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  PROJECT XOL

  BOOK ONE

  AMABEL DANIELS

  Disclaimer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 Amabel Daniels

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions

  Dedication

  For Minnie

  Chapter One

  Cassidy

  I hadn’t heard from my mom in eight months.

  That was three-quarters of the year, and no contact with Rosa. At all. Which, when I first counted the time, it wasn’t too alarming because we were both stressed-out, hardworking adults. We weren’t that close. Scratch that. We’d never had any kind of a tight kinship. Not because she adopted me, rather than having given birth to me, but because Rosa was more like…a cat. Aloof. Loving and sweet in episodes but fiercely independent the bulk of time.

  A feline. Rolling my eyes, I resisted the urge to scoff. I slowed my walk on the sidewalk in the trustier end of Cincinnati. I’m comparing her to a damn housecat?

  Still, almost an entire calendar had whipped by with zero correspondence from her. No infrequent texts inquiring about my job. No sporadic calls to make sure I was alive and breathing. Even her emails had faded to silence.

  Until this morning.

  The utility pole at the corner looked kind of lonely, so I stepped over and leaned against it. May as well semi-rest while I got my bearings. I shifted my purse to my other shoulder and dug into my tote. Under the spare clothes, next to the bag of miserably crushed Cheez-its… There it was. Her letter. I couldn’t stifle a huff. An actual, paper, tangible envelope. Snail mail. That was how Rosa finally broke her silence with me.

  To think I almost threw it away… Shaking my head, I pulled her letter out and smoothed the wrinkles against my thigh.

  Who even sent letters anymore? Certainly no one I knew. Other than Rosa, now. The teeny, almost-cursive chicken scratch on the address hadn’t even flagged my attention. At first glance, I’d thought it was one of those advertising gimmicks, to print a damn-near believable handwritten script. If I hadn’t been sorting through the junk mail so slowly in my apartment lobby—stalling to check out the too-hot-for-a-mouse-like-me neighbor who’d recently moved in—I would have missed it.

  I raised the nondescript beige envelope closer for inspection. As if studying it for the twentieth time might reveal some secret clue. Perhaps the darkening city sky would magically show something I’d overlooked. If the outside appeared direct, the missive inside was alarmingly misleading. There was no return address. The postal stamp was smeared, rendering the location and date of processing to a blur. Again, I unfolded her letter. Maybe I’d missed something…

  Cassidy,

  I need your help. Please go to my apartment and collect the box key. You’ve been approved to access the account. Retrieve the files inside. Tell no one.

  Rosa

  Nope. Nothing had changed. I was missing…everything. All of it. I still had no clue what the hell she expected of me. Aloofness aside, Rosa was a particular sort of woman. Private. Autocratic. Without clutter and never with assistance. She’d seldom ever asked me to help her. Even when we actually lived together, in those brief spaces of time when I wasn’t at daycare, babysitters, and then boarding schools, cohabiting with Rosa was a solitary experience.

  I need your help. Quite frankly, those words scared me. I rubbed at the skin below my ear and frowned some more.

  Could I even meet her expectations?

  Would I fail her?

  Those two questions had shaped so much of my twenty-six years of life. Pleasing Rosa. For too long, it’d been my only goal in life. I’d hate to admit how quickly the need to please her burned strongly again.

  Why—most of all—why would she require my help? And how—

  “Hey, there, sweet thang.”

  A man sauntered my way, overkill in his swagger and a torpedo of sleaziness in his lusty stare. He grabbed at his crotch and grinned. “You looking for something?”

  The metal of the pole at my back chilled me. Oh, for God’s sake. Because I was literally standing at a corner, he figured I was working the street? How could a bookstore employee even resemble a creature promising a decent fuck? Hookers had sultriness in spades, I had maybe a couple of sprinkles of it when the mood struck.

  I pressed the envelope and letter to my chest, shielding the correspondence from the punk as he crowded into my space. Screwing on my sourest stare, I said, “Certainly not you.”

