More than Truth (Arcane Crossbreeds) (12 page)

“Maybe next time you won’t overestimate your worth to a damn psycho, Doc.”

Pressing her lips together, Brit refused to acknowledge Tag’s needling with so much as a glare. He was in one of his moods, and she didn’t feel up to engaging him, not with most of the high-level Incog agents staring her down across the expanse of the interrogation table. It was bad enough he and Vin flanked her, hovering like a matching pair of assholes.

“You thought that a bit loudly, love.”
Vin was unnaturally still to her right, his attention sharp, hands in his pockets. He was close enough that she could feel the heat from his body, which she would
not
think about right now. She shot a quick glance at him.

“How much intel did you give the Triumvirate?” The words were soft, low, drawing her attention. Kyeros Forestor, the owner of Incog, assessed her with those obsidian eyes of his, and she steeled herself against the instinct to shift in her chair.

Instead she straightened, careful to betray none of her apprehension. “None. I would never.”

“Then how do you explain the missing files?” Raife snapped.

“I deleted them.”

Tag pulled up short where’d he’d been pacing back and forth next to her. “I looked. I couldn’t recover them.”

“If you could recover them, then they wouldn’t truly be gone, now would they?” Brit said as though she were talking to a child. A growl rumbled low in Tag’s chest, and Brit merely cocked an eyebrow at him, more to irritate him than anything else. “I used one of those shredder programs you’re so proud of. It seems you were right. They left no trace.”

Tag’s face went slack in disbelief.

“Don’t seem so shocked, Taggart,” Brit said in a haughty voice. “It isn’t my fault if you mistook my disinterest for ignorance.”

Brit flicked a bored glare at Vin when she felt his amusement. She wanted to be up on the top floors, where she knew the victims from the research facility were pouring in. She knew this damn inquisition was going to happen,
had
to happen, but it still made it difficult to sit here when her sister could possibly be among their numbers up there. Here. Under the same roof as Meghann after all this time.

“Damn it, woman…” Tag began.

Forestor cast Tag a quelling look and refocused on Brit. “If it wasn’t to offer intel, then why did you initiate contact with the Triumvirate?”

“I didn’t contact the Triumvirate. Not directly anyway.”

With a frown, Forestor narrowed his eyes on her. “Agent Jennings traced those communications. They were sent to and received from the Triumvirate Citadel in Europe.”

“I’ve never actually dealt directly with the Triumvirate, despite my years in their Citadel. It was always through the same emissary.” Brit sighed, and she swept her gaze over the others at the table, their anger clearly visible. “He approached my parents when I was ten with an offer from the Triumvirate that they didn’t feel they could refuse. Being crossbreeds, there wasn’t much choice but to accept the Triumvirate’s hospitality. I spent several years in the Dublin Citadel being educated by the best minds in the world. Several years later, the same emissary helped me escape the Triumvirate.”

Memories of fire and blood ripped through her unguarded mind, and she jerked away from them, carefully pressing them back into the dark recesses where they belonged. Vin moved in a subtle ripple of muscle and cotton. Once again she experienced that ghostly sensation of a hand gliding down her back.

“The research I was working on was to have been destroyed in the same explosion that killed my family. When I treated Ms. Schaffer, I suspected some of what was done to her was based on my research from that time. Then I was positive it was when I saw the files recovered from the facility she was held in.”

“Did you contribute in any way to the experimentation that was done on Ms. Schaffer or any other research for the Triumvirate while you were in the employ of Incog?”

Brit shook her head and vehemently protested, “Never. What they are attempting is unethical, and I will not be a part of it.” Yet even as those words left her mouth, the image of her sister strapped into that chair rose vividly in her mind, and she wondered if she would be so strongly opposed if it meant her sister’s life.

Beside her, Vin stiffened and frowned down at her, and Tag stopped pacing. She could feel their touch in her mind, the heat of their combined gazes on her back. She had to be careful to guard her thoughts. The Jennings brothers obviously thought her mind was their personal playground, and the last thing she wanted was them to gain any more of an advantage where she was concerned. They made her lose focus, and right now she couldn’t afford the distraction.

