Fight By The Team (Team Fear Book 2) (20 page)

Stills drew a rectangle in the air, motioning from one end of the lab area to the other. “We were trying to take him alive. I was up there.” He pointed to the top of the shelves. “Rose was down here looking like a drugged-out meat sack to draw him close enough to contain.”

“Oh.” One more mistake in a line of too many shoved off the panic and the grief that had gripped her since her father disowned her. She’d screwed up because she’d thought with her heart and not her head. “And then I came out.”

“Rose nearly had a coronary when he heard your voice. Trying to draw Echo off was brave but stupid. I get why you did it. Can even respect you for it, but Rose isn’t that evolved.”

“Not right now. But normally.”

Stills snorted. “Not ever. Not when it comes to protecting women.”

Six sisters. Sadly, Stills made a solid point. The noises Stills tried to distract her from got louder. Kicks, maybe. Cracks. Broken bones? She slipped around Stills to peek around the corner.

Robert lay on his side, slithering across the slick tile like a snake. He gripped his leg trying to staunch the flow of blood. Rose pulled back a large work boot and slammed it into Robert’s ribs.

Snap
.

Debi swallowed. As she watched, Rose tore into Robert.

Robert laughed, a wet, gurgling sound. “You’re just like me.”

Rose pulled back his fist to pummel, to visit death on the bleeding man. In profile, Rose was terrifying to behold. His jaw was hard, his eyes empty, and his body soulless. A bulge of muscle and anger throbbed in his throat. An animalistic growl emerged as if Echo’s words were the catalyst to unleash the beast within. The background blurred, turned to fog, with her focus on the rage in Rose’s normally calm demeanor. There was no humanity left in either man.

Guilt beat a constant mantra in her heart. This is what she’d done. “Stop him.”

Stills rubbed a hand over his jaw. “He already clocked me once. I’m not getting between him and his prey.”

“What if he kills him?”

“Sweetheart, Echo was a dead man the second he turned on you.”

Debi closed her eyes against the death match. Robert no longer fought. He took hits and kicks. Grunts and groans. Squishy sounds like a sponge. Her stomach turned and she threw up across the counter she leaned on. With a final
snap-crunch
, the sounds silenced.

She opened her eyes to see Rose standing over a bloody, swollen mass of flesh barely covered in the clothes Robert had worn. The white lab coat soaked up blood. More trailed along the floor reminding her of the night she’d broken her nose in her father’s pristine condo. Now the blood covered her father’s lab, and she was afraid for a whole new reason.

His back to her, Rose’s shoulders slumped like a man under a yoke. Defeated despite the dubious win. His knuckles were bruised and coated in blood. Flesh. He turned. Faced her, his eyes empty like Frankenstein’s monster suddenly confronted with his own strength. His own inhumanity. Cuts scraped his face. Blood dripped from a wound in his forearm, but it was the desolation that cut her heart out. Here he was, the Frankenstein monster created from her thoughtlessness. Her ego. She was the reason he’d beaten a man to death with two hands.

The recognition, the knowledge of what he’d done, shimmered in his eyes. She stepped forward with the need to save him from the hopelessness, but before she could reach him, he dropped like a massive boulder hitting the highway, out cold.

No thought, no fear could keep her away. She raced across the tile, her shoes squishing through the still wet blood trail. Rose’s skin went pasty white. While she watched, his chest stopped moving.

D
ebi dropped
to her knees at Rose’s side. His chest started again, panting out breath like she did in the middle of a panic attack. His pulse raced. Too damned fast. Cardiac arrest fast. “Beta blockers. The stuff he gave Ryder after they dosed him. Tell me you have some.”

Stills dug through his vest. “We all do. After what happened with Ryder.”

Ryder had nearly gone crazy, took risks, acted in random and illogical ways, and then spent three days recovering, but what they’d done to Rose looked worse. Robert had delivered the drug subcutaneously, making the reaction stronger and faster. Rose was strong, but human, and the side effects were getting worse not better. His heart could flat give out while she watched. God, she couldn’t lose him. The hand she held out trembled. “I’ll administer.”

“No offense, but you’re shaky as fuck. I wouldn’t want you anywhere near my veins.” He slipped off the lid and stuck Rose. Inserted the medicine.

Seeing Rose fall had happened in slow motion. The big man was supposed to be invincible. Tears dropped down her cheeks. Stills’ reaction was clinical, much the way she had been working in this lab. “Do you have to be so calm?”

“Actually, I do.” His eyes went cold. “We all do. Isn’t that the problem?”

“No. Damnit, the look in your eyes is the problem. This isn’t a death sentence.” Although Rose looked half dead on the floor surrounded by blood she prayed wasn’t his. “Was he shot?”

“Flesh wound. Enough to draw Echo into the box.”

She had panicked. Not only had she failed at the mission Stills gave her, but she’d failed to protect Rose from himself. It was her fault he was on the ground. The reason Robert was dead. The weight of knowing he could be the dead man floored her. She dropped to Rose’s chest to feel the movement of his breath under her cheek. To know he lived. Tears wet his shirt, but not enough to wash away the blood.

