Twisted Desire

by Sharon Kay

  “Sorry if this gets repetitive then,” Locke said.

  Megan shrugged half-heartedly, the gesture more weary than anything else. “What do you want to know?”

  “Well first of all, given that the field of genome research is kind of new uncharted territory, it has potential for all kinds of developments. Some might be more of a hot topic than others, maybe draw more attention…” Rhys let his words linger, watching Megan.

  She swallowed. “True. But we mostly work on cures or treatments for common diseases.”

  “Do you know if Scott was working on anything controversial or classified?” Rhys asked.

  “No. I don’t have access to his files, and anyway, the police already took his computer.”

  “Makes sense.” Rhys nodded. But Parker would find any possible digital trail that Scott left.

  “What was he like?” Locke asked. “Outgoing, quiet, workaholic?”

  “He worked insane hours.” Megan traced her finger on the table. “But this place was his baby. He built it up from nothing, and can detail any of the projects we have in progress or that have been completed.”

  “Family?” Locke asked.

  “Not married, no kids,” she said. “He was here all the time.”

  “Girlfriend? Boyfriend?” Locke pushed.

  “Neither.”

  “Can you think of anyone who he didn’t get along with? Maybe someone here?” Rhys asked.

  She froze for three seconds. Blinked. And her heart rate sped up again. Uh-oh. Rhys studied her. He glanced to Locke, who had gone still.

  “Megan?” Locke said, scooting closer, posture open and voice calm. Hell, the dude wasn’t a demon but obviously didn’t miss much.

  “He got along with everyone here…” She twisted her hands together. “Until recently. I guess.”

  “What happened?” Locke asked.

  “I-I heard an argument last night…” Her voice dropped to a near whisper.

  Locke laid a hand on the table near her nervous ones. Not touching, but so close, the offer of comfort was clear. “Between Scott and another employee?”

  “Yes.” She glanced at each of them as barely audible words fell from her lips. “I-I was scared. And I wasn’t sure of what I heard and saw, so—”

  “Saw?” Rhys’s senses hummed at how much she may have seen. Damn it. He needed to tread casually enough to keep her talking, yet seriously enough to make Locke think he was going easy on her and not just wasting time.

  “Well, I heard the argument,” she murmured. “But…then…”

  “You heard it,” Rhys repeated as encouragingly as he could. “And then you saw…more after that?”

  She nodded.

  Hell. Rhys had to ask the next logical question. “Megan, I need to ask this…” He watched as she met his gaze, almost hesitantly. “Did you see what happened to Scott?” He gentled his tone as much as he could, but there was no easy way to say it.

  Her voice, though subdued, echoed like a mortar shell in the quiet room. “Yeah.”

  Shit. If she’d seen the Deserati demon with her undisguised horns and tail? No wonder she was freaked out.

  “Jesus, I’m sorry,” Locke said. “Thought the offices were empty.” He shot a glance to Rhys.

  “So did I.” Fuck. Rhys ground his molars, imagining her terror at the demoness, but having to tamp down his instinct to tell Megan he understood her.

  “Not empty.” Megan waved a hand in a circular motion. “I was right h-here.”

  Rhys waited, guessing there was a lot more. How much she witnessed would determine the amount of damage control he had to set in motion.

  “I was working, and all of a sudden I heard loud voices,” she said. “They got louder as they kept talking. I couldn’t make out the words. These walls are thin, but still, for me to hear it in here…”

  “Do you know who the other person was?” Locke asked.

  “Yeah. Jerry Hayes.” She glanced to Locke. “He works a lot, too, and he’s polite but doesn’t socialize much. Except that a few months ago he started dating this gorgeous woman. I met her briefly after work one day. She looks like a supermodel.”

  Huh. Odd detail to share, but whatever. Rhys rested his palms on the table behind him.

  “Go on,” Locke said.

  “So, when I heard the arguing, I got up and walked to the hallway, to see what was going on. I knew Scott and Jerry were in the building. I didn’t think anyone else was. And when I was in the hall, I walked up to Scott’s office door and heard him telling Jerry to stop a project he was working on. Something about how he was getting nowhere, and it wasn’t funded by grant money.”

