“No. The farm appears abandoned. The boat is gone, and they’re trying to track it down. A flock of drones scouring the coast was lost after reporting a set of images that match the husband of Dr. Tyler-Stevigson and the SEAL.”
“Which SEAL?”
“Army Harrison.”
“She’s with the other. They would split camps, head different directions and use different travel methods.” Kessler waved a hand. “Basic black ops training.”
“They are expanding the search quadrants, monitoring their known wireless devices, but right now, the climatologist and Army Harrison appear to be traveling alone, north along the Atlantic coast.”
“And the girl is lost?”
Silence confirmed his suspicion. The pen began to tap slowly again.
“He’s going to ground. He’s turned off coms. Traveling by foot, probably. But where is he taking her, and why? She must know whatever her mother knew that made her leave TEAR and go all native. Then he would have told her more.” Kessler scoured his brain for what they knew about Persephone Tyler-Stevigson, but the only face that came to his mind was Rajni’s. Dr. Rajni, who had defended her and wanted his staff to share less about her. “Find Dr. Rajni. Interrogate him, and get every bit of info he knows about that girl. Tonight.”
CHAPTER 20
* * *
Northern Atlantic, East of Matinicus Island
She was lucky enough to find cans of tuna, crackers, and old packets of mayo—enough to create a passable meal, while the waves grew in intensity and the wind buffetted the craft with a giant’s strength. The storm closed in on them through the satellite-linked dashboard and manifested itself inside the small vessel by making it difficult to make much headway. As she took their dishes to the sink, a sudden wave threw the boat high and sideways on one of its twin hulls. It tossed Rory sideways, and she rapped her head against a cabinet before she could brace herself. The cabinet popped open, revealing the power console she’d been seeking earlier.
Hearing the noise, Navy shouted her name and tried to lean away from the helm enough to see her without letting go of the wheel.
“I’m fine, I’m fine. I found the heater switches,” she said dryly. She was still rubbing her head when she came back to her seat. “I think I’ll just sit still.”
“Good. And leave the heater off until we stop. It’ll feel even colder when we’re not moving.”
Rory tucked into her fold-down seat, wrapping her jacket tightly against the growing chill. Outside, the wind and the waves became living things, rearing up ahead of them at heights too tall even to be illuminated by the boat’s lights. Navy seemed to feel his way through them, trusting an instinct that told him where to steer for the lowest point, while keeping them faced into the waves’ path. To Rory, it felt as if sea monsters were continuously appearing through the wide windows, growing slowly and menacing as if ready to eat them alive. Her fear would crawl up her spine and press her chest; then Navy’s instinct would take them over the monster and down its watery black back, and her fear would ebb as the inky ocean grew a new head.
He steered them through five straight hours of the roughest seas she’d ever experienced, both of them nearly silent as he focused on nothing but the ocean and the instruments. When the buildingsized waves finally began to smooth into huge swells and then choppy whitecaps that were manageable on autopilot, he stepped back, stretched, and rubbed his neck to release knots of tension.
“We’re pulling into Great Seal Cove to drop anchor, and it should be safe to get the heater running.”
“Thank God.” She shivered and crossed to the galley where she’d found the switches to flip on the boat’s heater. Returning, she leaned against the passageway to the helm and watched him guide the boat into the harbor, find a spot out of the wind, and let the anchor out to keep them there safe. It struck her that, yet again, Navy had delivered her through a gauntlet that would have killed her without him.
“You keep saving my life. Thank you,” she said from the doorway. “I know I’m just the mission, but I appreciate it.”
Navy went silent and still, staring at the consoles. When he spoke, his voice seemed to resonate through the quiet, tiny cabin, and made the space between them feel even smaller.
“Is that the problem here, Rory? You think I regard you as a mission?”
She dodged the question. “I didn’t say there was a problem.”
He looked over at her, pinning her with amber eyes that read her mind.
