Retrieval (32 page)

“Yeah, Piper, put the gun away,” Micah echoed wryly.

He eyeballed her. Piper eyeballed him right back but slowly put her gun back in her holster.

“Eyes off my sister Micah. Down boy,” Kinsey said then snickered again as if enjoying a private joke.

“Real funny little bit,” Micah grunted.

“Micah. My man, what’s going on? The last I heard you were busy and couldn’t come out to lend a hand.” Bleak said walking over to the man and clasping his hand in the way of all warriors.

“Yeah, well, the lines were certainly lighting up, and I asked for a bit of time off to come give my boys a hand. Sebastian, dude, you look like shit.” Micah tried to tease, but the truth was evident.

“Yeah, fuck you too, Mic,” was Sebastian’s response. He turned to again look over the scene unfolding in his decimated study.

“Where’s Mo?” Micah asked nobody in particular.

“Here, man—” Morrissey said as he walked into the study, and his eyes automatically zeroed in on his friend’s arm slung around the shoulders of the woman who drove him crazy.

“Okay, man, I can see how it is,” Micah replied mysteriously as he removed his arm and went to shake Morrissey’s hand.

“You can, huh? ’Cause I’m having the damnedest time figuring it out myself.” Morrissey responded, then clapped the other man solidly on the back.

“Micah, you got here just in time. I don’t guess Craven’s coming is he?” Sebastian asked, and this time he got up from the chair he had been parked in for over an hour to make his way to the porch.

“Don’t know, man, but seriously, you look like you got hit by a Mack truck,” Micah said, and disbelief was evident in his tone.

“Not a Mack truck. Nope, it was a Sky truck.” Rover rejoined as he entered the fray.

Sebastian threw both men a look that clearly said the subject was off limits and simply said, “It’s time to plan. They’ll bring you up to speed. I’ve got something I have to do real quick, but when I get back we all need to be packed and ready to head out.” He tossed out that order, left the house and walked out into the yard.

*

He still wasn’t sure how he felt about what she’d done. Betrayed? Hurt? Pissed as hell? All of them played into what he felt right now. But for the life of him he couldn’t make himself direct any of that anger at her. He kept seeing how she’d looked as she’d offered herself to him again and again. How she’d moved against him, and, oh damn, the sounds she’d made as he was loving her. He kept hearing her tell him she loved him.

And it broke him down. Even more than her desertion within his mind, those words tore him to pieces. He’d realized too late just how important the words were for him to hear and say in return. Now he may not get the chance to tell her, and maybe that’s where this strange sense of surreal displacement was coming from.

He felt bereft, like the only thing that had mattered in too many years to count had been snatched away from him before he’d had a chance to grab a tight hold. He’d never felt pain like that. Knowing that she wasn’t with him, inside of him, anymore was …
fuck
, it was devastating.

Yet he couldn’t channel the anger he’d normally feel at the sense of betrayal. Instead he only felt her loss. But it was time for action, and he’d come out here to access that rage, so the warrior who lived in him could take over.

“Sebastian.”

It was Raina.

Night was falling swiftly over the mountains in Yellowstone, and he really didn’t want to answer anyone’s summons.

“Sebastian,” she called again, and his good Southern manners kicked in.

He turned, called out and walked over to the sister who could see so much even though she was blind without the touch of another. He didn’t know if any of his men recognized the woman was blind. With the exception of her strange eye color she moved like anyone else who had perfect vision. Had Skylar not told him, he’d never have realized.

“The temperature is falling, Raina, and you need to be inside packing what you need for our trip. I wanted to leave you and your sisters here, but I can see that you are all way too stubborn for that to happen. Plus your insight and knowledge might be the difference between her life and death.”

“She loves you, Sebastian. None of us could believe how quickly she fell for you. She wasn’t expecting you at all. We’ve been a solitary unit for so long that when she so readily included you in her feelings, well it took us all back a few steps. She’s always been the caretaker, and as the strongest of all of us, I guess it was natural for that to happen. When she fell for you, you became a member of her family, another person for her to take care of and protect.” Raina patted his shoulder and took a deep breath.