“Careful. He might wake up swinging.”

Debi didn’t acknowledge Stills as he stepped away to mutter on the radio. It was quite possible she was having a nervous breakdown. Every muscle in her body twitched. Her nerves backfired, her pulse raced, and the longer Rose stayed unconscious the more fear twisted her in its cruel grip. “Fight, damnit,” she hissed at his still frame. Words settled on her tongue with the need to express the emotion inside, but it was too new. Raw, and the once sterile room was too ugly. “You want to protect me? Protect your sisters? Then fight.”

The clock in her head stopped ticking until the moment his eyes blinked open. “River?”

He hugged her close, and that moment of sweet connection filled the hollow ache inside. Tangling a hand in her hair, he levered her back so he could see her face.

“Jesus, you have blood all over you. What the fuck did I do?” He crawled back, trying to scoot away, but she was wrapped around him. “Where’s Stills?”

“That’s the first thing you have to say?”

“I asked a question.” Patience was not his virtue.

“He’s calling backup.”

“Good.” Rose untwined her fingers. “Get off me.”

Okay, so he was still the asshole Rose. He was on drugs. No one knew the half-life of the garbage running through his veins.

“You’ve got blood all over you.” His lips twisted in disgust. He climbed to his feet and stepped away from her. “Stills. Where the fuck are you?”

“Yes, master?” Stills came limping in, hunched over like Igor, Frankenstein’s assistant.

“Knock it off. We have work. We need to clean up the mess. Get rid of the body. And figure out how to turn these damn lights down.”

“You thinking straight?”

“Straight enough.” But he slurred the words.

Debi sat three feet from a dead body in a pool of blood, watching the two men make plans, and she wasn’t sure Rose was okay. Not really. A few more minutes and she might have had to administer CPR. “Maybe we should go see Dr. Branson.”

Rose looked down at her, his eyes glazed. “Stills, get her the fuck away from me.”

The ugly words wore a groove through her brain. The shoulder wound burned, but it would heal. The stabbing pain in her heart might break her wide open. The deal with Barry had injured her pride. Compounded with getting kicked out of the program, it had festered and filled with angry puss, but one that stayed on her skin. It didn’t wind as deep as the words straight from Rose’s mouth.

There was no good way to take what he’d said. He hadn’t even spoken directly to her, as if he couldn’t stand looking at her. Talking to her. She followed Stills to join the rest of the team as they discussed what needed to be done.

Craft and Stills huddled at a table in the opposite corner of the restaurant. Fowler had stayed behind to take care of Rose. Rose had stayed to take care of the body. Debi wasn’t sure she wanted to know what that entailed. The rest of the team argued about the plan. They called it a strategy session. They were on and off the phone with Ryder while hovering over plates of bacon and eggs. She and Allyson sat across the restaurant, and they may as well have been invisible for all the men looked at them.

“I hate this,” Allyson said. “It’s the good old boy program all over again.”

Okay, if Allyson was the voice of women’s independence, Debi had fallen way far down the rabbit hole. “You’re right. Apparently to be in the club you have to have a penis.”

“You’re never going to let me live that one down, are you?”

“Not in this lifetime.” Debi smiled. It was faint, and didn’t reach her heart, but it was real enough. “I wasn’t sure you knew the word.”

“I know the word. I’m not as socially awkward as you think. I just don’t like people.”

“Last I checked, I was a person. Should I be offended?”

“No. I mean, I like individuals, just not people.” She gestured around the diner with its teal booths and neon signs. “Groups of people get me worked up. That’s why I was always happy to let Barry take the praise. I don’t need it. The one thing I knew from the age of eight was that I’m smarter than the average bear. I don’t need praise.” She coughed into her coffee cup as she realized the implication of what she’d said. “I mean, praise isn’t bad if that’s what you want...”

Allyson was talking about Debi’s convoluted relationship with her father. Debi had another moment she could misconstrue the statement or she could acknowledge what Allyson was trying to say, even if she was doing a piss-poor job of it. “I didn’t want praise. Not the way you mean. I wanted my father to see me, really see me and what I was capable of.”

“With or without a dick.”

Debi snorted. “Exactly. But he’s buried so deep in his own ego that I never had a chance. The only reason Barry has his attention is because of the money Barry brings into the university. Barry makes dear old Dad look good.”

“They’re a lot alike,” Allyson mused.

“Truer words.” Debi rested her elbow against the table to take the pressure off her arm. The sling only helped so much.

“I still think I should call campus security.”

On the drive over, they had convinced Allyson that Robert was a corporate spy. Stealing research was a big money business, not so unusual considering the grants Barry had brought into the program. “Robert got through the background check, which means he had inside help. These guys need to investigate, and they can’t do that if this goes public. The insider will walk away clean.”

Allyson scrubbed a hand over her forehead. “All of this is outside of my comfort zone. I just want to do the job I’m good at.”

“Then go back to work and pretend it never happened. The two of you weren’t friends or even friendly, really. No one will know you were there tonight.”