“Then why do you watch me like a hawk, avoid touching me, and question my motives constantly inside that head of yours?” Before she could answer, he stepped closer to her. “Maybe you’ve convinced yourself that I only care enough to deliver you from Point A to Point B?”
His eyes didn’t look like those of a man who was only finishing a job. With the dark marks on his face shadowed by a few days’ growth of beard, his shirt still stained from the blood of a wound he’d acquired defending her life, and his eyes burning into hers . . . he seemed suddenly determined. As her heartbeat quickened, her cheeks flamed, and she wondered if the SEALs taught him how to hear those things better than mere humans could. A tiny lift at the side of his mouth confirmed that suspicion.
She swallowed. “Aren’t you?” she managed. His eyebrow rose.
“Aren’t I what?”
Shit, she thought. I can’t even remember what he was saying. Get it together, Rory!
“Just going to drop me at the research station and disappear. Why else do you suddenly switch from being soldier to eyeing me like . . . and back again?”
He moved closer, cocking his head. “Like what, Rory? Like I want to eat you alive?” She lost her breath and took a step back in pace with him. “Like I want to peel off your clothes and touch every inch of you? Like I can’t get you out of my head, and I’m just waiting for you to realize how I feel about you?”
Each step brought him closer, his broad shoulders blocking out everything else. She took a careful step backward. “What are you doing?” she whispered. It was hard enough to keep pace with his steps, but his conversation had left her head and heart spinning. She felt like a tightrope walker about to tumble to an uncertain fate, with no net and a perverse desire to jump anyway.
“I’m moving toward you slowly.”
“Why?”
“I think if I ran, we’d both get hurt.”
Now he was inches from her, and she’d backed herself into the corner of the galley. The tightrope wobbled; she jumped anyway. Pushing off the countertop, she closed the gap between them and met his mouth with hers as she wrapped her hands around his neck. His arms closed crushingly around her, his lips devouring hers with the hunger she’d been sensing, doubting, from him.
Sensations assaulted her as he pressed her against the wall, his lips leaving hers only to travel down her throat while his hands roamed down her sides, over her hips, and under her thighs to hoist her legs around his waist.
“You drive me insane. I could never just leave you,” he growled into the curve of her throat. “How could you think that?” Rory tried to answer, but he covered her lips with his, and his hands slid into her hair as his mouth explored hers. She hardly registered that he was also cradling her head as he carried them to the sleeping berth of the catamaran.
CHAPTER 21
* * *
Bethesda, Maryland, TEAR Lab Headquarters
Dr. Jason Rajni let out a hiss of pain as the officer slammed him back into the seat he had just stood up from.
“You can’t keep me here. I’ve done nothing to deserve this.”
“You’ll stay until all our questions are answered.”
“I’ve. Answered. Them.” Rajni bit out the words in fury. “I only know Persephone gave her daughter shots.”
“What did she give the girl?” the officer repeated.
“I told you, I was never sure what they were!”
“Tell me more about when you and Persephone last spoke, before her death.”
<
br /> Rajni sighed. This was the fourth retelling.
“Persephone asked about the clinical trials. She’d been digging into my databases and suspected it, but she had no proof.” His mind recalled far more than he shared. Persephone finding the human test subjects, accusing him of abandoning all ethics.
You didn’t lose a child! he had screamed at her. Ethics be damned.
“She said I had abandoned my ethics,” he recounted, “and I told her that she didn’t lose a child, and her ethics could be damned. I didn’t see her or communicate with her again before she died.” Rajni was a well-read man. He knew the best liars wove truth throughout their fictions. And he had abandoned his ethics. He had left them at the hospital bedside of a four-year-old boy with his curly dark hair and his wife’s soft brown eyes. If TEAR could keep the rest of his family from dying, or another parent from feeling his soul-destroying grief, he would cross almost any moral boundary they asked.
The door opened and a familiar face met his. Kessler.
