Retrieval (17 page)

“How did you talk with—you know what? Never mind. Listen, you have no reason to trust us, but if you look at what’s happened over the past couple of days now, I would hope that you recognize we mean you no harm. In fact, you and your sisters have become our number one priority. Something huge is going on here and somehow, someway, you’ve become more important than my previous objective. I always get the job done, Sky. I’ve never backed out of an operation before, so the fact that I’m doing so now hopefully tells you something of my intentions to keep you safe.”

“I wouldn’t have made it out of that field if not for you and your men. I understand what makes you tick, I hope, and I’m banking on my instincts when it comes to trusting you with my life. I’m going to hope that you don’t betray that,” she told him solemnly.

He took it for the vow it was. If he betrayed her trust, she’d come for him with guns blazing.

“Where are your sisters right now? I’ve got to send someone their way. Smythe-Ward is heading toward New Mexico. Is that where they are?”

She nodded slowly, then gave him coordinates for their safe house.

“I’ll be right back,” he said and went to set Morrissey on their trail.

When he returned she still sat there stoically, waiting.

He stared at her, the brevity of the situation between them, and then she seemed to relax for a moment before she took a deep breath and looked him straight in the eye.

“I told you last night that my sisters and I are unique. I think you realized that the first time you saw us, and I’m pretty sure Smythe-Ward gave you a little information on us. Oh, I can see by your face that ‘little’ is the operative word in that sentence. I’m going to keep it as simple as I can because believe me, it can get more complicated than anyone would be able to keep up with.”

*

She centered herself, and her body tightened. Her thoughts calmed even as her hands clenched at her sides. Sebastian was a rock in the chair in front of her, his broad shoulders blocking the light coming in from the window behind him, his face didn’t give any hint to the emotion behind it. By the time she was finished, he’d be full of disbelief, and she’d have to show him before it was all said and done. What she’d done previously in his company was nothing compared to the power her body could wield, and she dreaded the look on his face when the time came, and he fully knew what she was.

That stony look on his face right now was a gift because once her story was finished she was sure to see revulsion reflected there.

“I don’t know what you know so I’ll start from the beginning. Again.” She laughed ruefully. “My biological mother was Milania Veragova, a brilliant geneticist from the Soviet Union. She went to work for Dr. Dolan Smythe-Ward shortly after he took his corporation, GenTech, global. Milania was young, only twenty-two, when she first met Smythe-Ward, who was pushing fifty. Poor woman fell like a proverbial ton of bricks for the modern ‘father’ of genetics. She said in the notes she left my sisters and I that she fell for his intelligence rather than his looks, which if you’ve seen him, you can see why. She expounds in great detail that he was the preeminent leader in the field of gene and viral therapy, genetic replication and splicing, but I can never get a feel for exactly what her specialty was.

“Anyway, she was young, beautiful, and full of love for science, and Smythe-Ward pounced on her like fresh meat. He managed to convince her he loved her and they should marry, have children. He wanted to populate the world with little genetic clones of themselves. It sounded horribly wonderful, my mother wrote in one of her notes, so she began to study the best way to accomplish that. After all, wouldn’t having children with their combined intellects be a blessing to the world?

“Yeah, so I can see your face, and it clearly reflects all the feelings I had when I first read about her desire to make more of her and Daddy Dearest. The shock wears off eventually, trust me. So where was I? Oh yeah, so Milania Veragova and Dolan Smythe-Ward set out take his sperm and her egg and produce genetically enhanced children who had both of their IQs, Mother’s looks, and a few other little special ditties that only they knew about.

“It was brilliant. Smythe-Ward had a young, gullible, incredibly talented genetic manipulation scientist at his disposal, and he’d tricked her into believing they were creating children out of love and for the good of the world, yada, yada, yada. Apparently Milania believed this, until she overheard Smythe-Ward plotting her disposal after the children’s delivery with none other than Warren Goolsby. See good old Warren’s been around a long time, a living testament to Smythe-Ward’s own genius at prolonging natural life through genetic enhancement. So Mother hears them plotting about her eventual demise so that Smythe-Ward can have the child for his own purposes, and she loses a little of her mind.

