Rhys

by Adrienne Bell

  She raised her hands and rubbed at her temples. She was so goddamned tired. Tired of keeping secrets. Tired of running. Tired of fighting.

  None of it had done a bit of good anyway. Nothing had turned out as she’d planned.

  “I don’t care about any of your damned excuses. I don’t give a shit who you are trying to protect. I’m going to make you talk.”

  “Carter,” the woman by his side shouted. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Tessa didn’t blame the man. She understood his reasons. She could see the same fear that was eating her alive reflected in his hard brown eyes. It was written all over the deep lines bracketing his mouth and brow. He was angry, sure. But he was also terrified for the life of his friend…as scared as she was. And unlike everyone else in the room, Carter knew exactly who to blame for Rhys’ condition.

  “You’re the reason that Rhys got shot today, and by God, if you don’t open your mouth in the next ten seconds and tell us what the hell is going on, I’m going to pull my piece out, and do the same to you.”

  “Over my dead body,” a voice came from across the room.

  “Rhys!” Tessa shouted as she shot up from the couch. Relief swept through her at the sight of him in the bedroom doorway. Some of the color had come back to his face, and he was standing under his own power.

  He looked okay. A real bandage was wrapped around his arm, but other than that he looked remarkably whole. She desperately wanted to rush over to his side and throw her arms around him, but she stopped herself.

  Being close to her was the reason he’d been shot in the first place.

  “Shouldn’t you be in bed?” Carter asked, his voice heavy with concern.

  “You try keeping him down,” Mason said with a laugh. He snuck past Rhys and made his way to one of the chairs by the couch. “He’s going to be fine. The bullet missed all arteries and bones. He might not be throwing out the first pitch at the company picnic for a few weeks, but other than that, he should be fine.”

  Carter didn’t look convinced.

  “You need rest,” he said to Rhys in a tone that sounded distinctly like an order.

  Rhys’ stare was as hard as ice. “And you need to know that if you ever threaten Tessa again, I will hurt you in ways you’ve never even imagined.”

  Carter didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink as they stood toe to toe.

  Dear God, it looked as if they were about to come to blows.

  Tessa’s stomach lurched at the thought of any more violence over her.

  “It’s okay, Rhys. He was just trying to protect you,” Tessa said, trying her best to diffuse the tension. “Besides, he’s right. This is all my fault.”

  Rhys’ face snapped toward her. “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s true,” Tessa said. She let out a sigh as she sat back down on the couch. “If I had stuck to my plan, if I had found a way out of your car that night—”

  “You’d be dead right now,” Rhys said. He turned his back on Carter and strode over to the couch, sitting down by her side.

  “Maybe,” Tessa conceded. “But you’d be safe.”

  “You think I care about this?” Rhys said, tilting his head toward his bandaged arm. “Do you have any idea what Dylan would have done if he’d gotten his hands on you?”

  Tessa swallowed down hard as she looked straight into the blue depths of his eyes.

  “Yes.” She knew exactly what he would have done. “And I still would have gone with him if it meant you’d be okay.”

  The auburn-haired woman let out a long whistle as she sat down in the last remaining chair. All heads turned her way.

  “Time out. Is anyone going to tell me what the hell is going on?” she asked, looking up at Carter. “Why did you threaten to shoot this woman? Why did you have Mason go to all the trouble of sewing Iceman back together, just to act like you were going to tear him apart yourself? And why the hell is anyone shooting at these two in the first place?”

  “Iceman?” Tessa asked.

  “Ally likes to give out nicknames,” Mason said with a wink. “Rhys is Iceman. Jake is Bruiser. I’m Blue Eyes.”

  “Ally?” Tessa said, rolling the name over in her mind. “Ally Weaver? The journalist that took down Congressman Fuller?”

  Ally held out her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you Miss…”

  “Dr. Teresa Rosenthal.”

