I spoke he listened intently, his face a blank mask. He didn’t even touch his beer and I had no idea what he was thinking. Then I told him about the firefight and Cal’s rescue and when I got to the part about killing Vandal, his gaze sharpened. I told him the details and he smirked.
