by Cindy Skaggs
Hell if Debi knew. The fairy tales had it all wrong. It wasn’t a song in your heart. More like a knife. “If it’s supposed to be easy, everyone I know is doing it wrong.” Debi had seen Lauren flattened by Ryder’s disappearance. Lauren’s mother had died of grief. Debi’s own heart resembled chopped beef.
“I think I mostly wanted a secret adventure. Something all my own with someone who wanted me enough to sneak away. It felt romantic in a Shakespearean way. Then Mark disappeared, which felt tragic. Also like Shakespeare. One night, we were planning our getaway, the next he had packed up his apartment and moved back to Ohio. It doesn’t matter.” Her eyes watered. “Barry would never have let me go.”
“You’re integral to his success.” Which sucked six ways to Sunday.
“I’d feel better about that if he acknowledged it, but if you asked him, the work is his and he’s showing me a kindness by letting me keep my job. When I saw his notes—proof that he’d stolen from you—I realized the depth of his narcissism.” Allyson’s throat flexed. “Being ambitious isn’t a sin.”
Ambition was all kinds of wrong when you pushed it to the levels Barry did. “But?”
“When I confronted him—”
“You actually told him you knew?”
“He didn’t deny it. He bragged about how easy it was. It was like...” She blew out a breath to ruffle her bangs. “He deserved it. It wasn’t a question of right or wrong, but of his right to take whatever he wanted. He deserved it, he kept saying. He was too smart to get caught. Even the old man, that’s what he called your father, even the old man didn’t catch on. It was like watching a stranger.”
Nerves fluttered to life under Debi’s skin. Once Barry exposed his true self to Allyson, he’d turn on her. Sister or not. Debi leaned forward. “I don’t like that he’s aware. Maybe you should consider coming back with us.”
“Where?”
“A safe house. Stay until we figure out what Barry’s involved in and if you’re in danger.”
Allyson stared across the coffee counter to the clock that was nearing midnight. “He wouldn’t hurt me.”
“I’m not so sure.” Barry might not get physical, but Echo was definitely watching the lab. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill Allyson. “Robert said Barry wasn’t in charge.”
“Robert was insane.”
“Obviously, but...” Oh, hell, in for a penny. If what Debi suspected was true, Allyson deserved to know the risks. And Debi needed to tell someone before her head exploded. “The changes Barry made to my formula? I think the Army used it for an experimental program.”
“It hasn’t gone through human trials yet.”
“Oh, yes it has, but not the kind you can put in a report.” Debi faltered. She didn’t mind warning Allyson, but she wouldn’t expose the team. “Robert and men like him are the human trials.”
The implications were stamped on Allyson’s shocked face. “Was Robert crazy before they tested it on him?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out, because it started as my formula even if Barry perverted it.” At least that’s what Debi suspected. She hadn’t had time to look at the results from the blood tests. “I really wish you’d come with us before one of the test subjects decides to go after you.”
“Barry might be an ass, but he wouldn’t let anyone hurt me.”
Debi gnawed on her bottom lip. “Going back probably isn’t smart.”
“I wanted to run away with Mark, but I chickened out. The week I delayed sent Mark away and I can’t live with myself knowing I’m doing it again. Failing to live up to the person I want to be. I’m not chickening out. Maybe I can find something out for you.”
Voices raised across the room, drawing all eyes to the men in the corner. If they were trying for covert, they failed miserably. Their size drew attention naturally. Their anger drew everyone’s eyes.
Sounded like strategy had the men divided. Debi avoided their stark gazes. No way would they approve of what she was about to do, but they weren’t exactly sharing their plans. And Rose had sent her away, pushed her away if she were honest, and it made the divide between her and the team greater. If they wanted to work together, great, but as long as they kept everything segregated, the women were on their own. Careful to avoid the needle, Debi pulled a used syringe from her sling. “You can start with this.”
“What is it?”
