“Oh? How so?”
“That’s a subject for another time, and we don’t have a lot of time to waste.” She looked around at the men. “Do we?”
“Okay, let’s look at this from another angle.” The network guy whose name she hadn’t learned practically charged at her. “Why are you here, and what use was all of this? What were you trying to prove? How good you are?”
If she didn’t know better, she would’ve thought Logan stepped between them to protect her. “Hawk, you need to cool down. This isn’t personal. We all know you’re the best. She must’ve had a reason to keep trying the way she did.”
“And I did,” she added before practically hiding behind Logan’s broad back. She was a terror behind the keyboard, but not so much when it came to hand-to-hand combat. Granted, she’d been trained to fight, but she still didn’t like her chances against the guy with a hundred pounds on her.
And who so clearly wanted to tear her heart from her chest and eat it while she watched.
Logan looked at her over his shoulder. “Any time you want to share with us why you did this, we would all appreciate it.”
She was surrounded by expectant faces, all of them waiting for her to confess why she’d gone to these lengths. She knew from all her research that they would understand, that she had nothing to fear from them.
It was one thing to know something, and another to feel it for sure. Her intellect could tell her all it wanted to, could give her every reason in the world to open up to them—another gesture of good faith, a way to clear up any confusion as to why she had targeted them.
That didn’t mean her heart had to agree.
She had never told anybody. Her dad was the only one who knew, aside from the people who’d gone through hell with her, and of course, the people who’d orchestrated that hell.
“We’re waiting,” Sledge muttered, folding his arms over his chest. Massive arms, massive chest.
There was no point in stalling anymore—and they might throw her out if she didn’t give them a reason. Her tongue darted out, moistening her dry lips. When had her mouth gone so dry? Her heart hammered almost painfully, her palms slick with sweat. She could do this. They would understand; they of all people would empathize.
She lifted her shoulders, spreading her hands—a gesture of helplessness, a what can you do sort of motion. “Because I’m like you. They did the same thing to me that they did to you.”
Bullseye.
All of them looked absolutely stricken, stunned. Even Hawk. They weren’t big, strong, threatening guys anymore. They suddenly looked much more human.
“You’re joking,” Logan whispered, turning to face her full on. “You’re playing another game.”
“I wish I could say I was,” she admitted. “But this is the truth. They did it to me too, and I want them dead. You’re the guys who can make that happen, so you’re the ones I’m putting my money on.”
She looked around. “So? Where do we start?”
Chapter Seven
Once again, Logan found himself taking notice of how silent everything got after something shocking happened like the silence after a car crash or after a bomb had hit.
He certainly felt as though a bomb had just hit, blowing his life apart.
And judging from the slack-jawed surprise all around him, he guessed he wasn’t the only one. That should’ve come as a relief, shouldn’t it? Knowing he wasn’t on his own when it came to being completely and totally stunned by this woman?
You are the leader. Lead them. There was that voice, shaking some sense into him the way it always had. He squared his shoulders, lifting his chin. “How are we supposed to believe that?” he asked, relieved to hear the certainty in his voice. If it had trembled even the slightest, he would’ve looked like a pathetic child.
“You’ll just have to believe it for now.” She reached into her pocket, eyeing all of them suspiciously as if she was afraid they would try to stop her, then slid a bottle of pills out for all of them to examine. “I take one of these a day. I’ve done it every day since I came home. I managed to get my hands on the entire stash the scientists made up.”
“I don’t understand. What’s that got to do with anything?” He took the bottle, turning around in his hand.
“Come on. I gave you more credit than that.” A smile played at the corner of her lips. “It’s a suppressant. It suppresses the symptoms.”
He almost dropped the bottle on the floor. Somebody in the group gave an audible gasp, but he had no idea who. He was too busy staring at the woman in front of him. “You can’t be serious.”
“Why would I make that up? Honestly. I couldn’t make it up if I tried. Just like I couldn’t make up what they did all of us. Believe me.” She looked around. “I was just like you. I mean, I guess I still am, only I have the pills. I won’t always, but I will for at least another few years.”
He had to sit down. There was a desk nearby, and he perched at the edge of it, his head spinning. He hated being this position, not knowing which way was up, feeling like he had just been thrown into an ice-cold pool with no warning. The water was over his head, completely surrounding him, and the surface was so far away.
Again, he reminded himself that he was his team’s leader, and there wasn’t any room for him to fall apart. No matter how surprised he was, no matter how unpredictable Jenna happened to be.
“Let me get this straight,” he murmured for fear of his voice getting too loud and frightening her. Though if she was a wolf, she wouldn’t be afraid of him in the least bit, not when her wolf could most likely hear his, could see through any façade he tried to throw up. “You were one of the people in the lab? They held you, too?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes. They held me along with another nine women.”
“There are more of you?” Zane blurted out.
“Sure. I haven’t managed to track down any of them yet, I have to admit, but I’ve tried. Once I found you all, however, I knew you were where I needed to spend my attention. So far, it seems to have paid off.” She glanced at Logan. “Maybe.”
