by Cassie Miles
“This isn’t about sex.”
“Damn.”
She was lying. Thoughts of making love to this incredible man were always running through her mind, but she had other concerns. “I need for you to trust me completely. There’s no more need for secrets.”
“I’ve told you everything.”
“Not by a long shot. I don’t even know your real name.”
“David,” he said. “David Andrew Barten.”
She rested her hand on his cheek. “It’s a nice name.”
“But not who I am. Little Davey Barten was an orphan, a foster kid with a chip on his shoulder, a victim.” He took her hand and pressed her palm against his lips. “I’m Drew Kincaid. A successful freelance journalist. A sportsman. An adult who determines his own fate.”
Drew Kincaid was the man who had swept her off her feet, but there was a soft spot in her heart for the boy he once had been. In spite of his regenerative abilities, his childhood wounds had never healed.
“Jack gave you a warning,” she said. “He’s a pre-cog. He can see things. And he said that you would need help, that you can’t handle this by yourself.”
“A handy bit of precognition,” Drew said. “Jack wants me to sign on. It’s to his advantage to have me cooperate. Would he have told me if he saw that his plan had any possibility of failure?”
“Wow, you’re cynical.” Jack Maddox didn’t come across as a scam artist or a con man. There was something deeply compelling about his ability, and Melinda believed him one hundred percent. “Jack isn’t a liar.”
“His primary focus is to rescue his twin brother. If anybody else—like me or you—gets hurt along the way, he might consider that to be an acceptable price.”
“How can you say that? Jack and Claudia were nothing but helpful. They gave us a lot of information. And that DVD. And the secure cell phone to call them.”
“Thanks for reminding me.” He took the phone from his pocket. “This thing might put out a GPS tracking signal. I’m throwing it out the window.”
“Don’t you dare.” She unfastened her seat belt and scrambled across the seats to snatch the cell phone from his hand. “They might need to contact us.”
“I don’t want to be contacted.”
She was beginning to get seriously ticked off at him. “Why are you being so obstinate? Jack has access to information we don’t know about, FBI information. He could alert us to danger.”
“Maybe,” he muttered.
“Finally! You’re starting to listen to me.”
When the phone in her hand rang, she jumped. The caller ID read unknown. She flipped it open. “Hello?”
A man’s voice said, “Put David on the phone.”
She held the phone toward him. “He asked to speak to David.”
“Tell him to go to hell.”
She spoke into the phone. “I’m sorry, but—”
“Put me on speakerphone,” the voice said.
She did as he asked. “You’re on.”
“Don’t hang up. This is the FBI.”
Drew glared at the phone. Anger radiated from him. His upper lip curled in disgust. “Hello, Daddy.”
Chapter Thirteen
Drew took the phone from Melinda and switched off the speaker. His conversation with Harlan Anderson was sure to get ugly, and he didn’t want her to hear. He pushed open the door to the Range Rover and stepped into the night. “How’s Belle?”
“Don’t know. We divorced years ago, not too long after you left town.”
“How come?”
“We had our reasons.”
Drew assumed that Harlan and Belle were complicit in the experiments. They conspired to keep him in the dark, telling him the blackouts were some kind of epilepsy, threatening him with being committed to an asylum. “Did Sykes pay you to keep me in the house close to The Facility?”
“Money changed hands,” Harlan admitted. “But that’s not why I did it. I was—”
“Stop. I don’t need to hear your excuses.”
There was no justification for what they’d done. Anger wrenched Drew’s gut. His muscles tensed, preparing for a fight. But there was no one to hit, nothing but a voice over the phone.
He strode along the shoulder of the road. Beside him, a rushing creek splashed over rocks and fallen branches. The cold night wind whistled through the tree branches.
“David? Are you still there?”
“Don’t call me that. I’m Drew Kincaid.”
“I’ve heard about your success.” Harlan sneered on that last word. He’d always been stingy with praise.
“Success,” Drew repeated. “They say it’s the best revenge.”
“I was the one who got you started with sports. Remember all those weekends when we watched baseball? And the basketball hoop in the driveway? We had some good times, son.”
“I’m not your son.”
“I protected you as best I could.”
Drew recalled an echo of auditory memory when Harlan had been telling someone that he’d had enough. A feeble attempt at protection? “You lied to me.”
“I had to. If we hadn’t taken you in, you’d have been locked up in The Facility, caged like a wild animal. With me and Belle, you had a normal life.”
His life had been a lot of things. Normal wasn’t one of them. He’d always been different—an outsider, fearful of the blackouts, confused by his strange abilities. And angry, too. Angry, mostly. He lowered the phone from his ear, unable to listen to one more mendacious word without exploding.
In the forest on the opposite side of the creek, a twig snapped. Reacting swiftly, Drew pulled his Glock from the shoulder holster, dropped to one knee and aimed into the deep shadows between the rugged pine trees. A doe stepped out from behind a granite outcropping.
The sight of this gentle animal served as a reminder that unbridled rage wouldn’t serve his purposes. He had to tamp down his anger. He shouldn’t waste this opportunity to talk to the man who raised him.
“I’ve been looking for you, Harlan.”
