Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
Hanging in the dawn light, the mystery woman, who he was no closer to identifying now than he had been when he broke into the farmhouse ten hours ago, looked like a sacrifice strung up ready to be offered.
Who exactly he was offering her to, Blade had no idea. To the universe, to fate, to Dr. Gardner, to his team, to himself, to the past, to the present, to the future, it didn't really matter, but she most definitely was a sacrifice of sorts.
In the hours since he’d taken her fingerprint and left her out there, she hadn't done anything more than cry quietly to herself. He’d expected her to beg and plead as he walked away, to offer him a deal, intel for her freedom, or at the very least to ask for mercy and her life to be spared.
But it seemed like his little hanging beauty had no idea what to do.
There was no doubt at all that she was afraid.
While she might work for Dr. Gardner, it was more than evident from her lack of fight and pure, undiluted terror that she was a scientist and nothing more.
She had no skills to attempt to fight for her life, and he didn't have to guess to know she had none for withstanding torture either.
Despite being a timid little thing, he’d felt the first spark of defiance in her. She had no fight-or-flight instincts, but she wasn't completely helpless. She was going to fight back, she just didn't know how yet.
Good.
Right now, he was itching for a reason to do more than string the woman up and scare her.
The tiny taste of her blood wasn't enough, he wanted, needed, craved more.
He wanted to hear her screams, allow them to soothe the rage that he kept on a tight leash but was always a single misstep away from flying loose.
Which was an unusual feeling for him. While he and his team were a family, there was zero doubt about that, they hadn't sat around and talked about their pasts, so he didn't know much about everyone’s lives before they entered the program. But he had gathered enough to guess that of all of them, he’d come from the happiest family situation.
His parents and extended family had been wonderful growing up.
He’d had siblings, and cousins who were like siblings.
He'd done well in school, had lots of friends, and played sport. Although he’d not been rich enough to have anything he wanted, he was well off enough to always have what he needed.
It wasn't until someone decided to play God with his body and his life without giving him all the information up front that he’d had his first real taste of rage.
When his phone rang, he stormed away from the window, annoyed with himself that he’d been standing there admiring the way the woman’s soft blonde locks caught the rising sun and shimmered like lengths of spun gold.
This wasn't a dating game it was an intel gathering op, he was there to get everything he could out of her in case Dr. Gardner was somewhere nearby, and then he and his team were going to kill her.
There was no sugarcoating things, no downplaying them.
The woman was spending her last couple of days on earth hanging from a tree, and then suffering a slow, agonizing death.
“Did you get it?” Blade asked without preamble, snatching up his phone and accepting the call.
“Good morning to you too,” Steel drawled, making him roll his eyes.
“Yeah, yeah, morning,” he muttered. But then because he really did care and wanted to know, he asked, “How are Rose and Cassandra today?”
“They’re both fine,” Steel assured him.
“And you guys?”
“We’re all fine too.”
“Good. So …” he prompted. After confirming that everyone was recovering from the injuries caused by the explosion, there was only one thing he wanted to know.
“No matches,” Steel replied.
“None? At all? Surely her fingerprints were in a system somewhere. And I sent you a clear photo of her face, she has to be in some database somewhere.” How could she not?
The woman existed. Despite moving away from the window, he could still see her hanging out there.
Her body was limp, although he could hear the sounds of her breathing and the beating of her heart so he knew she was still alive.
“She should be but she’s not,” Steel said.
“So she was scrubbed. Removed from everything so nobody could find her,” he said.
It was the only thing that made sense. “But why would Dr. Gardner do that? He didn't scrub himself from the systems, he just hid himself away so we couldn’t find him. But now we have a name, he’s searchable in several databases. Why isn’t she?”
“I can't answer that,” Steel replied.
“Her fake ID says she’s thirty, but I'd bet my favorite knife that she’s not.
Even if she was, that would put her at twenty a decade ago, very young to be working on a program like this.