“She plays the game so that Smythe-Ward doesn’t suspect she’s going to betray him. She allows him to implant the five fertilized specimens that have been genetically spliced from a single original egg, into her. It is possible to take a single sample, or an original fertilized egg, and replicate it into multiple eggs, each identical but separate and able to be enhanced or manipulated however the person playing God so wishes them to be.” She finished with a mocking laugh and looked past Sebastian, unable to watch the disbelief break over his face.

He sat forward, grabbed her off the chair she was in, and planted her in his lap. She looked into his blue eyes and took what comfort she could. He probably didn’t understand jack shit of what she was saying about gene splicing and cell replication, but he was acknowledging her pain and telling her with his body that pain wasn’t acceptable.

“I really need to be sitting somewhere other than your lap to finish this. In fact, I would love to be pacing right now, but I’m just so damn tired still. Let me sit back down, Bastian. I need some space for this, please?” she implored and cursed the husky tone of her voice.

“You’re sure?” he asked her, not letting her go.

“Positive. I have certain reactions to certain things, and I can’t control those reactions if I’m this close to you. I don’t want you to experience any bleed off my rage,” she explained mysteriously.

He stood and placed her back in her chair. “I’m hoping that you’ll explain just how in the hell that could happen, but if you need me to put you back in your chair, I will. For now,” he tacked on, and it seemed more promise than threat.

“Thank you.”

She watched as he walked to the bed, and took off the top cover, placing it over her legs. She wasn’t cold, but she appreciated the comfort of the gesture.

This man was so dangerous to her self-imposed exile from any relationship besides her sisters. If she were truthful with herself, she would acknowledge that he was already so deep under her skin she’d never rid herself of him. But she could hope that he would be able to move on from her. She was going to make sure in the end that he was able to.

There was no future for Skylar McKannon. Her sisters? Yes. Oh hell yes. She probably wasn’t going to live through what the future had in store for her, and she didn’t want her sisters or Sebastian Graham to be a casualty of her personal war.

Taking a deep breath she prepared herself to continue.

“So there’s Milania, implanted with five genetically identical, though separately enhanced eggs, hoping that the eggs all hold in her womb, and she’s planning. No way is Smythe-Ward going to use her as a baby factory and then dispose of her, keeping her children for God only knows what kind of experimentation. I like to think that my mother did love us. That we were her children instead of ways to prove her own genius. She made sure that we were cared for after her death, and she risked great personal suffering to bring us into the world. I have a hard time reconciling the woman who thought she and Smythe-Ward were gods in the making, to the woman who fled from his megalomania to protect her children’s future.”

Shaking her head at the thoughts, she brought her growing agitation under control.

“Once she was secure that each embryo was thriving, and it was a true miracle that all five eggs implanted successfully, she made her plans to leave GenTech1 and create a new life for herself and her babies. Smythe-Ward obviously thought he had her cooperation in the bag, because Milania wrote about his cockiness, and his growing disdain for her as it became more and more evident she would carry each egg, with the exception of S2, to term. Smythe-Ward was led to believe that S2 didn’t implant and was discarded.

“She explained in great detail in her letters to us the exact ways in which each egg was manipulated. There was a primary egg and from that, four others were replicated. Specimen S1 was the primary egg. Specimen S2 was the first replication, the closest in actual physical characteristic to the primary. Specimen P was the second replication, Specimen R the third, and the final replication was Specimen K. She never says why the specimens were labeled that way. Each of us took our names from the letters that coincided with our particular specimen.

“Milania ran from Smythe-Ward and settled into her new life as Mirial Blake, giving birth to quadruplets and then setting up a way for them to be raised by someone other than herself. She knew something that Smythe-Ward didn’t. She had cervical cancer caused by all of the testing she had put herself through to determine if she could handle multiple births. If she died, her children went where she’d planned for them to go, and there was hopefully no way for anyone to track them down. She died, but not from the cancer. Warren Goolsby found her too soon and murdered her.

“My mother seriously underestimated the power of Dolan Smythe-Ward, and she also underestimated the amount of genetic manipulation that he’d done to us. Milania had been under the impression that they were trying to make the perfect baby. A child who wouldn’t get sick, had genius intelligence, and would live a long and prosperous life. Smythe-Ward wanted more than that. He wanted weapons and tools that could be molded to suit his own needs in whatever arena he could fathom. She thought that he’d give up looking for any children when he realized she was dead. But Daddy had much more invested in his little experiment, and he knew we’d survived. He’d never given up trying to find us. I mean, sure, he’s been delayed several times, but he always manages to find us. I’ve spent my entire life running from that bastard. We run and hide, he tries to find us.

