Chapter Eleven
Emergency at my office. Assistant said place tossed.
“What the hell?” Benjamin Larson demanded as he read Cecelia’s text.
Will return ASAP. In the meantime, be careful. Have to tell you about Project Lazarus.
He fired off a quick text of his own. Don’t want fairy tales. If some piece of shit is gunning for you, I’ll stop him. The soldier boyfriend seemed pretty useless on that score, and Benjamin did owe Cecelia.
She’d helped him when he’d been at his worst freaking point. Most people still thought he was the devil incarnate, but not Cecelia. She’d been his lover and his friend, and he wouldn’t let her be hurt. Not by anyone or anything.
If her office had been trashed, then he’d better get over there. Benjamin shoved away from his desk. Hell, where was her office? He’d have to text and get her address. He marched for the door—
And stopped cold when he saw the tall, dark-haired woman standing in the doorway. Her skin was a soft tan, her curves were killer, and she had the most unusual blue eyes he’d ever seen.
The woman also should not be in his club. The place was shut down. He’d put a guard at the front door, but he’d given orders that only Cecelia and Flynn could come inside Sin. Benjamin froze at the sight of the woman, and his eyes narrowed. “Sweetness, who the hell are you?”
Her smile was gorgeous and sad. “I have no idea.”
Uh, okay. Handle with care. “Did you stay in Sin overnight?” That had happened before at plenty of his clubs. People had a bit too much fun. They passed out and woke up the next day to do the walk of shame.
She shook her head. “I just came in through the front door.”
The hell she had. He growled, “My bouncer—”
“Oh, yes. I knocked him out. Sorry.” She shrugged, not looking overly sorry at all. “But he wouldn’t let me inside, and I needed to come back here.”
She needed…
“I’m looking for someone. He was here last night, and you’re going to tell me where he is right now.”
He blinked. Did he look like the kind of guy who took orders? Because he sure as shit didn’t feel like that kind of guy. “No, what I’m going to do is show your sweet ass to the door.”
“He’s about your height. Dark hair. Gold eyes. He was at the club last night.” She nodded briskly. “I shot him, but he still got away from me.”
I shot him. At those casual words, Benjamin immediately moved behind to his desk. He made the move nice and easy, as if she hadn’t just put him on high alert.
“Now your heart is racing too fast.” She still stood in his doorway. She blinked once, twice, slowly. As if she were confused. Or as if she were one really sexy robot. “I said the wrong thing, didn’t I? I shouldn’t have mentioned shooting him. That made you nervous.”
His fingers fiddled with the top of his desk. His desk drawer was partially open, and his gun waited inside. Hell, yes, he always kept a gun close. With the kind of trouble that sometimes entered Sin, Benjamin had to be prepared. “What do you want with the guy?”
“I’m supposed to kill him.”
What the actual fuck?
“But…I don’t think I want to do that.”
“Sure…sounds like a good plan.” He offered her a smile. “Killing is never good, you know. Or at least, that’s what I’ve been told.”
She took a step toward him. “You know who he is.”
“I don’t even know who you are.”
He blinked, and she was right in front of him. She’d moved incredibly, impossibly fast.
Benjamin’s hand shoved into the drawer and he grabbed the gun, but even as he yanked it up, she’d taken hold of his wrist. She snatched the gun right out of his hand and turned it back on him. Benjamin’s jaw dropped.
“Were you going to shoot me?” she asked him. And she sounded as if he’d…what? Hurt her feelings?
“Are you going to shoot me?” Benjamin fired back, instead of answering her question.
She shook her head. “You’re not my enemy.”
“Good to know,” he muttered. “For a minute there, I was confused.”
She frowned at the gun. “I need to find him…the man with the gold eyes. I think he can help me.”
“Sorry, but I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
Her delicate jaw hardened. “You’re not my enemy, but I will make you tell me what I need to know.”
The hell she would. There was no way he’d tell her that Flynn was with Cecelia, that they were heading to Cecelia’s office—
“Thank you.” She nodded. “I should have gone to the shrink’s place first.”