The syringe Robert had stabbed into Rose. “My formula plus whatever Frankenstein-level stuff Barry added. I need you to reverse engineer it. Figure out exactly what they’re using.”
“You think Barry’s completely off the reservation.”
“I think he’s playing God.”
A chair scraped across the room. Craft stood, agitation stamped on his hard jaw, which was unusual for the normally low-key soldier. “No fucking way.”
Allyson tucked the syringe deep in the pocket of her jacket. “I have an appointment next week for the NMR machine. I’ll run my regular tests, and then I’ll run this.”
“I’m going to see what the big bad he-men have decided.” Debi dropped money on the table to cover their breakfast. “If you don’t want to go with us, I suggest you disappear while I distract them.” Debi sauntered over to the table where Craft still stood, his face blazing red. “Gentlemen, there are only two of you. Can’t you get along for an hour or two?”
Stills shook his head. “You don’t have to like it, man, but it’s operational security.”
“Like what?”
Craft pulled Debi down to sit in a chair beside him. “He wants to give Allyson GHB.”
Debi turned to where Allyson still sipped coffee from a yellow mug. “Craft’s right. No fucking way.”
“Jesus.” Stills ran a nervous hand over the back of his neck. “Put it in context. She knows too much, so we help her to forget tonight. Can’t be the best memory anyway. Knock her out, put her in her own bed. We’ve all been there. She loses time, but is no worse off. She wakes up with no memory of the night.”
After her own experience, Debi wouldn’t sanction it. No way, no how. “First of all, there’s no guarantee she would forget. And that’s assuming you get the dosing right, you ignoramus. Second of all, forgetting everything that happened could endanger her more. She’d be an easy target.”
“Then we bring her with us.”
“Oh, hell no.” Craft was equally emphatic, his voice growing agitated. “You can’t kidnap a woman. An innocent.”
“We don’t know she’s an innocent. She’s working at the lab.”
The guys might be big, but they weren’t stupid. They’d added the numbers of why a member of Team Echo was working at the lab. This wasn’t a coincidence. Robert had been at the lab for a long-term surveillance operation. Debi needed to convince Stills, because she wouldn’t let him give a drug to Allyson. “The lab has something to do with the experiments. Why else would Robert be there? He wasn’t waiting for me. I was a target of opportunity. He said that Barry wasn’t in charge, which implies Barry is involved.” That much they could figure out on their own. She lowered her voice. “We can go into details when we’re all together.” She wanted to discuss this back at the manor. “Allyson’s presence does not equate to guilt. I know her. I know her dickhead brother. He’s a control freak. Trust me, he did not share this project with her.”
Stills leaned back until the chair propped up on hind legs. He crossed his massive arms over his chest. “Not worth the liability to the team.”
“Not your call.” Debi would go over his head if she had to. Maybe Lauren could reason with Ryder. “What’s more, I think Allyson can help us. She has access to more of Barry’s records than I ever would.”
Stills dropped the chair down to all four legs. Oh, she had his attention now.
“What’s wrong with you,” Craft hissed. “That’s like leading a lamb to the slaughterhouse.”
“She doesn’t want to come with us. I offered. Outside of forcing her, and I’m against that on principle, what choi
ce do we have?”
Craft glanced over his shoulder and cursed. “None now. She bolted.”
The waitress had already cleared the table and set up for the next customer. Allyson was long gone.
A slight smile gave her away. Stills shook his head. “You helped her.”
Debi neither confirmed nor denied. “What’s the rest of the plan?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sweat dripped down the wrist restraints to pool on the plastic-covered mattress. The image of Debi replaced Maggie Madigan in his dreams that were no longer dreams. The images—memory or fear—played repeatedly in Rose’s brain until he roared with the need to get free. To protect her. To protect his sisters. His heart raced like a greyhound pounding toward the winner’s gate or death, and either seemed preferable to the light stabbing behind his eyes. If he closed his eyes, he saw the images of Debi’s death. If he opened them, the light stabbed like an ice pick in the brain.
