Her mother. Her mother. How did Matilda Lauderdale know Jessie Leigh? How did she know Parker Adams?
They’d always told her that Matilda died when Kayleigh was eight years old, a disease they’d worried Kayleigh had inherited. All the tests when she was a child, the yearly checks; they’d all come back clean.
Kayleigh had never looked at her own charts. Why should she? Since she was eight years old, her father had always taken care of it.
She’d never bothered to study her own sequencing the way she studied everyone else’s.
Everything came down to genetics. Her mother, brilliant and gifted, had known that. That had to be why she’d made Simon.
But for what purpose? Why had she bothered having Kayleigh if she already had Simon?
Why was it that her entire history, her own family, now seemed a lie?
Because it was. Jessie had tried to tell her.
“Further reports from the most damaged areas of the quake zone are heartening,” the newswoman continued, her voice somehow managing to be both cheerful and serious. “Among the most surprising, wanted felon Phinneas Clarke—once the owner of the now-defunct topside resort Timeless—organized the search and rescue for a man’s family after the man was allegedly refused help by New Seattle Riot Force officers.”
The Salem witches were broken, their sequencing incomplete. Defective. Matilda Lauderdale had been working on it when she died.
Or . . . or not died.
Kayleigh glared at the screen closest to her, eyes tracking across a string of letters. Adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine. The four bases were all there in the mystery fluid, but it wasn’t right. There were patterns in the sequence, extra genes she’d never expected to find. Had never seen before.
Links between the bases that meant nothing. Garbage. Her techs had been right.
But why had Parker been carrying the mystery fluid?
“After neighbors helped rescue the man’s youngest two children from the ruins of his home, witnesses say Clarke—actively wanted for questioning and suspected heretical associations—quickly vanished.”
Where had the stuff come from?
How had Matilda fixed Jessie?
“Augh!” Kayleigh stamped her foot hard, sending a spike of pain through her arch.
Twenty-five years ago, Kayleigh had been five years old. GeneCorp had shut down, moved, and all new generations halted.
Why?
Lydia Leigh had set it on fire, according to the subject’s living daughter.
“All across the metropolis,” the news anchor droned, “topsiders and low-street locals hold a collective breath.”
Kayleigh scowled at the screen.
Why didn’t her mother restart the program? Why didn’t her dad?
Matilda Lauderdale’s illness had become apparent. That’s what Kayleigh had been told. And without Matilda to fix the broken sequencing, any subjects they created would die.
She couldn’t remember. Why couldn’t she remember her own mother clearly?
A shrill beep knifed through the news chatter. “Analysis complete. Data compiled. Monitor—”
“Yes, yes,” she muttered, ignoring the labeled screen as figures filled a third panel on the bank of six.
Kayleigh’s eyes darted over it. Trembling, she keyed down. Again. The bases were there. The data, there.
The proof . . . there.
Her knees gave out from under her.
As she collapsed onto a stool, Kayleigh Lauderdale stared at the incontrovertible evidence of her parents’ duplicity.
The Salem genome.
Kayleigh had the witch allele. Her mother had been a witch.
Was that what was wrong with her eyes? With her head? Was that what was triggering when she looked at someone and just knew the things she did?
Why hadn’t anyone told her?
Think. There was always opportunity to take advantage of, always a solution to every problem. She just had to think like her mother.
Only she didn’t know how her mother thought.
“With Bishop Applegate dead and no clear line of succession—”
“Radio, off!”
The woman’s voice ended mid-word.
No, she didn’t know how Matilda thought, but she knew how her father operated. How his mind worked, and that meant Matilda did, too. She’d made Simon, and if her father had known, he never let on.
Why? Why hide from her own family?
What could her mother have done that was so bad?
“Focus,” she murmured, frowning at the flickering screens. She couldn’t think emotionally. That wasn’t how a scientist operated. She had to think rationally, logically.
