Predator (19 page)

Bree had never felt so alone. She turned on the faucet, let it run for a bit, and then splashed cold water across her face before blotting it with a paper towel. A quick glance in the dirty mirror revealed dark circles under her eyes. Bree raked her fingers through her hair, pushed the stray tendrils behind her ears, and tried to look somewhat presentable, not that anyone cared. An overwhelming sense of dread made it feel like she breathed in wet cement, but she stuffed it back down. There was no time to deal with that now.

“You almost done in there?” a male voice called.

“I’ll be right out.” Bree opened the door, and a scrawny man waited for her with his hands on his hips.

“Thanks,” he said with an accent.

She pushed past him and wove through the merchandise displays looking for something to use as a weapon, but it had to be something small. She considered a plastic knife but figured a pen might be stronger. As soon as a man her dad’s age cleared out of the aisle, Bree grabbed a pen and hurried out of the store. She hated not paying for it, but Liam’s life was on the line. And although the pen wasn’t much, she could stab someone with it, which was better than nothing.

“Excuse me,” a man said as he came up to her. “I’d like to discuss the item you have in your pocket. Please come with me back into the store.”

Bree couldn’t believe her bad luck. Someone must have seen her lift the pen. How could she be so stupid? It had to be the security cameras; she hadn’t thought to check for them. “That’s okay, really.”

“I’m sure we can clear this up in just a minute,” the man said.

No way Bree was going back into the store. As soon as he saw the pen he’d call the police. That was the last thing she needed. All the cops had to do was check her ID and they’d take her home, and then they’d see her dad.
Oh God
. The thought of his bloody and lifeless body punched Bree in the gut, and she almost doubled over next to a trash can.

Instead, she took off and didn’t look back, ran down the street past a shopping center, turned the corner, and kept going. She looked over her shoulder—thankfully he hadn’t chased her—and slowed to a walk.

She had to figure out something—and do it fast. It was too late for her dad, but it wasn’t too late for her to save Liam. He was her family now.

That’s when a second option hit her.

Maybe she wouldn’t need Isabella after all.

Sunderland Home, East Milmore, Virginia

It took Bree longer than she’d expected to make the trek home. First, she had to locate a safe place to hide the flash drive in case she was caught. It had to be someplace dry, somewhere no one would think to look. After rejecting a plastic playhouse and a trashcan, she settled on a deep hole in an oak tree in the backyard of 832 Timberlake Drive. If anything happened to her—if she didn’t make it back to recover the flash drive—at least no one else would find it.

When Bree turned the corner onto her street, she spied a man watching her house from inside a dark-colored sedan parked across the street. She ducked behind a tree, pulse hammering, and pressed her back against the rough bark; it dug into her skin, but Bree didn’t dare move. She waited a minute, listening carefully and ready to bolt if the man got out of the car, but all she could hear were the crickets and the traffic on Welborn Street.

After retracing her steps to the intersection, Bree cut behind the houses while keeping her eyes peeled for trouble. At her next-door neighbor’s house, she swung wide and scooted behind the tall hedge separating the neighbor’s backyard from the house behind it. Fifteen steps brought her as close as she could get to her house without being exposed, so she stopped and inched her head around the side of the hedge. On the right, near a cluster of azalea bushes, stood a man in dark clothes. His eyes were focused on the side of the house, but when they shifted toward her she popped her head back behind the bushes, trying to remain still to avoid drawing his attention. Now what? The back door wasn’t an option, and the only other way in was through the basement. She’d have to time her move right or they’d see her.

Bree waited in the shadows until the goon out back started to take a leak. Then she scooted around to the side of her house and dashed to the basement door. She pressed her back against the cement siding and listened for a sign that one of the goons had noticed her. Thanks to the evergreens flanking the door, she couldn’t see either of them, which meant they couldn’t see her either.

Bree listened for another minute and then pried the hidden key from beneath the fake rock. One more quick check and she unlocked the door and slipped inside.

