by Cynthia Eden
He was squeezing the trigger. She tried to lurch away, but then Flynn was there, he grabbed her, twisting his body to shield her. He’d moved so fast to protect her—
Flynn’s body jerked. There had been no thunder of gunfire. Just silence.
“Remember the tranqs you were given in Lazarus?” Mark’s voice was mild. “Consider this an upgrade.”
Flynn let her go. Cecelia stumbled back. “Flynn?”
He staggered toward Mark.
And her lying jerk of an assistant shot him twice more.
Flynn fell forward, slumping on his knees. “Gonna…kill…”
Mark just took aim again. “You’re going to kill me? I doubt it. I’m protected in this town. Your dumbass should have gone to some tropical island and hidden out for the rest of your days. Instead, you followed Cecelia like some lost puppy. Had to stay with her, huh? That’s your mistake.”
Cecelia grabbed the broken lamp that had smashed onto the floor. Mark was about to fire again. No. She lunged toward him, swinging the lamp. It slammed into his arm, and the gun fell to the floor. Before she could swing again, he’d grabbed her.
She’d always thought Mark was kind, easy. Gentle. His hold bruised her. “I can make things easy or hard for you,” he gritted as he yanked her toward him. “I wanted it to be easy. I was going to tranq you before the fire. You weren’t going to feel a thing.”
Before the fire? Oh, God.
“I need to know where the rest of the files are, Dr. Gregory. I know you, remember? I made it my mission to know you. And the brief notes I found on Lazarus—talk about bullshit. I know how you work. You have a whole set, a profile on every single soldier you worked with in Arizona. I need those files, and you are going to give them to me.”
She didn’t hear Flynn. The tranqs had knocked him out. How long would he stay out? She wasn’t sure. If the tranq he’d been given truly was some new cocktail, then there was no telling what sort of response he’d have to the drug.
Mark shook her. “The files! Where are they?”
Her head whipped back and forth with the force of his attack. “Stop! Stop! I’ll…get them!” The hell she would.
But he stopped shaking her. He smiled. His friendly, boyish smile. “I knew you had them.”
She stared at him, wondering how she could have been so wrong about someone. She’d had no idea that Mark was—
“Stop looking at me like that,” he muttered. “I’m not the bad guy, Cecelia. The boyfriend on the floor? The freak of nature that you’ve been screwing? He’s the bad guy. The Lazarus test subjects are flawed. They’re killers, and you know that. Wyman Wright knows how dangerous they are, and that’s why he’s instigated the recovery protocol.”
What recovery protocol? The guy wasn’t making sense. “Wyman Wright is dead.”
Mark’s fingers bit into her arms. “Now who the hell told you that?”
“He was at Lazarus. He…burned.”
But Mark just laughed. “Dead men don’t pay the way he does.”
Pay? Wyman was still paying him?
“Now show me the files. And I’ll do you the courtesy of knocking you out before the fire takes this place.”
“You’re going to burn me?”
“Have to destroy the evidence. Can’t very well just leave the place when my fingerprints are all over everything.” He hauled her across the room. Didn’t even glance down at Flynn. He was still out cold. “Is there a safe somewhere in here that I don’t know about? I looked but, shit, you can be a tricky bitch.”
He’d pulled her behind her desk. “Saying that you’ll kill me…that doesn’t exactly make me want to help you.” Her voice came out quiet and calm, and an odd calm had settled over her body. “You should work on your motivational technique.”
His hands tightened on her. “I told you…help me, and I’ll make things easy on you. If you don’t tell me where those files are—right the hell now—then I’ll have to hurt you. I can be brutal, Dr. Gregory. I don’t want to be. I legitimately like you. But I have a job to do, and I’ll do it, no matter what.”
“Are you going to burn Flynn, too?”
He glanced over at Flynn.
Her fingers slid toward her desk. Toward the letter opener that she could see peeking out beneath a pile of tossed papers.
