Retrieval (33 page)

“I have been told to allow that,” Everly said and closed her eyes as if preparing for a blow.

Sky reached with sureness and placed her palm on the other woman’s forehead. She would have preferred for the woman’s eyes to remain open because it was easier to access the brain waves that way, but if she had to have full on contact that was fine too.

When she placed her palm on the woman’s skin she began to tap into her thoughts and memories. She gasped as she was driven to desolation by not only what the woman in front of her had experienced, but by what she actually
was
.

It made her heart stutter and hurt to see the pain this creature had endured at Smythe-Ward’s hands. Her head began to pound, and as she removed her hand she felt a curious trickle from her nose. Wiping a finger above her lip, she came away with a crimson bead, and the pain inside her head intensified. Something was going on with her. She’d never had a nosebleed from downloading before. Everly’s face showed a strain, and slowly Sky took a step back.

“So now you know you aren’t alone,” Everly said as she opened her blue-black eyes.

“I’ve never been alone, but you can tell the others that their freedom is close. They will be forced to stay hidden for the rest of their lives, but the devil will die, and GenTech will perish along with it. By the time I’m finished with him and what he considers his, no one will have to worry about a trail leading to what he created. I’m sorry I can do no more than destroy him.” Sky’s voice was hoarse with the scream she held inside.

Pictures shot through her mind at a mach pace and everything that Everly had been subjected to or seen was now burned behind Sky’s retinas. If they hadn’t already been devoid of anything except a midnight color, the pain the being in front of her had experienced would have brought the blackness itself. God in Heaven, what had Smythe-Ward done? Half humans, half animals, animals who could speak, humans who could transform, they were all a myriad of carnival dreams that should’ve stayed in the realm of nightmares. But her father had brought them to life, and if the world found out about them, nothing would stop the free-for-all slaughter that would ensue.

“Ma’am?” Everly’s voice was once again a sweet, feminine sound.

“Skylar,” she corrected her. They were family after all.

“Skylar,” Everly conceded, “we will help if we are able, but you must understand that each of us are programmed to die should we raise arms against him. Please don’t leave us behind because it would appear that we aren’t helping your cause. We will do what we are able, but we just want to live in peace with no pain.”

A plea for leniency.

“Never worry, sister. You’re all mine now. I could no more harm you than I could my birth sisters. We did not share a womb Everly, but you are my family as surely as if we had. As for the others you seek to protect, I don’t want you to worry about them either, for they are my family now as well. When the time comes I will share my plans with you, but understand this: if you betray me, you will die. I will allow no one to stop me from my goals.”

There it was, enough information to placate and ease the other woman. If she was a plant for Smythe-Ward, Sky had just condemned herself.

“I should go now,” Everly said on a whisper.

“Yes. We’ll speak again,” Sky assured her. “And Everly? You are very brave. Whoever sent you should be proud.”

At those words the other woman practically glowed, and her spine straightened so tight Sky wondered if it wouldn’t snap in two.

“Thank you.” Then she was gone.

* * * *

“We have to get someone inside.” Dray Bonner’s voice was whip-like in its intensity.

“Not possible,” Bleak intoned, well, bleakly. “He’s hired no new staff at his estate for over ten years and his screening process before that was brutal. If you failed, you ended up in the morgue. Seriously, he actually killed people who failed to please him or didn’t meet his standards.”

“What about at GenTech?” Sebastian asked into the silence left by Bleak’s statement.

“That’s where I might be able to help you out,” Micah said as he joined the discussion via conference call.

They’d moved their base operation to Sebastian’s home in South Carolina. He had property outside of Charleston, and they’d hastily moved their little op to that location. It was far enough away from the low country of Bluffton to not raise Smythe-Ward’s suspicions but also close enough to get there quickly if he needed to. Micah had tried to convince him to set up outside of Montauk in New York, but Sebastian knew that GenTech was headquartered in Bluffton, SC.

“Well spit the shit out already, Mic,” Sebastian said.

“Damn, Seb, you ready to get to your woman or what?” Micah teased him but was wise enough to do it where Sebastian couldn’t actually get his hands on him.

