“You’re going to hold it hostage?”
“Only until you refresh yourself. At least I’m not demanding you get at least eight hours of sleep,” he countered.
Her lips pursed, and as a shiver racked her, she sighed in defeat. “Fine.” She wouldn’t admit he had a point, as the chill, not only of the storm but the violence, had her shaking.
They headed for the stairs, where Tower gave them a hand, the steps turning into an escalator that stopped on the seventh floor, where Aries awaited with a serious mien.
“Good to see you both back,” the man said with a nod. “How did the mission go?”
Grayson held up the case and the rock. “Water samples and what might be part of the asteroid.”
“Excellent. Any trouble?”
“A bit, but I handled it.”
“A bit…” Leila snorted. “Understatement.”
Aries arched a brow. “Aliens?”
At the assumption, Grayson shook his head. “No, just some assholes who thought they could hurt Leila.”
The reminder had her clutching herself and shaking. Grayson noticed and frowned. “Why don’t you head upstairs and jump in that shower while I fill in Aries on our trip. I’ll meet you in the lab with the goods soon as we’re done.”
“See you shortly.”
She made it to her room and stripped to get in the shower. Only then did the shock set in fully, weakening her knees, sending her to sit on the tile floor while hot water sluiced over her. She’s almost died and to survive, had killed a man. Surprisingly, she felt no guilt over her actions. Hard to feel remorse when a lack of action would have seen her dead.
In a dark twist, she found herself annoyed at having her kiss with Grayson interrupted. The first time she’d allowed herself to get close to someone since college, and it ended in disaster. Would they get another chance? She’d make sure of it. First, though, there was work to be done, and the sooner she started, the sooner she could explore the burgeoning passion between her and Grayson.
CHAPTER 15
Grayson followedAries to his office and set the case and asteroid on his desk.
“Glad to see you didn’t come back empty-handed, but before we talk about that, tell me more about the trouble you encountered,” Aries demanded, leading Grayson to launch into a recounting of Hassan and his kidnapping of Leila, followed by the shootout in the storm.
At the end of Grayson’s tale, Aries sighed. “I’ll have to apologize to Leila. I didn’t realize she might be in danger if she left Tower.”
“Honestly, it was just a stroke of ill luck that we ran into the man. At least he won’t be able to cause any more problems.”
“And despite that setback, you successfully completed your mission.”
Grayson nodded. “Leila got a bunch of samples from the lake.”
“And you found the asteroid.”
“Don’t get too excited yet. We’ve yet to confirm it’s the right one,” Grayson cautioned. “Leila wants to run some tests on it.”
“Hopefully, we have answers soon. While we seem to have eradicated the aliens in eleven of the meteor-landing locations,Toronto is a whole other story. We’re still running into issues, despite the fact we’ve been killing and torching all traces of the creatures.” Aries rubbed his face. “I swear, given how they keep popping up, I’m beginning to think there’s a factory somewhere churning them out.”
“How do you know there isn’t? As we’ve discovered, it takes only a single small chunk to grow another. Could be the aliens are tearing off pieces and leaving them behind before going on their rampages.”
The theory had Aries grimacing. “Fuck me. If that’s the case, if they are intentionally replicating, that speaks to organization, which seems at odds with what I’ve encountered. Looking those aliens in the eye, I didn’t see any signs of intelligence, just rabid fury.”
“Every species has the instinct to reproduce.”
“Agreed, but I don’t know any who reproduce just to create cannon fodder.”
“Could be we’ve been fighting foot soldiers.”