  Ally gave her a genuine smile, but then gave Carter some serious side eye. “I wish I could say that I’ve heard as much about you as you’ve heard about me. But it looks like someone has been keeping you a secret.”

  Carter let out a sharp breath. “It was for Dr. Rosenthal’s safety.”

  “Bullshit,” Ally said without missing a beat. “It was because there’s a hell of a story here, and you were afraid that I’d follow it.”

  Carter’s shoulders sank as he looked up toward the ceiling. Tessa had to admit, it was more than a little amusing to see that there was at least one person who could get the better of the Captain.

  “Which is exactly what you’re going to do, isn’t it?” he asked.

  Ally turned back toward Tessa. Her expression was open and honest. “That all depends on Dr. Rosenthal.”

  “What do you mean?” Tessa asked.

  “Someone is after you. I’m guessing they’re pretty powerful since these guys are involved,” Ally said. “But I might be able to help you. I’ve earned a reputation for taking down powerful people who step over the line.”

  Tessa shook her head. “Not this one. He’s far too dangerous.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Carter said.

  Ally ignored him. She leaned forward in her chair. “People only have the power we give them, Dr. Rosenthal. I understand that you’re afraid, and, based on those bruises, I can guess why. But what my darling boyfriend and his friends sometimes forget is that there’s more than one way of fighting.”

  “Ally’s right,” Charlie said from the corner of the room. “She could help you expose Boyd to the public.”

  “Anders Boyd?” Ally asked. “That’s who’s after you?”

  Tessa nodded. “But even if you could bring Boyd to justice, it wouldn’t fix the problem. Not completely.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s the million dollar question,” Carter said with a grumble. Ally shot him a glare.

  Tessa ran a hand through her hair. It was one thing when she was contemplating telling Rhys her secrets, but a room full of people? That was a whole other ballgame.

  Ally seemed to sense her trepidation.

  “You’ve made it through one hell of a battle,” she said. “But no one can fight a whole war on their own.”

  “Everyone here wants to help,” Charlie said, tilting her head toward Carter. “Even if some of us have a funny way of showing it.”

  Rhys took her hand, and Tessa turned to meet his gaze. “It’s okay, Tessa. I promise.”

  Tessa drew in a deep breath.

  Maybe they were right. She’d carried this weight for so long on her own, and gotten nowhere. Maybe it was time to let someone else help her shoulder the burden.

  “At first I thought that it was a godsend when Boyd recruited me straight out of MIT,” she said. “No one else was particularly interested in touching my work because it was too out there.”

  “How so?” Carter asked.

  “I’ve spent my whole career pushing the boundaries of nanotech. Most of my peers found my ideas too ambitious or unachievable. But not Boyd. He was the first person to see the possibility in my work. When everyone else was telling me to hold back, he pushed me to go further, to dream bigger. And the truth is, I adored him for it.”

  “So, you followed him out to California,” Rhys said.

  Tessa nodded. “He offered me my own lab and nearly unlimited resources to pursue my vision—medically invasive nanotech that could read and analyze the human genome in real time.”

  Mason cocked his head to the side. “That is ambitio
us.”

  Tessa gave a weak smile. “It was, but so am I.”

  “Wait,” Charlie said, taking a step forward. “You actually did it? You created a successful prototype?”

  “After years of dedicated research, yes.”

  “Why is that amazing?” Ally asked.

  Mason turned toward her. “What Dr. Rosenthal created was a tiny robot that could travel through a person’s bloodstream and assess deviations in their genetic code.”

  “And that’s bad?” Jake asked.

  “No, not necessarily. For one thing, it could revolutionize the way we diagnose cancer,” Charlie said, her voice full of awe. “Simply put, cancer cells are mutations from healthy ones. If Dr. Rosenthal’s tech could find a cluster of cells that don’t match the programmed genome and relay that information back to a doctor, then people could begin receiving treatment weeks, even months sooner than they do now.”

  “Faster than that,” Tessa said. “Boyd pushed for the prototypes to have therapeutic capabilities.”