Lines creased around Allyson’s tired eyes. “I wish I hadn’t been there.”

“Me too.” Although, knowing that a member of Team Echo was on the staff at the university research center opened up their investigation. She owed the guys to distract Allyson from all the questions she surely had. “What did you want to talk to me about the day we passed each other outside the admin building?”

“After the night we’ve had, it seems juvenile.”

Debi jerked her head toward the men in the back. “We’ve got time for juvenile.”

“It’s girly.” Allyson whispered the words like it was a sin. She ran a finger over the tabletop design.

“Sounds even better.” Allyson hadn’t had much room for juvenile and girly, two things every woman had a God-given right to experience. Middle school cured you of it, or should, but Allyson hadn’t had a chance for normal middle school. She’d been to prep schools and had graduated high school at fourteen. Debi rested her back against the wall and stretched her legs along the vinyl bench seat of their booth. “Is it about Mark?”

“How did you—”

“There are no secrets in the lab especially when you take every chance you can to rub elbows with the only male who isn’t your brother. So tell me all about it.”

“Mark and I started hooking up about a year ago.” Her face turned a splotchy red, which spread to her neck and chest.

“I thought sooner the way he looked at you. Watched the way you walked.” The budding academic hadn’t done much to hide his infatuation.

“Took me awhile to recognize the way he looked at me. Took even longer to act on it, but once we did, we were all in. We planned to run away, which is stupid. I’m a grown-ass woman, I can date who I want to date. Or hook up. Or anything I want. I don’t know if I loved Mark. What does love feel like?”

Hell if Debi knew. The fairy tales had it all wrong. It wasn’t a song in your heart. More like a knife. “If it’s supposed to be easy, everyone I know is doing it wrong.” Debi had seen Lauren flattened by Ryder’s disappearance. Lauren’s mother had died of grief. Debi’s own heart resembled chopped beef.

“I think I mostly wanted a secret adventure. Something all my own with someone who wanted me enough to sneak away. It felt romantic in a Shakespearean way. Then Mark disappeared, which felt tragic. Also like Shakespeare. One night, we were planning our getaway, the next he had packed up his apartment and moved back to Ohio. It doesn’t matter.” Her eyes watered. “Barry would never have let me go.”

“You’re integral to his success.” Which sucked six ways to Sunday.

“I’d feel better about that if he acknowledged it, but if you asked him, the work is his and he’s showing me a kindness by letting me keep my job. When I saw his notes—proof that he’d stolen from you—I realized the depth of his narcissism.” Allyson’s throat flexed. “Being ambitious isn’t a sin.”

Ambition was all kinds of wrong when you pushed it to the levels Barry did. “But?”

“When I confronted him—”

“You actually told him you knew?”

“He didn’t deny it. He bragged about how easy it was. It was like...” She blew out a breath to ruffle her bangs. “He deserved it. It wasn’t a question of right or wrong, but of his right to take whatever he wanted. He deserved it, he kept saying. He was too smart to get caught. Even the old man, that’s what he called your father, even the old man didn’t catch on. It was like watching a stranger.”

Nerves fluttered to life under Debi’s skin. Once Barry exposed his true self to Allyson, he’d turn on her. Sister or not. Debi leaned forward. “I don’t like that he’s aware. Maybe you should consider coming back with us.”

“Where?”

“A safe house. Stay until we figure out what Barry’s involved in and if you’re in danger.”

Allyson stared across the coffee counter to the clock that was nearing midnight. “He wouldn’t hurt me.”

“I’m not so sure.” Barry might not get physical, but Echo was definitely watching the lab. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill Allyson. “Robert said Barry wasn’t in charge.”

“Robert was insane.”

“Obviously, but...” Oh, hell, in for a penny. If what Debi suspected was true, Allyson deserved to know the risks. And Debi needed to tell someone before her head exploded. “The changes Barry made to my formula? I think the Army used it for an experimental program.”

“It hasn’t gone through human trials yet.”

“Oh, yes it has, but not the kind you can put in a report.” Debi faltered. She didn’t mind warning Allyson, but she wouldn’t expose the team. “Robert and men like him
are
the human trials.”

The implications were stamped on Allyson’s shocked face. “Was Robert crazy before they tested it on him?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out, because it started as my formula even if Barry perverted it.” At least that’s what Debi suspected. She hadn’t had time to look at the results from the blood tests. “I really wish you’d come with us before one of the test subjects decides to go after you.”

“Barry might be an ass, but he wouldn’t let anyone hurt me.”

Debi gnawed on her bottom lip. “Going back probably isn’t smart.”

“I wanted to run away with Mark, but I chickened out. The week I delayed sent Mark away and I can’t live with myself knowing I’m doing it again. Failing to live up to the person I want to be. I’m not chickening out. Maybe I can find something out for you.”

Voices raised across the room, drawing all eyes to the men in the corner. If they were trying for covert, they failed miserably. Their size drew attention naturally. Their anger drew everyone’s eyes.