by Cindy Skaggs
“You thought wrong.” Debi shifted her gaze to the mouse. “I’m surprised you’re still working with this asshat.”
“The pay’s good. Now that he made tenure—”
“Tenure?” Debi spit the word like a curse. That was years ahead of his plan. “What did you do?”
“Fulfilled my destiny.”
“You arrogant little prig. This has nothing to do with destiny. You stole research.”
Allyson cleared her throat. “They never proved that. The student involved retracted his statement.”
“The student was me,” Debi laid it out for Allyson, because Barry would never admit it, but some dark part of her needed Allyson to know the truth. “You haven’t had an original idea in a decade. The only meaningful new research came from Hannah, Allyson, and me, and when I brought that to the attention of the head of the department, you covered your ass and set me up for a fall.”
“The head of the department agreed with me. You broke protocol, jumping from animal testing to human testing without the proper approval.”
Debi stepped into Barry’s space. Wearing heels, she towered over the sniveling scientist. “I didn’t take it to human testing. After months of successful animal testing, I knew it worked, but I didn’t give it to some unsuspecting test subject. I took it, and the second you found out, you ratted me out to the head of the department.”
“Your father deserved to know you exposed yourself to a medicine that hadn’t been approved for human consumption.”
“Bullshit.” Debi shook, but she didn’t back away. “Neither you nor the old man gave a whit about my welfare.”
“I don’t think that’s fair,” Allyson interjected.
“Really?” Debi turned on her former friend. “In the course of ratting me out for my own good, Barry also took credit for DV1028 and said I stole the propriety compound for personal use. He threw me under the bus, ruining my career and helping his in the process.”
Allyson glared at her brother. “DV1028 was Debi’s research. You took credit?”
“Anything that goes down in my lab belongs to me. Read your contract,” Barry snapped. “Debra was a hack, cutting corners and failing to follow procedure. I did what I had to do to protect the university from her ego.”
“My ego?” Debi gripped the folder to keep from decking the little weasel.
“You’re right. It wasn’t your ego, it was you, you illegitimate bitch. The only reason you were accepted into the university in the first place was playing the daddy card against a brilliant scientist who probably isn’t even your biological father.”
Debi lurched for him.
“Hold on, sweetheart.” Rose pulled Debi back so she didn’t hit the man, breaking her hand in the process. He’d heard enough. This situation, whatever it was, might not be the danger he had anticipated, but the look on Debi’s face said it was the explosion she’d expected from the minute her high-heeled shoes hit the ground. The woman liked heels, and God bless her, they made her legs look a mile long. Rose wrapped his arm tighter around her waist and felt her shiver in response.
Then he stepped forward and had the satisfaction of seeing Barry’s pupils dilate in fear. “One more insult to Debi, and your sister will be calling an ambulance. Do I make myself clear?”
“Crystal.” Blood rushed to his cheeks, reddening the mottled skin. “Dating a bouncer now, Debra? One with a black eye and dull intellect?”
“Is that supposed to insult me?” Rose asked.
Barry sneered. “A Neanderthal like you probably wouldn’t understand a word out of my mouth. You’re like Frankenstein’s monster, a freak of nature. Debi, as you call her, is—”
Rose shoved the professor off the sidewalk and up against the nearest building letting anger fuel his movements. Blood and oxygen engorged his muscles as his body prepared to fight. “I’m all that and more.” A science experiment gone wrong, more Frankenstein’s monster than Barry could know. Big and bad and soulless. “I could kill you in a dozen different ways without leaving a trace of evidence, so before you open your big trap again, you might want to remember that an insult to Debi is an insult to me. I will end you.”
Barry’s grunts and struggles filled the space between the buildings. Rose let him drop to the ground. He hadn’t even been aware that he’d lifted the other man off his feet. “Run, little man, before I change my mind.”
Barry straightened his tie and jerked his head to the side. “Come, Allyson.”
Allyson’s face had gone pale and she glanced between her brother and Debi before casting an uncertain look at Rose. “Debi—”
“Allyson,” Barry ordered. “Let’s go.”
“Call me,” Allyson whispered before following Barry into the quad toward the modern building in the distance.
Rose took a deep breath. He’d threatened to kill a man he didn’t know. His pulse and breathing were normal; no adrenaline flowed through his system. He might as well be looking at crafts at the state fair for all his body reacted. A knot formed in his gut like a chunk of ice keeping him numb. He turned to find Debi doubled over, her hands on her knees. “Whoa, what’s going on?”
Breath panted out and the pulse in her throat thrummed like a hummingbird on steroids. “Panic attack.”
“Yeah, I got that. Come here.” He led her to a nearby bench and forced her to sit, and then he pushed her head between her knees for good measure. “Deep breaths.”
Arms and legs twitched and she didn’t bother arguing. Her back arched with every inhale and shook with each exhale. The movement drew attention to her frailty. The back of her ribs bumped through her shirt like waves as her back convulsed with uneven breathing. She was slight. He hadn’t noticed before. She was such a big personality, her smart mouth making up for her slight physical presence. Wavy black hair cascaded down her back and veiled her face, making it hard for her to catch her breath.
