Acceptable Risks (21 page)

“We got enough. He’s not going to hit you again.” He held his free hand out toward the car as they stumbled down the steps—well, she stumbled—and the headlights flashed with the chirp of the door locks. He helped her into the passenger side and slid across the hood to get into the driver’s side.

He scanned the console and dropped the key fob in his hand to jab a finger at a large button behind the steering wheel. Nothing happened. He jammed his foot on the brake and hit the button again. This time lights came on the dash, but the engine didn’t turn over.

“What’s wrong?” Gabby asked. She leaned over to help, but had no idea what she was looking at. “Why isn’t the engine starting?”

“It’s a hybrid.” Matthew pointed to a diagram on the dash. “Silent engine unless it’s drawing gas. But there’s something else going on.” He bent to look under the steering column and cursed. “He’s got a security lock on it. I need—”

But it was too late. Her door opened, and John held his gun against her temple.

“Get out of the car, please.”

“Um…no.”

Matt’s finger hovered over the button again, but he didn’t touch it.

“Nice try with the dirt man under the blanket, Mr. Madrassa, but it was a little too small.” John pressed the gun tighter against her temple. “Both of you, out of the car.”

Matthew’s door flew open, and Isaac snagged his collar and dragged him out. Matthew went limp and landed on the ground, where he swept Isaac’s legs. Isaac stumbled but didn’t fall. It was enough to give Matthew time to get on his feet, and they started fighting. John pulled Gabby out of the car by the upper arm, a little more gently than Isaac had treated Matthew, and waited. Gabby held her breath, watching as the men traded blows, one reeling backward, the other attacking, then both rolling across the needle-strewn ground. Tears dampened her face again, and she tried not to cry out or flinch. Matthew didn’t need the distraction, and it could startle the man holding a gun to her head. He seemed more stable than that, but she wasn’t taking chances.

After a minute Matthew got the upper hand. He half knelt, half stood over Isaac, the man’s shirt bunched in his left fist, his right raised and ready to deliver the final blow.

That was when John fired.

Chapter Eighteen

Despite how late she’d fallen asleep and how fitfully she’d dozed, Lark woke early, the light in the barn dim enough to tell her it was barely dawn. Even so, Jason was up already, dressed and making coffee on an ancient coffeemaker in a corner.

“Everything okay?” she asked, her voice gravelly.

Jason turned, smiling, and she knew even though the real answer was
hell, no
, eventually it would be okay.

“Nils is still here.”

“That’s something, at least.” She yawned and sat up, throwing her bare legs over the edge of the bed. She still wore her tank top and had put her underwear back on before they fell asleep. She picked up her bra from the end post of the bed and put it on, replacing her tank with a T-shirt Jason tossed her. “Are we going to talk about last night?”

His smile faded and he handed her a small, chipped mug of coffee. “Not now. After this is all over.”

Lark sighed and accepted the mug. “We could just call it a mistake and be done with it.”

The silence rang with denial. Lark wasn’t sure how much came from him, and how much from her. She’d never deliberately avoided relationships, but had never realized how truly empty and superficial they’d been. In just a couple of days, she already cared more for Jason than anyone else outside her family.

She should be terrified, and somewhere inside was frantic resistance. But she could barely feel it under the buzz of pleasure and hope.

But judging by the chasm Jason had set between them, he didn’t feel the same. Any residual contentment disappeared. She should let it go, at least for now, but her mouth wouldn’t stay shut. “Jason, age and my father are not good reasons to avoid a relationship with me.”

“Sorry the coffee’s black. We don’t keep cream or sugar here.”

“It’s fine.” She sipped the coffee and set the mug on the floor to pull on her jeans. “Boston and DC aren’t that far apart, either, and—”

“I’m not shallow, Lark.” His voice was low, hard. “You’re right, those don’t matter. This is about far more serious things that we won’t talk about until this is over.”

