The Judas Contact (Boomers Book 1) (7 page)

“Do you talk, Green Eyes?” She twisted sideways in the seat, pulling her legs up to sit crisscross in the seat.

“Garrett,” he corrected. “Since I spoke earlier, the question is a little specious.”

“No, it’s a sign of boredom. You’re taking me out of the city to an undisclosed location, chasing some fantastical technological cryptid and I want—I need to talk.” Her voice quavered up and down. He preferred her lower, huskier tone.

“Then talk.” He shrugged. It didn’t matter to him if she needed to get it off her chest. Traffic shifted, allowing him access to an express lane and he took it. The aggressive maneuver gained them about thirty feet before it slowed again.

“You’re a soldier, aren’t you?” She chewed on the inside of her lip. It was a thoroughly distracting habit.

“No.” He checked the GPS on his watch. According to the traffic report, their drive would last at least another two hours. How much talking could she want to do?

“You move like a soldier. Your team acts like soldiers. Rory’s one of you, but she’s not. That means she’s not part of the time travel delusion you all shared, but you’ve convinced her.” Her right knee bounced. “There’s an odd intensity to the way you interact with each other, but the command structure is off. You don’t use ranks—or maybe you’re not using them around me. Which would be cagey and intelligent to keep me from knowing more than I do—but you already revealed a lot of data, so I’m not entirely certain how keeping your military status a secret serves the overall mission.”

She looked at him expectantly and the silence pulled taut, so he grunted.

“Still not answering the question.” She sounded more amused than annoyed. “Is there a strategy behind not telling me where we are going?”

“No.” He shook his head once.

“So why haven’t you told me?”

“You asked for a place to work, equipment to work with, and a test subject. We are providing you with all of the above.” Traffic continued to inch forward and a sign appeared for his exit. It wasn’t far past the end of the bridge. The GPS still showed two hours despite the intervening ten minutes.

“All right, let’s try this with an actual question. What location are you taking me to?”

“Long Island.”

“Where specifically on Long Island?”

“Do the coordinates affect your testing?” Because he highly doubted that the location mattered to the work they needed her to do.

Her laugh caught him unaware, the sound spiking through his mind. It was almost sweet and the tension in his shoulders eased back. He wondered how he could make her do that again.

“Of course the testing doesn’t require a location, but I want to know.” She tapped her chest. “Me. This has been the most insane day—it is the same day right?”

“We picked you up at R.E.X. yesterday. It took you a few hours to sleep off the toxin.”

Her nose wrinkled, and she didn’t laugh. “Toxin. We’re going to talk about that aspect later, trust me on that.” Her stern tone relaxed. “However, I got up yesterday morning and I skipped my jog. I’m supposed to exercise every day. My doctor is all over my case about my blood pressure: it’s been too high. I spend a lot of time in the lab, a lot. I’ve got research to do, right?”

The question demanded an answer. So he nodded. “Right.”

She thumped his arm gently, accepting his agreement. The touch was so casual and open it startled him. The guys didn’t touch him. His gloved hands flexed on the wheel. They especially didn’t touch him when he wasn’t prepared for it. Fortunately, his Kevlar and jacket would shield her from his natural defenses.

“So I’ve started running, every day. It’s good for me, and I usually take one of the dogs out with me. But the director decided that the dogs were too valuable to be running the trail, so I have to run before I get in the office. It’s early, it’s dark, and there are clouds of flour and sweet stuff at every bakery I pass, which makes me want a donut, and then I pause to have a donut, but the running offsets that.”

No laughter, but lots of words. Garrett accelerated, glad the needle bobbed up above thirty. Maybe a change in scenery would offset the nonstop chatter. She paused again. He’d watched Michael and Rory enough to understand that she expected some kind of response.

“But you didn’t run yesterday morning.” He wasn’t entirely sure what that had to do with anything.

She stayed quiet, her expression shuttering. She unfolded her legs and leaned back in the seat. Her gaze turned from him to the window and the traffic flowing past them. They made their exit and he accelerated onto the expressway. The needle climbed above forty and the minutes ticked down on the GPS.

