Stynger continued as if Bella hadn’t spoken a word. “I’d like to wait until the swelling goes down, but there just isn’t time. I need you ready for transport too soon. And the first twenty-four hours are . . . precarious.”
Bella strained against the straps holding her in place. Not only were they too secure for her to break, the effort made her head throb.
“You really should rest while you can. I’ll be back in a few hours to check on you. I have a couple of arrangements to finish for our relocation, but I should be able to start the surgery tonight. Most of my female subjects didn’t survive, but you’re stronger than they were. I’m sure of it.” She patted Bella’s arm. “You’re going to wake up tomorrow feeling like a new woman. Assuming you wake up at all.”
* * *
There was no way in hell Gage was leaving Jordyn behind. Not only was she carrying his child, she was far too kind to deal with the level of psychotic violence Stynger could dish out.
The little boy snoozing beside him proved just how low the bitch would go.
Rage tried to gain a foothold in Gage’s chest, but he took deep breaths, staving it off as much as he could. Jordyn wasn’t the only one who needed to stay sharp and focused. He did as well.
He’d almost told her about the baby. She had a right to know. But he didn’t dare take the chance that the shock would slow her down or distract her. She was determined to do what needed to be done to free them. For now that had to be enough.
As soon as they were out of here he’d tell her. He didn’t know her well enough to have a clue how she’d react, but whatever her reaction, he’d deal with it then.
He had to admit that she looked comfortable holding the little boy. There was no awkwardness or hesitance. Her instincts to protect him had taken hold and compelled her to act. It was the kind of thing any good mother would do.
That reassured Gage on a level so deep he hadn’t even realized how worried he’d been.
He pulled the sheet up over his lap to hide his actions from the cameras he was certain had to be watching. He unscrewed the pen and used the clip to make quick work of picking the lock on his handcuffs. Once that was done, he screwed it back together and readied it to be used as a stabbing weapon if the shit hit the fan.
An hour was a long wait—more than enough time for excrement to start flying.
Chapter Forty-two
Bella was sweating and panting from her efforts to get free when the door opened and Randolph walked in.
“Didn’t think I’d see you again,” she said. “Figured you’d be slinking off with your reward by now.”
“Stynger and I don’t see eye to eye on my pay for the job of bringing you in. I decided to take my own benefits where I could find them.”
There had been a time when Bella had liked this man. He’d been easy to laugh, good at his job and even better with a rifle. If not for his overconfidence and a morally gray streak that made him genetically incapable of following the rules even when he had no reason not to, he would have been an asset to the company. He’d fooled her for a while, covering up his mistakes with grand, nearly heroic stories. But eventually she’d figured it out. He was just one more cocky asshole with a gun and a desire to pull the trigger as often as possible.
“Here for a little slap and tickle, heavy on the slap?” she asked.
He snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself. I prefer my women a little softer than rawhide.”
“At least now I know you like women. I always wondered.” The straps holding her to the steel table cut into her skin. It took all her willpower not to keep working to loosen them.
A rolling table draped with a blue cloth sat in one corner of the room. He pulled the cloth away to reveal an array of surgical instruments.
Bella’s blood froze solid, stopping her heart for a few painful seconds. She had to take several breaths before she could find enough air to speak. When she did, she tried not to sound as terrified as she was. “So, is this the part where you exact your pound of flesh, then?”
He ran his finger over the instruments as if trying to decide which one to use first. “You know what your problem is?”
“I’m strapped to this fucking table?” she asked. “You could fix that, you know. Let me free. We could sit down and discuss your grievances. If it will make you feel better, I could go back and redo your performance evaluations. Add team player to the list of your attributes.”
“You never think things through,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “That’s your problem. You charge in, certain you know exactly what’s going on when you really only have half of the story.”
“Are you saying I only know half of your story? And that if I’d known the whole thing I wouldn’t have fired you? Feel free to enlighten me.”
He picked up a scalpel and tested its edge on his forearm, cleanly slicing away the hair there. “I was finally getting my shit together when I came to work for you. My parents were proud. My ex stopped bitching that I never paid her child support. Hell, even my bookie was smiling.”
“If you liked your job so much, then why did you kill that kid?”
“You say I don’t follow orders, but that’s exactly what I was doing at the time. You said to take out the hostiles. They were shooting at our principal’s motorcade. We had every right to defend him and ourselves.”
“You had no right to shoot a child.”
“She had no right to be in the way. They were using her as a fucking human shield.”
“I don’t care!” Bella shouted, making her head pound. “You find another way. You don’t mow through innocents.”
“It’s not like her life would have been worth living. Poverty, squalor, life as some man’s property. I was doing her a favor.”
“Yeah? Maybe someone should have done you that favor when you were a kid and saved us all the trouble of locking you up now.”