Brit cut a glance at Katya where she sat at the opposite end of the interrogation table. She was pale, and Raife hovered. Katya couldn’t afford the distraction.

Brit inhaled and gasped as a spicy burst of air rolled over her tongue, filling her lungs with a heat that spread out to her shoulders and breasts. Her nipples tightened, and she cleared her throat, shifting forward to conceal her reaction. From the moment she woke up with Tag and Vin hovering over her, her libido had been in overdrive. What was it about them together that created such a reaction in her, so much stronger than they did apart?

Forestor’s obsidian gaze flicked from the two Drachon lingering so closely over her before settling on her. His nostrils flared, and her skin prickled in irritation. Forestor was a Guardian—a full-blood, strong-as-hell Guardian—and he used all his senses to see his surroundings in the innate way most people used only their eyes. It wasn’t the first time he’d scented her, but it was the first time it felt intrusive and…offensive.

Tag and Vin began to rumble like engines on either side of her, and oddly enough, it soothed her uneasiness. She shook her head in confusion, the pounding in her skull making it difficult to think.

“If you found what they were doing so offensive, why contact this emissary?”

Brit cleared her throat again and fixed her gaze back on Forestor. For a moment, she was alarmed, wondering if he too might be reading her mind but then realized he was talking about her claim to have refused help with the research. She’d never had this much trouble concentrating. Her mind was always sharp, always running the probabilities, but she could barely get two brain cells to fire at the same time.

She glared up at Tag, then Vin. This was their fault. They were doing something to her, making it hard to focus.

“I don’t think so, love. When we do something to you, you will know it.”

The sexy promise in the voice that slithered through her mind had her dropping her hands to grip the arms of her chair. Her body was starting to throb in time with her head. She shot a fierce look at Vin. Just being near him had overwhelmed her from the first moment. Tag was enough, but now there were two of them.

“Dr. Mahoney, if you had no intention of helping them, why bother to contact them?”

“I was angry,” she snapped before she thought better of it and acknowledged it was partially the truth. She was so careful to keep her emotions in check, but when she had discovered her research was still in existence, she’d experienced a fury so strong it had made her head pound with a ferocity that rivaled the headache she had now. All these years she’d managed her grief over the loss of her family with the consolation that they’d died for a damn good reason. When she’d realized their deaths had been for nothing, it felt as though she were watching them die all over again. She couldn’t explain that to Forestor.

Not with all these eyes on her, judging her. Then there were the two Drachon standing so close, pulling the air from the room and ripping away the barriers between her mind and theirs, seducing her body with their damn presence alone. The combination made her feel impossibly vulnerable, and that pissed her off even more. Brit carefully drew air through her parted lips, afraid of that spicy scent and what it would do if she drew it in too deeply.

“I’m responsible for that research, Mr. Forestor,” Brit explained in a calmer voice. “It doesn’t matter if I never contributed another minute to it.” She pressed her hand to her chest. “
I
created it. I wanted—
needed
to know how far they’d gone with it.”

“And what did you discover?”

That my sister was still alive.
“They haven’t gotten too much further. When I contacted the emissary, he hadn’t expected to hear from me. I was sure that they sent Ms. Schaffer here aware that I would recognize what they had done, hoping to draw me out.”

Raife stabbed his fingers through his long hair. “Do they know their fucking science project was a success? That they fucking robbed a lifetime from my mate?”

Brit remembered Irial Carrick’s nearly imperceptible reaction when she’d said Katya’s name. “I don’t think they are aware how far their research has gotten.” Did that mean the mutation of the ARSA gene had occurred after she’d been rescued? If so it was progressing even faster than Brit suspected. If she didn’t do something soon, Katya would die.

“You don’t think?” Raife snarled and slammed his fist on the table.

Vin jerked forward the barest inch but stopped himself. Brit impatiently waved him back and met Raife’s burning amber eyes, struggling with the guilt that never faded. “I can’t be certain. I saw his files, but all the subjects are identified with numbers, and I didn’t speak extensively with the doctor in charge.”

