“Clever girl.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
She didn’t need to look to know his gaze pinned on her, scrutiny wrapped in indolent humor. “My mistake.”
She swallowed her anger. “I know it’s some kind of witch lab experiment,” she continued evenly. “And that its roots go all the way back to the old city. Over fifty years.”
“Is that all?”
She shot him a narrow glance. Jerked her attention back to the road as the streetlamps they passed bathed his skin in crimson smears and unforgiving light. It was just blood. Everybody had it.
She didn’t mind her blood. His wasn’t all that different.
Red and wet. Harmless.
Liar.
Damn it.
She cleared her throat. The gummy texture in the back of it didn’t ease. “According to the information I acquired—”
“We’ll talk about how, later.”
She ignored that. “According to that information,” she repeated over him, “the project has been moved, shut down, and restarted a handful of times. Far as I know, the Mission wasn’t involved until Mrs. Parrish assigned you and Nelson to my unit and wanted us to do her legwork on Wayward Rose. I don’t know how Juliet Carpenter is related to any of it.”
“You’re thorough.” He closed his eyes, head resting back against the car’s side panel. “You know everything I know.”
“I don’t think so.” Her tone cooled. “How is Lauderdale involved?”
“He started it.”
And with that single phrase, pieces fell into place. A headache threatened behind her forehead; stress balled into an angry little knot as she said quietly, “And he’s still running it, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“You’re from this experiment.”
“Me and a whole army.” Wearily, he raised his bloody hand to his face, caught himself and lowered it again. “GeneCorp, an entity separate from Sector Three, runs the project, but GeneCorp is run by Laurence Lauderdale, ergo . . .”
Ergo, Lauderdale had his fingers in a lot of pies. She wondered if the Church knew.
“And?” she pressed when silence followed.
“And, nothing. You have all the answers.”
“Bull hockey.”
His snort of laughter only spiked a rising octave to her anger. He lifted the makeshift compress, checked his wound.
The hair on Parker’s neck raised as she forced herself not to look. Not to see the blood smeared on his side, soaked into his hands and bandages and— “Pull over,” Simon demanded.
She shook her head. Hard. “I’m fine.”
“Parker, pull over.”
She did. But only because she was fairly sure that if she didn’t, he’d make her.
And if he touched her with a single bloody digit, she was going to vomit. Her guts twisted just thinking about it.
He dropped the bloody T-shirt to the floor at his feet.
As the car drifted to a stop beside a brightly lit line of condominiums—metal and glass, unlike her quainter metal and brick complex—Simon unlatched the door and stepped into the rain.
Parker clung to the wheel and tried to breathe deeply.
Maybe he knew she needed a moment. Maybe he let her take it. She didn’t know. All she knew was that she had to get it together before she lost her cool completely.
The rain slammed into the car, pounded the roof and windshield until all she heard was the force of the weather. Thunder, pellets of water.
It drowned out her heartbeat.
Slowly, her grip on the steering wheel relaxed.
The driver side door wrenched open. Grabbing her arm, Simon yanked her out of the seat. Supported her weight when her feet tangled together, and tucked her, none too gently, between the car’s unyielding metal frame and the half-naked, strangely warm resistance of his body.
Rain sluiced down his face, pounded into his bare skin.
Parker blinked at the sting of it in her eyes. Her mouth opened, but whatever words she’d intended vanished on a breathy sound of surprise, of raw shock, as Simon seized her jaw between thumb and fingers.
“Stop fighting me,” he said, every word a low, aggressive order. “Just stop.”
His thumb dug into the corner of her mouth, forcing her lips to part on a gasp. Her eyes widened. “Those men were under orders to kill you, do you understand that? Do you know what I just threw away to haul your stubborn ass out of there?”
Cold rain slid down her cheeks. Pooled into the collar of her jacket, sent fingers of ice down her spine.
So at odds with the heat of awareness low in her belly. Of her heart’s frightened hammer and the wild fluttering in her gut.
So conflicted.
But the rain washed away the blood. Ruined the only excuse she had to avoid looking at him. He gave her no choice, fingers hard at her jaw, forcing her face to lift to his. Pinning her in place. “Make this easy on me, Parker.”
Her hand splayed on his chest—warm skin, hard muscle. Something about him pulled at her. Why? Because her hormones said so?
She couldn’t lose control of this. Couldn’t let him bully her. She was a director. The boss. The ice bitch of the Mission.
But as his eyes blazed into hers, wild and angry, Parker wondered what he’d taste like. What he’d feel like, wet skin to wet skin, moving over her. Into her. Taking her, dominating her. Right here in the rain.
He could. She knew he could.
And she couldn’t let that happen.
“I’m grateful,” she told him. The rain slid over her lips, cool and tangy. She watched his eyes trace her mouth. Darken. “I think that makes us even. Get off of me, Mr. Wells.” Before raw lust and temper overwhelmed whatever good sense she had left.
The woman needed a lesson. A thorough one.
Logic assured Simon that he didn’t have time to do it now. Still, he couldn’t help himself. His left hand cupped her skull just over the sodden knot she kept her hair in. Tendrils clung to her cheeks, forced loose by the rain. It helped soften her appearance.
