Hot

by Angel Payne

  Zoe twined her fingers into Shay’s and squeezed. Hard.

  “Their concept started out simply,” Ghid began. “The concept of transplanting animal organs into humans was decades old when Big Idea began. Melanie and Homer began with a version of that idea. They wondered if they could target human diseases by successfully extracting the blood cells from animals who had the corresponding strengths, then adding them to a serum formulated to activate them in the human bloodstream…”

  “Wow,” Tait murmured.

  “There’s an idea for a winning cocktail,” Colton added.

  Shay was totally silent. The ominous stillness he joined with it was unnoticeable to everyone except Zoe. She knew exactly what he remembered from the base now. And exactly why it led him to clutch her hand with brutal force.

  “Shit, Mom, I thought it was from you. I saw it as a sign that everything would work out okay…”

  “He went back to the house and put it there…for you…Bastard…”

  “What? Why?”

  “You drank it. The honey. Didn’t you, Shay?”

  “Yeah…I drank it.”

  Without second thought, she offered him her other hand. He didn’t hesitate to accept, twisting her fingers just as tight.

  “So…did it work?” His words were so taut, they snapped up Tait’s concerned stare. “At all?”

  With the last two words, Colton’s attention was snagged too. While Zoe longed to return their looks with even a small smile of assurance, she couldn’t. No use in perpetuating a lie. She couldn’t fix this any more than they could. And that dragged her into a grieving silence too.

  Ghid regarded Shay with eyes that stunned Zoe with their new intensity—and empathy. “There’s a damn interesting answer for that,” he stated.

  “Interesting,” Tait echoed. “Crap. There he goes again with interesting.”

  Ghid headed for the window again, his steps slow yet steady. “At first, the results blew them away. Mel and Homer started with a simple serum blending raven and elephant cells, both animals known for their memory retention. They gave it to a small group of targeted subjects in an Alzheimer’s study and had awesome results. While waiting for the numbers to come in on that one, they developed another serum. More complicated. The end game was endurance and running speed.”

  “Let me guess,” Tait offered. “They gathered a bunch of teen guys and told them they could have an advance copy of the new Halo game if they ran a mile in less than ten?”

  That actually garnered a tic at one side of Ghid’s mouth before he replied, “They used antelope, Iditarod sled dogs, and cheetahs.”

  Colton took his turn to snort. “In a magical serum? That you fed to—who?”

  “Targeted subjects,” Ghid replied without faltering. “Again with astounding results.” He threw his gaze to Tait and Shay again. “Your mother and Homer Adler were delivering the scientific world’s equivalent of shock and awe.”

  “Shit,” Tait responded.

  “Shit.” Shay grinded Zoe’s fingers into putty. She didn’t care. If he kept holding on, they could weather this together. Please keep holding on.

  “That justifies the menagerie.” Tait tapped two fingers on the couch’s arm while drilling his gaze into the modern photo art on the wall. “But it doesn’t clarify anything else.”

  “No.” Shay’s agreement was rough and low. “It doesn’t.”

  “If things were so awesome, then why did Mom leave? And then Homez?”

  Ghid’s reply was prefaced by an odd change to his face. A toughening in his jaw but a thick storm in his eyes. Zoe sensed it was the man’s version of sadness but couldn’t be sure. “They’d harnessed lightning in a bottle,” he offered, “but had very different ideas about what to do with it.”

  “And that’s why they fought,” Tait murmured.

  Shay shook his head. “And we thought it was because Homer let us feed the table scraps to Scout.”

  “Well, I did. You were always better about obeying the rules than me.”

  “No. You were just always there to take the blame instead.”

  “You made up for it by keeping me sane, brother.”

  Zoe bit into her bottom lip, dealing with the emotions flooding in. Dios, how she could empathize with Tait’s words. Though younger sibs were often sheltered from the tough crap, that didn’t make them any less important in the grand scheme of things. In many ways, it made them more valuable than ever. She watched Shay take that comprehension in and make it his own. Despite the battered landscape of his face, he’d never been more stunning to her.