Kessler pulled up a chair and offered him one of the two coffees he was holding.
“Dr. Rajni,” he said with a nod.
“General Kessler. I thought perhaps you trusted me enough not to treat me like a petty criminal.”
“I can count on one hand those I trust in this world, Doctor,” Kessler chuckled. “And the only one that isn’t dead is my dog.”
“I’ve been here repeating myself to your officers for over an hour. My wife will wonder where I am.”
“I’ve heard. And for what it’s worth, I believe you. So I have one last question.”
“Please. Do go on.”
Kessler wasn’t accustomed to anyone’s disrespect. Though tempted, he restrained himself from throttling Rajni and took a soothing breath.
“If you don’t know what shots the girl was given, surely you know whether there’s any scientific possibility for her to be resistant to infections.”
Rajni paused and tipped his head. “That’s what you think is going on? That Aurora Stevigson is some sort of . . . walking cure?”
Kessler shook his head in mock shock before his features settled into a flat, emotionless expression that caused a frisson of terror to climb through Rajni. “Don’t act stupid. Yes, of course that’s what I’m fucking asking. Is it possible?” Rajni was quite certain the man could, and would, kill him without hesitation or remorse.
“Anything is possible. It’s highly, highly, highly improbable.” Rajni leaned back, feigning the relaxation he didn’t feel. “For example, if in fact Persephone’s daughter had some sort of magic blood, the very simple logic would follow that Persephone would not have died of an infection.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t act stupid, General. It’s not logical for the same reason that you and I are keeping patients in forced comas while we use them for their blood antibodies like some sort of twisted human dairy farm.”
CHAPTER 22
* * *
Great Seal Cove, North Atlantic
Sunlight pierced the small side windows of the sleeping bunk and woke Rory slowly. It had been a long time since she’d slept on a boat. She’d forgotten the lullaby of waves splashing against a hull. She had never woken, undressed, in a man’s arms.
Sliding her head back, she examined Navy’s sleeping face. He looked completely relaxed, peaceful. It was the first time she’d ever seen him like that. She wanted to let him sleep, but she couldn’t resist touching him again.
Navy lay still, letting Rory’s fingertips whisper over his chest and abdomen as she traced the dark discolorations of his skin. Was she regretting her decision in the light of day? Then her lips replaced her fingertips, kissing a trail along one of the blue marks.
It was more than he could take. With a laughing groan, he dragged her closer and rolled her across his chest to pin her beneath him. She let out a squeal of surprise and laughter when he buried his face in her neck. When his lips began to trail across her collarbones and down her chest, the laughter turned into sighs carrying his name.
His body fit into hers perfectly, extending the waking dream and pushing away reality a little longer until she let out a cry of pleasure and her nails dug into his shoulders to anchor her to the earth.
“Good morning, Rory,” he whispered a few moments later, and she giggled again.
“Good morning, Navy.”
Rory rolled with him onto their sides and touched his face as their eyes held.
“When do we have to leave?” she asked.
“Not soon. The batteries died around three, and we need the charge time.”
She blinked blue-green eyes. “How did you . . . ?”
“I heard the heater go off.” He grinned. “I guess you were too warm to notice.”
She kissed him to linger in the warmth.
“C’mon. I’ll show you Great Seal Cove,” he suggested. “We can buy some supplies, if the store is still here.”
“Did you come here when you were young?”
Navy nodded and recalled the long fishing trips with his father. Cold, wet, hard work. But looking back, it was the purest, most honest work he’d ever done.
“I drank my first whiskey at the tavern here.” She wondered if he even realized he was twisting a lock of her hair in his fingers. “Yeah, my father and I came here on fishing trips,” he finally explained.
“Are you hungry?”
His smile was wolflike. “Starving, since I met you.”
Rory laughed and pushed up to sit on the edge of the bed. “If there’s no store, no restaurant or diner or even a farm with eggs, I might be eating Atlantic sushi for breakfast.”