“You were there for over three fucking days, and you’re telling me you don’t know anything? That’s bullshit. You’re hiding something.”

Both Tag and Vin slammed against the table on either side of her, leaning across menacingly, growls rumbled through the room as the three Drachon faced off against each other.

“Enough,” Brit snapped and stood up to pull the overbearing fire-breathers back by their shirts. At least her two. Katya was responsible for hers, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t give him hell. Brit elbowed her way between them to face Raife across the table. “No, Agent Merrick, I’m telling you I don’t know anything right now. Dr. Rupple was less than pleased with my answers to his questions, so he left me alone in hopes I would become more agreeable.”

A shiver worked over her skin as the sensation of being buried beneath the unrelenting silence of darkness hovered at the edge of her awareness. She’d survived her time in “the hole,” but the damn experience would add another lovely layer to her nightmares, as though she needed it.

“What the fuck is ‘the hole,’ Doc?” Tag reached down and held her chin in a grip that was gentle despite the fury she saw in rusty-green eyes.
“I don’t like your fear when you think of it.”
He brushed his fingers over her cheek, and a tingling awareness sparked across her flesh. “Is that where you received these?”

Brit jerked out of his grasp and away from the unsettling reaction she had to his touch. “Stay out of my head, Taggart.”

“I remember very well Dr. Rupple’s method for making you more agreeable, Dr. Mahoney.” A stillness settled over the room as Katya came to her feet, her halo of white-blonde hair making her look fragile. Her hands settled over her belly. Raife wrapped his arms around her from behind, and his big hands blanketed hers. Katya’s fear was tangible. “What they did? Can you reverse it? Will it get passed on to the baby?”

Brit closed her eyes and pressed two fingers above her right eyebrow, wincing when the slight touch sent more pain spearing into her skull. Tag and Vin stood so close behind her that every breath was infused with their heat, and her body felt heavy, sensitive. She shook her head and dropped her hand. “I don’t have any definitive answers right now. If I create a medical profile of each person that was rescued from the labs and cross-reference each one with the files from the center, I can develop a pattern, discover what Dr. Rupple was doing. If I can figure out what he did differently with you…” Brit shrugged. She couldn’t tell the woman that it wouldn’t matter because there would be no baby. “I don’t know.”

Tag gently wrapped his warm hand over her neck and pressed firm circles at the base of her skull. The gesture was too familiar. She should shrug him off, but she couldn’t force herself to. It was easing her headache even as it intensified the tingling that was a constant current running through her body when she was around them.

“Sorry, Doc. There
are
no files to compare.”

Before she could respond, Raife erupted. “What the fuck do you mean there are no files?”

“Settle down,” Katya murmured and turned in his embrace, smoothing her hands over his back.

“Sorry, man,” Tag said with deceptive calm as he shifting his body, maneuvering Brit until she was tucked at his side, hand still massaging her neck. “The data at the research facility was corrupted during the attack. Kat here knows her stuff. When she created that security system at the facility, she made sure it was going to stick.”

“You know Kat didn’t know that bastard she thought was her uncle had her making her own prison. This is
her
damn fault.” Raife jabbed a finger at Brit. “And she can fucking find a way to fix it. What about the files we got from before?”

“They were on the lab servers. All those were shredded,” Tag said, and he didn’t have to remind them who was responsible for that. She doubted anyone had forgotten. Tag eased Brit completely behind him, where Vin was positioning himself at his brother’s back. Gideon, silent as usual, casually pulled Katya back away from the table.

Raife thrust his hand through his hair again and turned to Forestor, who had risen from the table as the tension mounted but was silently watching the exchange. “Tell me why the fuck that traitor is still here? Let’s just let the damn Triumvirate have her if they want her so damn bad.”

Within a blink, Tag shoved Brit completely into Vin’s arms, and her next sight was Tag vaulting across the table to crash into Raife. Brit instinctively pressed forward, but Vin had an arm around her waist, restraining her. Forestor joined Gideon, providing a human wall between Katya and the brawling dragons, but he didn’t so much as say a word to separate them.