“Darling,
I must have looked surprised at that. My hand stilled on Luna’s back.
“You know he does,” she said.
“Maybe he does,” I nodded cautiously, stroking the cat again, “and maybe I know it, but how do you?”
Olivia leaned forward. “Because how could anyone know the real Joanna Archer and not love her?”
I smiled at her sincerity but looked away. It wasn’t that the sentiment wasn’t appreciated, but her rhetorical question brought to mind that afternoon’s confrontation with Xavier.
Olivia, sensing that, quickly changed the subject. “Don’t you want to open your present?”
I nodded, but didn’t reach for the package in the corner of the coffee tray. “I need to ask your help with something first.”
“Want me to take Ben for a little ride? Break him in for you?”
“I think I can handle that on my own,” I replied dryly.
“Too bad,” she said, demurely sipping her martini.
“I want to find out who my real father is,” I said. “I think Xavier knows, but he’s keeping it from me.”
“Why would he?”
“Knowing him, it’s probably just a power trip, something he can use to keep me under his thumb.” I frowned and tapped my finger against my glass. “But I was thinking about it this afternoon. What if he knows where the guy lives? What if Zoe mentioned it to him at some point?”
“What if,” Olivia finished for me, “she returned to this man when she left Xavier?”
I smiled at her use of his name. “So you’ll help me?”
She looked at me like I had the mental capacity of a two-year-old, which was unsettling. “I’ve already begun.” She rose and jerked her head, indicating I should follow. I did, leaving my present, my martini, and Luna on the couch behind me.
Mother Nature was apparently determined to make the city of light look like a dimly flickering bulb. The glass wall extending through the bedroom normally offered up a 180-degree view of the valley’s surrounding mountain ranges. Tonight, though, the oddly low cloud cover kept us from seeing even two feet beyond the glass. Lightning slashed at the sky, and as thunder rumbled directly overhead, I shuddered, thankful we were safely inside.
I turned my attention to the computer console, and sure enough, the machine was already on, bathing the corner of the room in an unflattering greenish hue. Circling to the other side, I saw the screen dancing with lipstick tubes and bottles of fingernail polish. I’d have wondered where Olivia found such a thing, but knew she’d probably designed it herself. Then I watched as she positioned herself in front of the monitor, placed acrylic against the ergonomic keyboard, and became the Olivia Archer most people never imagined.
Her fingers flew, following paths that could as easily access data from government sites as blow through a game of FreeCell. She’d gotten her first fake ID this way, and as a teen I’d had her pull up my psych evaluations as well.
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
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
