“Glass house, sis. You’re shacked up with the Lair’s edgiest Dom. I should be telling you to be careful.”
She cocked her head. “Why aren’t you?”
“Be careful.” He leaned up to kiss her cheek.
“Smartass. Call me tomorrow.” She went into the house and followed the sound of Cal’s voice until she found him in the den behind the kitchen. She dropped down next to him on the leather couch, suddenly exhausted. It sounded like he’d made it about halfway through her list. Her eyes slid shut as she listened to his conversation, filled with pauses as whoever was on the other side of the line searched for items.
“Wake up, sleepyhead.” Something stroked her arm and she sighed, settling deeper into her warm cocoon. She opened her eyes and realized she was stretched out on the couch, covered by a blanket.
“You can sleep there if you want,” Cal offered.
No, she wanted to sleep with him. She sat up and struggled to fold the blanket.
“Leave it.” He clicked off the light.
She dropped the blanket on the couch and followed him out of the room. Instead of turning right, toward his bedroom, he led her upstairs. Disappointment made her miss a step. He paused, waiting for her to regain her footing. Of course he wouldn’t sleep with her. He wouldn’t even kiss her. What had she been thinking?
At his gesture, she preceded him into a guest bedroom and waited for him to leave, longing to be alone, buried under the covers with her humiliation.
“I wish I could stay,” he said softly.
Was he a mind reader now? She tried to give him a smile, but her lips trembled. Good God, she was not going to cry. She cleared her throat. “It’s fine. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He leaned against the door, as if he hadn’t heard her dismissal. “I dream at night.”
“Most people do.” It was impossible not to sound a little bitchy.
“Not like I do. I have blackout curtains on the windows and the room is soundproofed. I dream blue fire all night and I can’t control it. It’s not safe to sleep with me.”
She wanted to be mad at him, but he looked tortured, leaning against the doorframe, not even trying to mask his emotions. His eyes blazed and his mouth was tight. Desire was written all over his face. She couldn’t punish him more. “I get it, Cal. I really do. But I’m tired. I could use a cuddle, and since I’m not going to get it, could you please just leave? I’ll have my equilibrium back tomorrow.” This time, she managed a creditable smile.
“A cuddle, huh? I can do that. As long as I don’t fall asleep,” he amended.
Her heart began to beat faster. “Really?”
He nodded and kicked off his shoes. “Pajamas?” he asked, pointing at a pile of clothes.
He must have moved them upstairs from where she’d left them when she emptied out the backpack. Inwardly, she groaned—of course Jake had packed her flannel cupcake pajamas. Oh well, it was probably for the best. She stepped into the adjoining bathroom to brush her teeth and change.
Was it selfish of her to ask him to do this?
Probably, she decided, but he was a big boy. He didn’t have to offer and he could change his mind. When she returned to the bedroom, he was stretched out under the covers. She climbed in beside him, noting the gleam in his eyes but appreciating the fact he didn’t comment on her pajamas. They settled into each other. Tentatively, she slid her arm over his chest. When he didn’t protest, she let her leg find a place between his.
He was warm and smelled like smoke and man. She sighed, hugging closer.
He groaned, a low sound of frustration that exactly mirrored how she usually felt when he was teasing her. Turnabout’s fair play. She giggled and pressed a kiss to the side of his neck.
“Now you’re pushing it,” he growled.
She eased back, already beginning to drift. Later, she felt the soft press of his lips against her forehead and heard the whisper of a melody before the bed grew cold beside her.
Chapter Twelve
The next morning, Cal awoke to the sound of the perimeter alarm. He grabbed the remote and pointed it at the screen. He saw a delivery truck on its way up the driveway. He hoped Audrey would be pleased.
For the next hour, a small army of technicians installed the new equipment in the basement. Cal was relieved they asked no questions about the long partitioned hallway that now blocked the dungeon from sight, and delighted when they completed their tasks faster than he had dared to hope. The elation on Audrey’s face when she came downstairs and saw the last truck departing was worth the small fortune he had spent. “Are you kidding me?” she asked. “Seriously?”
“Everything you asked for, plus a new charger for your laptop,” he replied, grinning. He held up the box.
“Thank you.” She clapped her hands and looked like she might start jumping up and down.
“You’re welcome.”
She took the charger and headed for the basement.
“Not so fast,” he said. “Coffee? Breakfast?”
“Sure,” she said, but didn’t break her stride. Well, he’d been warned. He grabbed another box and followed her down.
For the rest of the day, she worked. So did he, ignoring the grisly dissection going on in her half of the lab.
Around lunchtime, he tried to get a hold of Truman but got sent to voicemail. He was glad Tru was close to finishing the case that had obsessed him for months, but he also wanted to know if he had turned up anything new on the cell phone or wallet.
Audrey ate the sandwich he made her without looking away from her computer. He was tempted to watch her, just to see how much of the food would actually make it into her mouth, but he was close to finishing the new bio-enhancer prototype. He went back to work but stayed attuned to her, even as he plugged numbers into the calculator and embedded nichrome wires in leather.
