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Kam smiled as she lifted her coffee mug up to her blood-red-stained lips. “I’m sure you’re right. Please go on? I’m sorry; where are my manners? Would you care for a cup of coffee? I have to say I followed your lead and got my own Keurig.”
Emery wasn’t completely convinced that taking a cup of coffee from Kam would even be safe. Instead, she said, “No. Thank you. What I’d like is an explanation.”
“As would I. Why did you visit Carson Payne?”
“Because you recruited me to try and save him. I have to say if all anyone is doing is sitting and watching monitors, his chances for recovery are slim. Injured patients need rest, yes, but they also need human interaction. Dr. Payne appeared to be confused and fearful. I thought if he got used to seeing me on a regular basis—a familiar face, as it were—that it might help and reassure him.”
“Maybe. He thinks you have a crush on him.”
Emery laughed. “Of course, he does. He’s gorgeous and has the vanity that all men who look like him have about women who don’t look like supermodels. Do I think he’s handsome? Yes, certainly. Do I harbor some secret longing for him that drove me to his room?” Emery snorted. “Hardly.”
Kam spun her monitor around so that Emery could see it. Her nails clicked across her keyboard. “How do you explain this?”
A video came up showing Emery on Lower Level Two, looking around furtively as she made her way down the hall, peeking and entering into several labs. The video switched and showed Emery entering one, clapping her hand over her mouth and shaking her head.
“Something seems to have upset you.”
“Look, Kam, I was wandering around some place I probably wasn’t supposed to be, although in my defense you never told me that level was off limits. You have to know there’s all kinds of stories making the rounds about subterranean levels. I’d had a brief glimpse of one and three so naturally, my curiosity got the better of me, and I wanted to see two. That reaction was to the sight of a lot of what looked to be improperly stored or disposed of medical waste. If it’s that big a deal I can give you my resignation or you can fire me. We’re still in my probationary period.”
“I’m beginning to question your loyalty. That’s the second time you’ve threatened to resign.”
Emery shook her head. “That’s not true. Neither time was I making a threat. Both times I was giving you an alternative to firing me.”
Kam nodded, seeming to try and process not only what Emery had said but the veracity of it. “You’re right. The room you went in is medical waste of failed experiments. We do dispose of it properly, but most of it is recent. We have a huge facility here in Iceland and they have strict protocols. We tend to kind of save it up—I know, not best practice—but we also want to make sure it is truly waste and not something we’ll need in the short term.”
That sounded reasonable enough, but Emory knew it was complete and total bullshit.
“Apparently, I committed a huge faux pas where Lower Level Two is concerned. You can either accept my apology, restore at least my security clearance to access Dr. Payne and what I need to devise a treatment therapy, or I can leave. I’m not going to test my theories with my hands tied behind my back. Your choice.”
Kam thought for a moment and then nodded. “I’m going to accept your explanation for now. I’ll restore your security access to Levels One and Three but be advised you may be monitored more closely for a while. I believe in you, Emery,” she said, leaning forward sympathetically, “but not everyone at NLGP does. If you have any concerns in the future, I hope you’ll come to me.”
“Of course, Kam. Thank you.”
She turned, schooling herself not to take the breath she’d been doing without or rush toward the office door. Once outside, she put her head down and tried to get her beating heart and breathing under control. That had been close—too close.
CHAPTER 11
EMERY
Emery’s breathing, pulse, and heartbeat didn’t return to anything resembling normal until she’d returned to her office and made herself a cup of coffee. Oh, she knew people who would say pouring a cup of strong, black coffee and imbibing the caffeine wouldn’t do anything good for your nerves, but Emery had always found just the opposite. A good cup of coffee and closing her eyes for a moment allowed her to clear her thoughts and do a reset of her emotions.
Now what? She knew her movements were being monitored here at work, and if some of the rumors she’d heard were true, they were most likely following her outside the complex. She smiled to herself—that had to be one of the most boring jobs she could think of. But if NLGP was as nefarious as she thought, it wouldn’t hurt for her to figure out a way to scan her flat to see if there were any electronic bugs.
She ran a scan on her cell phone. She had an app that would tell her if there were any tracking devices on it—either to give away where she was or to intercept her phone calls, browsing record, or phone numbers she used. The scan showed she was clean, and she made a mental note to run a scan each morning and night and anytime she had to leave her phone somewhere.
Feeling confident that her cell phone was not being monitored, she located and downloaded an app that would allow her to use her cell phone to check her SUV and flat for any kind of electronic bugs. She was fairly sure there wasn’t an inch of the NLGP complex that wasn’t monitored, but she figured scanning it would alert them that she was on to their game. The longer she could play dumb, the safer she and Mason would be.
She really needed to talk to Mason. For one thing, she needed his calming presence. For another, she wasn’t quite sure what her next move should be. Until she could figure that out, she would do some real work on her genetic therapies, work on figuring out how and when to deliver the cave lion DNA to Mason, and try to figure out a way she could get them out of here sooner rather than later.
Emery called the security desk and asked for Terry. When he answered she said, “Terry, it’s Dr. Smoak. There was a hiccup in my security clearance this morning. Could you see if it’s been restored to allow me to see Dr. Payne?”
“Sure, Dr. Smoak, let me check that for you.” There was a pause. “Yes ma’am. All taken care of.”
The end of the day was approaching far more quickly than she had expected it to. She was certain if Kam wasn’t onto them, she would be soon. The time of dithering about the ethics of turning Mason was past. She needed to get the process started, and fast. She could fake experiments and therapies, leaving NLGP with nothing that would work, but that would serve to cover Mason’s transition from a snow leopard-shifter to a cave lion-shifter.
Rummaging through the supplies in her office, she prepared a saline solution containing a concentrated form of her saliva and drew it into the syringe. By the time she was ready, it was close to six. She pocketed the loaded syringe in her lab coat and left her office, closing and locking the door behind her, and then made her way back to Mason’s room.
“Evening, Dr. Smoak,” said the orderly who had denied her entrance earlier in the day. “Sorry about the mix-up. Apparently, we got bad intel. It’s been cleared up.”