He balled up his fist and hit her. She didn’t even see it coming. Her already concussed head screamed in agony, and her vision dimmed for a few seconds.
When her bell stopped ringing, he had her hair in his fist and his face only inches from hers. “See what I mean? You never think.”
“Kinda hard to think when you’re scrambling my brains like that. How about you let a girl free and we’ll fight it out like men.”
Randolph laughed. “I just bet you would have liked to have been born with a dick.”
“I bet you would have, too.”
His expression tightened into a snarl. She was sure he was going to hit her again, but instead he backed away and went to the little table of instruments. “I’m done letting you get under my skin, because in a few hours, Stynger is going to get under yours. She’s going to shove one of her toys in your brain, and you’ll know exactly what it’s like to have someone boss you around.”
“No, thanks. I’ll pass, honey.”
He picked up an electric razor. “No more passes, honey. Time to prep you for surgery.”
Chapter Forty-three
It had taken Jordyn nearly an hour to do what she needed to do. The wheeled cart stocked with instruments and boxes helped give her an air of legitimacy. Her rushed demeanor and a healthy dose of fear did the rest.
Every tech she passed gave her that sympathetic look that told her they knew what it was like to be on an errand for Dr. Norma Stynger.
All around the labs, techs were packing up equipment and files. Jordyn hadn’t been notified of the exact time of the move, but it had to be happening soon. The groups were intentionally compartmentalized to keep socializing to a minimum, but each group would be moved as a unit.
The blue unit was apparently the next one on the truck to wherever it was they were going this time.
A group of guards oversaw the whole process, but she doubted that a single one of them would know what any of the equipment being packed was for. A
ll they were probably worried about was making sure it all got packed on time so there were no delays.
Jordyn was counting on it.
She pilfered what she needed, tucking it all inside boxes, out of sight. The red unit next door was asleep, giving her plenty of room to work. She did everything she could think to do, including a little bit of hacking into the security system. The delays she set were already counting down when she made it back to Gage’s room.
This time she didn’t have to be let in. The door was wide open and filled with a pair of burly guards.
Jordyn shoved her way between them with one of her boxes of contingency plans. Inside the room, Gage was holding off another pair of guards with her ballpoint pen. The little boy was screaming in fear, dangling from Gage’s arm. Another guard was on the floor, blood pooling under his head. There was a ragged hole where his eye had once been. The other eye stared sightlessly in death.
One of the guards leveled a weapon at Gage’s head. “Let go of the kid,” he demanded.
Gage said nothing, but the look he gave the man was sharp enough to cut glass.
“This isn’t going to end well for you. You’re already bleeding all over the place.”
And he was. A trickle of blood was seeping out from under his bandages, which were soaked through bright red.
“What’s going on here?” Jordyn asked, working hard to sound like she had every right to know.
“Doc sent us for the kid,” said the nearest guard.
“I don’t care who sent you. I put that child here myself. Now go find someone else to bother.”
“Can’t do that, ma’am. We have orders.”
They also had implants driven into their brains that made them incapable of defying those orders.
Jordyn had no choice but to use up one of her tricks now.
She caught Gage’s eye. “Remember the gum?”
He nodded.
“Deep breath.”
She wasn’t sure if he understood what she was going to do or not, but there was no more time to explain. She used one hand to strap a mask on over her nose and mouth while opening the valve on the pressurized container with the other. The gas they pumped into rooms at night to keep people asleep flooded the space with a fine mist. She grabbed up the second mask she’d brought with her and tossed it toward Gage. “Heads up!”
She couldn’t see if he caught it or not. The air was too thick. She did, however, hear several heavy bodies hit the ground. The little boy’s screams cut off, leaving the room blissfully quiet. Only the faint hiss of the emptying can of sedative remained.
Jordyn stumbled over one of the guards toward Gage. She was close enough now to see he was still on his feet, mask in place.
She took the child from his hands and hurried him out of the room before he could breathe in too much of the gas.
Gage was right on her heels.
As soon as they were in the hall, she grabbed the wheeled cart with one hand and pulled. “We have about a minute before every lock in this place opens and every alarm goes off.”
He took the cart from her hands, freeing her to maneuver the child easier. She wasn’t sure if he was trying to help, or if he needed to lean on something. From the look of the blood seeping into his pajama pants, his surgical wound had reopened.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“Keep moving.”
“There’s a tranquilizer gun on the bottom shelf of the cart. It’s only got three shots in it before you have to reload.”
“Range?”
“None. You have to touch them with it to trigger it.”
They were almost out of the medical wing when there was an audible click of every electronic lock opening at once. A heartbeat later, sirens began to blare and lights started flashing.
The little boy didn’t even stir. If not for the strong pounding of his pulse under her hands, she would have worried he’d been hurt.
“Will the elevators lock down?” he asked.
