Page 42 of A Shot at Love
“Where are we?” she asked.
Ky put up his index finger, a signal for her to wait.
“Yeah,” he said into the phone. “Downstairs.”
A buzzer pierced the air and he pushed open the door.
“Up.”
She repeated her question.
“At a friend’s.”
From the top of the stairs a door opened and the dark hallway was bathed in shards of sunlight. A massive silhouette stepped in front of the light, blocking it.
The skin on the back of Gemma’s bare arms chilled. Instinctively, she moved back a step and rammed into Ky. The feel on his hand winding around her waist calmed her immediately. She told herself she’d think about exactly why that was, later. For now, just knowing he literally had her back eased her fear.
The giant said something to Ky in a language she didn’t recognize. She felt his own voice reverberate along the length of her spine when he responded in kind and she realized they were speaking Greek.
The giant stepped back, swiped a hand through the open door and said, “Please come in, Miss Laine. I assure you I don’t bite.”
She stumbled into the room when he added, “Unless I’m asked to, of course.”
*
Gemma looked around the room and tried not to gasp. There wasn’t an inch she could see that wasn’t covered with some sort of computer device. Dozens of colored electrical wires dropped from the ceiling, cascading down the center and sides of the room, attached to at least ten computer hard drives that were visible. She counted an equal number of differing sized monitors all in a row, set across two massive tables, each one of them on and processing data across their screens. Two forty-inch flat-screen televisions took up one complete wall. They, too, were turned on, both tuned to opposing financial market stations.
A dull, persistent, mechanical hum permeated in the air.
The windows were covered with clear plastic from pane to pane with what looked like aluminum foil surrounding the borders.
Once the door closed behind them, the giant grabbed Ky into what Gemma truly could call a bear hug, and slapped him on the back several times.
“It’s been too long, brother,” the man said.
“Truth.” Ky turned his attention to her. “This is one of my oldest friends, Theo Kanikaredes. Theo, Gemma Laine.”
She took her first clear look at him. He really did look like a bear; a teddy bear. Yards of unruly, curly black hair covered his head, and an equally messy beard, his face. He was at least half a head taller than Ky and twice as wide, with shoulders as broad as the back of a truck. A faded, elbow-bare MIT sweatshirt covered his torso, the same logo gracing the side of his baggy sweatpants.
Eyes the color of fresh coffee beans crinkled at the corners when his face broke into an open smile.
“Theo and I went from kindergarten to high school, and all through Greek school, together.”
“Xaipete. Welcome,” Theo said, slapping Ky on the back again. “But I don’t think you’re here to talk about old times, eh?”
“We need your help.” Ky quickly filled him in on the reason they’d appeared at his door.
Theo’s gaze shifted several times from his friend’s face to Gemma’s and then back again.
“First things first.” Theo moved to one of several desks in the room, opened a drawer and pulled out a bottle and two shot glasses.
“Theo, I can’t,” Ky said, watching his friend pour. “I’m on duty.”
The giant said something in Greek that Gemma knew was an oath. She’d heard Ky grunt the same thing when they’d been in the hotel room. He downed a shot glass full of the liquid, re-poured, and downed another.
With a full body shake, he put the bottle and glass back into the drawer.
“Now,” he addressed Ky. “Tell me what you need.”
While the two men talked, Gemma sat on the only cushioned chair in the room. The computer monitors scrolled continuously around her, scores of numbered columns flashing against the blackened screens in a continual motion. It looked like a scene out of movie about an underground cyber world.
She scrubbed her hands down her face. Her nerves felt like flayed and exposed electrical wires. There was a fine tremble in her hands that wouldn’t completely quell. She’d never been so scared in her life as when they’d been fired upon. That she might die in the van, never seeing her family again, never taking another picture, ran through her mind in a continual loop while they were under attack.