“Like you, I go by many names.”
This conversation had started with a mention of the FBI, which made no sense to Drew. As far as he knew, Harlan was in sales for some kind of paper products company based in Washington, D.C., and he was on the road a lot. “You’re a sales rep, right?”
“That was my cover.” He paused. “I’m a federal agent. When you were living with us, I had other assignments, but my primary mission was to locate The Facility.”
Drew took a moment to digest this information, unsure about whether or not he could believe Harlan. “I want verification.”
“Not likely,” Harlan said. “I can prove that I’ve been with the Bureau for over twenty years, but we don’t give out details on undercover investigations.”
“Let me get this straight. From the time I was ten until I was eighteen, you were trying to expose the place where these experiments were being conducted. Eight years. And you couldn’t find the place.”
“Sykes didn’t put up road signs.” His tone turned huffy and defensive. “I never knew when they’d take you. Sometimes, twice in a week. Other times, it would be a month or more. And if they knew I was following, we’d all be killed. Sykes was never shy about letting me know who was in control.”
“What about satellite imaging? Aerial photographs? What about a good old-fashioned search with a couple of dozen agents?”
“We couldn’t risk it.”
Or maybe the FBI didn’t want to take that risk. Maybe they were interested in seeing how the experiments turned out. Maybe they wanted his self-healing ability. “The Feds knew what was happening to me, and they allowed it to continue.”
“There were other people involved—innocent victims being held in The Facility. We couldn’t risk their lives. Hey, I didn’t come up with the game plan. I was just following orders.”
Just following orders. How many atrocities had been perpetrated with that excuse? Drew said, “I heard tha
t The Facility was raided a couple of months ago.”
“Yeah, and look how that turned out. Not good. Sykes got away with all his research. He took off like a Sammy Sosa home run hit over the center field fence. There’s only one way to find him now. And that requires your cooperation.”
Drew pivoted on the road and started back toward the Range Rover. Melinda leaned against the front bumper with her arms folded below her breasts. Moonlight caught in her curly hair, outlining her face like a halo.
He knew that she’d want him to cooperate with the FBI. To play nice. She trusted that these people who had allowed him to be victimized would do the right thing.
“There’s one thing I need to know,” Drew said. “The death of my parents. Was it an accident?”
“We don’t know.” He exhaled a sigh into the phone. “Military medical records showed that your father had the I gene. That’s why you were considered a good candidate for the experiments.”
“I need an answer,” Drew said harshly.
“Your parents went down in a small plane. It looked like wind shear was the problem. The FAA found no evidence of sabotage.”
“Damn it, Harlan. Tell me.”
“I don’t know.”
Drew’s fingers clenched around the cell phone. The glow from the screen mocked him in the darkness. He wanted to smash it with a rock. If it had been up to him, he’d say the hell with this. He’d climb into the vehicle and drive until he disappeared into the unknown. But he had Melinda and the baby to think about. “What do you want from me?”
“Give me a chance to explain. Tell me where you are. I’ll meet with you.”
As if he’d trust this man? “I’m not giving you my location.”
“Okay, how about if we meet tomorrow. At the old house in Lead.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“No matter what you believe, I’ve always cared about you. Let me make things right. Tomorrow. If you can’t make it at noon, I’ll wait.”
Drew ended the call. As he approached the Range Rover, Melinda came toward him. Even in the dim moonlight, he could see the worry on her face, and he was deeply sorry for dragging her into the disaster that was his life. He should have known better than to get involved with her, should have left her alone.
He held out the cell phone, keeping her at arm’s length. “Take the damn phone. I’m done talking.”
Ignoring him, she came closer. Her hands slipped inside his jacket as her arms encircled him. She adjusted her position to accommodate the shoulder holster. Her head nestled in the crook of his neck. Softly, she murmured, “It’s okay, Drew. We’re going to get through this.”
“How the hell can you know?” He heard the brusque rejection in his voice. His arms were straight at his sides, refusing to embrace her. Sex was one thing—one very good thing. But he wasn’t a fan of affection. “What are you doing?”
Her head tilted back and she looked up at him. “I’m comforting you, letting you know that I care.”
“I don’t need comfort.”
“But you do.” She didn’t seem to be arguing, just stating a fact. “You’re so furious that you almost mowed down an innocent deer in the forest. And you have every right to be angry after what you’ve been through.”
“What’s the point of being comforted?”
“It’s not a reasoned response. It’s a gift,” she said. “Open your arms and accept it. Accept me.”
He couldn’t say no. He wrapped his arms around her and held on tight.
MELINDA’S MOM always said you couldn’t understand another person until you walked a mile in their shoes. Though Melinda had only taken a couple of baby steps with Drew’s self-healing ability, she was already overwhelmed. The ability wasn’t actually the issue. It was everything that went with it. The espionage. The pursuit. The danger.
She was certain that they needed help to navigate through these obstacles.
After some intense talking, she’d convinced Drew to return to Rapid City to see Jack and Claudia again. Following their directions, she drove to the Quiet Valley Motel. A neon sign on the front office said Vacancy. The parking lot was circular. In the center was a fenced pond, a couple of ragged pine trees and a replica of Mount Rushmore. The rooms were separate cabins. Claudia said they were in number eight. A reference to the eight-pointed star?