But her eyes, blue and bottomless, hardened. Iced over, as if it’d help her.
It wouldn’t. Simon knew her tricks.
His thumb stroked the corner of her mouth, smearing the surprisingly durable red lipstick she’d chosen. “Simon,” he corrected. Rain splattered across his shoulders, down his back. It dampened the heat emanating from his skin, but not by much.
Was he running a fever? Just his luck.
The inevitable just crept closer and closer.
But not yet. Not before he got Director Parker Adams out of the mess he’d helped create. Whether she liked it or not.
She shoved at his chest. “This is ridicu—”
“Simon,” he said over her, and she gasped as his thumb once more dug at the corner of her mouth.
This time, he didn’t stop with making a point. The tip of his thumb slipped between her lips, slick with rain. Her skin, pale in the unforgiving fluorescent lights, flushed with sudden embarrassment. Heat filled her eyes.
She couldn’t hide that.
He wanted her to submit. To his protection, to his touch. To him.
Not something they trained him for at the lab.
Her tongue darted against the pad of his thumb, as if it could push him out.
As if she couldn’t help but taste it.
Her fingers at his chest tightened, nails digging in so suddenly that he inhaled on a harsh sound of lust as it tightened low in his balls.
Focus. “I’m a witch,” he said, voice rougher than he meant. “I’m part of the Salem Project. I’m the only thing standing between you and a shit storm none of you saw coming. You’re going to have to trust me.” And—because why the hell not?—he went for broke. “At this point in the game, I need you to trust me, Parker.”
Her teeth nipped at him; on purpose? He couldn’t tell. Her eyes locked on his, hazy. Banked with something so focused, smoldering, he couldn’t be positive she heard hi
m.
She would. His fingers clenched in her hair. Tight enough to secure the silken knot in his hand; hard enough to force her back into a steep curve, thrust her breasts against his chest.
“You call me Simon,” he said into her wide eyes. “I’ll call you Parker. Because we’re going to be stuck together for a while.” Longer than she probably hoped.
Too long for his peace of mind.
Too late for that.
“Do you hear me?”
Her lashes, brown at the base and tipped with red, flickered. Down to his hand; his thumb aching, caught between her teeth. Her gaze rose.
The lust he read there—raw, scorching, wild—reached into his blood and boiled it over.
Her mouth closed fully around his finger.
His thoughts fled on a ragged growl. “And we don’t have time for that, either.”
But damn if he didn’t let those sexy red lips pull on his finger.
The feeling tightened in his dick, squeezed as if her lips wrapped around him there instead of his thumb. Erotic as hell.
So not the right time. He slipped his thumb free, his smile flashing as her teeth scraped along the callused edge. “Jesus, you’re dangerous.”
He leaned back. Far enough that he couldn’t feel her body against his bare chest. That he could breathe without smelling the rain-drenched fragrance of her.
And her perfume, sweet and refreshing. The smell haunted him.
The director had a streak of something wild in her. Simon would explore that. He couldn’t not.
But he’d have to do it later. When his side wasn’t throbbing and the threat of Salem operatives didn’t ride his ass.
“Get in the car,” he ordered, and let her go.
As her gaze cleared, mouth twisting and one hand raised to her lips, Simon folded into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut.
His heart hammered. A steady thrum of arousal. And of excitement. Bad timing for it, but then, there wouldn’t be any time for anything if either of them got killed now.
It was time to come clean. At least as much as she needed to know to be comfortable.
Hell, maybe she’d have more to add than what he knew.
Maybe it was time to trust someone else.
Then again, maybe he just wanted in her pants.
The passenger door jerked open. Color high in her cheeks, Parker climbed into the seat, droplets scattering with every sharp gesture, and slammed the door shut again.
Thunder crashed. Perfect counterpoint to the twisting in his gut.
Simon guided the car back onto the street. “You know that the Salem Project has been around since before the quake.”
“Yes,” she said, once more the ice queen. Like that night in her home, it didn’t fit the rain-drenched, fierce-eyed creature shivering beside him. “But the trail for that project ended well after the quake. I assumed the records didn’t survive.”
He reached out, turned on the heater, and flicked the vents wide.
Because he didn’t have it in him to risk another wrestling match with his own need, Simon didn’t deflect her with humor. Not this time. “That, and because the Salem Project started as something else.” His tone flattened, eyes flicking from rearview mirror to the road at regular intervals.
The rain didn’t make spotting a tail easy.
“At the time, knowledge was worth more than results,” he continued when she said nothing. “Dr. Laurence Lauderdale and his wife, Matilda, pioneered a new track into an ongoing project, but they both worked for GeneCorp.”
“They didn’t own it?”
“Not then. After the quakes, they rebuilt the company. Or, more precisely, the Church rebuilt the company.”
“What is it?” she asked, but not impatiently. She’d put her director face on.
The one that said she was listening not as a person on the wrong end of a bad decision but as a tactical advisor. A decision maker.
He’d have to rid her of that notion real quick.
