10. Nataliya
TEN
The sun was barely in the sky when I crawled out of bed. Sleep had been a hard battle, and I’d been on the losing side, so I decided I might as well get up and get breakfast made. It was quiet in the house, and I moved gently around the kitchen, pulling ingredients out of the fridge and pantry.
I had just popped a breakfast casserole into the oven when Sam wandered in with her nephew, Myles, on her hip. Adrian had told me that the boy had brought Sam and Owen together. Myles’s parents had been Sam’s sister and Owen’s brother—and after the two of them died, joint custody of their baby went to their siblings. They’d moved in together to look after him…and love had ensued from there.
The little boy was hooting about Cheerios. “I got it, sweetheart,” she murmured at him and sat him in his highchair. “That smells good,” she said to me as she opened the pantry to grab the massive yellow cereal box.
“It should be ready in about twenty minutes. Do you want coffee? I made some.”
“If I didn’t love Owen so much, I might ask you to marry me,” she said, and I laughed as I got out two mugs.
“If you had a milk steamer, I could really impress you,” I told her. “My lattes are fabulous.”
Sam smiled. “I think we’re going to be fast friends.” She sipped her coffee. “I’d like to do an examination of Elias today, if you’re all right with that. From what you said, he’s a good candidate for my research, but I do need to make sure he fits the physical qualifications.”
I nodded. “That’s fine with me. After breakfast?”
Sam agreed, and she and I watched Myles play with the Cheerios on his tray while the breakfast casserole baked. As the oven timer went off, Elias shuffled into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. “Smells good, Mama,” he mumbled as he climbed into a chair.
“I agree.” A shiver went down my spine at the sound of Adrian’s voice. I had to lock the muscles in my neck to keep myself from looking his way. I could practically still feel his lips on mine. I don’t know what I had been thinking last night, but it had left a tingling imprint behind that I had to force myself not to reach up and touch. “What is it?”
“Breakfast casserole,” I said, pulling it out of the oven. “It’s a recipe from the diner.”
Sam helped me plate everything up, and we all gathered around Sam and Owen’s dining room table to eat. I was thrilled to see Elias tuck into his meal. It was as much gusto as I’d seen him eat with in months.
“Sakharok, Dr. Mayfield is going to check you out after breakfast. That’s okay?”
The little boy nodded. “Sure, Mama. Can I have more?”
I couldn”t remember the last time Elias had asked for seconds. “Yeah,” I said, tripping over myself to get out of my chair. Adrian put a hand on my waist to steady me; the heat of his palm was scorching. “Thank you,” I said.
Adrian nodded, and for a split second, his eyes dipped down just a bit from mine, and I knew he was looking at my lips. I turned away quickly, clearing my throat to stop myself from leaning in. What is wrong with me? It was just a kiss. I couldn’t even remember the last kiss I’d had, let alone the last one that threw me for this much of a loop.
I got a second, albeit smaller, helping for Elias, and he actually emptied his plate. “Let me get things cleaned up,” Adrian volunteered.
“I’ll help,” Owen added. He looked at Sam. “Go do what you need to do.”
Sam, Elias, and I made our way to Sam’s office, and I watched as she did an exam. For someone who was an adamant researcher, Sam treated my son more gently than most patient care doctors we’d seen in the last year. She softly explained everything that she was about to do directly to Elias and waited for him to nod before she did it.
When she finished, she smiled at him. “Why don’t you go watch TV in the living room, sweetheart?” she asked. “So your mom and I can talk.”
Elias’s eyes slid to me, and I nodded. “Go on,” I said, and the boy practically skipped from the room. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He was so lethargic after his last spasm.”
“Sometimes that happens with Loorer’s patients,” Sam said. “They get a big burst of energy.”
There was something she wasn’t saying. “Before he takes a downturn, do you mean?”
“I’ve seen it happen before,” she admitted, not mincing her words. I appreciated that. “It doesn’t always happen, of course, but I would be prepared for him to have another big spasm.”
Well, shit. “Does that preclude him from taking part in your trial?”
