Child of Recklessness (Trials of Strength Book 2) (13 page)

‘
Brian!?’ I chided.

He tore
his eyes from his work, and looked from me to Jessica.

‘
I didn’t untie her,’ he said. ‘I came in and she’d done it
herself, short of my inexperienced self, rushing a cold-blooded
killer, there wasn’t much I could do.’

Jessica’s smile was beginning to annoy me, she found
everything hilarious. I turned my gaze on her, and she shrugged and
raised her eyebrows.

‘
Blame your big old tough soldier guy,’ she complained. ‘He’s
the one that can’t tie a girl up proper. Now, how about that
coffee?’

I walked
over and kept my eyes trained on Jessica. She held my gaze and
handed me a cup of steaming liquid. I instantly poured it down the
sink, which only made the smile on the assassin that much brighter.
I opened the bin beside the counter, dumped the cup, and retrieved
a new one. I thoroughly washed it out as Jessica sipped her own
brew, before making my own.

‘
I’m not here to kill you, Lucas,’ Jessica said. ‘Trust
me.’

‘
If you think I’ll ever trust you, then you’re not as smart as
I gave you credit for,’ I replied, but strangely, I did trust she
wasn’t planning on killing us, but I couldn’t be too
careful.

Jessica
nodded and said, ‘Touché.’

Chris
slid into the room and walked straight past us. He stopped, turned
slowly, and shot daggers in my direction.

‘
Explain?’ he growled, incredulous.

I shrugged and rolled my eyes, then while filling Chris in, I
followed him over to Brian. Chris wasn’t pleased, and his hand
hovered over the gun he
had
remembered to strap on.

‘
How’s it going, Brian?’ I asked, hopeful.

He shook
his head and continued to type. Jessica prowled over and moved in
front of him. She removed her jacket slowly, and peered seductively
at Brian, batting her eyelashes in time with every stroke of his
hands on the keyboard.

‘
Can I help in any way?’ Jessica purred.

I
sighed, gritted my teeth and pinched the bridge of my nose. Brian
kept his eyes on the screen in front of him, seemingly unfazed by
the assassin’s advances.

‘
Oh,’ Jessica playfully huffed, before her mouth curved into a
smile, ‘I had a suspicion you swung the other way.’

Brian
blushed that time, and I’d had enough.

‘
Leave him alone,’ I growled. ‘Are you really here to help or
slut us to death?’

Jessica
stuck out her tongue and walked over to the kitchen. I grasped
Brian’s shoulder.

‘
Tell me you have something, Bri,’ I pleaded.

He
slammed the lid of the laptop shut, and then stood and threw it
across the room.

‘
Someone’s touchy,’ Jessica said.

I shot
her a glare.

‘
There’s nothing,’ Brian said as he ground his teeth together.
‘Anything that transferred onto the USB was corrupted by being
disconnected wrong. I couldn’t recover any of it.’

My
insides dropped with disappointment, but I tried to console Brian.
He just shook his head and moved to retrieve his now broken tech.
Jessica laughed.

‘
This broad is pissing me off,’ Chris muttered.

I turned
to Jessica and said, ‘Something to share?’

‘
How about a gesture of trust?’ she replied. ‘Brian, baby,
could you dig into the right pocket of my jacket
please?’

Brian
did so, pulling out a dark red object that looked like a lipstick
container. He popped off the top, revealing the end of a USB drive.
I looked sharply at Jessica.

‘
I was Danny’s back-up to begin with,’ she explained. ‘I
retrieved the information from Digilock, quite easily I might add,
and gave him the files most pertinent to learning more about all of
you. I only started hunting you once I knew he’d failed. All the
information on that computer I destroyed is right there in Brian’s
hand.’

Brian
set it down quickly, as if the drive might explode. We all stared
at it. It was what we’d been waiting for, that big break that I’d
thought we had lost. It was there, sitting beside Brian, its
secrets screaming to be told. The door to the corridor opened, and
Paul joined us by the computers. He looked at our intense faces and
asked what was up. We told him, and his expression matched ours as
he stared.