It was cold in the basement, as cold as death.

Bree started to shake.
Don’t fall apart now,
she thought.
For Liam. Just take it systematically. One step at a time.
She drew in a deep breath, forced herself to take another, and then another until she cleared her mind and focused.

Eyes now adjusted to the dark, Bree crept upstairs and across the den, crouching low in case the goon out back happened to look toward the house. She took the three steps up to the kitchen and grabbed a gray hoodie she had thrown over the back of a chair. What if the extra car key wasn’t there? What if she had left it up in her room again instead of putting it away in the drawer? There was no way she was going past the office to get to the stairs.

Not with her dad in there.

Bree held her breath, opened the drawer, and sighed with relief when she spied the plastic shamrock keychain. One swipe and the keys were in her hand. Two rolls of quarters in the corner of the drawer caught her eye, and she grabbed them too. Now to find out what was on the flash drive. But she’d need a computer, and those men probably took the computers from the house to see if there was any information on them.

She’d have to go to the lab. But first she had to get the car out of garage and past the goon out front. And that wasn’t going to be easy. The garage door was loud and slow.

Bree snuck back through the den to the garage. She felt for something with heft—this wrench would do. She’d only have one shot. If she made one mistake, if the noise wasn’t loud enough, or if she turned the steering wheel too hard or too fast and lost control, that would be the end.

Before she could change her mind, Bree ran back into the kitchen and hurled the wrench through the large bay window. The glass shattered and sent shards flying. She raced to the living room to see if the goon out front had left his car to investigate, but the toppled evergreen was still blocking the window. Either way, she had to leave now, or they’d trap her in the house.

Bree dashed to the garage and slid behind the wheel of the Maxima. She cranked the ignition and simultaneously pressed the garage door opener, keeping her eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror. She gunned the engine the instant the car could clear the rising door, raced down the driveway in reverse, and floored it. Both goons sprinted toward her from the side of the house as she pulled away. At the corner, she turned onto Wexley, and the car fishtailed a bit before she could straighten out. A quick check in the mirror told her no one was following, but it wouldn’t take them long. If she could just make one more block she’d be good.

An SUV backing out of a driveway narrowly missed Bree; she swerved to avoid hitting it but didn’t let up on the gas. She took the next corner onto Gunther, made a sharp left onto a dirt road, and pulled behind an abandoned barn. Sure enough, less than a minute later, the dark sedan soared past. Feeling slightly better, she retraced her route to the road, made a quick U-turn, and headed toward Timberlake Drive to retrieve the flash drive.

The Delcore Institute, Rivershire, Virginia

Bree watched the lab from a distance. The only car in the lot was Charlie’s, which was odd. His shift should be over. Yet it was a stroke of luck—another guard would have questioned any excuse she gave, but Charlie…he’d let her in no problem.

After waiting a while to ensure the goons didn’t show up, Bree parked behind the building. She crept down the path leading to the front door with her stomach churning like a witches’ brew. If she couldn’t find what she was looking for on the flash drive, it would be impossible to save Liam.
It has to be there,
she thought.
It just has to.
She looked through the window—Charlie wasn’t at his desk. She glanced at her watch and waited for him to return from his rounds. Six minutes passed and he still didn’t show. He should be back by now. Where was he?

Bree tried the handle—it moved freely. Not good. She shouldn’t have come here. She hoped that the only thing wrong was the automatic locking mechanism.

Bree scooted inside and eased the door closed. She listened carefully, just in case, but didn’t hear anything. Then she made her way to the end of the hall. When she turned the corner, she stopped short, stifling a scream. Charlie was on the floor. Blood from a hole in his chest stained his white button-down shirt. She raced to his side and placed her fingertips to his neck, praying she’d find a pulse, but his skin was cool and there was no movement beneath her fingers, not even a flutter. Bree pressed her ear to his chest, careful to avoid the copper-scented blood. She heard nothing. She then dared to look into his lifeless and unmoving eyes.

