Sacrifice the Wicked (10 page)
But her eyes, blue and bottomless, hardened. Iced over, as if it’d help her.
It wouldn’t. Simon knew her tricks.
His thumb stroked the corner of her mouth, smearing the surprisingly durable red lipstick she’d chosen. “Simon,” he corrected. Rain splattered across his shoulders, down his back. It dampened the heat emanating from his skin, but not by much.
Was he running a fever? Just his luck.
The inevitable just crept closer and closer.
But not yet. Not before he got Director Parker Adams out of the mess he’d helped create. Whether she liked it or not.
She shoved at his chest. “This is ridicu—”
“Simon,” he said over her, and she gasped as his thumb once more dug at the corner of her mouth.
This time, he didn’t stop with
making a point.
The tip of his thumb slipped between her lips, slick with rain. Her skin, pale in the unforgiving fluorescent lights, flushed with sudden embarrassment. Heat filled her eyes.
She couldn’t hide that.
He wanted her to submit. To his protection, to his touch. To
him
.
Not something they trained him for at the lab.
Her tongue darted against the pad of his thumb, as if it could push him out.
As if she couldn’t help but taste it.
Her fingers at his chest tightened, nails digging in so suddenly that he inhaled on a harsh sound of lust as it tightened low in his balls.
Focus.
“I’m a witch,” he said, voice rougher than he meant. “I’m part of the Salem Project. I’m the only thing standing between you and a shit storm none of you saw coming. You’re going to have to trust me.” And—because why the hell not?—he went for broke. “At this point in the game, I
need
you to trust me, Parker.”
Her teeth nipped at him; on purpose? He couldn’t tell. Her eyes locked on his, hazy. Banked with something so focused, smoldering, he couldn’t be positive she heard him.
She would. His fingers clenched in her hair. Tight enough to secure the silken knot in his hand; hard enough to force her back into a steep curve, thrust her breasts against his chest.
“You call me Simon,” he said into her wide eyes. “I’ll call you Parker. Because we’re going to be stuck together for a while.” Longer than she probably hoped.
Too long for his peace of mind.
Too late for that.
“Do you hear me?”
Her lashes, brown at the base and tipped with red, flickered. Down to his hand; his thumb aching, caught between her teeth. Her gaze rose.
The lust he read there—raw, scorching, wild—reached into his blood and boiled it over.
Her mouth closed fully around his finger.
His thoughts fled on a ragged growl. “And we don’t have time for that, either.”
But damn if he didn’t let those sexy red lips pull on his finger.
The feeling tightened in his dick, squeezed as if her lips wrapped around him there instead of his thumb. Erotic as hell.
So not the right time. He slipped his thumb free, his smile flashing as her teeth scraped along the callused edge. “Jesus, you’re dangerous.”
He leaned back. Far enough that he couldn’t feel her body against his bare chest. That he could breathe without smelling the rain-drenched fragrance of her.
And her perfume, sweet and refreshing. The smell haunted him.
The director had a streak of something wild in her. Simon would explore that. He couldn’t
not
.
But he’d have to do it later. When his side wasn’t throbbing and the threat of Salem operatives didn’t ride his ass.
“Get in the car,” he ordered, and let her go.
As her gaze cleared, mouth twisting and one hand raised to her lips, Simon folded into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut.
His heart hammered. A steady thrum of arousal. And of excitement. Bad timing for it, but then, there wouldn’t be any time for anything if either of them got killed now.
It was time to come clean. At least as much as she needed to know to be comfortable.
Hell, maybe she’d have more to add than what he knew.
Maybe it was time to trust someone else.
Then again, maybe he just wanted in her pants.
The passenger door jerked open. Color high in her cheeks, Parker climbed into the seat, droplets scattering with every sharp gesture, and slammed the door shut again.
Thunder crashed. Perfect counterpoint to the twisting in his gut.
Simon guided the car back onto the street. “You know that the Salem Project has been around since before the quake.”
“Yes,” she said, once more the ice queen. Like that night in her home, it didn’t fit the rain-drenched, fierce-eyed creature shivering beside him. “But the trail for that project ended well after the quake. I assumed the records didn’t survive.”
He reached out, turned on the heater, and flicked the vents wide.
Because he didn’t have it in him to risk another wrestling match with his own need, Simon didn’t deflect her with humor. Not this time. “That, and because the Salem Project started as something else.” His tone flattened, eyes flicking from rearview mirror to the road at regular intervals.
The rain didn’t make spotting a tail easy.
