The route back to the elevators took her right past the conference room.
Hannah Gallagher and several others were still arguing outside it. If she kept her head down, turned the corner and cut swiftly across the open space, she’d only be in their line of vision for a few seconds. Then it was a straight shot to the elevator.
One, two . . . go.
When she was squarely in the danger spot, Noah Gallagher came out the door.
That was her undoing. She slowed down. Not consciously, but simply unable to resist the temptation to steal one last look at him before fleeing.
His gaze snapped onto her, like a powerful magnet coupling.
Oh, God. Oh, no. He strode through the center of the group, scattering them, and followed her. Even with her back to him, his eyes burned through her layered, ugly disguise, a focused point of heat against her concealed skin. She stabbed the elevator button. He was twenty yards away. Fifteen, and closing. Picking up speed.
He couldn’t have recognized her. In this dreary get-up, she couldn’t be more different from Shamira the sexy dancing girl. She barely recognized herself dressed like this. The door slid open. She lunged inside. No other riders, thank God.
“Hold the door!” Gallagher called, loping for the elevator.
Asfuckingif. She punched the close button, and the mechanism engaged.
Their eyes locked, as the doors shut in his face.
Her heart was thudding, as if she’d done something wrong and had almost gotten caught. Maybe he was just wondering who the scruffy stranger was. Dressed like that, she stuck out like a sore thumb in the muted corporate elegance of Angel Enterprises.
She hurried through the lavish front lobby. Outside, a cab was letting a passenger out. She bolted for it, waving it down.
Noah Gallagher emerged from the entrance just as her cab pulled away. His eyes locked onto hers again instantly. Even shadowed by the hat, obscured by the dark glasses, through the back window of a cab that was already a half a block away.
He started running after her. Right out onto the street. Eyes still locked. The contact felt like a wire, pulling tighter and tighter. Then the taxi turned a corner and he was lost to sight. It hurt. As if something vital had been snipped with bolt-cutters.
Her fizz of excitement died away. The cold lump of fear was back in place.
She was so sick of feeling this way. She wanted to yell at the driver to circle the block, just on the off chance of catching one last glimpse of Noah Gallagher. To feel something different than that cold, heavy ache in her core. Just for a second or two.
But she could not have this. Not even a stolen taste of it. She could not let lust trash her good judgment. She had to stay murderously sharp. Constantly on the defensive. Without rest.
Sexual frustration wouldn’t kill her.
But there were other things out there that definitely could.
Chapter 2
She was gone. He told himself to stop running. Stop, goddamnit.
Noah forced himself to stop sprinting and slow to a walk. He stood there in the street, panting. Vibrating with the near-uncontrollable urge to keep pursuing her.
Breathe. Breathe it down.
Cars swerved around him, horns blatting. He was making a spectacle of himself, standing out in the middle of city traffic. Like he gave a shit about the noise and shouted insults. He just kept staring, trying to follow her taxi with his gaze even after it turned the corner. But even his enhanced vision couldn’t bend light rays.
The dancer’s bulky disguise—it had to be a disguise—couldn’t fool him, not now that he’d seen her energy signature. Unique to her. Invisible to anyone but him. Unless, of course, that person used cutting-edge visual imaging, similar to the micro-tech implanted in his own eyes and brain to support his AVP combat programming.
Her energy sig was the most beautiful he’d ever seen. A vivid bloom of color, floating in the air and superimposed over her drab coat. It struck him as intensely feminine, though he’d never assigned any gender attributes to energy sigs before. His hands clenched as he tried to shut down his raging frustration.
At the speed that cab had been going, he could have outrun it without breaking a sweat. Like a panther taking down an antelope. He wouldn’t even need AVP to access his emergency fuel stores. He could have wrenched the door right off the vehicle, flung it away and claimed his prize, then and there. Nobody on earth could have stopped him.
He wanted to howl like a wild animal.
Just his luck that she’d gotten away. She’d saved him from police involvement, legal action, media buzz. Viral fucking videos circulating on the Internet, filmed with the phones of whoever was passing by. And somebody was always passing by.
The Obsidian Group was lurking out there, watching and listening for them even years after rebellion day. Ready to come down on him, above all, like a ton of bricks. Behaving the way Obsidian had programmed him to behave would put everything and everyone he cared about in danger.