I wasn’t disappointed.
I had no sooner fired up the secure SAT link than my inbox started filling up with responses to my earlier inquiries. I clicked through them, one by one. Within a few short hours, I had a complete dossier.
Alyxandra Maeve Laskaris, twenty-six years old, born February 13th. Daughter of the late Jack Laskaris, Jr. and his wife Elysia (Quirke) Laskaris, killed five years earlier in a suspicious house fire. The fourth of five children. Her younger brother, Christos, had died from a brain tumor at the age of seven, when Alyx was just nine.
She had attended secondary school outside of Maple Heights, Ohio, where she finished with a perfect 4.0 average; higher if weighted by the Advanced Placement chemistry and biology courses she had taken. She had been barred from her graduation ceremony, however, because of her refusal to change some questionable passages in her valedictorian speech. Immediately afterward, she had attended the University of Pennsylvania on a full scholarship, provided by the Chamberlain Biomedical Research Foundation, with a paid internship during the summer semesters.
I stiffened when I read that. The name rang an unpleasant bell. There had been rumors that CBRF had been behind the private, underground facility we’d taken down only weeks earlier. The one that had been doing testing on shifters in an attempt to isolate and synthetically recreate what made shifters so much stronger and faster than their human counterparts.
Like I said, we made damn good soldiers.
As if on cue, my leg started aching again, a painful reminder of the horrible things I had witnessed before laying waste to every one of those sick bastards. The possibility that Alyx had anything to do with that made the bile rise in my throat.
Forcing down those thoughts, I read further.
After her third rotation in the CBRF labs, Alyx had withdrawn from the program. With only one year to go, she had walked away from the scholarship and returned to Ohio, where she enrolled in the nursing program at one of the state university campuses. With credits transferred from the U of P, she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Nursing less than two years later.
Over the next four years, she moved no less than five times, working in hospitals around the country, primarily in pediatric oncology units. Her most recent job change had occurred only two months earlier when she came to Nowaskannock.
When I finished reading everything, I sat back and rubbed my eyes. I had learned a lot, but I still didn’t know what had Alyx hiding out in Nowhere. Worse, I had even more questions than when I’d started. Some of the biggies: Did she have any knowledge of, or participate in any of the shady experiments taking place under the CBRF umbrella? Why had she given up her scholarship and switched from biomedical engineering to nursing when she had been so close to completing her degree? And what was behind the frequent moves and job changes?
Two things I knew for certain. One, I would get answers. And two, CBRF was the key.
The first thing I needed to do was find out more about Alyx’s time with CBRF. Who had she worked for? What kind of work had she done? I didn’t want to believe she could have had anything to do with the secret, unethical experimentation on my kind, but I wasn’t naive enough to dismiss the possibility entirely. If my experiences had taught me anything, it was that anyone was capable of anything with the right incentive. We all liked to think we were better than that, but the truth was, we weren’t. Everyone had a weakness. For some, it was self-serving, like power or money. For others, it was the people they loved.
Which was exactly why I made sure I didn’t have those vulnerabilities. Exactly why I couldn’t give in to my wolf’s insistence that Alyx was the one. The moment I acknowledged anything, she would become my weakness.
Unfortunately, my wolf didn’t give a shit about any of that. He wanted Alyx. Naked, marked, and wrapped around my cock.
By dawn, the sky was heavy with snow clouds, though the weathermen insisted the impending Nor’easter was still several hours away. Unable to sleep, I paced back and forth across the living room, my wolf pawing in concern. Alyx should have been home hours ago.
It wasn’t just the weather that had me concerned. I had spent most of the night looking more into Alyx’s connection with CBRF. There wasn’t much in the way of useful information. She’d worked three semesters in a division devoted to oncology research and, by all accounts, she had done well. There was absolutely no indication she had been involved in anything remotely questionable, which was both good and comforting, but not iron-clad proof that she hadn’t been.
What bothered me was the name of the person she had worked for—Roger Chamberlain himself. Grandson of the company founder, Roger Chamberlain III was a wealthy, arrogant, entitled little bastard. While Roger I and Roger II seemed to have built the company on a platform of optimism, scientific excellence, and sound ethics, Roger III had apparently decided those things weren’t profitable enough and had expanded into other, shadier areas.
Not long after Roger III had assumed control of the genetic research division, CBRF had been awarded a huge government contract. The details were sketchy at best, buried beneath mountains of paper trails which inevitably led nowhere. I didn’t have concrete proof, but a sick feeling in my gut told me that he, and that contract, were behind facilities like the one we had shut down.
I debated whether or not to send the information back to my CO. We had no way of knowing if the facility we’d destroyed was the only one, or if there were more out there we just hadn’t found yet. Chances were, we’d set them back by razing it, but none of us were naive enough to believe that was the end of it. Any hunter knew that to destroy a snake you had to cut off the head, and Chamberlain was still out there, slithering around somewhere.
Ultimately, I decided against reporting anything until I knew more about Alyx’s involvement, or lack thereof.
