The Judas Contact (Boomers Book 1) (10 page)

“Is there some reason you keep trying to feed me? I need to lose about twenty pounds, and did Rory say how my dogs were doing?”

“They’re fine. And no, you don’t. Food provides energy and supports cognitive function. You are on your feet and working. You need to support your body’s needs.” He fixed a cup of coffee for himself. He preferred it black, bitter, and strong. She liked some kind of nutty mixture. He grimaced at the first taste, but swallowed it anyway. He’d made her coffee once and then she ordered him away from the pot, refusing to drink “sludge.” If she ever had to walk a perimeter for twelve hours straight, keeping her eyes open for danger, she might appreciate the mixture more.

But her life is not lived in the shadows. She’s free. She doesn’t worry about anyone coming for her in the middle of the night or locking her up. She doesn’t have to worry about people hunting her.
Their current situation aside, he couldn’t imagine that was ever much of a concern for her.

“I like waffles. They cook up in two minutes. They’re hot and sweet and fill the hole. Do you remember how they implanted the chip?” Her ability to hopscotch from thought to thought in a conversation amused him. “I need to go see the dogs in the next couple of days, too. I need to check on their progress.”

 “Yes. It was a vaguely unpleasant procedure.” He ignored the rest of the comments. Amusing as they were, if he tried to follow every thread, it would only lead to more delays. Time to address them when she came up for air from her next series of tests.

“Did they implant it intranasally or did they actually open you up?” She took another toasty bite and washed it down with a swallow of her coffee. Her color normalized with every passing minute, her energy reserves replenishing. He should have made her take a break sooner.

Garrett shrugged. “They didn’t go up my nose. They used a vise to hold my head in place and went into my skull. I remember some stitches, a drill, and a very cold sensation.”

“You were awake?” Her gaze narrowed. “What about the others, did you see their implantations?”

“No. We went in separately along with about thirty others.” He choked down another nut-filled swallow of coffee. He planned to throw that bag out. Coffee needed to taste like coffee, not some plant grove meets peanut butter sandwich.

“What happened to the others?” She didn’t miss much.

“They were less fortunate.” He’d euthanized one himself. Jerrick had fought like a madman. He seemed to have lost all control over the blades that extended from his fingers. He’d punctured his own lung during his struggles. Putting him down had been the kindest thing, because the insanity firing in his eyes was more dangerous than the weapons he wielded.

“You should go shower and sleep now.” It was less than fifteen minutes since they’d come up the stairs. He wanted her to maximize the rest period.

“It’s really important to you that I get some sleep, isn’t it?” She finished the last of her waffle and drained her coffee cup. Crossing over to the sink, she rinsed out the cup and took her time about washing her hands.

He froze, coffee cup halfway to his mouth, as she lathered the soap up and began to scrub her forearms, wrists and then between her fingers. She cleaned up thoroughly every time, sliding her fingers together, cleaning out beneath her nails and then rinsing with the same attention to detail.

“Garrett?” She glanced over her shoulder.

“You haven’t slept much since you got here. Sleeping and eating are vital to your continued health.”

“And you’ve appointed yourself my watchdog?” Finished with the rinse, she dried her hands with a dishtowel. Admiring her attention to such fastidious details drove him to make sure she had fresh, clean towels every day.

“That’s my job.”

“Protecting me. Did you decide that or did the chip?” She turned, leaning against the counter, gaze sharp and assessing.

“The team decided that.” It didn’t matter that the chip declared her as a non-threat and encouraged her protection. It mattered that, as a unit, the Boomers needed her help. That meant she got theirs.

“But you told me the chip wanted me protected.” She approached him slowly, staring into his eyes as if she could bore right into his mind to the chip with her gaze alone.

“The chip offers tactical information. That’s all.” The woman didn’t deserve anything less than their assistance. He held his ground.

“Is it active right now?” She pursed her lips and stretched out a hand. He realized what she was doing a second before her hand flattened against the front of his jacket.

The muscles in his chest locked. He didn’t dare breathe. He concentrated on control, focusing his thoughts away from anything dangerous. He never knew exactly what would set him off. Like all his clothing, the jacket insulated his skin, allowing no sweat to soak through and escape.