  Charlie’s jaw fell open. “Oh, no.”

  “Okay, so that must be the bad part,” Ally said.

  Mason nodded, as he let out a long breath. “If the nanotech could be programmed to destroy cancer cells that means it could be programmed to attack any cells that don’t match a certain set of criteria.”

  “So, it could be used as a weapon?” Ally asked.

  “Not just any weapon,” Tessa said. “Possibly the most terrifying one the world has ever seen.”

  “What could happen if it fell into the wrong hands?” Rhys asked.

  “A whole range of nightmare scenarios, from targeted political assassinations to wiping out entire ethnic groups,” Tessa said.

  A hush fell over the room as the magnitude of what she’d created sunk in. The weight of their silence hung heavy on her shoulders. Tessa’s gaze fell to her lap as a new wave of guilt and regret washed over her.

  “Boyd called it Project Exodus. I was so wrapped up in leading humanity to the promised land by finding the solution to cancer that I didn’t realize that what I was creating were the plagues of Egypt,” Tessa said.

  Rhys squeezed her palms, and she lifted her eyes to his. They were as steady and strong as ever. With a single look he was lending her a measure of his strength.

  “But you did figure it out,” he said.

  Tessa gave a shaky nod. “A few months ago, Boyd started acting strange, pushing me for a working prototype when we were still way ahead of schedule. Security was beefed up around the building—my lab in particular. I began to suspect that I was being tailed when I wasn’t at work.”

  “Did you confront Boyd about any of this?” Carter asked.

  “I knew better than that,” Tessa said. “I’d seen how he’d dealt with those he felt had crossed him. So, I started digging around as quietly as I could. I found out that he’d been meeting with various military and paramilitary groups for months about the project. I figured that with all this new pressure he’d finally settled on a buyer, and they were getting antsy for delivery.”

  “And that’s when you destroyed everything?” Rhys asked. His gaze was so intense, so direct, that she couldn’t stand to stare into it any longer.

  Tessa turned away, feeling like a coward.

  “I destroyed everything I could get my hands on,” she admitted. “It only took a few minutes to gather everything pertinent at the lab and toss it into the incinerator. Then I went to my apartment. I had just finished burning the last of my notes when Dylan broke down my door. I was hoping that I’d have more time before they caught me, but they were just too quick.”

  “Why did you need more time?” Ally asked.

  “Because she didn’t get to everything,” Rhys said slowly. “There’s still more to destroy.”

  “But you said you were the last link to your creation,” Carter said, his voice hard. He obviously didn’t take well to being lied to, no matter the reason.

  “It was imperative that Boyd and everyone else believe that the trail ended with me,” Tessa said.

  “So what else is out there?”

  “I have a unit in a self storage facility in downtown San Jose. It’s mostly filled with household junk, but I used it to store some backups of work stuff there before Boyd put me under surveillance—notes, digital backups…and a few of my early prototypes.”

  “That’s where you were trying to get to the night I found you, wasn’t it?” Rhys said, his eyes narrowing. “That’s where you were running to.”

  Tessa drew in a shaky breath as she nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Could you imagine what would happen if Boyd found those remaining prototypes before I did? Destroying the contents of that unit was the only thing that mattered. No matter the cost.”

  Tessa could feel Rhys’ energy change behind her. He stiffened, going almost completely still. His gaze stayed steady on her, but the intensity in his eyes changed, as if he had just come to some great realization.

  But he didn’t say a word. A knot twisted in the center of Tessa’s belly.

  “What I don’t understand is why no one has found this place,” Charlie said. “Self storage units—or anything else with your name on it—should have popped up in all your background checks.”

  “Because it’s not in my name,” Tessa said. “I had a roommate when I first moved out to California. The unit was in her name, but she let me share it. By the time she’d moved away, I’d practically taken the whole thing over. So, I kept it, but never got around to changing the name on the contract.”