She understood, then, what he really meant. While she’d been struggling to overcome fantasies of a future with him so she could sleep, he’d been pondering their present. He thought he wouldn’t survive, or that she wouldn’t, and he didn’t want either of them to make promises. That was the smart way to handle it, except it didn’t matter. She knew that it would hurt just as much if he died again, whether he told her he cared about her or not.

But a sudden shaft of sunlight through a high window reminded her that time was a precious commodity. People were in danger, not just them. So she pretended to drop it, to wait until a more appropriate moment. And hoped her deep dread didn’t mean there wouldn’t be one.

She finished dressing and sat cross-legged on the bed, cradling her coffee. “What is this place?”

“It’s an old farm my parents own. They planned to retire here but decided they missed being near the conveniences of the city too much.”

“It’s stocked.”

“They use it as a hideaway from time to time.”

“Oh.” She tried not to think of the condom he’d found last night, and then wondered if they knew he was alive. “Have you talked to them since you got out of the lab?”

He shook his head and drained his mug. “No time. They’re traveling, anyway. Matt’s kept them from getting too worried about me.” He offered her a refill. She nodded, and he split the remaining coffee between them and then leaned against the wall, well out of touching distance.

“Why did you come after me?” he asked after a moment.

At first, she didn’t know what he meant. It seemed so long ago that she’d first gotten on his bike. “You hadn’t checked in. Don’t argue.” She shook her head, tired. “It’s done. Did you get anything out of Nils before I got there?”

“Not as much as you did. They want Gabby because of me, and the RT-24 data so they can sell the formula to someone.”

“Why did they take my father, then?”

He shook his head. “Nothing ties together, at least not neatly. Abducting Matt doesn’t further Isaac’s agenda to destroy his reputation. He has to be out there facing the damage in order for it to hurt.”

“But his disappearance during a sensitive time does damage.”

He grimaced. “We need more information. Did you get anything from the drive?”

“Oh, my God, yes!” She jumped off the bed and dug in her back pocket for her list. “Look!” She handed the crumpled pages to him.

He unfolded the lined paper and scanned the names. “What am I looking at?”

“I found this list—some party list, according to the file name. But when I read them, I found correlations.” She explained how the first and last names were one-off, leaning close and pointing to the page. How did he smell so good after everything they’d done over the last twenty-four hours? “I recognized my aunt’s name, and that triggered it all. I wrote the original list on the back, with the strikethroughs.”

Jason flipped it over, then back. His frown deepened. “I recognize some of these from Hummingbird.”

“Maybe people Isaac tried to get on his side?” A trace of excitement buzzed through her. This could be their first solid lead. At least, something they could act on.

“Maybe,” Jason mused. “Most of the Hummingbird people are crossed off. Your aunt isn’t.”

“I know, and neither is Carl. But only if you assume the last name is the pertinent strikethrough.”

“Carl’s the boyfriend?”

“
Ex
boyfriend.” Had he sounded edgy about that? “Are there any employees not crossed off?”

He studied the list again. “One. One of the on-site security team.”

Lark pointed to the plus-two next to the name, like a party notation indicating he’d be bringing two other people. “Probably someone else, too, not written on here. I don’t know why he’d note it like that, though.” She pressed her lips together. Logic said Isaac had only gotten to Nils and the one or two other people whose last names weren’t crossed off, rather than all the others. But that meant her aunt and Carl were conspiring against her father.

She sat heavily on the bed again. “Stuart had access to my greenhouse. He probably gave Donald the codes, which allowed him to come after me and the plants.” She didn’t know why that bothered her so much. She wasn’t close to Stuart. Still, they worked together. Had similar goals. What had probably been a shrug-worthy business transaction to Stuart still felt like a betrayal, and it marred what her work life had been. Made her wonder if she could go back to BotMed…assuming she had that choice in the end.

Jason smoothed her hair, and his quiet empathy brought a lump to her throat.

“Let’s go talk to Nils,” he said.

Lark forced the sadness to convert to anger. It welled, hardening her muscles as well as her emotions. She stood and clenched her fists, stalking to the doorway.

“I’ll beat it out of him.”