“You have to see me sometime, Micah,” Sebastian warned him.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Anyway, I have a contact in the DOD who has the ability to plant IDs like a motherfucker. I just need a female operative, because according to my sources, Smythe-Ward likes to surround himself with beautiful blonde scientists. You find me the operative, and I’ll supply her credentials,” Micah assured them.

“I’m in,” a woman said from the opposite end of Sebastian’s table.

Her name was Dawn, and she was employed by Bonner’s outfit. Sebastian looked down the table, noted her beauty, blonde hair, and the keen intelligence reflected in her eyes. She’d work fine in his opinion.

“No,” Dray Bonner said emphatically. “Dawn, I’m not arguing with you about this. Where’s Eric anyway? I thought you guys were going to take some time off and go to Fiji or somewhere? Dare, where’s Eric?” Bonner turned to his twin with a look of helplessness.

“I’m not a baby for cripes’ sake. Eric and I have plans, but we also know the importance of what’s going on here. Hell, if he weren’t finishing up that job in Turkey, he’d be telling you the same thing: send Dawn. I meet Smythe-Ward’s qualifications closely enough, and I’m the only woman operative you’ve got access to right now,” she said with a negligent shrug.

“She’s right, Bonner. What’s your holdup?” Sebastian asked.

“Since Dawn just put everything so concisely, I guess I don’t have one. Know what you’re getting into, Dawn. I swear to you that if something happens to you, and Eric comes sniffing around Sasha again, I’ll kill him.”

There was a ring of truth in the other man’s words. Sebastian concurred, because when it came down to the woman you loved, you didn’t really have friends, and every other relationship paled in comparison.

It’d been almost an entire month since she’d left. He’d agonized the entire time about what she was going through, and without any way of knowing it was just about killing him inside. He’d spoken at great length with her sisters and gotten more information from them than he could have imagined, both about what they were and what they could do. They really had abilities that were reserved for tales of superheroes. But they could be killed. They were still flesh and blood.

He’d researched Smythe-Ward and GenTech
ad nauseum
, and even with what he still didn’t know he could fill in the blanks. He and Bonner had both gotten to General Post, who had turned out to be nothing more than an unknowing conduit in this entire situation. Sebastian had been relieved but didn’t think he’d ever be able to look at his old commander in the same light again. A military veteran like Post should have never been able to be duped, but he had been, and even though he was now supplying information to Sebastian and Bonner, a sense of betrayal was still there for Sebastian.

Dray Bonner was something else. Sebastian had heard the story about his life with Sasha, who was indeed, Skylar’s sister, S2. There had been a brief meeting between the sisters Sky left behind and the sister she’d never known, but time had been of the essence, and the meet had been short, though unbearably sweet. Sasha was identical to his Skylar, though their hair was a different color. She had an attitude that was a little more hard-assed than Sky’s, and she was definitely all about giving Bonner way more than the man could handle. Sasha was eight months pregnant with Bonner’s twin babies, but she still hadn’t married him and was refusing to even live with him peacefully. To the first, he swore he begged daily. He said he could handle the second, but it was painful. Bonner hovered throughout the sisters’ meeting, and Sebastian had been pissed. Not at Bonner, but at Sky. She should’ve been there to meet the lost one, but oh no. She’d hightailed it off on a suicide mission, and he had no way of letting her know they had confirmed S2’s identity. It was such a cluster, and now he was faced with the prospect of sending an innocent woman into the arms of a madman who placed as much value on human life as he did on a kumquat.

“Then it’s settled,” Dawn said as she stood up and patted down invisible strands of hair.

“I’ll be there within the hour with everything you’ll need then. Sebastian?” Micah queried.

“What?”

“I need to speak with you privately when I get there.”

“Sure,” Sebastian responded wondering what the man needed to speak with him about.

“See you all in a little while then.”

* * * *

“So that’s it. Skylar saved my life a few years ago, and now you know my dirty little secret,” Micah finished, letting out the breath he’d been inadvertently holding since he walked into the conference room with Sebastian.

“Why couldn’t you have told me that earlier? Why all the secrecy?” he asked his longtime friend.

