Page 62 of How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win a Wager
He checked that Myers was still focused on the lab tech and shook his head before pointing to the dying vampires with his chin.“Save them,”he mouthed.
Wesley’s expression hardened. His hand darted between Vincent’s, undoing the fastenings at his wrists as his gaze went to Myers’s belt. To her ID access badge.
Before Vincent could find a way to reply, Myers turned to wave them forward.
Wesley gave a low whistle under his breath. “This place must be hopping when you’ve got all the cells full. Looks like I’ve got some work ahead of m—e!” While his head was twisted toward the empty cells on the far side of the room, he caught his foot in the lab tech’s cart, tipping it over as he tripped into it. The open vials of blood splashed across his jacket and sprinkled on his face and neck.
In the midst of the commotion, Vincent swept his hand out, unclipping Myers’s ID badge so fast that his arm blurred. He pressed it into Wesley’s back pocket and took a step away after, holding his wrists as though the bindings still held. His head felt light, the danger of what he’d just done hitting him only now that it was over.
“Shit, I’m so sorry,” Wesley said, his cheeks flushed beneath the splatter of blood and palms outstretched as Myers cursed.
“It’s fine,” she muttered, helping the lab tech right the cart. She glanced at Wes and her nose wrinkled. “There’s a bathroom down the hall, sign over the top. Don’t get any of that stuff in your eyes or mouth.”
“Right, sorry.” Wes bounced backwards with a sheepish smile and fled so awkwardly out the room that Vincent felt like he was looking at himself in a mirror.
As the door closed behind him, all the remaining warmth seemed to desert the space, leaving it a terrible, lifeless place. Vincent swallowed. Myers grabbed him. He flinched, stumbling over his own feet with each harsh shove she gave him toward the empty cell.
Run. He had to run. But he couldn’t, not yet. Not until Wesley—
And then he was inside, the glass sealing closed behind him. He forced himself to breathe. Either Wesley would come back for him, or this was where he’d die.
Wesley would come back for him.
23
WESLEY
Wesley deserved some kind of award for what they’d just pulled off. Maybe astupidest plan ever doesn’t fail—yetaward, or anidiot fumbles through life on sheer charismaaward. Definitely a prize forman doesn’t break cover despite wanting to look back at the vampire he’s madly in love with one last time. It wouldn’t be one last time though. He was coming back for Vincent.
Right after he figured out where the damned server room was.
He tried to ignore the fact that he’d seen no references to the kind of nefarious human studies that might have killed his mom. Perhaps the human deaths had been accidental. This was still the place that regularly handled the deaths of their lab participants and had the security set up to keep it all under locks. This would still be where they held those records. They would have known what they were doing was too illegal to keep in the labs upstairs. If his mom’s information was in their system, this was where it had to be.
Wes turned away from the restrooms, walking until he found a little safety map with the emergency exits and fire extinguishers highlighted. He scanned the setup. There were a dozen obvious laboratories and an area that was definitely the prison he’d just let them lock Vincent in, and there, at the center of the research floor, was a small room only identified as 340. Either that was the server room, or Wes was fucked.
God, if this worked, he was never going to half-ass anything again in his life. Maybe he’d even start going to Mass. At least for Advent and Easter.
He swiped a tablet from a metal basket as he jogged, glad that at least the night shift down here seemed to be just Myers and the lab tech from the prison room. Room 340. He held his breath, and pressed Myers’s ID to the lock. It clicked open.
A row of tall, cabinet-sized computers blinked in the darkness. Wes flipped on his phone light and pulled an external drive from the belt loop of his pants. The handle of Babcock’s gun pressed awkwardly into the small of his back as he squatted beside a strip of ports, hunting for the size that fit.
“Here goes.” He shoved his drive in.
Nothing instantly shut down on him, which seemed like a good sign. He used a cord from a nearby box to hook the tablet into the same computer server box. Did they have a more specific name than that? Wes was pretty sure his business degree had never covered industrial espionage.
He inserted Myers’s access card into the side of the table. The device made him input the woman’s pin code, and he congratulated himself for having watched her fingers closely when she’d first entered it. He clicked into the server’s main file system.
When he tried to open the human research trials folder, a popup appeared asking for an additional password. Fuck. For some reason he’d figured getting direct access would bypass that kind of security, but that seemed foolish now. He clicked back out, looking through the rest of the folders, different veins of research, protocols and certifications, then there: specimen records.
Even the humans they’d killed had to be in there, if they’d been willing to cover up their disappearances the same way they had their vampires’.
Adrenaline fluttered in Wesley’s chest, like the moment before launching off a cliff. He could have copied the entire folder over, looked through it later in the safety of his home. But he had to know. He opened it. At the top appeared a massive spreadsheet, individual files below it. Files with names.
Aaron, Eric.
Ackerman, Tina.
Aguilar, Daniella.
