“I can go,” I say with a shrug. “It’s no big deal.”
“Absolutely not,” Hopper says. He turns to me, grabbing me by my shoulders. “You belong here as much as I belong here.”
Ant rubs his chest and sends Hopper a grateful smile. “Exactly.”
We watch as Oakley throws his arms around his fathers and walks them over to their assigned building pads at the far end of the site.
Oak glances over his shoulder as he puts on a hard hat, giving me a quick, encouraging smile.
Oh man.
What his smile does to me… I can’t explain it, and I have no control over it, and now I’m fireworks on the beach. He has zero clue how I feel about him, and it’s killing me not to run up to him and kiss him and…huh. As instructional as porn has been, I still don’t feel totally confident about what comes next.
Hopper sidles up next to me again. “If you need a palette cleanser after this, I’ve got a high school coach on the agenda who could use the ol’ Hopper-Sy treatment.”
I take a deep breath and let it out slow. Yes. Murder always comes next.
“Sounds like a plan.”
3
OAKLEY
Maverick dropsthe tray on the metal table, then winces when it clatters loudly in the busy lunchroom. The diverse staff at the Wimberley office—people in lab coats, special ops folks in all black, office personnel—turn toward the sound.
“Sorry!” Mav says, waving both hands like a politician. “Slipped out of my hand.”
Everyone returns to their business, and Mav slumps into the cafeteria chair.
He’s bitched about having to go through Hedy’s training program, given he’s already started going on missions, but considering everything we’ve learned on day one…
I sit across from him, equally rattled.
Rami was right. One hell of a first day, and we’re only halfway through it—which feels incongruous, given that we’re in a state-of-the-art office building overlooking the Texas Hill Country on a gorgeous blue-sky day.
Hedy joins us. “How’re y’all doin’?”
Our aunt-slash-boss wears a knowing smile, her green eyespopping against her pretty freckles and caramel-colored waves. Curvy and comfortable in flowing layers, you’d be hard-pressed to guess that she’s also the pilot of record for all of Wimberley’s aircraft. Including the tactical helicopter. Apparently.
I raise my brows. “You could have warned us about Aunt Rae and her…” I pause, still trying to wrap my head around what I saw. “…genetic gifts.”
The extensive NDA we signed before coming in this morning is starting to make sense. As is all the secrecy around Wimberley. Suffice it to say that genetic experimentation in the late nineteen hundreds waswild. And highly illegal.
Hedy sends me an amused grin. “How’d you fare?”
I turn over my hand, a weak gesture. “I did okay. I guess.”
“Okay? Yeah, right.” Mav snorts. “I nearly shit myself, and this one just stood there, cool as a cucumber.”
I shrug. Years of research into the human psyche and clinical rotations through the most dangerous mental health wards thankfully burned through my startle reflex a long time ago.
Still, Rae was…something.
“I would have preferred a heads-up,” I finally say. “And not just with Rae.”
What I don’t say is that I’ve already figured out that the PhD track I followed—the one Hedy suggested—was never meant to lead me to researching mental health reforms, as I’d originally planned. She wanted me here, in the Wimberley office, this whole time.
As it happens, psychopathy, which is my specialty, shows up with alarming frequency in the richest of the rich. It’s estimated that forty percent of today’s leaders—CEOs, governors, representatives, and, yes, presidents—demonstrate psychopathic traits.