If Kayleigh wanted to hide something from the world, what would she use?
Plain sight.
People saw only what they wanted to see. Her gaze narrowed on the screens, flicked from her own chart to the junk analysis.
Obeying gut instinct, Kayleigh snagged a pencil, paged through her own genetic sequencing, and wrote out the bases. The collection of letters that earmarked each genetic line. Wrote until her paper was filled with letter after letter, until she flipped it over and started again.
For thirty minutes, she labored in silence, brain working the puzzle. Churning it through the analytical filters that had allowed her to tear through her work in school and, later, in this very lab.
Ding! The comm chimed cheerfully at her elbow.
Kayleigh snatched the unit up, plucked the earpiece from the case, and affixed it to her ear, eyes on her scribbled notations. “Dr. Lauderdale.”
Silence met her habitual greeting. Silence, and the faint whisper of an active frequency.
Her pencil moved between two notations.
Then her focus fractured as a deep, masculine voice said quietly, “I wondered if you’d gone back home.”
The pencil lead snapped. Kayleigh’s head came up, but there was nobody to see; nothing but empty lab and the sudden crush of too much memory, too many unspoken words in her chest. “Shawn.” A whisper.
“You sound surprised.”
More than she’d ever wanted to be. Surprised, a little relieved.
Scared.
“What are you doing calling me?” she asked, laying the pencil down very carefully. “It’s not safe.”
“For you, you mean?” The scorn infecting the frequency line dragged sharp nails across her nerves.
She blew out a hard breath, propping her elbows on the table surface to dig the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. “For you, you idiot.”
“Try another one.”
His voice. Damn it, she’d done so well blocking out his voice. First, the hospital had allowed her to sleep without dreams. Then, this . . . this new discovery. Focusing on the puzzle beneath her elbows, the mystery of her medical charts—
Who was she kidding?
“Shawn, I—” Her throat closed around the words she didn’t know how to say.
How could she admit to the man who’d kidnapped her that her father was flawed? That he’d hidden the greatest secret of her life from her?
That she was a witch.
She couldn’t.
“You shouldn’t be contacting me,” she said instead, husky. Ragged. “It’s over.”
“Yeah.” A grunt of confirmation. “You made that very clear when you knocked me out.” Anger lashed across the feed. “How long did it take you to make that decision, Kayleigh?”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Please, don’t—”
“Was it spur of the moment?” he pressed on, over her, ignoring her protest. His voice was implacably tense, all but vibrating through the tiny mic clipped to the shell of her ear. “Or did you come up with the plan when I was fucking you on that table?”
Kayleigh’s back straightened. “You did it first.”
“So, that’s how we’re playing it. An eye for an eye?”
“No!” She practically growled the denial. “You wouldn’t understand.”
> “Oh, yeah? Because way I understand it, honey, I was balls-deep in your body and all you wanted was—”
Her hands flattened against the table surface so fast, the sound cracked through the lab. Returned a flat echo. “Stop it!”
Silence filled the feed. Tense. Heavy.
Kayleigh held her breath, stared sightlessly at the scribbled notes between her fingers as the comm line crackled.
“Kayleigh—”
She flinched. “I don’t—”
“Ask me how I am,” Shawn said, but there was nothing sharp in the weary demand.
She licked her dry lips. “How . . . how are you?”
“Tired,” he answered immediately. Quietly. “Confused. Torn.”
A wild kernel of something warm and dangerous unfurled in her chest. “Torn?”
“You’re a Lauderdale.”
Was she? Kayleigh raised her gaze to the glowing monitors in front of her, the ache in her throat intensifying as the words built, jumbled together.
“You’re everything I swore I’d hate,” he said roughly. “I don’t sleep with people I hate, Kayleigh. Ever.”
She closed her eyes.
“I . . .” A beat. A breath. “I don’t blame you. My pride’s stinging, but I don’t blame you for doing to me what I did to you.”
