It was hard for J.T. to sit tight in his hiding spot patiently, but he knew from experience that rushing in half-cocked, juiced up on emotion, was the best way to get yourself shot.
On the last mission, not everyone from his squadron had returned.
Hell, sometimes he still heard Tommy Boy’s rebel yell in his mind.
The kid had always been a hothead.
Now he was buried in Arkansas with full military honors, but J.T. was sure his family would much rather have their son back than the useless medal hanging on the wall.
Shaking off the bad memories, he focused on the task at hand.
Deep night fell, and with it, they moved stealthily through the compound, quietly dispatching guards as they went until they could breach the house.
* * *
THE WAITING HAD been the worst. Hope wasn’t sure how the men had quietly sat like stone statues, waiting for the right time to strike. She’d been about to lose her mind.
Now, as she trailed behind J.T., his silent shadow, she wished she were sitting in the brush again.
It wasn’t easy to watch J.T. kill a man, but she tried to remember that it was either the guards or one of them.
And Hope wasn’t about to die tonight.
Hope followed J.T. as they headed for the lab, while the others went off in search of Anso, and they reached it without incident. She quickly punched in the code, and the door opened with a soft snick and they went inside.
She immediately went to the cold storage while J.T. covered the door.
She found her travel pack and the special container, but she didn’t have time to don a containment suit, as would’ve been protocol if she weren’t stealing the virus from a lunatic.
Hope took care to load the vials into the special container, lock it and jam it into her pack. Slinging the pack over her shoulder, they hightailed it out of the lab to the sound of erupting gunfire.
So much for a quiet in and out.
“I want you to hide,” he told her even as she shook her head vehemently, but he insisted. “I have to make sure Teagan and the guys are okay. I will come back for you.”
“No!” She gripped his arm. “Please don’t go.”
“I’m coming back. I just have to make sure that my brother gets out alive.”
“I don’t want to separate.”
Hope could hear the panic in her voice, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t bear the thought of being left alone in this crazy place.
J.T. must’ve realized she was going to hold her ground and relented with a few choice swearwords, but she didn’t care. They weren’t separating. Not again.
He didn’t look happy about it, but he didn’t have time to argue. They followed the sound of gunfire, running across a dead guard here and there, but as luck would have it, four American men came running at full speed in their direction.
They didn’t waste time on talk. As soon as J.T. saw them, he skidded to a stop and quickly changed direction, running back to the fence line. One by one they scaled the fence as if it were the easiest thing in the world and then J.T. hoisted Hope up and over with the assistance of his friends.
Within moments they were on the other side of the fence and Hope wasn’t even sure how it had happened. The adrenaline rushing through her veins blotted out the fear of being shot. They put distance between themselves and the compound as they ran through the jungle until they found the car they’d stashed and squeezed into the older-model Blazer.
It wasn’t until they were driving away that J.T. started talking again. “Where’s Ricardo?” But judging by the tone of his voice, he already knew. “He didn’t make it?”
“No,” Teagan answered grimly.
“Please tell me one of you killed that son of a bitch DeLeon,” she said, with an uncharacteristically vicious need for revenge. “That man didn’t deserve to live another moment.”
“Yeah, Ricardo got him.”
“Well, at least he got what he deserved.”
Before this adventure, Hope had always been more of a liberal, preferring incarceration over capital punishment. Not anymore.
Bad people needed to die.
But what about her? Was Anso right about her purposefully ignoring the true application of the virus she and Tanya had created?
The burden of that question weighed on her shoulders, but the answer scared her more.
Now more than ever, she had to get to the South American lab. “J.T., you have to take me to the lab. We have to get there before we leave this country.”
“I take it our vacation adventure was just extended a little bit?” Kirk asked.
J.T. shared a look with Teagan and nodded grimly. “Gotta finish what we started.”
Grateful, Hope closed her eyes and tried to calm her frantic heart. They would destroy the virus and everything would be all right.
It had to be.
20
KIRK AND HARRIS stayed behind while Teagan and Ty came with J.T. and Hope to the lab. Hope didn’t protest the extra people, probably because she knew they were nonnegotiable.
The dirt road was filled with potholes and sections of washboard, which certainly would’ve deterred the hapless tourist who had gotten on the wrong road, but Hope assured them they were on the right path.
“I memorized the map before I left California. I knew if I ran into trouble, I’d need to know where I was going,” she explained, adding with a slightly sheepish expression, “Another benefit of an eidetic memory.”
“Damn.” J.T. whistled, shaking his head. “I don’t even want to know what your IQ is. I might never recover.”
“Are you afraid of smart women?” she asked.
“Only ones I’m attracted to,” he quipped, eliciting a blush on her part.
Teagan rolled his eyes. “Keep it in your pants, Romeo.”
J.T. laughed and Hope averted her eyes, though a secret smile found her lips. God, she was sexy.