Maybe Dr. Gardner was bringing in young college students because they were easier to control, but he would still need experienced scientists,” he said, his gaze glued to the woman hanging in the tree.
“We keep assuming that just because she knew about the tests that she was in it from the beginning,” Thunder spoke, and Blade realized he was on speaker.
“No way to know that’s true,” Voodoo added.
“She might be new to the program. We know it’s still going.
We know that he never stopped the experiments and that the others all keep dying, which is why he wants us back.
Maybe she just took a job for him, not realizing what it really entailed, and once she realized she knew she couldn’t stay on and stand by while we’re hunted like animals and decided to do something about it. ”
“That would make her another innocent,” Cassandra said softly.
It would.
And Blade’s stomach cramped at the thought.
Was the woman he had left hanging from a tree for almost eight hours now an innocent?
There was an innocent air about her, that was for sure. Those wide blue eyes screamed young and sweet, and the blonde waves and pouty lips added to the image. There was a softness to her he felt rather than saw, and he couldn’t be sure whether it was real or a projection she wanted him to see.
The last thing he wanted was to be just another stupid guy to fall for a pretty face.
“You need to talk to her, get her to open up,” Dragon growled, the implication clear even if he didn't want to say the words in front of Cassandra, who he’d almost lost once because of their need for vengeance.
He had to make her bleed, scream, and beg. It was the only way, and what he’d taken her to do.
So why did he suddenly feel uneasy about it?
“Keep looking for her real identity, just because she was scrubbed doesn’t mean she’s not still out there somewhere. I’ll work on her and hopefully get her talking,” he said before abruptly disconnecting the call.
As he walked to the kitchen and filled a glass with water, he realized what had him so unsettled.
Dr. Gardner hadn't removed himself from databases, yet he’d made sure that this woman didn't exist anywhere outside his own facility.
The only reason Blade could think of to do that was that this woman was important somehow.
If she was important enough to erase, then it didn't make sense that she’d only been with him for a short time.
But she was too young to have been there from the beginning, even if the birthdate on the fake ID was real.
Strolling out of the house, he felt the woman’s eyes on him as he closed the distance between them. She still didn't say anything, but he could see the blood streaking the cuffs of her simple pink long-sleeve T-shirt, and the dried tear marks on her cheeks.
He still wasn't sure if her silence was a conscious choice or if she was just literally too scared to talk.
But he did know she was freezing, the temperature had dropped further since he brought her out in the middle of the night, and she was wearing only the long-sleeve T-shirt and a pair of flannelette pajama bottoms. Her bare feet would be frozen and unusable even if she got free, which she wouldn't, and her hands must be numb, her shoulders screaming in pain.
But she didn't speak, just eyed the glass of water in his hands, and he knew she was thirsty, too, on top of everything else.
“Drink?” he asked conversationally, holding out the glass.
Surprise filled the blue eyes that snapped up to meet his, and the range of swirling emotions in them was like a punch to the gut. Some he expected, fear, uncertainty, confusion, guilt, remorse. But there was another one there. Gratefulness. Like she truly appreciated this seemingly genuine offer.
She really was so sweet and innocent that she thought he was going to give her water to drink. What the hell was up with her? Surely, she knew he had zero good intentions where she was concerned, yet she believed him.
Or she was playing him.
Annoyed that he kept feeling himself drift toward giving her the benefit of the doubt just because she had a pretty face and an attractive body, Blade stepped closer.
He’d hung her just far enough off the ground that her feet couldn’t take any of her weight, given their size difference, he was six three, she had to be around five two or three, their faces were about even.
Lifting the glass like he was going to bring it to her lips, she was already opening her mouth when he tangled a hand in her hair and yanked hard, tilting her face back so she was staring at the sky.
Then he poured the water directly down her nose, making her choke and cry out as she attempted to jerk out of his hold.
Not that he let her.
He kept her there, the water pouring down her nose, enjoying knowing that it was causing her pain. If she thought her big innocent eyes were going to save her, she was stupid as well as evil.