“You need to sleep,” Fowler told him in a pitch designed to drive him insane.
“Jesus, do you have to scream?” Rose croaked.
“I’m going to give you something to make you rest.”
Rose yanked on the restraints of the rusty gurney, but they held firm. “Don’t touch me.”
The needle pricked the skin stretched taut over his bones.
“What the hell did you pump into my blood?” He cursed his teammate until his mouth ran dry. Sleep called, but Rose resisted. He needed to get up and protect her. He couldn’t live through her death one more time, and he wasn’t sure if the her in his nightmares was Maggie or Debi or Camy.
A feral scream punctured the silent night. Debi shivered on the stairs but forced herself toward the scream that broke her heart. At the bottom of the stairs leading to the basement clinic, Ryder sat on a bench tucked into an alcove. His head rested against tile and he looked deceptively calm. Almost sleeping. Debi tiptoed, hoping this time to make it past the night guard.
Then she hit the bottom step. Ryder sat up and stretched his legs. “I’d bet every dollar in my bank account that Rose doesn’t want you seeing him like this.”
“I’d bet every dollar I have that he does.”
The smile on his face had a knowing quality. Sadness and pain. “Guess we’ll have to wait until he wakes up to ask him.”
“I don’t care what he looks like. How he acts. I need to see him.” The fear beating in her chest wasn’t the panic attack variety. What Robert injected into Rose had lasting consequences. She needed to see Rose to assure herself he was okay. DV1028 had cost her everything. Her career. Her father. Her friends. She couldn’t live with the drug taking away the man she loved. “Please.” She hadn’t even had a chance to tell Rose how she felt.
Ryder shook his head. “He’s fine.”
A knot formed in her throat. “Fine means a lot of things, but okay isn’t one of them.”
“Rose will be okay. We’ve all been through the detox.”
Another scream echoed. “Sounds worse than it is,” Ryder assured her.
“He shouldn’t be alone.” No one in that much pain should suffer alone.
“Fowler is with him.”
“But Fowler trained on goats.” Even she heard the whine in her voice.
“Fowler’s a trained medic, no matter what story Rose told you. He’s in good hands.”
Debi turned and climbed two steps. She turned back. “I need my research notebook. It’s in the lab. The last exam room.”
“Nice try.”
“I really do need my notes.” She needed to confirm the chemical makeup, in the off chance she was wrong. “I’ll wait right here.”
The smile on his face almost looked real. “I’ll bring it to you. After you’re gone.”
“You’re really not going to let me see him?”
“I’m really not.”
She made it three steps this time. “Ryder, he means something to me.”
“You mean something to him, too. That’s how I know he wouldn’t want you to see him. I wouldn’t ever want Lauren to see me like this.”
“Promise you’ll come get me if anything changes.”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
She shuffled up the rest of the steps, her head hung low. If anything happened to Rose, she’d never forgive herself.
The straps on his wrists were slack, but still buckled. Rose’s hand shook as he lifted it off the mattress. “You think you can give me another inch of wiggle room? I can’t sleep like this.”
Fowler opened his eyes to slits. “I give you another inch and you’ll be out of those restraints and on my ass in under ten seconds.”
“Damn straight. I’d kick your ass.”
“I don’t want to fight another brother.”
Rose glanced around his surroundings. The lights were dimmed, but still showed enough to make out the exam rooms at the manor. He didn’t remember the return trip. “She saw me beat a man to death with my bare hands.”
Fowler was crashed on a sleeping bag on the floor. “So I heard.”
The logical course would have been to keep the man alive. Interrogate him, but anger had bubbled up like lava blowing the top off his control. “I couldn’t stop it. The rage.” And beyond where the Army quacks had hidden fear, a niggle of worry broke free. Just because Mad Dog was exonerated didn’t mean they were harmless. Any one of them could lose it. “What if I had turned on her?”