“No. I overrode that part of the code.” She hoped. Otherwise, they were trapped down here. There were no stairs leading up, no other way out.
Jordyn turned the corner, but Gage was no longer with her. She backtracked to see where he’d gone and found him disappearing into one of the surgical rooms.
The second she looked through the glass window, she knew their escape had just gotten a lot harder.
There was a tall, dark-haired woman strapped facedown on one of the surgical tables. The back of her head had been shaved, and whoever had done it hadn’t been careful. Her skin was bleeding in several places, matting what little hair was left. Her arms were bruised and bloody from where she’d been fighting to escape.
As still as she was now, there seemed to be no fight left in her.
“Bella?” Gage said, leaning down to see her face through the horseshoe headrest.
She let out a rough moan and started thrashing.
He put his hand on her arm. “Easy.”
“Gage?” Her voice was thick and muffled.
He began to undo the straps holding her down. “Hang on.”
She was barely free when she burst off the table like she was spring-loaded. Her face was bruised and covered in drying blood. Her bangs were matted with more blood. Both lips were swollen as if she’d taken a couple of hard hits.
She swayed on her feet. Gage grabbed her arm to steady her. As soon as her eyes focused on him, she launched herself at him, grabbing him in a hard hug. “You’re alive!” She let out a sob of relief before catching herself and regaining control.
Jordyn watched the display, marveling over it. She’d never seen people hug like that before in person. She’d seen it on the Internet, but never in real life. It was so . . . intimate.
A spike of jealousy caught her off guard. She knew better than to think she had any right to mind if the two of them stripped down and had sex right here on the floor, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to finish ripping the woman’s hair out.
He hugged her back, but not nearly as hard. Fresh blood oozed from his bandage. After a couple of seconds, he pulled away, allowing Jordyn room to breathe again.
“You good to go?” he asked Bella, holding her face between his hands so she had no choice but to look him in the eye.
She gave a weak nod. “Always. But they dosed me with something. If I start acting screwy, don’t hesitate to knock me out.”
“Screwy?” Gage asked.
“You’ll know it if you see it.”
He nodded.
“I’m Jordyn.” She shifted the boy’s weight to offer her hand.
Bella didn’t take it. She looked at Jordyn with suspicion. “Stynger’s daughter?”
“Unfortunately.”
“She saved my life,” Gage said.
Bella nodded, seemingly satisfied with his reference, then turned to Gage. “What’s the plan?”
“Follow Jordyn.”
Bella picked up a scalpel from the instrument table. “Lead on. If you see that asshole Randolph, he’s mine.”
Jordyn knew the man and wanted nothing to do with him. He was selfish in a way that suited Mother well. As long as she had something he wanted, he was her pawn.
“This way,” Jordyn said as she led them down the hall. “The elevators aren’t far.”
Gage was right on her heels, sticking close. Every few seconds his hand would brush against her arm so she’d know he was still there. If not for the reassurance of his presence, she would have been terrified right now. As it was, she was merely scared.
Jordyn turned the last corner before the elevators. A pair of guards were waiting for them no more than fifty feet away.
They opened fire.
Chapter Forty-four
Gage jerked Jordyn back before she could take a hit.
In the split second that passed between when he saw the threat and reacted to it, he realized just how much she meant to him. How much their child meant to him.
He hadn’t asked to be tied to her in this way. Neither had she. But they were tied, and unless and until that changed, he would protect his family with his life.
She looked up at him, pale and shaking, her pretty eyes filled with fear as she cradled the little boy against her chest. “They’re blocking the exit. What do we do now?”
“Make a hole,” Gage said.
Bullets ripped into the nearby wall. Splinters of concrete showered over them.
“Easier said than done without any real weapons,” Bella said.
“There’s another pressurized can of sedative on the cart,” Jordyn said. “But I only brought two masks. I wasn’t expecting company.”
“Stay here. I’ll go back for it,” Bella said. She was gone before anyone could argue.
If he didn’t make it out of here, there would be no one outside of the labs who could explain to Jordyn what had been done to her—that she’d been impregnated with a virtual stranger’s baby without her knowledge or consent. She was smart and would figure it out eventually, but it was dangerous for her not to know she was pregnant. Even that sedative that she had been toting around could be harmful.
“Your mother did something to you,” he said, wondering how one eased into such a subject.
“She did a lot of things to me. I’ve never been anything more to her than an interesting experiment.”
“No, she—” His words were cut off by another volley of gunfire. The men’s voices were closer now as they coordinated their attack.
Gage was running out of time. They all were.
He gripped the tranquilizer gun tighter, readying it to strike whoever came around the corner first.
Blood dripped along his ribs. The top of his pants were wet and cold with it, making him wonder just how much he could bleed before his strength failed him completely.
“She what?” Jordyn asked. “If you know that Mother did something to me, you have to tell me.”
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