It didn’t steal my breath, but chambered it in my chest like a bullet to be fired. One that would obliterate the thin veneer of professionalism between us. Regardless of our past connection, she’d hired me to do a job—to find her sister—and that was all this should be. It was all it was supposed to be.All it could be.
A breeze swept around us, and Lara shivered.
“You should go back inside.”
She stubbornly didn’t move.
“I’m sorry about your mother. I didn’t know she was ... murdered.”
A thread of tension pulled my spine taut. “It was a long time ago.”
“Time is like a drug. It doesn’t cure the disease, only lessens the symptoms.” She folded her arms. “At least, in my experience.”
There was a reason I didn’t talk about Mom, but it didn’t have anything to do with the circumstance of her death, only the aftermath. But maybe that was why I should share it. Because what had just happened in the tent almost completely ruptured my restraint.
I needed a reminder that the worst thing in my life wasn’t not having Lara, but what could happen if I lost her.
“Before Stonewall and us, Mom was a biochemical engineer,” I began, the growing darkness dragging me into the memory of a similarly dark night. “She was recruited by the Department of Defense to work on a top-secret project, and that’s where she met Cassius. He was FBI.”
“Wow.” The shape of her lips should’ve been criminal, the way it broke into my senses and entered a thieving heat into my veins. “So, your dad ...”
“Didn’t always exile technology?” I chuckled. “No. Far from it. That’s why he is the way he is. He knows just how ... dangerous it can be.”
“What were they working on?”
“I don’t know exactly. They never spoke of it. And to guess ... well, there are very few kinds of top-secret DOD projects that the government would need one of the nation’s foremost biochemical scientists for.”
“A weapon?” I could hear surprise elevate her voice.
“Or a defense against one.”
The concepts of biochemical warfare and bioterrorism weren’t new to the discussion of national defense. As time ticked on, it had only become more likely that bioagents would be the weapons of the future.
“Whatever it was, it didn’t end well. At least in my parents’ opinion. They both got out of the field and moved here. Off the grid. Away from that project. Their past.” I paused, hearing a screech just before a dark, winged shadow of a bat zipped across the pale haze of the full moon. “At least they tried.”
Lara shivered, her arm brushing against mine.
“I was fifteen. Cassius had taken Creed, Callum, and Colt out for storm-survival training. I was at the house with Mom, Colby, and Creighton.” I remembered the smell of electricity in the air. The hush of the wind through the trees like a whispered warning. I was surprised to feel my throat start to tighten. “I was in the library, studying. I had a geography test the next day. Colby came running in, trying to hide from Creighton because she’d let her pet chicks loose in his room.”
Lara laughed then, the sound forcing me to stop. Rich and decadent, just like the homemade hot chocolate Mom had loved to drink every night. And just as uncommon.
“You’re telling me you never played pranks on your sister?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“I ...” Lara pulled her lips between her teeth and then expelled a smaller, sadder laugh. “No, I never really pranked Rachel. We were always on the same side.”
Instantly, I regretted the question, and went back to my story.
“I was about to buffer their fight when Mom came running in. Something was wrong, I could see it. Even as a kid, you kind of know—can sense when something is really wrong.” I lifted my handand ran it along my jaw like I could forcibly stop it from clenching. “She told me to take them into the storm cellar. It’s underground, below the greenhouse.”
My pulse marched steadily faster, and I listened to the deeper, slower breaths from the woman beside me, the heat of her lungs beginning to fog the chilled air.
“I thought it was the storm,” I continued, a hoarseness entering my voice. “Now, when I look back, I remember how she sounded. How she looked. I remember the handgun at her side and the panic in her eyes. But that night, I was annoyed because I had to study, and Colby and Creighton were antagonizing each other and Mom wasn’t doing anything about it. I was too ... preoccupied that the reality didn’t really register.”
“You were fifteen,” Lara repeated, like I hadn’t heard it all before.
In the distance, lightning cracked through the dark sky, too far away to be anything but ornamental illumination.
“I took my siblings to the cellar and waited like she’d instructed. Even underground, we could still hear the storm play out like the rumble and tumble of a football stadium.”