Grabbing a hunk of silky hair, he sat next to her on the wooden bench and pulled the hair away to open her airways. Gradually, her breathing normalized. The shakes replaced the hiccups of her breath. “Adrenaline,” he warned. “It’s a bitch.”
“Not my first attack.” She lifted marginally, resting elbows on her knees and staring out at the parking lot. “Sorry.”
Rose didn’t want to relinquish the marginal contact, but sitting next to her holding the hair served no purpose, so he dropped the mass to her shoulders. “Sorry for what? Your ex-boyfriend? You don’t owe me an apology for that asshole.”
“No.” A shallow laugh bubbled to the service. “The days of apologizing for his high-handed behavior are over. He knows exactly what he’s doing and deserves whatever he gets.”
“Then why apologize?”
“For, uh.” A shiver shook her shoulders. “The panic attack. Sorry, I—”
“Apologizing for that is like apologizing for the snow.”
Velvety brown eyes glanced up in question.
The vulnerability on her face stopped him short. She was beautiful, something he had noticed in the abstract, but this close, he appreciated the softness of her skin over prominent cheekbones with a sassy nose. Her full lips were another damn problem. “Not something you can control.”
“Oh.” She returned her gaze to the parking lot. “Most people don’t get it, that I can’t control them.”
“Most people are idiots. What were you going to do before I got here?”
“Deck him?” Her answer was more of a question.
“If you’re going to hit, do it right.”
“Anything that caused him damage was right.”
He rearranged her hand into a proper fist, without the thumb tucked inside. “If I train you right, you could break his nose next time.”
“I’d pay good money for that.”
“We’ll work on it.” The warmth of her hand tucked into his tugged at some lost humanity he didn’t want to awaken. After Madigan, he’d worked hard to bury the links and connections to those he cared about. He couldn�
�t afford to let her close when he wasn’t sure he could control the angry monster inside. So he dropped her hand and glanced up, away from the intensity of their exchange. His silver pickup stood out in the faculty lot filled with sedans and the occasional SUV. Maybe he was too working class for the academics. Rose rubbed a hand across her shoulders, washing away the last of the shivers. “Are you cold?”
She straightened, holding his gaze. “Your hands warmed away the chill.”
“That was the plan.” It was more than warmth that passed between them, it was alchemy, that undefined something that turned a touch into fire, but if his truck didn’t belong in the parking lot, his hands sure as hell didn’t belong on her. He swiped his hand back. “Ready to go?”
“Sure, Rosie.” She picked up the stack of files where she’d dropped them earlier and led the way to the lot.
Rose picked up the bags of water bottles and the rest of the evidence and followed her. They damn sure better get some good intel out of the bottles, considering the pain of seeing the source of her personal pain face-to-face. If she’d told him back at the motel about the ex, he would have suggested she stay back. Why had she insisted on coming if she knew her ex would be around to rub her nose in the past? Rose wanted to ask, but it was none of his business. They all had pasts they regretted. Debi was no different than any of the men on the team. The past haunted you, no matter how hard you tried to leave it behind.
Rose helped Debi into the truck and tucked the water bottles in the cooler behind the driver’s seat. He started the engine with a rumble and pulled out of the lot. The roar of the truck drew a few stray looks from passing pedestrians, which he ignored. “I would rather have spared you that situation. You should have said no when I told you where the mission was.”
“Why? Because of Barry?” She shook her head. “He’s whatever. I needed to come.”
“Why?”
“The motel was making me stir-crazy, you know that.”
A group of cars pushed into line behind him, eager to leave the lot. “Was it worth running into Barry the Bastard?”
“Ha. I like that nickname.”
“Enough to stop using the nickname you use for me?”
“Not a chance.” She grinned at him, the smile warming the air.
Rose accelerated to move around a gold sedan and into the adjacent lane. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Which one?”
“Was it worth running into Barry?”
Her smile faded. “It keeps my ego in check.”
From what he’d seen, she didn’t seem like an egomaniac. “That’s not an answer.”
“Best you’re going to get.”
He rode a few miles in silence. “You’ve got some sharp edges.”
“You have no idea.”
Rose watched the mirrors as he sped up the entrance ramp to the highway. An itch at the back of his neck said they’d gotten off too easy. “What’s Barry’s deal?”
“You’ve a lot of questions for a man who didn’t say word one to me on the way here.”
“Takes me a while to wake up.”
“Didn’t take long for you to wake up and scare the crap out of me in the dark motel room.”
“Wasn’t asleep yet.”
“You need to sleep more.”
“Said the pot to the kettle.”
She curled a foot underneath her legs. “I took a job at the bar because I don’t sleep much at night. Not since...”
The gold sedan that had been in line behind him in the campus parking lot still followed three cars back. It had been there since leaving campus. “Since Barry?”
“Not so much him as the whole sordid mess. There’s not a single researcher in the lab that Barry hasn’t poached. He takes the glory and does none of the work. He does luncheons and awards ceremonies and schmoozes the grant committees while the rest of us are... were doing the bulk of the work.”
“How does a skater like him get rewarded?”
