Cold spilled over Daniel. Trisk was an industrial spy? Working at Global Genetics to steal methods and techniques for another lab? But she’d given information, not stifled it. She’d helped him with innovative techniques he’d never seen before. Techniques no one had ever seen before. She has no published articles and a pretty face to open doors, he thought suspiciously. Someone as good as her should be widely published. Unless she was trying to stay unnoticed.
“I’m sorry Kal put you in this position,” Quen said, and Daniel looked past the edge of the building, drawing back slightly when he saw Trisk facing him, sitting at the tall counter with a plate of cookies between her and Quen, her angular face eager in anticipation as Quen ate one. Quen stood in the kitchen across from her, the cookie lost in his knobby hand. His back was to Daniel, every inch of his suit pressed and perfect and his dress shoes gleaming.
“Kal is a total jerk,” Trisk said, her attention dropping into her half-empty glass as Quen obediently ate a cookie. “Everything coming out of his mouth is pure horse crap. But he can be surprisingly . . . fun.” She winced in embarrassment. “Sometimes I go home at night—”
“Alone?” Quen interrupted, and she flashed a grin at him, dark eyes alight.
“Alone,” she agreed. “I take a hot bath or sit in front of the fire as I remember all the nice things he said or did that day.” Her smile faded. “I know it’s fake, a game to him, but it feels good anyway. To hear those things from someone who once spit on your shadow.”
Suddenly Daniel felt stupid. The woman was a spy, and he’d been worried Kal was trying to take advantage of her? Expression twisting, he dropped the flowers.
“He’s been at me to put my application in at NASA,” Trisk said, head bowed over her glass. “I said I would if he’d put his in, too. Come with me.”
“I bet that put a sparkle in his step,” Quen said, and Daniel drew back, holding his breath when Quen turned and his shadow spread long over the porch. From inside, he could hear the water at the sink run. “You’re not going, are you?” Quen asked, standing right before the window.
“Are you kidding?” Trisk said sourly. “Talk about your boys’ club. They’d have me washing their petri dishes and picking up their dry cleaning my first day. I’m putting Kal off with the excuse that I can’t leave until the enclave finds a replacement for me here. By then, he will have signed off on the patent transfer for the T4 Angel, and with that, I’ll have a successful product and can get a job anywhere. Meanwhile, I’m playing this stupid game of girlfriend. God! What a woman has to do to get credit for her own work.”
Daniel frowned, more confused. She was spying on him for an organization called the enclave, but trying to make a name for herself? Perhaps she needed to in order to get into the more exclusive labs.
“I need to stay for a few years more at least,” she said, and when Quen’s shadow vanished, Daniel risked looking past the flat of the building again. “Someone needs to watch Daniel,” she said, and his face warmed. “He’s got a new line of tactical virus to play with and he shouldn’t be left alone.”
Left alone?
Quen moved to stand between him and Trisk, hiding her. “I don’t like this game you’re playing with Kalamack,” Quen said as he sat, his elbows on the bar and his head down. “But I’ll be there if you need me. Just promise me you won’t let him sucker you into believing he’s any different than he was three years ago.”
“Yeah. Right.” Trisk snapped a cookie in half. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you those last few years at school.” She nibbled the cookie. “Needs more cinnamon.”
Quen turned away. Trisk was busy wiping the crumbs off the counter and missed his expression, one so deep and enduring that Daniel suddenly realized that as much as they looked alike, this man wasn’t Trisk’s brother, though that same need to protect was there.
“So, how did you get time away from the Kalamacks?” she asked, oblivious to how deep the man’s commitment to protect her went. “I was surprised to get your letter that you were coming out. It’s almost six hundred miles. I haven’t seen you since graduation.”
Daniel dropped back as Quen looked to the window, his heart pounding. “I’m supposed to be in Kentucky looking at a horse for possible purchase for breeding stock,” Quen said, his voice distant. “But I already know the animal is worthless. He’s all pedigree, no drive. I’m going to suggest they buy him. They won’t know he’s a bad choice for at least two years, and by then, I’ll be gone.”
The man was at the sink again, and Daniel began to edge away. He could put his car in neutral, push it far enough down the road that they wouldn’t hear when he started it. He wasn’t sure who he was going to tell, but he knew he didn’t want to be caught.
“You are incorrigible,” Trisk said, the light play back in her voice. “How would you know if he’s a good horse or not?”
“They speak to me,” Quen said. “In little nickers and whispers. This guy? He wants to laze about in the field all day. Hey, if you ever want horses for your stable, let me know.”
I can’t leave the flowers, Daniel thought suddenly, turning to find them.