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“Well, maybe they can call…” She let her voice drift off. “Of course they’re not going to call the police, are they.”
“No, and C.P.’s guards have better forensic training than local law enforcement up around here anyway. Still, no matter how hard they look, they won’t get anywhere. That was a professional job.”
As her throat tightened like a fist, she choked out, “Is Gus dead?”
Funny, how that rhetorical could come out as a question. And how unfair. As if Daniel could dispel the sole rational conclusion to all that had happened.
“You need to go to the mountain tonight.”
Lydia frowned and immediately shook her head. “I’m staying with you—”
“Blade will be up there—and as much as I hate you being anywhere around him, you need to go find him. He’s the only one who can help us right now, if Gus is going to have any chance at all.”
Even though she fought it, the image of a powerful male in red robes, lurking in the shadows of the summit, staring at her, talking at her, would not be denied. He had seemed to understand instinctively that she was of two things, both tame and wild—and that moment between them hadn’t lasted. The attack had come from out of nowhere, gunshots ringing out, some kind of cyborg nightmare that made no sense nearly killing them both. Blade had been injured, and she had helped him—and his sister.
The next day, Daniel had jumped toconclusions that had made sense only on a surface level, and everything had fallen apart for her. For the two of them.
She had not, and would not, ever be with Blade.
His attraction, his obsession, with her was a one-sided figment.
Lydia shook her head and got to her feet. Even though the last thing she was going to do was leave the room. “I’m not in a big hurry to see that man—or whatever he is—ever again.”
Symphath.That was what his kind were called.
With a grunt, Daniel pushed himself up on the pillows, and as he swept his hand over his head, it was a familiar gesture that reminded her of when he’d had such thick, beautiful hair.
“I would do it if I could—”
“Do what.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You already said there’ll be no evidence at Gus’s—”
“—so Blade is where we have to go. My former boss is—”
“Totally untrustworthy. You said that yourself—”
“I tried calling him.” He nodded at the door as if he weren’t hearing her at all. “When you walked the medical types out and talked to them in the hall. He didn’t answer—maybe he killed that number.”
She thought about being in that cave up on the mountain, where Blade had been recovering after he’d been shot. The memory of Daniel walking in on them was not a good one.
“Lydia, if we want to help Gus, we need him.”
“Even if I could find that male, what makes you think he’ll help us—”
“He’s in love with you. He’ll do anything you ask him to.” As she opened her mouth, Daniel put his palm up and continued in a bleak tone. “I’m still sorry I was such an asshole when I saw the two of you together. I was wrong. Utterly wrong. And as for how dangerous he is, I know you can take care of yourself, especially up there with all those wolves protecting you. If there was another way… but we need everything we’ve got right now.”
Daniel’s defeat was in the lines of his face, the grooves at the sides of his mouth making him seem closer to eighty than twenty.
“I would do it myself, Lydia. If I could.”
“If C.P. Phalen’s squadron of guards can’t find anything, what makes you think Blade can?”
“I have a lead. I found it when I back-doored into the FBG server after that guard was killed on the front lawn here. Maybe it isn’t anything, but Blade will know. The bastard knows more than even I do about the hidden labs in this country—and who the fuck else would take someone like Gus.”
FBG. The Federal Bureau of Genetics. A supposed covert arm of the U.S. government tasked with protecting and defending the integrity of the human genome. Daniel’s former “employer.” Whichin actuality had just been a front so Blade could go around bombing the underground labs that were just like C.P. Phalen’s.
Daniel had lied to her when he had first come into her life. But she had lied to him, too. And yes, two wrongs didn’t make a right, however they’d both had their reasons.
Lydia went over to the tall windows that overlooked the field that went all the way back to a forest line. Underneath her skin, the wolf in her stalked its cage of DNA, ready to run. Demanding freedom.