“A crew will come for him,” Mark replied with a roll of his shoulders. His gaze lingered a moment on Flynn. “He’ll be studied before his termination.”
Not happening. “No one will terminate him.”
Mark’s gaze flew back to her face.
She slid her hand down to her side, hiding the letter opener that she’d just grabbed. “If you were truly told otherwise, then you were told a lie. The Lazarus subjects are too valuable. They aren’t just going to be killed. Especially not if Wyman really is the man pulling your strings.”
“Wyman is a patriot—”
“Wyman killed American soldiers and put them in the Lazarus program without their permission. He’s lied time and time again. And he’s destroyed more lives than I can count.”
Mark’s eyes were angry slits. “Give me the files!”
“You aren’t going to hesitate, even a little, when it’s time to kill me?”
“I have gasoline in my car. I’ll knock you out with the tranq, and then after the collection team arrives and they remove Flynn, I’ll burn the office around you.”
Her heart slammed into her chest. “The fire could spread to the other floors in this building.”
“No one is on the floor above you. No one is below you. The firefighters will be able to control the blaze long before anyone else dies.” He lifted one brow. “Not such a monster, am I?”
He was still going to kill her. So, yes, he was.
“The files,” Mark bit out. “I won’t ask again. I’ll just start breaking your fingers.”
He would. She fully believed that dark truth. “I don’t know you.”
Once more, he flashed his smile. “No, Dr. Gregory, you don’t. You only know what I wanted you to see.”
She swallowed. “I suppose that’s only fair. You don’t really know me, either.”
His smile slipped. “What?”
She brought up her hand in a fast slash. The letter opener sliced into his chest, and she wrenched it upward as his blood flew out. The attack wasn’t deep—the letter opener and the angle didn’t allow for that, but she still caught him by surprise. Mark stumbled back from her, colliding with the edge of her desk.
“What in the hell?”
She attacked him with the letter opener again. This time, she stabbed down, driving it into his shoulder. He let out a roar of fury, and he punched at her.
But she ducked. Ducked and hauled ass back across the room.
“You fucking bitch—”
She could see the tranq gun he’d dropped when she hit him with the lamp. She grabbed for it, her fingers tightening around the weapon as she whirled toward him.
Mark tackled her. They slammed onto the floor, and, as they fell, she squeezed the trigger, firing once, twice. He jerked against her. Shuddered. Then…
Went still.
Unconscious? Was he out? His body was a dead weight on top of her, and Cecelia shoved him off her. Or at least, she tried. She wound up crawling out from beneath his heavy body. He was so still and stiff, and she didn’t think he was even breathing.
“Well, well…” A woman’s voice rang out. Oddly amused. “This isn’t what I expected.”
Cecelia glanced up. A woman with dark hair and bright blue eyes was standing near the doorway. Cecelia hadn’t heard the woman’s approach, but she had been distracted with the little matter of a life or death attack.
“Who’s the dead man?” the woman asked, glancing down at Mark.
He wasn’t dead. Was he? She’d thought she knocked him out. Cecelia clutched the tranq gun. “Who are you?”
The woman laughed, but the sound held no real humor. “People keep asking me that. I have no clue.
” Her gaze was assessing. “Bryce says you know. He says you know everything. He wants you…” She stepped forward. “So you’re going to come with me. You and the boyfriend over there. You’re going to—”
“You’re not going to hurt Flynn. And if you’re working with Bryce King, then you need to get the hell out of here, now.”
The woman shook her head. “No. I have a mission—”
Cecelia fired.
The woman jumped to the side, dodging the tranq. “That wasn’t very nice.” Her breath came faster. “Don’t do it again—”
But Cecelia was already firing again. The other woman lunged toward her, and Cecelia kept firing. She had to protect Flynn. He wasn’t moving, was still knocked out, and she was the only one who could keep him safe. He’d protected her before, and it was her turn to keep him safe. It was—
The woman’s fingers closed around her throat. “I thought…you’d help me.”
