“I don’t remember any of it,” Theo admitted. “But this was during a time when she was regularly dosing me. Even if I remembered something one day, I would forget it the next. I’ve gotten a lot of my memory back but it’s almost all from before I met McDonald. I don’t even remember how I got shot. I don’t remember moving into our house. I sure as hell don’t remember a couple of appointments at a lab.”
Erin’s hand ran up and down her husband’s back. “It’s okay. I’ll let you do all the work for the new nursery. And I’ve been meaning to replace that horrible recliner of yours. We’ll get all new living room furniture and skip on the delivery. You can shove it all in the back of Case’s truck. It’ll be exactly like when we moved in.”
Theo turned and stared down at her. “I remember the first time I kissed you. And I remember the first time I spanked your pretty ass. I can recreate that, too, my sarcastic love.”
But he was smiling. Erin had done her job and she winked her husband’s way before turning back to the group. “So now we think Dr. Walsh is the bad guy?”
The bad guy. The evil doctor. Or rather assistant evil doctor.
Could she have not known? How could she have not understood what was happening? All he knew was if she’d had an inkling of what was going on behind Dr. McDonald’s project, she hadn’t mentioned it. “What do we know about the lab she was at?”
Ezra had his laptop up. “McDonald was in and out at the time. This was in the months before Kronberg shut her down and she went on the run. Naturally they kept it all quiet. They announced that Dr. McDonald was leaving to pursue other opportunities. The last thing they wanted was the world to know who McDonald was. It could have opened them up to lawsuits. Hell, even her death was covered up. The papers announced it as an accident and said nothing else.”
“Given the time period, I would have thought we were in Argentina, not Germany,” Theo said.
Ariel walked in with two mugs of tea in her hand. She placed one in front of Robert, her hand briefly touching his shoulder before she sank into the seat beside him. “She had the Argentine base long before she was forced out of Kronberg. Her father had been funding those portions of her research. Are you certain you heard correctly? I have a hard time believing Dr. Walsh knew what exactly was going on.”
He did, too, but it was obvious she’d known something and she’d said not a word. “I know what I heard. Sasha sent Jax a digital recording before he went to work at the foundation. You can listen to it yourself. She states plainly that Theo was a patient.”
“No, she said Tomas was a patient,” Robert pointed out. “She likely had no idea he wasn’t exactly who McDonald said he was.”
“There’s an easy way to figure this out,” Erin said. “Theo and I walk into the foundation.”
“And see what happens? See how she reacts?” Ezra nodded. “That could work.”
Erin moved out from behind her husband. “You didn’t let me finish. Theo and I walk into the foundation, put a gun to her head and tell her to talk or we’ll blow it off. She’s a brain surgeon and all that. I think she’ll know what happens to the old brain pan when a bullet hits it.”
Ezra stared at Theo. “Your brother puts up with this, why?”
“Big Tag loves me,” Erin said, pulling out a chair. “Okay, how about we consider calling her and setting up a meeting. We say Theo is still Tomas and would like to talk to the doc who helped him years ago.”
“We don’t know how deep into this she is.” Owen felt the need to take the lead in this. He’d been the idiot to push them all to trust her. It was definitely time to take a long step back. “If she knew what was going on, this could tip her off and she could run.”
Ariel set down her tea, a look of concern on her face. “Owen, she could have known absolutely nothing about the true nature of McDonald’s research. You have to remember that Hope McDonald was a sociopath, and a brilliant one at that. She was excellent at covering her tracks.”
“You said she left early,” he pointed out. “I happen to know Rebecca Walsh doesn’t walk away from anything early. She gets the job done. She walked out for some reason. She knew something and she didn’t bother to get the word out. Have you considered that if she’d reported McDonald, none of what we went through afterward would have happened?”
Theo would have come home years before he had. Jax and Tucker, Dante and Sasha wouldn’t have been forced to commit crimes. Robert wouldn’t have suffered. Theo would have been home for the birth of his son.
His mum and sister would be alive. He would have his memory. He would still have a bloody home. He would never have betrayed his team.
Theo stared across the table at him. “You can’t go down that road. Believe me, I understand. I think all the time about the things I could have done, but we can’t go back. We can go forward, and right now that means trying to figure out what’s going on.”
It was easy for Theo to say that since he had a family who loved him and a home. He could have pride in himself.
Ezra sat back. “I listened to the tape Sasha sent. First of all, I want to know how Carter knows what he does. If he’s been talking to someone, I’d like to know who that is. It’s obvious this wasn’t as well buried as we thought it was. I didn’t even know she’d called it Project Tabula Rasa.”
Theo shrugged. “I can put a call into Ian and Case. No one knows more about McDonald than my brothers, perhaps with the singular exception of my sister-in-law. Mia’s been dying to write the whole thing as a tell-all. So far Case has managed to keep her under control because of the whole classified-material thing, but she’s never stopped researching. If this Carter guy has a connection to McDonald, she might know about it.”
“I don’t see how.” Owen had gained a lot of knowledge on Carter Adams. “He’s been working at Huisman for the last six years. He’s never been out of the country. He’s spectacularly ordinary. But I definitely think we should look into any possible connections between Carter and McDonald. Sasha and Dante are going to search her office again. They can’t get into her lab. No one is allowed in there, and I’m starting to worry we need to. Apparently her private office in the lab is protected with biometrics. We would need a retinal scan to get in.”
“I can get that for us,” Erin said with a savage grin.
He stared back at her. “Don’t touch her. I’m still the man in charge of handling her and not a one of us is going to physically harm her.”
“I always knew you were soft, Shaw,” Erin said, sitting back. “So what did she say to you about Carter showing up? How did she react?”
There was a knot in his gut that twisted at her words. “She didn’t say a word about it. She told me no one showed up. I was supposed to stay in the back of the museum. She has no idea I was listening in the whole time.”
She’d lied directly to him, and when he’d prodded her, she’d lied some more. Of course he was lying to her as well, but he had his reasons. What were hers? Was she covering up the fact that she’d helped to develop one of the most dangerous drugs in the world?
“I listened in with Ezra,” Ariel began. “If I had to guess, I would say she was afraid and confused. I would like to see the CCTV footage. If I could read her body language that might help enormously. Jax is supposed to be getting it to us soon.”
“Who is still at the foundation this afternoon?” He needed to keep eyes on her. He should have stayed and staked out the foundation building, but Ezra had wanted a report. “I’m supposed to pick her up at eight, but I don’t trust her not to leave the building without me. Not anymore, I don’t.”
“Tucker is there along with Dante and Sasha. Sasha’s on night duty. Dante gets off at six along with Tucker.” Robert’s arm moved casually around the back of Ariel’s chair and it made Owen wonder if the last few days had gone well for those two. Or he would wonder it if his own misery wasn’t twisting his soul. “Dante’s staying after his shift so he can get some pictures and video footage of the labs. It might take some time, but I can’t imagine Chelsea and Hutch can’t figure out a way around those biometrics.”