The words stopped Jonah’s exploration of the third cabinet and he turned to look at Aubrey. She was standing beside one of the brushed metal tables in the center of the room, one of the tables that Jonah remembered lying on its side, splattered with blood, when they came back to this lab after he, Oro, Azrael, and Ariella arrived from Penthos. She was looking down at her lab coat, her fingers playing idly with the buttons. She glanced up at him when he didn’t respond. He could see the intensity of their blue shade and felt his stomach flutter even as his mind started to churn with what she had said.
“Somebody helping him?” Jonah asked. “Why would you say that?”
Aubrey shrugged and pushed away from the table.
“He’s still working here, isn’t he? He has to be doing something. The types of projects that he works on can’t be done by just one person.”
Jonah felt his heartbeat increase slightly. What could she have meant by that? Did she know something about the breeding facility or the hybrid experiments? Was there any way that she could be involved, putting him in serious danger as he stood there sifting through the contents of the laboratory cabinets? He tried to subtly lean forward so that he could examine her face more closely, looking for any indication that she might be one of the hybrids that Ryan had created in the gruesome labs hidden only a few floors beneath their feet. Unlike the hybrids that he had encountered when Pyra and the others freed those being tortured in the facility, Aubrey showed no signs that she was anything but completely human, but he didn’t know if that should reassure him or make him worry even more.
“What types of projects?” he asked.
Aubrey gave a short laugh.
“Wow. He really does keep things secretive, doesn’t he? Don’t worry. I don’t know any of the specifics of his work. I just know that his projects are always considered high priority and a huge percentage of the grant money that comes into the department is funneled right to him. Even though I haven’t personally seen any finished results from any of these projects, some of the progress reports that he’s presented have been impressive. I just can’t see him being able to take on that much work without an assistant. At least if he’s anything like any of the other scientists. It seems like they are heavily motivated while they are still one of dozens working on University-sponsored research projects down in the main lab. They’ll take on huge portions of work and be in the lab day and night to get the work done. The minute that they get their own lab and are able to design their projects, though, suddenly they are just too burdened and fragile to do anything on their own and need the department to give them funding to pay for assistants to do the grunt work for them. Besides, look at this place. It’s immaculate. Do you really think that there is any leading scientist in this place who would have enough time in his schedule to keep his lab so clean on his own? Especially with all of the equipment that he designs and builds himself.”
She gestured at the corner of the room and Jonah turned to look at the strange tube embedded in the juncture of the walls. The curved glass that had been shattered when Jonah first saw the lab was repaired just like the rest of the damage had been. It was as if Pyra, Eden, and the rest had never confronted Ryan there. As if they had never released Aegeus from his chains. Everything had been wiped clean and it had accomplished exactly what was intended, removing any sense of suspicion or even realization that anything had changed from those who might find their way into the room.
“Um…” Jonah started.
Aubrey laughed again and Jonah looked at her sharply, startled by the sudden sound.
“Listen to me,” she said. “I’m standing here explaining Ryan to you. I’m sorry. Anyway, I’m just glad that they found an assistant for him that he won’t be able to push away with ick-factor.” She paused and looked down at her feet for a few seconds. “Well. I guess I should be getting back to my lab. The main lab.” She sighed. “One day I’ll have my own lab.”
It sounded like she was trying to find a way to stall, to stay in the room with him for longer. Jonah gave as much of a smile as he could and she started toward the door. He felt a sense of urgency rise up inside him and he took a step toward her.
“Wait,” he said.
Aubrey turned around to look at him.
“Yes?”
Jonah took another cautious step, trying to formulate what he was going to say.
“Can I trust you?” he asked.
Aubrey’s head tilted slightly.
“Should you be able to?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Jonah said, “but I really need to right now.”
“Why?”
“I’m not Ryan’s assistant. I don’t even work with him. But I need to be able to get back in the lab. Can I use your access chip?”
“Why do you need to be able to get in the lab?” she asked.
Jonah opened his mouth and closed it, unsure of what he should tell her.
“I can’t say right now,” he finally managed. “But I need you to trust me.”
“Am I supposed to trust you, or are you supposed to trust me?” she asked.
“Both,” he said. “Look, I know that this sounds ridiculous and that you could get in a lot of trouble for helping me. I need you to trust that I wouldn’t ask you to do this if it wasn’t critically important. There are literally lives hanging in the balance. Please.”
Aubrey looked at him for a few long seconds and then stepped forward, holding the access chip out to him. Jonah smiled and let out a relieved rush of air. He reached out and took the chip from her palm, allowing his hand to rest over hers for a moment longer than it needed to. Their eyes met and he saw hers darken slightly. She licked her bottom lip and then pulled her hand away, looking away as if embarrassed by her subtle reaction to him.
