Acceptable Risks Read online

  Not that he’d admit it.

  “What about the skin issues?” he forced himself to ask.

  Gabby adjusted her dark-framed glasses and peered at her clipboard instead of at him. Damn. He wasn’t going to like this answer.

  “Unfortunately, there’s nothing remarkable about your skin tissue. However, the regeneration therapy we gave you has continued to exert an influence, even though we tapered it off weeks ago. Which means more nerve growth.”

  “Which means increased sensitivity.”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  Jason shrugged again but doubted he fooled her. Everything inside him was stronger, but his skin was ultra-sensitive. Light touch had the effect of fine wires poking his skin, while heavy touch or stroke felt too good. He’d tried to explain without coming right out and saying a massage set him off like a rocket. After an excruciating number of days “shopping” for clothes he could tolerate, he’d found enough to develop a wardrobe. One he hadn’t worn yet, since he didn’t see enough people to matter. Gabby and her team of specialists and the technicians who did the drudge work didn’t care if he wore bike shorts and shirts twenty-four/seven.

  “What about the important stuff? You said the white cells…”

  “Yes, they’re within normal limits. But the risk of overwhelming post-splenectomy infection is high. We’ve vaccinated you against anything we possibly could, though for some you’ll need additional shots. You can come back for those.”

  Jason perked up. “Come back?” No way. She had to mean eventually. Every time he’d asked when he could go home, both she and Matt had evaded the question.

  Gabby lowered the clipboard and squared off with him. “Listen to me, Jason. You have to avoid illness. Wash your hands every chance you have. Stay away from sick people. Minimize touching surfaces in public, and keep hand sanitizer handy at all times.” She jabbed her pen at him for emphasis. “If you have any increase in your temperature or any flulike symptoms, you must come in here for immediate treatment. Fatality rate for other OPSI cases is nearly fifty percent. And obviously, you’re an exceptional case.”

  “Obviously.” He couldn’t keep the wryness from his voice and, to prevent her from bringing up his mental condition again, he asked, “So when am I getting out of here?”

  She pursed her lips. “I wanted it to be two weeks. But it doesn’t seem we have that luxury.”

  “Why not?”

  “I need you.” Matt walked into the room, looking haggard and wearing jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt. Jason hadn’t seen him dressed that casually at work in—ever. The flash of concern drowned under a rush of adrenaline. He wasn’t just getting out. He was getting a mission.

  He refused to show eagerness. “Need me for what?”

  Matt flinched at the hardness in his voice. Jason knew it was unfair to treat Matt that way, but feeling rarely had anything to do with knowing.

  “Thank you, Dr. Berwell,” Matt said, dismissing her.

  Gabby flushed and backed out of the room. “I’ll have a few more things to go over, Jase, before you go. But we’re pretty close to done here.”

  “Thanks, Gabby.”

  Matt waited until the door closed, then clicked the lock and crossed the room to sit on a table opposite Jason. “I’m sorry I haven’t been down in a while.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “It’s not, and I know it.” His eyes looked bleak, and he rubbed the spot between his eyebrows with his thumb. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  Jason snorted at the understatement. Matt had wanted him to concentrate on his recovery, not whatever was happening outside the lab for the last six months. “Like why everyone thinks I’m dead?”

  “Not everyone.”

  True. Jason’s parents knew he was alive. He didn’t think Matt had given them much detail, though. He had talked to them on the phone, but they didn’t seem to have any clue about the extensiveness of the damage or how close to death he’d been. His mother had described the “nice funeral” as if it had been a graduation party. But then, she’d only seen the video, herself.

  “Close enough.” Jason stood, his butt sore from the hard plastic. “Where’d you get the decorator for this place, anyway? Secret Experiments R Us?”

  “I don’t know, it was here when we moved into the building.” Matt’s voice was weary, and a shard of pity stabbed through Jason’s frustration.

  “Why don’t you just start with the accident and go from there,” he said.

  Matt drew a deep breath and blew it out. “You saved my life. The bullet that hit your shoulder would have gone right through my heart.”

  For the first time, Jason had an inkling of what Matt had gone through, watching him fall, thinking him dead. He couldn’t imagine life without Matt in it. They’d been friends, members of the same health club, before they’d been boss and employee. Jason was only twenty-one when they met, but he’d known since high school what he wanted to do. After a criminology degree, three summer internships with the FBI, and jobs running security at various businesses during the school year, he’d convinced Matt to make him one of his operatives. Within five years, he’d worked his way up through each level in the company until he’d become Matt’s right-hand man at the office, as well as his sounding board, weightlifting spotter, and designated receiver during pickup football games in the park. Since Kelly, Matt’s wife, died, Jason often felt that all they had was each other.