‘
This is it!’ Paul shouted with his face alight with joy. ‘This
is what we’ve been waiting for! This nightmare could be over
soon!’

I knew
that was unlikely, but I didn’t burst his bubble. Brian, with
shaking hands, picked up the drive. He sighed at the broken laptop,
before he booted up one of the desktop computers and plugged in
Jessica’s ‘gesture of trust’. If the drive really did have what we
needed, then I might not shoot Jessica with a tranquilizer when I
got my hands on one.

Anna
waddled out from our bedroom, muttered morning and walked to the
kitchen. She yawned, and poured herself a coffee. I watched
exasperated, as she smiled at Jessica and picked up her mug. I had
to stop myself from reminding everyone that the night before, that
assassin had tried to murder us.

‘
I need a password,’ Brian called out, and Jessica picked up
her coffee and slouched over.

‘
Did you get something?’ Anna asked. She moved over as fast as
was possible for her, her eyes wide and innocent.

‘
We didn’t,’ I replied. ‘Jessica did.’

Anna
looked at the woman in question. Jessica herself smiled sweetly,
not the mocking grin she hit us with, but a gentle and sincere
one.

‘
Thank you,’ Anna said.

‘
You’re extremely welcome,’ Jessica replied.

‘
Password?’ Brian said, tapping his foot.

Jessica
bent over him, deliberately pressing her torso into the groove of
his neck as she typed her password. Once she was done, Brian got to
work. I instantly told him to focus on anything that related to
Anna’s brother, to ignore everything else. I couldn’t escape the
memory of the night before. The way Anna had broken her heart. I’d
promised to do everything I could, and I was going to.

‘
Here’s what I always wondered,’ Jessica broke the silence.
‘You guys wouldn’t have had any access to toilets down in those
tunnels, right? So where the hell did you do your
business?’

I
flinched.

‘
We-’ Anna started.

‘
Anna!’ I gasped. ‘I didn’t think about it then. I sure as hell
don’t want to now.’

‘
Oh come on,’ Jessica teased, ‘one survivalist to
another.’

I shook
my head, disgusted.

‘
The tunnels had an abundance of rooms,’ Anna smiled, ‘we used
those. When Chris went out to scavenge for supplies he always
brought toilet paper and an extra collection of bottled water for
us to clean.’

‘
Oh,’ Jessica said. ‘You even pooped?’

‘
Can we please stop talking about bowel movements!?’ I cried a
little too highly. ‘And while we’re on the subject of revealing
things, let’s change subject with how did you get over to Digilock
so quickly? I mean your bullet came from quite a bit away, an
opposite building if I had to guess.’

‘
Kudos to you tough guy,’ Jessica beamed. ‘I had a wire
connecting the two buildings. If by some miracle I missed you,
something that doesn’t happen often I’ll add, I knew I’d need a
quick way over.’

‘
Huh,’ I said, glad the conversation was over.

We all
hung around. I paced back and forth, and for two hours Brian
searched the drive, filtering through hundreds of files. The
majority of it was useless, indecipherable notes and shorthand,
questions without answers. There was a bit about the experiments
conducted when my father was still employed by the government.
Those piqued my interest, especially when Brian told me that video
files had been connected to them.

‘
Can we see them?’ I gasped.

‘
No, I said they
had
had videos connected with them, not anymore,’ he
replied.

I looked
over at Jessica.

‘
Don’t look at me tough guy,’ she said. ‘If those files aren’t
there, then someone removed them before I got a hold of
them.’

I
sighed, exasperated. That would have been a huge win for us. I
flashed back to the earlier conversation I’d had with Chris a while
ago, his plan to blackmail the government to keep them off our
tail. We needed something irrefutable, something that couldn’t be
drowned out. Video files of past experiments would have been grand.
Simple words like the ones Brian sifted through were
useless.