“Because if touching you puts me in danger, then it should be telling you, right?” Her nose wrinkled, head tipping a fraction to the right as she studied him. His pulse jumped. The pressure of her hand on his chest was just the barest of sensations, a weight, rather than a feeling. His heart jabbed at his ribs.

The chip, however, remained silent. Sucking in a much needed lungful of oxygen, he forced himself to step back, retreating from the contact. Almost instantly, he missed the pressure. Despite the alien sensation of it, he wanted to continue the experiment.

But not at such a high risk.

“You weren’t in danger, because I saw the touch and it wasn’t skin on skin.” He cleared his throat. “Go get some sleep, doc. Reckless decisions are not good ones.”

Of course, she didn’t just walk away. She glanced at her hand and then at him. He saw the calculation in her eyes and caught her wrist in an iron grip as she reached out to touch his face.

“Don’t. Be. Stupid.” Cold anger broke loose inside him. He squeezed, tight enough that her appraising expression winced with pain. “You will not endanger your life so foolishly again, do you understand me?”

“That hurts, Garrett.” Distress colored the words. He squeezed a fraction tighter, aware of just how much force he applied and careful to not compress the smaller bones in her fragile wrist.

“You can heal a broken bone. You can mend a sprain. You can function without a hand.” Her expression wilted further under the lash of his words. “You may not survive toxic shock. Clear?”

“Yes. I won’t do it again. Now let go. Please.” Despite the quaver of hurt in her voice, she didn’t try to jerk or pull away. He released her and pointed to the stairs.

“Go to bed. Sleep off the attack of stupid. We can deal with this later.” He regretted the harsh tone when a tear spilled out of her eyes, but she turned away and all but ran out of the kitchen. He listened for her steps on the stairs and the echo of the door slamming above. After she was gone, he pressed his hand to the spot on his chest where she’d touched him.

It was as though the feeling lingered beneath the protective barrier of his clothing to brand his skin. He blew out a slow breath. Sweat trickled down his back and his heart continued to thud like an over revved motor.

She scared the piss out of him.

* * * *

The door slammed behind him, but Simon didn’t glance up from the photo on his computer. Garrett’s question sparked a memory inside of him, but the information remained annoyingly elusive. “Problem, Michael?”

He didn’t need to look to see the team’s captain, a man whose cool nerves kept them together for four decades, seething. Only one person managed to get him in this condition and they’d been fighting for two days straight. Michael’s presence in Simon’s office, with Rory conspicuously absent from the warehouse, suggested they’d reached some sort of impasse.

“She’s gone to see him.” The marksman dragged a chair back, rubber stoppers on the legs screaming across the tile.

Simon winced at the sound, but kept his tone neutral. “We did the background check. Henry Graystone is not Hans Geiger as far as I can tell. The photos don’t match—even extensive reconstructive surgery couldn’t change his eyes. She’s also said repeatedly that Geiger isn’t her father. The Graystones are clean.”

It was a pointless exercise, but keeping Michael focused when Rory was offsite served them all well. He never seemed to think clearly where she was concerned. “Does this look familiar to you?” He gestured to the screen.

Grunting, the captain leaned forward and stared at the image. “Where have I seen that before?”

“That was my question—or more accurately Garrett’s question. He sent the sketch, he recognized it, but he doesn’t know from what.”

“The layout—it’s a place.” Michael snapped his fingers. “The training and reclamation facility outside of Savannah—where we found Garrett.”

A muscle in Simon’s right eyelid twitched. Of course Michael recognized it almost immediately and, with that information, so did Simon. Michael had planned the operation to shut down that facility. They’d gone in for survivors. Locations for train and reclaim centers were protected under layers of security in the world they came from. Center victims were often those who spoke out against the government, with more specialized individuals receiving experimental treatments. They’d lost one teammate to the reclaims, a soldier who came up through the ranks with Michael. The two had been like brothers. Sixty days in a center turned him against all of the Boomers.

