“You didn’t know.” His words were hoarse. “I always knew you didn’t know. Forgive me for doubting you, Becca. When I heard you’d treated Theo, it triggered something in me. But I can easily see how she manipulated you. You’re not the villain in this.”
But she was. “I knew something was happening. I thought it was Steven. If I’d said anything at all, maybe she gets caught.”
“Or the pharmaceutical company she worked for covers it up and she moves on and they very likely have you and anyone you’d talked to about it killed. It was how they worked. They only cut her loose when she wouldn’t fall in line. I doubt any one person with one complaint could have taken her down.”
“Let me up, please.” It was time to put some distance between them.
His arms tightened almost painfully. “I don’t want to let you go.”
“You have to. You said it was my choice. Did you lie about that, too?”
His arms dropped and she stood, the wood of the gazebo creaking under her feet. Weariness invaded her limbs and when she looked back at him, his head was in his hands.
His eyes gleamed in the moonlight, and she could have sworn there was a sheen of tears there. “Forgive me. I didn’t go into this with the thought to hurt you. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”
“It doesn’t matter now.” She wasn’t even sure what to do. Her life was in ruins. There was apparently a warrant out for her arrest. Everything she’d ever worked for was gone and all because she’d taken a job so she could spend time in Europe. All because she’d been arrogant.
“Of course it does.”
She stared out at the water. It was dark, and she had no idea how deep it went. It looked peaceful on the surface. What horrors did it hide? “The scars on your body, you didn’t get them the way you said you did, did you?”
He was quiet for a moment, the silence emphasizing the distance between them. “I had a bad reaction to the drug. I don’t know if it was the one that wiped my mind. I think she used the other one on me, too. I don’t know. I get flashes of things now, and I don’t know if they’re real or not. I hope some of them aren’t. I hope they’re dreams. From what I can tell I wasn’t there for long. A little more than a day.”
“If she gave you the time dilation drug, I assure you she could make a few hours seem like years. If she then wiped your memory, well, you might not remember it, not the way you’re used to remembering things. It would be like something rippling under the water. You wouldn’t know why you were afraid. You would likely convince yourself there’s nothing to be afraid of, but it would be there. Always.” Like it was for her. It was always there simmering underneath her shiny surface, and now it was out in the open, crawling up from the muck like some monster inching toward her. “Why does this Green person want me? Why go to all this trouble to set me up?”
She heard him moving behind her. “I think he wants to put you in a position where you’ll work for him. Becca, there are things you should know about me.”
“I can’t do anything personal with you right now.” If she did she would break down again. She could understand why they’d investigated her. She could even forgive them for surrounding her. When researching a disease, one had to isolate the cause. They’d thought she might have been a cause. But they hadn’t had to send Owen to her bed. They hadn’t needed to trick her like that. From what she could tell, they’d placed someone in every aspect of her life. While she’d been listening to Faith, Robert had shown up along with Ezra’s wife, Ariel, who probably wasn’t Ezra’s wife since Robert seemed to have a hand on her the whole time. Even the lady who’d recently started making her morning lattes was in on it.
They hadn’t needed to send her a lover who didn’t love her.
“All right, but understand I’m not letting it go. You’re only delaying the inevitable.” He sighed and moved in beside her.
“Tell me what your group wants from me.”
“Shortly before she died, Dr. McDonald sent you something. We believe it was a package that contained her research. We think she understood the net was tightening around her. Ezra has been working on this for a while now. He thinks she’d set up an escape hatch, so to speak. When Theo’s brother raided her French laboratory, she had protocols in place to erase every computer in the lab.”
“She destroyed her own research?” It was a foreign idea. Everyone she knew was obsessed with their own work and desperate for it to live on even after they were gone.
“I don’t think so. Not completely. What was your relationship like with her?”
It was easier to talk out here. She didn’t want to admit it, but it was easier to talk to him. “We were friends. Sort of. She was kind of a mentor to me. It was like she wanted to teach me, to mold me. That was why Steven had a problem with me. He liked being her protégé. He was very jealous of her. I thought for a while that they were lovers.”
A shudder went through Owen’s big body. “Please don’t ever tell Tucker that. I don’t think he could handle it.”
Tucker. The name didn’t fit him. “I don’t know that I can handle being in the same room with him.”
“What did he do to you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She couldn’t handle that confession, but she could make another one. “And I only thought they were lovers at first. I realized later on that they had an odd relationship. She used him almost like her bad cop, if that makes sense. He was mean. He was also brilliant, which isn’t uncommon in my world. People put up with a lot when a researcher has brilliant ideas. We don’t call them bullies. We call them quirky or eccentric. But they are bullies. Having a brilliant mind doesn’t excuse being cruel. He was cruel, and she used that so she didn’t have to look cruel. I realize that now.”
“He’s one of the kindest men I know,” Owen said softly. “He was on a mission once with a friend of mine. He sacrificed himself to save a woman I admire quite a lot. He doesn’t remember who he was. He won’t hurt you.”
“Or he’s fooling all of you,” she said quietly. She’d read the final report on McDonald’s last day and the raid that took her out. “Have you considered the idea that he could have faked it? He could have seen what was happening and faked his own memory wipe?”
“Jax knew him. Jax and Sasha and Dante were in there with Tucker. If he was faking he would have to have done it for months. I promise I won’t leave your side and I’ll talk to him about giving you space.”
He wouldn’t believe her about Steven Reasor. That was obvious. It was one of the reasons she hadn’t said anything at the time. She’d known they would all come down on his side.
She held her hands out to show him how empty this whole thing had been. “I don’t have a package from her. She called me the week after I left Kronberg. She wanted to know why I’d gone and I told her. She said she would handle Steven and asked me to come back. I refused and we didn’t talk again. She left me a voice mail a few months later telling me Steven had been killed in an accident and she could use my help. I did not reply. I didn’t hear a thing about her after that until she died. There wasn’t even any gossip about her.”
And that told her a lot. There were powerful forces surrounding this whole mess if no one talked about it. Even in the research world there were sections that thrived on gossip. Yet almost no one talked about Hope McDonald after she died. It should have made her curious.
It had been far too easy to ignore all the clues, and now she would pay the price with her career.
She’d already paid the price with her heart.
She’d loved Owen. She’d fallen in love with him and she’d been nothing but a job to him. And a failed one at that because she didn’t have the mysterious package they wanted.
“She didn’t send me anything, Owen. Or at least I never got it,” she said, every word dull. “Maybe these people you say are after me have it.”