An hour on the road and Hope directed them to the gate, giving Teagan the code to punch in. The gate swung open and they rolled through.
“No security?” Ty asked, finding that suspect. “Something doesn’t feel right here.”
“It’s okay,” Hope assured him. “That gate is electrified. It won’t open without the right code and if anyone tries to scale it, they’ll fry. So, yeah, don’t touch the fence.”
“Good to know.”
They went deeper into the complex and parked in the near-empty parking lot.
“Boy, when you say it’s an ultrasecret lab, you aren’t joking. The employee picnic must be a real snore,” Teagan said, glancing around. “Are you sure this lab is operational?”
Hope seemed to share his concern. “There should be more employees. C’mon, the entrance is over here.”
She produced a key card from her bag and the door popped open with a soft click.
“The virus storage is on the top level, same as the lab in California,” Hope explained, taking the lead, but J.T. had a weird tingle at the base of his skull that didn’t bode well.
He pulled his gun for good measure, and Teagan and Ty did the same.
They took the stairs because J.T. didn’t trust the elevator. There was power running through the small complex, but it was a ghost town and that was beyond strange.
Hope slid her key card into the lock and the door opened, but was stopped by something on the other side of the door.
J.T. halted Hope before she could push the door open and directed her behind him. Teagan and Ty flanked him for backup as J.T. pushed against the resistance to open the door.
Hearing nothing but dead silence, J.T. entered the room to find what was causing the resistance.
A body.
Hope stuffed back a scream as she stared
at the man in a lab coat sprawled out with dried blood staining the floor.
“Oh, my God!” she gasped, edging away from the blood spill. Then she saw that the dead scientist hadn’t been alone. There were two other bodies, another man and a woman, slumped over their stations, staring sightless at the walls. “What happened here?”
“Something bad,” Ty replied darkly. “I say we get the hell out of here before whoever did this comes back.”
“I don’t understand... Anso is dead. Who would do this?” Hope asked, panicked. She scanned the room for answers, her gaze desperate. She looked to J.T. “I have to tell Deirdre. There must be some kind of protocol. This room is supposed to be a clean room. There could be contamination.” Suddenly, she lost the panic and hustled to another section of the room.
J.T. went after her. “What is it?”
She opened a closet and pulled out a huge white suit and climbed into it. “I have to make sure that the samples that are housed here haven’t been compromised. Stay here.”
“Think again,” J.T. said in a low tone. “You don’t know what happened to these people and if there’s some dangerous viruses turned loose in that room, you’re not going in.”
Hope ignored him and zipped the suit. “I’m the only person qualified to go in there. The suit will keep me safe. I have to know.”
Teagan stopped J.T. “She’s right. Let her go. She’s the only one who can.”
He didn’t care what’d happened here. Dead scientists, dangerous viruses—he wanted to put this place in his rearview mirror, but he knew Hope wasn’t going to leave until she knew there hadn’t been a breach. “Fine. You’ve got two minutes and then we’re getting the hell out of here.”
Hope pulled the protective cover over her head and walked into the cold storage where the viruses were held.
“I don’t like this,” J.T. growled to Teagan.
Ty went to a computer and started nosing around, but came up empty. “Nothing here. Whoever was here didn’t much care about what was on the computers.”
Hope reappeared and pulled her cover free. “Someone destroyed the samples. There’s nothing left.”
An idea came to J.T., one that was borderline crazy, but considering their options seemed almost brilliant.
“Destroy your samples, too. It’ll look like whoever broke in was responsible for everything,” J.T. said, shocking Hope. “It’s the best way to come out smelling like a rose in this deal. Otherwise, you’ll always worry that someone out there is abusing the virus.”
Even though the plan had been to destroy the samples, Hope suddenly hesitated, turning to him almost desperately. “This is my life’s work,” she said, torn. “I mean, not only mine, but Tanya’s, too. And it doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to Tessara. Maybe it’s not right to destroy it.”
“No one needs that kind of power,” J.T. said in a low tone. “Especially a company like Tessara.”
Teagan urged them to make a decision. “Time’s short, man. Shit or get off the pot—we gotta blow this place.”
J.T. met Hope’s gaze. Please destroy it. Everything hinged on that one decision.
Hope’s mouth firmed as she nodded slowly.
“You’re right. This is what needs to happen.” She grabbed her pack, pulled her protective hood back on and disappeared into the cold-storage room.
21
THE COLD-STORAGE door closed firmly behind her, sealing the room. While the room was used to store the live viruses, it was also equipped with the machinery to destroy them.
As she approached the machine, vials in hand, Hope’s resolve wobbled again.
Am I doing the right thing?
She wasn’t usually this indecisive, but then she’d never been faced with such a potentially big consequence in her hands.
It wasn’t only her life’s work on the line; Tanya had died for this breakthrough and even though there were potential ramifications if it were to fall in the wrong hands, the potential good it could do was astounding.