Everyone
had dinner, bar Brian, who sat sweating as he searched for Anna’s
brother. The sun dipped, and finally vanished from the sky. The
silence and tension in the air sent energy through my body, and I
started to pace again. I finally walked over to where Jessica had
sat next to Anna, and made a list of questions.

‘
The group you’re a part of,’ I said, and before she could
protest, I cut her off. ‘I don’t want to know about them, I just
want to know, that if you’re not going to kill us, will they send
another?’

‘
No,’ she replied. ‘If I haven’t done the job, then they’ll
know why.’

Her eyes
dropped to Anna’s stomach, and glazed over.

‘
So we don’t have to worry about more of you?’ I
pushed.

‘
Technically I still have the contract,’ Jessica said. ‘No one
will touch it while I still have it, and no one will come near you
if I haven’t killed you. They wouldn’t dare unless they wanted to
forfeit their lives at my hand.’

‘
You have a lot of faith in yourself,’ I pointed
out.

‘
They won’t come near you,’ she stated in return.

I
resumed my agitated pace. We needed something, anything. I couldn’t
take it any longer. My father had to be stopped one way or another.
The government had to be taken off our backs. We needed Anna’s
brother, we needed my sister. I wanted my life back, a life with
Anna and our baby. I could have a son or daughter on the way, soon
by the look of it, and they’d be born into a nightmare.

‘
Where did he learn all this?’ Jessica asked Anna. ‘The guy’s a
whiz kid.’

‘
He’s always loved computers,’ Paul answered, coming up behind
them. ‘It started out just playing games, before I knew it, he
was
making
his
own. I remember two years ago on his sixteenth birthday, I bought
him a new laptop, top notch stuff. I walked in on him dismantling
it, tweaking it into something better.’

Jessica
looked genuinely impressed. I thanked the Gods Brian was on our
side.

‘
How’s your leg?’ Anna inquired.

‘
Yeah it’s healed,’ I answered, pulling my trouser up to show
her.

Anna
smiled thankfully and patted my thigh, but Jessica stared, her eyes
snapped open wide and her mouth dangled. She jumped to her feet,
and spun, staring incredulous at Anna’s stomach.

‘
Christ,’ she whispered.

‘
What?’ Anna gasped as her hand raced to where Jessica was
burning holes into.

Jessica
stood there gawping, her eyes shooting from me to Anna. Chris and
Paul shared a confused glance, and the hairs on my neck rose at
Jessica’s expression.

‘
How can you brainy idiots not have put it together!?’ she
exclaimed.

‘
Put what together?’ I asked.

‘
I know what happened in Greystone,’ Jessica said. ‘I know what
your Dad did to you, and what you are now. I know what you can do.
I
know
why Anna’s
stomach grew. Think about it!’

We all
just looked confused. Jessica sighed.

‘
Your leg, the cells regenerated, healed,’ she said and I
nodded.

That’s
when I got it.

‘
What?’ Anna cried.

‘
Anna,’ I whispered with eyes wide, ‘what if the abilities I
have, what if, what if our baby has them?’

‘
So what if he or she does?’ Anna asked. ‘Is that
likely?’

‘
More than likely,’ Jessica said. ‘Lucas’s DNA is in your
baby.’

‘
But Lucas didn’t change until after we…’ Anna said and
stopped.

It was
true, but it didn’t matter worth a damn. My father had been
prepping me slowly, injecting me with miniscule amounts of his
‘miracle’ drug over time. But it didn’t stop my DNA from changing.
It just took longer for it to fully affect me and for my system to
reject it. I was at the height of the drug when Anna and I
conceived our child, and it was moments after that I
changed.

‘
Your child has the same regenerative abilities its father
does,’ Jessica whispered. ‘Who knows what effect that has on the
pregnancy? This could be one of them.’

Holy shit.

‘
Holy shit,’ Brian gasped, echoing my thoughts.

‘
I know,’ Chris said.