“I don’t need your absolution,” she whispered.
“I know.” He hesitated, and this time, she swore his deep voice shook as he said, “I’m going to need yours.”
What did that even mean?
“I just wanted you to know that,” he finished, finality obvious on the frequency.
It didn’t matter. In his eyes, she was a Lauderdale. How much of one only came down to blood and genes and logistics, but as far as Shawn was concerned—as far as he’d always care—she was raised by his enemy.
“Thank you for telling me.” The ache carved a hole in her chest and threatened to leave her heart bloody and raw on the floor, but she couldn’t let on. “If it’s all the same to you—”
“Kayleigh.”
Her hand jerked as she reached for the comm. “If it’s all the same,” she repeated louder, over his deep, rich voice. The way he said her name.
Like he might actually care.
“I have to go,” she whispered. “I . . . There’s work to do before I—” Ruin whatever life I have left. “I have to go.”
“Remember this later. Promise me you’ll remember what I said.”
Pain lanced through her heart.
She squeezed her eyes shut again, forced them open to glare at the papers strewn across the table. “Don’t contact me again, Shawn. This . . . It never happened.”
Her finger hovered over the button that would disconnect the line. Froze.
For a long moment, he said nothing.
End it. Her hand shook, her stomach twisted.
Shawn took a slow breath. “That,” he said, just as measured, “is where you’re wrong.”
The connection severed. Kayleigh looked down to find her nail embedded in the rim of the button, the unit silent and dark again.
Very slowly, she let go of the comm unit. It didn’t vibrate again. Didn’t chime or light up or any of the things she hadn’t yet reprogrammed it not to do.
He didn’t call back.
Numb, Kayleigh picked up her pencil, clicked the lead back into place, and returned to the puzzle in front of her.
This, at least, was quantifiable. Something she could fix. Figure out.
Work with.
With the pieces finally in place, she found the pattern. After forty-five minutes, she sat back. Tears filled her eyes—elation, fury, grief so profound, it filled that hole in her chest, drained it into her stomach where it burned like hell.
Her mother had been so brilliant.
So damned clever.
The liquid inside Parker’s mysterious vial wasn’t garbage. Not under the right circumstances.
She reached for her comm, keyed in her father’s number, and let it ring. When it went to his mailbox, she did it again. And again.
Her shoulders drooped, eyes squeezing shut as her forehead settled against her scribbled notes.
The line clicked once. “Kayleigh, can this—”
“What else don’t I know?” Her greeting, drained of everything that had ever been warm, scraped even her own nerves raw. “What else aren’t you telling me?”
“Slow down, Kayleigh.” Her father’s voice, in comparison, hadn’t changed. Thinned as it was by age and she could only imagine what kind of stress, it nevertheless carried a professional clip that told her he wasn’t alone. “I’m very busy right now. The state of emergency—”
She flattened her free hand on the table, forced herself to sit upright. “The Eve sequence,” she interrupted. “I have a lead.”
The suddenness with which he changed tactics ripped another hole in her stomach. She hunched, hand shifting to her abdomen, as he ordered crisply, “Send it to me right away.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” Irritation? Or impatience?
She stared at her notes, glanced at the three filled screens in front of her. “It’s . . .” She tapped a few keys. The comm in her hand vibrated softly. “It’s just data right now. I think it’s viable, but I need a working test.”
Background noise peppered the line as her father fell silent. Then, “We should discuss this in person.”
“I think,” Kayleigh said as she slowly slid from the stool, “that would be a really good idea.”
“I’ll have Patrick set up an appointment.”
She almost said no. Almost demanded his attention now, this minute; but stomping her foot had never gotten her what she wanted. “All right,” she agreed, digging the heel of her hand into her forehead. “We’re going to have a lot to talk about, Dad.”
In the grand scheme of things, she’d already waited thirty years for answers to questions she never knew she had. He would confess everything.
