Page 93 of Wicked Beautiful (Wicked Games 1)
While Tabby recites a list of meetings, phone calls, and tasks to be completed, I allow myself one fleeting, beautiful memory of the way Parker looked at me when he put his hand over my heart last night, the way his eyes were so soft, and so thrillingly wild.
“Hearts can’t lie,” he said.
Maybe not.
But that’s only because they’re so stupid.
TWENTY-SEVEN
~ Parker ~
The call comes as I’m headed to Xengu at five o’clock. I hit the answer button on the steering wheel and say hello.
Without bothering with any preliminaries, Connor says abruptly, “I need you to come to the shop to take a look at something. Soon as you can.”
I steer the Porsche through the heavy afternoon traffic but am no longer paying attention to the road. “Why? What’s up?”
He pauses. Then: “Somethin’ you need to see. And Parker?”
“Yes?”
“Shut off your phone as soon as we hang up. Don’t forget.”
Connor disconnects the call.
I make a hard right turn, cutting off a taxi in the process and earning me a shouted curse from a guy stepping off the curb whom I nearly run over, but all I care about is getting over to Connor’s to see what he’s found out.
From the sound of it, it’s not good.
* * *
Connor’s “shop” is located in a converted warehouse in the Meatpacking District, a block from the Hudson River. There are no signs that advertise the name of his business, and it’s not listed in any directory, online or otherwise. Metrix is off the grid, in all the ways that count. All its clients are referred by word of mouth and accepted only after ironclad contracts have been signed, exhaustive background checks have been conducted, and substantial amounts of money have changed hands.
There’s nothing Metrix can’t secure, but it’ll cost you.
I pull up to the solid steel entry gate, roll down my window, look up at the small black bubble mounted high on the barbed-wire-topped brick wall that flanks the gate, and wait. I know that behind the black bubble is a scanner reading both my license plate and the contours of my face, and behind the scanner is a computer analyzing the results, and at the computer is a man who can kill me with a single blow to my windpipe if he’s in the mood.
I hate to think what would happen if I failed the scan, because I suspect the two panels inset in the brick wall on either side of the driveway would burst open to reveal a pair of computer-operated machine guns.
In seconds, the gate slowly swings open. I drive through.
The warehouse itself is your typical three-story, institutional-looking brick affair built at the turn of the previous century. You don’t notice until you’re walking up to the door at the front that all the windows are blacked out, and there appears to be only one entrance. As soon as I approach the door—hammered steel, ten feet tall and half as wide—it slides open on silent tracks.
There stands Connor, arms crossed over his broad chest, legs braced apart, wearing head-to-toe black, a Glock semi-auto handgun strapped to his waist, and an expression that would do a serial killer proud.
I ask warily, “Why do you look like you’re about to invade a small country?”
In answer, he jerks his head and turns, expecting me to follow.
If the outside of Metrix looks average and unassuming, the interior is anything but. It’s like walking into a bank vault…if the bank were on a spaceship manned by anal-retentive aliens with genius IQs and itchy trigger fingers.
The ceilings are high, the lights are low, and the temperature’s cool enough to make me shiver through my coat. The polished concrete floor gives off a subtle, expensive sheen. Black computer towers extend the length of the north wall in blinking, softly humming rows. The video and television screens that glow from dozens of cubicles on the east wall are stared at by hard-jawed men at keyboards wearing headphones. Locked, backlit cases of weaponry displayed in military precision along the south wall look eerily menacing. They’re also new; last time I visited Metrix, they were absent.
“What’s with the hardware?” I ask Connor’s back as we walk toward his office.
He replies over his shoulder, “Gotten into extractions recently. Good money in it.”
Extractions? I decide not to ask.