“What she’s done is inexcusable, but I understand it, and I sense that you do, too. Smythe-Ward is going to do horrible things to try and break her. We have to get to her as soon as possible. She left because we can be used against her. You can be used against her, and she wasn’t willing to risk you or us in this fight against our father. So what I’m asking is: do you love her enough to fight for her? Do you love her enough to risk your life? If you don’t, tell me now. My sisters and I will leave and handle this on our own. But if you do, she’s going to need you to be stronger than you have ever been and be willing to let her do what she was created to do.”

“I do. But what is it exactly that she created to do?” Sebastian asked hoarsely, dreading the answer, yet already knowing it absolutely from first-hand experience.

“Destroy.”

Chapter 19

She’d been trapped in this prison of an existence within Smythe-Ward’s estate for a month. She was just now seeing the beginnings of his fragile trust in her intentions and knew that if she didn’t earn an all-out full pass to his company soon, she was going to have to take more drastic measures.

For the last week he’d been taking her on excursions to the GenTech headquarters. She’d met people she hoped never to see again, and she’d felt such suffering coming from the cells beneath the first floor of the building that she couldn’t suppress a shudder at the pain that reverberated through her.

Smythe-Ward was good on his word to keep all others away from her. Warren Goolsby had been nonexistent on the estate, and no one disturbed her except to bring food, drink, or to clean. She’d played for the last few weeks, showing him glimpses of the power she held but had continuously driven him off the true scent. She’d misled him into thinking that even she didn’t know the full scope of her abilities. He called it energy walking, she called it “power”—it was definitely “you say to-may-toe, I say to-mah-toe.”

She’d performed what she considered parlor tricks, and he’d seemed pleased. But she was beginning to get the impression of impatience on his part. He was looking for something specific, and if she wasn’t careful, he’d discover way more than he’d ever thought had been encoded in her DNA makeup.

Her father had great plans for his creations, but damn if she was able to get even a whiff of what those were. She’d asked to see his original files on their genetic splicing and enhancement and had been given a small stack of papers that held nothing more than bare facts. She’d read him thoroughly though, and it seemed that he had mind barriers like the Grand Canyon—deep, wide, and full of peril. The only time he was vulnerable was when he slept, and unfortunately he slept under a UV light beam. Bastard. She could get through, but it would be incredibly painful to be caught inside his mind if he woke up, and the UV light penetrated his retinas. It’d be the equivalent of getting caught with her pants down, only hers would probably catch on fire from the UV light penetrating his skull.

So she’d waited. And she continued to wait. Patience was a virtue, but damn it, she was ready for action. She was tired of eating his food, sleeping under his roof, and breathing his air. She wanted to kill this egomaniacal bastard and eat his liver with a nice Chianti and some fava beans.

Well, not really eat his liver, but she wouldn’t mind celebrating his death with that Chianti. She was drawn out of her musings by a soft knock on the door.

“Yes?” she called out from her perch beside the large bank of windows within her bedroom.

“Service,” came the muffled response. These people acted like this was the Hilton—was this not a residence?

“You can come in,” she said and turned back to the beautiful view of the Atlantic Ocean right outside her window.

It was the color of Sebastian’s eyes today.

The door opened and closed softly, and then she heard the sounds of someone straightening the room. No doubt there were leaving new listening and visual devices, since she daily destroyed the ones her father had planted.

“Will that be all, ma’am?”

Sky turned and was startled to see a lovely woman with short blonde hair and killer curves standing very close to her. She hadn’t seen her before but didn’t wonder at that. There were probably hundreds of people working here she hadn’t seen. Or heard. How had the woman gotten so close without Sky noticing?

Normally Skylar picked up on a body’s vibrations long before she saw or heard them. Each person had a certain vibratory wavelength that came from their body’s natural processes. When a person took a breath, their heart beat, or their blood rushed through their veins, it either created or used energy. All of that energy was relayed to Skylar’s senses, but this woman should be dead for all the energy not being given off by her body.
Is she shielding?

