“Perfect,” Cabe said, clapping his hands.
The guys walked over to where he was seated.
“Just let me finish, jackass. But I’m not going to ask. She came to me for help, Cabe, and we’ve found a weakness in our plans. There aren’t enough of us to do any kind of meaningful rotation on a full-time basis and do the intel work to figure out who is behind this. So we’re going to have to address our growth plans to figure out how we afford that. And by the way…” He looked over to Mac, confident enough to say the words out loud to his friends that he wasn’t quite ready to say to Lou. “Yeah. So what if I love her? I get why that seems odd. I met her for the first time three weeks ago. It makes no fucking sense to me either. So can we stop talking about her like she’s an item on our to-do list? Because I’m going to lose my shit if you don’t.”
He shuffled back to the medical room, desperately needing to lie down.
“I can help, you know,” Louisa said as he was about to get onto his bed. Instead he wandered over to her bunk and sat down gingerly.
“What do you mean?” he asked, surprised to find her awake. He placed his hand on her leg, but she shuffled up the bed and sat up, leaning against the headboard.
“I overheard. If your funds are running low, I can help. It feels like the least I can do for keeping me alive.”
Six shook his head and reached for her hand. “Thank you, Lou. But we’ll figure it out.”
Lou took a deep breath and pulled her hand from his. “Will you be able to keep protecting me?”
“What the hell, Lou. Of course. And please. Stop trying to pull away from me. It’s bugging the crap out of me, and to be honest, my side hurts like a bitch. So please. Go easy on me.”
Immediately, she stopped tugging. “Fine. Go ahead,” she said in a tone that told him that his balls were at risk if he made a misstep.
He caressed the inside of her wrist with his thumb, feeling the way her pulse raced in the vein beneath her skin. “I told the guys that this was not a job anymore. Because somewhere between learning that you know what a Dieffenbachia fortunensis is and watching you shoot a bullet into the guy who would have willingly killed me, I fell in love with you, Lou.”
Her whole body snapped to attention at that, and she stood. “You can’t possibly mean that, Six. I mean, you don’t even—”
“Whatever argument you are about to give me, stop. You asked me whether I intend to keep protecting you. The answer is yes, for the foreseeable future and beyond that.” He slid his hands around her waist and drew her close.
She placed her hands tentatively on his shoulders and shook her head gently. “You and me … we … Oh, lord.”
Six laughed and pressed his forehead to her chest, relieved when her fingers wound their way into his hair. As always, she needed time to think. She might read faster than anyone he’d ever known, but her decisions took forever, and for a guy who really needed reassurance that he hadn’t just puked his feelings onto her feet for nothing, waiting for her to figure out what she wanted to say was torturous.
“You really meant all of that?” she whispered into his hair before placing a kiss on the top of his head.
“Yeah, Lou,” he said, pulling away to look up at her. “I love you.”
She stared at him, those dark brown eyes of hers shimmering with tears. “Even though I might have Huntington’s?” she asked. “It could affect everything. Life span. Having kids.”
He’d considered that too. “There are no guarantees in anything. You might, you might not. And while you might have just scared the crap out of me by mentioning kids, Lou, there are lots of ways to have them that might avoid passing the disease on.”
“Preimplantation genetic diagnosis and those kinds of things are one way. But it feels like a lot to take on.”
Six sighed and shifted his hands to her hips. “You went straight to the biology of it. The disease, the way to have kids. There is more to life and love than just biology, Lou,” he said, grateful they could have this conversation in private. “What about the chemistry of it? What do you feel?”
Louisa took a deep breath, her eyes fluttering shut on her exhalation. For the first time since he’d walked into the room, she smiled, the permanent look of worry on her face fading. Her eyes flashed open. “I think that—”
“No. Don’t think.” Six took her hand and placed it over his heart, pressing it flat to his skin. “Thinking is what comes easy to you. I want to know what you feel, Lou. Not how you can rationalize this, or how some biological reaction makes your heart speed up the way it does. I want to know how you feel when I look you in your eyes and tell you I love you. Does your heart feel it like mine does?”