  “Do you know what the project was?” Rhys asked.

  “No,” she said softly.

  “Sorry if this is dumb question.” Locke offered a half smile. “Does all your work get grant money?”

  She nodded. “Pretty much. Some of these trials and developments run into the millions.”

  “But not one particular project of Jerry’s.” Locke folded his arms.

  “Well, I don’t know how much it cost. But in Scott’s mind it must’ve been taking too much time and resources.” She rubbed her temple. “And that’s strange, because Scott always encouraged us to come up with new ideas and submit them for funding.”

  Locke flicked a glance to Rhys, then swung back to Megan. She’d gone back to fidgeting with her safety glasses, folding and unfolding them. “Were either of them argumentative?”

  She shook her head, dark hair swishing around her shoulders.

  “Odd,” Locke grunted.

  “Yeah,” she sighed. “But then I heard footsteps like they were going to come out of the office, and I ran back to mine. I kept the door cracked open though. They were still arguing when they left.”

  Rhys rubbed a hand over his hair. “They walked out, fighting about something, at three in the morning?”

  “Yes. I mean, I didn’t see exactly what happened to Jerry after they walked through those glass doors.” Her voice tapered off to a tremble.

  “Megan?” Rhys asked with sincere sympathy. He knew from experience how frightening it could be for humans to unexpectedly encounter the city’s supernatural creatures. And he sensed the most damning details were still to come. “Can you tell us what happened next?”

  Her grip on her safety glasses turned white knuckled. “You guys...I don’t understand what I saw. And please don’t think I’m crazy. This…this particular detail, I didn’t tell the cops because I was terrified they’d put me in a psych ward. But also…I’m scared of what happened.”

  “You can tell us anything. We work with the cops, but we aren’t cops, so we have different resources. And different ways of moving on threats.” Now Locke did lay a hand on her slender arm. “What you say will stay with our teams.”

  She pinned hesitant eyes on Rhys. “You promise?”

  Rhys was fully aware that a human investigator might ask her why she’d held anything back. But his number one priority was to keep her comfortable with them. “All we want is to find the perpetrator and make sure nothing like this happens again.”

  She nodded. “Okay. Well…after they left, I went to the conference room in the front that has windows facing the street. And I saw Scott walk out. And he was on the phone, looking up and down the street. I figured he was calling a cab. And then…something ran at him.”

  “Something?” Locke asked.

  “A person?” Rhys asked. His instincts screamed in silent warning, anticipating what she would say next.

  “Yeah. I guess. I-I don’t know. I told the police that someone ran toward him with some kind of weapon…” She bit her lip. “I couldn’t see it very well. And then he collapsed. That’s all I said. Which is true…but there’s more.”

  “Okay…” Rhys murmured as calmly as he could, but internally, he was ready to tear that damn Deserati apart.

  Megan took a deep shuddering breath. “And this…this is the worst part…” She broke off into
rapid breathing, hands twisting in agitation.

  “Need a minute?” Locke asked quietly.

  She gulped. “No. If I don’t just say it, I may not be able to. Um…okay. Please hear me out.”

  “It’s okay, Megan.” Locke said. “We’re not gonna haul you off anywhere.”

  She drew another shaky inhale, and with wide eyes, she continued. “I thought it was a woman. I thought she needed help, maybe, that’s why she was running toward him. But she had a…a…” She squeezed her eyes shut for a second and opened one, then the other. “This is going to sound crazy. And there’s no good way to say it.” One rapid breath after another escaped her lips. “It looked like she had a, um…a tail. Or a weapon that looked like one? I don’t know.” She pressed a hand over her mouth as if horrified that she had even spoken those words out loud.

  Locke’s brows shot up.

  Rhys froze. Holy shit. Time to make sure Locke didn’t realize demons were running around Chicago, but also to reassure Megan that she wasn’t nuts at the same time. Without a doubt, Megan had seen the Deserati female. And holy gods, she was lucky to be alive. If the female realized she had a witness… “Can you tell us more?”