Was it a questionable call? Sure. I rationalized it away by telling myself that I had nothing beyond vague circumstantial evidence and a hunch. Definitely not enough to warrant an official inquiry, especially after the legal shitstorm that last op had brought down. If my CO suspected I was poking around Chamberlain when I was supposed to be off the grid, I might just find myself on permanent leave.
It was nearly seven a.m. when I finally saw the light go on over at Grace’s. I counted off ten minutes before picking up the phone. After another five, I sat in my neighbor’s cheery kitchen, eyes alert for any sign of Alyx. I had called Grace using the excuse that I wanted to make sure she had everything she needed to weather the storm. Grace, however, hadn’t been fooled for a minute and invited me over for coffee, just as I had hoped.
“Alyx often works double shifts,” she said knowingly as she placed a steaming mug in my hands. “Sometimes, if one of the kids is having a hard time of it, she stays even longer.”
Grace sat down at the table across from me with a cup of her own. “Her brother died of cancer when she was very young. I don’t think she’s ever quite gotten over it. For years, she told everyone she was going to find the cure for cancer.” Grace smiled sadly. “With her intelligence and her passion, I believe she might have.”
“Might have?”
“Nursing wasn’t her first choice. Biomedical engineering was. She was thrilled when she received a full scholarship to an Ivy League school with one of the top-rated programs in the country.”
Of course I knew all this. The black and white of it, anyway. Grace didn’t know that, though, and by listening, I might be able to fill in some of those gray gaps.
“What happened?”
A shadow passed over Grace’s face. “I don’t know all the details. However, I can tell you this ... It changed her, Reid. She hasn’t been the same since ...”
“Since ...?” I prompted.
“Since they discovered just how special she really is.” Grace shook her head. “I’m sorry, Reid. I can’t say any more than that. Alyx is a very private person. But you understand that, don’t you?”
Special. The way she said it implied more
than intelligence and passion. The way she looked pointedly at me implied she knew I wasn’t exactly normal, either.
I met her gaze. “Yes, ma’am, I do.”
She seemed relieved. “Maybe, someday, you can confide in each other.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing.
“Anyway, things have a way of working out. Alyx is touching a lot of young lives, making a difference. There’s one boy in particular she has grown quite fond of. His name is Dylan. No one expected him to make it through Christmas, but he’s still hanging on. She spends a lot of time with him. I imagine that’s why she’s running late today.”
I looked out the window again. The driveway would soon be covered, and road conditions would only continue to deteriorate. I certainly couldn’t begrudge Alyx spending time with a little boy with cancer, but I worried for her safety.
Just as I was about to suggest driving to the hospital to give her a ride home, I heard the hum of her cycle. Another glance out the window confirmed Alyx was home, gliding her bike down the driveway in a controlled skid. The wave of relief I felt was substantial.
Alyx didn’t even look toward the house, though she must have seen the lights on.
“Oh, dear,” Grace murmured as she, too, watched her granddaughter through the window.
The older woman placed her small hand on my arm. Unused to such familiar contact, I tensed. She pretended not to notice.
“Alyx takes it hard when one of her kids isn’t doing well,” she explained. “The trouble with having such a big heart is that it gets broken easily.”
I wasn’t sure if her words were meant as an explanation or a thinly veiled warning.
“Is there anything we can do?”
Grace shook her head. “No. She needs some time. She’ll come out when she’s ready. The most we can do is be here for her when she does.”
It wasn’t lost on me that Grace said “we,” instead of “I,” nor that I had, either.
I waited for the protest to rear up inside me, but strangely enough, it didn’t come.
I nodded and drank my coffee, accepting the wisdom of the woman who knew her granddaughter a lot better than I did.
Chapter Five
Alyx
I was dead on my feet after pulling another double. A sixteen-hour shift would be hard enough as it was, but the constant release of healing energy was especially draining. Caffeine and adrenaline only went so far, and then I was forced to function on sheer willpower.
My stomach rumbled painfully, reminding me that I hadn’t taken the time to eat in a while, either. None of that mattered. What mattered was that I had been able to pull Dylan back not once, but three times.
The latest test results weren’t good, but I wasn’t giving up. At this point, keeping the tumors from spreading, encroaching around his heart, his lungs, his brain, and pretty much every major organ in his little body, was enough for now. The boy had shown more courage and had more faith than anyone I had ever met. He didn’t deserve this. Not that any kid deserved cancer ever, but Dylan was special to me.
Just like Christos. Dylan even looked like him a little, with that dark, golden hair and those big brown eyes.
Not a day went by when I didn’t think of my younger brother. I hadn’t been able to heal him, but I had grown into my powers since then.
I still had a long way to go. Sometimes, no matter how much energy I expended, it wasn’t enough.
Now that I was back at the loft, I let the mask slip and collapsed onto the sofa bed. Hot tears coursed down my face unchecked. It just wasn’t right. For the hundredth time, I wondered why I had been given a gift that didn’t always work. Why I could help some and not others.
Gram often said everything happened for a reason, but if there was any rhyme or reason to this, it was beyond my comprehension.