Cecelia squeezed the trigger. She felt the tranq deploy.
The dark-haired woman grunted.
“Been…choked already,” Cecelia managed to gasp out. “Don’t…like it…”
Shock had the other woman’s eyes flaring. She let go of Cecelia and took a lurching step back. Her hand went to her stomach as she shuddered. A tear slid down her cheek. “Don’t…” Her voice was a painful, weak rasp. “Please don’t…let them lock m-me up…again…” She collapsed onto the floor.
Cecelia stood there, her whole body shaking, the tranq gun still gripped in her hand. She was afraid the woman would lunge up at her again—or that Mark would attack once more. But they didn’t move. No one was moving. She whirled and dove for Flynn. Her hand went straight to his throat. His pulse beat against her fingertips. Slower than normal, but Flynn was alive.
She fumbled and yanked her phone out of her pocket. Her finger flew over the broken screen as she made her call.
Jay Maverick answered on the second ring. “Dr. Gregory…how are you—”
“Get your ass to my office, right now,” she practically screamed. “And bring all the back-up that you can. We’ve got a serious problem.”
Flynn groaned.
“Hurry.”
Chapter Twelve
“Cecelia!” Flynn jerked upright, roaring her name as awareness came flooding back. Fury burned through his body as he prepared to attack—
“It’s okay.” Cecelia caught his hand in hers and held tight. “I’m okay. You’re okay. We’re both safe.”
He stared at her a moment, lost, trying to figure out just what the hell was happening. Then he looked beyond Cecelia’s beautiful face, and he saw the dark wood furniture, the heavy drapes, the bedroom that was not familiar to him at all. “Where are we?”
“A safe house.” She shrugged. “Of sorts. You know Jay, the man owns more property than should be legal. This place is another safe house, one he owns in Virginia. After everything that went down with Mark, we thought it would be safer to get the hell out of D.C. for a while.”
His temples were pounding. “Refresh my memory.”
But he didn’t just need a refresh. He couldn’t remember jackshit. He’d been in Cecelia’s office, the place had been trashed, and then that little dick Mark… “He shot me!” Flynn jumped from the bed. His hands automatically went to his stomach—his shirt was gone, and he just wore jeans. There were no marks on his stomach.
Cecelia winced. “He tranqed you. Twice. No, um, three times, I think.”
The rage Flynn felt got worse. “I’m going to kill him.”
Her lashes lowered. Pain flashed on her face. Came and went. “No, turns out, I already did that.”
“What?”
“He used an upgraded tranq on you. Seems the folks at Lazarus had been working on it in secret. They knew the old formula wasn’t taking the subjects down as well as it once had because your bodies had already adapted to it, so they upped the dosage. Added a few new ingredients.” She swallowed. “So the tranq takes you out fast, and it keeps you out—you were unconscious for almost six hours.”
Six hours? “No.”
“Yes.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. She still wasn’t looking at him. “The tranq works on Lazarus subjects. I-I didn’t think it would do anything to Mark but knock him out. I actually think he believed it would do the same thing to me. Knock out a human, not kill.” Her words came out, faster and faster. “He was going to burn me, Flynn. Going to torture me, then burn me in my office, and take you away. I had to stop him.” Now her hands twisted in front of her. “I had to! You’ve protected me, so it was only fair that I have my turn protecting you!”
His fingers curled around her shoulders. “Cecelia?”
Her lashes lifted. “I shot him with the tranq. I thought I was knocking him out.” Her words were slow now. Carefully spaced. “But he wasn’t just unconscious. He was a dead man. Willow said he was, but I didn’t understand what she meant, not until I went to check his pulse—”
“Willow? The female Lazarus subject? What does she have to do with this?”
Now Cecelia bit her lower lip. “I tranqed her, too. She’s alive, though. But Jay has her locked up, and I told him he can’t do that, he can’t—”
His hands slid under her chin. He tipped her head back, and his mouth took hers. The kiss was deep, hot, and slow. He wanted to fucking inhale her because the woman was his sanity, and their enemies had tried to snatch her away from him.
