by Lucy Monroe
Myk had the guy pinned to the wall, his hand fisted in the scumbag’s shirt before Myk realized what he was doing. “Thirty-three people.”
The guy gave him a belligerent glare. “What? That supposed to mean something to me?”
“It’s the number of people your employer has had killed in the last six months pursuing his deranged plan to increase his power. That we know of.”
“So?”
“So, you piece of shit, those people had rights, too. They had the right to pursue their livelihoods without the threat of some sociopath cartel jefe ordering their deaths with less thought than he orders dinner. You get me? In this house? You are the only link we’ve got to that son of a bitch and your life is only worth what you can tell us.” He snapped his fingers in the cartel thug’s face. “That’s your rights.”
The bastard finally had the intelligence to start looking a little worried.
“Mykola.”
“What?” he ground out without looking at Lana.
He didn’t want to see the disappointment that was bound to be on her face right now. He had to do what needed doing, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to rip him up to lose her over it.
She was the idealist, after everything. He was a pragmatist.
And he was going to protect her. Whatever the cost.
“I went a little crazy after my stay in Turkey.”
“Yeah?” Did she think this was a blip in his sanity? That he was going to calm down and realize he needed to turn this scumbag over to the authorities?
“Yes. I wanted to know if my parents loved me, if they ever had.”
Oh, damn. “I’m sorry about that, sweetheart. I really am.”
“Don’t be.”
“So?” He knew she had a point. His brilliant head geek might have a convoluted way of thinking, but she always had a final destination in mind.
He just hoped it didn’t lead to her telling him she couldn’t tolerate him or his methods.
“I developed a truth serum that is to sodium pentathol what morphine is to aspirin as a pain reliever. It doesn’t have any long-term side effects, but it’s extremely effective.”
Despite the cool air in the marble foyer, sweat broke out on the thug’s brow. Apparently, his grasp of English was better than good. He had something to hide, something his employers didn’t want him sharing. Or he wouldn’t be so nervous.
Even so, Myk wasn’t nearly as interested in the perp’s reaction as he was to Lana’s. He spun to face her, dropping the cartel henchman, who swore as his weight settled back onto his wounded leg.
She was smiling softly at Myk, no condemnation anywhere on her face. “I changed in that prison lab, Mykola. I still don’t believe in violence as a solution, but sometimes it is necessary.”
He nodded, the level of his relief at her acceptance acute.
“We have to stop the sociopaths who think they can use my research to instigate a new power structure.”
“Yeah, doc, we do.”
She smiled. “Together.”
“Together.” So long as her involvement kept her completely, totally, indisputably out of the line of fire. “How long will it take you to whip up a batch of your truth serum, doc?”
“A few hours, but I need my lab.”
“I’ll take you back to ETRD.” He turned to Brett. “Get his scratch disinfected and bandaged, then lock him up until we get back.”
“No problem.”
“Keep an eye on Casey. Find out if he overheard anything else. Make sure he rests.”
“Will do.”
“TGP’s research agent identified a Vega office in Mexico. Maybe Claire and Alan can collaborate and pinpoint the location of Vega right now.”
“I’m on it,” Claire said. “You got his deets?”
Myk beamed the info from his phone to hers. “As far as TGP is going to know right now, there was an abortive kidnapping attempt on Casey.”
“Got it.”
“I want to see Casey before we go.”
Myk thought about the best diplomatic answer to Lana’s demand. “No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“He needs a chance to get himself together, without worrying about whether or not he’s letting you down or not acting like a man in front of his mentor and friend.”
Lana stared at Myk, a myriad of emotions swirling in her beautiful hazel eyes. “Oh.”
“You can see him when we get back.”
“What if he wants to see me now?”
“How about if I ask him?”
“Why is it okay for you to see him and not me? Aren’t guys more worried about looking weak in front of other guys?”
“Sometimes, but not this time.”
She frowned, but nodded. “Go ask him.”
Casey was exhausted and in pain. “It’s just a bump, though.”
“You’ve got a tough head,” Myk said.
“Yeah. I guess. I knew something was wrong. When Ramirez showed up. I’d seen the morning’s team lead and it wasn’t her.”
“She was fired yesterday.”
“Oh, wow. Wish I’d known.”
“Lana’s going to feel guilty for not telling you.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference. I lied to Ramirez, so she wouldn’t go looking for Lana. Something felt off and I wasn’t taking any chances. I was hoping they’d leave if I gave them the enzymes, but they decided they would use me, too.”
“You’ve got good instincts.”
“Thanks. I feel like such a wuss right now, though.”
“Why?”
Tears flooded the other man’s eyes. “Because I’m still scared.”
“That’s understandable. You’re not weak, though. You’re strong and I’m impressed.”
“Yeah?”
“Definitely.”
“Thanks.”
“Lana wants to see you.”
“Could I…”
“See her later?”
“Yes. I don’t want to hurt her feelings.”
“But you don’t want her to see you like this.”
