3. Chapter 3
Chapter three
Jensen
W ith my GTECH senses screaming in warning, I follow Layla inside her house, leaving my team covertly nestled around the exterior perimeter. I shut the door behind me, welcoming any added barrier between us and the Zodius, who I am certain are nearby.
Layla turns to face me, close, so close that the soft floral scent of her insinuates into my nostrils and warms my blood. Close enough that I can see the infinitesimal specks of amber sunshine and honey in her gaze. She’s a woman now, beautiful and confident, with curves in all the right places and the most amazing mouth that demands to be kissed.
We stare at one another, the air crackling with a mixture of unmistakable, surprisingly clear and present, shared attraction, along with something edgier, darker, that tells me she’d probably smack me if I really did try and kiss her. And I’d deserve it for standing her up so long ago; I’d even welcome it if it would get the past out of the way and dispel the uncertainty and distrust radiating off of her. She’s on edge and suspicious of me, which only makes me more suspicious of her. The coincidence of her involvement in something so near to me is hard to digest—nearly impossible—while her months in Germany could have easily been spent in a lab with Julian Rain.
But none of this stops my eyes from tracing her lush lips and imagining how she might taste.
My gaze lifts to her cautious one. “You should lock up,” I tell her, wanting to do it myself but afraid I’ll put her more on edge, as if I’m a crazy person from her past who’s trying to hold her captive.
She sets her purse on the slim mahogany table against the wall. “Locks will slow my escape if you turn out to be some sort of crazy stalker.”
My lips twitch at the playful accusation, though I know she isn’t completely joking. Good thing I didn’t lock the door myself , I think with amusement. “Since when does a crazy stalker wait for an invitation to come inside?”
She crosses her arms in front of her. “I’ve heard stalkers are quite patient and calculating.”
“I don’t have fourteen years of patience, which is how long it’s been since we last saw each other. Is there someplace we can sit down and talk?”
“I met you in a library forever ago. There’s no logic to how you can be standing in my house. What is this about?”
“Science. And I’m just as surprised as you to be here and to have seen your name on the list of people who might be able to help me.” I hold up my hands. “I promise you. This is a business visit.” I lower my hands, my voice softening. “The way we parted ways has always been a nagging regret I’ve never fully understood. We were kids who barely knew each other. It’s really good to see you.”
She studies me several beats, her intelligent gaze sizing me up, before she motions down the hall. “This is still weird, but okay. This way.”
I hang back a bit, flip the locks into place, and follow her into a shiny, all-white, rectangular-shaped kitchen that sparkles with the kind of perfection you expected of a soldier’s home. But then, she’d grown up a soldier’s daughter.
She brushes the windblown brown silk of her hair from her face and motions toward the table, offering me a seat, but without any indication that she plans to sit down herself. I arch a brow. “You’re not going to join me?”
“Not until I know how and why you’re here,” she says, leaning against a counter. “And frankly, I’d rather you sit while I stand. It makes me feel like I have a running chance if this reunion turns bad.”
I chuckle and grab a wooden chair from the table, whipping it around and straddling it to rest my arms on the back. “Happy now?”
“No. No, I am not happy. I feel like I am in the Twilight Zone . And I can’t think of one reason why the boy who stood me up for a date fourteen years ago would show up on my doorstep out of the blue like this. How did you even know where to find me?”
Damn, there it is. The reason I deserved to be slapped. “That night—”
She holds up a hand. “I don’t need to know.”
“I want—”
“Please don’t,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s awkward. It’s over. And actually, just thinking about how I sat in that library for hours waiting for you is making me ridiculously and irrationally mad. Maybe you should just tell me why you’re here.”
As much as I want to push, want to explain the past, that prickly instinct I felt outside is ever present and warning me that trouble is nearby, and I need to get to the point. “We need your help, Layla.”
“We—being who?”
“We—being my special operations unit.”
“You joined the Army?”
“Fourteen years ago.”
She blinks and seems to process the timeline to our missed date, but she doesn’t comment on that point. “Why in the world would a special operations unit need my help?”
“There’s a highly addictive street drug being circulated around the general population. And when I say addictive, I mean, once you use this drug, you can’t stop without dying. If we don’t come up with a method to safely wean people off the drug, we’re looking at mass casualties. We’re hoping you can help us make that happen.”
She pales. “Oh, God. I haven’t heard about this at all.”
“We’ve kept it as on the down-low as possible, but that won’t be the case for long.”
“I want to help. I do. I will, but I’m an astrobiologist, Jensen. I don’t know the slightest thing about street drugs.”
