Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 136425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 682(@200wpm)___ 546(@250wpm)___ 455(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 682(@200wpm)___ 546(@250wpm)___ 455(@300wpm)
“We’re making first contact and treating her like a scared deer we need to be gentle with,” Henry replied.
“She’s a bombmaker,” Tristan pointed out. He relaxed back as he looked her uncle’s way. Tris was a lovely man with dark hair and green eyes and a body he honed in the gym. “The woman has been in and out of prison most of her adult life. I don’t think we should be treating her with kid gloves. She’s killed people.”
“She built something that killed people.” Zach’s tone was bland, like he didn’t care. “I’m not making excuses for her, but she got caught in something bad, and you can’t imagine that life. Tris, you’ve always had people who cared about you. Who would move mountains for you. You literally have three parents who treat you like the sun in the sky. She never had that. What she had was a genius-level IQ in a poor household where her mother didn’t care about her bouts of depression, her anxiety.”
“I know I have loving parents, but I assure you I do understand what it means to get caught in a life that’s not good for you,” Lucy said softly. “I would bet she started because she was trying to please someone, likely your father, and the truth of the matter is jail doesn’t rehabilitate criminals most of the time. It merely gives them access to other criminals. They became the only people she could halfway trust. Zach, I’m with my father. I’m going to treat your mother with care. Your father is another story.”
“How do you feel about that, Zach?” Uncle Ian studied Zach with sympathetic eyes.
“If you see him, don’t hesitate,” Zach replied in that toneless voice he used when he was far too emotional. “He already tried to take Devi. And that’s my fault. The Canadians believe Huisman had someone follow me the night we broke Devi and Kala out of the house in Virginia.”
“I’d like to see their data,” her uncle said. “But I believe them. That was weeks ago. Why wait until now to make a move on Devi?”
“Oh, I’ve been sitting on that farm taking care of chickens and horses and all the kittens.” She wished she could have taken one of the kittens with her. Sweet little things. “That was the first time I was allowed off the farm, and I get the feeling I’m going to pay for it. I don’t know why Zach decided today he wanted to be a Dom. He literally could have picked any of the other days when I was perfectly well behaved.”
She felt him place a kiss on her ear. “You’re never perfectly behaved and you know it. You’re a force of nature when you want to be.”
Her uncle ignored them utterly. “We think Huisman has a plan he would like to execute soon. There’s a meeting of the world economic council in a couple of weeks. We think he wants to disrupt it.”
“But not in the traditional way,” Henry continued. “He’s careful when it comes to anything close to what he considers intelligence circles, but he can be a bit reckless when he’s working with criminals or what we would call underground activists.”
“A few months ago, we found some chatter on a couple of sites I monitor on the Dark Web,” Lucy explained. “They started to talk about a group that stole a sample of weaponized anthrax.”
The room seemed suddenly on edge. Oh, they knew something she didn’t. “Is it Huisman’s group?”
“Huisman used us for cover to steal that. My fiancé’s father owned a lab that was doing some risky research.” Tasha took over the narrative. “At the time we didn’t realize who Huisman was. We were researching him. We certainly didn’t realize he would use the raid on the business to slip in and get the formula they developed.”
“Anthrax is bad?” Devi didn’t keep up with medical stuff.
“Anthrax is a bacteria that occurs in nature.” Naturally Lou took the scientific explanations on. “It’s rare but humans who catch it usually do from contact with an infected animal. Depending on the way the spores are introduced into the body, the mortality rate is between forty and fifty percent.”
That sounded bad. “So he stole some of this bacteria?”
“He stole the formula to aerosolize anthrax. What they’re trying to do is take something rare with a high mortality rate and make it easy to spread and over a wide space. It could kill half a city quickly if dispersed in the right way. It would need to come from above. We think he’s made his anthrax and is looking for a place to test it. What he needs is a way to deliver it.”
Now she understood. “He needs something he can use as a biological bomb.”
“Which is where my mother comes in,” Zach explained. “She’s known for targeted explosions, which sounds like it wouldn’t work, but the truth is she can adapt. With the right chemistry and tech, she can ensure the spores get delivered to the city’s biggest population centers.”