Sam shook her head. “Not at all, actually. He’s exactly the kind of volunteer we need: a few years post-diagnosis, on meds that make him stable, but still with ongoing issues. Too early post-diagnosis, and the subject won’t have been on medication long enough for their condition to stabilize. Too late, and the patient might have irreversible damage. Elias is still in the sweet spot where he’s able to bounce back.” She put a hand on my shoulder. “I told you before that I can’t make you any promises, and I stand by that, but I will do everything I can for you and your son.”
I wasn’t a hugger by nature, but I threw my arms around Sam and squeezed her tightly. “Thank you,” I told her, tears choking my voice. “Thank you so much.”
She patted my back. “I haven’t done anything yet,” she reminded me. “I might not be able to do anything at all.”
I shook my head. “You gave me hope. I was running out of that.”
Sam gave me a few moments to collect myself, and then we rejoined the rest of the group. Elias was in the living room, stacking blocks with Myles with a soft smile on his face, and Owen and Adrian were at the kitchen table. Both wore serious expressions that sent a bolt of fear through my gut.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Adrian looked at me, and for a split second, his expression softened. “How long do you think it will take you to decrypt the files and find what your brother said was there?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “If Hayes got careless because he thought everything was safe in the secured server, a few minutes. If he’s put up any other kind of firewall protection? Days. Months, maybe.”
“Shit.”
“How much time can you, realistically, give me?”
Adrian held out his phone. Drake had, apparently, found an architectural plan from when the Hayes Group had renovated their headquarters a few years ago. The security was heavy, and if anything had changed, I couldn’t imagine that he would have gone lighter on his precautions. “Less than an hour,” Adrian said.
It took way longer than that just to crack open the files Anton had left for me, and he intended for me to see them. I shook my head. “I don’t know if I can do it.” I looked at Adrian, whose mouth was set in a tense line. “But I’ll try,” I promised. “Anton wanted this to happen. He gave you that message in the hopes that you’d find me…I don’t think he’d set all of this up as a failsafe just for it to be impossible.” Though a secure facility in the middle of a city was a lot. Even for a team of former SEALs.
My doubt must have shown on my face because Adrian stood and slid an arm around my shoulders. I bit back the gasp that rose in my throat. “I’ll bet you can run circles around whatever obstacles that bastard puts in our way,” he said. It was patently absurd, and I rolled my eyes…but the tension in my shoulders bled out a little.
“You’re putting entirely too much faith in me.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I like to think I’ve developed some good instincts over the years, and I have a good feeling about you.” He held me to him for just a moment longer before he let go, and I almost mourned the loss of his body heat against me.
“My brother was like that,” I said. “He trusted his instincts…but then those instincts got him involved with Ian Hayes, and he died.”
“He died trusting us,” Adrian said, putting voice to the ugly thing I was thinking but didn’t want to say. “We were supposed to keep him safe, get him out of the RoW and bring him safely here to you. And when it went to hell, you and I both lost people we cared about. But I’m going to make it up to you. I’m going to make it right and make sure that Hayes can’t harm you or anyone else ever again, okay?”
I studied him for a moment. Adrian’s guilt ran deep, that was obvious, but I had also learned he was one of those genuinely sincere people who were exceedingly rare in the world. Guilt might be driving him to make these promises—but he’d keep them, no matter what it took. “I trust you,” I said finally, and his eyes widened just a hair, like he didn’t quite expect me to say that. “I’ve never met anyone who’s as motivated as me when it comes to getting what you want.”
“Grief is a hell of a motivator,” he said.
“Agreed.” I gestured to the smart phone in his hand. “When will the others be here?”
“Nate’s busy cleaning up in Tupelo,” Owen said, drawing my attention away from Adrian. “And Zach and Gabe are supposed to be heading this way, but?—”
“But?”
He flicked his eyes to Adrian. “What if they met you in Georgia? It would be less of a drive, and if they’re being watched, it wouldn’t bring hell here.”
Owen didn’t have to tell us he was worried about his family. Nate and Emily were lucky that Hayes’s men didn’t descend on their actual home…but Owen lived here. If the others brought Hayes to his doorstep, it wouldn’t be a vacation home that was ruined—it would be their whole lives.
“We can drive to them,” I said before Adrian could say anything. “Besides, they’d have to backtrack if they drove all the way here. There’s no sense in wasting time.”
“There’s another issue here.” We all looked at Sam. “What are you going to do with Elias?”