“I’ve got to go,” she murmured.
“Thank you,” Jonah said as she stepped out of the door, waving at him as she disappeared.
Jonah looked down at the chip in his palm and then laughed, tossing it up in the air and catching it as it came down. This access chip was how he was going to be able to do what he needed to do undetected. With this chip, he could move throughout Ryan’s laboratories whenever he pleased. He tucked it into his pocket and went back to his exploration of the cabinets. He hadn’t found anything yet, but now he knew that he could take his time.
Two hours later he gathered every piece of paper that he had found in his examination of the lab and went to the door to the lab. He opened it carefully and peered out into the corridor. It was empty and quiet, giving him the opportunity to slip out and rush toward the closet. When he was back in the basement, he added the new items that he had found to the collection of evidence that he already had and sat on the floor as he had for the majority of the time that he had spent since the rest of the group had left for Penthos. The new discoveries meant nothing to him, but he kept staring at them, letting the lists and rows of numbers and letters, calculations, and notations roll through his mind in hopes that eventually something would make sense to him.
The day passed slowly as he went to check on the wounded and the women, prepared meals for them, and helped apply new ointment on the worst of the injuries, then returned to his room and continued to stare at the papers and the files that were gradually filling the floor. Finally, the exhaustion dragged on his eyelids and he couldn’t stay awake any longer. He lay down beside his collection of information, draped a blanket over himself, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
***
The next morning Jonah crept out of the closet into the corridor and paused again to listen for any sign that there was anyone else on the floor. Hearing only the quiet, almost imperceptible whir of some internal system of the building, he closed the closet door and rushed straight for the lab. Using the access chip that Aubrey had given him, he entered the lab and returned to the same examination that he had done the day before. Though he felt that he had gone over it as carefully as he could the day before, he was compelled to go over
it again, to dig deeper and find anything that may be hidden.
Jonah was crouched on the floor peering into another of the cabinets when he heard the click of the lock behind him. His body tightened anxiously and his eyes shot to the side to look at his bag and the weapon that he had placed on top of it. He hadn’t expected that he would have to use it, but he realized now that that had been foolish of him. There had to still be hybrids and Valdicians somewhere, and if they had caught any wind that there were still members of the group in the building, they would be looking for them. He scrambled toward the bag and wrapped his hand around the handle of the weapon, crouching behind one of the tables to watch as the door opened. A pair of high heels stepped into the room and he stood sharply, bringing the weapon up to his side.
Aubrey took a startled step back, nearly going back into the hallway. Jonah placed his weapon on the table and reached out a hand to her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You startled me.”
“Is that going to be our traditional greeting every time that we see each other?” Aubrey asked, resting her hand over her heart for a second as she stepped the rest of the way into the laboratory and closed the door behind her.
“I’m sorry,” Jonah repeated. “I thought that you might be…”
His voice trailed off as he realized what he was about to say. She took a few steps closer to him.
“That I might be what?” she asked. “What is it that you are so afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid,” he insisted.
Aubrey looked at him incredulously.
“You’ve tried to pull a blade on me twice,” she said.
Jonah shook his head and looked down at his hands pressed to the table in front of him and drew in a breath. He knew that it was unrealistic that he would be able to continue on with his explorations of the lab and the medical facility using this woman’s access chip and having her know that he was there without soon giving her at least some form of understanding of what was happening.
“I didn’t mean to pull it on you,” he said.
“No,” she said. “You meant to pull it on these mysterious people that might be threatening lives.”
“Not might,” Jonah said insistently.
“Then tell me what’s going on.” When Jonah hesitated, Aubrey walked closer to him and looked at him unflinchingly in the eye. “If there are people in danger and it has something to do with the University, you need to tell me.”
Jonah drew in a breath.
“What do you know about Ryan’s work? Anything. Anything that you might know about his research or the projects he’s been working on.”
Aubrey shook her head.
“I really don’t know much,” she admitted. “To be honest, my access chip shouldn’t even open the doors to his laboratory. He has special clearance even beyond the other scientists and only the most authorized of personnel have access. When they repaired the broken locks, though, they reprogrammed my chip to allow access. When I first saw you, I was coming here to see if I could find out anything about where Ryan went.”
Jonah was surprised at the revelation, but it was also reassured him in a way. If she had been sneaking into the lab, that meant that she wasn’t one of the creatures that Ryan had weaponized or one who was under his control.
“Why?” Jonah asked. She didn’t answer and he stared more deeply into her eyes. “You know something,” he said. “There’s something about Ryan or the work that he’s been doing that has concerned you enough that you thought to come up here and look through his lab. What is it?”
Aubrey hesitated. She looked uncomfortable and unsure, as if she regretted that she had said anything. After several seconds, her shoulders lowered as if she had resigned herself to the reality that they had both made themselves vulnerable to each other and that she might as well keep going.