The woman hadn’t blinked or moved a muscle since Skylar had turned to her.

“Since I didn’t ask you for you to come clean up after me in the first place, I guess what you’ve done is great. I don’t need anything else, though, if that’s what you’re asking.”

The woman looked like she might cry for a second, and Sky tamped down an urge to reassure her. If she worked here, she had balls of steel, so there was no way that moisture in her eyes was a tear.

“Sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean to intrude,” the woman whispered.

For a moment Sky thought she heard steel underneath the tone.
Yeah, definitely not a crier.

This woman was more than she appeared to be. She wore servant attire, but her spine was ramrod straight, and while she tried to convey a subservient attitude, it just wasn’t coming across very well.

“You didn’t. What’s your name?” Sky asked.

“What happened to your eyes?” the other woman blurted out and then turned beet red and appeared flabbergasted by her own outburst.

“What’s your name?” Skylar asked again, steel in her own voice now as she ignored the other woman’s questions.

“Everly.” The sharp, clipped answer was in stark contrast to the blush riding her face.

The woman didn’t like not being answered. She reminded Sky of a warrior crammed into smaller packaging.

“Well, Everly,” Sky drawled before she slid her sunglasses from her pocket, thought better of it and put them back, “didn’t your mother teach you it’s impolite to ask questions of such a personal nature?”

“I have no mother. But I meant no offense, ma’am.”

She bowed her head, but contriteness didn’t sit well on the woman’s shoulders.

“Fair enough. None taken. As for my eyes, let’s just say I lost something precious to me, and it has caused me a certain blindness,” Sky finished before she turned and stared out of the windows again. Her once brown eyes were now a mocking black as she caught her reflection.

“You can’t see?” the woman persisted, decorum out the door.

“No everything is crystal clear,” Sky responded enigmatically never looking away from the ocean.

“The dolphins are out today,” the woman, Everly, said as she stepped even closer to Skylar.

“Yes, they are aren’t they?” Sky murmured, going on alert at the nearness of the woman.

“It seems like they visit every day now since you’ve arrived,” Everly whispered in reverent awe as the pair of dolphins right off the beach bounced joyously from wave to wave.

“Well, Everly, I wish I could take credit. Unfortunately, the feeding just happens to be good this time of year off this particular coast. So they aren’t following me; they’re following the food.”

And with that Skylar turned fully to the woman, her stance loose, her hands at her sides, prepared to find out exactly what the woman wanted. Prepared for anything.

She stood there letting her silence command the attention of the woman who’d told Sky her name but not what she wanted.

The woman née maid turned toward Skylar, and it was Sky who was startled as Everly’s gaze turned silvery bright before the color returned to a deep, deep blue. It reminded her of the eerie sheen of Raina’s eyes when she went blind.

“Why are you here?” the woman asked quietly.

“How is that any of your business?” Sky’s voice was winter cold.

“You only have so many chances to answer my questions before they deem you unacceptable and seek another,” Everly said, and her voice this time was old and brittle.

“Who is ‘they’?”

“The others.”

“Other what?”

“The others like you. All of us here are like you, Skylar.”

Chills broke out on Skylar’s skin, but deep inside her there was a cauldron of hot, hot anger that churned and sent flares out to her internal organs and her limbs. She’d known that Smythe-Ward had continued his research. Just because he hadn’t had access to his daughters didn’t mean he hadn’t tried to duplicate the initial experiment. One would’ve thought that he would’ve been well beyond his initial experimentations, but apparently there was something about his first tries that continued to draw him. There was something he was trying to recreate.

Either that. or he needed Sky in order to supply the base components for new, even more heinous, experiments. That was another reason Skylar had wanted to get into GenTech. She needed to find out what DNA components had been used when Smythe-Ward and her mother had spliced into Sky’s original makeup. Now, to have confirmation that others were housed so close?

“May I touch you, Everly?” Sky asked softly, still standing in a ready stance should the person in front of her decide to go postal on her.