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Taking a woman for breeding purposes rather put him up there on the monster scale, didn’t it?
She forced herself tothink.She could get away from him.
He intended tokeepher long enough to steal her eggs, apparently. She could get away. It would just require her not panicking.
Or doing anything stupid.
"Why did you pick me for this experiment?" She was going to question, until her head cleared, and she wasn't so damned sluggish. And when she was certain she could get her hand free. Then she was going to take this lunatic down, get herself out of here. And whoever else he had captive in this madhouse. "Tell me, so I can understand. I think you owe me an explanation, Dr. Eastman. Don’t you?"
"You are perfect. You look just like your mother. You are healthy. You are as intelligent as she was. Not as intelligent as that blue-haired young woman or the other one, but you are well into genius and gifted territory. Did you know that? I do have records, intelligence tests given when you were eight. That I paid for, of course. With the psychologist I hand-picked to work with you. You are not the brightest of your sisters—Penelope holds that distinction, with her profound IQ of 189—but you are rather remarkable as well. Pity you chose something so plebian of a career as mere law enforcement. You could have done quite extraordinarily in another, more prestigious field. Medicine, perhaps."
"Well, I wanted law school, but I had to feed my younger sister every day. The TSP was a guaranteed paycheck and benefits. You know…priorities. Which of my other sisters are here?" The room they were in was no more than six by eight. No windows. Old hospital surgical lighting, flood lights that practically blinded her. There was a computer next to him. Instruments she didn't even want to think about identifying. “Which other sister do you have here?" It had to be Paige or Ariella. Or...eggs. Donors. Surrogates.Babies.Of course. Melody had introduced him as an IVF researcher, hadn’t she? "Is there a little girl here somewhere, Dr. Eastman?”
His hand jerked. Surprise was in his intense pale blue eyes. "How did you learn of that child? Oakley’s very existence is a secret. I have made certain of it. Both Oakley and Orion."
There were two. Two innocent children.
"I am an investigator for the governor now. I investigated." She tugged the tape again. It slipped, maybe a fourth of an inch. "Tell me what is so perfect about me?"
"Your DNA, of course. Your mother was quite brilliant. Beautiful, with a smile that could stop the world in an instant. And your eldest brother. So brilliant. I wanted to raise little Luciano as my own. But she left me. By the time I found her again, I was married to my second wife. Or was it my third? Paige resulted, then. I believe that young woman's name is Paige. She was my first female subject born, created. I saw her recently. Quite beautiful.”
Created. Zoey fought the urge to vomit at what he was implying.
They…she and her siblings…they were alllab ratsfor a lunatic. “I don’t understand.”
“Denita did carry Paige herself. After all those other males—which Denita did not carry. Denita was not highly interested in more pregnancies without some convincing. Not after the Alvaro twins, you understand. She eventually, of course…but not for a while. Most of the children I created were male for a while there. Which was quite frustrating from a scientific prospect, but quite profitable financially. I needed the females most, you understand. For long-term experimentation."
He'd hadherIQ tested. He’dcreatedPaige. What in the hell was she facing here? A mad scientist in his evil laboratory? That was something off a crime drama episode, not real life.
But she wasn’t stupid. She’d heard of this kind ofevilbefore. Had brushed up against it before.
And survived. She was a survivor. She was going to get back to her sisters, her brothers…and the man who loved her. And when she did, she was going to throw her arms around that man andtellhim what he made her feel. No matter what. The first thing she was going to do was tell Murdoch Michael that she loved him. Then she’d tell Pen, and Paige, and all the rest.
But first, she was getting out of here, finding Oakley and Orion wherever they were, and whatever other poor woman this bastard had taken for his sick games. And she was going to make Gregory Daviess Eastmanpay.
"Subject? Tell me the parameters of your experiment. Are you Paige’s father?"
If he’d been screwing around with babies and donated eggs longer than Zoey had been alive—there could be…countless sisters and brothers out there. Somewhere. "I think I deserve to know. Considering this situation I’ve found myself in."
There had to be something nearby she could use as a weapon.
"I am not Paige’s father, no. I am going to prove that maternal intelligence is the main factor in engineering a gifted infant. A golden child, they are called. I started the longitudinal study after the births of those Alvaro twins—what was it?—thirty-seven years ago. I grossly misjudged the elder twin. I believed he would not survive, so I arranged for his natural father to collect him, until the child’s death. One hundred thousand to Alvaro, of which he returned a cleaned fifty thousand to me after. I needed that money as a refund for another project that was unsuccessful at the time. Tell me, what do you know about eugenics?"
Eugenics. Genetically engineering super babies, often to increase the likelihood of certain desirable genes or traits. It had been a popular topic around the 1920s and 1930s, but lost favor because of the Nazis.
There had been some guy in the eighties, she thought, that had had a sperm bank of supposed Nobel Prize winners. The guy had been all about genius babies, and eugenics. There were others out there who stilldiscussedthe concept. Still believed it was theoretically possible.
To Zoey it was stomach turning.
Pen had mentioned it before—when she’d been trying to “find herself” when she’d been all of fourteen. Her sister had said she hoped no one ever attempted it for real. The ethical implications were terrifying.
No damned kidding.
Apparently, she’d stumbled right into another eugenic freak. Just her luck.
And he’d known her mother. Just how well had he known her mother?
"Isn't that the study of deliberately breeding for desired traits?" Horror filled her as she even considered it. Someone messing with eugenics was unimaginable and highly unethical. She'd read of experiments like this before. Illegal ones, or fraudulent. Or deliberately cruel. Or just flat-outinsane. "What exactly do you intend to do to me before you dispose of me sohumanely?"
