by L. B. Carter
Val replied, “It’s not about her this time. It’s some friend from her home.”
Reed was glad Nor wasn’t there to hear that. He’d confided to Reed one night that he wanted Rena to consider this place home; she hadn’t even been with her foster grandpa for more than half a year, and she didn’t remember much of her childhood in the lab, thankfully. That would certainly not qualify as a “home.”
“Then where is Rena? Is her friend okay?”
Reed cut off the Q and A. “It’s classified. We’re trying to keep the situation contained. It’s need-to-know.”
“And Ace is need-to-know but not me?” Henley’s pout came through in her inflection.
“Ace doesn’t know either. Haven’t you gotten used to the chain of command yet?” Val flipped a palm up. “I know BSTU didn’t give you all the info for each project they demanded.”
Henley’s sigh was loud through the speaker. “No, but friends are supposed to be more forthcoming.”
Reed played mediator. “We’ll tell you more once we have it all sorted out. Which shouldn’t take long. Okay?”
“Every detail,” Henley negotiated.
“You got it. Ace, do we need anything else?” Reed tried to direct their conversation back on topic. It wouldn’t take long if they actually focused on the mission.
“Smith?” Ace checked.
“Should be good. Based on their speed and location, they’re on the boat,” Smith reported.
“A boat?” Henley’s curiosity spiked.
“Thanks, Ace. We’ll talk after. Have fun stabbing your fiancée!” Reed made a slashing motion across his neck and Smith cut the call.
“Ugh, fiancée.”
Reed smirked at Val’s look of revulsion, one-hundred percent relating to her emotion. And Nor hadn’t proposed to Rena, thank God. And he’d better not for several more years. Ace and Henley were a bit older than that couple. The wedding was going to be bizarre, Reed wagered, like watching two computers profess love to each other.
Reed reeled his thoughts back to the present. Nor would need to make it through this if he wanted a future with Rena.
“On the boat, huh? Well done, Nor,” he muttered with a whistle of appreciation. He needed to stop doubting his brother and give the kid more credit. For one thing, he was a better people-person than Reed; sending him on missions where coercion and negotiation might be needed was something they should include in their team’s future plans. Reed was more the muscle and force if it came to that.
“What do you mean? They haven’t even gotten there yet; they’re still en route.”
Reed raised a brow at Val. “And here I thought you had done your research on Sirena. She hates water.”
“What?” Val frowned, confused. “But she was genetically engineered to survive better in subaqueous environ—”
“Yeah, but there’s the fact that she has killed people in order to, as you put it, ‘survive better’ underwater, which, I might add, involved a lot of testing, remember? She was subjected to what I would classify as water boarding—torture by intentional drowning, a the hands of the girl whose body you stole.” His jaw clenched as he tried to shove aside any thoughts of Jennifer Tate.
He hadn’t known about her uncouth past. Reed had dated Jen after she’d switched identities with Val, taking her name and appearance, which was another point of discomfort.
Reed tried not to feel anything about Jennifer’s real body, presented by the woman standing beside him. It was a confusing mix of feeling like he was cheating on Jen and simultaneously hung up on her—meaning he was attracted to a ghost.
Val’s chin tipped up. “I’ll remind you that the girl who tortured Sirena was your ex-girlfriend, not me, though I have her curves.”
Reed bared his teeth, sucking air in fast as if punched in the stomach.
“Ouch,” their audience whispered.
Reed’s throat tightened. “And she regretted her actions. She tried to make amends for what she did.” Reed lifted his palms toward her. “I don’t need to defend Va—Jen to you. You worked with her to organize your little swaparoo; you know exactly how she tried to get Sirena out and make the knowledge useful to the world.”
He forcibly slowed his tirade. “The point is: getting Sirena to step foot on a boat and head out into Atlantic waters without view of land for hours is quite the feat.” He snorted. “In fact, the first time Nor met Rena, he startled her so hard she almost fell off the dock in her Podunk town in Maine. That was when she punched Nor in the nose.” Reed laughed, remembering his brother prone on the couch in Tom and Barb’s safe house with a slab of frozen venison over his eyes.