With her hand clamped over her mouth, Bree shot to her feet and backed away from Charlie. Who had done this? The military? The Benandanti? And was the person still here? Bree pressed her back against the wall, throat dry and heart throbbing, and listened for the slightest noise while scanning the hall for any signs of movement. But whoever did this was long gone. He wouldn’t have stuck around. And if he had, she would have already had a bullet through her head.

Bree skirted Charlie’s body, raced down the hall to her dad’s office, and flicked on the light. There were papers scattered everywhere, books dumped in front of the bookcase, chairs on their sides, a paperweight jammed into the computer monitor. Her dad’s diplomas lay on the floor, frames broken and glass shattered. And the computer was gone.

She bolted out of the office, turned right to avoid looking at Charlie again, and entered the first office she found. She booted up the computer and paced until it was ready.

Bree slid the flash drive into the USB port and skimmed through the file folders, searching for something, anything, that would help her. She was just a girl. She couldn’t save Liam and Conor—if Conor was still alive—on her own. The only way to keep her dad’s research away from those super soldiers was to become as fast and as strong as they were, so she could fight them off. But what if she became as savage and uncontrollable as they were? Her dad hadn’t had a chance to test the serum. What if, instead of saving Liam, she killed him? What if she didn’t even care? Or worse yet, what if she enjoyed it? Bree shuddered at the thought.

But what choice did she have? Using the serum was risky, but it was a risk she had to take.

Bree had to become a lycanthrope.

The first folder Bree checked contained a document with her dad’s ideas about the lycanthrope DNA project, a daily diary about how things had progressed and his reactions to them. She made a mental note to go back and read them if she ever got out of this mess alive. Other documents had ideas for future projects using the lycanthrope DNA. Some were detailed; others were just a few lines. Ideas so outrageous, Bree couldn’t believe her dad had thought of them. She shook her head in disbelief.

In the next document she found what she needed—a detailed list identifying the various DNA/virus combinations her dad had created. Without the list, it was impossible to know that the five combinations varied from one another. The most recent version, dated a day ago, was labeled WWGNTX55678. That was the version she would use. Now to locate the accelerator.

It took Bree only a minute to find the information on the accelerator; her dad had labeled the document “speed.” But his notes were only a bunch of formulas and coded information—nothing that told her how much of the accelerator she should use. Bree covered her face with her hands, fingertips digging into her closed eyelids. What should she do?

If only her dad were here to tell her.

After stowing the flash drive in her pocket, Bree returned to the lab and tapped the combination into the keypad that secured the storage unit, kept her fingers crossed, and hoped it worked. The lock clicked, and Bree sighed with relief. She turned the handle but stopped with the door halfway open as she realized this was really happening. A moment more and there’d be no turning back.

The second row contained what Bree wanted. With shaking hands, she removed the preloaded syringe containing the virus and the lycanthrope DNA and set it down carefully on the counter. On the bottom shelf she found the accelerator.

Now if only she knew what to do with it.

Bree stared at the bottle and tried to figure out how to proceed. If she used too much accelerator she would change too fast and wouldn’t be able to control it; if she used too little she wouldn’t change in time to save Liam. Maybe if she had asked her dad more about the accelerator and how it worked in combination with the lycanthrope DNA when he had mentioned it, she’d know what to do. Bree’s chest tightened.

“Just do it,” she said to herself.

Bree unscrewed the top of the bottle. Using the pipette she had grabbed from the instrument tray, she suctioned a few drops and added them to the DNA/virus combo. Was it too much? Too little? She had no idea. She added another dozen drops just to be sure. And then another dozen.

Nervousness and desperation had given way in Bree to a new found strength—a strength that made her ache to kick some lycanthrope soldier butt.

Without hesitation, Bree dropped her pants, aimed for the muscle—and jammed the needle into her thigh.

Whatever Bree had imagined would happen, it wasn’t this.

She felt the same as before.

She looked at her hands. No change.