“The official word of the University is that Eden left on her own, but I just can’t shake the feeling that they either aren’t telling the full truth, or they don’t really know what happened to her. And there are other women who have just disappeared in the last few years, and the only connection any of them had is either that they were coming to the University or knowing someone that was in the University. They never found any trace of them or any indication that something happened to them. That is just far too coincidental to me.”
Jonah nodded. His heart was pounding in his chest and he felt like he could hear the adrenaline rushing through his veins. He felt a connection to Aubrey that he hadn’t expected to feel with anyone, and now that he heard her voicing her suspicions, the appeal only got stronger. He leaned closer to her and touched his chest, wanting to both keep her attention focused on him and show his sincerity.
“I know what happened to them,” he said. “I know Eden and I think I know about the women who disappeared, at least some of them.”
Aubrey looked taken aback, but she didn’t step away. She searched his face as if waiting for him to laugh, and when he didn’t, her eyes widened. Not wanting to risk her leaving without knowing what he needed to, Jonah surged ahead, telling her about Eden, the Denynso, and the time that they had spent on Earth. He withheld the details about himself, thinking that that would be simply too much for her in that moment, and still unsure of how he himself wanted to handle his arrival back on Earth. For now, he wanted to stay anonymous and not have the pressure or responsibility of his true identity on him. He needed to conceal who he really was and why he had remained on Earth while most of the others went to Penthos so that he could protect himself and the integrity of what he was trying to do.
He felt like he had been talking forever, pouring himself out to her until the final words fell from his lips and he felt drained. When he finished, Aubrey was leaning on her elbows on the table, her hands covering her mouth as she rested her chin in her palms. Her eyes were wide and searching, and Jonah expected her to run out of the lab. Instead, she stood slowly and started unbuttoning her lab coat.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“You are going to need help,” she said. “So, I’m going to help you.”
Chapter Seven
It was late in the evening when Aubrey checked her phone and saw the time. She reluctantly turned toward Jonah, not wanting to leave his side.
“I should be getting home,” she said. “I need to be up early in the morning for work.”
“I know,” Jonah said with a hint of a laugh in his voice.
Their eyes met and she felt the same heat swell up between them as she had at several points throughout the day. She could feel the draw toward him and each time that he looked at her she thought that she saw a flicker of the same attraction in his eyes. It made her not want to leave his side and the privacy of the lab that they had been sharing as he told her more about what Ryan had done and they worked together to find out as much as they could about what he had been doing in that room as they could. She wanted to stay there with him and keep riding the tingling feeling of the attraction growing, but she knew that she couldn’t. She needed to get home and sleep so that she could return to her own lab the next day before her coworkers thought that she might have gone missing like the other women.
“I’ll try to come up here during lunch and any lulls that we might have.”
Jonah nodded.
“I hope you do.”
Aubrey felt a tremble through her belly, but she reached for her keys and started for the door to the lab. Her hand had just rested on the handle when she felt Jonah wrap his hand around her wrist. He spun her around, pulling her up against him so that she felt her body crush against his and the warmth of his breath touch her face. The keys fell from her hand and skittered across the polished floor, but she was focused on the feeling of Jonah’s body against hers and the velvety darkness of his eyes as he stared into hers with incredible intensity. Suddenly his mouth crashed down on hers, and he held her body tightly against him and kissed her with ferocity.
The kiss took Aubrey completel
y by surprise and for a moment she barely knew what was happening. Jonah’s hands pressed against her back and he pulled her even closer. She could feel the pounding of his heart against her chest as if it was reaching toward her with every beat. Her eyes fluttered closed and she gave herself over to the kiss, reaching up to rest her hands on the back of his neck to make herself feel steadier. Aubrey felt Jonah’s tongue teasing at her lips and she parted them, welcoming it into her mouth. His mouth was hot and strong, his taste both comforting and invigorating. She had craved his touch and taste since the moment that she saw him, and had thought that it was never going to be in her reach. Now that he was this close to her, offering her everything that she had wanted, Aubrey was going to give herself to it completely.
Jonah's strong arms wrapped around her and she felt him sweep her up off of the ground. As he lifted her, her shoes dropped to the floor. It was only her shoes, but it seemed like a suggestion, a promise of what was to come, and she felt a shiver move through her. Still supporting her with one arm, Jonah slid one hand down the back of her thigh to guide it up around his hips. Aubrey complied, mirroring the movement with her other leg so that she was wrapped fully around him. They continued to kiss almost frantically as Jonah carried her back across the lab toward one of the tables. She felt as though he were making up for everything that he had lost and showing his gratitude for the years that he had suffered but that brought him to her.
The Alien's Mystery (Uoria Mates IV Book 7) Page 6