“At the time, knowledge was worth more than results,” he continued when she said nothing. “Dr. Laurence Lauderdale and his wife, Matilda, pioneered a new track into an ongoing project, but they both worked for GeneCorp.”
“They didn’t own it?”
“Not then. After the quakes, they rebuilt the company. Or, more precisely, the Church rebuilt the company.”
“What
is
it?” she asked, but not impatiently. She’d put her director face on.
The one that said she was listening not as a person on the wrong end of a bad decision but as a tactical advisor. A decision maker.
He’d have to rid her of that notion real quick.
“I get that it’s rolling out witches on some kind of”—she gestured—“factory belt, but why? Is it a supersoldier project? A genetic study on witches? What’s their goal?”
Even he didn’t know that. It’d changed, somewhere along the way. Changed enough that Mattie had fled.
He flicked her a quelling frown. “My story. Simmer down.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Of course, Ag—” She caught herself. “Simon.”
His name on her lips shouldn’t have lanced a bolt of lust to his cock. It did.
Because she’d listened.
God, that was sexy.
“I don’t know how it started, or what the intent was, but it graduated to gene therapy shortly after the Salem genome was discovered.”
“Why? To . . . cure it?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. The Lauderdales focused on retro-engineering the genome first. For study. They were only in the fledgling stages when the quakes hit.”
Parker glanced down to the floor. Blanched, and pulled her sneakered feet up.
Simon hid a smile. “Sorry about my shirt.”
“It’s fine.” It wasn’t, but he’d give her points for bravado.
“After the quakes, the witch hunts started.” Simon glanced in his side mirror. Frowned when a single light winked out of view.
“The witches created the imbalance,” Parker replied. Like a good little Church mouthpiece.
“I’ve never met a witch who could cause an earthquake.”
“Enough blood makes a powerful focus for—”
Simon’s back teeth came together so hard that they audibly clicked. “Take off the Mission face paint for one second, Parker, and listen to me. Witches
do not
have that power. Period. It’d take an entire city of blood to cause something like that—” She opened her mouth. “
Not
that there’s any proof it’s even possible. There were no citywide sacrifices before the disasters started.”
Her mouth closed, red eyebrows knotting. She sat back in her seat, back angled into the corner. To keep an eye on him. Put distance between them.
And rightfully so.
He forged ahead anyway. Might as well rip the stitches out all at once. “Think about it. In the handful of years before the quakes, there were other cities hit by other things. Superstorms, earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, floods. Don’t you think if there were any articles, any recordings,
anything
about witches conducting mass sacrifices, the Church would have shown it by now? As pure propaganda, if nothing else.”
Her eyes narrowed again, but it wasn’t in anger. Score one point for logic.
Negative five hundred for indoctrination.
Simon rolled his shoulders. It didn’t ease the tension. “I realize it goes against everything you believe in, but you’re going to have to face this. I’m part of a legacy that spans over five decades. I know what I’m talking about.”
She said nothing.
“Somewhere along the time line, they successfully retro-engineered the sequence.” He frowned again at the mirrors. The single light doggedly followed. In and out of view. Too far to get any details.
“But why wasn’t anyone told?”
“Because witches are bad, remember?” He didn’t bother mitigating the scorn out of his answer. “At that time, the populace was just antsy enough to pull a torch-and-pitchfork routine on anyone caught playing with witches. Even if those witches were innocent of anything.”
“I guess so. But why would Bishop Applegate want soldiers genetically modified with the Salem genome?” she demanded. “It goes against every doctrine he’s ever preached. They’re making
witches
.”
Simon’s smile lacked humor. “He doesn’t. The program isn’t for him. I doubt he even knows.”
Her gaze dropped to his torso, though he knew she couldn’t see his seal—or the incriminating bar code—from where she sat. “How old are you? Where were you born?” Her frown twisted. “Are you from outside the city?”
“I’m thirty. And I wasn’t born, Parker, I was vat-grown. Cultivated in a test tube and incubated by a machine, right here in New Seattle.”
Every word seemed to shape her expression. Narrowed it, refined it. Hardened it. Her mouth flattened into a thin, white line.
He might as well go for broke.
“The Salem Project isn’t for the Church.” He glanced at her. “It makes witches out of genetic material with the greatest odds of survival. Hatches them, raises them, and turns them into soldiers. The problem is in the longevity.”
“What do you mean?”
His smile twisted. “There’s something in the DNA that’s . . . broken or fractured or not complete. I don’t know, I’m not a scientist.” He glanced at her, then again at the mirror. “That’s what has the Lauderdales so wrapped up.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s easy. Director Lauderdale made himself an army, but his wife made sure he couldn’t use it.”