As Melinda parked, she looked over at Drew. He’d been awfully quiet since his phone call with Harlan, and she feared that he was reliving memories of his younger days. “Thinking of Harlan?”
“He wasn’t a bad father,” Drew said. “Kind of distant. Not home very often. But he didn’t slap me around or anything.”
“He wasn’t a father. Never intended to be,” she said. “Like he told you, he was doing his job as an FBI agent, and that didn’t include being a parent. He was a caretaker.”
His gaze met hers. “What’s the difference?”
“You’ll know,” she said with confidence. “When our baby is born, you’ll know what it means to be a dad.”
“I’m glad you think so,” he said as he opened the car door.
Though Drew never had a decent male role model, she was certain he had the capacity to love. In spite of everything, he was a good person, capable of empathy. That was one reason he was so good at writing interviews. When they first started dating, she’d read some of his articles, and she appreciated the depth his words gave to a goofball skateboarder or a world-class cyclist in the Tour de France.
Jack opened the door to number eight before they knocked, which she figured was a pre-cog thing. A little disconcerting.
Drew confronted him immediately. “Why the hell did you give the cell phone number to Harlan?”
“I wanted to convince you that we’re legitimate, working with the FBI.”
“He’s the worst possible messenger you could send. I don’t trust Harlan.”
Still, Drew walked through the door into the cabin, and Melinda followed. She had to wonder if Jack’s pre-cog ability had told him this would be the outcome after Harlan’s phone call.
The interior of the cabin was narrow, only a little more than twenty feet across, and they had to dodge between a bed and a sleeper sofa to get to a round kitchen table in front of a half-wall divider that separated them from a kitchenette.
Claudia rose from the table where she’d been on the computer. “No need for worry. We’re safe here.”
“How do you know?” Drew demanded.
“Well, there’s Jack,” she said with a fond smile in his direction. “He doesn’t foresee any threat. And I’ve also set up surveillance scans.”
Drew went toward her, obviously interested in any sort of security technology. “Show me what you’ve got.”
Melinda turned to Jack. “Is Harlan a safe contact?”
“It’s hard to get a good read on him. He specializes in undercover work. Duality is his nature, which makes it hard to know where his true loyalty lies. But we need him. He’s our contact for reaching Sykes.”
“He asked Drew to meet him tomorrow at noon at the house where they used to live in Lead.”
“We can arrange to follow him and have other agents present in case Harlan tries to pull something.” Jack frowned. “I have a sense that there’s something bad about that house, something Harlan doesn’t want us to know.”
“Like what?”
“Something from the past. Something dangerous.”
Oh, swell. Another threat. The risks were piling up around them like kindling for a bonfire. “Are there precautions we can take?”
“There’s one.” He went toward the table where Drew and Claudia were poring over a rectangular electronic object. “I’d like for you both to have a GPS chip implanted. That way we can track you.”
Drew scowled. “GPS would show you the location of my cabin. That’s something I want to keep secret.”
Melinda assured him, “Of course, we trust you, but—”
“I understand,” Claudia said as she reached
for a briefcase, which she placed on the table and opened. “I’d have the only receiver. Nobody else could follow you.”
“What kind of range are we talking about?” he asked.
“Thousands of miles with pinpoint accuracy.” She gave him a smug grin. “This is top-of-the-line FBI equipment.”
“But the Feds can’t trace the signal?”
“Not without the receiver.”
He still looked hesitant, so Melinda stepped up. “I’ll do it. I like the idea of having someone know where I am.”
“Roll up your sleeve,” Claudia said as she took an injection device from the briefcase. “I’ll zap this tiny chip under your skin. It barely hurts at all. If we need to find you, we can activate the transmitter. Otherwise, I won’t turn it on.”
Melinda took off her jacket and tossed it on the bed. She pushed her sweater sleeve up on her arm. Before she could present her arm to Claudia, Drew caught hold of her hand and turned her toward him. “Are you sure about this?”
“I want every advantage I can get.”
“Your decision affects me,” he said. “If you’re on the grid, it means I am, too.”
“Not if you aren’t with me.”
As she spoke, she realized that she was forcing him to make a choice. Either he could continue by himself or he could commit himself to staying with her, even if it meant doing something he didn’t want to do.
She wanted him to choose her. If he turned his back and stormed out the door, she didn’t know if she could stop herself from running after him.
He leaned close and whispered in her ear, “I’ll never leave you, Melinda.”
Stepping back, he peeled off his jacket, revealing the shoulder holster. “Might as well zap me, too.”
Claudia implanted the chips. First in Melinda, then in Drew. “While you’ve got your sleeve up,” she said, “I’d like to take a blood sample.”
Earlier tonight, Drew had nearly erupted at the suggestion of drawing his blood. Now, he merely shrugged. “Let’s do it.”
Melinda sat beside him at the table, smiling into his eyes. His willingness to cooperate pleased her; it was a step toward realizing that he wasn’t all alone in the world. There were people he could trust. “What changed your mind?”
