by Angel Payne
“Tell me.” Shay’s voice thickened to a growl, harsh in its demand—but not just from Ghid. He needed the revelation for himself, and clearly waged an inner war of self-pride and loathing about it. Elite soldiers insisted on knowing every detail of what they faced, no matter how horrifying the intel.
Tight emotion jammed the bottom of Zoe’s throat. Part of her gave in to a girlish swoon at observing the proud warrior side of him. The other part succumbed to her growing dread for him.
Both conditions were distant memories within the next minute.
Ghid replied to Shay’s command with a respectful nod. “You deserve to know,” he stated, “but sometimes, the telling is best done in the showing.”
Without any more preamble, the man stripped off his shirt.
As anyone with a brain would expect, Ghid was as ruthless and chiseled below the neck as above. Every inch of his tan skin was stretched taut over huge mounds of tendon and muscle. It was all a bit too daunting for Zoe, though she gave Melody Bommer a silent high-five for being the lucky female who shared his bed.
And then he turned around.
Proving, in graphic reality, that she’d remembered everything from the hallway with perfect detail. And bringing an insane new meaning to the words side effects.
Chapter Seventeen
“Holy sssshhhh…”
Dan never completed the exclamation. Shay didn’t blame him. The expression was beyond what his mind could produce, fumbling past shock and bewilderment, scrambling for the fortitude just to keep him on his feet instead of crumpling to his ass in a ridiculous ball of horror.
Get your shit together. You’re a member of the finest fighting force on the planet. You’ve been through cluster fucks and fire storms that would spin the heads of most men. You need to look. And see. And try to understand.
Ghid’s back…wasn’t a back. Instead of muscle and skin, his spine was bracketed by swaths of thick green scales. Shay would’ve even guessed that the plates were simply painted on, but they jutted from his back at least an inch, and shifted with every move he made…which so far, the man subdued to a few uncomfortable shifts of balance. The sight was like a damn car wreck. Shay couldn’t help gaping but was sickened with himself for doing so.
When their shock ticked past the one-minute mark, Ghid turned back around. “As you can see, Mel’s concern about long-term effects pretty much smacked the target.”
“No shit,” Dan muttered.
“Fuck,” Tait spat.
“Wow.” They all threw stares at Zoe in the wake of her awe-filled murmur. The smile she gave Ghid conveyed even more admiration. “So that explains your eyes.”
Ghid snorted. “My eyes?”
“Of course. They’re beautiful. And fascinating.”
Ghid blushed to the base of his neck. Shay joined Tait and Dan in a burst of laughter. The moment was a needed, if temporary, reprieve from this insane revelation.
Insanity. Right. If only that was where Shay’s senses stopped. Inside the next ten seconds, he blew past insanity and straight down the highway to terror.
“Fine,” Ghid finally huffed. “That’s what drinking lizard blood will do to a guy.”
“Lizard?” Dan drawled. “You mean those cute little guys who run around on my backyard wall until my dog eats ‘em?”
“Hmmm.” Ghid pulled his shirt back on. “Nice image, but no. More like a mix of monitors, komodos, and gilas—the kind that like human limbs for breakfast.”
Dan stepped back. “Oh.”
“But if you count rhinos as ‘cute’, then I guess I qualify.”
Shay joined Tait in a smirk as Dan paled. “No. Rhinos aren’t cute.”
Ghid clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Didn’t think so.”
All the humor aside, Shay’s gut left terror behind and dove into a vortex of raw dread. There was an elephant in the room—and dammit, it might even be him. He saw now that all of Ghid’s intense glances had actually been attempts at commiseration. He was officially a member of the Big Idea freaks club now, and the guy had been attempting a series of awkward welcome mats since hauling his ass out of hell. While he was grateful, this was one goddamn card he longed to rip out of his wallet.
Have you learned anything about life yet, asshole? Don’t you know the choices aren’t always yours?
Great fucking tip. Because years of choking down MREs, humping his ruck through miles of hell, and getting shot at by crazy jihadists hadn’t taught him the lesson already.
He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Or break something. Maybe all those fucking picture windows.