  They were having to take a painful road back to brotherhood…but they were getting there.

  “So what happened, Ghid?” Shay asked then. “Mom and Homer hit an impasse. The results were shitty. We have that part figured out.”

  Ghid reset his stance before going on. “In a nutshell, Adler got impatient. And greedy.”

  Tait leaned forward. “Didn’t you say Big Idea was subsidized by a government cooperative? Where does greed play into that?”

  “Money isn’t the only wealth that corrupts,” Ghid replied. “Homer felt marginalized and impatient. He wanted to present the Big Idea honchos with some wow results, but your mom thought a public ra-ra was still premature. They hadn’t had a chance to study the serum’s long-term effects. They had no idea about side effects.” While grating through his next sentence, he locked eyes with Zoe. “Or deformities.”

  Colton shifted forward, voicing what they were all thinking. “So Homer took things into his own hands?”

  Ghid’s face hardened into the hardest scowl Zoe had seen from him. “That’s the nice way of putting it.”

  Tait dropped his fingers to the couch’s arm again. “Tell us the not-so-nice way.”

  “When the holidays came, Homer told your mother he was going back to his country for a family visit. He went to Washington instead.”

  “And swapped spit with Big Idea on his own,” Tait spat.

  “Who probably threw their hats over the windmill with glee at the information,” Colton added.

  Ghid dropped a confirming nod. “They instantly authorized more funds for bigger tests, expanded labs, and new serums—all in the name of scientific advancement, of course.”

  “Never mind the blatant military applications.” Tait tacked on a growl of disgust.

  Before all the conclusions were reached, Zoe braced herself for Shay’s tighter hold.

  It didn’t come.

  Instead, he fed her worst fear.

  He let go.

  Tait grunted. “No wonder Mom popped a thousand gaskets when he got back from that trip.”

  “So what happened then?” Colton queried.

  Shay’s interjection was a jagged knife on the air. “Cameron Stock happened then.”

  Tait’s face exploded on a disbelieving glare—quashed by another nod from Ghid. “At that time, Stock had started to make his name in Hollywood. He was working with some pharmaceutical companies who’d backed some film projects and kept his eyes open for new investment opportunities for them. Believe it or not, he met your mom at the grocery store in Des Moines one weekend. He was there scouting locations for a movie, and she was there—”

  “Buying us Ding Dongs.” Shay’s voice was a rough blade edged in deep emotion.

  “She always bought us Ding Dongs in Des Moines.” Tait’s explanation was just as serrated. “Our local grocery didn’t carry them.”

  “Stock saw a biomedical thriller poking out of Mel’s purse. He was interested in what she thought of the story. Her review gave away enough about her profession that his interest turned to fascination.”

  “That doesn’t explain Mom’s gullibility,” Tait snapped. “She’s a smarter woman than that. Or at least she was.”

  “Unbelievably, Stock wasn’t always such a huge prick,” Ghid stated. “There was a time when the only thing he wanted was to make big money and have a little creative fun in Hollywood. And he was damn good at
both.”

  Tait’s forehead creased. “That tidbit and six bucks will get you a latte and a barista who cares,” he growled. “And I’m not him.” His lips compressed. “So Mom was standing there with Ding Dongs in the cart and a chest full of pissed off at Homez. I take it she spilled all to Stock?”

  “Pretty much.” While Ghid’s face remained, as always, an inscrutable wall, his eyes gave him away again. Shadows of deep memories turned them into dark moss forests. “And in return, he offered her everything, too.”

  Tait’s shoulders tensed against his T-shirt. “You’d better tell me my mind just jumped to the wrong conclusion about that, man.”

  “It did,” Ghid replied. “Because believe it or not, here’s where the story gets uglier.”

  “Fuck.” Shay’s reaction came from deep in his gut. Zoe ran a hand up to his shoulder, happy that he didn’t shirk her off again.