He finished before she did, so he turned his attention to the strange silver weapon from last night. He ran his hands over the smooth barrel, searching out seams or any clue as to how it was put together. Touching it unsettled him, and he didn’t think it was because he couldn’t figure it out.
Audrey collapsed onto a stool and sighed. He put the weapon on the table, instantly feeling relieved, and went over to her. “Making headway?” he asked.
She looked at him blankly and he chuckled. “Remember me?”
She made a face. “You’re the chef, right? I hope so. I’m starving.”
“Right this way, Dr. Fallon.” He swept his arm toward the door.
She groaned as she got to her feet, stretching her arms above her head.
“Suck it up, Doc. I’m putting you back to work after dinner. The bio-enhancer is ready for a new trial.”
Her eyes lit up and she grinned. “Let’s do it now.”
“Dinner first,” he insisted, leading her out of the lab. “Can’t have you running out of energy.”
Audrey ate the pizza Cal ordered, but she didn’t really taste it. She was still thinking about her experiments. Dissection of the gravid mice had provided viable cells, but it would be days before the cultures would be ready. She’d be lucky if she could make a karyotype by the end of the week. She was almost certain when she did pair and order the chromosomes, she would find a translocation somewhere.
Damn, she was glad Cal had noticed her laptop on Peter’s desk. Because of him, she still had her own and Jake’s karyotypes to use for comparison. Of course, that meant Peter might have the information, too, if he had been smart enough to make a copy. She wondered if any of the information had been news to him.
She gasped, realizing she had forgotten all about the other aluminum experiments on the flash drive. All of the necessary files had been on her laptop, and she’d been so busy unwrapping equipment and getting cell cultures started, she hadn’t even taken the drive out of her pocket.
“I’ll be right back.” She left Cal at the table and dashed out of the room.
She got the flash drive and her computer and brought t
hem into the kitchen.
Cal joined her at the island. “What are you so excited about?”
“Other aluminum experiments on the company database. I’m not the only one. Maybe they already know…” She double clicked the first file, holding her breath, expecting it to be locked or encrypted. When data scrolled across the screen, she hooted in triumph. No wonder Peter had wanted the drive. He must have realized he’d forgotten to log out. His barb about her tunnel vision had struck home, and she felt a little better knowing she’d never noticed these files because she hadn’t had access to them. Thank God the cocky son of a bitch hadn’t bothered with more than one password.
“What’s it say?”
“Hang on.” She opened the next file. And the next. Her horror grew with every click. She sat, staring, unable to speak. After a few minutes, Cal left her and went back to the pizza.
She could hardly believe it, but there it was, right in front of her. When she came to the end of the last file, she rubbed her hands over her face. They came away wet, but her tears couldn’t wash away the images in her mind’s eye.
Cal stood beside her. “Can I help?” he asked softly.
She lifted her chin. “God, I hope so. Genecorp is experimenting on humans.”
“Are you sure? That’s a serious accusation.” Cal looked at the screen in front of her, but it didn’t make any more sense to him than it had fifteen minutes ago. Biology had little in common with physics.
“It’s all right there in the files. The experiment spans almost twenty years. They’ve bred a human, Cal. A boy. They’re experimenting on him. Peter told me last night his talent is memory control. He’s got an army of amnesiac scientists, of which I was supposed to be one. What if they want to create another army too? A talented army. And why stop there? Once they get the trait they want, they can begin cloning. And with Peter in charge, no one will remember anything.”
Now he understood why she was crying. “So why are they after you?”
Her eyes were wide, dark pools as she considered.
“What do you have that they don’t?” he probed.
He knew she’d reached the same conclusion he had when she inhaled sharply. “I’m neutral. Their army would have no power over me.”
“If they wanted to kill you, I think they could have done it by now,” he said.
“The alternative could be worse. Having my DNA harvested and replicated doesn’t exactly float my boat. Now the guard with the needle makes sense. Oh, God, Peter put his arm around me the other day. He stroked my hair. They’ve probably already got my DNA.” She looked sick.
“Can you fill in the gaps for me? I think I’m missing some big pieces here. What’s the link between your research and theirs?”
“I’ve been studying the effect of dietary aluminum, hypothesizing that aluminum causes mutations in DNA.”
“Why dietary? People don’t eat aluminum.”
She shrugged. “But we drink out of aluminum cans, wrap our food in aluminum foil and cook in aluminum pans. You of all people should know atoms don’t always keep to themselves.”
A fair point. He nodded for her to continue.
She stood up and began to pace around the kitchen. “Jake and I both have a balanced translocation in our chromosomes. We have the same genetic material as everyone else, but some of it is in different places. I believe if I made a karyotype of your chromosomes, or the chromosomes of any talented person, there would be similar translocations.”
“So did your mice have mutated chromosomes?” he asked.
She stopped in the middle of the kitchen and looked at him. “No—I gave them the aluminum for a year. The karyotypes were normal. Then I bred them.” She stared at him expectantly.
She seemed to want him to make a connection, but it wasn’t happening.
Her small smile was sad. “My mother is in an institution with near-toxic aluminum levels. Do you know where your mother is?”
He shook his head. She’d run away and left him with her sister. Come to think of it, Truman didn’t remember his parents, and Sam and the Doc had grown up in an orphanage. “Oh my God, do you think they were experimenting on the general population before they took it underground to Genecorp?”