Who the hell was he?
What the fuck was he?
If he wanted to find out, he had to hump the goddamn ruck again. And listen to the rest of Ghid’s story.
“So what happened then?” he forced out. “When all of you started to—to—”
“Morph out of control?” Ghid narrowed his eyes a little after filling it in. “What do you think happened, kid?”
The man’s reasoning for the response was clear. By assisting with the answer, Shay could reclaim a couple of things he hadn’t had a lot of lately: his identity and his control. He was a trained member of a Special Forces Alpha team, not only capable of connecting this kind of information, but processing it at least five different ways then serving it up an enemy’s ass if that was the ordered plan.
Ghid wasn’t just a genius; he was a friend.
Shay communicated his gratitude with the nod he prefaced to his answer. “Operating outside the radar allows the government to deny culpability if they have to. In this case, I’m sure the Big Idea folks did everything they could to squeeze you all back down to a damn small idea.”
Ghid’s gaze turned the color of a moss-lined torture chamber. Shit. Zoe was right. The guy’s eyes told profound truths. “It was a shit-rough time,” Ghid uttered. “They talked about secured camps, maybe shipping us off to an island…”
“Dios mio,” Zoe whispered. “You’re human beings!”
“Creatures,” Ghid corrected. “At least in their eyes. Walking, talking reminders of their big-time shit on the fan, but not sentient beings with lives or futures to be considered.” The guy sent a benign stare to Zoe—well, his stilted attempt at one. “Zoe, before the study, we were all convicts, remember?”
“Who became something else in the name of their science.”
“Not everyone’s.” Tait rose as he professed it. “Just that pudwhack Homer. He didn’t present the full facts to the brass. He had a big ego and a pencil dick, and he should have listened to Mom.”
“And nobody knew that better than him,” Ghid stated. “The guy was the first one out the door—figuratively speaking, since there really wasn’t any door. It was a warehouse roll-up with fifteen kinds of security, which they bumped to seventeen even after they started keeping us strapped down all day.”
Shay dropped to the couch again, backed by a stream of Spanish obscenities from Zoe. “Christ,” he muttered. His blood chilled, a horror martini tossed over ice cubes of incredulity.
“What happened then?” Dan queried.
“I think I know.” Tait’s gaze followed the dreamlike lines of the print on the wall again. His eyes hazed over with memories. “Somehow, somebody got word to Mom about Homer playing off the Big Idea pier then falling into the royal drink of fuck-up. I happened to be home sick from school. A woman came to the house, flashing papers and ID, saying she was from some lab in DC.”
Shay scooted his head out from the cocoon of his hands. “That’s one hell of a vivid recall.”
“I’m sure of this one,” his brother asserted. “I won’t forget that goddess as long as I live. She looked like a living version of Pocohontas. Hell, she was—” He had the grace to squirm a little. “Sorry, Zoe. But she was fucking hot.”
“Awww, sheez.” Shay let his head fall again.
“Pocohontas?” Dan nailed his stare to Tait. “You mean the cartoon I was always
embarrassed about pitching a tent over?”
“Hair in the wind, big doe eyes,” Tait concurred. “Those legs you couldn’t help imagining around your waist and—”
“The subject?” Shay cut in. “We had one, dorks. Can we stick to it?”
Tait shrugged. “Yeah, though my part of the story wraps up there. Two days after Pocohontas came to visit was the last time Homez dared show his face at the house again. That was also the night he and Mom threw down like Rocky and Apollo. We all know the fall-out from there, though I’m surprised Homez didn’t come back and curse the house just for good measure.”
Shay left his head where it was. Low. Really low. If a curse on the house was all he came back to accomplish, brother…
“I take it this is where Stock entered the picture for good,” he finally said.
“Excellent word selection,” Ghid replied. He let several moments weigh in for emphasis. “And though you all may throw tizzies at me for it, I’ll say it again: at first, the man really did do some good.”
Tait opened another beer then dragged hard on the brew. “He can take that up with the good karma angels after I drive a Bowie into his throat.”
