Chapter 13
Chapter
Thirteen
How was he supposed to focus on anything that wasn't Cassandra?
Joining her for yoga had been a bad idea.
But how was he to know that wearing sweatpants was apparently some girl secret language turn-on code?
Looking around at the guys sitting at the large conference desk they had in their office, he wondered if they’d ever heard that girls liked sweatpants. They didn't discuss their sex lives with one another.
Ever since they’d had their DNA altered by Dr. Gardner, Dragon had never looked for a woman to have sex with, he’d always thought it was too dangerous.
Mafia family rules meant he’d had his first sexual encounter at thirteen with his father watching on.
The woman was a prostitute, at least he hoped she’d been, because as he grew older, he’d suspected that she was in fact a human trafficking victim, although he had no way to verify that.
Once he escaped and joined the military, he’d kept himself on base so there hadn't been options for sex.
Prostitutes had been his only option as a teenager, and he’d never felt entirely comfortable with it because the older he got, the more he understood what his family was and the more he believed those women were not there by choice.
So while he’d had enough sex to satisfy his father that he saw women as something to be used for his own pleasure, he actually hadn't had much sex at all, where he was free to explore what it meant to share that intimate act with another person.
He didn't need to be the most experienced guy to know that Cassandra had been burning hot for him this morning. Didn't need to have enhanced scent to smell her arousal, which had flooded the room the second she saw him waiting for her.
There wasn't a doubt in his mind that every single one of his teammates was more experienced sexually than he was.
No one brought girls back here, but that didn't mean they didn't travel into the nearest town to find a sexual partner.
Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, although he doubted Lion did, the man was still hung up on the woman he’d left behind.
And Steel had Rose now, so he wouldn't be looking at anyone else.
“Did you know about sweatpants?” he blurted out, causing all five sets of eyes to turn to stare at him quizzically.
“Sweatpants?” Blade asked.
“What about them?” Thunder asked.
“Why are we talking about clothing in the middle of what is supposed to be an important intel gathering session?” Steel demanded.
Shrugging, Dragon felt bad about derailing their work, not that they’d been making much progress anyway, but he didn't back down from his question.
If he was going to do his best to fight against his instincts and his fears and embrace this whole pursuing Cassandra thing, then he figured part of that was embracing the brother bonds he had with these men.
“I know what he’s asking, and yeah, D, I know,” Lion told him. There were shadows in the man’s eyes, the pain of leaving behind someone he loved not having dimmed over the last decade, but there were the remnants of fond moments from what he was sure felt like another life to Lion.
“Well, I still don’t know what in the hell we’re talking about,” Voodoo said, looking utterly lost.
Lion rolled his eyes at all of them. “You all really that stupid? You never noticed that girls go crazy about gray sweatpants? Does something to mess with their libido.”
“It does?” Steel looked intrigued by the idea, and he had no doubt the man would be buying gray sweatpants as soon as they finished up here.
“As if Rose needs another reason to have sex with you,” Blade said with a mock shudder. “I swear all I hear these days are the sounds of you two going at it.”
Steel just grinned. “What can I say? My girl is insatiable, and I can't look at her without wanting to be buried inside her. Too bad I can't stay that way.” Steel’s voice conveyed true regret as he said that, and it went without saying that the rest of them were grateful that it wasn't a viable possibility.
Being happy for Steel and Rose was one thing, wanting to see the man they considered a brother, and the woman they were beginning to see as a baby sister having sex was quite another.
“I wore sweatpants to do yoga with Cassandra this morning, and she suddenly got all weird and started on about sweatpants. Took a while for me to get out of her what she was talking about,” he explained, feeling extremely odd to be having this conversation.
In his house growing up, conversations revolved around making more money, dealing with staying off the cops’ radar, and dealing with those who betrayed the family.
They did not involve discussing a girl he was obsessed with.
“So, you guys ended up doing some active yoga?” Thunder teased.
“Actually, we didn't. She wanted to, and damn did I want to. But Cassandra is so innocent, so perfect, I don’t want to do anything until I'm sure I can control myself. The last thing I want to do is hurt her.”