What? He hadn’t told her a single thing. He’d thought about Flynn and Cecelia, but no words had passed his lips.
“Sorry.” She gave a little wince. “But I can’t have you following me or, rather, trying to follow me.”
The gun slammed into the side of his head. Benjamin pitched forward, falling across his desk.
***
“I don’t know what happened!” Mark rushed toward Cecelia as soon as she and Flynn stepped into the lobby of the office building. “The alarms didn’t go off, but the place is absolutely trashed!”
The guy was twisting his hands together, and his body was practically shaking with terror. Cecelia squeezed his arm. “It’s okay. I’m just glad you weren’t in the office when it was ransacked.”
Beside her, Flynn was quiet. Grim. They rode up the elevator together, and when the doors opened, Flynn headed out first. “Stay in the lobby,” he ordered briskly. “I’ll make sure the place is clear.”
She nodded, swallowing. The place didn’t look too bad from where she was standing. Okay, it didn’t look too bad if you didn’t stare too long at Mark’s shattered computer and the files that had been tossed all over his desk.
“Who could have done this?” Mark seemed stunned.
“I don’t know.” But she did know. Bryce. Bryce King could have easily done this.
“Do you think it’s related to the FBI case you’re working?”
That was suspicion number one for her, yes.
“Or do you think…” His voice dropped lower as he asked, “Do you think it’s related to the government work you did?”
Her head turned toward him. She hadn’t told Mark any specifics about her time with Lazarus, and she wasn’t about to make a big reveal to him. “Unlikely.” A lie, but…
“The place is clear.” Flynn was back, looking pissed, eyes blazing. “But your office is totaled.”
Not the news she wanted to hear. Cecelia hurried toward her door.
“Dr. Gregory!” Mark called. “What happened to your voice?” She heard his steps shuffling behind her.
Without answering, she entered her office. Stopped dead. Her place hadn’t just been searched. It had truly been destroyed. Her couch was slashed. Her chairs slashed. Her lamp was smashed, and chunks of broken glass littered the floor. Her picture frames, her diplomas—everything was shattered. Her files littered the floor, but it looked more like a scene of rage instead of some kind of search and grab scenario.
“Are you okay?” Flynn asked her. He’d come to her side, moving silently.
She stood in the middle of her office, in the middle of that absolute chaos, and felt lost. “I was starting over.” She shuffled forward. Her feet slid over the loose papers.
“I checked with building security,” Mark announced after he cleared his throat. “The video cameras went down last night. So there is no footage of this floor. No way to know who might have come inside and done this.”
“I have to figure out what’s missing,” she whispered. “If I find out what was taken, then I can figure out who did this.”
“You may never know.” Mark gave a sad shake of his head. “And I’m not so sure this was about stealing files. I mean, look at this destruction. This is anger. This is hate.” His hands gestured to the chaos. “You know it, too, Dr. Gregory. Basic psychological response to rage—destruction. Someone is angry with you. That person wants you to suffer, so he destroys what you value. Destroys what makes you feel safe. This office was your refuge from Lazarus, and now look what happened.”
Her breath felt icy as she pulled it into her lungs. She hurried back to Flynn. She rose onto her toes and whispered, “Flynn, can you smell any of the intruders?” Her voice was low, meant just for him.
“No. Just your assistant’s cologne. That’s all I get in here.”
That was what she’d feared. She took a step back from Flynn, and she lifted her chin as she faced Mark once more. Mark, the assistant she’d had before Lazarus. Mark, the man she’d immediately hired once she’d decided to open her practice again.
Mark, the man who’d had full access to her office. “I never told you about Lazarus.”
Mark had been staring down at the files scattered on her floor, but at her words, his head snapped up. “What?”
“I never told you that I went to work at the Lazarus facility. I just told you I was doing a project for the government. The facility was top secret. I couldn’t tell anyone about it.”
His mouth opened, closed. Opened again.