It wasn’t all bad, I reminded myself. My gift did have a purpose. I was able to help some, if not all. There were at least half a dozen people who were going to be in better shape today than they had been yesterday because of me.
That was what I had to focus on—the things I could change, not the things I couldn’t.
I had to be careful, though. A subtle nudge here, an acceleration there. I couldn’t heal people outright, not without drawing attention to myself. That might sound terribly selfish, but there were those who wanted to exploit my gift for their own personal gain. Men like Roger Chamberlain, who would go to any lengths to get what they wanted.
Discretion was necessary. The need to keep my secret had been drilled into me since I was a kid and my ability to heal had first manifested. But these feelings of suspicion and fear, they hadn’t become such a huge part of my life until much more recently.
Special abilities might be unusual in the general population, but not in my family. My grandmother had a gift for sensing love matches. My mother had been able to touch an object and see into its past.
My father’s ancestry included some secrets of its own, and each of my siblings had their own special abilities, too. We had a long history of gifted bloodlines, and as such, a long history of persecution, so we’d grown up understanding the importance of keeping our talents hidden. Those lessons had been drilled home in the most brutal way when our parents died.
While we couldn’t prove the fire that had taken their lives had been deliberately set, we suspected that was what had happened. My sister, who was very sensitive to negative and positive energies, said the area where the fire had started reeked of malicious intent. We couldn’t tell the fire investigators that, though.
The bottom line was, we kept our secrets and pretended to be just like everyone else. We learned to control our affinities and use them within socially acceptable parameters.
By the time I started my senior year of high school, I had already been offered a fully paid scholarship to Penn. It included a co-op program that allowed me to work with some of the greatest scientific minds in the biomedical industry on cancer research. I’d jumped on the chance.
My gift had its limits—I couldn’t personally help everyone—but science ... science could reach far more.
I wasn’t sure exactly how my gift worked, but I suspected that whatever happened, happened at the cellular level.
Real progress was frustratingly slow, though, and one day, I decided to move things along. I stayed late at the lab one night, and after everyone else had left, I tried manipulating some of the test cultures using my healing abilities. I hadn’t been sure it would work, but it had.
No one else was supposed to have seen those results, not until I had an actual plan. Unfortunately, things hadn’t worked out that way. Someone noticed that a few of the lab mice that had been injected with the latest treatments showed marked improvement.
I denied having anything to do with it, of course, but not before garnering the attention of Roger Chamberlain himself. Bad news travelled fast, but a potential breakthrough in cancer research moved like lightning.
In a bizarre turn of events, one thing led to another and soon Roger Chamberlain and I were dating. I had been too star-struck at the time to question it.
At twenty-nine, Roger was brilliant, good-looking, and charming, not to mention extremely wealthy. He said all the right things, did all the right things, and I soaked it up like a dry sponge.
Looking back now, I don’t think Roger had ever bought my feigned ignorance about the trials. While he’d wined and dined me, he’d also had me under constant surveillance, both on and off the job. During that time, I can only surmise that he had somehow put two and two together. I didn’t flaunt my gift, but if I found myself in a situation where I could help someone discreetly, I did.
As I prepared to return to school after that last rotation, Roger had grown increasingly possessive. He had even gone as far as to propose. That had been enough to put a crack in those rose-colored glasses I was wearing and realize things weren’t what they had seemed. We had gotten along well enough, but not enough to warrant a pro
posal after six weeks. We just never had that kind of instant chemistry. When we were together, my heart hadn’t beat fast, and my body hadn’t heated up or responded in a dozen different ways.
Not like when I was around Reid MacIntyre.
I shut those thoughts down immediately. They were unwelcome and unhelpful and totally inappropriate.
Needless to say, Roger hadn’t taken my rejection well. He became obsessed. Calling me all the time. Showing up all hours of the day and night. The situation had gotten so bad I put in my resignation, gave up my scholarship, even moved away and changed my major to nursing.
It hadn’t helped. If anything, Roger became even more determined. He would give me a few months, make me think he’d moved on, and then suddenly appear again. Each time was more desperate than the last. I figured I had another month, maybe two, before I had to leave again.
For now, I was safe.
I forced myself into the shower. For a few minutes, the scalding water helped. I would have to go back to the hospital again in a few hours and needed to get myself together. I supposed I could have just stayed there and saved myself the trip, made use of the hospital’s locker room and crashed in the lounge instead, but I needed this time in my own space, away from everyone else. I needed the quiet of my little sanctuary to let my guard down and recharge.
I managed a few hours, but not nearly enough. The wind howled outside, rattling the windows as the brunt of the storm bore down upon us. Ideally, I would have stayed in my loft, snuggled down deeply in a nest of down comforters until my next shift, but my churning mind and rumbling stomach wouldn’t allow it.
Finally, I just gave up, figuring it was better to weather the storm in the warmth of Gram’s kitchen. At least I would get some food in me, and that was equally important to replenishing my depleted energy reserves.
It was a short walk, but by the time I got there, I was covered in snow, my lashes coated in ice crystals.
Going Nowhere: A BAMF Team Novel Page 4
