by Angel Payne
Ghid gave them both another extended look before going on. “What you said, Shay? About missing pieces of the big pie? Good call. Thing is, you’re still missing a few chunks of the thing. I’ve got them but they taste a bit bizarre.”
The man’s brilliant green eyes darkened to the shade of a troubled ocean. Zoe wasn’t the only one who picked up on the strange change. “A bit?” Shay rebounded. “Why does that sound like the world’s biggest understatement?”
Ghid exhaled through his nose. “Because you’re damn good at discerning that kind of shit.”
“He always was.” Tait’s tone was full of the years he’d been on the receiving end of Shay’s perceptive abilities. Zoe could sympathize. She’d only been exposed to hours of the stuff, and had come out of the experiences in a tangle of awe and annoyance.
After ticking a brow at his brother, Shay turned again to Ghid. “So where does this story start?”
Ghid’s awkward posture still prevailed, so he finally decided to sit. “Where most of the good ones do,” he told them. “At the beginning. So…you guys remember your buddy Homer?”
“Nuclear bomb Homer?”
Tait’s quip had Shay throwing a glance to Zoe. A new giggle sprang to her lips at his I-told-you-so smirk, suppressed by pressing a hand over her mouth.
“Yeah.” Ghid leveled another stunner by sliding in half a smile over the end of it. “Mel told me about your little fun with that theme.”
Tait’s eyes narrowed. “‘Mel’?”
Shay shifted a little. “It’s what he calls Mom.”
“Why?”
Shay backhanded his shoulder. “Why do you think?”
Tait stabbed a new glare at Ghid. Then viciously twisted his lips. “Are you fucking kidding—”
“Lock it down.” Shay turned his move into a steeled grip. “Dad’s been dead for a long time. Ghid just risked his ass in a big way to save mine. And he’s got pie, even if it’s bizarre.”
None of them gave the comment even half a laugh. As Ghid pushed his fingers together in a taut steeple, Zoe bit her lip hard. Mierda. The man actually appeared like a self-conscious CO himself, about to hand walking papers to a couple of his guys. Her gut twisted in sympathy for him, too. “You two never really knew what they were working on, did you?”
Shay looked at the man with extended contemplation, perhaps trying to tell what the angle was on the question. “I know she was a bio-scientist and so was he, so that dictated the focus of their work. We had a damn zoo of research animals at the house for a while.”
Tait broke into a dazzling grin. “Shit. The zoo. Now that part was fun. Mom let us keep the iguana in our room at night, didn’t she? We called him Messy.”
“Original,” Ghid muttered.
“What? He was.” Tait openly moped. “But Homez took Scout back to his place most days, and I wasn’t a happy camper about that.”
Shay shrugged. “But when Homez left, Scout stayed.”
“Barbecue bonus,” Tait concurred. “Of sorts.”
“Sure.”
“I fucking loved that dog. Nearly as much as you loved the horse.”
“Yeah.” Shay’s return to boyhood joy brought dimples she’d never seen to the corners of his mouth. “Hercules. He deserved that name, too. Fucking awesome animal. An Arabian of some sort. Homez would let me sneak in to feed him carrots. I definitely had a guy crush.”
Ghid’s stare at Shay grew more intense. “Hmmm. That’s probably a good thing.”
Shay’s response was equally as forceful—with discomfort. “Why?”
Zoe was glad to see she wasn’t the only one unnerved by the man’s vibe of cryptic and creepy. The impression gained strength as Ghid pushed back to his feet, arms angled back as if he aimed to go find a street brawl. But surprisingly, his comeback was built on solid composure. “The animals in your zoo…weren’t test subjects. They were Melanie and Homer’s inspiration. And…DNA sources.”
“Huh?”
“What?”
Ghid stopped in front of the window. “You two might be proud to know that in her way, your mom was a member of a unique Special Forces team of her own.”
Shay scowled. “At the risk of sounding redundant, huh?”
Ghid squared his stance, leveled his jaw, and fixed them with the fresh laser focus of his gaze. “The research she performed in your garage was part of a very special project, jointly embarked on a top-secret basis by twelve of the world’s leading nations. The initiative was given ten years of funding, and was simply called “Big Idea.” The sole goal was to combine the knowledge of the planet’s greatest scientific minds to craft innovative solutions to the world’s biggest challenges.”
Tait let out a low whistle. “By ‘challenges’, I’m assuming you don’t mean shit like the soccer/football discrepancy and asshats who won’t pick up their dog’s crap.”
“Both valid points,” Ghid returned, “but no. Big Idea was about addressing shit like the ozone layer…world weather patterns…poverty…”
“Oh.” Shay snorted. “Just that kind of stuff.”
Ghid didn’t mirror the sarcasm. Still serious, he stated, “Some pretty amazing shit came out of the project. Though it was all streamlined to the public via different avenues, you can thank Big Idea for biologically enhanced vegetables that resist pesticides, most materials that recycle besides tin cans, and lifesaving improvements in how tsunamis and hurricanes are tracked.”
Tait spread his hands. “So how does this circle back to the work Mom and Homez were doing?”
During his question, Zoe’s heartbeat leaped by at least twenty beats per minute. Then thirty. Two words from Ghid’s explanation slammed like a lightning bolt then fused with another blow—memories as vivid and disturbing as the minutes that formed them, in the hallway back at the base.
Biologically enhanced.
Biologically enhanced.
She’d still held the water pitcher. It slipped from her numb hand now, crashing to the hardwood floor near the table. “Por Dios,” she rasped.
“Zoe.” Shay rushed over. “You okay, dancer? Did you—”
“I saw them.” She gripped Shay’s arm but blurted it straight at Ghid. “In—in the hallway. At the base. That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it? They’re what you’re talking about.”
Her mind raced, shoveling Ghid’s pie pieces into all the logical slots. But it still made no sense. It didn’t come close.
Ruthless shivers roared up and down her spine. She’d dismissed all those poor creatures as an illusion of her exhaustion, stress, and fear, or at the worst, an evolution of humans forced to mate with the aliens that so many assumed were housed in Area 51.
Not government-sanctioned science experiments.
Not products of some idealistic “project” for mankind.
Not the brainchild of Melody Bommer—the mother of the man who’d wrapped himself around her heart. The man she pressed more tightly to now, who swore softly in his distress for her.
“Zoe, what the hell are you talking about?” Shay finally murmured. She felt his head turn, probably to look at Ghid. “What the hell is she talking about?”
Ghid’s labored sigh turned every air molecule in the room into a cactus ball. “Come sit down again, Shay. Bring her with you.”
Zoe’s knees felt like rubber. Just how correctly had she pieced the pie together? And how thoroughly would she want to throw up after being forced to eat it?
“Forget the weeds,” Tait professed as Shay eased her to the couch. “I’m wandering the goddamn forest now.”
“Make room because I’m right there with you.” Shay dropped next to her with stiff movements. “DNA sources? Ghid, what the fuck?”
Zoe joined them in scrutinizing the man. As she expected, Ghid didn’t even try for a fashion model pose anymore. His posture was firm and his face the same tough mask—though his eyes, searching all three of them now, were a thousand sharp green shards apiece. What he had to tell them wasn’t e
asy. Not by a long stretch.
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 tick 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 creat
ive 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.