Beside her, Flynn stiffened.
A weak laugh escaped Mark. “What? Of course, y-you told me.”
“No.” She shook her head even as she began to advance on him. “I didn’t.” She’d told Aaron. She’d been about to tell Benjamin, but she hadn’t gotten the chance.
“What are you saying? What are you thinking, Dr. Gregory?” Mark’s eyes were wide and stark. “You believe I had something to do with this break-in? That doesn’t even make sense! I have a key to your office! If I wanted to take something, I wouldn’t need to wreck the place.”
Flynn responded before she could. “You’d need to wreck the place if you took something.” Flynn’s voice was low and rumbling. “You’d make the chaos to hide your crime, or at least, to buy yourself more time.”
“I didn’t!”
“Maybe you didn’t find everything that you were looking for,” Flynn continued in his dangerously quiet voice. “Maybe you thought that Cecelia would run over here, and you could get her to show you where the files you need are hidden. But she didn’t rush over here alone. She came with me.”
Mark glanced down at the floor. “A boyfriend was never part of the equation.”
His voice…it wasn’t hesitant or shaky. It was cold. Hard. Brutal.
His head lifted and a faint smile curled his lips. He didn’t look like the hesitant assistant any longer. That guise was long gone. His gaze was calculating, his face almost cruel. “I know all about Lazarus. I knew about Lazarus even before you did, Dr. Gregory.”
Cecelia realized that she was staring at a stranger.
“You had to be vetted, of course. Wyman Wright doesn’t allow just anyone to have access to his projects. I was put into your path. I was tasked with gaining your trust. Finding out what made you tick.” His grin stretched. “It was easy enough to learn you were obsessed with killers. With figuring out the darkness that people hid inside. But you were trustworthy. You were dedicated to your job. I told Wyman you’d be an ideal candidate for the position he had.”
No. A dull ringing filled her ears. Mark was her assistant. Her friend.
“Then Lazarus went to hell.” Mark sighed. He was right in front of the doorway. His hands lifted and touched the door frame. “I thought you were dead, too. Gone in the fire, but you escaped. Rose from the ashes like a phoenix. You came back to D.C. You had the balls…” Now he actually sounded as if he admired her. “You had the balls to open your practice again. To just go on as if nothing had ever happened.”
“You came back to work for me.” He’s been lying. This whole time, he was lying, and I didn’t realize it. “Why?” She took another step toward him.
“Cecelia…” Flynn’s voice held a warning edge.
“Because my job wasn’t finished. Wyman can’t let you stay as a loose cannon. Surely you realize that? You’re too dangerous out here.” He shook his head. “You and the Lazarus boyfriend.” His gaze darted to Flynn. “Yeah, buddy, I know what you are. Hard to miss the signs. So why don’t you both just think of me as the clean-up guy.” Then his hand came up, fast, and she saw the gun he gripped in his fingers. A gun that was pointed straight at her. “Sorry, Dr. Gregory—”
He was squeezing the trigger. She tried to lurch away, but then Flynn was there, he grabbed her, twisting his body to shield her. He’d moved so fast to protect her—
Flynn’s body jerked. There had been no thunder of gunfire. Just silence.
“Remember the tranqs you were given in Lazarus?” Mark’s voice was mild. “Consider this an upgrade.”
Flynn let her go. Cecelia stumbled back. “Flynn?”
He staggered toward Mark.
And her lying jerk of an assistant shot him twice more.
Flynn fell forward, slumping on his knees. “Gonna…kill…”
Mark just took aim again. “You’re going to kill me? I doubt it. I’m protected in this town. Your dumbass should have gone to some tropical island and hidden out for the rest of your days. Instead, you followed Cecelia like some lost puppy. Had to stay with her, huh? That’s your mistake.”
Cecelia grabbed the broken lamp that had smashed onto the floor. Mark was about to fire again. No. She lunged toward him, swinging the lamp. It slammed into his arm, and the gun fell to the floor. Before she could swing again, he’d grabbed her.