  “So, all we have to do is get to this storage unit and light up the contents, right?” Carter said. “That shouldn’t be a problem, now that we know what we’re dealing with. Two of you can take care of it first thing in the morning. Just tell us where it is.”

  “I should do it myself,” she said.

  “The hell you will,” Rhys said. The sharp edge was back in his voice, but this time it chilled her right down to the bone. “Boyd is hunting you. After today, Dylan will be out for your blood. You’re not leaving this apartment.”

  “But—” she started.

  “No buts. You don’t trust Carter. I get that,” he said. “So, I’ll go. And when I say that everything is destroyed you can trust my word.”

  Unlike hers.

  It felt like a knife slid inside Tessa’s heart.

  “Okay,” she said, her voice shaky.

  Another hush fell over the room. It seemed she wasn’t the only one taken aback by his sudden burst of temper.

  “I’ll go with you,” Mason said, after a few long seconds had passed. “You’ll need back up. Something tells me you’re not Boyd’s favorite person right now either.”

  Carter nodded. “Sounds good.”

  “And I can start looking into these visits by foreign military to SciGen headquarters,” Ally said. “Something tells me that’s not going to go over very well with a whole bunch of government officials.”

  Carter rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling, even as his hands gently squeezed Ally’s shoulders. “That, on the other hand, doesn’t sound so good.”

  “Get over it, Captain,” Ally shot back, as she stood up.

  Charlie stepped forward and tapped Jake on the shoulder. “I guess that just leaves you and I to clean up the operating room, so that these two can use it as a bedroom tonight.”

  “Are you sure it’s a good idea for me to spend the night?” Tessa asked. “I mean, I’m putting you in danger just being here now.”

  Charlie gave her a wide smile. “Don’t worry. I’m just Carter’s IT girl. I doubt that Boyd even knows I exist. I fly way under the radar.”

  “I’m not sure that’s exactly how I’d put it,” Carter answered. “But you two ought to be safe enough for one night.”

  You two.

  Tessa’s heart clenched. She wasn’t sure there still was a two of them. Rhys had sounded so angry a moment ago. So angry at her.

  She shouldn�
�t have been surprised. She knew that was the price of keeping secrets and telling lies, but deep down she’d been holding out hope that he would understand.

  But when he stood, and, without a word, walked over to look out the window, leaving her completely alone on the couch, Tessa realized just how terribly wrong she’d been.

  Chapter Eleven

  Apparently, Tessa had seriously underestimated how much planning it took to torch one little storage unit.

  For hours, people buzzed around her talking and coordinating, coming up with the perfect strategy to get in and out of the San Jose facility without leaving a shred of evidence behind.

  And, here she’d been planning on picking up a gallon of gasoline and a disposable lighter.

  Not that Tessa was complaining. In fact, she kind of liked the constant drone of conversation around her. It helped distract her from some of her darker thoughts.

  Like whether or not she’d just made the biggest mistake of her life giving Macmillan Security the location of her storage unit. Or maybe that distinction went to spilling her guts to Ally Weaver. It was only a matter of time now before everything that she’d confessed ended up in the papers.

  Or, how eventually everyone was going to leave Charlie’s apartment, and she’d finally have to face Rhys…alone.

  He still hadn’t said a single word to her. Not one. He’d barely even looked her way, but she could tell from the hard set of his shoulders he was still upset. She could practically warm her hands off the heat emanating from his slow burn.

  And, as one by one the group started to head off for the evening, Tessa realized that she was going to have to face the music sooner rather than later.

  The trouble was, she had no idea how.

  If the last couple of days had taught her anything it was that exit strategies really weren’t her strong point.

  Carter and Ally said goodbye first, hoping to salvage their dinner reservations. Mason left a few minutes after. Jake stayed behind talking in hushed tones with Rhys for another fifteen minutes.

  He stopped by the couch and cupped his hand over her shoulder before making his way to the door.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow morning,” Jake promised, giving her a sympathetic look.