The memory was bittersweet, though; Barb, like Jen, was no longer with them, having been piloting the helicopter that crashed in the midst of rescuing him and Val from the Midwest.
“You Stanleys sure do get punched a lot.” Val giggled. “If there’s anything else I know about the Stanleys, it’s that they can come up with some …creative ways to coerce women into doing things they never thought they would.” She bit her lip, smug. “A couple hours with nothing to do but wait until they land? And he needs to get her to focus on anything but the water. So … why not get her to focus on him?” She winked.
Reed scowled gently to avoid a sting from his nose. “That’s my brother you’re talking about.”
“And?” Val’s brows rose. “Are you jealous he’s got more game than you do?”
He scoffed a little louder than he intended. “Hardly. I’m proud. Everything he knows about seducing women, he learned from me.”
Val rolled her eyes.
“I just hope he brought protection, or else we’re looking at some kind of mutant baby on the compound.” The horror of what he’d just said hit him, and Reed really hoped Nor had internalized that lesson if nothing else.
Val gaped. “I am not a babysitting. Those things are gross.”
“Things? You mean babies? I bet you’re thinking of all the spit-ups and diapers. I recall how unwilling you are to deal with that kind of stuff.”
Val stuck out her tongue. “Waste is waste. It’s expelled from the body for a reason.”
“Because it’s disgusting?” Reed snarked. “If I recall, you ingested it.”
Her gaze narrowed. “Accidentally. Because you wouldn’t help me. Shouldn’t assisting women be in your book of How to Charm a Lady?”
Reed tried not to smile back. He was enjoying their banter. But right then Smith interrupted.
“She is right that it’ll be a few hours before I have an update for you.” He gave a pointed look at the two people nervously hovering right in his personal space bickering in his ear. “Unless you want to stare at this dot with me, which is bound to be all sorts of fun, you don’t have to wait here the whole time.”
Reed made an effort to not lean over the guy and took a step back from both Smith and Valerie. “Do you have an ETA?”
“At this rate…” Smith calculated in his head. “I’d estimate three hours twenty minutes, give or take four minutes.”
Reed nodded. “Then we’ll be back in three hours.” With that, he seized Val’s hand and towed her from the room. He didn’t want Father accusing them of bothering Smith unnecessarily.
“Where are we going?” There was a bit of excitement in her question.
“Like you pointed out,” Reed demurred as they stepped out the door and headed down the hall of the compound. “Us Stanleys know how to fill a couple hours with distraction.”
Chapter Five
They’d only made it halfway down the hallway when Reed’s phone vibrated against his leg. He swore and kept marching, tugging Val along behind him, though she was keeping up willingly.
His free hand pulled the device from his cargo pants, and he answered without annoyance, giving the caller his full attention and not fixating on how Val’s fingers were no longer limp and had curled around his.
“Yeah?”
“Your package has been delivered.” Father hung up.<
br />
Reed returned his phone to his pocket instead of smashing it against the wall, coming to a stop. So much for a few hours to kill.
Val bumped into him from behind, and he tried not to focus on that too—her curves pressing into his body. “Reed?”
Indecision warred within him. There was a closet around the corner. They could be quick. He didn’t need hours, just a few minutes.
No, he was in charge of this mission at his own request and Father’s orders. He had to be responsible. Nor was relying on him …and so were Rena’s friends who’d just unknowingly cockblocked him.
Besides, the closet held all kinds of weapons Val could turn on him if he got too handsy for her liking. He had a feeling she liked to be in control and he wasn’t sure he could hold back.
“Damn it.”
Altering their trajectory, he headed toward the loading dock.
“Where are we going?” Val asked.
“Rena’s friends are here. Tilly and Liam.”
Val was quiet. Was she happy? Frustrated by the interruption like him? Not thinking about anything at all?