“His wife.” Parker smoothed her hands over her hair, but it wouldn’t help. Gone was the sleek coil. Tendrils hung around her cheeks in a sexy frame he couldn’t help but notice. She looked good ruffled. He wanted to ruffle her some more. “You mean Mattie,” she said, so suddenly that he couldn’t help his smile.
“Yeah. I called her Mattie.”
“But she died. Matilda Lauderdale passed away years ago.” Her voice now slanted what was common fact up into a question. “You had to be, what, six years old?”
Approval had him nodding, but not in agreement. “That’s a lie Lauderdale gave his suddenly motherless kid. Mattie died two months ago.” He reached up, adjusted the rearview mirror. “And she didn’t abandon us completely. Hang onto your bucket, sweetcheeks.”
“What?” She gripped the seat belt over her chest. “Why?”
Simon shifted his grip on the wheel. “We may have a tail.”
K
ayleigh knocked on the door as a courtesy.
“In,” came the raspy reply.
She stepped inside the spacious office, her shoes sinking into plush carpet. The lights blazed, circles of gold and lighter yellow. It painted the office in homey tones, touched on the dark wood furniture and gave it a warm sheen.
Given the amount of time Laurence Lauderdale spent in this office, it might as well feel like home.
“Dad,” she began reproachfully, only to cover her mouth with her digital reader as the tall, frail man behind the desk raised a gnarled hand.
“No, we’ll need more than that if it’s going to make a dent,” he said, beckoning her in further. But he wasn’t talking to her. His desk-mounted comm lights glowed blue, and he tilted his head to the side as he always did when a comm mic was clipped to his large ear.
Kayleigh muffled a sigh. The man never rested. How he’d managed to live well into his eighties was a secret she hoped was genetic. Well, in that
normal cause
kind of way.
As a geneticist for Sector Three, Kayleigh spent a lot of time considering the many mutations that comprised a human being. Hair colors, skin colors, eye colors. Shape, texture.
She’d never been that interested in life span.
At least until now.
Her stomach burned as she held the reader to her chest. The stress of her current project sat there like a ball of acid, and it wouldn’t get better while she waited for her dad to finish his call.
She didn’t sit in one of the red leather chairs arrayed in front of his desk. Giving him what privacy the large office could afford, she strolled to the wall-to-wall bookshelf, pretended to peruse titles she’d long since devoured.
“Double- and triple-check your numbers,” Laurence said into his earpiece. His voice, once so strong and kind, now quaked with age. “Keep a close eye on everything, but I don’t want to sacrifice too much manpower. I’ll need your team prepped.”
Pulling a worn, creased text from the shelf, she idly flipped through its dog-eared pages. But her glance flicked sideways.
In her memory, Laurence was still a tall, lean man with strong arms and a wide smile. Never
young,
he’d always been a man of distinguished demeanor. Kind. Gentlemanly.
But her eyes told her a different story.
Now he stooped with age, his joints gnarled and often stiff. Physically, he appeared frail. A thin skeleton with mottled spots showing through his short, cobweb-thin white hair. His ears were large, loose skin hanging, and his teeth had been reduced to dentures, but she loved him anyway.
The smart ones didn’t let his appearance fool them, either. Her dad ran a tight ship. One look into his faded blue eyes, similar to Kayleigh’s own, and it became clear why he remained director of Sector Three.
The man was brilliant. Truly a pioneer.
Her role model. A lot of the scientists’ role model, really. She hated to disappoint him.
She slid the book back into the bookshelf.
“Good,” Laurence said, flicking through something—probably data of some kind—on his reader. “Stay close and keep your comm on. Take care, now.” He plucked the mic from his ear with shaking fingers, but his lined, weary features brightened. “Kayleigh.”
“Hi, Dad.” She crossed the office, bent to kiss his gaunt cheek. His cologne—the same light blend of subtle aftershave and soapy-scented cream he’d used for years—filled her nose.
Every year, every month, seemed to hit her harder. He just kept getting older. Thinner.
Less,
somehow.
He didn’t argue as she plucked the mic from his awkward grip. “Dad, how many times have I told you to get the new earpiece?”
“I don’t need a new earpiece,” he argued good-naturedly. “The old one works just as good as it ever did.”
She slotted the bit into his desk comm. “Except it’s too small for you to handle well. I’ll order you one tomorrow, okay?”