* * *

Jason trailed Lark into the main barn. He understood the betrayal she had to be feeling, and he’d let her vent it on Nils if she needed to. The guy had earned a little torment. But she’d done good work, figuring out the list. It gave them leads. They’d need them. Nils wasn’t as knowledgeable as he pretended, and Jason doubted he had anything else to share.

When he got to the stall, Lark had opened it and stood over Nils. The guy reclined in one corner, trying to look like he wasn’t cowering. When Jason appeared, Nils half-crawled to the side, away from Lark.

“Hey, JT. I smell coffee. Can I have some?”

Jason didn’t answer. He braced his legs wide in the stall doorway and folded his arms.

“Okay, that’s the way it’s gonna be. I get it.” Nils rolled back to sit and rested his arms on top of his updrawn knees, a nonchalant pose belied by the constant darting of his eyes everywhere but at Lark. “I’m not tellin’ you nothin’.”

“Sure you’re not.” Lark stepped closer. “Ella Darron.”

Nils looked blank. “Who’s that?”

“You know who that is. I want to know what she has to do with you and Isaac.”

“I never heard of her.”

Jason believed him. The guy was far too transparent to lie effectively. Jason was starting to wonder how he’d lasted so long at Hummingbird.

“What about Carl Frankel? Stuart Reinhart?” Lark rattled off one name after another. Nils just kept shaking his head.

“Fine.” Lark looked around, then raised her head to scan the barn outside the stall. She spotted something, shoved past Jason, and stalked back in with a pitchfork in her hands. “How about you just tell me what you do know, and I’ll stop trying to lead you.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Nils held up his arms to ward off the tines she aimed at his chest. “Come on, now! I told you stuff!”

“Tell us more.”

Nils eyed Jason, then Lark, then the pitchfork. She jabbed it at him, poking his arm.

“Ow!” He rubbed it, scowled, heaved a huge sigh. “Fuck. Okay. I told you, Isaac doesn’t tell me everything. I don’t know anything about those people you said. All I know is that Hummingbird has this nerve regeneration therapy that helped keep Jason alive and stuff, but it makes him hurt.”

Jason kept his features schooled when Nils said that. He hated anyone knowing his weaknesses.
Lark knows, and it doesn’t bother you anymore.

“And?” Lark pressed Nils.

“And that’s it. I told Isaac, he found a buyer, and he said this was all he needed to take you all down. I swear, that’s all I know.”

They had a buyer who intended to use a medical breakthrough designed to help people to cause them pain instead. Jason wasn’t a scientist, but guessed that adjusting one element of the compound, or adding one minor thing to it, would be enough to turn the pain of regrowth and the irritation of light touch into true agony. He couldn’t let that happen if he had the power to stop it.

Lark hovered for a moment. When she feinted with the pitchfork, Nils flinched but didn’t say more. Either he was telling the truth and didn’t know anything else, or he was afraid enough of Isaac to keep it to himself. They would get no more out of him.

Lark backed out of the stall and Jason secured the door again. “Like I said last night, we’ll lock him down.” He led the way back to the office-bedroom. Once they were out of earshot of Nils, he added, “We have a couple of leads. We need to track down Ella Darron.” He gathered up saltines and beef jerky from the trunk and a jug of water from a shelf. “Do you know how to get a hold of her?”

“No.” She took another jug off the shelf and followed him to the storeroom, where he grabbed a bucket and a roll of toilet paper. “I haven’t seen or talked to her in years.”

“Okay, tomorrow we’ll have Caitlyn check the call logs at the office. If Ella called Matt there, the number was recorded.”

She followed him to the stall and waited as he dropped the items in and re-secured the door.

“We’ll be back in a couple of days,” Jason told Nils, who looked a little panicky. “Or we’ll send someone.”

“Yeah, someone dangerous,” Lark growled through the bars. She looked adorable, but Jason bit back his smirk. He didn’t think she’d appreciate it.

“What will we do in the meantime?” she asked when they got back outside.

“We’re going to Boston.” Jason climbed into the truck and started the ignition. “You have some contacts up there we need to talk to.”

* * *