“You’re kidding, right? Nobody but Sky and Kinz know what I am. They’ve kept my secret since that night in Louisville, not even Piper or Raina know. What? You expected me to come to you all those years ago, and tell you what? ‘Hey, Seb, guess what? I can wag my tail and bark.’ Not hardly, dude. I became something out of a nightmare, and I have the ability to do things normal men don’t. But the reason I’m telling you all this is that Sky called in her chit with me. She’s thinking she isn’t going to make it out of there alive,” Micah said with brevity.

“Why do you think that, Micah?”

“She wouldn’t have called in what we refer to as a ‘lifer’ unless she thought she wasn’t going to make it out of whatever situation she’d gotten herself into. She’s never asked me for so much as a scrap of information since she saved my ass that night.”

“Well it’s good to know that she trusts you so much, Mic. It’s heartening to think that while I’ve pined away for her these past few weeks and busted my ass to get her out of Smythe-Ward’s hands, she’s been banking on you to come through for her.” Sebastian couldn’t keep the sneer out of his voice.

She was willing to trust everyone, Bleak, and now Micah for God’s sake, everyone but him—the man she claimed to love.

“That’s what I’m saying. Are you fucking listening to me, man? She’s obviously gone over you to call in a lifer chit with me. Sky isn’t the type to ever call in favors. She does for others and never lets them repay her kindness. She’s saved so many people lives and never once expected even the smallest reciprocation. Do you know why she became a doctor?” Micah asked him.

“No, but I bet you do.” Again, he couldn’t keep the irrational anger out of his voice.

“She has this amazing ability to heal people while she’s operating. I know that Raina and the others swear she was created to destroy, but she saves. She can cut like a fiend, but she heals as she operates. She’s a fucking miracle and has cured so many, kept so many from death, and nobody has managed to guess that it’s
her
. It’s Skylar, giving bits and pieces of herself to heal others, so they can go home to their parents, their children, their lovers. She’s a savior, not a fighter. It will destroy her to kill Smythe-Ward, but she’s willing to die to save her sisters … and you. Though I’m starting to wonder if you deserve the saving?” It was Micah this time who couldn’t keep the anger from his tone.

Sebastian tightened his hands into fists, fighting the need to punch the other man in the face. “What? She honestly thinks that Smythe-Ward will come after me?”

“She knows he will. I know you’ve spoken with her sisters, but you know that when she strikes the killing blow on him it will annihilate her, right? He programmed an end stop into her DNA as a means to prevent her from killing him. He’s done the same thing with every being he has created since the McKannon sisters. The things he’s done, man, you cannot imagine. The people, and I use the term loosely because some of them are so genetically fucked up I don’t know that the word human applies, who serve him are all terrified of leaving or doing anything to better their circumstances. They will die if they try. You’re dealing with a megalomaniac who has surrounded himself with Frankenstein-like creatures, and Skylar will not allow him to hurt the ones she loves. Get the picture?”

“All the more reason for us to move quickly and get her out of there,” he gritted out.

“We have to play this right. We move too soon and force her to act, she’ll kill herself by taking him out. I know Skylar, and she’s got a plan. If we can get this Dawn in there and within Sky’s radar, we’ll know what she’s planning, and maybe, just maybe, we can save her when she destroys her father.”

“What’s DOD’s stake in Smythe-Ward, Micah?” Sebastian wondered.

“DOD had operatives in the field with spec-ops backgrounds. They went missing about five years ago. Recently, they’ve shown back up on our radar. I knew some of these men and women, and what they’ve become is scary. They’re like me, changed into beasts with very short triggers, though I was changed long before them. The DOD wants their men back, but they also want Smythe-Ward’s head on a platter. I volunteered because I knew his ego, and I knew my past with the man. If I returned and begged forgiveness for escaping, he might kill me, but more-than-likely he’d let me back to make me suffer. He put me under Goolsby and made me security. He trusts me about as far as he can throw me, but I’m not so high up in the echelon that I cause much notice. I’m under pretty deep, but I can’t risk my mission for this Sebastian. Those men, that entire team that went missing in Afghanistan five years ago, need to come home. I owe Sky my life, but I owe these men theirs.”