“Four years ago, I decided I was tired of hiding. We were struggling to survive and normal jobs aren’t a possibility for us. So I decided to do something I had always wanted to do. I became a doctor. I have an ability to heal others, and I’m wicked good with a knife, so I took what came naturally and tried to turn it into a career. I was doing pretty well, right up until a few nights ago, when you found me, and we had to take off again.”

Her tone conveyed her displeasure, but honestly, could she be angry when it had led her to the most amazing night of her life? When it had led her to him?

Nah, not really.

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry about that. You’ve been unexpected. I took this job on a referral, and it has turned into a quagmire of intrigue that I wasn’t prepared for. We specialize in retrieval, but I’m finding that I want to keep you hidden, and you’ve completely rearranged my priorities in this job,” he muttered.

He stood up then and began pacing himself. She took several moments to admire the play of his muscles under his clothes. His hair was pitch-black, though light shone off it, unlike Kinsey’s hair that absorbed it completely. His eyes never stopped moving, indicative of his ever-working mind planning and plotting so that his end could be achieved.

She wanted desperately to trust this man. He’d consumed her heart the moment he had touched her, and if she was reading him right, he was her perfect complement in every way. He was strength to her weakness, fairness to her partiality, and most importantly he made her want something more than just the death of Dolan Smythe-Ward.

Nothing good could come from her feeling so much for him. She had a rock-solid plan that had no room for loving Sebastian Graham. But damn if that wasn’t where she was finding herself after only knowing the man for about seventy-two hours.

Still her heart thudded painfully as she watched him walk and think. His hands move restlessly through his hair, and she found herself wanting them back on her body, inside her body.

Damn, man.

He turned to her suddenly and speared her with an intense look.

“What?” she asked him, defensive at his look.

“Nothing. So, your mother gave birth to you all and died, leaving you in the hands of the McKannons to raise and protect you from a man richer and more powerful than Croesus? They are killed on his orders, you and your sisters run, and you spend years hiding from the man who is your biological sperm donor? I’m getting this right?” At her nod he continued, “Smythe-Ward uses a contact who happens to also be my former SEAL commander to find and hire us to bring you to him, but gives us little to no information other than a possible location. We reconnoiter for several weeks until we’re positive it’s you, and then we report back that it
is
you and your sisters. He okays retrieval, and we know what happened after that don’t we? I know you said you and your sisters are enhanced. I’m almost afraid to ask, because I’ve been on the receiving end of one of your little shockwaves, but how are you enhanced?”

“Okay, well you need to sit down, and I need to pace for this. Do you think we could let King in? I’d like to have him in here for this, and I hear him sitting outside the door.”

“Yeah, hold on,” he said and went to let King in.

The big dog trotted directly over to Sky and, bumping her hand with his head, sat down beside her chair. Sebastian sat down and looked at her expectantly. She got up and began to pace in his place.

“It’s important to remember that we were engineered outside of the womb. Most conception takes place inside a woman’s uterus. In our case one egg was removed from Milania and fertilized before being spliced, replicated, and genetically tampered with. Then we were implanted into Milania’s womb. I’ve researched the known techniques for gene splicing and replication. They’re both done with impunity in this day and age. I’m sure you’ve heard of cloning? Well replication is a form of cloning, though in our case we were each given specific identifying traits, such as different hair or skin color. You asked last night how we managed to avoid questions about being quadruplets, because that is something that would trigger interest we didn’t want? It’s simple. We don’t tell anybody. We all have the same eye color. Our basic facial features are similar enough that we could all be considered identical, but our heights and body shapes differ somewhat, and this sets us apart from each other. Piper is tall, and her build is all lean muscle. Raina is average height with a voluptuous figure. Kinsey is short and compact. Myself, and I’m assuming S2, are short and petite, while also managing somehow to be fuller figured in the hips and breasts.” Her voice full of irony, she rolled her eyes at that.