Los Angeles

  Allison stood, muscles tensed, the ruined wine glass in her right hand. The melodic tinkle as it cracked resounded through the upscale restaurant like a gunshot.

  She hadn't meant to do that.

  No one moved. Waiters and waitresses stood mutely like fenceposts, serving trays forgotten in their arms. Well-dressed diners stared, with forks half-raised to gaping mouths.

  Their eyes bore into Allison. She felt like a wounded fish in a crowded aquarium.

  Across the table, lips pressed tightly together, sat her date.

  Sharp cheekbones, strong chin, and murderous eyes. Still handsome, even with a Napa Valley Merlot dribbling down his face and off his aquiline nose.

  Hadley Caine.

  A senior coworker—until she threw the wine.

  She'd done THAT on purpose.

  The table, set for two, transformed into a feast for dozens of prying eyes. They had seen the slender brunette with the prosthetic hand baptize her date with mature vintage wine. A train wreck. For a vain and vapid moment it united them, a subcultural phenomenon, to watch the red liquid cascading down like a waterfall of blood, beneath eyes of cold fury.

  Hadley Caine, Vice President of Human Resources for Tetherly, known around the office as "the vampire" because of his sparkling good looks and unflinching expressions.

  Even now, it fit. His face? Still handsome. Still calm. Except for the eyes. His eyes burned with hatred.

  The other patrons of the Los Angeles restaurant hadn't heard his indecent proposal. No, the beautiful people, stars of their own stories, only took notice when Allison reacted. She felt the weight of their eyes—curiosity? Sympathy? Pity? Her stomach lurched. She dropped the broken glass to the table, grabbed her purse, and fled.

  Allison strode past the curious and beautiful faces of the LA elite as she left Hadley behind. She weaved through the room, her only intent to put space between herself and the angry-eyed HR executive. Ahead, a hallway with placards above calling out the antiquated concept of men's and women's restrooms—and the true life gospel promise of escape, in fiery red letters at the end of the hall.

  As the music and din of the dining room faded, replaced by the steady steps of her flat-bottomed skating shoes, Allison made three life-changing decisions.

  First, the date had been a mistake. Hadley was a piece of human garbage. Turning him down seemed right, until she considered where saying yes might lead. If she could win an ally in her pursuit of more responsibility, it might be worthwhile. But when he suggested the casting couch approach as the best way to reach the next rung of the corporate ladder, she'd made her second decision. It was time to leave Tetherly.

  She passed the kitchen entrance and the restrooms, nearly to the safety of the Exit sign. Allison looked back over her shoulder. No Hadley. With any luck she'd never see him again. She felt a firm chunk of wood in her left hand. Allison glanced down. She'd grasped the steak knife from the table without realizing it. A subconscious weapon—in case of assault, break glass. She held it to her chest, blade down and concealed along her inner wrist.

  Allison extended her right arm, pressing the utilitarian crash bar of the exit door with her prosthetic hand. The bar clicked inward. The door gave with little resistance, swirling a yellowed and torn scrap of brown packing paper in its small but sudden eddy of wind. She stepped out, head whipping to the right and the left like a prey animal, before speed-walking out of the alley and into the full glory of Los Angeles at sunset. She shielded her eyes against the daily miracle of an ocean turned to flames. Music filled the sea salt air.

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  Allison crossed the sidewalk to stand on the fringe of a crowd as they listened to a street guitarist. She worked her way through the crowd, then turned to face the restaurant's street-side entrance. After minutes of nerve wracking watching, she pulled out her phone and selected an app. The icon, a cartoonish dog driving a soapbox racer, expanded to fill the screen. Allison tapped, swiped, and tapped again. The phone flashed with an image of Scruff flashing a smile and brandishing an anthropomorphic thumbs up gesture.

  Success. Her get away car, a Tetherly Autocab, was on its way.

  While she waited for the robotic taxi, Allison checked her bank account. It was decent, for once. Too bad THAT was over. Satisfied that she had cash available, Allison tucked the phone in her purse and hopped into the already waiting autocar.

  ***

  Hadley Caine looked at the world through a filter of red. He'd made an error, pressing a little too far and too fast with this skittish cripple of a cutie.

  He watched her leave through his peripheral vision, tracking her motion through the five-star restaurant like a hawk would a rabbit.

  Prude.

  Hadley closed his eyes. He breathed in, and out, willing his mind to let her go. For now. He was in control. He was always in control.

  Even when the women said no.

  He was stronger than them, stronger than his peers—stronger than the ocean of angry blood roaring in his ears.

  Alone in the restaurant, his face still damp with wine, he meditated. He didn't acknowledge and discard the angry thoughts. When they occurred, he gave them directions to the closed-off corner of his mind—the hard boys' clubhouse. He kept his dark thoughts in there. It was where they did their best work.

  Hadley Caine opened his eyes. He took a starched white linen napkin from the table and wiped his face dry. Absently, instinctively, he licked the wine dripping from his upper lip. Stark, bitter, sour—a merlot. His favorite.

  Hadley surveyed the wrecked table before him. He'd thought Allison was smart—for a cripple. Apparently her disabilities extended to long-term planning as well. A brief smile flickered on his full lips. No matter.

  It really wouldn't matter if she got a promotion or not, now.

  Aside from the wine-dampened face and ruined silk shirt, Hadley maintained the looks of a male model. His looks had made it so much easier to find women to entice. It was how he entertained himself, back in El Segundo.

  But Tetherly had opened a whole new set of doors. The women who would want him now (wanted his money, his prestige, his power—who cares?) were high-class, even if they were tarts. Expensive tastes, and harder to put off in the end.

  Not like the girls he grew up with.

  Those girls were disposable. If they wouldn't leave, there was always a convenient dumpster nearby.

  But Allison? Just a little token hire princess. A curio conquest. Hadley was an equal-opportunity enjoyer of the female persuasion. Allison might be good to look at, and a new variety of woman to bed, but just a fling. He'd even meant it about tossing her a bone afterwards.

  That had all changed.

  Now he'd get her, make her pay for the insult.

  And he'd do it tonight, before she could report him at work.

  Hadley didn't know where this particular ice princess lived. Yet. He oversaw Personnel and Retention at Tetherly. Finding her address would be as easy as pie.

  Hadley stood and left the high-class restaurant—after dropping two bills on the table. It was enough to cover the meal and the scene that little ice princess had caused.

  "Run all you want, Lefty," he whispered, knuckles popping as he made unconscious fists. "Get nice and cozy... Rabbits die easiest in their sleep."

  ***

  Allison held her prosthesis against the black sensor to the right of her apartment's doorway. The sensor, a Tetherly home automation security module, recognized the RFID chip buried in the carbon fiber skin of her synthetic hand. A green LED flashed as the door's rod and pin lock system audibly retracted. She pushed the front door open and stepped inside. The lights of her apartment turned on at her approach, not by a motion sensor but through more RFID technology within her prosthetic, increasing the brightness as she approached and decreasing as she passed. The overall effect was that of someone walking past a series of flames that rose and fell based on proximity.

  Allison headed to her bedroom, feeling like a child lost in the woods. She was still grappling with her third life-altering decision.

  This one, though, was more of a realization than an action.

  And that's why it hurt the most of all.

  She had to leave LA.

  To go home, like her father had wanted—too bad it was four weeks too late to see him alive.