Wisely, Ghid didn’t push that issue harder. “The thing was, Stock had already approached your mom about accepting a research deal with Verge Pharmaceuticals. She’d flat-out turned him down but he kept in touch ‘just in case.’”
Tait narrowed his eyes. “Because he was such a great guy and wanted to do it for humanity, right?”
“Never said the guy was bucking for sainthood,” Ghid qualified. “Cameron was always business first. Brokering the deal would’ve earned him a pile of flow like he’d never known. But by then, he also had a general idea of the shit that was going down at home with your dad. He started feeling more protective toward your mom…and probably a few other things, too.”
“Shit,” Tait spat.
“You may want to go for the fast recap on this part, G,” Shay muttered.
“Acknowledged.”
Dan tipped the neck of his beer forward. “I think I can help braid this rope a little tighter. Verge Pharma, right? They invested in a lot of space in Austin in the late nineties. I remember their complex being built. Lots of big glass buildings with spacey-looking security shields. We called it the star fleet.” He tossed a quizzical glance to Ghid. “Was that because Melanie inked the deal through Stock?”
Though the answer was obvious, the observation did nothing for Tait’s tension level. Shay glanced at him and murmured, “She did what she had to, T.”
“Fuck off.”
“Shay’s right.” Ghid braced both legs wide again. “She didn’t know where to turn.” His gaze sharpened to laser green. “Unlike that chicken fart Adler, she felt responsible for what had happened to us, which was why she left home so abruptly.”
Tait’s glower darkened. “With the intention of never coming back?”
“That what your turdtastic father tell you?” Ghid waved a dismissive hand. “Never mind. I already know the answer.” As he lowered that hand, he curled it into a fist. “Let me be real clear about something. There wasn’t a day that passed without your mom having deep conflict about the decisions she made and the consequences you all paid for them. You really think she just walked away, never thinking she’d come back? What kind of a snow globe did your dad dunk you two in? He had a front row seat for the knock-downs she had with Homer. He knew everything that was at stake when she left for DC and that she had every intention of returning after she handled the crisis. And yeah, kids, it was a crisis.”
A soft sob shredded into the middle of his explanation. The source didn’t surprise Shay. Zoe had seen others like Ghid, the men Bash had originally described as mutants. Her face reflected that horror—and encompassed his deepest fears—but he couldn’t hang on to that fear when gazing at her. The woman’s heart was so huge, every drop of its compassion showed across her incredible face. She took his breath away.
“How many of you were there?” she softly asked Ghid.
“Fifty, maybe sixty,” Ghid estimated. “And we all would have been left to die in that warehouse, if not for Dr. Melody Bommer.” As he took a breath, a shocking change overcame his whole body. The man’s posture actually softened. “When she walked in, with her cheeks rosy from the cold and her hair in all those gorgeous curls…” His shoulders dropped in unspoken surrender. “I had no idea who she was, so I assumed I’d just died and was getting a lucky break from a living angel.”
Tait peeked at Shay. “I should be disturbed by that, right? Why aren’t I?”
Shay gave his brother a meaningful smile. “Because he sees her how we do.”
“She promised we’d be moving out of the warehouse within a few months,” Ghid went on. “Kept her word, too. Five months later, we moved into preliminary buildings at the complex outside Austin. Melody was with us the whole time…and always talked about how she was excited things would be settling down so she could finally get back home to her three men.”
He made the last assertion with a defined stare over his shoulder. Shay could see that he meant it but Tait insisted on the snide asshat angle. “So did you still think she was an angel?” he alleged.
Ghid’s riposte was immediate yet composed. “Of course I did. But it stayed capped there until well after your mother took her wedding ring off, after she received word about your dad’s death.”
Tait snorted before voicing the obvious retort to that. “At which point, she still didn’t come home.”
“At which point, she wasn’t able to.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
Ghid picked up his water glass and took a huge drink. “You remember I said that Stock started as the nice guy.” Another gulp went in. “Well, stories are often filled with twists.”
Tait took another long, angry pull on his beer. “Here’s where we get to the part justifying my blade through the bastard’s neck.”
“Pretty much,” Ghid muttered.
