The Judas Contact (Boomers Book 1) (19 page)

He glanced down. She was pressed up against him and their every breath brought her chest into contact with his. And she had touched him.

Twice.

No. I can’t let this happen. She has to be okay.
If he touched her again, he could pull the toxin out. He could draw it back into himself. He slipped free of her grasp and pulled off a glove. The flashlight hit the ground at their feet and he brought his fingers up to her face, not quite touching. He concentrated. He was more a hammer than a surgical tool, but he could feel illness in his bones. He knew its scent, its lingering imprint, and he could call those toxins home.

He swallowed and traced a touch in the air just above her face. Her eyes, still damp from tears, tracked his movement. “I’m fine…”

“Shhh.” He mimicked her earlier sound. He pushed away the image of her parted lips, of her tongue moistening them, and the rise and fall of her breasts straining against the tank top. He forced himself to blot out the scent of lavender and fresh green things with the faint undertone of copper and water. He looked only for the toxins, the minute poisons infiltrating her blood.

Nothing.

Sweat beaded on his back and he focused his will. His body knew its toxins, it knew how to call them. But nothing came to him. No scent of illness, no taste of wrong, no feeling of bad—just the sweet warmth of the doctor in his arms.

“Garrett. I’m not sick. I’m sore. I’m bruised. And I’m upset. But I’m not sick.” The softness in her voice acted like a siren call on his system. His body hummed with need. He was millimeters away from touching her face.

No one was immune to him. Maybe his mother—but they’d never been allowed to find that out. Rex was only immune when he shifted. He avoided contact with those he liked—and strangers too—when one touch could kill them. He wanted to believe she was okay.

“Do you hear me?” Her voice floated up through the haze, but still no toxins answered him. Would a moment of carelessness cost him this wonderful woman?

Target Acquired: Doctor Ilsa Blaine

Target Identified: Mate

The chip nattered on, but his mind blanked at that word. Earlier it had suggested her as a potential mate.

What? Was it serious? Or was there some kind of malfunction? Why couldn’t he just ask it a question?
Identify mate.

Target Acquired: Doctor Ilsa Blaine

Target Identified: Mate.

It reminded him to protect her. Not that he needed the reminder. He frowned. His pulse sped up.

“Okay, you’re scaring me now. Garrett, I need you to talk to me.” Her voice quavered, but she didn’t pull away.

“How can I ask the chip a question?” His hand shook.

“I don’t know—the memory matrix was a SQL database protocol. Try a query.”

He swallowed and held his breath.
Query. Identify mate requirements.

 
Query response: Mate requires a DNA match within 98.9 percent parameters.

His lungs shuddered.

Query. Identify DNA parameters.

Query response: DNA parameters established by chip implementation code one-one-four-one-nine. Host DNA compatibility.

That made no damn sense. “Did you have a code one-one-four-one-nine?”

“For what?”

“Ilsa. Please just answer the question? Did you have a code?”

She shook her head slowly, and his hope crashed. “I had codes. But nothing that detailed. I was working with a table of five to ten commands. What’s happening?”

Just tell her.
“Earlier the chip identified you as a potential mate and it just answered a query and said that the DNA parameters had to be met for host compatibility. Any idea what that means?” He knew what he hoped it meant, but he didn’t dare hope.

Ilsa frowned and leaned back, the flashlight at their feet left her face cast in shadows. “Your DNA has to be the host. The chip has to be compatible, particularly with your body and your abilities.”

“And if it’s compatible?”

“You can’t hurt it.” Her nails grazed his wrist. Digging in.

Query: Chance of infection for Doctor Ilsa Blaine?

Query response: Unknown.

“Son of a bitch.” He let her go and backed up a few steps, trying to get his breathing and his body under control.

“Tell me.” She didn’t follow him.

“I asked it what the chances of infection for you were—it said unknown.”
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
He retreated from her further. Not only had she touched his face in the car, now she’d held his wrist. If she wasn’t infected before, she could well now be.

“Ask it about rejection.”

“What?” He glared anywhere but at her. It hurt to look at her.