She covered his hand with her own. “Yes, I feel it, Six. I feel it down to my toes.” Her cheeks flushed with pink as she said those simple words. She leaned forward and buried her face in his hair. Six waited as her brain likely thought through every facet of the words she’d just said to him. Just being with her was enough. It was slow, and real, and the opposite of his life, which up until now had been fast, and impromptu, and sometimes shallow.
Eventually she stood straight and looked at him. “Did you know that penguins undergo what is called a catastrophic molt?”
Six laughed—he couldn’t help it—and it pulled on his stitches, making him groan.
“What’s so funny?” she asked. “It was a genuine question.”
“Oh, I know it was, sweetheart. But I just laid it all out for you that I love you, and your response is to ask me about penguins.”
The corner of her mouth twitched in the making of a smile. “Anyway, do you know what the catastrophic molt is?”
“My guess is something to do with losing baby fur or something, but go ahead. Tell me, because I can’t wait to see you turn this into a relevant analogy.” He grinned at her but managed to grip her wrist when she playfully went to hit him.
“It’s called a catastrophic molt because it’s when the baby loses all of its baby feathers at once. The old feathers won’t fall out until the new ones have fully grown in. It lasts about two or three weeks, and during that time, they look weird and awkward and uncomfortable. It’s not painful, just strange.”
Suddenly he got it. She was the penguin. He wrapped his arms tightly around her. “Lou,” he said carefully.
“Two or three weeks ago, I didn’t even know you. I honestly never thought I would meet someone like you. The lab and my research have been my everything for so long, and now they’re gone. My safety was a privilege I took for granted, and now it isn’t,” she said, and ran her fingertips across the gauze taped to his side. “So it feels weird, like new things are growing while old things are still lingering. Like my life is changing radically in a very short space of time.” Louisa pressed her lips to his just long enough to stir him up before pulling away. “I love you, Six, and it feels strange, and wonderful, and a little bit terrifying amid this huge change happening in my life. I don’t know where I am going to end up when this is all over, but I hope it’s with you.”
She loved him, and the warmth he hadn’t known was missing from his life filled him as if someone were heating his blood. It settled in him. Grounded him. Made him forget about everything else except the sheer perfection of having Louisa in his arms, knowing that her feelings for him were as strong as his for her.
* * *
Standing in her clean jeans and a T-shirt, Louisa helped herself to another croissant. It was her third, and she piled more than her fair share of the juicy tropical fruit platter onto her plate. Six looked across the large table at her and winked. Her heart stuttered. She was officially in a relationship. With him. The way he looked at her, like he did now, like he wished he could eat her instead of the pastry in his hand, made her knees weak.
The coffee Mac placed next to her was steaming hot and very strong. She added a little cream and sugar to help keep her awake through the next hour. Thanks to Buddha and Bailey who’d made a drive to Encinitas to grab
bags for both her and Six, she was thankful for the return of her belongings, and her dead phone was now charging. Plus, she’d showered with products that didn’t smell like they’d double as disinfectant. Transience usually left her agitated, so she doubly appreciated her own things around her.
“Okay,” Mac said, dimming the lights. A projector shot images of people and buildings onto the white wall. The full team was sitting around the table with her, men she’d seen around Six’s home before. Men who were willing to help her. Each one was as intimidating as Six had been at first, but every time she felt herself flutter around the edge of panic, Six would tap her foot under the table. “So here is the timeline. On Friday the twelfth, Louisa noticed that someone had been messing with her files and switched the samples as a precaution. Let’s call the dangerous sample A and the innocuous sample B. On Thursday the eighteenth, she noticed that sample B had been taken, and she assumed that whoever took it thought it was sample A. Unable to find it in the lab, she went to talk to the owner of the lab, Vasilii Popov, and his grandson, also Louisa’s lab partner, Ivan Popov.”