He killed fourteen before Michael took him out.

“Where did he get the sketch?” The captain kicked back in his chair, a brooding expression supplanting his earlier anger.

“No idea. He just thought it looked familiar. I’m assuming this came from the doc, but he’s not answering texts at the moment. He sent word they were going to get some sleep. He’ll answer later. Did Curtis tell you what he found out about the director?” Curtis Sven, also known as Rupture, was one of Rory’s teammates from the Infinity Corporation. Initially resistant to working with the Boomers, they’d become firm allies in their current projects. Michael wasn’t overly fond of either Curtis or Josh, but Rory’s affections for her teammates kept him from saying much.

At least in public.

“He did. The Director is a front man. He isn’t exactly in charge of the R.E.X. facility. He also said that internal security tripled in the last five days and the company is fishing for a sniffer to send after Doctor Blaine. Rory’s gotten some phone calls from the police, too.”

That was news to Simon and he turned in his chair. “When were you going to mention that?”

“Right now. She’s dealt with it. She was signed into the building when the breakout occurred. They questioned her about meeting with the doctor. She dealt with it.”

The telepath sighed. A new headache began to form behind his eyes. “I should have been there for the questioning.”

“You can trust her, Simon. She handled it.”

“It’s not a matter of trust. It’s a matter of what the detectives believed. We do not need to deal with law enforcement getting too close. This is a delicate enough situation. We have no idea who the actual director is or his agenda. We don’t know much about these human trials they’ve engaged in, and the doc doesn’t appear to be making much progress in answering our questions about the chip.”

“You tell her about the human trials?” Michael wanted her told as soon as he’d read the information in the reports, but Rory and Simon agreed that Ilsa was too fragile for that type of a blow. They needed her focused on the problem, not worrying about the fallout of an experiment she didn’t actively participate in. Rex worked on trying to identify who the actual candidates were beyond their identification codes in the files, but that required getting back into the central mainframe of the R.E.X. facility—and that would take time.

“No. When and if we need to involve her in that, Garrett will tell her. How long until Rory returns from her meeting?” He wanted her objective opinion on the level of Ilsa’s involvement. It made no sense that the company would press forward into human trials without the scientist who developed the technology working on the project. Hardly impossible, based on the detailed notes she kept in her computers, but the trial and error would require fine tuning. They couldn’t be relying on the results from dogs alone for that type of finesse.

“When she gets here.” Michael exhaled the words with slow, careful precision. It sounded like a parrot of Rory’s exasperation.

Hiding a smile, Simon nodded. “All right. You up for a job, Captain?”

At Michael’s bland look, he fished out a bug. “These are wall penetrating sensors. Let’s go bug the R.E.X. tenth floor. Long range implant should work. I want to know who is in charge there.”

* * * *

Ilsa hid in the shower and let the spray disguise the tears rolling down her face. Her left wrist ached from the pressure of Garrett’s fist. The force of his grip was matched only by the icy rejection in his expression. He’d been furious. She hadn’t planned the little episode, but she wanted to know if the chip worked regularly and conclusively or if the instruction to protect her was an aberration. She needed to get him into the FMRI to know what triggers activated it.

C’mon, he warned you that touching was dangerous. He wasn’t upset when you touched his clothing, just when you reached for his face.
The rational part of her mind wanted to cut him some slack.
If he’d never been allowed to touch, how hungry for physical contact must he be?

Or was it something else?
What if touch hurts him? We’re sensitized by touch from a very young age. Skin on skin contact is vital for a thriving baby. If he’s never been touched—

 Her anger evaporated on the tail end of that thought. Rubbing the water against her face, she groaned. He was right, she needed sleep. It had been a stupid, stupid error to push like that. But he was so sweet, thoughtful, considerate, and a dozen other words her tired brain couldn’t think of. He reminded her to eat, pushed her to rest, answered her questions—not always patiently—but he did answer them.

And how did she repay him? She threatened him with contact that scared the hell out of him.
He said that casual touch was dangerous because, if he wasn’t prepared for it, it could poison me. But he saw me. He was prepared for it…wasn’t he?