She’d always thought Mark was kind, easy. Gentle. His hold bruised her. “I can make things easy or hard for you,” he gritted as he yanked her toward him. “I wanted it to be easy. I was going to tranq you before the fire. You weren’t going to feel a thing.”
Before the fire? Oh, God.
“I need to know where the rest of the files are, Dr. Gregory. I know you, remember? I made it my mission to know you. And the brief notes I found on Lazarus—talk about bullshit. I know how you work. You have a whole set, a profile on every single soldier you worked with in Arizona. I need those files, and you are going to give them to me.”
She didn’t hear Flynn. The tranqs had knocked him out. How long would he stay out? She wasn’t sure. If the tranq he’d been given truly was some new cocktail, then there was no telling what sort of response he’d have to the drug.
Mark shook her. “The files! Where are they?”
Her head whipped back and forth with the force of his attack. “Stop! Stop! I’ll…get them!” The hell she would.
But he stopped shaking her. He smiled. His friendly, boyish smile. “I knew you had them.”
She stared at him, wondering how she could have been so wrong about someone. She’d had no idea that Mark was—
“Stop looking at me like that,” he muttered. “I’m not the bad guy, Cecelia. The boyfriend on the floor? The freak of nature that you’ve been screwing? He’s the bad guy. The Lazarus test subjects are flawed. They’re killers, and you know that. Wyman Wright knows how dangerous they are, and that’s why he’s instigated the recovery protocol.”
What recovery protocol? The guy wasn’t making sense. “Wyman Wright is dead.”
Mark’s fingers bit into her arms. “Now who the hell told you that?”
“He was at Lazarus. He…burned.”
But Mark just laughed. “Dead men don’t pay the way he does.”
Pay? Wyman was still paying him?
“Now show me the files. And I’ll do you the courtesy of knocking you out before the fire takes this place.”
“You’re going to burn me?”
“Have to destroy the evidence. Can’t very well just leave the place when my fingerprints are all over everything.” He hauled her across the room. Didn’t even glance down at Flynn. He was still out cold. “Is there a safe somewhere in here that I don’t know about? I looked but, shit, you can be a tricky bitch.”
He’d pulled her behind her desk. “Saying that you’ll kill me…that doesn’t exactly make me want to help you.” Her voice came out quiet and calm, and an odd calm had settled over her body. “You should work on your motivational technique.”
His hands tightened on her. “I told you…help me, and I’ll make things easy on you. If you don’t tell me where those files are—right the hell now—then I’ll have to hurt you. I can be brutal, Dr. Gregory. I don’t want to be. I legitimately like you. But I have a job to do, and I’ll do it, no matter what.”
“Are you going to burn Flynn, too?”
He glanced over at Flynn.
Her fingers slid toward her desk. Toward the letter opener that she could see peeking out beneath a pile of tossed papers.
“A crew will come for him,” Mark replied with a roll of his shoulders. His gaze lingered a moment on Flynn. “He’ll be studied before his termination.”
Not happening. “No one will terminate him.”
Mark’s gaze flew back to her face.
She slid her hand down to her side, hiding the letter opener that she’d just grabbed. “If you were truly told otherwise, then you were told a lie. The Lazarus subjects are too valuable. They aren’t just going to be killed. Especially not if Wyman really is the man pulling your strings.”
“Wyman is a patriot—”
“Wyman killed American soldiers and put them in the Lazarus program without their permission. He’s lied time and time again. And he’s destroyed more lives than I can count.”
Mark’s eyes were angry slits. “Give me the files!”
“You aren’t going to hesitate, even a little, when it’s time to kill me?”
“I have gasoline in my car. I’ll knock you out with the tranq, and then after the collection team arrives and they remove Flynn, I’ll burn the office around you.”
Her heart slammed into her chest. “The fire could spread to the other floors in this building.”
“No one is on the floor above you. No one is below you. The firefighters will be able to control the blaze long before anyone else dies.” He lifted one brow. “Not such a monster, am I?”
