Ava Gray - Skin Tight

Gillie could feel the sickness pouring into her. She never knew if it came in through the tube linking them or if it melted through her very skin. The pain was real. She knew this person’s suffering and sickness intimately, and it echoed with the memory of so many near deaths when she was a child. She didn’t want to remember the brittle ache of her bones and the weakness that left her unable to lift a spoon.

Death whispered through her veins, and she recognized him, too. He carried with him doleful music and the whispering of wings. The cancer burned in her blood, fighting with the gift. She wished she could heal it herself, but her gift was nothing so clean or lovely. Gillie thought of herself as a magnet, attracting all things diseased and decayed. It wasn’t a gift she’d wanted; the doctors had discovered it as a fluke when she first recovered from a particularly virulent strain of leukemia.

Her parents had been so delighted to have her back, whole and healthy-a normal kid for the first time. They’d been reluctant to let the Foundation run their tests, and when they became suspicious, they’d moved, so many times that Gillie had lost count. But when she was twelve, they took her on the way home from school.

Her gift was too rare and wonderful not to be used, they’d said. She was a natural resource, like oil or diamonds. At first they’d tried to convince her she wanted to help, but Gillie had only ever wanted to go home. Rowan had told her years ago that her parents were dead now, and so there was nothing for her in the outside world anymore. She didn’t know if she believed him.

Now the worst began. Her blood would filter the sickness while she lay near death, suffering someone else’s anguish. That took hours. Hours of agony she hadn’t earned, but the rich clients paid the Foundation handsomely for the use of Gillie. It was said she could cure anything.

The rotten waste resulting from said filtration would have overwhelmed her kidneys, if not for dialysis. Even with her eyes closed, she knew what Rowan was doing now. He was preparing the machine; he needed to be ready when she conquered the old man’s cancer. She knew he watched her while she twisted and suffered. Doubtless he thought bearing witness gave them some kind of connection. It only made her hate him all the more.

“You’ll be right as rain in less than twenty-four hours,” he whispered, brushing the sweaty hair back from her brow.

This, Gillie hated most of all. But then the pain took her, as it always did.

“Mia,did you finish running those reports yet?”

She clenched her jaw. “Working on it.”

Greg Evans smirked. “I need those before you leave tonight. Don’t forget.”

No wonder she’d never worked a regular job. She was discovering she had serious issues with authority.

It had been a week since she lost her mind and spent the night with a man whose real name she didn’t know. Mia expected regrets to spring immediately from that lapse in judgment, but instead, she regretted their truce had been for one night only. She wanted him, despite his murky secrets.

If nothing else, he’d proved her brain could shut off under the right circumstances. That gave her hope for the future. At least going home with him established Mark had been wrong; she could be spontaneous.

But she had a job to do. First she set the parameters for Greg’s stupid report. She knew the son of a bitch would just shred it, but she couldn’t break cover by telling him to fuck off. Her clients were paying for discretion.

Four names remained on her list of potential embezzlers. Unfortunately, the culprit had left no signs of his passage in company systems, which meant he was very good at what he did. Mia would have to be better. She’d studied their résumés and none of them had a Computer Science degree, but that didn’t mean they lacked knowledge. After all, she intended to access their financial records when she got home, and she didn’t have a CS degree, either. Some things you learned outside school.

Mia hadn’t worked in the facility long enough for intuition to give her a favorite. Plus maintaining the pretense of doing real work handicapped her investigation. Greg hadn’t believed her when she said, point-blank, she didn’t want his job. So he was constantly assigning her busywork, checking network protocols, troubleshooting workstations that didn’t need repair. Something was off here; she’d worked other classified assignments before, but nothing ever felt as wrong as this.

Maybe she’d been going at this from the wrong angle, assuming a single guilty party. Maybe Greg was in on it. Maybe he’d fixed the records. Though she rather doubted he was clever enough, that opinion could be colored by sheer dislike, as he’d made her life damned difficult the past few weeks. Mia decided to have a look at his bank records, too.

Quickly, she pulled his social security number from the system. Once she had that, she could do damn near anything. She tapped her fingertips on the desk, considering her suspects: two men, two women. Embezzlement was an equal opportunity crime.

Melissa Stuart, accounting manager. She was young to have landed in such a position of responsibility, not quite thirty. The woman favored designer clothing and expensive handbags, but her annual salary wasn’t impressive enough to support said couture habit, unless she carried heavy credit card debt.

Mia had seen Greg flirting with Melissa more than once. It didn’t mean they were conspirators, but she couldn’t imagine why anyone as pretty as Melissa would give Greg the time of day. The man was a bit of an IT troll. Putting him aside for the moment, she went on to her next suspect.

Darrell Brown, assistant controller. On the surface, he was the perfect employee. The man never came in late, never called in sick. He spoke little and fit the basic profile for antisocial behavior, which included theft from a sense of entitlement. More interesting, he had a sealed juvie record. Mia wondered what he’d done and whether it had any bearing on her investigation.

Janine Young, bookkeeper. She was a plump, motherly woman in her fifties who dressed like a Sunday school teacher. Janine often brought cookies and left them on the table in the employee break room for everyone to enjoy. She worked hard and got along with others, offering a smile and a kind word if they happened to pass in the hall.

Of her four suspects, Mia most hoped it wasn’t Janine. She liked her. But the woman had the opportunity to alter the books, siphon from the company. Once again, Mia faced the likelihood the embezzler had a partner. This crime was simply too clean for it to be one person.

Finally, she had Michael Troy, auditor. He was a weedy individual in his forties, average in every respect, save one. The man had a plethora of nervous tics. It was possible he’d always had them, just one of those things, but perhaps they came from guilt or stress. Some people started down a road without reckoning how rough the way would be. He might well be regretting his theft by now.

With a start, Mia noticed the time-after five. She went to the printer, pulled her report, and tossed it onto Greg’s desk. He was already gone for the day, no surprises there.

Like the other drones, she powered down her workstation and headed for the front doors. She’d do more at home.

On her way out, she waved at the employees who chatted with her during the lunch hour. Very few people went off-site to eat, because the facility was in the middle of nowhere. By the time one drove to a restaurant, the break was more than half over. She’d learned a lot about the place in general, but nothing helpful to her real task.

Mia told herself she wasn’t looking for Strong, but she scanned the lot as she unlocked her car. It wasn’t her business what time he left, or if he did. Sighing, she got in the car and drove to the condo, where Peaches waited at the front door. Though she’d never been a cat person, she couldn’t deny the satisfaction of coming home to a warm, furry body that didn’t care who she was. He only wanted her to fill up his dish and rub his belly.