He sat back, eyes twinkling. “What brings you to my office, Kayleigh? Shouldn’t you be home and sound asleep?”
“That’s
my
question.” She rounded his desk, fingers trailing on the satiny finish, and folded into a chair. Out of habit, her legs crossed at the knee. “It’s after midnight, and you know the doctor said you needed to get away from the office more.”
“Heh.” He waved her censure away. “Barry spends his days on a golf mat in his office. What does he know?”
“He knows your blood pressure,” she pointed out serenely.
Laurence’s thin mouth twitched. He leaned forward, resting his bony elbows on his desk, and raised a bristling white eyebrow at her. “Did you come to lecture me, Dr. Lauderdale, or is this an official visit?”
“Official visits ended hours ago,” she replied with a long-suffering sigh. Her chest squeezed, as it always did when he looked at her with that mix of devilish humor and stern expectation. And her insides rolled over.
She looked down at her digital pad. “But you’re right, as usual.”
“As I suspected.”
Swiping her thumb across the print-lock, Kayleigh pulled up her report. A quick scan refreshed everything she needed to share. She’d start with the good news. Good-ish. “I have the Salem data from generations fifty-two through fifty-five.”
“All right.” He nodded. “Go ahead, at your own pace.”
A smile tugged at her lips. He’d been telling her to move at her own pace for years. “Okay. First, we’ve lost one hundred percent of fifty-two and -three.” Not a flicker on his creased expression greeted her unsurprising revelation.
This was an ongoing problem. And one she’d have to address before she left. Her stomach burned at the thought.
“We lost seventy percent before you authorized euthanasia for the rest,” she continued, “but as was mentioned, degeneration was guaranteed. Patterns from fifty-four are following precedent.” Kayleigh scrolled through a lengthy list. “We’ve lost sixty percent of that generation. Same as before. Their abilities are overclocking too fast for their bodies to handle.”
“What about the field agents?” the director asked, eyebrows beetling.
“We managed to get to three when they didn’t report in,” she said, frowning. “They were euthanized before the damage could manifest itself beyond explanation. But we’ve missed the catastrophic phase for four of them. They degenerated too fast, and the Mission is reacting according to expectations. They’re keeping the docket open.” It didn’t help that some of the euthanization orders weren’t being handled as cleanly as they could.
Kayleigh didn’t think it right that the bodies were left out where anyone could find them. They deserved cremation, at least. After study.
They held answers, but her father’s team was adamant that missionaries not simply disappear. They needed to be found dead. Needed to give the Mission director’s people closure, keep them away from the truth.
Kayleigh suspected it was far too late for that. She needed those bodies.
“Damn,” her father sighed.
She didn’t begrudge him the word. It wasn’t exactly the best news of the night. Putting Salem Project operatives in with the Mission, even as a field test, had been too extreme for her taste. One of Nadia Parrish’s many mistakes, a mistake Kayleigh was desperately trying to rectify.
Only her father constantly overruled her concerns.
Kayleigh recognized the validity of the project. The Salem genome was too understudied, especially for the level of power locked into such a tiny allele. Witches could heal, they could bestow gifts, blessings. Somehow, they had powers science could only reach for.
Unlocking a healing witch’s genetic makeup could mean synthesizing the sequence to curing disease. But she wasn’t so sure that was her father’s plan. And she didn’t know how to ask.
She’d grown up saturated in the concept of gene therapy, in genetics and biology on a macro level. She’d gone to school, top in her class, had taken every step she could to make her father proud. To honor her mother’s memory.
But the extent of the Salem Project awed her. And worried her. Field-stressing the subjects had a certain logic to it, but in the Mission?
She didn’t like it.
“What about the rest of fifty-four?” her father asked.
“There are still some operatives in the field,” she added as a handful of photos scrolled across her reader. “Including Simon Wells.”
“Wells.” Laurence’s face pulled into a dark frown. “Has he reported in?”
Kayleigh straightened. “Recently. He’s still functioning, despite his wounds. He claims one hundred percent, but I’d put him at about eighty. The trauma he suffered during Mrs. Parrish’s antics might have been enough to trigger degeneration.”
“Any signs?”
“Not that are physically apparent. He’s less than inclined to work with us,” she added pointedly.
Her father’s frown stitched deep lines into his mouth. “How was he? Did you examine him?”
“No,” she admitted, bracing herself for the dismay, the disappointment, she saw in her father’s scowl. “He seems to be holding up remarkably well for his generation. He was mostly trying to make sure I didn’t ruin his Mission credentials, given the consequences of Operation Wayward Rose.”