  “I’m glad you weren’t hit,” was all he could think of to say. He folded his arms and leaned against the treadmill.

  “I’m not. Well, I wasn’t. I watched you trip over that guy’s legs—”

  “Yeah, can we not mention that part anymore?” Jason cut in. “Kinda ruins the whole hero thing.”

  Matt’s eyes crinkled but he didn’t seem to have enough energy to smile. “I saw you go over. Heard your body bouncing from rail to rail. Watched you hit the steps eight floors down. I didn’t think there was any way you could be alive.”

  Jason knew the rest. How he somehow hadn’t hit his head, at least not hard enough for brain trauma. He’d ruptured his spleen, lacerated his liver, and damaged enough intestine to require a resection and a temporary colostomy (thank God he’d been asleep until after they reversed that). Plus all the shredded muscle-shattered bone stuff.

  They didn’t need to dwell on the how. Jason said, “No one seems to know if you found out what it was about. Who attacked us and why.”

  “Hummingbird wouldn’t still be here if we hadn’t.” Matt slumped over and rubbed his hands together, slowly, between his knees. “Kolanko’s ex-wife—not Adrina’s mother—found out he hadn’t updated his will. I don’t know how.”

  “Probably boinking the lawyer.”

  “Probably. Anyway, the guys in the stairwell talked. They were hired guns, no loyalty to who hired them. They’re in jail on reduced sentences. The ex has been extradited from Italy and is awaiting trial. The will’s been changed.”

  Jason pushed away from the treadmill and started pacing. Stupid fucking reason to be killed. He was glad he wasn’t really dead.

  “And the aftermath?” He had a feeling this would be worse. When you hired a company to protect you, you expected a low number of explosions. Like none.

  “It hit immediately,” Matt admitted. “Half our ongoing private sector clients have fired us. The government hasn’t managed to find a way out of the stuff we do for them already, but they haven’t given us anything new. The media frenzy has died down, of course, it always does, but in the industry there’s still a furor. Some say our failure on the Kolanko job has damaged relations all over the industry.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, if people believe it.”

  And Jason had been down here running on a fucking treadmill, listening to Harry Potter audiobooks for the last three months. “I should have been—”

  “No, you shouldn’t. It was hard enough losing you the first t
ime.” Matt stopped. Swallowed. “The risk of infection was too great for you to be out.”

  Jason nodded. It didn’t help his guilt, but it was reality and couldn’t be changed. “I appreciate what you’ve done, Matt. But—”

  “There’s a reason I had you declared dead.” Matt rose and came closer to him, visibly steeling himself for whatever he was going to say. “The technology we used to fix you is a big deal. It can mean saving a lot of lives. But none of it is approved for use in humans yet. We didn’t know if it would work, and there wasn’t time… I had to make a quick decision.”

  Jason bit back his response. He knew he was an experiment, and didn’t blame his friend or the doctors who, except for Gabby, treated him like a lab specimen. So he couldn’t yell at Matt for that. It wasn’t what he was really angry about, anyway.

  “There was no way you should have survived the fall,” Matt continued. “If anyone had known you did, we wouldn’t have been able to save you.”

  Jason nodded. It wasn’t that he wasn’t grateful or anything. But resentment burned in his gut for the implications of the lie.

  “Plus, I knew if anyone found out about the technology, found out it had worked, we’d have enemies after all of us, from worldwide.”

  “Why won’t we when I go topside, anyway?” Matt didn’t respond right away, and the resentment swelled. “Because they won’t know, right?” This time, he didn’t wait for a response. “Fuck that, Matthew. I’m not changing my identity.” It was one thing to use dangerous technology to save his life, and to use him to test dangerous technology. It was another to strip Jason of everything he’d done and been for thirty-six years. Every experience, every success and failure.

  “You won’t have to,” Matt said, derailing the head of steam Jason was building.

  He scowled. “How do you figure that? I’m dead.” He didn’t want to change his identity, but Matt’s decision six months ago had left them little choice. His intentions had been good, and Jason understood he’d been protecting both him and the company. So for Matt to now say he didn’t have to change his identity… His brain chewed on that for only a few seconds before he understood.

  “Crap.”