“Then maybe we should all be focusing on what we’re supposed to be doing.
Once Dr. Gardner is dead, I think we’ll all feel better about controlling the anger inside us,” Steel said, but it was clear from the look in his eyes that as soon as they were done here, he’d be tracking down Rose, stripping her naked, and having his way with her.
That was actually true, though, so Dragon picked up the sketch Cassandra had given them of the woman who had accosted her.
Since the man who had attacked her in her home was a mercenary without any attachment to Ridge Gardner other than wanting the money for delivering Cassandra to him, they were focusing on the woman to try to get a lead on Dr. Gardner.
They had a few possibilities on who Cassandra’s assailant’s partner might be, but again, that wasn't going to lead them to the crazed scientist.
“What do we think of her?” he asked. The woman looking back at him was yet to be identified, but she had soft blonde waves that hung just past her shoulders and wide blue eyes.
She also looked young. Too young to be working with the doctor, and yet she knew about what had been done to them, the doctor’s experiments, and what would happen if they were caught again.
There was no denying she was involved despite her seeming too young.
“She has to be an employee,” Voodoo said. “One of them.”
“No one else is bothered by the age thing?” Thunder asked.
“Because I am. She knew about us, but from her looks she’s barely twenty.
How could she know about things that would have happened when she was a kid?
She doesn’t even look old enough to have graduated from college, and I can't see someone like Dr. Gardner hiring anyone who wasn't the best of the best.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” Blade reminded them. “Just because she looks young doesn’t mean she is.”
“Still, she’d have to be at least in her thirties to have been a recent graduate working for Dr. Gardner back then,” Lion piped up. “And I don’t remember there being anyone younger than us.”
“Cassandra only saw her in the dark,” Dragon said. “I'm not doubting her description of the woman, but in the dark, with the woman all in black, and her being totally unprepared to be approached, she could have gotten the aging wrong in her sketch.”
“And it’s not like we don’t know for certain she’s involved,” Voodoo said. “She knew everything, and she was there with a warning, so she’s in on it all.”
“Or maybe a relative?” Thunder suggested.
“Just because we didn't find any evidence of it doesn’t mean that Dr. Gardner doesn’t have a kid out there,” Lion said. “Maybe this girl is his daughter, and she knows what her dad is up to but isn’t involved in it all.”
The problem was, there were too many options, and they had no way to narrow anything down because they couldn’t get a hit on this woman on any database they searched or any CCTV camera they hacked.
It was like she had randomly materialized out of nowhere and then disappeared once again after delivering her warning to Cassandra.
“She did go to Cass to warn her, to try to save us,” Blade said. “Maybe she was on the doctor’s side, but now she’s flipped.”
“I wish we’d been able to follow her longer, figure out where she went after talking to Cassandra,” Steel said, and they all nodded their agreement.
This woman was like a ghost. No one out there seemed to match her description, and yet she existed. He’d seen her with his own two eyes, although at the time he’d thought she might have been a drug dealer.
“Until we can ID her, we need to focus only on facts,” Steel said.
“Anything else is merely conjecture and not going to be conducive to finding out who she is, how she connects to Dr. Gardner, and finding out where she is now. All we know for certain is that this woman knows who we are, knows we work for Prey, and figured out that Cassandra is also connected to us. We know she knows that we were injected with the experimental drugs, knows that we’re the only ones who survived, and knows the doctor’s plans for us if he were able to capture us again. ”
“Which he won't,” Voodoo injected confidently.
“Whoever and wherever she is, I don’t think we’re the only ones looking for her,” Dragon said slowly.
“Cassandra was attacked only after the woman spoke to her, so likely unintentionally, she led Dr. Gardner right to Cassandra. If she wanted to hurt her, there was nothing stopping her from doing it when she tracked her to the park, and it would be counterproductive anyway if she wanted to ensure the message got to us. I think Blade is right. I think this mystery woman used to work for Dr. Gardner, but now she’s flipped sides.
Which means if we can get our hands on her before the doctor finds her, we can get enough intel out of her to find Dr. Gardner’s hideout and end this once and for all. ”