“We need to get them quarantined. Time to suit up.”
“Ohhh uniforms,” Val purred.
Hearing the edge of frustration, he figured she was trying to lighten the moment. His irritation bubbled under his steel surface. “You’ll like Tilly,” Reed commented.
“Why?” Val asked suspiciously.
“She’s missing a filter between her brain and mouth. Says whatever she wants. Does whatever she wants. Fiesty redhead temper too.”
“And why will I like that?”
Instead of falling into that trap, Reed replied innocently, “She balances it with a lot of hippy shit. Maybe you could try a bit of meditation?”
Her hand wrenched from his. “Oh I need it, dealing with you each day.”
Reed laughed openly, and they walked down a few more corridors, detouring to the clean lab for protective gear.
There was a quiet hum inside the anteroom that led into the clean lab from various cleaning equipment. Everything was organized, pristine, and a blank, fresh white. Reed hated it. He liked dirt from use, passion, and sweat.
Val plucked up a mask, frowning at it as it dangled, one strap looped over two fingers. She wasn’t the type to enjoy donning accessories that cover her perfect face.
Reed spun in a circle, taking in all the items in the room. “You know, we updated our emergency procedures after the last…”
“Disaster,” Val supplied.
Reed gave her an unimpressed stare. “Mishap,” he replaced. “But we definitely don’t have a policy on what to do with regard to hosting a biological weapon. Containing it? Sure.” He gestured at the lab behind the door. “ We have all sorts of research going on in here that has to be isolated. But inviting it in?” He shrugged, not sure what gear they needed.
“Well, time to add a new section. Look at you! Learning things.” Val beamed and dropped the mask on a counter to give two thumbs up in exaggeration.
“You know you just made that mask no longer sterile.”
She glanced at it.
Reed shook his head. “Director of natural disasters being wasteful. Creating unnecessary trash.”
She tossed him a look similar to the one he gave her a moment ago. “Former director.”
His brows lifted as he headed to the sink to wash up. That seemed like a good place to start. Val followed and waited her turn, standing akimbo. “So once you lose your job, you just drop your morals too?”
“Of course not,” she snapped. “But as former director of disaster management, I know that PPE recycling centers exist.”
Reed believed her. “I knew that. I was testing you,” he lied.
“Sure.” She hip-checked him out of the way once he’d grabbed a few paper towels.
Clean, Reed donned a pair of purple gloves, picked up a fresh mask and hooked it over one ear, letting the covering hanging free for now. He was candid enough with himself to admit that he also didn’t like things over his face, partly for the reason Valerie didn’t, and partly because it felt constricting.
Anything that got in the way of accomplishing his job was a frustration. He tended to keep his gear and equipment to a minimum, contrary to the body armor and loaded weapons belts most action movies depicted. That limited movement and flexibility for uncertain situations. In particular, blocking one’s mouth made silent communication trickier—he’d have to resort to sign language over lipreading, something Val probably didn’t know, unlike Father’s team.
He spoke as he unhooked a white jumpsuit from the wall and stepped into the legs. “So if you know about recycling PPE, you must know about wearing it. More than me. I generally don’t deal with science shit.” He pulled the jumpsuit up over his upper body, the restrained feeling building like an itch.
Val dried her hands, watching with amusement as he struggled to get the torso section over his broad shoulders. He hissed a breath in through his teeth as it bunched between his legs. He gave her his back to adjust things to a more comfortable arrangement.
“Indeed. Unlike you I was bluffing.” The trash can lid clanged when tossed the wet paper towels. In his periphery, she sorted through the remaining suits for one her size. “And I’m pretty sure, given where we are, you do deal with science shit. All the time.”
She’d said “we.” He suddenly understood the satisfying feeling Nor was seeking in giving Rena a “home.”
He grunted, facing her again, his zipper struggling to rise over his chest. “Yeah, but not directly. I don’t go in labs or handle any specimen. Everything I collect or transport is prepackaged safely by the client. That stipulation is in our contract.”