This time, she had all the cards.
She could wait a few more hours.
Chapter Twenty
“This is goddamned the dumbest thing we’ve ever done.”
Shawn looked up into the dark, only vaguely picking out the soles of Simon’s boots hanging above him. Black on black, the man was all but invisible as he scaled a cable.
On the ground, Silas Smith wrestled a taut cable into place, the muscles in his shoulders and arms bulging as the line jerked in his gloved hands. He watched Simon’s progress up the cable carefully, square jaw thrust forward in intense concentration.
It was his deep baritone that grunted the words.
A muted glint of red on Shawn’s left signaled Parker’s shaking head. “That’s saying a lot.”
“Sorry, kids.” Jonas’s voice filtered to all of them, his easy tenor a welcome distraction from the grim cold settling over New Seattle. “If the sec-lines weren’t locked down, this would be a lot easier.”
“You’re telling me,” added a feminine voice that caused Silas’s head to tilt faintly.
“Jessie, why are you on the line?”
“Someone had to keep an eye on the S-Team,” she said brightly. Parker’s chuckle turned into a poorly disguised cough. “Jonas has his hands full with the computer stuff, so I’m your bird’s-eye view. Sort of. We’re the J-Team!”
His eyes flicked to Shawn, exasperation underscoring the effort it took to keep Simon’s cable from swinging.
Shawn shrugged, touching the mic on his ear to turn it and leave it transmitting. “Simon?”
“Fuck, already,” the man gasped, clear on the comm line they all shared, but echoed faintly in stereo from above. The line wrenched to one side. “Not the . . . easiest thing . . .”
The amusement faded from Parker’s expression, leaving her quiet and hunched against the autumn chill.
On the very edge of the city, on the tier just below the sec-lines, security was supposed to be nearly impossible to get through. At least,
for normal people. The city had never counted on Jonas Stone, or the insanity of a couple of morons with a mission.
Nobody could expect some enterprising fools to scale the next tier up, and they didn’t have the means to watch it happen with Jonas’s electronic genius at work. The man had hacked into the system, blacked out a swath of the street they’d be climbing into, and redirected the security cameras.
All so they could go topside and murder a man. And, if they were lucky, find the data Kayleigh didn’t know she had.
Shawn looked up, past the dark blot that was Simon’s struggle. He hadn’t been this high in the tiers for a long time. Without the sea of neon and lights speckling the canvas, he felt out of place. Lost.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t his location.
Why had he called her?
That was a dumb question, and he knew it. Shawn liked her. Wanted her to reconsider everything, give up her life for him.
Just like that.
Could someone really like somebody so fast? No committee to talk it over with the rest of his thoughts? His goals?
A hand touched his arm. His head jerked up, furrowed eyebrows deepening to find Parker watching him with shadowed concern. “Are you okay?”
Silas grunted as the rope twanged hard.
Shawn’s attention slid to him, ready to offer an additional grip if needed, but the cable steadied. “Fine,” he said abruptly.
Her eyes, bleached of color in the near-dark, narrowed a fraction. A smile, all but invisible. “You seem torn.”
Torn. Exactly the word he’d used with Kayleigh.
But he didn’t have to be, did he? She’d made her choice. Work, the Salem Project.
Her father.
She’d turned him down. “No, I’m fine.”
“You’re worried about Kayleigh.” Her pronouncement set his teeth on edge.
“I’m nearly at the top,” Simon declared on the line.
Hyper-conscious of Silas’s straining presence only a few feet away, of the ears on the frequency, Shawn jammed his gloved hands into his jeans pockets, shivering some as the cooler air up here ghosted across his nape. “I don’t have to worry about Dr. Lauderdale.”
Parker, her arms folded across her flak vest to conserve her own heat, tipped her face up to the night. To Simon, now invisible as he crested the top. “She’s . . . complicated.”
Karina Cooper - [Dark Mission 05] Page 21