“This isn’t a typical street drug. The drug is created from military technology, and by that, I mean of an otherworldly nature.”
The look of utter horror on her face defies my suspicions that she had knowledge of ICE before this and that she might have been in Germany helping Julian. She sits down next to me, the space barrier between us forgotten. “ Please tell me I’m misunderstanding, and you don’t mean an alien organism, because an alien organism in our environment could have devastating, unpredictable results. Maybe not immediately, but over time. It’s what we fear at NASA, what we work sunup to sundown to prevent.”
“I don’t know if you would call this an organism. Then again, maybe you would. We don’t know at this point exactly what we’re dealing with. The lab reports have identified an unknown component. What we do know is that almost three years ago, the Army created a serum made from a DNA sample obtained in a…shall we say, unique aircraft, back in the 1950s. They proceeded to tell a group of two hundred soldiers they were being immunized against a chemical agent the enemy had obtained. Those men became what we now know as GTECH Super Soldiers. Not long after the injections were completed, the DNA that created the serum was destroyed, and with it, the ability to replicate it. Our scientists believe this street drug is a synthetic recreation of the serum.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “He really went through with it.”
I stiffen. “He who ? What does that mean, Layla?”
She draws in a taut breath and expels it. “I was approached by someone named General Powell several years back to help with what he was calling the ‘Project Zodius’ immunization program.”
“Powell was responsible for recruiting soldiers under false pretenses to Area 51 and the mastermind behind injecting them with the DNA.” And then trying to control his creations with torture devices that their immune systems later destroyed, but I leave that part out . “So, he approached you, and then what?” I ask.
“I was eager to help save the lives of our soldiers,” she says, a tightness to her tone that makes me suspect she was thinking of her father and brother, both killed in combat only a few years before. I think of Caleb, too, and wonder what’s worse. Losing family to war or fighting a war against your only remaining family member, as Caleb is forced to do with Julian? “I’m not sure what the false pretenses were, as I was told the soldiers were volunteers who knew what they were getting into. And so, to that point, I was intrigued, too,” she admits. “The scientist in me reveled at the chance to study the unknown.”
“But you said no.”
“I had to. Powell wanted this immunization program ready for use in a few months. I knew he was treading on dangerous territory, pushing too quickly with an unknown pathogen, and I wanted no part of it. In fact, I went to my superiors and requested they get involved to ensure he was stopped.”
“And what happened?”
“I was told, in no uncertain terms, to leave it alone. As in, it would be dangerous to pursue any action against Powell, with a distinct underlying threat. I was shocked.” She pauses. “Are they dead? The men he injected?”
“You didn’t let anything happen. Powell was too powerful. No one could have stopped him.”
“Did they die?” she presses. “Please, Jensen. I need to know.”
“No,” I confirm. “They didn’t die.” We didn’t die, I add silently.
“Thank God.” Her shoulders relax marginally, but her eyes narrow on me almost instantly. “There’s more, right? What aren’t you telling me?”
“Once I tell you this information, Layla, you can’t unknow it. That threat to leave Powell alone was nothing compared to what we’re talking about now. This is the kind of secret people get killed over.”
“You’re special ops, which means you checked me out before you came here.” There’s a slight rasp to her words, as if the words are uncomfortable in her mouth. “You must know any liability I represent is short-lived.”
I inhale sharply at what seems to confirm my biggest fear. Her working with Julian had been a better answer than the other potential reason, the one Caleb swore to be the truth of the matter. Layla was in Germany as a part of a medical study for an experimental, noninvasive treatment for a rare, rapidly-progressing lung cancer that attacks nonsmokers.
I see the truth of it in her eyes—I see her death in her eyes, her fear . Regret, anger, and an undeniable ball of protectiveness settle where my breath had been moments before and then shoot through me with the force of a nuclear bomb. She doesn’t look sick. She hasn’t lost her hair. The cancer has to be a cover story—she really is working for Julian. Her anguish is guilt-driven fear. Of me. Of what she’s done. That has to be it.
I can pull her back from the dark side, but I can’t pull her back from the grave. But her eyes—her beautiful amber eyes—tell the truth that I want to be a lie.
Before I can stop myself, I do what I’ve wanted to do for fourteen long years. I stand and pull her to her feet with me, close to me, and cup her face. “I won’t let you die.” My lips press to her lips, tongue licking into the sweet recesses of her mouth. She moans, and, holy fuck, she tastes as perfect as I always knew she would. I’m hard as a rock and molding her closer when something crashes into the patio door. I jerk back from Layla, right as the kitchen sink shatters.