Shay didn’t feel like drinking anything. Could’ve had something to do with the ball of apprehension in his gut, snowballing by the minute. “I take it Stock finally rolled in his gold pile and liked the dirt.”
“And the corruption,” Ghid added. “He had things and people, especially your mom, right where he wanted them. The Austin location was nice and remote, just where he wanted to keep your mom for good…now that he’d developed full feelings for her.” He finished the water—and slammed down the glass. Several fissures ran up the length of the thing before it collapsed into several fragments atop the table. “That was when he made up the blackmail sandwich for Mel.”
Forget the snowball. Shay’s stomach turned into a full-on warhead of dismay. “Blackmail?” he fired. “In what way?”
“Easiest way there is.” Ghid’s gaze turned the color of a tormented tornado sky. “He used the two of you.”
“What?” He and Tait sputtered it together.
Ghid picked up a bigger piece of the broken water glass, examining the distortions of light through its curved surface. “You both remember your sweet little neighbor, right? What was her name? Something with a V?”
Shay rammed his bottle to the table. “Mrs. Verona.” In every syllable, he inserted his unspoken threat. A word against Mrs. V and the guy would have to stress about keeping his balls whole.
“Watch where you’re treading, man,” Tait snarled. “Mrs. Verona was the closest thing we had to a saint in our neighborhood.”
“Didn’t change the fact that she worked for the devil.”
“Fuck,” Shay rasped.
“You’re lying,” Tait accused.
Ghid lifted his gaze to Colton. “Double-check my facts, spook-boy. Pull up the woman’s financial records, and her status as a ‘location consultant’ for his production company.”
Shay traded a significant look with his brother. “She never went anywhere,” he confessed.
“Because she had to be near the phone. If y
our mom ever dared to scoot out from under Stock’s thumb, Mrs. Verona would be called.” The depths of the guy’s eyes turned from tornado clouds into furious smoke. “Melody would’ve come home to find her two little boys with bullets through their brains.”
Along with Tait, Shay tumbled into a fog of shock and betrayal. They sat together in silence for a long minute, identically posed with elbows on their knees.
“Why mess with bullets?” Tait finally grated. “She’d probably have just poisoned the cookies.”
For once, Shay didn’t whack his brother for being a drama queen. “Why bother to bake at all? Tossing us in the garage and turning on the car…there’s quick and painless.”
Colton, thank fuck, was still able to form a clear head around the subject. “That’s a fine excuse through the eighteenth birthdays for these bozos,” he queried, “but what about after that?”
Ghid turned to Dan with a steady regard. “You’re able to braid this one tighter, too, Tex. Rewind your mind by about ten years.”
After processing that for a few seconds, Dan’s face ignited. “Cork my goddamn pistol. That was when Verge downsized the star fleet.” His gaze, strangely matching Ghid’s in green intensity, narrowed. “What happened?”
“What do you think?” Ghid flung. “The gang at Big Idea finally figured out we weren’t all dead, and tracked us to the hideout.”
“So you had to break camp again?”
“Not until after your mom struck a pure genius deal with them, giving us the green light to move into the facility at A-fifty-one.”
Shay couldn’t figure out how to react to that. He processed the genius reference, but the rest was lost beneath his haze of raging memories—four half-conscious, torture-filled days’ worth. The shit churned through him as a physical force, driving him to his feet again. “She…was the one…responsible for transplanting your asses into that hell?”
Ghid stunned them all by turning like a cornered animal. More accurately, a peeved rhino. Fury flashed in his eyes. Shay wondered if a horn really would bust loose in place of his nose. “She didn’t have a lot of options by that point, all right? The feds promised us there’d be no more restraints or dissection-style tests. Mel was still tormented about inking the contract with them, knowing she didn’t trust them enough to leave us alone in a base that wasn’t even publically acknowledged by the government at the time. But by that point, Stock was out of control on letting the lies and corruption take over his life.” He paused, breathing hard, looking ready to wrestle a fucking bear. “I was the one who finally begged her to sign again with the feds—after I found Stock just a few inches away from raping her.”