“Right.” Casey looked awed. “How did you know?”
“It’s natural.”
“You don’t think it will hurt her feelings? I don’t want to upset her. I don’t blame her or anything dumb like that. I wanted to protect her, and I’m glad I did.”
“But now you have to deal with the aftermath of what that cost.”
“Exactly.”
“You’re going to be fine, Casey, you really are.”
“I believe you.”
“Lana needs to whip me up some truth serum.”
“Serious?”
“Yep.”
“She’s a woman of varied and inexplicable talents.”
They both laughed, and Myk was still smiling when he explained to Lana that Casey said he’d see her when they got back from ETRD.
Thankfully, she let it go at that.
He didn’t tell her how Casey had sacrificed himself for Lana’s well-being. That would come later, when Myk could hold her when she cried.
Lana showed an incredible ability to focus when they got back to her lab. She didn’t ask questions about Casey’s rescue, what the plan going forward was, or anything else. She did one thing and one thing only. She worked.
Myk had no desire to interrupt her. And there were a couple of things he had to take care of himself. He’d brought Collins with them. He left the bodyguard and Lana in a locked lab while he interrogated the ETRD security guard who had made the mistake of letting the kidnappers in. Twenty minutes and several questions later, he was satisfied the man was poorly trained and truly enamored of his job.
His anger pushed him to fire the idiot, but instead, he assigned the security guard to the first group of trainees leaving for Oregon the following Monday. He ignored the man’s effusive thanks and made a necessary trip to ETRD’s main security office.
Forty minutes later, he was back in Lana’s lab.
“How’s it going, doc?”
“Without incident.”
He looked at Collins.
The guard shrugged. “I think that’s good. She hasn’t cursed once or dumped anything out and started over.”
“Of course not. I don’t make mindless mistakes.” She sounded mortally offended.
“Glad to hear it.”
She carefully picked up a tray of test tubes and carried them to something that looked like a microwave in the wall. She put the tray inside the unit, pressed a series of buttons, and it started with a quiet whir.
She turned to face him and Collins. “Right. The chemicals need to agitate for twenty-seven minutes exactly and then be left to rest for another hour before being brought to temperature and kept there for six minutes. Once it cools to ninety-eight degrees, it is usable. It will remain viable as long as it is kept at a temperature between sixty and one-hundred-two degrees Fahrenheit. Note, it is best to use it at moderate temperature.”
“So, you’re saying we’ve got a couple of hours of waiting?”
“Pretty much.”
She’d told him it would take a few hours to make the serum, but that didn’t stop him from wishing there was a way to speed the process up.
“We can use refrigeration to bring it down to usable temperature as long as we watch the drop in heat closely.”
“You reading my mind, doc?”
“More like your expression.”
“I have a great poker face.”
“But you don’t hide your impatience to interrogate the Vega lackey well at all. Two different things.”
He wasn’t so sure about that. Too many of his defenses disappeared around this woman.
“You want to know how Ramirez got into ETRD after being fired?” he asked in what he thought was a pretty brilliant change of topic.
Chapter 17
“How?” Lana asked, really curious.
Ramirez had been fired the day before. She shouldn’t have been able to get into ETRD on a visitor pass, much less with access to the labs.
“She used an I.D. badge.”
“Didn’t they take hers?”
“Yes.”
“She had a duplicate.”
“Must have. A well-run cartel like Vega’s would plan for contingencies like her getting fired.”
“That’s scary.”
“It shouldn’t be. Criminal mastermind or not, the guy and his minions couldn’t plan for the contingency of you.” Myk grinned at her.
Warmth suffused Lana at his approval. “You don’t think I’m a nut job, Lojacking my assistant?”
“I think you saved him a lot of pain and probably his life.”
“What about Ramirez?”
“She was logged entering the building at eight-forty-five this morning and leaving again less than thirty minutes later through one of the side entrances. She logged her cohorts in as visitors and since her security clearance had not been removed on the computer yet, no alarms showed in the system when she did so.”
“But why hadn’t her clearance been removed?”
“She’d given up her I.D. badge. As you know, security is a dual program. The badge and a biometric scan.”
“One is useless without the other.” She’d run into that when she’d forgotten her ID badge at home.
“Right. Duplicating the badge with its computer chip inset is an expensive and tricky process.”
“So, it never occurred to security that she might have done so.”
“No.”
“And they put taking her clearance away on the bottom of their ‘to do’ list.”
“Near the bottom, anyway.” Myk looked and sounded disgusted by that fact.
“I can’t believe it.”
“I could. Mr. Smith accepted the Head of Security’s resignation on my recommendation ten minutes ago.”
“But he was going to retrain at that place in Oregon.”
“You can’t train instincts and his sucked.” Myk glowered, clearly upset by what he saw as the other man’s incompetence. “He gave an important job to a family member whose biggest recommendation for hiring was her distant familial tie. When she began undermining the security staff with talk about how the scientists here are treated like elitists while the security force is treated like glorified custodial staff, he did nothing more than give her a verbal warning. Even officers with good instincts were having them subtly undermined by her rhetoric.”