Her hands rose and pressed to his chest. His heart was beating faster. Did she get that his heart beat faster when she was near? That his whole body reacted to her? His last memory had been of her. He’d been in her office, he’d been falling to the floor, and he’d tried to say her name. He hadn’t been able to speak, and he’d just wanted her to run. Wanted her to get the hell out of there.
His tongue pressed to hers. He tasted her. He savored her. He worshipped her with his mouth.
And he wondered if she knew just how much she truly mattered to him. That if he’d woken and she hadn’t been there, there would have been no controlling his fury. No controlling him.
His mouth pulled from hers. “I keep failing you.”
“What?” Her gaze was so deep. He could stare into her eyes forever. “No, you don’t.”
He brushed a tear drop off her cheek. “You hurt because you had to kill him.”
“I didn’t mean to kill him.” Another tear slid down. “I just wanted to stop him. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want him to take you away. He was going to put you back in the Lazarus program. He was working for Wyman—Wyman Wright is still alive! His men were coming for you.”
What the fuck?
“The nightmare—the experiments—nothing is over. We thought we were safe, but we were all wrong. So wrong.”
***
She came awake in a quick rush. One moment, the woman with the gorgeous olive skin and the long, silky, dark hair was unconscious on the bed. And in the next instant, she’d lunged out of the bed. She whirled in a circle, studying every single aspect of the room that surrounded her. Then she lunged for the door.
“It’s not going to open,” Jay spoke into the microphone.
As his voice drifted to her, the woman—they only knew her as Willow—froze. Then her gaze jumped to the four corners of the room. When she saw the video camera, her eyes narrowed.
“Easy,” he tried to soothe.
She didn’t look soothed. In fact, she just ran for the door. She tried to yank it open—
“It’s reinforced. Deliberately designed to, ah, keep someone like you from breaking out.” Because he’d known that he had to be prepared for the day when his team encountered other Lazarus subjects. He’d known that he needed a way to contain those subjects. He’d even tested the room on Sawyer, to make sure it was escape proof. Sawyer had made it clear he hated the room, but he’d understood its necessity.
Or at least, Jay hoped he had.
Sawyer wasn’t at the safe house right then. Sawyer and West were—unfortu
nately, they were getting rid of a body. Cecelia’s assistant Mark had to disappear.
Elizabeth was sleeping upstairs, and the FBI agent—they’d left him back in D.C. His ankle monitor wouldn’t let him travel all the way to the safe house. But Jay was keeping tabs on the guy, checking his location with his computer every thirty minutes.
Willow pounded her fists into the door. Over and over.
Jay tensed. “Please don’t do that. You’re just going to hurt your hands.”
She whirled toward the camera. And she showed him her hands—as she flipped him double birds.
His lips twitched. “Willow, I am not the enemy.”
She’d jerked at her name. Was it her real name? He hadn’t been able to find any reference to her in his searches—at least, not so far. But if she’d been black ops, her past would be well hidden.
“If you aren’t my enemy, then let me out.”
He stared at the monitor. Stared hard at her. “You’re part of Lazarus. You were a test subject.”
An animalistic growl broke from her.
“I’m not the enemy,” he said again, but Jay knew the words were a lie. What so many didn’t know…he’d helped fund Lazarus. Even his new “friends” didn’t realize that he’d been responsible for bankrolling Wyman Wright.
What did folks say about the road to hell?
It had been paved with his fucking best intentions.
***
“It’s not safe in D.C. Even with a new identity, even with you keeping out of your old haunts, it’s not safe. There could be other people like Mark out there. People we think we can trust, but really, they’ve just been working for Wyman Wright all along.”
Flynn stared down at Cecelia. The scent of vanilla wrapped around him. Cecelia wore a white t-shirt, faded jeans, and no shoes. Her hair was loose around her shoulders. Her face was completely free of makeup. And she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.