“Skater?” She’d never heard that term.
“Someone who skates by while everyone else does the work. Happens in every field, the Army included. Not on the teams, but in the regular Army. There’s always some loser who skates out of the hard deployments while the rest of us do double time to make up for their lazy asses.”
“And you take it?”
“Hell no. A blanket party is the preferred method of correction.”
“I thought hazing was illegal.”
“It is. Officially. Unofficially it’s how shit gets done, although there are less physical means of getting a skater to pull his weight.”
“Did you really beat some poor guy in his bunk?”
“Poor guy? Is it right or ethical for the go-getters to face nearly double the risk of death or dismemberment because a soldier who made a pledge and took a paycheck failed to deliver?”
The anger etched on his angular jaw surprised her. “You lost someone, didn’t you?”
“We all lost someone.” He forced his focus out the windshield. “Did you really take an experimental drug?”
“To think that on the way here, I actually wished you would talk more.”
“Change your mind?”
“Absolutely.”
“Too bad. Answer the question.”
She rolled her eyes to deflect the emotion clogging her throat. “Barry made it sound worse than it was. I’d been working on a proprietary compound for nearly two years. I followed the protocol, and the compound passed animal testing with flying colors, but it can take years, years I didn’t have, to get approval for human trials.”
“You needed to succeed that badly?”
“God, I wish it were my ego, but no. I developed DV1028 for me. I needed—” She bit her lip. “I was an idiot. And I have no idea how Barry knew I’d started taking the compound. Couldn’t wait to tattle to my father, the filthy little weasel. After accusing me of human trials, Barry took credit for my research, and said that my irresponsible behavior was putting his entire research program at risk. Jesus.” Debi shoved a wisp of hair from her face. “Why do I spill my guts around you?”
“It’s a gift.” Rose shifted lanes to pass a slow semi. The gold car shifted as well. “I take it your father didn’t take your side.”
“I admitted to testing DV1028 on myself, and then told him in no uncertain terms that the research was mine, not Barry’s. My biological looked me right in the eye and told me to prove it.”
“Sounds like he’s more of a bastard than Barry.”
“And then some.”
“Do me a favor.” Rose pulled out his phone and handed it across the console. “Give Ryder a call.”
Her face paled. “Why?”
“We’ve got company.” He grabbed her arm before she turned. “Don’t look. The driver isn’t stupid.”
“Echo?”
“Odds are high that the driver of the car is Team Echo.” Her pulse beat rapidly beneath his touch. “Stay calm. We knew this was a possibility.”
“We did?” Her voice squeaked.
“Yes, that’s why we have contingency plans. Dial Ryder. While I drive, you’re radio communications. Think you can handle it?” Challenging her gave her a job that forced her to focus away from the fear. She’d gone pale and frightened, two steps closer to another panic attack.
“I can handle it, Rosebud.” The sarcasm made her voice stronger. She dialed and put the phone to her ear. He could have her put the phone on speaker, but relaying information would give her something to do. “Ryder, it’s Debi. We have a tail.”
Chapter Four
A whooshing sound strummed through her eardrum and she could see about as far as the dashboard. Debi held the phone to her head with the other hand over the opposite ear. “We picked up a tail when we left campus.”
“Why didn’t they attack when you were in the open on campus?”
“How the hell would I know?”
Ryder’s warm laughter sounded tinny through the phone. “Rela
y my question to Rose.”
“Oh.” She turned her attention to the driver. Strong hands gripped the steering wheel with long, lean muscles sculpting up his arms. Everything about him screamed safe, steady, and calm, exactly what she needed. “Ryder wants to know why they didn’t attack on campus.”
“Best guess is this guy was a loner, set in place in the off chance we showed up there. He’s waiting for orders.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Relay the information to Ryder.”
“Right.” Bad, it was probably bad, because once the guy had orders—
“I heard.” Ryder’s calm voice soothed the panic clawing her insides. “Ask Rose if we have enough time to get the primary plan into place.”
“He wants to know if we have time for Plan A or if we need to go with Plan B?”
Rose glanced at the mirrors before signaling and getting off at the next exit. “I can make time. How long until they can get into position?”
Debi continued relaying information as they formed a plan. Ryder knew the perfect place for an ambush with high ground, whatever the hell that meant. The men seemed pleased and would be in place in thirty minutes, at which time Rose would drive them into position, drawing the guy on their tail into a trap. All Debi had to do was stay buckled in her seat. After hanging up the phone, she forced a deep breath to calm her nerves. “What now?”
“Now, we drive the long way to our destination, while avoiding high-risk areas.”
“High risk?”
“Low traffic. Bad neighborhoods. Anywhere it feels like we’re getting herded toward an ambush. This guy could have another team en route same as us.”
“I really didn’t need to know that.” The idea of another team curdled the coffee and creamer in her stomach.
“Yes you did. You’ll be fine.”
“Easy for you to say.” He was a tank that could survive a direct hit. She was like a porcelain doll held together with glue. All brittle edges and easier to break the second time around.
“How do you deal with drunks at the bar?”
The question threw her off. “With a bouncer.”