“Query: Opportunity for rejection. It won’t understand infection, but it should understand rejection. The chip’s work can’t be done if it is rejected. Ask it.”

“Leave it alone. We need to get you to a doctor.”

“I am a doctor, you big, stupid, stubborn man.” She slapped his shoulder and he turned to find her right there in front of him. Need flowered open inside him, bolts of shattering want and desire that he had never allowed himself to experience. She was too close. “Ask the chip the question.”

Query: Opportunity for rejection to host DNA?

Query response: Identify target.

Garrett swallowed.

Target: Doctor Ilsa Blaine.

He waited.

Query response: Target identified: Doctor Ilsa Blaine, DNA match within acceptable 98.9 percent parameter as established by code one-one-four-one-nine. Chance of rejection less than point-zero-zero-three percent.

His mind locked. His body tensed.

“Garrett?”

“Chance of rejection less than point-zero-zero-three percent.”

She stared at him. The world slowed. She reached out and took his hand and stripped off the glove. He watched, holding as still as he could, focusing his will. She lifted his bare fingers back to her face. “Touch me.”

Did he dare?

A chance of rejection was still a chance.

“It’s okay.” She smiled, murmuring. “Those are acceptable odds, more than acceptable. In science, that’s damn near a perfect match.”

His fingers twitched, her breath tickled the tips.

He wanted to touch her. Ached with the want of it. She waited. The nerves in his body sizzled. With painful slowness, he uncurled his fingers and stretched out two, just two, and brushed them down her cheek.

“Soft.” He could barely frame the word.

Ilsa smiled and turned her head to press a kiss to his fingers.

He shook.

“It’s okay, Garrett.” She rubbed his wrist soothingly. His hand glided along her cheek and then he slid it up into her hair and pulled her close. She fit perfectly against him. His heart skipped as her arms came around him and held him tightly.

It was his first hug.

An hour later, Ilsa sat in the back of another van with a kit, directing Rory on how to stitch the four-inch-long slash along her side. It stung like a bitch, but she focused on what she was doing in the mirror. Rory sat across from her, unusually silent. Drake picked the damaged van up and set it upright. Michael and Rex were putting the vehicle back together. Simon wanted to talk to Garrett and he’d left her with great reluctance.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to a hospital?” Rory grimaced. The stitches weren’t pretty, but Ilsa didn’t care. The wound was clean, she’d given herself a shot of antibiotics, and the stitches were smooth. It would leave a scar, but not one she couldn’t live with.

“I’m fine.” Her skin pinched each time Rory threaded the hooked needle through it. The throb was constant, however, and she timed her breaths between the stitches to control the pain.

“Okay. Do you want to talk about what happened with the creature?” The guarded tone, the wary look in her eyes, and the uneasy set of her posture screamed Rory’s concern, but Ilsa just shook her head.

“I’m fine.” She didn’t want to answer any questions. The whole team converged on them just minutes after Garrett finally let her touch him and he her. Her body tingled at the memory, warmth invading all her cool rationality and blowing away the reasons why it was a bad idea for them to get involved. She’d agreed to do work for them, intending to disprove their wild theories and, instead, she was falling deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole.

Distance might help her get some perspective, but the thought of leaving Garrett increased her perspiration, pulse and respiration. She recognized the symptoms of anxiety, and she struggled against them. She wanted to talk to Garrett.

Not Rory.

“You keep saying it, but I don’t believe you,” her old friend tried again and Ilsa blew out a huff of a breath as she tied off the last stitch.

“Look, believe me, don’t believe me. That choice is yours. I don’t want to talk about this right now. Summer is no longer a threat. I want to take him and Garrett and go back to the house.”

Rory set aside the needle. She used some alcohol to clean her fingers and dried her hands before reaching for salve. Ilsa took it from her; the antibiotic ointment would reduce the pinching soreness and then she could wrap it and be done with the injury.

She didn’t even know where she got the cut, though Garrett told her Summer had pulled her from the vehicle. It was in the right location to have been an accidental slice. Her heart squeezed. Questions surged in her mind. Questions about Summer, about what had happened to him, and about Garrett and what the hell was going on between them.

