Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
When Daniel just cocked a brow back at her, she shrugged. “Running out of time means different things to different people.”
“Two months,” he answered. “Maybe. So why did you change your mind about meeting us.”
Not a question, a demand. Because if she could walk around in his mental garden of delights, he expected some quid pro quo on her end.
“My husband, as you’d call him, almost died last night.” As he recoiled, she nodded. “It was a reminder.”
Lydia came around. “Of what, exactly?”
The woman, soldier—whatever she was—looked back and forth between the two of them. “That things can be taken away in the blink of an eye.”
Lydia took Daniel’s hand and squeezed it.
“Does she know what you are?” he asked in a quiet voice.
“Yeah,” Alex Hess said. “I know she’s wolven.”
“But you’re not one of them.”
“No.” Before he could ask her how she could help or what her connections were with Lydia’s other side, the woman cut him off. “Exactly how did you get my number?”
* * *
She’s a vampire, Lydia thought. And something else.
As she stood by Daniel and held his hand, she tested the air with her nose, teasing out and disregarding the scents of shampoo, deodorant, and fabric softener… so she could focus on what was under all that artificial surface stuff.
Vampire. Yes.
Since the spring, Lydia had run into them on the mountain from time to time—although rarely, because like wolven, they preferred to keep to their own. They always recognized her, however, just as she noted their presence, and invariably, there was eye contact over the heads of Homo sapiens.
But there was something else to the female. Something she had never sensed before.
“I got your number from a source,” Daniel said in response to the question that was floating around them.
“What kind of source.”
As the terse demand hit the cold air, Lydia appreciated the female’s no-nonsense approach to conversation.
And she did bring up a question that was worth asking.
“Just someone I know,” Daniel hedged.
“Who is…?”
“A person I once used as a source in a brokered deal for information—and no, I’m not going any further than that.”
In a rush of memory, Lydia remembered the details of Daniel’s previous life, before he’d met her, before the cancer had come for him: She recalled the terrible story of how his mom had thrown herself off a bridge when he’d been a teenager—and how he’d tried in vain to save her. After that, he had floated around under the radar of the system, a homeless kid who had stayed on the streets and learned to survive. Somewhere along the line, he’d joined the military… and after that, he’d worked for a clandestine agency, a shadow arm of the U.S. government tasked with protecting the human genome from bioengineering.
Which was how he’d come to the Wolf Study Project, and why he had lied to her in the beginning about who he really was and what his purpose in Walters had to be.
She could only guess what the information he’d brokered with the “source” for had been and why it had been required.
And no, she didn’t want to know the contact he had used.
“Can you give me a name?” The female known as Alex Hess looked over at Lydia. “Or you?”
“He never told me,” she replied. “And I never asked.”
Daniel squeezed her hand. Then brought it up and kissed it. “I’ll say this. I believe he, too, was… different. In some way.”
“But how did you know he’d be a help?”
“After I met her”—he nodded at Lydia—“and learned what she was, I got sick. Or was diagnosed, whatever. I didn’t know anyone like her, but then I thought of him… and figured he might have some contacts. That’s how I got your number.”
There was a pause. And then the female said in a dry voice, “Any chance he had a mohawk?”
“As a matter of fact… yes.”
Alex Hess rolled her eyes. “He’s a goddamn busybody. But what I can’t figure out…”
“Is what?” Lydia asked roughly.
“I don’t know any wolven, either. Yeah, sure, I’m sorry about… what’s going to happen to you both in a couple of months. I just don’t understand why I’m some kind of connector for you? I’m just being honest. A dying human, a wolven, and me? There just aren’t any intersections here.”
As Lydia lowered her head, Daniel stroked her arm. “Looks like all three of us are confused.”
Lydia was trying to think of something to say when from out of the corner of her eye, movement registered in the trees. Flaring her nostrils, she got nothing in terms of scent. Then again, the wind was blowing from the opposite direction, so there was no way to sniff out who or what it was.
But someone—or something—was watching them.
“We’ve got company,” she said quietly. “Right there.”
TWENTY
DOWN IN C.P.’S laboratory, things had gotten quite quiet, the hustle and bustle of researchers dimmed down, only a few stragglers passing by outside of her patient room. Although what time was it, midnight? She checked her watch. Then slipped off the exam table and went over to the computer at the desk. After she signed in, she glanced at the clock at the bottom right-hand corner of the monitor. 12:17 a.m.