“No way,” Tom said flatly.

He turned around to walk away, but the limo followed. A window rolled down, the wheels rumbling over the gravel next to him, kicking up a thin cloud of dirt that stung his throat.

Fed up, Tom whirled around. “Why,” he said viciously, “would I ever get in the car with someone who helped reprogram me?”

Vengerov regarded him over steepled fingers from within the dim limousine. “Because curiosity can be maddening, Mr. Raines.”

Tom’s sneakers scuffled to a stop. So did the car. Tom stood there in the swirling dust, betrayal a stinging wound in his chest, but, yes, questions were burning through his brain. He was dying to know why Vengerov was here, what he wanted.

He heard the doors unlock. The driver circled around and opened the door.

I am going to get my brain wiped again, some voice beat in his skull as he moved jerkily over. He slouched in the seat across from Joseph Vengerov like he was actually comfortable, like every fiber of muscle in his body wasn’t ready to spring, to get him out of there.

“The airport, I presume?” Vengerov said.

“The airport.” Tom never took his eyes from him.

And then they were off.

Chapter Sixteen

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

FOR A FEW minutes, they rode in silence, Joseph Vengerov examining him over steepled fingers, a drink at his elbow that he wasn’t touching. Tom had taken a soda from the cooler, but he hadn’t ended up drinking it, either.

“It’s not very prudent to hitchhike,” Vengerov noted.

“Yeah, I could run into some creep in a limo,” Tom said before he could stop himself.

Vengerov’s pale gaze didn’t flicker. He barely seemed to blink. “My, you are insolent. If you still had those subroutines I wrote for Dalton Prestwick, you’d be in far better standing with those companies now, rather than blackballed by them.”

Heat flushed Tom’s cheeks. “I don’t care about that.”

“I can’t say I believe you. You have that lean and hungry look about you. I suspect you’re more ambitious than you let on. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be wasting my time with you.”

Orange streetlights flickered over him again and again until they reached the end of the toll road, and merged on to a cheaper toll road. The limo jounced a few times before the driver shifted the car to pothole mode. The windows displayed an optional infrared mode in the absence of light. Vengerov dismissed it with a single, careless jab of his finger. Nothing to see outside but buildings fallen to disrepair.