Too many questions.

“Look you’ve already done so much…”

The van door slid open and Rory glanced at Simon and Garrett. Worry creased her forehead. Ilsa lifted her chin and met the telepath’s gaze evenly.
My work isn’t finished. You can erase my mind. I get that. But you still need me.

The blond man’s brows rose a fraction and his face creased in a faint smile. “Indeed, Doctor Blaine. We do not disagree that we need you. We are, however, concerned about your safety.”

Ilsa flicked a look toward Garrett. His jaw was locked, tension radiating off of him.

“We, as in all of you? Or just Garrett?”

The man in question jerked his head up and met her gaze. She saw the warning in his eyes. She ignored it.

“Garrett’s concerned for your well-being, Doctor. As far as we can tell, the hunt for you has been called off—at least the public one. The police have closed their case and the labs are back to business as usual.” Simon chose his words carefully. She recognized a manipulative gambit when it was being played, particularly when she wasn’t the target for this game.

“We’ve had this discussion, Simon.” Garrett’s voice strained, tempered with quiet anger.

“We have. Now we are having it with the doctor.” The telepath never took his gaze from her face. Was he trying to read her mind?

What do you want to know?
She held onto that thought, pushing it out there. If he was reading her mind, he’d answer.

The corner of his mouth quirked.
Garrett is terrified he will cause your death. How certain are you that he cannot poison you?

She shrugged.
As certain as I can be. We’ve had skin contact. I’m not sick.

It can take a while. If it was a low dose of the toxin, it could settle into your cells, cause other damage.
The sound of his voice inside her mind was disconcerting.

The only way to know for sure is to run some blood tests. I can test my DNA against the sample I took from Garrett’s spinal fluid. His chip gave him good numbers, however. And it doesn’t matter, if I get sick tomorrow or fifty years from now, I have work to do. We—screw that—I need answers. I need to examine Summer. I need to find out what they did to him. I need to finish helping Garrett. I won’t leave him.
She lifted her chin. A dull ache stretched behind her eyes, accompanied by an odd sensation of pins and needles.
What are you doing?

“My apologies, Doctor.” The sensation retreated. “You aren’t used to mental conversation and it can be uncomfortable.”

“Stay out of her head.” Garrett snapped.

“Easy friend, she’s fine and she’s determined. Take her back to the house. We’ll deliver Summer in the next day or two. We want to make sure they don’t have a tracking device on him.” Simon motioned and Rory stood up. She leaned in for a quick squeeze.

“Be safe, okay? I can’t ever repay you for the help you’ve already given them.” The quiet, fierce declaration echoed in the tight hug.

“I will. You too and take care of those broken toes. You keep running like you have been and they may never heal straight.” Despite her time as a researcher, she was still a doctor at heart. Rory winked and the men had to step back so she could hop out.

Ilsa reached for the gauze and surgical tape, but the van bounced a little as Garrett slid inside. He grabbed the gauze in a gloved hand. “Let me help.”

His voice was gruff and he seemed determined to not meet her gaze, but she tugged her shirt a little higher and sat back. “Thank you.”

Tucking the gauze against the stitches, he had an incredibly light touch. The surgical tape took a few extra seconds, but he finally smoothed down the edges. Her skin tingled where his gloved fingers brushed against her.

“Are you sure you want to go back to the house?” The hesitation in the soft question betrayed his concern. She caught the gloved finger running down her side and pressed his hand flat against her.

“Yes, I’m sure. I want to run one test. That test should answer your questions and mine and assuage any fear.” If his blood was toxic to her, then it would kill her red blood cells. If she wasn’t affected by his toxins, then it would do nothing. Her gut clenched. If she was wrong, they’d already risked it. She would rather spend two weeks dying slowly, spending it with him, than the rest of her life wondering what could have been.

“Ilsa…”

“Don’t say it.” She tipped her head to the side, catching his gaze and holding it. “We’re going to be great. But now you have to drive me back and let me do my tests. Can you do that for me?”