  “You don’t think I’m nuts?”

  “No.” Rhys put on his best causal voice. The poor thing was a mess, and he couldn’t blame her. She probably thought she was going batshit crazy. “We see a lot in our work. Not sure about people with tails.” He flicked a glance to Locke. “But with genetic modification occurring more frequently, nothing can be discounted.”

  “Um…okay. Well, we’re ten floors up. Whoever she was moved fast. I thought I was seeing things. But the woman, she had something that she used to hit him really hard. I couldn’t really see that well, and it happened so fast…” Megan’s eyes brimmed with tears. Locke snagged a tissue box from his end of the table and pushed it toward her. She took one, only to crush it in her hand.

  “She…it…whatever it was, hit him in the chest. It looked like a streak in the air. Like a dark streak going right for him. And-and then he dropped.” She grabbed another Kleenex as the tears overrode her efforts to stop them. “I’ve never seen anything like that. And I don’t understand any of it.” She leaned close to Locke as her shoulders trembled.

  Locke moved closer, wrapping a big arm around her. He glanced uncertainly over her head to Rhys.

  Rhys frowned and raised a shoulder in a half shrug. No doubt Locke had questions about everything Megan had said. Rhys would expect no less from a Titan team member, and the situation was beyond human capability to explain or fix. But more than that, he needed Megan calm and focused enough to remember details.

  Because that Deserati female was very real and very dangerous. And her existence couldn’t be revealed.

  “D-do you know what it was? What killed Scott?” she asked, glancing to each of them in turn.

  “No, but there has to be a logical explanation for it,” Locke said.

  “Locke’s right,” Rhys said. “We’ll figure it out, Megan. Thank you for sharing that with us.”

  “Figure it out? There may be some kind of weird creature—oh god, listen to me, I sound insane.” She grabbed a third tissue to blow her nose. “I shouldn’t even be here. Whenever I close my eyes, I see it…her, or whatever, replaying in my mind. And I couldn’t share this with anyone. Not without sounding crazy. I figured work might help me calm down and concentrate. At least I could take care of the rats.” She scowled at the balled up Kleenex. “I was wrong. I’m a mess.”

  Footsteps on the other side of the lab door caught Rhys’s attention, and he quickly processed Parker’s approach. His buddy opened the door slowly, as if not sure what part of the question and answer session he’d be walking into. One look at Megan’s tearful face and he paused. “Uh…everything okay in here?”

  “We’re good. Megan was sharing some details from the time of the incident,” Rhys murmured. “I think we were at a stopping point.”

  “Actually, I’m in Scott’s files. They were all backed up on the server.” Parker flipped a pen back and forth between his fingers. “Megan, are you familiar with something called Project Tashuri?”

  CHAPTER 5

  MEGAN PEEKED UP FROM HER embarrassing weepy muddle on Locke’s broad chest. The third man from this unanticipated, yet surprisingly calm trio had returned. The one who had left to take a look around. “Project Tashuri?” She slowly repeated the unfamiliar syllables. “No. Where did you see that?”

  “On emails between Scott Dayton and a Jerry Hayes. Something they didn’t agree on?”

  “Um…” A new unease tumbled her stomach. Hearing her normally mild-mannered colleagues yelling at each other had been bad enough. How far did this problem extend?

  “Megan was just telling us a little about Scott and Jerry. The argued right before…” Locke frowned.

  Yeah, there was no good way to say what she had just said. “Something work related, that Scott wanted Jerry to shut down. I didn’t realize it had a name.”

  “There’s more than a name,” the man—Parker, she remembered—went on. “There are dozens of files, charts, and those helixes. DNA stuff, right?”

  “What? Where did you see those?” DNA? Her curiosity spiked.

  “Mostly on Jerry’s computer,” Parker said. “But all the emails are on Scott’s too.”

  “How did you get into their files?” Megan gaped. He’d been gone all of what, fifteen minutes?