He was still going to kill her. So, yes, he was.
“The files,” Mark bit out. “I won’t ask again. I’ll just start breaking your fingers.”
He would. She fully believed that dark truth. “I don’t know you.”
Once more, he flashed his smile. “No, Dr. Gregory, you don’t. You only know what I wanted you to see.”
She swallowed. “I suppose that’s only fair. You don’t really know me, either.”
His smile slipped. “What?”
She brought up her hand in a fast slash. The letter opener sliced into his chest, and she wrenched it upward as his blood flew out. The attack wasn’t deep—the letter opener and the angle didn’t allow for that, but she still caught him by surprise. Mark stumbled back from her, colliding with the edge of her desk.
“What in the hell?”
She attacked him with the letter opener again. This time, she stabbed down, driving it into his shoulder. He let out a roar of fury, and he punched at her.
But she ducked. Ducked and hauled ass back across the room.
“You fucking bitch—”
She could see the tranq gun he’d dropped when she hit him with the lamp. She grabbed for it, her fingers tightening around the weapon as she whirled toward him.
Mark tackled her. They slammed onto the floor, and, as they fell, she squeezed the trigger, firing once, twice. He jerked against her. Shuddered. Then…
Went still.
Unconscious? Was he out? His body was a dead weight on top of her, and Cecelia shoved him off her. Or at least, she tried. She wound up crawling out from beneath his heavy body. He was so still and stiff, and she didn’t think he was even breathing.
“Well, well…” A woman’s voice rang out. Oddly amused. “This isn’t what I expected.”
Cecelia glanced up. A woman with dark hair and bright blue eyes was standing near the doorway. Cecelia hadn’t heard the woman’s approach, but she had been distracted with the little matter of a life or death attack.
“Who’s the dead man?” the woman asked, glancing down at Mark.
He wasn’t dead. Was he? She’d thought she knocked him out. Cecelia clutched the tranq gun. “Who are you?”
The woman laughed, but the sound held no real humor. “People keep asking me that. I have no clue.” Her gaze was assessing. “Bryce says you know. He says you know everything. He wants you…” She stepped forward. “So you’re going to come with me. You and the boyfriend over there. You’re going to—”
“You’re not going to hurt Flynn. And if you’re working with Bryce King, then you need to get the hell out of here, now.”
The woman shook her head. “No. I have a mission—”
Cecelia fired.
The woman jumped to the side, dodging the tranq. “That wasn’t very nice.” Her breath came faster. “Don’t do it again—”
But Cecelia was already firing again. The other woman lunged toward her, and Cecelia kept firing. She had to protect Flynn. He wasn’t moving, was still knocked out, and she was the only one who could keep him safe. He’d protected her before, and it was her turn to keep him safe. It was—
The woman’s fingers closed around her throat. “I thought…you’d help me.”
Cecelia squeezed the trigger. She felt the tranq deploy.
The dark-haired woman grunted.
“Been…choked already,” Cecelia managed to gasp out. “Don’t…like it…”
Shock had the other woman’s eyes flaring. She let go of Cecelia and took a lurching step back. Her hand went to her stomach as she shuddered. A tear slid down her cheek. “Don’t…” Her voice was a painful, weak rasp. “Please don’t…let them lock m-me up…again…” She collapsed onto the floor.
Cecelia stood there, her whole body shaking, the tranq gun still gripped in her hand. She was afraid the woman would lunge up at her again—or that Mark would attack once more. But they didn’t move. No one was moving. She whirled and dove for Flynn. Her hand went straight to his throat. His pulse beat against her fingertips. Slower than normal, but Flynn was alive.
She fumbled and yanked her phone out of her pocket. Her finger flew over the broken screen as she made her call.
Jay Maverick answered on the second ring. “Dr. Gregory…how are you—”
“Get your ass to my office, right now,” she practically screamed. “And bring all the back-up that you can. We’ve got a serious problem.”
Flynn groaned.
“Hurry.”