“I get that it’s rolling out witches on some kind of”—she gestured—“factory belt, but why? Is it a supersoldier project? A genetic study on witches? What’s their goal?”
Even he didn’t know that. It’d changed, somewhere along the way. Changed enough that Mattie had fled.
He flicked her a quelling frown. “My story. Simmer down.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Of course, Ag—” She caught herself. “Simon.”
His name on her lips shouldn’t have lanced a bolt of lust to his cock. It did.
Because she’d listened.
God, that was sexy.
“I don’t know how it started, or what the intent was, but it graduated to gene therapy shortly after the Salem genome was discovered.”
“Why? To . . . cure it?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. The Lauderdales focused on retro-engineering the genome first. For study. They were only in the fledgling stages when the quakes hit.”
Parker glanced down to the floor. Blanched, and pulled her sneakered feet up.
Simon hid a smile. “Sorry about my shirt.”
“It’s fine.” It wasn’t, but he’d give her points for bravado.
“After the quakes, the witch hunts started.” Simon glanced in his side mirror. Frowned when a single light winked out of view.
“The witches created the imbalance,” Parker replied. Like a good little Church mouthpiece.
“I’ve never met a witch who could cause an earthquake.”
“Enough blood makes a powerful focus for—”
Simon’s back teeth came together so hard that they audibly clicked. “Take off the Mission face paint for one second, Parker, and listen to me. Witches do not have that power. Period. It’d take an entire city of blood to cause something like that—” She opened her mouth. “Not that there’s any proof it’s even possible. There were no citywide sacrifices before the disasters started.”
Her mouth closed, red eyebrows knotting. She sat back in her seat, back angled into the corner. To keep an eye on him. Put distance between them.
And rightfully so.
He forged ahead anyway. Might as well rip the stitches out all at once. “Think about it. In the handful of years before the quakes, there were other cities hit by other things. Superstorms, earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, floods. Don’t you think if there were any articles, any recordings, anything about witches conducting mass sacrifices, the Church would have shown it by now? As pure propaganda, if nothing else.”
Her eyes narrowed again, but it wasn’t in anger. Score one point for logic.
Negative five hundred for indoctrination.
Simon rolled his shoulders. It didn’t ease the tension. “I realize it goes against everything you believe in, but you’re going to have to face this. I’m part of a legacy that spans over five decades. I know what I’m talking about.”
She said nothing.
“Somewhere along the time line, they successfully retro-engineered the sequence.” He frowned again at the mirrors. The single light doggedly followed. In and out of view. Too far to get any details.
“But why wasn’t anyone told?”
“Because witches are bad, remember?” He didn’t bother mitigating the scorn out of his answer. “At that time, the populace was just antsy enough to pull a torch-and-pitchfork routine on anyone caught playing with witches. Even if those witches were innocent of anything.”
“I guess so. But why would Bishop Applegate want soldiers genetically modified with the Salem genome?” she demanded. “It goes against every doctrine he’s ever preached. They’re making witches.”
Simon’s smile lacked humor. “He doesn’t. The program isn’t for him. I doubt he even knows.”
Her gaze dropped to his torso, though he knew she couldn’t see his seal—or the incriminating bar code—from where she sat. “How old are you? Where were you born?” Her frown twisted. “Are you from outside the city?”
“I’m thirty. And I wasn’t born, Parker, I wa
s vat-grown. Cultivated in a test tube and incubated by a machine, right here in New Seattle.”
Every word seemed to shape her expression. Narrowed it, refined it. Hardened it. Her mouth flattened into a thin, white line.
He might as well go for broke.
“The Salem Project isn’t for the Church.” He glanced at her. “It makes witches out of genetic material with the greatest odds of survival. Hatches them, raises them, and turns them into soldiers. The problem is in the longevity.”
“What do you mean?”
His smile twisted. “There’s something in the DNA that’s . . . broken or fractured or not complete. I don’t know, I’m not a scientist.” He glanced at her, then again at the mirror. “That’s what has the Lauderdales so wrapped up.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s easy. Director Lauderdale made himself an army, but his wife made sure he couldn’t use it.”
“His wife.” Parker smoothed her hands over her hair, but it wouldn’t help. Gone was the sleek coil. Tendrils hung around her cheeks in a sexy frame he couldn’t help but notice. She looked good ruffled. He wanted to ruffle her some more. “You mean Mattie,” she said, so suddenly that he couldn’t help his smile.
“Yeah. I called her Mattie.”
“But she died. Matilda Lauderdale passed away years ago.” Her voice now slanted what was common fact up into a question. “You had to be, what, six years old?”
Approval had him nodding, but not in agreement. “That’s a lie Lauderdale gave his suddenly motherless kid. Mattie died two months ago.” He reached up, adjusted the rearview mirror. “And she didn’t abandon us completely. Hang onto your bucket, sweetcheeks.”
“What?” She gripped the seat belt over her chest. “Why?”
Simon shifted his grip on the wheel. “We may have a tail.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Kayleigh knocked on the door as a courtesy.
Dark mission 04 - Sacrifice the Wicked Page 10