After finding a dockside store, they tied off the cat and loaded up on fresh food, then walked through the small town built around the cove’s inner harbor. The town’s only restaurant was open, and they both devoured large plates of eggs, smoked fish, and potatoes. A small fishing shop yielded some bait and a new, warmer jacket for Rory.
He took her hand as they walked, and Rory indulged in fantasy for a moment: that she was a normal young woman, on a vacation with her lover, enjoying a beautiful stroll. The urge to beg him to stay there with her was almost as strong as the longing she had to tell her mother what she was experiencing.
“I wish you could have met my mother. She would have liked you.”
Navy paused, and she turned, surprised to find him staring at her intently. He tugged her into his arms and held her tightly. Into her hair he whispered, “Sorry. I was just thinking the same thing about my dad.”
After a moment’s silence, she tilted her head back to meet his kiss.
“Did your dad teach you how to catch lobster? Because as far as I’ve seen, you’re awful at it.”
Laughing, he pressed her forward to return to the boat.
“He really would have liked you.”
Back on the boat, as they cast off and Navy checked the displays again to set their course, he turned the radio on low to listen to the chatter of the other boats. When Rory sent him a questioning look, he explained.
“We’re going to curve past the southern tip of Nova Scotia, and it’s a busy area. I want to know how much Coast Guard activity there is, because that’s the next logical step for TEAR. Kessler will tell them to look for stolen boats and go from there.”
Rory listened along with him, hoping to hear her father’s baritone cut through the lines and confirm he was all right. The thought of joining a new world, a new place with its own new cultural norms, people, and relationships, seemed more than daunting without him. She was sure he was safe, but she’d prefer he be with her when they switched from the boat to their new destination.
“What’s eating at you?” Navy interrupted her thoughts with a gentle nudge.
She met his eyes and shrugged. “I just don’t know anything about this place we’re going. I’d like to disembark knowing Dad is there already, or arrive with him.”
He nodded. “Ask me anything about it.”
�
��I don’t know . . . tell me what it’s like. Who founded the Resistance? What type of people have joined it?”
Navy turned the radio down slightly and gave a few seconds’ thought before launching in with the facts he was willing to share.
“I’d say it came together with a handful of scientists who became aware of what TEAR was doing and its real agenda. Jeffrey McWray, an ex-Marine and technology and energy billionaire, got involved early, gave access to resources we wouldn’t otherwise have—that’s what the Hibernia really is, his energy farm.”
“Like a wind farm?”
“There are those. Also wave farming, capturing kinetic energy of waves. Byron’s going to enjoy Jeff. That, or they’ll annoy the hell out of each other. But you asked about people. Obviously me and Army. Several hackers and computer analysts. They’ve been watching your database. They’re impressed,” he added with a smile at her. “And then, of course, there are researchers. A few from TEAR, but from several other countries, too. I don’t understand everything they’re doing—looking at viral resistance markers or something all the time. I read the reports, but it doesn’t all translate.”
“Bacterial resistance markers,” she supplied. His arched brow said it was still lost in translation. “Viruses don’t become resistant. I mean, they could if we had drugs for them, but generally we—anyway, they aren’t actually alive, so markers—I’m still confusing you, aren’t I?” She laughed and rolled her eyes.
“Try again. I like when you explain the science to me.” Now her brow arched. “You have sexy brains.”
A smirk belied her pleasure at the comment. “Bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics after they are exposed long enough, because bacteria are constantly evolving and replicating. If you think about how long it took humans and animals to evolve to the current state—millions upon millions of generations and selection pressures that favored us walking upright, growing big, sexy brains—well, that’s like a year or even a day in the life of bacteria. They replicate so quickly, and they’re so simple compared to us, that overexposure to antibiotics is a selection pressure that favors the bacteria that have developed resistance. It kills off the bacteria that aren’t resistant, leaving plenty of space for the smarter ones.”
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