“What, mass murder?” Rue shook her head. “You’re better than this.”
His gaze went flat again. He was locking everything down, just like Elliot did when he didn’t want to show too much emotion. “You don’t know that. You don’t know anything about me. None of you do, and that’s always been the problem.” He turned away, waving a dismissive hand. “Lock them up with the others.”
“What about your daughter?” Elliot called as the soldiers dragged them away.
Cade froze. “I’m doing this for her,” he said so softly, Rue had to strain to hear him.
She’d known Cade was struggling after his falling-out with Davey, but this? Working with the organization that hadsystematically murdered research teams, that was planning to unleash a pathogen on the world?
“Nova will never forgive you for this,” she said, shaking with fury. God, if the betrayal hurt her this much, she couldn’t imagine what Elliot was feeling now. “When she grows up and finds out what you’ve done?—”
“She’ll never know.” Cade’s voice was steel, but she caught the flicker of pain that crossed his features before he masked it. “I’m her father. It’s my job to make sure she has a future to live in. I chose the winning team to keep her safe.”
With that, he turned away.
“This will break your parents’ hearts,” Elliot called after him, and there was so much heartbreak in the words that her eyes stung. “This person you’ve become isn’t the man they raised, and you know it.”
Cade’s spine stiffened, but he kept walking.
“Let’s go,” Jess said, shoving her gun into Rue’s spine again.
The soldiers hauled them past the kitchen, where she’d eaten breakfast just days ago, and past the rec room, where Koos had beaten everyone at poker and Tyler had spun his outlandish stories. Everything looked the same, but nothing was.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
The formerly locked door to Lab B stood open, guarded by another pair of armed soldiers.
They didn’t look like Russians.
She kicked herself for not realizing that the story about proprietary Russian research was bullshit before now.
Jess gave her an unnecessarily hard push over the threshold, and one of the other soldiers shoved Elliot. They stumbled inside, and the door slammed shut behind them with the finality of a prison cell.
Lab B mirrored Lab A, but this one was set up like a hospital ward, with cots spread evenly throughout. A window stretched across the shared wall with Lab A.
How had she never noticed it from the other side?
And there in his usual spot, bent over a workstation with his sleeves rolled up, was Dr. Keene. He stared into a microscope, then all but bounced with excitement before scribbling something into a logbook. He was so myopically focused on the pathogen, he wasn’t the least bit concerned that his entire team—including his grad students—was being held hostage in the next room over.
Bastard.
Rue turned her attention back to the others in the room with her. Camille perched on a lab stool, somehow managing to maintain her air of sophisticated disdain despite the circumstances. Noah hovered near her, arms crossed like he was her own personal bodyguard. Which, hell, given all the other recent revelations, maybe he was. It made sense.
Moretti lay unconscious on one of the cots, his complexion pale, his head bandaged.
The cot in the far corner of the lab had been cordoned off with clear plastic sheeting, duct-taped floor to ceiling in a flimsy attempt at containment. Dr. Volkova was in there, bent over the cot, her elegant face pinched with concern behind her mask as she worked on her patient.
Tyler.
Rue’s breath caught in her throat. The young grad student was nearly unrecognizable. His skin had taken on a waxy, grayish cast, and black lines spread beneath the surface like a grotesque road map. His breathing came in wet, rattling gasps, each inhale a visible struggle. Dark fluid stained his lips and the front of his shirt.
Takahe’s frozen victims flashed through her mind.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, drawing everyone’s attention.
Mia sat beside Tyler, holding a damp cloth to his forehead with a gloved hand. Her dark eyes locked on Rue and Elliot, swimming with tears, and she gasped. “You’re alive!”
“Holy fuck,” Noah said, and for the first time since she met him, his expression was something other than blank. In fact, he looked genuinely stricken. “We didn’t think you’d survived that fall. If I had known…” He trailed off.