Val stepped into her suit without teetering, zipping it up with one hand as the other pulled it up and into place fluidly. His mouth dropped at the dexterity while he was sad to see her tight shirt and jeans vanish beneath the potato sack. The way she moved was like a goddamn ballerina—a ballerina who’d worn a clean suit daily for years, though he noticed she also had to tug the fabric to get it over her chest.
“False: Sirena,” she countered.
She gave in and moved over to assist Reed with the zipper, slapping his hands out of the way.
He stood tall and absorbed the moment as she finished suiting him up, snapping a tiny clasp at the neck he hadn’t noticed. Her fingers lingered there a second, then they glided over the fabric across his collarbones and over his shoulders under the pretense of smoothing the fabric.
He knew she was just looking for an excuse to feel him up. He kept that truth locked inside his chest, warming him up. “Sirena doesn’t count.” His voice was a bit huskier and he settled his hands on the waist hidden beneath the tent of her suit. He needed to get her to eat more. They’d both become malnourished while staying with the Juarezes and with his rigorous workout regimen, her weight hadn’t recovered enough. Maybe they could do a dinner date—with cafeteria food. One thing lacking from his ability to impress a woman was his cooking skills. They blew.
Val’s hair swung when she tilted her head back and bit her lip. Her fingers skimmed back up his neck, sliding toward his cheeks, her stare on his lips. Instinctively, his head lowered.
She grinned, tapped his cheek—hard—and slid his mask across his face. Once the other strap was latched over his ear, then she kissed him. The pressure was there, enticing him, yet the delicious tingle of lip-on-lip action barred by the fabric.
He groaned. “Tease.” The mask muffled his word and his lips caught on the interior. He tried to shift it so it wouldn’t get on his nerves.
“Protection.” She winked, and pinched his injured nose, molding the mask to tighten the seal on his face. Pain flared. “Safety first.” She slipped goggles over his head and let them ping onto his face. He let out a shout.
Ignoring his watering eyes and furious expression, she pulled on her own gloves and mask. They both secured the straps around their wrists and slid the hoods up, tug
ging on the strings until the headpiece tightened around the edges of his face. Val kindly handed him a face shield and slid the strap over another her skull. They both tugged coverings over their shoes, tying them around their shins. Finally, they paused, a pair of marshmallows with personal windows.
“What about these?” Reed asked, plucking at a container of hair nets that looked like shower caps. “Shouldn’t they have gone on under the hood?”
Val shook her head. “We’re not trying to keep others free from our germs, just other’s germs from us. If any strands fall out, no one dies.” She raised a purple finger. “But good point.” She snatched up an extra pair of masks. “For our visitors. Ready?” She sashayed to the door.
“You’ve never looked hotter,” Reed commented blinking the tears away.
She huffed over her shoulder coyly. “I don’t appreciate the sarcasm. I know for a fact that I look good in anything. Pretend all you want. I call your bluff again.”
She was claiming her right on Jen’s body again, but Reed let it slide because she was right. He’d meant his compliment as hyperbole, but she was unresistingly alluring. Damn her. “And out of anything,” he was betting.
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
He really would. “Shouldn’t I be leading? Or do you know where the loading dock is?” Snark against snark.
“Oh, please. After you. I insist.” She let him in front of her. “This way I can ogle your ass instead.”
“Oh yeah? I can make anything look good, too.”
“Actually,” Valerie mused, dead pan. “I was going to say it is a shame that the same isn’t true for you.”
He chortled. “I can hear the lust in your voice, woman. Don’t bother.”
“You wish.”
“Want to help me again when I take this off later?” Reed asked.
She didn’t answer. Her footsteps were quiet behind him, the coverings padding her shoe’ impact on the tile.
“See?” he gloated. “You think I’m attractive in any uniform.” He pushed open a door and let her through.
“I never think—What the freak!”
They both pulled up short at the sight of Tilly and Liam.