  Parker shrugged. “Part of my job. You wanna come see if this stuff makes sense? I can pull up the data, but I’m no scientist. It’s just numbers to me.”

  Locke gave her shoulder a tentative pat. This tall and very hot man had been surprisingly mellow with all her weirdness. He had a rugged confidence that suggested he didn’t spend much time at a desk job, and eyes that studied her like he wanted to learn more. She didn’t even know him and had blubbered all over his shirt after admitting she saw a person with a tail. Locke could very well think she was crazy.

  But she straightened her spine. She didn’t understand what she saw, yet these guys seemed to take her words in stride. If they could take her seriously, then she could examine a few files and help them understand the numbers and data as best she could. “Sure.” She grabbed one final tissue to wipe her eyes. “I can do that now.”

  Locke was on his feet instantly, seemingly ready to help her up if she teetered in her emotional state. She had no idea where he came from, but his demeanor radiated safety. And the hard muscles under his shirt were like none she had felt before.

  Not that she should be thinking anything along those lines. Her boss had been murdered. The stress of the day, of what she saw, had weighed on her so heavily that, by this point, she was ready to talk. And Locke and his crew made it clear they were more than ready to listen.

  “I feel better, letting that all out,” she said as she stood. “I’ve been a wreck all day, wondering if I should tell anyone, worried what would happen if I did…”

  “Sometimes you just need to tell the right people,” Locke said.

  “Yeah.” She crossed the room to meet Parker. “Jerry’s office?”

  “Yup. After you.” He gestured to the open doorway.

  “What if he comes in?” If Jerry had truly had a hand in what happened to Scott, Megan didn’t want to do anything to make him mad.

  “I’ll see it.” Parker held up his phone, which showed black-and-white images that were awfully familiar…

  She peered closer. “Those are our security cameras!” The depth of Parker’s skill slammed her. Pulling data off the server, hacking Jerry’s files, and now picking up Dayton security feeds on his mobile device. Whoa. These guys must be higher up the investigative ladder than she realized.

  Parker shrugged as if he hadn’t done something monumental. “A precaution.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured, and led her new and unexpected group of friends to Jerry’s office.

  Parker had left the door open. Megan beelined for the de
sk and sat down, drawn to the images on the screen. A rotating double helix spun slowly and gracefully on the screen, but it was unlike any Megan had ever seen before. Dimly, she registered the men entering the room. Geez, they were all big. There was no room left to move around. Good thing she was where she needed to be.

  A tiny voice chimed in her head. Really? You’re breaking into Jerry’s personal stuff.

  But the image of the scary mystery woman with what really looked like a tail flashed in her mind, and she shook off the hesitation. If Jerry wasn’t working on anything illegal, then fine, no harm done.

  Locke moved behind her to rest an arm on the back of the chair. He leaned over her, but not in a too-close way. More of a protective way, and she definitely didn’t mind. “I’m no scientist either,” he said. “That look like anything to you?”

  “It’s DNA, but I’m not sure whose.” She clicked on another file. This one held chart after chart of data. White and red blood cell counts. Comprehensive metabolic panels with details on protein, electrolytes, glucose. Dates. And only one name.

  Trina.

  “Oh my god! Trina. That’s…” She had only met her once, months ago, and Megan had been rushing to catch a late train. But the name wasn’t common, and now it clicked. “Trina is Jerry’s girlfriend.”

  Her gaze traveled among the men she was trusting more than police, and who had already probably violated several surveillance laws. Rhys glanced up from a safe on the floor. “He has DNA data on his girl?”

  “Is she sick?” Locke asked.

  “I don’t know. She seemed healthy—very healthy—the time I met her.” Megan paused, thinking back. “But I know that doesn’t always mean anything. Let me keep checking, see if any of her bloodwork indicates any viruses or malignancies.”

  “I’m gonna open this baby up, see what he’s got stored in here.” Rhys rapped his knuckles on the black metal safe.

  “Um, do you need a key?” She started opening drawers in the big wooden desk.

  “Nope. It’s a combination.” Rhys winked at her. “I got this.”