Page 37 of Black Bay Protector
Orders from above. As in the government. Fuck. Had his call tipped them off and they’d ordered the move? He’d been intentionally vague, just telling them that his people had heard some chatter about experiments on soldiers and they wanted permission to look into it deeper. It could have been enough to make them nervous and want to relocate he supposed. Shit. That would mean this failure sat firmly on his shoulders.
Pushing that aside, for now, he focused on Doctor Dietrich. “And just who would those orders come from? Who’s pulling the strings?”
How high up did this go? Did the president know?
“I’m afraid that’s above my pay grade. You’ll have to interrogate Doctor Craig Jerome. He’s the one who would know.” She leaned forward, her expression eager. “Have my redhead do the questioning.” With a gleeful laugh, she clapped her hands together. “I’d love to be there to watch him squirm.”
Hisredhead had a goddam name. But regardless, the team had already thought of that. While the majority of them had packed up to move out, Lark, Kong, and Jace had gone to the address they had on the senior bio-robotics engineer that headed up the program intending to question him, or if he was gone, search his place for clues. The residence had been cordoned off with police tape when they’d arrived, and a quick hack of the local law enforcement computer system revealed that the good doctor had been killed execution-style in his own living room.
“Doctor Jerome is dead.”
That broke through the mask of calm she’d thus far maintained. Her body jerked in surprise and her eyelids fluttered rapidly. “What? How?”
“He was shot. Two to the chest. One to the head.”
Her throat worked as she swallowed convulsively and her hand raised as if she was about to clutch a set of metaphorical pearls. Her voice was thick when she uttered, “The Commander.”
It was the General’s turn to raise a brow. “Who is the Commander?”
She shook her head, her lips tight, and then, she visibly pulled herself together. “The Commander is one of the prototype soldiers. When 5402J4C3 copied those files at Bellock, he triggered security.” Her eyes flicked up to the General. “We were able to get a tracker on him.”
The General nodded, urging her to continue with his hand. He already knew about the tracker they’d gotten on Paige – not Jace – and while he longed to correct her for using a serial number to refer to Jace, he didn’t. Whether Jace wanted to share his name with this woman or not was up to him.
“Doctor Jerome sent the Commander after them. Solo mission.” Her face twisted with undisguised disgust. “The fool. I didn’t know it at the time, but the woman with 5402J4C3 was the Commander’s sister.”
Commander Grady Carter. Former Navy SEAL with one hell of a distinguished career. He was also Paige Carter’s brother and the man Jace was hell-bent on saving.
“Craig thought to use it as atest,” she hissed the last word, her derision plain, “to see if the memory wipe worked. Now we have a rogue asset on the loose who has broken his programming and has plainly chosen vengeance.”
He looked at her thoughtfully. “Do you blame him? This Commander?”
Her lips pressed into a hyphen but she looked him dead in the eye when she said, “No, General. I do not. It may surprise you to learn that I was never fully on board with this program. Those soldiers, what was done to them, that was never my vision.”
“But you still did it.”
“It was either that or live in a prison cell.” She spread her hands to indicate the room she was currently occupying. “At least here, I’m with my children.”
Her children. Christ, it burned his ass when she said that. This woman was no mother.
Through gritted teeth, he ground out, “Children you tortured and abused for years.”
“To save other mothers from hell!”
“Save it!” he barked as he headed for the door. There was nothing she could say that would ever get him to see her twisted side of things and if he spent another moment in her sadistic presence, he might give in to temptation and give her a taste of her own medicine.
The Commander watched the house from his perch in a nearby tree. He’d gotten the address from the files he’d accessed, but nothing about the split-level ranch sparked any memories. Then again, he had no idea if this was the house he’d grown up in or something his parents had purchased after he was grown.
The man and woman who lived here – his parents – he had recognized. But not in the way he should have. Not in the way he’d wanted. Instead of a flood of childhood memories like he’d hoped for when he saw them, it was a niggling in the back of his mind, a forgotten word on the tip of his tongue, but the harder he tried to place it, the quicker it slipped away. Like smoke on the wind. It was frustrating. And that frustration only escalated the anger toward the people who had done this to him.
He felt no remorse for killing Doctor Jerome. Some would call him a murderer. He called it justice. His own files weren’t the only ones he’d accessed. The not-so-good doctor had been in it up to his eyeballs. Targeting soldiers. Conspiring with hired operatives to do harm and then assuaging his conscience by calling it scientific advancement for the good of his country. Doctor Jerome had thought himself a hero. The man had no idea what a true hero was.
The doctor had also ordered him to kill Paige Carter – not only an innocent woman but Grady’s own sister – as a test. The sick fuck deserved to die.
Leaving the concealment of the tree, the Commander made his way to the quiet house, the occupants having long-since retired for the night. When he’d first arrived, he’d thought about going to the door and ringing the bell, but the thought of his parents seeing him like this – seeing the look of horror on their faces – had turned his stomach. He’d waited. He’d watched. But the need to know had become nearly overwhelming. Surely there’d be something inside the house that would give him a clue as to who Grady Carter had been.
It was a work of a moment to disable the home security system, and quietly, he entered through a set of French doors on the side of the house.
The scent of gun oil and the lingering aroma of cigars hung in the air. His father’s office.