Ilsa remained quiet. The lack of chatter grated more than the constant comments. Garrett glanced to his right, his gloved fingers flexing on the wheel. Five miles later, he frowned. He didn’t like the silence.

Clearing his throat, he looked over at her again. “Do you want to run when you get to our location?”

* * * *

The house on Long Island turned out to be a mansion near Montauk. Ilsa leaned forward, hand resting against the dash as Garrett drove them up the long drive. It sat perched on a cliff overlooking the water. Twisting in the seat, she could see a trail that led from the house right down to the beach. Thick green grass decorated the lawn immediately around the house and a wraparound veranda with a crenellated roof looked inviting.

“You guys own this?” It was easily a two to three million-dollar home. She couldn’t even fathom how that was possible. The Hamptons was an exclusive playground for the wealthy escaping from the too hot city in the summer. Autumn wasn’t a peak time of year, but how could they possibly afford this place?

“Yes.” Garrett’s taciturn response reflected his contributions to the conversation throughout the drive. A garage door whistled upwards on a breeze of quiet. He parked the van inside and the door shut, wrapping them in the dark cocoon. She blew out a breath, but the lights came on and she could see the four-car garage was utterly normal, from the concrete floor to the solid walls. But they didn’t look totally normal either.

“Reinforced.” Garrett answered the unspoken question as he pushed the door open and climbed out. He was such a tall man, broad shouldered, and thick. His arms were easily twice to three times the size of hers. He glanced back inside the car. “And soundproof. If anyone is looking for you, parabolic mikes won’t pick you up here. Do you want to rest or do you want to run?”

She blinked at the question. The man seemed almost removed, solitary, and aloof. Yet, that was the second time he’d asked her about running. Her lower back ached as she followed him out of the van. Everything seemed a little stiffer. She hadn’t actually fought anyone the day before and, other than the mad dash up the stairs, she didn’t think she’d hit anything. But her body still protested.

“I need to stretch and change and then yes, something normal like run.” She surprised herself with the agreement. But a run would clear her head, let her work through the details of this abduction. “Garrett, can I ask you a question?”

He opened the side door to the van and dragged out a couple of duffel bags. His mild glance suggested that she’d already asked quite a few, but she ignored it. Her brain worked the way it did, he would have to get used to the way she processed things. “You can.”

“Am I a prisoner?” Her heart thumped uneasily. She felt a little like a prisoner, trapped by the most bizarre circumstances. They were asking for her help and holding out the most impossible of carrots. The desire to rush to the testing phase conflicted with the urge to put it off. Were they lying? Suffering from some common delusion? Or were they telling the truth?

She really had no idea which one would be the worst answer.

“No. But I am here to provide security as well as act as your test subject. Your director wanted you in custody for something. You don’t have to stay, but if you want to go, you need to wait until I get Simon here. Then we’ll drop you at home or somewhere else more secure.” He slung another bag over his shoulder. “Do you want to go?”

No recrimination or rebuke existed in the words, just a cold practicality. For some reason, that made her feel better. “No. I’ll stay. But if I decide I’m done, I want your word that I can go.”

“When you want to go, we’ll call Simon.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” She frowned. Simon was the pale-eyed blond with the lean build and almost eerie stare.

He nudged her with a look toward the interior door to the house. “Enter 2093, star, 1968.”

Stretching with every step, she tried to work the kinks loose. At the keypad, she thumbed in the numbers and the door hissed and then released. They had air pressure seals on a garage door? She grabbed the handle and pulled it open. The door opened outwards, not inwards. Another oddity to add to the long list of questions she was compiling.

Inside, the air hummed and a tingling washed over her. Above, three black ball cameras focused on the door. Their red lights turned green one at a time and a second door at the end of the three-by-four-foot hall opened with another pressure release—a decontamination chamber of some kind. Uneasiness worked up her spine. The inner door opened outwards, as well, into the rest of the house.

