Olivia hummed absently, her eyes fixed on the screen, brows pulled down despite repeated botox injections, and glossed mouth pursed in pretty concentration.
She had discovered computers around the same time I had escaped into Krav Maga. Our mother had left no indication that she would ever be returning, and our father had so thoroughly removed himself that neither of us even thought of turning to him, and I was emotionally unavailable, which left Olivia to fight her demons alone.
I’ve always felt guilty at how I shut her out in those early days, but this—a skill few possessed—was the good that had come from it, as strange and unexpected as a lotus blooming in a trash heap. She’d developed an identity outside of her physical body, one completely at odds with the way others thought of her. She may have had a body manufactured in Sin City, but she had a mind to rival the finest graduates of MIT.
In short, she was an unnaturally talented, self-taught computer genius.
With an underground website catering to hackers and their faceless clients, her business generated a far greater income than her generous monthly allowance from Xavier. There were bulletin boards on everything from the technology needed to take care of outstanding parking tickets to assistance establishing offshore bank accounts, and help in funneling untraceable money into those accounts. Her screen name? The Archer, of course.
Because Xavier had discouraged Olivia’s interest in anything beyond basic cosmetic application, she’d developed the habit of working at night, an M.O. that served her exceedingly well. To the outside world it appeared she slept all morning, spent her days shopping or lunching with the ladies, and partied all night. But most of the time she could be found here, and this, I’d realized, was Olivia’s warrior side. The part of her that flipped the bird at Xavier and everyone else.
“See,” she was saying, pointing at a graphic flashing at the top right corner of the screen, “there are multiple levels to break through in order to access your birth records. Shouldn’t take more than an hour. We’ll see if Mom covered her tracks as well as she thinks she has.”
I nodded like I understood, but was distracted by the tool bar at the bottom of the screen. Another screen was currently in use. “What’s that?”
Her gaze followed my own, and I thought I saw her body jolt. The screen had my name on it. Mine and another.
“Nothing.” A quick dance of fingers and it vanished.
“Olivia,” I said, slowly enunciating each syllable of her name. “What was that? You’re not trying to find that…that child, are you?”
“No!” she said, too fast, and crossed her arms. It was more a protective move than a defiant one. I stared at her, hard. Olivia might be queen of the computer, but I knew body language.
“Don’t play affronted bimbo with me.” I jabbed a finger at the screen. “What’re you up to?”
Her cell phone rang just then, the theme from Pretty in Pink saving her from reply. I raised one brow, indicating we’d pick this conversation up later. Some things, and some people, were best kept in the past. She quickly turned her back to me and flipped the phone open. “Hello?”
I turned my attention back to the screen, letting thoughts of unwanted children fade from my mind. Slowly, the computer was working through the records at Sunrise Hospital. I studied it, toying absently with the chain at my neck as I watched the dates and files flash in front of my eyes, and wondered how Zoe had fooled everybody so thoroughly about my parentage for so long? And why?
Had she cheated on Xavier, and didn’t want to risk losing him, or his money? But then, why just up and leave sixteen years later? And why, at least, had she never told me? She knew there was no love lost between he and I.
“But it’s almost midnight,” I heard Olivia say in her best bubblehead voice. This was followed by a sigh that said the person on the phone already knew this and didn’t care. “Look, it’s just not a good time, Butch.”
She rolled her eyes when she saw my expression, and I shook my head. Butch? She was dating someone named Butch? “My sister’s over and we’re just having—”
I heard the timbre of a masculine voice arguing his point, but the boom of thunder drowned out the words. I picked up Luna, whose tail had gone bottle-brushed at the accompanying flash of light, and tried to stroke her fur back down into something resembling feline. Outside, rain began to pour in sheets over the glass walls.
“Yes, I know it’s raining,” Olivia was saying. “No, you can’t stay until the storm passes. You can pick up your things, but then you have to go. ’Bye.”
She threw the phone across the room and it landed on a pink sea of down comforter and frilly pillows. Then she stalked over to her closet and pulled out handcuffs. And a whip. I stared, openmouthed.
“Don’t ask,” she muttered, adding a studded dildo to the loot. “I thought it would be fun. That was before the condom broke. I panicked at the thought of wading around in his gene pool, you’ll see, and threw him out without giving back his toys. He’s come to collect.”
“Must have found a new playmate.” She gave me a sharp look, and I grinned. “No pun intended.”
“Fine with me. He was too obsessive for my tastes anyway. He wanted to lick me in the weirdest places. And he could spend hours smelling me. Not to mention he had more hair than a woolly mammoth.”
“Aren’t those extinct?”
“So we believed,” she said, and threw some sort of belt—I didn’t want to know what it looped around—into a pile that was growing at an alarming rate.
“Don’t worry,” I said, picking up a tube of lipstick with a penis-shaped wand. “If he gets overly amorous, I’ve got your back.”
“Not necessary,” she said, yanking the tube from my hands. I picked up Luna instead. “He looks like a Hell’s Angel, but he’s relatively harmless.”
I saw what she meant when she opened her door to a six and a half foot ape dressed entirely in leather a minute later. I actually thought he looked rather like a large bulldog, complete with sunken eyes and hanging jowls, and she was right—he was hairy. I could see where Olivia might balk at banging chromosomes with a physiological mutant.
“Jo, this is Butch.”
“Yes, it is,” I muttered, giving the giant a hesitant nod.
Luna apparently experienced a similar reaction. She took one look at Butch and sprung from my arms like an Olympic platform diver. “Ouch, shit!”
The bundle of fur wheeled across the marble floor, scrambling for purchase with a click-clack of sharpened nails, and disappeared into the bedroom. As I watched, the stinging marks on my arm became angry pink ribbons, then filled with bright red blood, promising scarring.
“Shit,” I said again.
“Are you all right?” Olivia rushed over, leaving Butch in the foyer.
“He never did like me,” Butch mumbled, shutting the door behind him.
“She,” Olivia corrected as Butch joined us in the living room. “She never liked you. And maybe she would have if you hadn’t stepped on her tail. Twice.”
Butch just shrugged. Big bad bulldog.
“You two stay here,” she said, catching my eye. That meant she didn’t want him following her into the bedroom. “I’ll just get your things and find Jo something to wash off with.”
She disappeared, leaving me with Leather Man. He was practically wearing the whole cow—when he started moving toward me I almost expected him to moo.
“Want me to take a look?” He held out his hand. I hesitated, without reason, though I generally didn’t need one. I didn’t know Butch, but there was some sort of unease or smothered energy that I didn’t like. The drop-point knife was still sitting on the coffee table, close enough to see, but far enough away to be as useful as a butter knife. Still, I had the folded blade in my boot, and was confident enough to hold out my arm for his inspection, testing us both. If there was something off about Butch, I didn’t want him around Olivia, and better I find out about it than she.