“I have no idea, but I do wonder what kind of offspring my mice would have had if Peter hadn’t killed them. I cultured fetal cells today. We’ll know in three or four days if they carry the translocations, but I don’t think we should wait that long to expose Genecorp.”
“Hang on, we can’t just hand the police stolen files and tell them Genecorp is run by zombie scientists who’ve created a super kid. They’ll think we’re nuts.”
“Not if we have their super kid.”
“You want to go back into Genecorp?” Cal asked.
Audrey didn’t blame him for looking at her like she was crazy. He didn’t know Genecorp like she did. “I’m almost certain they’ve got him in the basement.” It wasn’t used for storage, offices or labs. No one had a key to get down there, either. Every time she stood in the elevator, she stared at the B on the control panel and wondered, curious, but not sufficiently motivated to make any inquiries. Now she was glad she hadn’t. Lord only knew what might have happened to her then. “I bet Peter has been messing with his head his entire life. We’ve got to help him.”
“I need to call Truman.”
“Go ahead, but I don’t think the police can help. If we bring too much attention to Genecorp, everyone will be looking at us too. Do you want to have to explain why you wear gloves all the time? Or why Jake won’t take his sunglasses off? Let’s go back in there, get their super kid and blow out the mainframe. Losing their data will slow them down for a while, long enough for us to figure out who we can trust and how we can stop them.” She knew from recent experience exactly how crippling it was to lose data.
“I guess it won’t hurt to go take a look, but I’m still calling Truman.”
“And I’m calling Jake.”
He pointed at her. “Let’s test the bio-enhancer before we do anything. If it works, you’re going to wear it tonight. I will not stand powerless again, watching you defend yourself with your feet. You need a longer-range weapon.”
“I did pretty well with my feet last night,” she reminded him.
He crossed his arms. “It’s crazy to bring your feet to a gun fight.”
She considered arguing, but then he said, “Although that was an awesome kick.”
“As long as we agree on that.” Since she was as anxious to try the bio-enhancer as he was, she headed for the stairs.
When they reached the lab, he pointed at the silver rod on the table. “I can’t figure it out. It’s got a dial on one end and that’s it. Touching it gives me the creeps, but I imagine that’s because it blew a hole in my arm and turned my body to lead.”
She picked it up. “It doesn’t feel deadly to me.”
“No nausea? No weird urge to hurl it across the room?”
She shook her head.
He shrugged and took it out of her hand. She watched him place it in a drawer, thinking he did look a little green. “So where’s the enhancer?” she asked.
The mannequin across the room stood naked, and there was no leather or wire in sight.
“I refined the design,” Cal said, with a wicked grin. “Your demonstration yesterday gave me ideas.”
She arched an eyebrow, wondering what the smirk on his face meant. He opened another drawer and pulled out what looked like a black spandex bikini top.
“Oh, hell no.” she said.
His grin widened. “And that’s not all. Leather collar and cuffs complete the circuit.”
She shook her head and he held up a hand. “Your brother and I have used kink to camouflage our abilities for years…humor me.”
But she didn’t live in their world and never would. If he wanted to help her blend in, he should have wired the bio-enhancer into a unisex lab coat.
“C’mon, give it a try.” The appeal in his
eyes made her sigh and pull her T-shirt over her head.
Cal pulled on a pair of gloves, and his touch was impersonal as he fastened the back of the bikini top and fit the collar around her neck. He looped the trailing wires around her arms. With a few deft motions, he clipped them off and cinched the cuffs around her wrists.
“I feel ridiculous,” she said.
“You look hot,” he countered, pulling her in front of a reflective metal cabinet. “See?”
She examined her reflection. The stretchy halter top held her breasts front and center, giving a whole new meaning to the concept of underwire. More wire spiraled around her arms from the collar to the thick wrist cuffs. She had to admit it was an eye-catching ensemble, but it wasn’t her style at all. She felt like an imposter, a lab rat masquerading as a Dominatrix, but she didn’t have the heart to tell him, not if he liked what he saw.
“Here’s the conductor.” He placed the same gun from yesterday in her hand and snapped the wire to the cuff. “Ready?” he asked.
She nodded.
He led her over to the firing range and touched the back of her neck. She heard a click. This time he didn’t guide her hand. She touched the tip of the gun to the top of the battery and pulled the trigger.
Blue fire sizzled. “Holy shit,” she gasped, letting go.
She pulled the trigger again and they both watched the needle climb toward the red.
“Stop.” His eyes glowed. “I think we’ve got a weapon for you.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Déjà vu,” Jake said, as they walked toward Genecorp. “Only last time we were kidnapping dead mice instead of a live human.”
“We’re not kidnapping, we’re rescuing,” she said.
“What if your super kid doesn’t see it that way?”
“He will. How could he not? They’ve been keeping him in a basement. Besides, that’s what you’re for—he’s coming with us whether he wants to or not.”
Jake shot a sideways look at Cal. “Two days with you and now she’s a kinky kidnapper?”
Power Trip: Double Helix, Book 1 Page 12