“That woman.” One gnarled hand slammed on the desk. “She will be the death of me.”
“I hope not.”
His thick eyebrows knitted into a solid furrow. “What is she doing? Is she still blocking us?”
“Every chance she gets.” Kayleigh sighed. “Dad, Director Adams hasn’t done anything to impede our progress. Not really. Mrs. Parrish stuck her in the middle of a Sector Three problem because she got lazy. It’s not Director Adams’s fault. She’s just protecting her people, like you do for us.”
He sat back, eyes flashing. “We’ll just see about that.”
Kayleigh grimaced. Her dad’s temper flares weren’t good for his heart. “Settle down, Dad. I don’t want the doctor yelling at me at your next physical.”
“Hmph. What about generation fifty-five?”
She switched gears easily. “On a more positive note, we’ve only lost seven percent of fifty-five as of today’s reports. That’s better than the sixteen percent we’ve usually tracked by now.”
Her father raised his eyebrows, craggy lines settling into his forehead. “The difference?”
“A particular pattern of sequencers in the—”
Laurence suddenly grinned, raising his twisted hand again to cut her off. “Just make sure it’s all in your report, or we’ll be here all night.”
“Right.” They could spend hours on the subject, and every minute crept on past midnight. “It’s already in, and I’ll forward it to you right away.”
“Good girl.”
And now was as good a time as any for the real reason she’d come. As a knot in her stomach bubbled and frothed, her humor faded. “Now for the rest.”
“Hm?” His eyes sharpened on her face, studied the arms she wrapped around the reader. “What’s wrong, Kayleigh?”
Bracing her chin on the upper edge, she stared glumly at his folded hands, riddled with age spots. “The truth is . . . Dad, I don’t think I can crack the Eve sequence.”
“Nonsense.”
She sighed. “I’m serious. I’m dancing as fast as I can, but all I’m seeing is more and more subjects dropping off my lists. My simulators are all projecting catastrophic losses.” Her mouth twisted. “I’ve worked through seven generations in the system. First I lose them all by the time they hit fourteen, then I manage to isolate a sequence that keeps them going until thirty-five, but I can’t push it past that. Whatever Mom saw in the DNA, it’s beyond me.”
“You’re doing the best you can.”
No. All she was doing was delaying the inevitable. Her simulations were proof enough—her father’s project was a failure.
But how could she say so? “I know they’re all lab subjects, but . . .”
They’re human, too.
Sympathy for the subjects wouldn’t earn her any points.
She had to be logical. Reasonable. Objective.
Laurence rose, not as gracefully as he once could and with a great deal more creaking in the joints. He circled the desk, his smile kind. Sympathetic. He knew the stakes as well as she did. “I understand,” he told her, and cupped her shoulders in his thin hands. Bending, he met her gaze, held it. “That’s why you have to keep working, sweetheart. Without you, without your brilliant mind, these subjects will keep dying.”
“But if you stop the project—”
His eyebrows furrowed. “We can’t do that,” he cut in sharply. His grip tightened on her shoulders. “Kayleigh, your mother and I, we spent our lives on this. My Mattie died before she could finish the single most important thing of her career. Sweetheart, you need to complete her formula. You’re the only one who can.”
Her stomach hurt. It always did when she started considering the casualties. When she started considering the ethics.
Not a word her dad took lightly.
She looked down at her reader, arms tensing around its hard frame. “I’ll keep working on it,” she said quietly. “I just . . .” She just what? Didn’t want to be in charge?
Didn’t want to know the numbers?
Wasn’t her mother?
She couldn’t do that. He’d put her in charge, his right-hand woman. She couldn’t let him down.
He took her hands. His skin was cool, paper dry, but his grip was firm as he enfolded her fingers between his. “You’re every bit as brilliant as your mother,” he assured her gently. “Maybe even more so. You’ll crack the Eve sequence. And when you do, all our work will be worth it. A new dawn. I promise you.”
Maybe. Kayleigh rose, shifting her reader to the crook of her arm, and squeezed his hands in return. “Okay, I’ll keep working. Now, please, Dad, go home. You’re already out past curfew, you know how the gate guard gets.”
He let her go. “So are you, young lady.”
True. She smiled at him as he turned, bracing one hand on the desk to walk around it and regain his seat. “Since you’re probably not going to leave anytime soon, is there anything I can get you?”
He tapped the desk with his index finger. “Compile all of Simon Wells’s data and send it separately. I want all of his charts. Go back to his genetic compilation.”