  He made kissy lips at me and passed by. His filthy gaze lingered on my back and it was enough of an impetus for me to move. I shoved the letter back into the envelope and returned them to my bag.

  Empty-handed, I tugged the straps to my bags tighter to my shoulders and scanned my surroundings. The last time I’d made the drive from my house in Ann Arbor to Rosa’s apartment in Cincinnati was a year and a half ago. I had been here before. Now, though, nothing stood out to me. Address numbers weren’t easy to locate on the brick walls along the street, but I knew I was close.

  As soon as I’d read Rosa’s odd letter—a letter!—I’d grabbed the tote I used for spare clothes after infrequent Pilates workouts, told my best friend and landlord I was heading out of town for the night, and took off. Getting slightly lost in her neighborhood wasn’t on my agenda. I couldn’t concentrate on seeking out landmarks and finding her building because I was too preoccupied with my steadiest companion of worry.

  What files?

  Why couldn’t she get them herself?

  I need help.

  I swallowed hard.

  It simply wasn’t in Rosa’s nature to request a gopher. Even if she needed someone to play fetch for her, she had a delegated personal assistant. Of course, Hendrick was only her RA, her research assistant. She’d ask him to perform tasks relative to their studies at the university. It wasn’t like she was some kind of academic overlord, delegating menial chores to students. When Rosa wanted something, she went for it. If she needed a chore to be completed, nine times out of ten, she’d do it herself. There was perfectionism, and then there was whatever brand of freakishness Rosa was. She once explained that if it was something she was capable of, she knew she could trust herself to do it best—so why ask another?

  If Hendrick couldn’t have completed this mystery task for her, it clearly meant she needed my help with a personal matter.

  What, I couldn’t imagine. Rosa didn’t share personal things. Sometimes it seemed she even lacked a personality with her unbreakable dedication to her research.

  Regardless, I walked faster. One creeper trying to solicit me on the sidewalk was enough. Dusk in the city wasn’t the opportune time to linger and patiently stroll about. The quicker I located Rosa’s place, the faster I could ask her for an explanation. Like, maybe…why she couldn’t just get her own damn files out of her own damn box? Sure, it was a four-hour drive for me to come here. But it wasn’t like this was any sort of hardship. Just an oddity. It came in handy that I had the next few days off from work, but this wasn’t what I had in mind for my mini-break.

  Ahead to my left, white-washed bricks stood out, almost like a beacon of lightness in the sea of red and brown walls. That was her building. It had to be. I remembered sitting on those steps once, waiting…and waiting for Rosa to come home from work. I smirked as I ran up the concrete. It was always work with her. When I’d reread her letter for the first six times, I assumed she was simply away on a trip, perhaps visiting another university. Her last scholarly
adventure was to Nottingham, but she was supposed to have returned a couple of months ago.

  I paused at the front door, my—her spare—key at the ready. Did she ever come back from Nottingham? A cringe twisted within me at the realization I didn’t have an answer. I’d been busy at work, repainted my living room, found a new author I had to binge read…the ordinary busyness that made up the life of an assistant bookstore manager. Okay. Maybe I was at just as much fault for not getting in touch with Rosa. Even though she was the one who usually initiated the thread of hey-I’m-back-home texts, I could have inquired.

  I slid the key into the hole and inhaled sharply.

  She couldn’t have…been hurt, right?

  If her plane had crashed, or if—

  I closed my eyes in an effort to tune out the start of another runaway worry train. No. If something bad had happened to Rosa, I would have heard about it—from her or the authorities. Besides, if she’d suffered some traveling mishap, she wouldn’t have written me that letter, would she? Could be something as simple as her trip being extended and she wasn’t back home yet.

  Again, the answers were waiting for me upstairs in Rosa’s studio apartment on the top floor.

  So, quit stalling and move it, Cass.