Fowler didn’t give him comfortable lies. “Was that a possibility?”
“Hell if I know.” Rose wet his cracked lips. “Can I get a drink?”
“You’re hooked up to an IV. I’m not getting close enough for you to kick my ass.”
“Smart man.” Rose didn’t even know what he’d do if he could get free. He couldn’t trust himself around Debi, but he craved her like water. Like she was life, but he still didn’t know if she was safe. What if he was the worst thing chasing her?
Three days passed before Fowler declared Rose drug free and ready to leave the torture device they’d strapped him to downstairs. The detox was killer according to all involved, and the sound of his moans had sent Debi scurrying away when she’d normally have pushed. She’d caused him this pain.
When he returned to the land of the living, Rose sat half a table away, leaving her crammed between Craft and Fowler feeling like a Barbie doll in the midst of GI Joes. She’d refused to discuss the findings from the lab until they were all together. Considering what she had to say, she didn’t want Rose to hear things secondhand. Now she didn’t know how to begin. Dinner—Ryder and Lauren this time—went down like sand. Debi couldn’t get enough water. When Rose wouldn’t meet her gaze, she turned to Craft. “Have you heard anything on the dummy email account?”
“No.” He had setup a dummy account for Allyson to contact her. It was untraceable according to their resident computer expert. “After the way she left, you still think she’ll help?”
“She didn’t go to the cops.” They’d monitored police blotters and 911 calls. “It’s the first thing I would have done.”
“She doesn’t know Echo is dead.”
True. Allyson had hightailed it out when she’d had the chance. Lucky her. “There was a lot that went down that night that was abnormal. Robert hasn’t shown up back to work, and he did attack her. Plus breaking and entering.”
“Which she participated in.”
“You really don’t like her.”
“I don’t know her. I know we’re in a world of hurt. Friends are few and far between. Her staying away from the cops doesn’t look good. Means she could be working with Echo and they now know too much.”
“You’re paranoid.”
“That I am.” He didn’t sound ashamed of it.
“Yet you didn’t want to give her GHB.”
“Hell no. I didn’t join the Army to take the war stateside. I’m not drugging civilians. We’ll leave that to Echo. Whatever they’re up to, it’s wrong and we may be the only ones in a position t
o stop them. Until we know more about the lab, I’ll stay paranoid.”
Paranoia was a side effect. It wouldn’t go away, at least not that they knew.
“I may be able to help with the lab.” She swiped her sweaty palms on the front of her jeans. They had threatened on multiple occasions to destroy the monsters responsible for creating the experimental drug that changed them. Inside, the fear lived like a bright fire, but she couldn’t live a lie no matter what she risked by telling the truth. “I have a few answers and more questions.”
“You’ve been awful quiet since that night.”
She’d been thinking about Rose. Thinking that you couldn’t control who you loved, and wasn’t that a shame. “Had stuff to think about.”
“Done thinking?”
“That never really happens. The human brain... Oh, you don’t care.” And she was too nervous to put more words together. She should use Camy’s excuse. Girl stuff. Shut men up every time. She pointed discreetly at Rose, who had his face buried in his food. “I wanted him to be awake before we talked about all this.”
“Ready now?”
Not even close. “I love jumping into fires.”
Craft whistled to draw everyone’s attention. “Debi has information.”
“You and Rose took the same class in subtle,” she mumbled.
He grinned. “Worked, didn’t it?” Every eye in the place focused on her. Except Rose. He focused on the clock behind her head.
“Why don’t we take this to the great room,” Janet suggested. “Jake and I can make coffee.”
The delay spiked Debi’s nerves, but people were already moving. Jake pulled his mother aside. “Janet, I’d rather you stayed out of this.”
“Suck it,” Janet answered.
Jake pulled back in surprise. “Excuse me?”
“You heard.”
Debi tried to follow the conversation as she moved with the crowd. The two had an interesting parent-child dynamic.