Free Code Zero by Jonathan Maberry Page A

her head. “It’s not a reset. You never get the terminology right.”
    “Yeah, yeah, I know. Whatever you gamers call this stuff.”
    “It’s a new game. Brand new.”
    “Yes, it is,” he said. “And everything will be different afterward. A new America … a new world.”
    “But we won’t share it,” she said.
    “We will.”
    “No—”
    “We will ,” he insisted. “It’ll just take some time. You’re going to be busy getting the hell out of Dodge and I’ll be busy remaking this country into what it should have been if we’d stayed the course. So, call it a new game, call it what you like, honey. When all the fires are out, we’ll find a way to get together. Maybe even out in public.”
    “You’re a very charming liar.”
    “I mean it.”
    “What, you’ll dump your wife and trot me out on your arm? The world’s most hunted terrorist, and you think that’ll make for good arm candy?”
    “You’re not the world’s most hunted terrorist yet.”
    “Day’s young.”
    He laughed. “You’re an evil bitch, you know that?”
    The woman reached up and caught the end of his bathrobe belt, gave it a sharp pull, and licked her lips as the robe parted.
    She reached between the flaps of the robe and wrapped her fingers around his hardness, and with that as a handle, drew him toward her. She was not gentle about it. It hurt. But that was okay. Pain was another kind of drug. Her breasts and thighs and buttocks were still red and bruised from last night’s slaps and bites. Collins shoved her back against the mattress, used his knee to roughly part her legs, and with a low feral growl thrust into her with only a little guidance from her strong hands.
    He did not take her. They took each other, both of them thrusting against the other with brutality and need and a shared viciousness that was an incredible aphrodisiac for each of them.
    Outside, the sun set fire to the morning and the sound of the birds in the trees changed in Collins’s ears to the shrill screams of fear.
    And that, too, was a turn-on.

 
    Chapter Thirteen
    Surf Shop 24-Hour Cyber Café
    Corner of Fifth Avenue and Garfield Street
    Park Slope, Brooklyn
    Sunday, August 31, 6:03 a.m.
    The girl who came into the Surf Shop was one of those twenty-somethings who could actually have been anywhere from seventeen to thirty. She had a porcelain complexion and gleaming black hair in a Betty Page cut. She wore red sneakers, black leggings, and a baggy black T-shirt that had a picture of an androgynous Asian with a shock of white hair and hugely oversized sword. The words DEVIL MAY CRY were hand-painted below the image. A loose leather belt was clasped around the shirt, hanging low on one hip. The girl wore oversized sunglasses and never took them off the entire time she was in the café.
    She stood in line with the other early birds, earphones in, texting on an Android, talking to no one and acknowledging no one.
    The sleepy counter man, Caleb Sykes, had seen her or a thousand girls like her every day. Most of them were underpaid secretaries who still couldn’t afford a smartphone or their own laptop and who wanted to check their e-mail before heading into the city to start their day. It wasn’t as common to see them this early on a Sunday, but really Caleb didn’t give much of a shit.
    When it was her turn to pay, Caleb took money for a Red Bull and handed over a log-in card for one of the computers bolted to tables scattered around the room. The girl paid cash, didn’t tip, didn’t say anything else except when she’d ordered the drink. Caleb’s only thought when he saw her was that her hair looked like a wig. Just that. When she left the counter, Caleb forgot her completely. Fifteen minutes later, when the counter rush slowed and Caleb looked around the room, the girl was gone. He was not consciously aware of her not being there. She would have slipped entirely from his mind had it been an ordinary day.
    However, the day was not ordinary and,