He shook his head, looking at the floor. It was easier than looking at her, wondering how he hadn’t picked up on it yet, how he had not felt her wolf. Maybe it had something to do with those pills—though she hadn’t yet explained what they did, not exactly.
“Why do you have these? Why just you?”
Only then did she look uncomfortable, shifting from one foot to the other and biting her lip. “That’s not so easy to answer, and honestly, there are still certain things I don’t feel comfortable sharing. Nothing that I think would make any difference, really,” she was quick to insist, looking around at them.
“No.” He stood up straight and tall, almost relishing the fact that he was so much bigger than she was. It was clear his physical presence intimidated her a little, giving him the upper hand. “You’re going to tell us. Now. If we’re going to work together, there can’t be any secrets.”
Her eyes narrowed. He wished they weren’t that particular shade of blue, a shade he recognized. Eyes that had belonged to somebody else, somebody whose voice still ran through his head on the regular. “What if I say no?”
“Then there’s the door.” He pointed to it. “I’m not playing with you. None of us are. You can come completely clean, or you can get out of here. We’ll take care of this on our own. We’ve managed to do pretty well without you so far.”
“Come on,” she snickered. “You’ve done pretty well? Would you call the things you’ve withstood recently doing pretty well? The fact is they’re after you. They want you dead. They want all evidence of what they’ve done erased—and that includes me too. All of us. You haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of what they’re capable of, and you certainly don’t have the first idea about where to find them. I know we all want the same thing here.”
She looked around. “We all want them dead. We want this over. And we want to try to build some sort of lives for ourselves w
here we don’t have to hide. I’m not saying we all have to walk around as wolves all day but having a house I can settle down in and make my own would be nice.”
What did that mean? She was on the run from them too, probably moving from place to place to stay ahead of them. He could imagine it easily, just as he could imagine all of the little tricks and games she’d been playing as not games but reconnaissance work.
She’d been looking for them because she knew there were others like her in the world. She was only one person working alone and needed allies.
“Where did you get these? Who got them for you?” His hand closed around the bottle.
“There’s plenty more where that came from, so don’t think holding them hostage is going to get me to talk.” She searched the nearby area and found a chair, which she pulled up and sank into with an audible sigh. “But I will talk because I want to now, not because you’re forcing me to. I just want you to know that.”
He rolled his eyes. “Sure, sure.”
“No. I mean it.” She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. Staring at him hard. “I want you to know that and to know for sure.”
He took a deep breath, grinding his teeth, remembering how he needed her. He wasn’t even sure exactly why he needed her yet, only that he did. She had some sort of inside information he wasn’t privy to—why she did, he didn’t know and could only hope she would decide to be forthcoming.
“Okay,” he assured her. “You’re talking because you want to talk, not because anybody’s making you talk, and trust me when I tell you we appreciate that.” Jace snorted, but a quick glance from Logan shut him up.
She had a habit of cracking her knuckles when she was nervous too, looking at the floor, speaking softly enough that he nearly had to lean down to hear her. Even with his ultrasensitive hearing, she was practically inaudible. “My dad was one of them.”
Logan held up a hand to silence everyone else since it was clear all of them wanted to ask questions. That would only scare her, shake her up, leave her overwhelmed to the point where she clammed up. “One of the scientists?”
“One of the men who oversaw the project, an Army general. I didn’t know anything about the project. It wasn’t like he brought his work with him, you know? Not that sort of thing, anyway. I found out later that it was brewing for years before I ever became aware—that idea of building a super army, soldiers who could withstand just about anything. He became fanatical about it, especially after my mom died. It was like there was nothing else for him to focus on anymore. I was eighteen, legally an adult and on my way into the Army, so there was nothing left for him.”
“So he’s the one who gave you the pills?” Braxton asked.
“Eventually, but there’s a lot more to it than that. See, he was there with you guys. He told me so after my time in the lab, and what he saw horrified him.”
It was with surprise when Logan realized her eyes had filled with tears when she looked up at him. She could’ve looked to any one of the men standing around her, but she chose him. And that felt right somehow, almost like it was just the two of them having a conversation. The others might as well have not been there.
“He didn’t mean it. Please, I need you to understand that. He didn’t know what would happen, and when he saw what happened, it shook him. He realized what a mistake everything had been.”
Was he supposed to feel sorry for the man? Or maybe for the girl in the chair in front of him?
“Then he should have done something about it instead of being a coward and trying to cover up what he’d done.”
“He didn’t,” she whispered. “He never even had the chance, really. He spoke out. He tried to convince his colleagues to stop the project, to forget it ever happened, to free all of you.”
“I guess he was overruled, then.”
“You could say that,” she allowed. “You could also say that they used his daughter against him to keep her silent—and him.”
“And how did they do that, pray tell?” Though he thought he knew the answer. And in a sick sort of way, it made perfect sense.