  One flick of my wrist and the building’s front door unlocked smoothly. After I stepped in, I shut the door and rested my back on it. Drab tan walls made up the bleak lobby, and it was there that I waited some more. Stalled. Debated. Sorted through another stream of what-ifs.

  As much as I was desperate to know what Rosa needed my help with, a sickening agony of dread spun in my gut. Breathing slowly and steadily, I warded off outright anxiety. Nothing about this felt right. Being here, my summons to come—

  Tell no one.

  There. That was the stickiest part of my fear and curiosity. Those three words that had me hesitating to just get this over with.

  Why the secrecy? My adoptive parent was a private woman, but this stunk of some deeper type of confidentiality.

  I raised my face to stare up the steps. The faintly lit stairwell wasn’t oozing with welcome. Silence roared too loudly in the empty lobby and a dooming blanket of isolation crept over me at the too-quiet and dim space.

  Again, the faster I got my ass up there, the faster I could leave.

  Quit dicking around and move it.

  I pushed my butt off the door and strode for the stairs. There was no point getting carried away with my gut instincts, which, more often than not, ruled on assumptions and emotions than logic. I’d go up there, get the key, and—

  And what? Rosa asked me to get the key to retrieve these files. What was I supposed to do with them?

  God. Too many questions. My Converse slapped harder and faster up the steps. In sync with the storm of unknowns in my head, I sped toward her floor.

  Once I stood in front of her door, I stared at the knob, the key waiting in my hand at my side. I couldn’t shake my nerves.

  I need your help.

  Without even knowing the details, I’d come to her SOS call. Of course I had. This was Rosa. My only family. I hadn’t even entertained dismissing her letter. Standing here now, though, only a door away, I fidgeted with the uncertainty. I had a bad, nagging insistence warning me that as soon as I opened this door, there would be no going back.

  Stop being so dramatic.

  My fingers trembled as I inserted the key, jimmied it how I remembered Rosa doing in the past, and turned the knob. Darkness spread before me. Squinting my eyes, I took one step in, just over the threshold. This wasn’t some soft dimness, or mere shadows. Pitch-black nothingness concealed all of Rosa’s home.

  Her fish tank. That gentle glowing blue light was off. Even if there had been a disruption to power, those little fish would have their lamp automatically working after the electricity resumed.

  I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

  This fish light. It was the first trigger to send my heartrate jack-hammering. Dueling the need to listen to my fears and the desire to ignore my worries, I bit my lower lip and entered further into the room. I shuffled my feet across the carpet, unwilling to hasten my pace as I let my eyes adapt to the dark. Leaving the door open, I hoped the hallway light would be enough for me to reach a switch on the wall. Over there, to the right of the couch should be the floor lamp.

  Two steps. Three. On the fourth, an arm wrapped around my neck and choked my attempt of a scream.

  Chapter Two

  Luke

  It was only eight o’clock but goddamn, was I tired. A full day’s worth of work at my little brother’s gym never knocked me on my ass like this. I could only blame myself and the seventh season of Games of Thrones. There was no way I could watch the last year of the series without refreshing the entire previous season. I’d avoided spoilers this far. I’d finally catch up and complete the saga. There was a lot I needed to catch up with since reentering life after prison twenty-some months ago.

  A grin tipped up on my face as I debated who’d survive in the next episode. So…worth it. My fatigue was a petty price to pay for staying up too late. My apartment was mere feet away. A few more steps up, down the hallway, and I’d be home to crash like the hermit I preferred to be.

  As I gained the landing for the top floor, I couldn’t look forward to my front door. My attention was arrested on my neighbor’s place. Rosa’s door was wide open, revealing complete darkness within.

  When had she returned? Had she come back? I didn’t know too much about the elder resident who lived in the only other apartment on this floor. What I did know wouldn’t explain her carelessly—or deliberately—allowing the entrance to her domain to remain open.