With Garrett crowding behind her, she followed her curiosity into the main house. The main level of the house was wide open, blue and green marble tile swirling out from a central pattern like the yellow brick road in
The
Wizard of Oz
. Vaulted ceilings, crystal chandeliers, and mahogany wood trim screamed wealth.

She almost wanted to run up the sweeping half circle staircase to the balcony above. Half a dozen rooms opened off the main entryway. The front doors were doublewide and reached up eight feet. The handles were two feet in length on each and featured an interlocking series of bolts. The color was black, but they weren’t wood.

They were steel.

This wasn’t a house.

This was a fortress.

“The laboratory is in the basement. The bedrooms are upstairs. You can take your pick.” Garrett strode around and up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He didn’t wait for her to follow, but she did anyway. At the top, she leaned against the railing and looked down. It was like standing in the middle of a movie. She half expected a footman to open the front door and begin admitting wealthy, overdressed guests, dripping in diamonds.

But Garrett continued across the landing and down a long hall without pausing. She hurried to catch up, glancing in the rooms as they passed. Two were ordinary with thick carpet and a bed and very little else in the way of furniture. The third door was closed and a keypad inset into the wall next to it suggested it was locked, but she’d test that theory later.

Three doors later she found Garrett dropping bags in a non-descript brown room without any windows. Leaning in the door, she studied the walls. Two sets of heavy, deep chocolate drapes hung where windows should have been, but it was daytime and no light shone in. “Have something against windows?”

Garrett glanced up from checking his phone and grunted something. He flipped the phone closed and touched a button on the nightstand next to the bed. A clank followed by a rolling noise peeled back two shutters and revealed two large windows. Curious, she wandered deeper into the room and stared out the glass. The ocean foamed as it came against the rocky sand beach below. In the distance, a couple of sailboats cut through the water, their blue and red sails creating quite a splash against the scene.

“Why on earth would you close these off like that?” It was as though she’d gone down the rabbit hole into a luxurious wonderland of the bizarre.

“Security. Your room will have them, too. At night, when you sleep, they are to be sealed shut. The internal air regulators keep the temperature moderate and the air purified. The house will seal all the windows at dusk. The glass is treated and resistant to observation, but it’s still glass.” Garrett grabbed another duffel and walked out of the room. His voice drifted back, “You coming?”

 The bags he left on the bed must have been his own. The varying shades of brown were restful, earthy, and failed to reveal much about her driver slash test subject slash security guard slash whatever he really was. No pictures, no trinkets, no personal items were in evidence. Whoever Garrett was, whoever any of them were, she wasn’t going to find it in the décor.

Maybe they bought the house as it was and left it that way. But who kept a several million-dollar home and didn’t put their personal stamp on it? Her apartment wasn’t even a hundredth the size of this house and her life story played out on the walls, in the cushions hand-stitched by her grandmother and the quilts sewn by her friends. Even the sloppy, haphazard puppy paw print cross-stitch hanging above her sofa could tell a story.

She glanced at the duffel bags. Maybe his secrets were tucked away inside the black canvas.

“Dr. Blaine?” Garrett’s voice drifted back, patient expectation hanging in the air. She tucked away her desire to open the bags for later. The lack of personal information might be better, anyway. She needed to approach this insanity from the perspective of pure science. Hypothesize, observe, test and review the results. Those would give her a clearer, cleaner picture, unadulterated by personal feelings or bias.

Garrett waited in the room immediately next to his. That meant her room looked down onto the same beach. A curl of delight rippled through her. Where his room was all brown, hers was all in green. Rich greens that complimented each other, but barely touched the color of his eyes. The room bore the same layout and lack of personality, with the only concession being a classic roll top desk next to the windows and a vanity opposite the large bed.

“The bathroom is there. Clothes for you are in the bag. Rory sent you supplies. Drake will bring up anything else we need.”

She caught his arm as he started to brush past her and walk out the door. His expression tensed at the contact, the soft leather of his jacket almost buttery against her fingers. “Thank you, Garrett. I’m just going to wash up and change.”