“She primed the other guards to ignore things out of the ordinary.” It was a clever, if diabolical plan.
“Exactly.”
“I hope I see her again one day. And I hope I have my stun gun out, primed to use.” Which wasn’t the kindest of sentiments, but that evil bitch had tried to kidnap Lana’s friend. She deserved a painful jolt of reality.
“You have a stun gun?” Collins asked, sounding shocked.
She nodded, trying for nonchalant, rather than a kook who was way too worried about personal safety. “It looks like a cell phone. An attacker goes to grab it from me and gets a heck of a shock. Literally.”
“You’ve got hidden depths, Lana-love.” Myk didn’t appear in the least like he thought she was an egg shy of a soufflé.
In fact, he looked impressed. And that helped something inside her that had been squirrelly since admitting earlier that she’d given Casey a watch with a GPS locator in it.
“You should see my can of mace. It looks like a pen,” she said proudly. “It only holds one dose, but hopefully that’s all I’d ever need.”
“Not a tube of lipstick?” Collins asked with raised eyebrows.
Lana laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Do I look like a woman who would carry around a tube of lipstick?”
“If I say no, does that get me brownie points or the rubber boot?” Collins asked with a grin and a wink.
Myk drew himself up to his full intimidating height and glowered down at the bodyguard with an exaggerated air. “Flirting with the doc is going to get you the wrong end of my boot, and it has a steel toe, not rubber.”
Even Lana could tell he was joking. Mostly.
Collins laughed, but gave Myk a look that said he got the message.
That had Lana rolling her eyes. “If you get tired of playing Neanderthal, I’ve got something in my Lathyrus odoratus growing room I want to show you.”
“I thought it was Cro-Magnon man.”
“Let’s just say you’re primitive. Very.”
“Works for me.” He inclined his head to Collins. “Alert me immediately if anyone attempts entry into this lab.”
Collins nodded and took a sentry position beside the door—all official and military-like. It reminded Lana of memories long buried, but she admonished herself that this time the soldier was on her side. Not her captor’s.
That made all the difference.
Lana had never felt protected. Not even when Mr. Smith gave her the belly button ring with a locator in it. That was a passive stratagem intended to get her back. It was not the same as Mykola taking proactive measures to make sure nothing could happen to her.
“Thank you,” she said to Collins.
“Just doing my job, Dr. Ericson. And if you don’t mind my saying so, I’m glad to be called in on this assignment. We all are. You’re doing something good here and nobody should be able to get in the way of that.”
“I…” She didn’t know what to say.
“It’s okay, sweetheart.” Mykola brushed hair that had come loose from her ponytail behind her ear. “Not everyone is as blind as your family to the true value of what your brain can do.”
She felt tears well up and she spun away, not wanting Collins to see. “Thank you. Again.” She crossed the lab to the growing room.
Mykola followed her with that silent tread of his. How he managed to do it with steel-toed boots, she had no idea. But even if she couldn’t hear him close behind her, she could feel his pres
ence. It made her feel so many things, safety only one of them.
He stepped into the room right behind her. “I’m glad whatever it is you want me to see is in the place that smells like flowers, not rotting corpses.”
She grinned, but didn’t answer.
The door shut, sealing them into the fragrant, silent room.
Perfect.
She didn’t need an audience for what she wanted to show him. Her gratitude.
Myk leaned back against the door. “What did you want me to see, doc?”
She stopped right in front of him and reached up on tiptoes. “This.”
Lana kissed Myk. Long and sweet.
Damn.
If this was what she wanted to share with him, he was all for it.
When she ended the kiss and stepped back, he grabbed her shoulders to stop her from getting too far away. “What was that for?”
Under the growing lights, her eyes were shiny with suspicious moisture. “You saved Casey. You didn’t try to use him to further your case. You cared and you kept your promise.”
“I always keep my promises, sweetheart.”
“I believe you.”
Those two words went straight to his heart and his dick. While a big neon sign flashed DANGER—Emotional Waters Ahead in his mind, his body vibrated with the need to get closer to her.
But some things needed to be said first. “You are as responsible for keeping Casey from being taken out of country as those of us who went chasing after him.”
She hadn’t just been paranoid for her own safety, but as soon as she’d recognized the potential danger to Casey, she’d done something to mitigate it. Lana was a doer and the world needed more people like her.
“I never wanted him to go through what I did in the prison lab,” she said in an almost whisper.
“He won’t. We’ll make sure.”
“Yes.” The trust shining from her eyes was a damn potent aphrodisiac.
His cock was filling fast and his fingers itched to take that ponytail holder from her strawberry-blond, silky waves. “If Collins wasn’t out there, I’d make love to you right now.”
“We can lock the door from the inside.”
“He’ll know what we’re up to.”
“Does that worry you?”
“Nope. I assumed it would bother you.”