  Rosa was a quiet, secluded woman, one I’d bonded with past the lines of small talk. When she was there, of course. Her true home was her work. The last I’d seen her, she’d explained her pending absence would be due to a trip to… Hell, where was it? Seemed like so long ago that she’d mentioned it. London? No. Ireland somewhere.

  I focused on my senses as I set my foot on the worn carpet and waited for a beat before continuing down the hall. Taking stock of my surroundings yielded no clues. I was alone in the hall. Stillness. No movement around me. Eyes narrowed, I squinted to see anything in the blank space inside Rosa’s home.

  Nothing. I could see absolutely nothing. Had we had a power outage? Today was crystal-clear with big skies of bright blue. Clearly no storms to warrant a break in electricity.

  As I lowered my other foot to the floor, I heard it. If I couldn’t see anything inside the doorway, I sure as hell didn’t miss hearing the grunt. Then a gurgled gasp, a foreboding hint of suffocation. I gripped the railing too tightly as I honed into the sounds, my pulse racing. A smack of impact came next, flesh striking flesh.

  Danger.

  Rosa? Was she in danger? Someone broke in?

  I didn’t know, but nothing seemed right. Adrenaline rushed to surface and I reacted the only way I knew how. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d try to defend someone struggling to survive. I could only obey the need to help. To defend.

  Soundlessly, I hurried through the doorway, my exhaustion replaced with a burning energy. With the light from the hallway, I could just make out the shapes of people. Two. One larger holding another. Their movements were all I could follow in the blackness. In front of the couch, in the center of Rosa’s living space, they turned and twisted in a macabre tango.

  A feminine whimper slipped out and my fists tightened. I allowed one lungful of breath before nearing them. A slice of light from the hallway fell upon them, showing me a tease of one half of her face. An eye so wide and full of terror as she gazed at seemingly nothing, her opened mouth silent on a cry, no air coming in with the thick arm strapped over her windpipe. Pink tresses jerked over her face as she squirmed in her attacker’s hold. She slapped her bloody hands to the man’s arm, piercing her nails into his flesh as she struggled to remove the limb from her airway.

  I rushed forward. Coiled to str
ike. To save. To kill.

  The little scrap of a female wasn’t Rosa. But that wouldn’t stop me from helping her. It’d be my dying day when I would stand back from rescuing the underdog in a fight.

  I flung myself forward with no strategy in mind. Muscle memory and a primitive drive guided me. Years of fights prepared me well. Whether from my time behind bars or surviving on the streets, I wasn’t entering this fray naively.

  I slipped my arm around the attacker’s neck. One twist and jerk caught his attention. It was a lethal maneuver, or it could have been if he hadn’t been just a little taller than me. His size, both the solid bulk of muscles and his tall frame, had me at a disadvantage. No matter. I’d dealt with worse. Hell, at least it was only one-on-one here.

  In reaction, he loosened his grip on the woman to fend me off. He pivoted and bent, but I anticipated his attempt of flipping me over before he could finish it off. Facing each other, I still lacked the chance to view this second stranger in my neighbor’s apartment. I didn’t need to actually see his face to know he didn’t belong. In a blur of too much power and skill, he came at me. A flurry of jabs and kicks rained down. Some I blocked, some I countered, but not for one second did I let him get distracted and go for the girl again.

  Gasping for air after a brutal punch landed on my side, I wondered where she’d gone. A sudden dash of light eased into my peripheral vision, and it was too long of a break in my attention. The bull of a man lunged at me, and instead of fending off his violence on my own two feet, we were locked in a wrestling war on the floor.

  I gripped his sweaty hair and slammed his face to the ground. The curses that left his lips aggravated me. If he was coherent enough to string a sentence together, I wasn’t anywhere near winning this. More. I needed more of a victory. Being pinned beneath him sent a surge of determination through me. That fear of being trapped, of being beaten. It propelled me to find a last reserve of fight. I had more. There was always more.