  “Your mom didn’t know it, but Homer was already working with others to make all of it happen. Though the funding came from Big Idea, they kept it all off the books, with knowledge about the project limited to a select group—and the sad-shit volunteers they scraped up for the program, of course.”

  Watching the man’s eyes was proving to be a wise move. They revealed his soul with heartbreaking clarity. “Mierda,” Zoe uttered. “You were one of those volunteers, weren’t you?”

  Ghid let out a heavy breath. “A man will sign on to do a lot of dumb things when he’s desperate,” he uttered. “Spend thirty years in prison or sign up for a couple of weeks in a simple science study? That’s a no-brainer, right?”

  “But it wasn’t.”

  The second Shay slammed out the words, he surged to his feet. The burst wasn’t a surprise. Zoe had been the one to feel the tension climb higher through his body. She longed to rise with him, to help him through this, but how could she soothe away the confusion from a situation she hardly understood? There wasn’t a user’s guide for this picture. No handy online video to help ease the soul of a man who’d just learned that his mother’s “magic honey” might really have been a tainted elixir.

  “Tell me.” Shay’s voice thickened to a growl, harsh in its demand—but not just from Ghid. He needed the revelation for himself and clearly waged an inner war of self-pride and loathing about it. Elite soldiers insisted on knowing every detail of what they faced, no matter how horrifying the intel.

  Tight emotion jammed the bottom of Zoe’s throat. Part of her gave in to a girlish swoon at observing the proud warrior side of him. The other part succumbed to her growing dread for him.

  Both conditions were distant memories within the next minute.

  Ghid replied to Shay’s command with a respectful nod. “You deserve to know,” he stated, “but sometimes, the telling is best done in the showing.”

  Without any more preamble, the man stripped off his shirt.

  As anyone with a brain would expect, Ghid was as ruthless and chiseled below the neck as above. Every inch of his tan skin was stretched taut over huge mounds of tendon and muscle. It was all a bit too daunting for Zoe, though she gave Melody Bommer a silent high-five for being the lucky female who shared his bed.

  And then he turned around.

  Proving, in graphic reality, that she’d remembered everything from the hallway with perfect detail. And bringing an insane new meaning to the words side effects.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Holy sssshhhh…”

  Dan never completed the exclamation. Shay didn’t blame him. The expression was beyond what his mind could produce, fumbling past shock and bewilderment, scrambling for the fortitude just to keep him on his feet instead of crumpling to his ass in a ridiculous ball of horror.

  Get your shit together. You’re a member of the finest fighting force on the planet. You’ve been through clusterfucks and firestorms that would spin the heads of most men. You need to look. And see. And try to understand.

  Ghid’s back…wasn’t a back. Instead of muscle and skin, his spine was bracketed by swaths of thick green scales. Shay would’ve even guessed that the plates were simply painted on, but they jutted from his back at least an inch and shifted with every move he made…which so far, the man subdued to a few uncomfortable shifts of balance. The sight was like a damn car wreck. Shay couldn’t help gaping but was sickened with himself for doing so.

  When their shock ticked past the one-minute mark, Ghid turned back around. “As you can see, Mel’s concern about long-term effects pretty much smacked the target.”

  “No shit,” Dan muttered.

  “Fuck,” Tait spat.

  “Wow.” They all threw stares at Zoe in the wake of her awe-filled murmur. The smile she gave Ghid conveyed even more admiration. “So that explains your eyes.”

  Ghid snorted. “My eyes?”

  “Of course. They’re beautiful. And fascinating.”

  Ghid blushed to the base of his neck. Shay joined Tait and Dan in a burst of laughter. The moment was a needed, if temporary, reprieve from this insane revelation.

  Insanity. Right. If only that was where Shay’s senses stopped. Inside the next ten seconds, he blew past insanity and straight down the highway to terror.

  “Fine,” Ghid finally huffed. “That’s what drinking lizard blood will do to a guy.”

  “Lizard?” Dan drawled. “You mean those cute little guys who run around on my backyard wall until my dog eats ’em?”