Louisa listened attentively as he ran through the details with the team. She looked at the floor as the details poured out, but felt marginally better when Cabe leaned his shoulder against hers, giving her a nudge of support.
As she listened to Mac recap the relationship between Kovalenko, the man who had tried to abduct her the first time, and a man called Mitkin who had orchestrated it all on behalf of his father-in-law, a man called Lemtov, she couldn’t get her mind off her phone. Something was niggling her in the back of the brain. It was important.
“Ivan has gone off grid,” Lite said. “We last saw him come out of his house on Monday.” Another picture flashed up on the wall, and pain ripped through her at the sight of the man she’d once trusted. It didn’t make her feel any better to see that he looked incredibly gaunt, stress or guilt or some other emotion having weighed heavily on him in the six days since she had seen him.
“We no longer have the element of surprise with Lemtov,” Mac said. “He’s bound to know we took in some of his guys. Lite, did we learn anything new?”
Lite twirled a pen around on the tips of his fingers. “Lemtov grew up with Ivan’s deceased father. Went to school together. So there is a real connection between the two families. Lemtov is Ivan’s godfather. Not sure as of yet whether the main connection is through Vasilii or Ivan.”
Vasilii. His call. That was what had been bugging her. They’d forgotten to tell the others about it. “Vasilii called me,” she said quickly. “The night you all met with Mitkin. I almost forgot to mention it because Six came home hurt.” She looked over at Six, who suddenly sat up and leaned forward, folding his arms on the desk. Thankfully he didn’t disclose what had her so distracted that night. Memories of the way he’d taken her made her shiver.
“What happened? What did he say?” Mac said.
Louisa recounted the conversation to them all. “It struck me as odd, because it started apologetically. But somehow it sounded … I don’t know … it lacked authenticity if that doesn’t sound too hokey. Then he gave me excuses, about the reputation of the lab and our security. Knowing what Aiden told us, he’d already had visits from the police and the FBI before he called. And then he ended by telling me I was paranoid.”
Cabe swore.
“And where’s the phone now?” Lite asked. “You wondered how they found you last night, Six. There could be a tracker on it. We should check for that first, then get rid of the phone.”
Panic choked her. “If they know where I am because of my phone, what’s to stop them from coming here to get me?”
Gaz laughed. “They’d have to be suicidal to come try to get you here. Weapon count, boys?”
All of them suddenly began to pull weapons. From holsters, belts. Louisa looked around the room. To a man, they were armed to the teeth, and not just with small handguns. There were big guns that could do a lot more damage. And knives. Suddenly she felt overwhelmed.
“He’s right,” Cabe said. “They’d be idiots to try to come in here.”
“So what do we do now?” she asked.
“Lite is going to deal with your phone and try to find Ivan, among other things,” Mac answered. “Buddha, Gaz, and I are taking a trip to LA to catch up with Lemtov. He’s likely being cautious right now, but we’ll get eyes on him, who he’s meeting with.”
Six tapped the table with his fingertips. She could feel the tension rolling off him. A small muscle twitched by his jaw. There was obviously something on his mind. She tapped his foot under the table, but he didn’t look up. This time, she kicked it, much harder than the first time.
“Give me a minute with the guys, would you, Louisa?” he said. “Let me talk business for a minute while you get your phone.”
They were supposed to be past this, him keeping her out of the process. “Whatever it is you need to discuss, you can say it in front of me. I’m—”
“Please.” His eyes met hers. “I just want to tell them what we talked about this morning.” His tone was soft.
She’d convinced him to let her give them more so they could honor the bookings they had while taking care of her. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ll go get my phone.”
The air in the locker room was stagnant. It was probably some kind of safety feature that the place in which they slept had no other exits than the door, but they could certainly do with better ventilation. She reached for her phone and turned it on. The eighteen-percent battery was better than nothing but had no signal. She wandered out into the training area to find one and several notifications began to appear, including several missed calls from Vasilii. Dialing her voice mail, she sat down on a chair by the large doors.