Was she being selfish? She didn’t like to think so, but she hated to think that Tanya had died for nothing.
J.T. didn’t agree with her decision to go back to Tessara and talk to Deirdre, but she had to get a feel for what was going on in their lab. What if Deirdre wasn’t the mole and she was as clueless as the rest of them about who was secretly monitoring their projects? Didn’t she owe it to Tessara to give them the chance to prove themselves before she destroyed company property?
Of course, the small print was that she would probably lose her job and likely face prison if it was found out that she’d destroyed the samples without permission, but that was a small price to pay for doing the right thing.
Hope worried her bottom lip. Wasn’t it?
Okay, so the truth was she didn’t want to go to jail. Starchy foods didn’t agree with her digestion and orange was not her color.
But she wasn’t a spy or trained to know if someone was lying, so how would she know if Deirdre was some kind of criminal mastermind or simply a power-hungry supervisor with zero sense of humor?
She could picture the watercooler chatter.
“Oh, how was South America? What did you do?”
“Great! I stole company property, crash-landed in Mexico, slept in the jungle, rode in the back of an old pickup truck to a small airport, only to fly to South America and be kidnapped by a crazy sociopathic billionaire who planned to beat me with a whip when I didn’t agree to weaponize the virus I created. Oh, and I had some great local cuisine while I was there!” Pause. “What did I miss while I was gone?”
But as Hope knew, if anyone actually asked about her vacation, she would make up some grand lie about a boring staycation that involved binge-watching Downton Abbey and eating ice cream straight from the carton.
She pulled the vials carefully from the container, resigned to destroying them. J.T. was right—they were simply too dangerous to leave to chance.
She slid the vials into the autoclave machine, snapped the door shut and locked it, then pushed the button to eradicate the only viable samples of the virus on the planet.
A mixture of sadness and relief flooded her as she watched the timer. There was no turning back now. She and Tanya had already doctored their notes to show that their attempts had ended in failure. The only proof that they’d been successful was being cooked at 121 degrees Fahrenheit and the formula was locked inside Hope’s head, where it would remain for the rest of her life.
“I hope I made the right decision,” she murmured with a quick prayer, and then exited the lab. Once clear, she removed her biohazard suit and tossed it down the chute for the incinerator and returned to the room where she’d left the guys.
“It’s done,” she said, drawing a deep breath. “It’ll take an hour for the process, but the vials are unmarked. No one will know what was in them. They’ll just assume that someone was following protocol for live toxins when all hell broke loose here.”
“Works for me,” Teagan said, still on edge. “I say we blow this place now before whoever did this decides to come back.”
“I need to do one last thing,” she said, going to a panel and opening it.
“What are you doing?” J.T. asked, wary.
“I used my key card to get in here, which is an electronic record. I have to call it in or else I won’t be able to answer questions without raising suspicion. Tanya had already prearranged for my trip here, so if I don’t make it look as if I was just following instructions, they will look deeper.”
“Good point,” J.T. agreed, motioning. “Go ahead.”
Hope swallowed and made the call straight to Deirdre with the appropriate amount of terror in her voice.
“Something terrible happened here,” she told Deirdre, waking her with the news. It was the middle of the night in Califo
rnia. “I don’t know what to do!”
Deirdre, a no-nonsense type A personality, snapped into efficiency mode. “Are you safe?”
“I think so. Whoever did this was gone by the time I arrived.”
“Good. I will alert the authorities. I want you to leave. We will take care of the details.”
Hope was happy to be off the hook and gratefully agreed. Deirdre clicked off and Hope turned to the guys and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here before she changes her mind,” and they bailed.
* * *
THE FOLLOWING MORNING J.T. awoke to a spicy aroma that was welcome to his growling belly.
Hope smiled, already dressed. “There was a street vendor outside the hotel. It smells pretty good. The guys already ate theirs, so I’m guessing it’s safe. No threat of food poisoning.”
Swinging his legs over the bed, he tugged on his jeans. Hope looked like a vision out of his most erotic dreams, her hair pulled into a messy bun at the top of her head, her glasses perched on her cute nose, dressed in a soft short white linen dress that clung to her curves and made him want to rip it off.
“What’s on the menu, aside from you?” he asked with a playful growl, tugging her close to nuzzle her neck. “Smells incredible.”
“Me or the breakfast?”
“Both.”
She laughed and pulled away. “It’s nothing fancy, chorizo and eggs in a tortilla.”
“Sounds like my kind of breakfast.”
Hope laughed and handed him his burrito, but even as she smiled, there was something else behind her eyes that made him pause.
“Are you okay?”
“Great!” she returned brightly, but she was nervous. “Is it good?”
“Delicious,” he answered around a hot bite, still trying to decipher her strange behavior. “Are you sure nothing is bothering you? You seem on edge.”
“Actually, yes, there is something we should talk about,” she started, and he had a feeling he knew where this was going because he’d been grappling with it, too.
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