“I was at our base where I usually was working on the network, collecting intel. A bomb went off somewhere nearby, damaging the building a little—but not a lot. Not enough to cause any real concern or to alert anybody. Just one of those things, you know? Before I knew it, though, a pair of guys in suits came in and took me away. Told me the building had to be examined, that they had to be sure there was no serious damage. I fought it—I was in the middle of work, you know? I couldn’t leave my post. That was when one of them drugged me, shoving a needle in my arm.” Her eyes went dim, slightly out of focus. “When I woke up, I was in the lab. I guess the bomb was planned as a way to get me out of there.”
“They did it to you to keep his mouth shut,” Logan concluded. Just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, that the depths of their depravity had already been plumbed, he found out something like this. It was like they’d decided to lower the bar over and over, daring each other to be even more inhuman.
“Exactly. They used me against him, and they most definitely gave me what they gave you guys. You see, there was a whole other compound filled with women, and all of them were already there when I was brought in. They’d already been turned. I remember them screaming and howling and snarling when I first got there—they knew I was a newcomer, and the soldiers treated me pretty rough. I guess it pissed the girls off. I don’t know. I was never able to find out any of their names.”
She let out a shuddering sigh. “I wish I had. You see, you all have each other. You escaped together. But all of us, we’ve all been separated. Those women probably feel so alone, like freaks. And I really have tried to find them, but it’s no use.”
For the first time, she wasn’t just a hacker. She wasn’t only a pain in the neck, somebody who thought this was all a fun little diversion. She was human, painfully so, and she was just like them.
Just the same, he couldn’t afford to melt under the weight of this new information. “How did you get out of there alive? We were marked for termination, which is why we escaped in the first place.”
“My father managed to negotiate with his colleagues. He swore he would never go up against them, that he would never do anything to reveal what they’d done. But they had to let me and the other women go. He was there when I got out; he escorted me from the lab personally. Talk about your awkward reunions.”
She nodded to the pill bottle he still held. “He stole all of them. The scientists in charge of the project came up with that once it was clear they’d created a monster. They’re gel caps, and dad told me they have an indefinite shelf life. So far, they’ve worked well for me.”
“What is the point of them? Why do you take them?
“That was another one of Dad’s stipulations when he negotiated with the people who used to be his friends. He wanted an antidote developed. Granted, it doesn’t reverse the effects of being turned, but it staves them off.”
All of them were left reeling by the time she finished talking—even Hawk, who had started their little meeting with an almost violent hatred of the girl. He wasn’t even a shifter, but he understood the grave importance of the situation.
“Have you ever shifted?” Logan found the voice to ask.
“Only in the lab. Just those first days I spent there after they injected me. That’s it. I’ve been taking the pills ever since my dad stole them, maybe a few weeks after I got home. I held her off. It was too scary, the thought of shifting, losing control of myself.”
“And it never occurred to him that more people might’ve wanted them besides just you?” The bottle’s plastic cracked in his hand. He had to put it down before he did further damage.
“I’m sure it might have,” she shrugged. “And maybe we would’ve been able to find and give you some of them if you wanted them, but I’ve been a little tied up ever since then.”
“Tied up with what? What was more important than this?”
<
br /> Her head snapped up, and the eyes which had grown dim and tear-filled now flashed fire. Bright spots of color flamed up on her cheeks, stark against her creamy complexion. “The hotshot somebody gave him. I never did find out who. I only know he was found in the men’s room, foaming at the mouth, with a puncture mark in his arm.”
“They tried to kill him.” It wasn’t a question.
“The man had not a single puncture mark anywhere else on his body, not even between his toes,” she snapped. “He was the healthiest man I ever knew. He lived outdoors, ran marathons, swam for hours a day on his vacations. He was disciplined. Yet there he was, dying of an overdose on the floor of the men’s bathroom. All alone. If somebody hadn’t come in to check on the trash cans, to see if they needed emptying, he would’ve died there, but they got there in time to at least save his life.”
“What happened to him, though? People don’t often recover fully from something like that.”
“Exactly. Basically, it’s like he had a stroke. His brain function is a fraction of what used to be. He lost the ability to speak. He can care for himself in the most basic ways, but he’s not allowed to use the stove or drive a car or anything like that.”
“Where is he now?”
“That’s none of your business—and don’t even try to talk me out of it, because you’re not going to. You want to know what I’m trying to protect? Why I wasn’t more forthcoming before now? That’s who. That’s why. They want him dead too.”
“So he stole the medication, gave it to you, and then he was given the overdose.”
“Pretty much.” She leaned back in the chair, arms folded. “Anything else you want to know? You trust me now? Do you need me to rip the bandages off some other half-healed wounds so you can pick at them?”
Suddenly, he felt very ashamed of himself—ashamed enough to question everything he thought he knew.
Chapter Eight
Jenna felt empty inside. Exposed. Vulnerable.
And, she realized, relieved. For the first time in years, she’d been able to tell somebody what happened. She didn’t have to keep secrets anymore. It was the most freeing and terrifying thing she could imagine.
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