  “Hmmm.” Ghid pulled his shirt back on. “Nice image, but no. More like a mix of monitors, Komodos, and Gilas—the kind that like human limbs for breakfast.”

  Dan stepped back. “Oh.”

  “But if you count rhinos as cute, then I guess I qualify.”

  Shay joined Tait in a smirk as Dan paled. “No. Rhinos aren’t cute.”

  Ghid clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Didn’t think so.”

  All the humor aside, Shay’s gut left terror behind and dove into a vortex of raw dread. There was an elephant in the room—and damn it, it might even be him. He saw now that all of Ghid’s intense glances had actually been attempts at commiseration. He was officially a member of the Big Idea freaks club now, and the guy had been attempting a series of awkward welcome mats since hauling his ass out of hell. While he was grateful, this was one goddamn card he longed to rip out of his wallet.

  Have you learned anything about life yet, asshole? Don’t you know the choices aren’t always yours?

  Great fucking tip. Because years of choking down MREs, humping his ruck through miles of hell, and getting shot at by crazy jihadists hadn’t taught him the lesson already.

  He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  Or break something. Maybe all those fucking picture windows.

  Who the hell was he?

  What the fuck was he?

  If he wanted to find out, he had to hump the goddamn ruck again. And listen to the rest of Ghid’s story.

  “So what happened then?” he forced out. “When all of you started to…to…”

  “Morph out of control?” Ghid narrowed his eyes a little after filling it in. “What do you think happened, kid?”

  The man’s reasoning for the response was clear. By assisting with the answer, Shay could reclaim a couple of things he hadn’t had a lot of lately: his identity and his control. He was a trained member of a Special Forces Alpha team, not only capable of connecting this kind of information but processing it at least five different ways and then serving it up an enemy’s ass if that was the ordered plan.

  Ghid wasn’t just a genius; he was a friend.

  Shay communicated his gratitude with the nod he prefaced to his answer. “Operating outside the radar allows the government to deny culpability if they have to. In this case, I’m sure the Big Idea folks did everything they could to squeeze you all back down to a damn small idea.”

  Ghid’s gaze turned the color of a moss-lined torture chamber. Shit. Zoe was right. The guy’s eyes told profound truths. “It was a shit-rough time,” Ghid uttered. “They t
alked about secured camps, maybe shipping us off to an island…”

  “Dios mio,” Zoe whispered. “You’re human beings!”

  “Creatures,” Ghid corrected. “At least in their eyes. Walking, talking reminders of their big-time shit on the fan, but not sentient beings with lives or futures to be considered.” The guy sent a benign stare to Zoe—well, his stilted attempt at one. “Zoe, before the study, we were all convicts, remember?”

  “Who became something else in the name of their science.”

  “Not everyone’s.” Tait rose as he professed it. “Just that pudwhack Homer. He didn’t present the full facts to the brass. He had a big ego and a pencil dick, and he should have listened to Mom.”

  “And nobody knew that better than him,” Ghid stated. “The guy was the first one out the door—figuratively speaking, since there really wasn’t any door. It was a warehouse roll-up with fifteen kinds of security, which they bumped to seventeen even after they started keeping us strapped down all day.”

  Shay dropped to the couch again, backed by a stream of Spanish obscenities from Zoe. “Christ,” he muttered. His blood chilled, a horror martini tossed over ice cubes of incredulity.

  “What happened then?” Dan queried.

  “I think I know.” Tait’s gaze followed the dreamlike lines of the print on the wall again. His eyes hazed over with memories. “Somehow, somebody got word to Mom about Homer playing off the Big Idea pier and then falling into the royal drink of fuck-up. I happened to be home sick from school. A woman came to the house, flashing papers and ID, saying she was from some lab in DC.”

  Shay scooted his head out from the cocoon of his hands. “That’s one hell of a vivid recall.”

  “I’m sure of this one,” his brother asserted. “I won’t forget that goddess as long as I live. She looked like a living version of Pocohontas. Hell, she was—” He had the grace to squirm a little. “Sorry, Zoe. But she was fucking hot.”