“Louisa. It’s Vasilii. I’m sorry about the call yesterday. But I need to speak to you urgently. Please call me back.”
She saved the message because from now on she intended to keep a complete record of all of her interactions with Vasilii. There was no telling when she might need that information again. She pressed the right button to continue.
“Louisa. It’s Vasilii again. Please, I need to talk to you.”
His voice sounded strained, frantic even.
“I have sent you a photograph, Louisa. I hate to do this to you, but I need you to see this and return my call.”
Louisa pulled her phone away from her ear and opened her email. There was a message with an attachment from Vasilii. When she opened it, there was no text, and for a moment she wondered whether or not she should open it with Six. But he was busy with his men, and she wasn’t such a coward that she couldn’t open an email in a box of a room where nobody could get at her.
She tapped the little attachment icon, and the several seconds it took to open felt like a lifetime. For a moment, it was all Louisa could do to keep down the food she’d eaten so hungrily earlier. Her mother sat in a place she didn’t recognize. The cast on her foot told Louisa that the photo was recent. She didn’t look injured, but she did look terrified.
Her phone shook in her hand, and she was glad she was seated. There was a garbage can within arm’s reach, but Louisa breathed deeply and slowly until she had her heart rate under control. The image changed everything she thought she knew. There was no length too far for Vasilii. He wanted the formula badly enough that he would take her mother. She knew what she had to do. She had to go to him, offer to re-create it in the lab. But there was no way she was going to do something as stupid as sneak out the side entrance and do this alone. Not when there was a room full of men more than qualified to help her scour the earth for her mother. All she had to do was buy them time while they did it, perhaps throw in a couple of missteps along the way to kill time.
Either way, she knew what she held in her hand was crucial information, and it certainly explained where Ivan had disappeared to.
Once she felt under control and able to walk on legs that were shaking, she hurried back to the meeting room. As she hit the hallw
ay, she could hear Six.
“And I say we hire three more right now. Harley could be back here by tonight, and according to Gaz, Jackson is doing little more than screwing around in Tijuana. The guy is thirty minutes away. There’s got to be a third that we can find.” He’d finally gotten his head around her offer. It had taken an hour of convincing, and when she’d finally made him see sense, he’d insisted on treating it as a loan. Even insisted they pay her back interest.
“I’m on it,” Cabe said as he grabbed his phone off the table. “I’ll go make those calls.”
Despite the shot he’d taken to his side, Six was on his feet, ready to fight on her behalf.
Without overthinking it, she walked around to Six’s side of the table. Gently, she placed her hand on his shoulder, encouraging him to sit. Muscles strained beneath her fingertips as he lowered himself to his seat. She knew she’d never convince him to stand down, to let the others help her while he healed. Nor would she want him to. She trusted her life in his hands. But she could get him to rest when it was possible.
“Cabe, you should stay just for a moment,” she said with as much authority as she could muster. “I think it’s about to get worse.” She placed her phone into Six’s hands.
“What the…? Who sent you this?” he said, handing the phone to Mac.
“It’s from Vasilii. They have my mom.” She looked at Six. “And you aren’t going to like what I’m going to suggest we do to save her.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Louisa.”
The way Vasilii drew out her name in some sicko pretense of being friendly made Six want to punch the guy in the throat, right before he carved out his vocal cords with a blunt fishing knife.
“Where is my mom? Let me speak to her. I need to know she’s okay.” Louisa moved to pick up the phone, but Six stopped her. They were recording the call. Her hands were frozen.
“You have something I want. I have something you want. A simple exchange is all that is required to put this all behind us. I will send a car for you. Be ready within the next hour. I know where you are. The driver will not be told where to take you until you are safely on your way. He also does not know where my guest is. Don’t test me, Louisa, or the thing I have of yours may become … damaged. Oh, and as much as I hate to sound like a cliché, if anybody tries to interfere in any way, like follow you or call the police, or attempt to hold the driver hostage, the damage will become permanent, so please, come alone.”
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