  “Yeah.” Matthew shoved his hand through his hair. “We can do some damage control. Since you left your assets to me—”

  “Back up.” He pushed away from the treadmill and faced his best friend. “You’re not going to keep hiding me.” Matt didn’t move, didn’t change expression, but Jason knew he was right. “You’ll let them find out I’m alive. Why?”

  “I’ll get to that.” Matt’s voice was strained. “As I was saying, since you left your assets to me—”

  “Actually, I left my assets to my parents, under your guidance as trust manager.” Security at Hummingbird’s level was lucrative, and Jason had built what his mother called “quite the nest egg.” Not wanting his parents to face the repercussions of suddenly having a huge sum of money, he’d set it up to take care of them for life without causing a burden.

  “Exactly,” Matt acknowledged. “They’re getting their allowance, and having a lot of fun with it, you’ll be glad to know. But I created a pocket fund for you. It’s been paying your ongoing expenses, including your property taxes and housekeeper.”

  Jason raised his eyebrows. “My home is still there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My neighbors—”

  “Moved out, a month ago. Place is still vacant.”

  What a coincidence. He only had one family living close enough to notice his presence, and they were gone? Matt had been busy.

  “How come I didn’t know about this stuff?” He motioned around the lab. “Before, I mean. It had to be long-term research.”

  Matthew winced. “Yeah, I kinda hoped you’d be mad enough about the rest to not mention that.” He rubbed the back of his neck and left his hand there. “It’s a separate company, not part of Hummingbird. And what they were doing was so sensitive, so advanced—”

  “You didn’t trust me.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

  Matt didn’t talk for several seconds. Finally, he admitted quietly, “It was so sensitive and advanced, even before we used it on you, it skirted moral if not legal channels. I didn’t think you’d approve.”

  Jason watched him straighten and turn away. An unfamiliar warmth soothed the burning. He’d been wallowing down here for months, thinking one thing, and the opposite was the truth.

  He cleared his throat and snatched at the towel hanging over the treadmill, just for distraction. “Okay, so.” The words stuck, and he cleared his throat again. “So. The risk of someone wanting the technology and coming after either me or the company.”

  Matt turned around again, his face tightening. “I figured it would be acceptable to you.”

  It was. “Except—”

  “Except I underestimated our enemies.”

  “Someone already knows.”

  “Suspects.”

  “Any idea who?” Jason’s mind clicked into work mode and started considering possibilities.

  “Someone who knows me. Knows us, and what would hurt us most.”

  His brain halted on one name. “Kemmerling.”

  “I think so. I don’t know for sure.”

  Isaac Kemmerling was a former employee. Slightly younger than Jason, he’d been an excellent agent for Hummingbird until two years ago, when he was promoted to mission leader, got cocky and risked all his agents’ lives on a job, and was censured. He didn’t take well to that and left the company. Since then, he’d done his best—unsuccessfully—to discredit Hummingbird and “take down” Matthew and Jason, as he’d threatened in a taped interview with a small-town Maryland reporter. It made sense he’d try to capitalize on the misfortune following the Kolanko incident.

  “Who else could it be?” he asked, his mind searching for possibilities and not coming up with any.

  Matt shrugged. “No one we’ve pinpointed. No one who has the knowledge, contacts, and especially motive to come after me. I could be wrong. But it’s the best place to start.”

  Jason nodded. “So that’s what you need me for.” He looked around for a pad and pen. “To investigate Kemmerling without anyone knowing.”

  “Not exactly.”

  Matt’s voice had tightened even further, and Jason stilled, his heart thudding even though he had no idea what was coming.

  “I got intel today that leads me to think Kemmerling is going after Lark,” Matt said.

  Jason swallowed. “What kind of intel?”

  Matthew pulled a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. It was a single sheet with a printed photo. Lark—whoa, had she grown up!—stood in the shower, her hair slicked back, eyes closed. Luckily for Matt’s sanity, Jason thought, she had her arms in front of her.

  Jason didn’t think that helped much, though, considering the red laser sight in the center of her forehead.

  Chapter Four

  “Hang on, I’m looking.”

  Lark startled at the strange voice in what was supposed to be an empty, secure greenhouse. Wrist-deep in soil, she squinted through the leaves of the plant she was repotting, trying to see the person who’d spoken. He definitely wasn’t any of the BotMed scientists who had access.

  The figure moved toward her from a few aisles away, but with an odd gliding step that seemed to indicate stealth.